Podcasts about Latins

In this solo episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Tony Arsenal tackles the concerning theological trend of "Divine Council Theology" and its recent resurgence within Reformed circles. He offers a critical analysis of Michael Heiser's influential work and its problematic popularization by Reformed figures like Doug Van Dorn and John Moffitt. Tony demonstrates how redefining the biblical term "Elohim" to include both God and created spiritual beings in the same ontological category fundamentally undermines the creator-creature distinction essential to Christian orthodoxy. Through careful examination of systematic theological categories, communicable and incommunicable attributes, and implications for Christology, he reveals why this seemingly academic redefinition poses serious threats to biblical monotheism and classical Reformed theology. Key Takeaways Divine Council Theology, popularized by Michael Heiser and now being promoted within Reformed circles, attempts to redefine "Elohim" as a functional category that includes both God and created spiritual beings. This theological trend commits an etymological fallacy by redefining the predominant usage of "Elohim" (which refers to the God of Israel in ~2,300 of 2,600 occurrences) based on minority usages. The approach dangerously blurs the fundamental creator-creature distinction that is essential to Christian monotheism and orthodox theology. Proponents incorrectly classify divine power as a communicable attribute rather than recognizing omnipotence as an incommunicable attribute that cannot be shared with creatures. The theological system makes problematic analogies to the incarnation, showing a confused understanding of the hypostatic union and potentially opening the door to Arian implications. This theology represents a concerning return to concepts the early church fathers fought against when confronting pagan Greek thought, rather than a retrieval of biblical teaching. Departing from the "pattern of sound words" handed down through church history in favor of novel interpretations should raise significant warning flags. Key Concepts The Creator-Creature Distinction The most fundamental division in Christian theology is not between spiritual and material beings, but between the uncreated Creator and everything else that exists. Divine Council Theology dangerously undermines this distinction by placing God and created spiritual beings in the same category of "Elohim." While proponents acknowledge God as the uncreated Creator, they nevertheless insist on categorizing Him alongside angels, demons, and other spiritual entities based on shared attributes of power or function. This categorization system parallels pagan worldviews more than biblical theology, where God exists in a class of one. By defining "Elohim" as a functional category related to spiritual power rather than an ontological one, this approach inadvertently returns to a hierarchical view of spiritual beings with God merely at the "top of the totem pole" rather than in an entirely separate and unique category of existence. This framework subtly but significantly undermines biblical monotheism by suggesting God shares a fundamental nature with His creatures. Communicable vs. Incommunicable Attributes Divine Council Theology mishandles the traditional theological distinction between God's communicable and incommunicable attributes. In classical Reformed theology, communicable attributes (like love or wisdom) can be shared with creatures in a limited, analogical way, while incommunicable attributes (like omnipotence, eternality, or divine simplicity) belong exclusively to God and cannot be shared without making the creature into God. Proponents of Divine Council Theology erroneously suggest that the power denoted by "Elohim" is a communicable attribute that God shares with spiritual beings, rather than recognizing omnipotence as properly incommunicable. This misclassification creates theological incoherence: if God could truly share His omnipotence with creatures, those creatures would effectively become equal to God in power, creating the logical impossibility of multiple omnipotent beings. This confusion of categories demonstrates how this theological system fails to maintain proper distinctions that are essential for preserving the uniqueness and transcendence of God in Christian theology. Memorable Quotes "Christianity and biblical Judaism—the primary distinction is not between spiritual and matter... The primary distinction when we're talking about the most absolute line is the distinction between the uncreated creator and his creation." "Rather than rely on the safe time-tested words and concepts that have been proven and validated, and attacked and defended and have been victorious for hundreds and thousands of years... Moffitt and Van Dorn think it is smarter and safer to depart from the pattern of sound words rather than to keep the pattern of sound words because they think that they are able to look at the Bible the way basically no one ever has in the 2000 years of the church and find something they haven't." "These teachings are pagan. This is talking about returning to a world populated by spiritual beings, and God is kind of just on the highest part of the totem pole... We're just returning to something that the early church fought hard to get rid of when they came out of their pagan culture." Resources Mentioned Reformed Arsenal article series on Divine Council Theology Full Transcript [00:00:24] Introduction and Episode Setup Tony Arsenal: Welcome to episode 461 of the Reformed Brotherhood. I am Tony, and today it's just me. Hey, brothers and sisters. We had a little bit of a scheduling conflict this week, so Jesse is taking the week off and uh, it gives me an opportunity to talk about something that I've been doing a little bit of research on. [00:00:47] Affirmations and Denials Tony Arsenal: Hopefully the listener has noticed that Jesse and I have been trying to keep our affirmations and denials a little bit tighter so we can get into the meat of the episode a little bit quicker. But occasionally we do run into a denial, usually a denial, but we run into a denial that, uh, we often say this could be an episode of its own. And so today is one of those episodes. So I'm not gonna give you my normal affirmation or denial. I'm just gonna jump into it. Now this is gonna be a little bit off the cuff. I've been doing some research, so I may not have as much of the receipts as the kids say, um, as I normally would. But I am writing a series of articles on this issue over@reformedarsenal.com. I'll make sure to put the link to the first article in the show notes. All of the receipts are there, all of the timestamps for the podcast episodes that I'll be. Discussing your critiquing. Are there citations for research work that I'm doing? All that stuff is there. So if you're interested in digging into the meet and you're the kind of guy who, or girl who likes to nerd out in the footnotes, then head over to uh reformed arsenal.com. You'll find the series pretty quick. [00:01:56] Introduction to Divine Counsel Theology Tony Arsenal: What I wanted to talk about today, and I'm glad we have kind of a whole episode, uh, to talk about it, is a movement, uh, that has some foothold in reformed theology. Uh, it's not new, uh, it didn't start in reformed theology, but for some reason, uh, those who are within our orbits tend to be a little bit enamored by this kind of theology. I'm not exactly sure why. [00:02:19] Michael Heiser's Influence Tony Arsenal: This theology is often called Divine Counsel Theology, and it was really, um, you know, it's not entirely new even with, with this figure, but it was really made popular and sort of, um, spread about and made accessible by the late Michael Heiser. Um, part of this is because he was just a very winsome, uh, guy. He took. Sort of highfalutin academic concepts and was able to bring them down to, uh, to an understandable level, including things like ancient near Eastern context, biblical, you know, ex of Jesus Hebrew language, other ancient near Eastern languages, which of course, that's that kind of stuff is what this podcast is all about, taking difficult, sometimes technical concepts. Talking about them, translating them into kind of the language that everybody else speaks. So that project was fine. The issue is the direction that he goes with a lot of the theology. So Michael Heiser writes a book called Unseen Realms, which is seen as kind of a retrieval of the supernatural mindset and worldview of the Bible. Uh, there's a lot to be commended about that, uh, enterprise, about that intention. I do agree with part of what he has to say when he says that we've lost a lot of the supernatural context of the Bible. Um, but I think where he goes with it is a direction that we really ought not go and we'll dig into it. [00:03:43] Critique of Reformed Fringe Podcast Tony Arsenal: The reason this is coming up now is because recently there's been a series of articles and podcasts put out by a show called The Reformed Fringe. Uh, some if you're in the Telegram chat, which you can join at, uh, t Me slash Reformed Brotherhood. You've already seen some of this stuff. We've already talked about it a little bit. But the Reformed Fringe is a podcast that sort of tries to fill a space that's something like Haunted Cosmos, which we've talked about before. Um, fills sort of looking at the weird fringe kind of things in the world. Ghosts, paranormal activity, trying to explain it through a biblical, uh, lens or worldview. Again, that's a commendable. Effort. There are strange things that happen in our world that are not easily explainable or at all explainable by natural, uh, naturalistic means. And so coming to those things with the Bible as our, uh, rubric to instruct us on how the world works is a commendable thing. But again, this project, which is by and large, um, and we'll get into maybe, but by and large is just an extension of, um, Heiser's project really goes in directions that cause all sorts of problems down the road. So the podcast is, uh, run by a guy named Doug Van Dorn, who most of the audience probably hasn't heard of. I have had run-ins with Doug over the years. Um, the last time I ran into him actually was revolving around similar kinds of issues that I'm gonna be calling out today. Um, and it, it ended up with him kind of having to depart from the reform pub, uh, maybe to put it a little bit politely and, um. You know, he has, he has taken, he's theology, which was not explicitly reformed. Heiser was not a reformed guy. He had no claims to be a Calvinist in many ways. Uh, he was sort of anticon confessional in, in that he opposed not the idea of a faith statement, but he sort of purported to come to the Bible with no biases, with no tradition. He wanted to approach what he called the Naked Bible. That was actually the name of his podcast before he died a few years ago. And so what Doug Van Dorn is, has done who, uh, Doug is a claims to be a 1689 Reformed Baptist. He's a pastor in Colorado, I believe. Um, he has tried to take this divine counsel theology and bring it into the reformed world. So he comes at it with a, a slightly different angle, but for the most part, his conclusions are the same. And in many cases he just straight up steals ER's work and doesn't cite it, doesn't do much to, uh, articulate that this is not his original research. Um, so he's taken that and he's trying to bring it into the reformed world. And Heiser himself was actually quite influential when I was a, an admin in the reform pub. We would run into lots of, lots of young reformed guys. Who were really enamored with this and they really saw, he's project as sort of a return to a pure form of exo Jesus that really got at what the Hebrew was saying. And it tickled, I think, kind of an intellectual, uh, an intellectual itch that a lot of those guys had combined with sort of this desire for the new and novel, um, which is in itself can be pretty dangerous. To sort of make things a little bit more pressing, Heiser has teamed up with John Moffitt, who many of our listeners may know. Uh, he's one of the co-hosts and founders of the podcast, Theo Cast, uh, which otherwise is a perfectly fine podcast. Um, he's also a 1680 or claims to be a 1689 Reform Baptist. He's a pastor. Um, their podcast is sort of what you would get if you had, uh, and I don't mean this to be pejorative, although maybe it is a little pejorative. Theo cast is what you would get if you took r Scott Clark. Uh, you made it much less intellectual and careful, and then made it Baptist. And what I mean by that is Scott's whole project. In large part is to recover and to emphasize the law gospel distinction. Theo cast has taken that and sort of cranked it up to 11. Uh, and they have um, they have sort of moved away from a lot of the classical reform distinctions of the law itself, so they don't full on deny the third use of the law. But in practice they would say that, um, good works is no kind of evidence whatsoever for your, um, for your faith. It's no kind of evidence of your, your salvation, which of course are confessions themselves. Um, say that there is a kind of evidential value to assessing our good works within certain reason and con. So the show is otherwise orthodox. You know, I I, I recall hearing episodes where they were refuting things like EFS, um, but because of that, Moffitt brings with him sort of an air of credibility and an error in orthodoxy that, um, the show itself probably hasn't merited. If Doug just recorded, pushed, play and put it on the. I don't think there would've been too much, uh, too much of a following. He would've probably, you know, grabbed a couple people who heard it and thought it was interesting. But because Moffitt has such a following on Theo cast, he brings with him a large audience, and that makes it particularly dangerous because his name attached to it makes it more widespread. It makes it feel like it's safer. And so I think a lot of people, uh, assume that what he's saying is orthodox and good. And I think what we'll find out is, is that it's not. So I think that's enough ProGo. [00:09:10] Elohim and Its Implications Tony Arsenal: I'm gonna go ahead and, and jump into explaining kind of what the theology that we're talking about is and, and what the problems are. So this all started kicked off, uh, with a series of podcast episodes and the first episode, and again, I don't have the specific titles here. I'll put a bibliography in the show notes on this one just so you have links to all the relevant episodes. Um, this all kind of kicked off with a podcast episode called something like The History of the Word God, or something like that. And, um, basically what Moffitt and Van Dorn want to do is they wanna look at the word Elohim in the Bible, which of course is a plural noun. Uh, in Hebrew, the, the suffix, just like in English, we might add an S or an ES, um, to a word to make it plural. Or in Greek, it's usually, if it's a masculine, uh, noun, it's, it's an oi or an omicron iota that sort of always sound at the end. Um, or when we, we talk about Latin, you have, you have like, um, you add the I at the end, so we say octopi instead of octopuses or something like that. Cacti instead of cactus. Although both of those are kind of pig Latins, um, in, in Hebrew for, uh, for masculine nouns. The suffix that you add to make it plural, is that eam sound. It's a, it's an Im if you transliterate in English. So the word Elohim is a plural of the original noun El which is a proper name for a eury deity. But it came to just be the singular word for, for God. Um, and, and in non-biblical language, we would say in a God. Um, and we do see in English, there are in, in Hebrew, in the Bible, there are places where we see the singular of this. It's kind of an older form, so it doesn't show up as much. Um, but by and large when we see the word Elohim in the Bible. Something like, uh, outta 2,600 references or more than 2,600 references in the Bible. Um, the word Elohim is associated with a single, a singular noun, and it only refers to the God of Israel. What Moffitt and Van Dorn want to do is they want to take this word and they wanna define it based on the abnormal. Uh, use of it. So the vast minority, minority of cases in the Old Testament, the word Elohim refers to the gods or to a non, like what we might say is lower G God, either like the God, Baal, or some sort of collective reference to the gods, the gods of the nation, or something like that. They wanna take the fact that there is this variation in the way the word is used and sort of radically redefine how the Bible uses it. And this, this is what I call and what a lot of people would call an etymological fallacy. So what they're doing is, instead of, uh, looking at the word and defining it based on how it's used in an, in an overwhelming fashion, they're looking at sort of the etymology of the word. And then they're using the fact that there are, uh, some pretty Dr. Dramatically minority cases where the word is used in a different way and they wanna redefine it and say, in, in all or most cases in the Bible actually. This is what the word means. So they look at the word L, which from its root has something to do probably with the, with the word for power or something like that. Um, they wanna look at it. And, you know, if you read someone like Vos in Reformed dogmatics in his volume one, he talks about how when we see the name Elohim for God, it denotes or, or refers to his sort of power, his omnipotence, which is all good and fine, just like we would say Yahweh. Uh, as a proper name refers to God sort of in his covenant role. It's his covenant name, his, his intimate, familial name that he shares, uh, with his people or he reveals to his people. Elohim is a more abstract name and it refers to God's power. Usually we see it in relation to his cre creation. So in Genesis one, um, when it's God created, it's Elohim created, which is also important and relevant for, for later. So what they wanna do is they want to say that Elohim actually. What Act Elohim actually means is it's a reference to a class of beings, spiritual beings, and that that it means sort of any spiritual being that has some type of supernatural power or enhanced power, some sort of spiritual power. They do this by saying that the noun is not an ontological noun, it's actually like a noun of function. Um, so like we would say a, a good example in English would be a painter that's a noun of function. It's a title of function. It any person could be called a painter if they engage in the verbal action of painting. And so what they're saying is that any being that engages in the action of having power. Is, uh, is an Elohim. And so that would include, in narrating at least, it would include angels, demons. Uh, I, you know, I don't know that they've said this explicitly, but I, I think Heiser would've included things like ghosts, disembodied spirits, um, humans in sort of the intermediary state might be considered Elohim humans in the, in the, um, this. Life are called Elohim, uh, in some instances. So, so this is where the Divine Council theology comes from, and that comes from Psalm 82, I think, where there's this council of Elohim that, that Yahweh seems to be speaking to and deliberating with. Or you look at Joe, where the sons of God come and they sort of pulled court in God's heavenly presence. So he would say those are examples where the, the collected Elohim. God being one of the Elohim are somehow gathered in this heavenly divine counsel. Now what this does is just devastating to Christian theology is it takes God who exists in a class of one. The, the, the God of the universe is, is the only uncreated entity in all of of the world. And so when we start to talk, and this is ironic, when we start to talk about the ways to divide up the world, the ancient world, the, the pagan world tended to divide the world between, um. Between spiritual and material. So think of g Gnostics where matter was bad and spirit was good. Or even think of something like, um, the Greek pantheons, the Greek, um, Greek religion, like ancient Greek mythology. You have sort of the spirits and the spiritual world and the gods inhabit a spiritual, have a spiritual existence for the most part. And then you have the physical world where kind of people live, uh, at least while they're alive. Christianity and, and Judaism, at least Biblical Judaism. On the other hand, the, the primary distinction is not between spiritual and matter. There is of course that distinction. There are humans, which are spiritual and material. There are animals which are entirely material, and then there are angels which are entirely spiritual. And so we would say that God is spiritual. So that is a distinction in the world. But the primary distinction when we're talking about the most absolute line is the distinction between the, the uncreated creator and his creation. So what Moffitt, Moffitt and Van Dorn do is instead of observing that biblical distinction, which really all of Christian theology and Christian monotheism rests on, they wanna say that instead, the distinction is between the. Um, is between the Elohim as the sort of spiritual beings and then sort of everything else of the created world, and so they wouldn't deny that God, that Yahweh is. The uncreated creator of all things, but they would say he's an uncreated Elohim and that there is a class of created Elohim. So I don't, I don't think you have to go too far down this road to see what this does. It puts God on the same level as his creatures in at least one way. Um, and I think we'll find out later, uh, as we talk through this, actually it does it in a couple ways that are really, uh, really can be problematic as we go. And so, uh, just let me be clear if all that, if all that Moffitt and Van Dorn were saying, if, if all they said was, um, we can use the word Elohim to describe any creature. Or God that doesn't have a body. Elohim is a synonym for the word spirit. Um, that wouldn't be the wisest way to speak, I don't think. It wouldn't be the, the most, um, felicitous or safe way to talk about the distinction. But it wouldn't be controversial. There'd be nothing wrong with that. It'd just be using a different word. It'd be like if I said, well, instead of the word spirit, I'm gonna use the word bibly bop, you know? So we have. We have God who is bibly bop, and we have the angels who is bibly bop, and humans are biblio bop. And also material, again, not the safest way to talk. There's no reason to use that alternative language when the Bible gives us perfectly legitimate language. Um, but it wouldn't be a problem. But Moffit and Van Dorn go. Way past this and maybe they don't realize it. I've asked them on Twitter, I asked them to clarify. I didn't get a response. So if they are hearing this, which maybe they will, maybe they won't. If they're hearing this, I would really love to get some clarification on some of these questions because I would love nothing more than to be able to say that this was all a big misunderstanding and that actually all they're saying is that there is this spiritual existence. That, um, we can put all things that are spirit without a body or spirit with a body. We can put all those in the same category and call that category Elohim. Again, I don't think that's safe, but if that's all they were doing, that would be fine. But we see in their episodes, and I'm gonna try to grab some quotes, um, from, from some of the articles I've written. But again, go read the articles because this goes way more in depth. It's got timestamps of it. It's got links to their episodes. Don't take my word for it. Go listen to their. Words and, and check, you know, check my math on this. But what they do is they actually start to, in, in an attempt to justify why it's okay to put God in the same category as his creatures. Um, and in at least one way, they start to make some weird statements that have a lot of systematic theology, um, implications that are, are just really, really risky. So, for example, one of the ways that they try to kind of explain this, I'm gonna pull, pull the article that I wrote up here. So, great podcasting. [00:19:34] Communicable vs. Incommunicable Attributes Tony Arsenal: Um, one of the ways they start to try to do this is again, they, they wanna say they use this distinction between incommunicable and communicable attributes, right? So in, in Christian theology, classically speaking, a communicable attribute of God is an attribute that he shares or could share with. A creature and primarily we're talking, you know, we're talking about attributes that he shares with his image bearers. So something like, um, love. Love is a communicable attribute. Our love is different than God's love, but when we say love, we're talking about the same basic category of things God loves differently than we do. But love and in a human sense, and love in a, in a divine sense, are still talking about the same thing. There's a point of contact there. Um, an incommunicable attribute would be something like, um, something like eternity. Right. Eternity is not just an extended infinite sequence of time. If it was, he could share that with us. Um, but eternity or infinity is an entirely different way of existing than a creature could ever, could ever exist in divine Simplicity is another example. Um, God could not make humans simple because simplicity entails all sorts of things like infinity. Um, eternality. Um, you know, omnipresence, omni, potent, all of these things are entailed by simplicity. So God could not make a creature infinite because in order for it to be infinite, it would have to be God. Uh, God could not make a creature simple, uh, in the, in the sense of no composition of parts. Uh, because that would mean that that creature is actually God and has no composer. So, so those would be the classic, uh, incommunicable attributes and omnipotence. Is considered, although it's a little bit weird, it sort of crosses the line in some ways. But omnipotence is considered. An incommunicable attribute. God cannot share his omnipotence with a creature because you can't have two omnipotence. Um, if you have two omnipotence, then those two omnipotence cancel each other out in some sense. If God, and, and, and he has a will, God wills one thing, and then I as a creature, if he shared his omnipotence with me, somehow willed a different thing, then we would no longer be, neither of us would be omnipotent. Where this goes sideways with Moffitt and Vandorn is rather than respect omnipotence as a an incommunicable attribute, they say that the attribute or the word Elohim denotes power or might, and that is a communicable attribute. So God does give us a certain level of power. He allows us a certain level of agency. He grants that to us. Again, I'm not even sure that we would call that an an. A communicable attribute. Um, but in a sense, I guess it is. And so they say here, um, Elohim does not mean omnipotent. It means power. It's not an incommunicable attribute. It's a communicable attribute that all kinds of entities could possess. So they're saying that the word, um, the word Elohim, uh, in the Bible denotes that a. A, an entity possesses a certain kind of power or acts in a certain role of executing a certain kind of power. And that doesn't mean omnipotence. It means it means potence. It means some sort of power. And so that that wielding power attribute that. Uh, being a, being that wields power, that attribute, whatever we want to call it, however we want to phrase it, that is a communicable attribute that God shares. He communicates that attribute to all other beings in the class of Elohim. Now, let's just back that up for a second. Um, this still would mean that God has to be the creator and they don't deny that, but it would still mean that God, prior to creation. Was an Elohim in a category of one, and then somehow he created a class and because he's extended. This attribute of wielding power, say power wielder, to try to make it actually more of an attribute. He's extended this attribute of power wielder to uncreate or to created angels, demons, human spirits, whatever other spiritual entities there might be. They would bring in things like principalities, powers, they have a whole, in other, other contexts, they'll talk about this whole different bifurcation of types of spiritual beings that I think is a little speculative, but not a big deal. He extends this power wielder attribute to these created categories. And instead of this now creating a separate category of power wields who are not God, it now is uh, he expands this category of one to now include all sorts of other things, which again, as you can, you can imagine, just runs into problems. And so the, again, this, this word Elohim appears over 2,600 times, and of these instances, 230 of them refer to the God of Israel. So the idea that that. This word is not used specifically as a reference to the God of Israel, or should not be thought of as uniquely titling or almost exclusively titling God. The God of Israel just doesn't really match the data, but it's also just really poor Exogenic method. So rather than take the predominant usage and look at the context. Understanding that the predominant usage is the predominant usage. Instead, we're gonna go back and say, well, these, these minority, these 300 or so cases outside, and not even all 300 of them are used the same way, but these 300 or so cases of them not referring to the God of Israel, we're gonna use that to redefine the word. Its entirety. It's just poor. It's just poor scholarship. It's overly speculative. Um, I haven't read much of. He's work on this in the primary sources. Um, I, I would venture a guess that Heiser makes a much more robust argument than this. And this is part of the problem. When you take an already speculative, already dangerous theology and you try to pop popularize it when you just don't have the same chops that he did, uh, you end up really making some crass, simplistic arguments that just make you look a little silly. To think we can take 200 or 2,600 instances and redefine 2 20, 300 of them. By the way, it's used 300 of the times Just doesn't make any sense. So it again, if, if all we are saying is that God is spiritual and angels are spiritual and so there is some point of affinity between the two, then that would be okay. That wouldn't be a problem. Again, there's some risk in using the word Elohim in that. Sort of placeholder, but, um, that would be a semantic discussion. What they're doing is far, far deeper and far more problematic than that. [00:26:30] Systematic Theology Concerns Tony Arsenal: And so the, the other thing they do, um, that I think is really dangerous, and I don't have all of the, I haven't finished this article yet, so I don't have all of the timestamps in front of me to, to, to get there, is in attempting to justify this Moffitt, uh, in, in one of the other episodes, he turns to the incarnation as a sort of model. And so he'll say that, you know, the son of God is divine, but he's also human. And the fact that he's human, uh, doesn't therefore mean he's not also uniquely the uncreated creator. I would assume everyone hearing this who listens to this show, uh, which has done many, many episodes on Christology, it's one of our pet projects, is just throwing their listening device across the room because what Moffitt seems to miss entirely is that Christ is not, the sun is not in the category of human. Uh, sort of in a simple sense, Christ is in the category of human because he assumes to himself a second created nature. So what, what the, the analogy he's trying to draw is if the sun can be human without ceasing to be the unique one, uncreated God, then so also can, the whole trinity, I guess, can also be Elohim without ceasing to be the one uncreated God. He even goes so far as to say that there is Uncreated Elohim, and then there is created Elohim, and they're all in the category of Elohim, but because there's this commonality, we should still consider that class. And he draws that distinction or he draws the implication that. Um, there's somehow uncreated humanity in Christ, which is a whole different ball of worms that we won't get into. But in, in drawing this analogy, he sort of shows that he really doesn't understand the hypostatic union. He doesn't understand the incarnation, or if he does, he's really making a poor comparison because in the hypostatic union it's not as though the son, uh, as divinity, the son, as the one uncreated. God simply adds to himself in a raw sense and merges. Uh, he doesn't become part of the category of human without taking on a second nature. And then now we are even getting into some inconsistencies. Is human an ontological category or is that a category of function? Are there other categories of function, uh, other creatures in existence that the category of function human might fit? So I think you can see that this just is not a self consistent. Um, a self-consistent system and it leads to all these weird implications. Um, you know, and then they'll even go on to talk about how the Son is the angel of the Lord. I'm not gonna get into a lot of it here, and I agree with that thesis that the, when we see the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, in the vast majority of cases, we're probably seeing a pre-incarnate appearance of, um, of the second person of the Trinity. They go so far as to say that this is actually a sort of. Incarnation or a sort of hypostatic union of the Elohim nature. So they, they, they draw this distinction, or they draw this parallel between created Elohim and Uncreated Elohim, and they, they argue again, I think implicitly, but in some instances it's almost, it's almost explicit that the son in, in being the angel of the Lord, takes on the uncreated or takes on the created Elohim nature. It's, it's really, um, it's really problematic. So now we have the son who is, uh, sort of hypostatic united to the unc, to the created Elohim nature, and then also is hypostatic united to the human nature. Um, it, it really just gets messy and it confuses categories in a way that is not helpful. And if I'm just being frank, a lot of the younger reformed guys. And when I say younger, I'm talking, maybe I'm projecting back to when I was a younger reform guy, um, I'm talking about people in their mid twenties to maybe early thirties, right? The, the people who were maybe the second or third generation of the young restless reform guys, they didn't necessarily learn, uh, ref young restless reform theology directly from RC Sproul. You know, they weren't the first generation. Um, and, and maybe their pastors weren't the first generation, but, but maybe their pastors were the second generation and now they're learning it from their pastors. So you might think of 'em as like the third generation, to be frank, they don't usually have a great grasp on some of these systematic theology categories as part of why. Jesse and I do this podcast, and part of why we cover the same topic over and over again, part of why we're gonna go through this parable series. But when we're done, we're probably gonna go back and start over with systematic theology. We're gonna go back, we're gonna go through another confession. That's why we spent, we spent like six years going through systematic theology. And almost immediately went back to the Scott's confession and did most of it all over again because these truths need to be taught again and again and again. This is part of what Jude is talking about when he says, we have to contend for the faith. It's not just fighting with people online. It's not just polemics or apologetics. It is reteaching and handing down the faith that was once delivered to the saints. Again, and this is perhaps, and this is the last point I'll make. This is perhaps the most. Telling a reason we should be weary and suspicious of this theology. Paul, in, uh, one of the letters to Timothy, second Timothy, maybe he says, follow the pattern of the sound words that you heard from me. He's not talking about the scriptures. He doesn't say follow the sound words that I'm writing to you. He's referring to a body of doctrine sometimes. The Bible calls it the faith, right? Jude says to contend for the faith. There's this body of doctrine that is the teaching of the apostles, and it is encapsulated in this sort of set pattern of words. Erin A is called it the rule of faith or the regular fide, right? This is where we get things like the Nicean Creed or the Hanian Creed. Why we have creeds and confessions is because we don't need to reinvent the wheel and rather than rely on the safe time-tested words and concepts that have been proven and validated, and attacked and defended and, and um, have been victorious for hundreds and thousands of years, rather than rely on those. Moffitt and Van Doran think it is smarter and safer to depart from the pattern of sound words rather than to keep the pattern of sound words because they think that they are able to look at the Bible the way basically no one ever has in the 2000 years of the church and find something they haven't. I don't wanna be too bombastic. Um, I don't, I don't know either of them. Well, um, from what I can tell, what I've heard of their professions of faith, uh, they're, they're Christian believers. They love the Lord and are very confused. But these teachings are pagan. This is, we're talking about returning to a world of, of populated by spiritual beings. And God is kind of just on the highest part of the totem pole, and maybe there's a firm line between his place on the totem pole and the, the next level down. Maybe there is, um, gets a little bit less firm of a line when we're talking about Jesus, right? So there's some potential Arian implications there that the son, uh, is not the highest deity he is. He's like the father in some ways, but he, you know, in his sort of original form is like creatures in other ways. Um, we're just returning to something that the early church fought hard to get rid of when they came out of their pagan culture. When we started to see Greeks convert to Christianity, they had to figure out how do we come out of our polytheistic culture, and this is where we get the best defenses of monotheism. Jewish Christians didn't have to argue for monotheism because all the Jewish Christians already were monotheists in a biblical sense. The Greek Christians had to fight this stuff. Justin Martyr had to fight this stuff. Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers had to fight this stuff constantly pushing back against the background Greek culture. And Moffitt and Van Dorn wanna point to that and say, see, really, they're just Greeks in disguise and in the reality is Athanasius and the cap oceans, were fighting against the theology that is making a resurgence in this divine council theory. [00:34:55] Conclusion and Call to Action Tony Arsenal: So I think that's enough for now. Please. Again, I'm writing a long series on this. I don't know how long it's gonna take. I think it's gonna be probably 10 or 13, 10 to 13 articles. It's, it's gonna be a pretty extensive project. But go read them. Go look at them, listen to their episodes, read their articles, and then you compare that to the word of God, has what I said made more sense or does what they make more sense. So I'll leave you with that. The dog is losing her mind. And uh, with that honor, everyone love the brotherhood.

We've well and truly kicked off season 7 in style as we welcome our first guest onto the show - IAAPA Board Chairman, Massimiliano Freddi. In this episode, Paul sits down with Massimiliano Freddi, the first Italian to ever hold the role of IAAPA Chairman in the association's 107-year history. From his early dream of running a theme park to founding Wonderwood and shaping Italy's unique attractions landscape, Massi shares how passion, storytelling, and a people-first mindset continue to drive his vision for the industry. Skip The Queue is back for Season 7 and we're announcing some big changes! Get ready for new hosts, a fresh new look, weekly content and find out where you can catch us live at events to be part of the action.Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website SkiptheQueue.fm.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on LinkedIn, or Bluesky for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 24th September 2025. The winner will be contacted via LinkedIn or Bluesky. Show references:  https://iaapa.org/https://www.linkedin.com/in/freddi/Massimiliano Freddi  a leading figure in the amusement and entertainment industry, has been appointed president of the steering committee of IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, the leading international association for attractions and theme parks) for 2025. This is the first time since the foundation of the World Association of Attractions (1918) that this position has been entrusted to an Italian.The appointment underscores his extensive experience and significant contribution to the global industry. Freddi brings a wealth of experience gained at some of the industry's most prominent companies. His career began in marketing and press office for the Italian market at Disneyland Paris. He subsequently joined Leolandia.A visionary entrepreneur, in 2018, Massimiliano Freddi founded Wonderwood, an adventure and amusement park for all ages, of which he is currently CEO, in his hometown of Trarego Viggiona, in the Verbano-Cusio-Ossola region on Lake Maggiore. This growing business has redeveloped several local facilities and provided employment to several young residents of the small towns in the area. His passion for the sector also extends to academia. Since 2016, he has been a member of the coaching staff of Seth Godin's Altmba and is a professor of marketing and experience design at IULM University in Milan. At the same university, where Italy's first course in theme park and attraction management was introduced, he teaches subjects such as consumer experience, marketing, and soft skills as an adjunct professor. Freddi was also one of the original founders of Parksmania, the first newspaper dedicated to amusement parks.Freddi will continue to bring his innovative vision and deep industry knowledge to the global association, helping shape the future of attractions internationally. Regarding Italy, he commented that he sees great potential and wants to help realise it. Transcriptions:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast about the world's best visitor attractions and the people that work in them. I'm Paul Marden, along with my co-hosts Andy Povey and Sinead Kimberley, I spend my days working with ambitious attractions like theme parks, museums, galleries, and science centres to help them to attract more guests. Paul Marden: Today on Skip the Queue, I'm joined by someone who has been shaping the attractions industry in truly remarkable ways. Massimiliano Freddi is the first Italian ever to hold the role of chairman in IAAPA's 107-year history. A milestone that not only celebrates his career, but also shines a light on Italy's growing influence in the global attractions landscape. Massimiliano has worn many hats across his journey, from fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a Theme Park Managing Director at just 28, where he grew guest numbers from 300,000 to over 800,000, to founding his own destinations like Wonderwood on Lake Maggiore and Wonderwood Spina Verde, overlooking Lake Como. Along the way, he's pioneered inclusive and eco-conscious practices, championing the power of storytelling and shown how attractions can thrive by creating meaningful experiences for every guest.Paul Marden: Beyond his leadership roles, Massimiliano is also a Professor of Marketing and Experience Design at IULM University in Milan, where he's passionate about nurturing the next generation of talent in our sector. Often described as both a dreamer and a doer, he brings together vision and practicality in a way that continues to inspire operators around the world.Paul Marden: Massimilliano, welcome to the show. It really is a pleasure to have you with us. We always start Skip the Queue and the kickoff of season seven, no less, is going to be no different. We always start with an icebreaker question. And I'm thinking back to, we're just back off of our summer holidays, aren't we? For your perfect holiday, would it start with planes, trains or driving.Massimiliano Freddi: Oh, that's a beautiful question. By the way, congratulations because you've pronounced Massimiliano in a very correct way. So that's unusual. I have a complicated name. I know, I know.Massimiliano Freddi: Hey, I would say train. Train is really, really part of the way that I love to travel with. And unfortunately, too often it happens by car, which I like a little bit less. I get dizzy, you know, and stuff. Train is my ultimate, ultimate way to travel.Paul Marden: I did a sleeper train to Scotland a couple of years ago, and it was amazing. I absolutely loved it. And what's brilliant is there's more of those sleeper trains hitting Europe, aren't there now? So there really is very few excuses for us not to be holidaying with the start with some elegant sleeper train. My only disappointment was that there was no murder on the train, so I couldn't have an Agatha Christie style novel themed around my train  journey, but uh, you know.Massimiliano Freddi: I mean, I mean, it could have been the Hogwarts Express, but apparently, it doesn't run every day, so.Paul Marden: That would be pretty cool as well. I've just come back from Edinburgh, actually, and we saw, you know, the viaduct where the train goes to Hogwarts, and completely unplanned, there was a steam train that went over the bridge whilst we were there. It was amazing.Massimiliano Freddi: Happy go lucky.Paul Marden: Yeah. So enough of my holidays. Let's kick off talking about you and IAAPA. What can international markets learn from attractions in Italy? Tell us a little bit about the attractions landscape over there in Italy at the moment.Massimiliano Freddi: Yes. So let's say that the attraction landscape is very similar, somehow, to how the restaurants or the retail landscape has always been, which means a lot of mom and pop stores. And I think that what people who travel to Italy love is to find something that is one of a kind that you can find only in Italy. I have a deep respect for Starbucks, but I'm always... questioning myself, you know, when somebody comes to Italy, do they really want to find Starbucks? Is this a real thing? So when it comes to parks and attractions, Italy has not faced a big concentration in players like it has happened in other countries. Of course, some big players are there. Parques Reunidos owns Mirabilandia, which is the second most important Italian park. And the most important Italian park is Gardaland, owned by Merlin Entertainment. Then we have a few other groups. Owning and operating some of the facilities, but let's say that, out of 250 parks between—or, you said, attractions— that's very correct now, if we talk about attractions, now the number is endless, because where is the border?Paul Marden: What is an attraction? Yeah, that's a big philosophical question.Massimiliano Freddi: Okay, okay, so let's say that, once upon a time, we used to count parks. So when we talk about parks, we have roughly 250 parks in Italy, and most of them are tiny, tiny, tiny, and they are independently owned. That's my case. I own and operate two parks right now, and I'm about to open, a third location that will be an indoor one this November. And so, yes, I think that what what others can learn from Italy i think is to keep this respect for your roots and to make sure that you don't make every attraction look like another one, but you kind of keep it, you know, different.Massimiliano Freddi: And so it's a matter of the mix of how people can have fun and get entertained. But it's really also about retail and about food and about shows and festivals and you name it, you know. So there are these places that we see on Instagram and immediately we say, oh, that's, I mean, when I see a picture of the Empire State Building or of the Tower Bridge. I know immediately where it belongs to. And so I think that, with attractions, we need to think in the future always about this. Guests coming to visit us, they want to have the ultimate experience and they want to have something that's different from anything they've done before. So this is the responsibility we have.Paul Marden: And a big one it is. Let's talk a little bit about the experience economy. And especially when we think about, you know, beyond the parks, there's this... massive ecosystem around the outside of different ways that people can enjoy themselves. What does that experience economy mean to you, especially in Italy?Massimiliano Freddi: The experience economy, first of all, it truly matters to me, the book. Because in 1999, it was once upon a time, it was really difficult to find literature and scientific literature on the leisure industry. And so I think that at that time, we thought that everybody could take inspiration from the attractions industry. And it has happened because right now. Yes, definitely. You know, food is experience and travel is experience and lodging is experience. You name it, you name it. You know, even there is also a funeral house in Italy, which has become very famous because they are really based on the experience they will give, you know, not to the people who passed away, unfortunately, you know, but the people remain. So I think that it's very hard now to find an industry that doesn't think, that we are in the experience economy and that everything should be experienced and experiential. And so I think that when I go back to my example, I think that we as attractions, we need to be even more wise in how we choose to present ourselves and what we cater to our guests.Massimiliano Freddi: Because of course, we need to raise the bar. So right now, we know that some access... And some services to our attractions have become better with technology. But still, we are, you know, long lines sometimes. And we feel we are paying too much for what we are getting back.Massimiliano Freddi: I would say that in the end, experience economy starts with people and ends with people. And so we need to be people-centric. And only like this, we can be truly experiential. I don't think that an experience is about technology.  It's always, always about people.Paul Marden: Absolutely. I wonder as well, I'm always struck by this industry, how close we are, how we collaborate with one another. And really, the competition aren't the other parks or attractions. The competition is getting people out and doing something. There are so many things at home that could keep you at home, getting you out and about and visiting places and enjoying those experiences. I wonder whether collaboration is the answer to this.Massimiliano Freddi: I think you nailed it because it's crucial. Everybody who has not been working for this industry, when they enter the industry, because they might change jobs, everybody is so surprised that we collaborate so heavily. And I think that a key to this success has always been this big collaboration. I have almost always in my career been part of smaller facilities. And to me, IAAPA and the associations were, it's been crucial, you know, because you are alone. Very, very often your facility is in the middle of nowhere. No matter if you're part of a big group, because even big groups have facilities in the middle of nowhere, but for family-owned and operated attractions, that's almost the golden rule.Massimiliano Freddi: And so there are so many days in your life, in your career, in your profession, where you would benefit strongly from talking to somebody else who's been through something like you before and who's found a different solution and who can open up your eyes. So I think that's the beauty of our industries is getting together. Again, if we don't get together, how can we make people get together?Paul Marden: Yeah, I'm very excited about getting together because I've got my first IAAPA in Barcelona coming up. And I'm very excited about what this is going to be like.Massimiliano Freddi: Oh, you will be blown away.Paul Marden:  I can't wait. I absolutely can't wait. Now, look. Someone has once described you as a dreamer and a doer. One of your dreams was to be managing director of a theme park. Where did that inspiration come from?Massimiliano Freddi: So it comes from a terrible childhood. And so it comes from the fact that, yeah, the world around me when I was a kid was not a positive world. And my family had a lot of troubles. And I'm an orphan from the side of my mother. I mean, I went through several things. And so I think that the attractions industry, to me, it really meant this place that's always happy and where grownups can really take great care of kids and kids at heart.Massimiliano Freddi: So I think that my passion came out of that. Now, dreaming and doing, of course, we all have as a big myth and as a reference, Walt Disney himself, and he was the guy who first said, 'Dreamers and doers' talking about, what enterprises, so his imagineers. I think that whenever I see something, I want to say something. Everybody who knows me knows pretty well. But it means that I love to see the world in a constant improvement. So, if I check in at a hotel and I see that there is something in there that, you know, it even doesn't impact me. But with a small step, they could make it better and fix it. I just share it and I share it, you know, wherever I am. And so I think that maybe this was a bit of my secret weapon because I got involved in several things. I think because I'm curious and maybe because I'm generous in sharing.Massimiliano Freddi: And I don't know if there is a secret there. There is just that in the moment in which you accept yourself the way you are and you acknowledge that you have some talents, and you don't have some others, and some skills you can get better, some others no way—okay. I could never never be an attorney, I could never do a lot of jobs on the planet, but now I know, at the age of 44, that I know what I'm good at, and even if I'm good at that, I want to constantly improve. So I think that maybe the support that I could bring to the table to the companies I've worked for, to the associations, to my own business, and so on, it's always been this obsession with constant improvement every day.Paul Marden: I think it takes a certain vulnerability, doesn't it? To spot something that you think can be improved and to offer a suggestion. And I think it's so valuable. I was at an attraction recently and I got the email at the end of the day, saying, 'How was it?' Please leave us a review. I went to click it and it didn't work. I knew the head of marketing, so I just pinged him off a quick email that just said, 'Oh, I had such a brilliant time but I couldn't leave you a review. I wanted to give you a brilliant review, but I couldn't do it because it didn't work. And that led them to go and look at all of their outbound emails, and none of them were working properly. But you know, you could walk by and just leave that alone. But I can't do it. However, it is sometimes does make you feel really awkward, couldn't you? But when I get great services in a restaurant, when somebody looks after me while at an attraction, I want to tell them how good it was, and if I can see something they can do better, I want to tell them what they could do.Massimiliano Freddi:  Totally, totally. And I'm so much on the same page. I was about to say that it's equally important to call people out when they're doing well.Paul Marden: Yeah.Massimiliano Freddi: So to make sure that they are aware. And sometimes, you know, to say there was one day where I travelled during a bank holiday, and I arrived at the entire bank holiday, and I arrived to the airport, and I decided I wanted to thank each and every employee that I would meet because they were there that day. I mean. We got used that Sundays are no longer Sundays, but the bank holidays, these are the moments in which you spend time with your family and with your kids and so on. And if you're there and you're working, I mean, it's good that somebody sees you and tells you, 'Hey, thank you because you're working even today, you know?' And you can tell how everybody gets surprised. So I think that we learn so much more by positive reinforcement.Massimiliano Freddi: And so how important it is also to tell attractions, facilities, managers, CEOs. I mean, CEOs, they are so used to just getting... I can't use swear words. Yes, you can. Under those kind of storms, you know, all the time, all the time. And so when a CEO does something good, come on, let's tell her.Paul Marden: Yeah, it's a really lonely job. And all you get is... is the spankings and the tellings off. Isn't it? So when they get it right, they definitely need a pat on the back because they're not going to get it. They're not going to get it. So I can't believe this. At the age of 28, you made your dream come true and you were managing director of a theme park in Italy for Minitalia, which became Leolandia, in this role you took guest numbers from 300, 000 guests a year to over 800,000.Paul Marden: Tell us that story. How do you so dramatically increase footfall at the attraction?Massimiliano Freddi: I don't think it was me. I think it was a great teamwork because it's a great teamwork, you know, and you can grow this much. If your operation is working very well, if your safety is right on spot, if the park is clean, you know, and so on. I can tell you one thing that when we were at the basic level, so at the very beginning, of course, we couldn't afford to buy big attractions or too heavily themed. And we needed really, I remember that the first Halloween, we had a 10K budget, 10,000 euro budget for a whole month of Halloween. Okay, so we would go to the do-it-yourself stores and buy brooms and build everything. I mean, that was a magical moment because it created the capability of the team to envision that, if you want, you can do with the things you have. And of course, with a huge budget, you can do fantastic things.Massimiliano Freddi: But sometimes, you know, this helps. So in that moment... TripAdvisor was a true success still. We're talking about 20 years ago. So TripAdvisor was kind of the reference. That's even before Google Maps and all that. So I remember that I did an analysis and I understood that every restaurant or park who had over 4. 5 out of 5 was growing. And having 4 out of 5 was not enough. Now we call it NPS, we call it a different way. But there, in this practical way, so I remember this moment with my team saying, 'Hey, we need to be obsessed with getting five stars.' And this is the point. So what can we do? First of all, we can have the cleanest toilets on earth. Let's make sure that the smell is good, they are super clean, and so on. Because people, that's a level of service. Of course, this is not a driver of visit, but this is a driver of satisfaction. And in the same way, let's start to work with better suppliers when it comes to food and beverage.Massimiliano Freddi: Let's start to make things more comfortable. So I think that this was the first thing. The second aspect, again, it's very much linked to IAAPA because I think that attending the show every year and knowing the people. At that time, Jakob Wahl, he used to be one of the employees of IAAPA in Brussels. I don't think he was a manager at the time yet. He was in charge of keeping relationships with members. So I reached out to him. We are the same age. I reached out to him and I said, 'Hey, I would love to visit a few facilities in other countries because I need to get fresh ideas.' It was a very delicate moment. We came out of two bad seasons due to bad weather. Because then you know, you don't go from here to here as a straight line, but always as this roller coaster. And in a moment you think, 'Oh, I made it.' There's a dip.Paul Marden: Yeah.Massimiliano Freddi: You can never sleep. And so he put me in contact with several facilities. I visited some in Belgium, in the Netherlands, and in the UK. And in the UK, I visited this, at that time, small park still called Paulton's Park. You might know that. I remember it was a weekday with bad weather and the parking lot was packed. And I was like, 'How comes?' Kids are not at school today. What is the point? I enter the park. The park is, yeah, not so crowded. So I really suspect that they are, you know, keeping the people all shut down together in a place. I don't know. I don't know what the point was. And then I enter the Peppa Pig's World.Massimiliano Freddi: And it blows my mind. And again, what blows my mind is that it didn't have any huge attraction. But it had that feeling. And people were just so happy. It was magic. Little kids there with their families, a lot of strollers all over the place, traffic jams due to strollers. And so I came back and I said, 'Hey, we need to get Peppa Pig.' And I remember that the team was like, 'It can't happen.' It has happened. In the end, we were the second park in the world after Paulton's Park to get Peppa. And that reshaped the entire strategy of the park we had at that time, turning it into what we wanted to achieve, is to become the best park for the kids under the age of 10 in Southern Europe. And best means really the best, rated from the bottom of the heart. And so this is what has happened. So I think that, you know, before Leolandia, I had worked for Disneyland Paris and I'm a big Disney fan. So that was kind of the school I had attended and I just had to apply. The theory that I've learned, I had to apply it, and I had a fantastic team and the resources to do that.Paul Marden: Amazing. Now, fast forward to 2018, and you've taken the step from MD to founder and founded Wonderwood on Lake Maggiore. Now, let's test my Italian. You've also founded Wonderwood Spina Verde. Massimiliano Freddi: I'm speechless. I can't correct anything.Paul Marden: Wonderful. Overlooking Lake Como, both of which, by the way, were... So I've been to Maggiore and Lake Como for my honeymoon. So a beautiful, beautiful place. And you've put two parks there. How has that been?Massimiliano Freddi:  It has been crazy. So I remember that the first year, and I mean, we created the company at the end of 2018. We've opened our gates in the summer of 2019. Now, if we all remember what has happened at the beginning of 2020.Paul Marden: Yeah.Massimiliano Freddi: Okay, so perfect timing. Now, I can tell you that the first season, every day, I would literally cry, but for real.Massimilliano Freddi: I was exhausted. My husband was exhausted. We thought that this was a nightmare, the worst possible nightmare. And if somebody had knocked on my door and asked me, 'Hey, could I just take it over?' I don't give you a penny. I will just take home the loans. I would have said yes. And that's because, of course, every project is over budget. Of course. No matter. No matter.Massimiliano Freddi: And when it's a family company and you don't have the money because you've contracted several loans and so on, it makes it super, super difficult. So in that moment, my call for action was because the possibility of Lake Maggiore was in the town where I spent every summer as a kid. So it was a love story. And I wanted to give back to the community. I wanted to do something in the nature that would inspire kids to hike more. To become more active and just not only to stay in front of a screen, but to do something different. So that came out of this kind of dream. And so it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare at the very beginning. Then COVID hit and we were very lucky, of course, because we didn't lose anyone from our families and friends. So I am very thankful for that. And at the same time, it gave us the possibility to stop for a second, rewind, and refine our strategy.Massimiliano Freddi: Because we had just closed the park in, I mean, the week before Christmas, and we were supposed to reopen in less than three months, but we were exhausted. So I'm telling this story because usually it's so nice to tell that the triumphs, you know, and say, 'Hey, it's been fantastic.' Yeah, we nailed it. We had, no, we made 200 mistakes.Massimiliano Freddi: And we paid for all the mistakes. So I think that in that moment, yeah, we were struggling at the beginning. We were reflecting in the middle part. And then three years ago, two to three years ago, I woke up one morning and I understood that I really loved what I was doing. And it had changed. It had changed. And seeing so many families happy and so many people visiting and seeing... How many young professionals or students started to work with us and then you see them leaping? I think that this is the most beautiful thing on earth. It's very empowering. So right now I'm in this situation where I am so grateful for this entire six years, even if they started in a way that was very, very heavy. But, you know, the Latins used to say 'per aspera ad astra.' It means... 'towards the stars through the asperities.' And so we need to go through that thing, that tunnel.Paul Marden: Absolutely. Now, as if founding your own parks wasn't enough, you also mix your time as a professor at the university. I can hear from what you were talking about, about bringing the young professionals into the park, that there's an element to you of apprenticeship almost, of teaching that next cohort of people that are going to come and take over the world.Paul Marden: How exciting is that for you to be able to mix that in at the university?Massimiliano Freddi: It's fantastic. It's fantastic. And again, it came out of passion. It came out. I didn't do a PhD after my university. My career wasn't supposed to be the academic one. And I didn't trust I would be able to do that. And then I got called for a lecture, then two lectures, and three lectures. And then, right now, I have several courses at university.Massimiliano Freddi: There's a point. The point is that, if we meet between our age of 14, 14, 15, until our 25, and if we narrow it down, it's between maybe 16 and 22, this is the moment in which it's more important to meet some mentors. And most of us don't meet mentors. They meet nice people around them, giving them very nice advice based on their experience and not seeing the talents they have in front of them. And in several cases, we are scared. We think that we are not enough. And so I really think that it's such a huge privilege for me to be able to be at university and to meet so many hundreds of students every year and to try to make my small impact so that, first of all, they can believe in themselves and they can believe that the world can be a better place, even if right now it's kind of a tough moment. But from tough moments, again, we can learn things.Massimiliano Freddi: Even at IAAPA, one of the things that I really am passionate more about is what are the spaces we can create for young professionals and students. So I want to give two very short examples. The IAAPA Foundation has evolved a lot over the last few years. We were able to collect so many more donations.Massimiliano Freddi: And now, this year, it will be a record-breaking year when it comes to scholarships to which students can apply in universities around the globe. So I think that's... But to me and to all of us in the board of the IAAPA Foundation, that's like the starting point. We are here celebrating because it's a big achievement and then we look each other in the eyes and say, 'Okay, now what's next?' Now, how can we make sure that the impact is even bigger? And if we go on the side of IAAPA, I think we are very... We pay a lot of attention to make sure that the membership fees are very low for the people entering. The word of leisure. Just a few weeks ago, it got launched on the IAAPA job board that whoever has a company and wants to post an internship, that's free to post. So that, you know, there could be thousands of internships available for students.Massimiliano Freddi: Of course, as a big association, we are used to talk to members and maybe older members because we visit facilities and we visit manufacturers and we need to deal with safety and stuff. But students and young professionals are not on the back of my head. They are like near and dear to my heart. And so my real question is: when this year ends in a couple of months, how can I dedicate myself even more to contribute to young people? Because I think that they are making a change. They will make a change. And we are learning so much from them because the work we are leaving you and me right now. I have bad news. It's no longer our world. We don't have the code to decode that. So we don't have the keys. We can just support people that are better than us and make sure that they can live, that they can teach, that they can learn.  That's a bit of what I see.Paul Marden: I completely agree with you. I think it's interesting because you talk about what you're giving, but you're also getting something back. This is not entirely altruistic, is it? The support that you're giving for these young people and early career professionals, you're getting something back, enriching yourself and learning new things from them.Massimiliano Freddi: Always, always. And I think that, you know, I don't always teach. Market leisure marketing and stuff— you know, I teach marketing at a at a Master's Degree in Management of Beauty and Wellness, total different industry, you know, food and wine. As I was telling, but what I bring home every time is how much young people need to feel seen and, and this is truly important because if we create for them not a safe zone, because of course we want them to get messy. We want them to take risks, but they need to feel safe as humans and they need to feel safe as seen. And so I appreciate a lot this because then the energy that I... And you know, when we talk about IAAPA, we have so many ambassadors that have been contributing to the IAAPA trade shows and events all over the globe. We have young people joining the committees.Massimiliano Freddi: Right now, there are a few, more than a few young professional task forces around the globe that are really helping us, old people, to understand what they need. So I think that we are at the very beginning. And if I could say a dream out loud, I wish that IAAPA in five or ten years, maybe in five years, can multiply the number of young engaged people in the association by 100. 10 is not enough. 20 is by 100. We need to make an impact. And I think we want to make an impact. So hopefully.Paul Marden: Well, there's an ambition for you. And I think every... worthwhile project— every it always starts with that kind of ambitious goal— at the very beginning of it you need to be driven by that  hundred times impact not the 10 times impact we we always like to finish our interviews with a book recommendation, fiction, non-fiction, industry-related or not, give us a view uh into your reading habits, okay, so can I mention more than one book? You bankrupt me because I always offer the book recommendation as a prize for people, but you can have more than one.Massimiliano Freddi: Okay. Okay. Thank you because I'm a big reader. So the first author that I would love to mention is J. K. Rowling because Harry Potter is not just a story of a kid or of magic, but it's a story of a woman who was a bit desperate. And then... She followed what she was feeling. She allowed her emotions to flow. And she has created a masterpiece. And she has impacted us all, you know, no matter business-related, non-business-related, and so on. So I think that, to read again, the first Harry Potter book, it's very important because it brings us back to some reason why, you know, and to some things. The second book that I would love to mention is a book written by Seth Godin. I have had the privilege to work for Seth for several years.Paul Marden: Really?Massimiliano Freddi: And yeah, he's an amazing guy. He's an amazing guy. And come on, he's such a generous person and he's amazing.Massimiliano Freddi: I don't have any other words that's amazing. He wrote a book maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago called Linchpin. And Linchpin is not his most famous book, but it's the book that changed my life because it really nudges you. In a gentle and not so gentle way sometimes. No, I'm saying in a gentle way. It nudges you to don't set for what you have, but to see your inner talents and to innovate and to be creative, be generous, and so on. So, Linchpin to me is the book that changed it all for me. So, I think that everybody, young, less young, everybody should read once in a lifetime.Paul Marden: I feel like I need to go and read this because that is one Seth Godin book I have not read. So there we go. Listeners, if you would like a copy of Linchpin, then the first person that heads over to LinkedIn and reposts our show notice and says, 'I want Massimiliano's book' and can spell Massimiliano correctly, will have a copy of the book sent to them. We've got IAAPA Europe taking place next week in Barcelona.Paul Marden: And we have a very special Skip the Queue announcement. We are going to be hitting the show floor on a daily basis. We are going to go live for daily episodes of Skip the Queue from the show floor. We're going to be talking to operators about what their challenges are like. Finding out what new supplier announcements are coming out. And the Skip the Queue team is going to be feverishly working away. We'll be recording during the day and Steve and Wenalyn will be editing and producing through the night, ready to post the show the following morning. So I'm very excited about that.Massimiliano Freddi: And I think we are super excited to have you guys on the trade show floor. And I recommend... Of course, visiting it, making the most out of it, and don't underestimate the fantastic education sessions that take place. There is a strong lineup of speakers that will impact the way that the industry will be in a few years. So, great opportunity.Paul Marden:  How's that for a trailer? That sounds amazing. Massimilliano, it really has been a pleasure to talk to you.Massimiliano Freddi: Thank you so much, Paul, for me as well. And see you in Barcelona.Paul Marden: Yes, how exciting. Looking forward to it.Paul Marden: Remember, if you'd like a copy of today's book, head over to LinkedIn and repost our show notice saying, 'I want a copy of Massimiliano's book.' If you've enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on your podcasting platform. It really helps people to find the show. If you didn't enjoy it, or you've got ideas about how we could improve the show, then let us know at hello@skipthequeue.fm. My thanks to Massimiliano and his team at IAAPA for their help with this episode. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, the digital agency that creates amazing websites for ambitious visitor attractions. This episode was written by Emily Burrows, produced by Wenalyn Dionaldo and edited by Steve Folland. To Skip the Queue team, also includes Sami Entwistle, Sinead Kimberley, Claire Furnival, and Andy Povey. The 2025 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsTake the Rubber Cheese Visitor Attraction Website Survey Report

Dr. Jenkins continues his discussion of the schism between the Orthodox and Latins, focusing this week on Anselm of Bec and Canterbury and his treatise on the Holy Spirit, and how this became the basis for so much of later Latin theology on the subject. For the Orthodoxy and Education Conference: https://tinyurl.com/OrthEd2025

This week Dr. Jenkins looks at the errors and misunderstandings that plagued by Rome and Michael Kerularius, and thus we examine both Humbert's Bull of Excommunication against the Patriarch, but also Peter of Antioch's reprimand of Kerularios for his own misunderstandings of the Latins. For the Orthodoxy and Education Conference: https://tinyurl.com/OrthEd2025

Renunciation: The word has certain connotations that are often tied to deprivation or unhappiness. What we find in the writings of the great ascetics, St. Isaac especially, is something quite different; the weaning of ourselves from the things that we are attached to in the world in order to become more attached to God, to what endures and fills the soul with consolation and strength.  For example, we are called to embrace the practice of vigils, to rise during the night to pray and thereby humbling the mind and the body. Yet Isaac does not see this as costly but rather as restorative and promising consolation in times of trial and affliction. It is in silence, often deepest during the night and free of distraction, that we are able to listen to God and receive what he desires to give us.  Likewise, we are to persevere in spiritual reading while we dwell in stillness. We let go of the hectic pace of society and the busyness into which we often thrust ourselves in order to taste the sweetness of the wisdom of the scriptures and the fathers. Perhaps more challenging, we are told that we are to love poverty. We are to willingly let go of material goods and radically simplify our lives. In doing so, Isaac tells us, the mind remains collected and is secured from wandering. We often become anxious about our worldly security and protecting what ilwe have come to possess. We become driven to spend more time focused on the things of this world than we are pursuing the life of virtue and prayer. In a similar vein, Isaac tells us to detest superfluity so that our thoughts might remain untroubled. Again, filling our lives with things, activities, work or social engagements steals from us solitude and the silence that is born from it. Surrounded constantly by the noise and the affairs of the world we begin to experience intense anxiety and depression seeing only the presence of chaos and violence that makes one question reality and the value and purpose of life.  Part of the beauty of reading the desert fathers is that they reveal to us the beauty and the dignity of the human person made in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the blood of Christ.  Their lives and their writings fill the heart with hope in a dark world and set the soul on fire to to embrace what has been promised us by our Lord. To God be the glory unto ages of ages. Amen. --- Text of chat during the group:  00:04:19 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 143, first short paragraph, 6 00:12:49 cameron: The names again please 00:14:56 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 143, first short paragraph, 6 00:14:59 cameron: Monk and monastery 00:15:13 cameron: Thank you. 00:20:52 Myles Davidson: Replying to "P. 143, first short ..." “Honor the work of vigil…” 00:21:55 Bob Čihák, AZ: P. 143, first short paragraph, 6 00:32:20 James Hickman: For years I've found myself waking up against my will, then over the years (more recently, and not always!) seeing it as a gift. But when I have an icon on my wall, I find it a grace when I lay there awake in bed and make simple prayer of the heart, simple acts. This seems valuable. I'll be ok to hear if there's more expected than this. Objectivity is desired here. Work in progress here. 00:33:05 David: I have a prayer book that has a Greek orthodox evening prayer and in the ending it says "we sing to you in the night- Holy, holy holy are you oh God, through the prayers of the Theotokos have mercy on me". Is this a practice when one begins a vigil? When I do wake I always try to say it but was not sure if it is something formal in vigils? 00:35:59 Jessica Imanaka: Several Trappist monks I know have said they don't need as much as sleep as medical science dictates. The deceased abbot used to say that prayer reduces the physical need for sleep. Whenever I go on retreat, praying the full office, I just can't sleep as much. My body doesn't want to. 00:36:13 Anthony: On waking up at night....some people say 3am is the devil's hour, so it's advisable to pray then.  I think that gives way too much focus on the devil's? Or is this real Christian tradition? 00:40:58 Myles Davidson: The noonday devil was a desert father thing 00:41:11 Nicholas B. Besachio: What does St. Issac say about demonic attacks on Faith. 00:41:26 Rebecca Thérèse: Christ died on the cross at 3pm so Satanists say a black mass at 3am, that's why some people refer to it as the devil's hour 00:42:30 Bob Čihák, AZ: Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin did a Mysterious World session # 98 on “Sleep” which I found helpful. Cf. http://jimmyakin.com/ . 00:43:45 Thomas: I have heard priests say not to pretend to be monks what do they mean by this, because we should imitate them 00:46:06 Una: Reacted to "Catholic apologist..." with

George has competed his masterpiece! Errors of the Latins is now a 2 Vol. set available here: https://uncutmountainpress.com/products/the-errors-of-the-latins-volume-i?srsltid=AfmBOoqHgIYQqfHqYJriNtREN9X7hBhYLHe7OexXNZOMe27ed37DdQYP I will be speaking at this conference! Get tickets here https://southernorthodox.org/conferences/3rd-annual-conference/ Send Superchats at any time here: https://streamlabs.com/jaydyer/tip Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnt7Iy8GlmdPwy_Tzyx93bA/join PRE-Order New Book Available in Sept here: https://jaysanalysis.com/product/esoteric-hollywood-3-sex-cults-apocalypse-in-films/ Get started with Bitcoin here: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/jaydyer/ The New Philosophy Course is here: https://marketplace.autonomyagora.com/philosophy101 Set up recurring Choq subscription with the discount code JAY44LIFE for 44% off now https://choq.com Lore coffee is here: https://www.patristicfaith.com/coffee/ Subscribe to my site here: https://jaysanalysis.com/membership-account/membership-levels/ Follow me on R0kfin here: https://rokfin.com/jaydyer Music by Amid the Ruins 1453 https://www.youtube.com/@amidtheruinsOVERHAUL Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnt7Iy8GlmdPwy_Tzyx93bA/join Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnt7Iy8GlmdPwy_Tzyx93bA/join #catholic #catholicchurch #religionBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jay-sanalysis--1423846/support.

In the beginning, by which I mean before 1054, the Church was united, though the Eastern and Western pieces had lots of theological differences, which they could just not iron out. But then it was 1053, and the Patriarch of Constantinople closed all the Latin churches in the city, and after that, the Pope of Rome tried to get the Patriarch to recognize him (the Pope) as the head of the Church, which he wouldn't, and then they excommunicated each other, and we had The Great Schism of 1054. But there was still lots and lots of trade between the East and the West, because money, which is why in 1182 there was a large Italian population of traders and their families in Constantinople, especially since they'd been given lots of economic incentives, and so they were making lots of money and shouldering all of the Byzantine traders out, and also, alas, the Italians were VERY arrogant and annoyed everybody, besides which they were very badly behaved, and a mob that had been celebrating the entrance into the city of their new emperor Andronikos pivoted and began massacring all of the Italians they could find in the city. This was very bad. Very bad indeed. And it didn't help the East-West relations, which would be reaching their nadir with the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, after which the East and the West wouldn't even speak to each other, for hundreds of years. We explain the massacre and Michelle finds novels, including one by, I kid you not, Louis L'Amour, who apparently had a sort of cowboy take on the whole shebang.

Continuing his discussion of the schism, and the filioque's contribution to it, Dr. Jenkins this week looks at St. Maximos the Confessor (580-662). St. Maximos shows that in the 640s the Latins did not confess what would later be their doctrine, that the Spirit's person eternally procedes from the Son as He does also from the Father. https://tinyurl.com/Doxamoot2025 https://tinyurl.com/OrthEd2025 Byzantine course: https://tinyurl.com/LuxchristiByzantium Still Points: https://tinyurl.com/StillPoints Next issue of Rule of Faith: https://tinyurl.com/RuleofFaith6-1

Jeudi 27 février 2025Le dehors dedans - Averroès en peintureRencontre avec Jean-Baptiste Brenet autour de son livre Le dehors dedans - Averroès en peinture - éditions MaculaEn présence de l'éditrice Véronique YersinPendant deux cent cinquante ans, entre le XIVe et le XVIe siècle, on a peint en Italie des Triomphe de Thomas d'Aquin qui représentent le théologien chrétien en chaire, majestueux, dominant le même adversaire assis ou étendu à ses pieds. Enturbanné, barbu, cet homme vaincu est Averroès, le grand commentateur arabe d'Aristote. Que fait-il là ? Quel est le sens de cette figuration, a priori négative, qui se répète à travers les âges ? C'est à quoi ce livre veut répondre, en proposant de « lire » ces peintures d'un autre œil : non pas en spécialiste de l'art, mais en historien de la philosophie, soucieux du dossier théorique ayant opposé les deux personnages et leurs épigones (les annexes contiennent la traduction inédite de textes majeurs de la querelle).Deux choses ressortent, dans un renversement : que ces œuvres de propagande travestissent la réalité du rapport complexe d'héritage et de relance que la scolastique puis la pensée « européenne » auront entretenu avec la pensée arabe ; qu'elles se trahissent, pourtant, laissant voir ce qu'elles entendaient recouvrir. Dedans, et non pas dehors, Averroès, songeur, est un motif inattendu : le véritable « sujet » de tous ces Triomphe.Jean-Baptiste Brenet est médiéviste, professeur de philosophie arabe à l'Université Paris 1- Panthéon Sorbonne. Il est spécialiste de l'œuvre d'Averroès (Ibn Rushd) et de son legs au monde latin. Traducteur de l'arabe et du latin, il a publié une vingtaine d'ouvrages, parmi lesquels : Averroès l'inquiétant, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2015 ; Je fantasme, Lagrasse, Verdier, 2017 ; Que veut dire penser ? Arabes et Latins, Paris, Payot et Rivages, 2022.

Why do the fighters fight? What is the psychology that sustains the terribleand wonderful thing called a war?In nothing is this new history needed so much as in the psychology ofwar. Our history is stiff with official documents, public or private,which tell us nothing of the thing itself. At the worst we only have theofficial posters, which could not have been spontaneous preciselybecause they were official. At the best we have only the secretdiplomacy, which could not have been popular precisely because it wassecret. Upon one or other of these is based the historical judgmentabout the real reasons that sustained the struggle. Governments fightfor colonies or commercial rights; governments fight about harbours orhigh tariffs; governments fight for a gold mine or a pearl fishery. Itseems sufficient to answer that governments do not fight at all. Why dothe fighters fight? What is the psychology that sustains the terribleand wonderful thing called a war? Nobody who knows anything of soldiersbelieves the silly notion of the dons, that millions of men can be ruledby force. If they were all to slack, it would be impossible to punishall the slackers. And the least little touch of slacking would lose awhole campaign in half a day. What did men really feel about thepolicy? If it be said that they accepted the policy from the politician,what did they feel about the politician? If the vassals warred blindlyfor their prince, what did those blind men see in their prince?There is something we all know which can only be rendered, in anappropriate language, as _realpolitik_. As a matter of fact, it is analmost insanely unreal politik. It is always stubbornly and stupidlyrepeating that men fight for material ends, without reflecting for amoment that the material ends are hardly ever material to the men whofight. In any case, no man will die for practical politics, just as noman will die for pay. Nero could not hire a hundred Christians to beeaten by lions at a shilling an hour; for men will not be martyred formoney. But the vision called up by real politik, or realistic politics,is beyond example crazy and incredible. Does anybody in the worldbelieve that a soldier says, ‘My leg is nearly dropping off, but I shallgo on till it drops; for after all I shall enjoy all the advantages ofmy government obtaining a warm-water port in the Gulf of Finland.' Cananybody suppose that a clerk turned conscript says, ‘If I am gassed Ishall probably die in torments; but it is a comfort to reflect thatshould I ever decide to become a pearl-diver in the South Seas, thatcareer is now open to me and my countrymen.' Materialist history is themost madly incredible of all histories, or even of all romances.Whatever starts wars, the thing that sustains wars is something in thesoul; that is something akin to religion. It is what men feel about lifeand about death. A man near to death is dealing directly with anabsolute; it is nonsense to say he is concerned only with relative andremote complications that death in any case will end. If he is sustainedby certain loyalties, they must be loyalties as simple as death. Theyare generally two ideas, which are only two sides of one idea. The firstis the love of something said to be threatened, if it be only vaguelyknown as home; the second is dislike and defiance of some strange thingthat threatens it. The first is far more philosophical than it sounds,though we need not discuss it here. A man does not want his nationalhome destroyed or even changed, because he cannot even remember all thegood things that go with it; just as he does not want his house burntdown, because he can hardly count all the things he would miss.Therefore he fights for what sounds like a hazy abstraction, but isreally a house. But the negative side of it is quite as noble as well asquite as strong. Men fight hardest when they feel that the foe is atonce an old enemy and an eternal stranger, that his atmosphere is alienand antagonistic; as the French feel about the Prussian or the EasternChristians about the Turk. If we say it is a difference of religion,people will drift into dreary bickerings about sects and dogmas. We willpity them and say it is a difference about death and daylight; adifference that does really come like a dark shadow between our eyes andthe day. Men can think of this difference even at the point of death;for it is a difference about the meaning of life.Men are moved in these things by something far higher and holier thanpolicy: by hatred. When men hung on in the darkest days of the GreatWar, suffering either in their bodies or in their souls for those theyloved, they were long past caring about details of diplomatic objects asmotives for their refusal to surrender. Of myself and those I knew bestI can answer for the vision that made surrender impossible. It was thevision of the German Emperor's face as he rode into Paris. This is notthe sentiment which some of my idealistic friends describe as Love. I amquite content to call it hatred; the hatred of hell and all its works,and to agree that as they do not believe in hell they need not believein hatred. But in the face of this prevalent prejudice, this longintroduction has been unfortunately necessary, to ensure anunderstanding of what is meant by a religious war. There is a religiouswar when two worlds meet; that is, when two visions of the world meet;or in more modern language, when two moral atmospheres meet. What is theone man's breath is the other man's poison; and it is vain to talk ofgiving a pestilence a place in the sun. And this is what we mustunderstand, even at the expense of digression, if we would see whatreally happened in the Mediterranean; when right athwart the rising ofthe Republic on the Tiber, a thing overtopping and disdaining it, darkwith all the riddles of Asia and trailing all the tribes anddependencies of imperialism, came Carthage riding on the sea.The ancient religion of Italy was on the whole that mixture which wehave considered under the head of mythology; save that where the Greekshad a natural turn for the mythology, the Latins seem to have had a realturn for religion. Both multiplied gods, yet they sometimes seem to havemultiplied them for almost opposite reasons. It would seem sometimes asif the Greek polytheism branched and blossomed upwards like the boughsof a tree, while the Italian polytheism ramified downward like theroots. Perhaps it would be truer to say that the former branches liftedthemselves lightly, bearing flowers; while the latter hung down, beingheavy with fruit. I mean that the Latins seem to multiply gods to bringthem nearer to men, while the Greek gods rose and radiated outwards intothe morning sky. What strikes us in the Italian cults is their local andespecially their domestic character. We gain the impression ofdivinities swarming about the house like flies; of deities clusteringand clinging like bats about the pillars or building like birds underthe eaves. We have a vision of a god of roofs and a god of gateposts, ofa god of doors and even a god of drains. It has been suggested that allmythology was a sort of fairy-tale; but this was a particular sort offairy-tale which may truly be called a fireside tale, or a nursery-tale;because it was a tale of the interior of the home; like those which makechairs and tables talk like elves. The old household gods of the Italianpeasants seem to have been great, clumsy, wooden images, morefeatureless than the figure-head which Quilp battered with the poker.This religion of the home was very homely. Of course there were otherless human elements in the tangle of Italian mythology. There were Greekdeities superimposed on the Roman; there were here and there uglierthings underneath, experiments in the cruel kind of paganism, like theArician rite of the priest slaying the slayer. But these things werealways potential in paganism; they are certainly not the peculiarcharacter of Latin paganism. The peculiarity of that may be roughlycovered by saying that if mythology personified the forces of nature,this mythology personified nature as transformed by the forces of man.It was the god of the corn and not of the grass, of the cattle and notthe wild things of the forest; in short, the cult was literally aculture; as when we speak of it as agriculture.With this there was a paradox which is still for many the puzzle orriddle of the Latins. With religion running through every domesticdetail like a climbing plant, there went what seems to many the veryopposite spirit: the spirit of revolt. Imperialists and reactionariesoften invoke Rome as the very model of order and obedience; but Rome wasthe very reverse. The real history of ancient Rome is much more like thehistory of modern Paris. It might be called in modern language a citybuilt out of barricades. It is said that the gate of Janus was neverclosed because there was an eternal war without; it is almost as truethat there was an eternal revolution within. From the first Plebeianriots to the last Servile Wars, the state that imposed peace on theworld was never really at peace. The rulers were themselves rebels.There is a real relation between this religion in private and thisrevolution in public life. Stories none the less heroic for beinghackneyed remind us that the Republic was founded on a tyrannicide thatavenged an insult to a wife; that the Tribunes of the people werere-established after another which avenged an insult to a daughter. Thetruth is that only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have astandard or a status by which to criticise the state. They alone canappeal to something more holy than the gods of the city; the gods of thehearth. That is why men are mystified in seeing that the same nationsthat are thought rigid in domesticity are also thought restless inpolitics; for in

Andronikos III Palaiologos takes charge of a Roman state still recovering from the loss of Anatolia and the raids of the Catalans.He takes on the challenge with enthusiasm and tangles with the Turks, Latins and Serbs. He also reunites Epiros and Thessaly with Constantinople.Period: 1328-41Check out my episodes on the First Crusade which have been turned into videos by @Empire-Builders Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Text usProduced by: Mickie EberzIn this brutal deep-dive into medieval darkness, we leave the battlefield behind and shine a torch on the murders and massacres that happened off the field. These are the betrayals in cathedrals, assassinations at royal feasts, religious purges, political executions, and grisly “justice” carried out behind closed castle doors.From the shocking murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in his own cathedral to the York pogrom of 1190, from Scotland's infamous Black Dinner to a royal execution by red-hot poker, this episode explores the blood-soaked stories of power, paranoia, and vengeance that shaped history—and still echo in our nightmares.Also featuring:☠️ The Massacre of the Latins in Constantinople

In this episode of The Healers Café, Manon Bolliger, FCAH, RBHT (facilitator and retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice) speaks to Anne-Marie's about her journey with Bowen therapy, the different practitioners and techniques she has explored, and the evolution of the modality. For the transcript and full story go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/anne-marie-ferguson     Highlights from today's episode include: Anne-Marie Ferguson  07:50  I believe that the way we think about our health affects our healing, even the belief that we will get better. Manon Bolliger  09:37  at Bowen College, what I do is I teach not psychology, but I teach how to LISTEN to your body, which means you know, also observing your thoughts and how they interfere or not you know, Anne-Marie Ferguson  I asked her if I could use add the Bowen therapy technique, and she told me she'd always had hip pain, and I was able to see that the problem stemmed from the TMJ, so I made a few changes there, and around three weeks later, I got a Message from her saying her the pain that she had for years disappeared.   ABOUT: I was introduced to Bowen therapy at a wedding rehearsal in 2013 on the Gold Coast in Queensland when we lived there for a couple years.  I began a workshop with Robyn Wood who was an instructor with Bowtech. I continued on to receive my diploma and attended many courses trying to understand how this modality worked. I had some great outcomes. My husband and I have worked as missionaries in Mexico for many years. We work with the Tepehuan group. My husband is fluent in their language and so we are often traveling to visit family or churches so have lived very unsettled for a number of years with our 4 children who are now adults. Bowen therapy courses have introduced me to many other therapists who are curious about what works, what doesn't. I began hearing about the Emmett technique and in 2015 i believe I took my first course with Ross Emmett in Seattle and then began attending several workshops amazed at the releases that we all experienced. In 2017 my husband and I thought we would finish our work in missions so we moved to Abbotsford for just a year when he found a better job back in Melbourne through connections and we moved back to Australia again in. 2018. I studied a one year remedial massage program and worked in a spa. I was also offered a job with a naturopath and would work from home as well. We were there until October 2021 when we lost our jobs due to the craziness of Covid. We then sensed we should volunteer back in Mexico and make ourselves useful. We returned to Chihuahua to train Latins to reach out to their own people and in August of this year we have returned to Canadá for another period and are looking at how we will continue the work in Mexico. Throughout all the moving I always have opportunities to practice Bowen informally. Core purpose/passion: My mission as a Bowen therapist is to provide a therapy that is valuable and creates a change. Something should always change as a result of the session. The client should either experience reduced pain, less inflammation, more range of movement, a feeling of lightness perhaps or balance. | Facebook |     ABOUT MANON BOLLIGER, FCAH, RBHT  As a de-registered (2021) board-certified naturopathic physician & in practice since 1992, I've seen an average of 150 patients per week and have helped people ranging from rural farmers in Nova Scotia to stressed out CEOs in Toronto to tri-athletes here in Vancouver.  My resolve to educate, empower and engage people to take charge of their own health is evident in my best-selling books:  'What Patients Don't Say if Doctors Don't Ask: The Mindful Patient-Doctor Relationship' and 'A Healer in Every Household: Simple Solutions for Stress'.  I also teach BowenFirst™ Therapy through and hold transformational workshops to achieve these goals. So, when I share with you that LISTENING to Your body is a game changer in the healing process, I am speaking from expertise and direct experience". Manon's Mission: A Healer in Every Household!  For more great information to go to her weekly blog:  http://bowencollege.com/blog.    For tips on health & healing go to: https://www.drmanonbolliger.com/tips    Follow Manon on Social – Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube | Twitter | Linktr.ee | Rumble   ABOUT THE HEALERS CAFÉ:  Manon's show is the #1 show for medical practitioners and holistic healers to have heart to heart conversations about their day to day lives.  Subscribe and review on your favourite platform: iTunes | Google Play | Spotify | Libsyn | iHeartRadio | Gaana | The Healers Cafe | Radio.com | Medioq |   Follow The Healers Café on FB: https://www.facebook.com/thehealerscafe   Remember to subscribe if you like our videos. Click the bell if you want to be one of the first people notified of a new release.   * De-Registered, revoked & retired naturopathic physician after 30 years of practice in healthcare. Now resourceful & resolved to share with you all the tools to take care of your health & vitality!

He was born sometime in the mid-fourth century on an island in the Aegean. For a time he lived successfully in the world, receiving a good education in Constantinople, then serving for a time for the Prefect of the Praetorium. But, becoming aware of the vanity of worldly things, he answered Christ's call, gave away all his goods to the poor and entered a monastery in Syria. After four years in obedience, he came to feel that the security of monastic life was inconsistent with the Gospel command to take no thought for the morrow; so he withdrew to the desert, taking with him only his garment and the Book of the Gospel. There he lived alone for seven years.   At the end of this period he set out on an apostolic mission to Mesopotamia, where he brought many to Christ: the city prefect Rabbula was converted after Alexander brought down fire from heaven, and a band of brigands who accosted the Saint on the road were transformed into a monastic community. He finally fled the city when the Christians there rose up demanding that he be made bishop. He once again took up a solitary life in the desert beyond the Euphrates, spending the day in prayer and part of the night sheltered in a barrel. There he remained for forty years. His holiness gradually attracted more than four hundred disciples, whom Alexander organized into a monastic community. Each disciple owned only one tunic, and was required to give away anything that they did not need for that day. Despite this threadbare life, the monastery was able to set up and run a hospice for the poor!   Alexander was perplexed as to how the admonition Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) could be fulfilled by frail human flesh, but after three years of fasting and prayer, God showed him a method. He organized his monks into four groups according to whether their native language was Greek, Latin, Syriac or Coptic, and the groups prayed in shifts throughout the day and night. Twenty-four divine services were appointed each day, and the monks would chant from the Psalter between services. The community henceforth came to be known as the Akoimetoi, the Unsleeping Ones. (Similar communities later sprang up in the West, practicing what was there called Laus Perennis; St Columban founded many of these.)   Always desiring to spread the holy Gospel, Saint Alexander sent companies of missionaries to the pagans of southern Egypt. He and a company of 150 disciples set out as a kind of traveling monastery, living entirely on the charity of the villages they visited. Eventually they settled in some abandoned baths in Antioch, setting up a there a monastery dedicated to the unceasing praise of God; but a jealous bishop drove them from the city. Making his way to Constantinople, he settled there with four monks. In a few days, more than four hundred monks had left their monasteries to join his community. The Saint organized them into three companies — Greeks, Latins and Syrians — and restored the program of unsleeping prayer that his community had practiced in Mesopotamia. Not surprisingly, his success aroused the envy and anger of the abbots whose monasteries had been nearly emptied; they managed to have him condemned as a Messalian at a council held in 426. (The Messalians were an over-spiritualizing sect who believed that the Christian life consisted exclusively of prayer.) Alexander was sent back to Syria, and most of his monks were imprisoned; but as soon as they were released, most fled the city to join him again. The Saint spent his last years traveling from place to place, founding monasteries, often persecuted, until he reposed in 430, 'to join the Angelic choirs which he had so well imitated on earth.' (Synaxarion)   The practice of unceasing praise, established by St Alexander, spread throughout the Empire. The Monastery of the Akoimetoi, founded by a St Marcellus, a successor of Alexander, was established in Constantinople and became a beacon to the Christian world. 'Even though it has not been retained in today's practice, the unceasing praise established by Saint Alexander was influential in the formation of the daily cycle of liturgical offices in the East and even more so in the West.' (Synaxarion)

The Roman festival of Faunalia Rustica was celebrated in rural areas in honour of the god Faunus, a god who according to epic poetry was the King of the Latins, but to many needed appeasement for country living. Guest: Associate Professor Rhiannon Evans (Classics and Ancient History, La Trobe University)

Send us a textIn this episode, we visit the rouge imperial state that popped up in the Balkans after the conquest of Constantinople. This state is called the Despotate of Epirus, as it was the rightful inheritor of the Roman Empire. Michael Komnenos Doukas was a bastard cousin of the Emperor in Constantinople... but now he had the chance to really make a name for himself and carve out a piece of the old empire to form his new kingdom. In this episode, Michael goes from a puppet of the Latins to a full-blown rebel, going to war with Latins, Albanians, and the city of Dyrrachium. When he entered the old imperial cities, he was greeted as a liberator and a hero, but when he crossed over to the Latins, he became the cruel conqueror... but maybe he was just the type of cruel conqueror the Greeks needed to deal with the Latin Crusaders now living in the midst of the old Roman Empire.The History of Modern Greece Podcast covers the events from Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, to the years under the Ottoman Empire, and 1821 when the Greeks fought for Independance... all the way to the Modern Day.Website: www.moderngreecepodcast.comMusic by Mark Jungerman: www.marcjungermann.comCheck out our 2nd Podcast: www.antecedors.

Send us a textIn this episode, we meet our first main character from Season Four. Theodore Laskaris started his career in Constantinople when he married the daughter of the Roman Emperor Alexios the 3rd. But after the city was sacked, the noble members of the Imperial fled in all directions. Theodore found himself in Nicaea, where he started a resistance against the Latins. After many successes, he was crowned the Emperor by the Patriarch and started the Empire in Nicaea. However, he was not the only member of the royal family to claim that title, and soon, five Roman emperors were running around the frontiers, with several offshoot Imperial states rising in the three corners of the old empire. Theodore Laskaris finds himself under attack by, not only the other Greek States, but also the Seljuk Turks and the Latin Crusaders in Constantinople.The History of Modern Greece Podcast covers the events from Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, to the years under the Ottoman Empire, and 1821 when the Greeks fought for Independance... all the way to the Modern Day.Website: www.moderngreecepodcast.comMusic by Mark Jungerman: www.marcjungermann.comCheck out our 2nd Podcast: www.antecedors.com

Full Text of ReadingsFriday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 495The Saint of the day is Saint Albert the GreatSaint Albert the Great's Story Albert the Great was a 13th-century German Dominican who decisively influenced the Church's stance toward Aristotelian philosophy brought to Europe by the spread of Islam. Students of philosophy know him as the master of Thomas Aquinas. Albert's attempt to understand Aristotle's writings established the climate in which Thomas Aquinas developed his synthesis of Greek wisdom and Christian theology. But Albert deserves recognition on his own merits as a curious, honest, and diligent scholar. He was the eldest son of a powerful and wealthy German lord of military rank. He was educated in the liberal arts. Despite fierce family opposition, he entered the Dominican novitiate. His boundless interests prompted him to write a compendium of all knowledge: natural science, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics, and metaphysics. His explanation of learning took 20 years to complete. “Our intention,” he said, “is to make all the aforesaid parts of knowledge intelligible to the Latins.” He achieved his goal while serving as an educator at Paris and Cologne, as Dominican provincial, and even as bishop of Regensburg for a short time. He defended the mendicant orders and preached the Crusade in Germany and Bohemia. Albert, a Doctor of the Church, is the patron of scientists and philosophers. Reflection An information glut faces us Christians today in all branches of learning. One needs only to read current Catholic periodicals to experience the varied reactions to the findings of the social sciences, for example, in regard to Christian institutions, Christian life-styles, and Christian theology. Ultimately, in canonizing Albert, the Church seems to point to his openness to truth, wherever it may be found, as his claim to holiness. His characteristic curiosity prompted Albert to mine deeply for wisdom within a philosophy his Church warmed to with great difficulty. Saint Albert the Great is a Patron Saint of: Educators/TeachersMedical TechniciansPhilosophersScientists Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

The election is over, now what? Did you jump for joy or record yourself crying? Y's Election Day story. Mike is sus about the way things are quiet. Women and Latins are dummies and racists because they voted for Trump. Free speech and why it's important. The celebrities this Election cycle. Will Trump stop the war in Ukraine? Women rights…are they really under attack? Has anyone checked on Tyrese?  If you want follow us online   https://twitter.com/theIn4mous  https://www.instagram.com/theinfamous4/  http://theinfamous4.com/ 

Send us a textAfter the sack of Constantinople, the ousting of the Royal Family, and the occupation of the Ancient Roman Capital, the Greek world was turned upside down. The Latin Crusaders now ruled over the Greek capital, and three offshoot empires sprung up around the Imperial City. The Greek people were all but defeated, and the Turks, Latins, Bulgarians, and Venetians swallowed up all that was known as the Medieval Greek world and the Eastern Roman Empire. But the Eastern Roman Empire was not gone, and the Greek dynasties were determined to recover from their losses, and by luck, skill, or both... the Eastern Roman Empire survived for another two hundred and fifty years.The History of Modern Greece Podcast covers the Greek people's events from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Greek War of Independence in 1821-1832, through to the Greco-Turkish War from 1919 to 1922 to the present day.Website: www.moderngreecepodcast.comMusic by Mark Jungerman: www.marcjungermann.comCheck out our 2nd Podcast: www.antecedors.com 

Did Donald Trump just seal his electoral chances in Pennsylvania shut by calling Latins and Puerto Ricans garbage that doesn't practice proper birth control, at his racist Madison Square Garden rally yesterday? Michael Popok takes a look at the 600,000 majority Puerto Rican Americans who are or are about to vote in Pennsylvania, as Kamala Harris simultaneously counter programs by meeting with the Hispanic community to present her plan to rebuild the Puerto Rican economy and lift up its people. Get up to 40% off for a limited time when you go to https://shopbeam.com/LEGALAF and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Join the LegalAF Patreon: https://Patreon.com/legalAF Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In questo episodio speciale di Buongiorno Business, facciamo un salto in Messico con Antonino Di Marco, fondatore di Proa Digital e ideatore de "America Latina Day" che si terrà a Milano il 24 ottobre 2024, info:https://americalatinaday.com/Antonino ci racconta la sua esperienza di oltre sei anni in America Latina, inclusi Messico e Cile. Esploriamo le principali opportunità e sfide per le imprese italiane che cercano di espandersi in Messico, un paese strategicamente aperto al commercio globale.Discutiamo di nearshoring, settori trainanti, accordi commerciali e come le imprese possono affrontare rischi legati alla sicurezza e ai salari bassi. Alla fine, Antonino ci rivela il perché sempre più imprese italiane stanno scegliendo il Messico come sito produttivo e strategico per le loro attività.L'ITALIA è QUI in Brasile e in America Latina!

146 BCE - 1204 CE - This is the story of the Balkan Peninsula from its post Classical Greek and Hellenistic period when it was conquered by the Roman Republic, through to the defeat of the Byzantine Empire by the Latins of the Fourth Crusade. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/historyoftheworldpodcast/message

Fredag!!! I dag blir det en snällt men naggande gott avsnitt. Det blir bolaget-nostalgi, dokusåpakändisar, gröna lunds damtoaletter och en hel del svärföräldrar. Har du ett skvaller som fler borde få höra? Maila det till kafferepetpod@gmail.comMissa inte vår månatliga systerpodd Cigarrummet. Bli prenumerant på www.underproduktion.se/cigarrummet7:10 - En capricciosa 11:00 - Tysk logik13:33 - Styrelsemötet17:32 - Magsjukan21:11 - Grannsamverkan with a vengance26:00 - Rim till svärmor33:10 - Samtal från helvetet39:21 - Anonym kafferepet-historia50:07 - Den otrolige Harry Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

St. Neophytos the Recluse (Άγιος Νεόφυτος ο Έγκλειστος ca. 1134–1214) was a twelfth century Cypriot hermit and saint whose short chronicle, "On the Calamities Against the Country of Cyprus," provides us with an invaluable look into the Third Crusade and, more specifically, its impact on Cyprus which he considers an unmitigated disaster. He is decidedly critical of both the Byzantine usurper, Isaac Comnenus, who "despoiled the land" and King Richard the Lionheart, from "the wretch...from England, a country beyond Romania,"*** and laments Cyprus' loss to the Latins in 1191. Next month, Tassos Papacostas (King's College London) joins me to discuss Cyprus in the Byzantine period with a particular focus on the settlement of the Troodos Region. ***Romania is not a reference to modern day Romania but rather, the Byzantine Empire. Let us not forget that "Byzantine" is an exonym and a misnomer. "Byzantines" would have called themselves Ῥωμαῖοι (Romans) and their land, Ῥωμανία (Romanland).

Welcometo Episode 227 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.We are now discussing the Epicurean sections of Cicero's "On the Nature of The Gods," and this week we introduce the Epicurean spokesman Velleius, beginning in Section 8For the main text we are using primarily the Yonge translation, available here. The text which we include in these posts is the Yonge version, the full version of which is here at Epicureanfriends. We will also refer to the public domain version of the Loeb series, which contains both Latin and English, as translated by H. Rackham.Additional versions can be found here:Frances Brooks 1896 translation at Online Library of LibertyLacus Curtius Edition (Rackham)PDF Of Loeb Edition at Archive.org by RackhamGutenberg.org version by CD Yonge Today's TextVII. Indeed, says I, I think I am come very seasonably, as you say; for here are three chiefs of three principal sects met together. If M. Piso was present, no sect of philosophy that is in any esteem would want an advocate. If Antiochus's book, replies Cotta, which he lately sent to Balbus, says true, you have no occasion to wish for your friend Piso; for Antiochus is of the opinion that the Stoics do not differ from the Peripatetics in fact, though they do in words; and I should be glad to know what you think of that book, Balbus."I?" says he. I wonder that Antiochus, a man of the clearest apprehension, should not see what a vast difference there is between the Stoics, who distinguish the honest and the profitable, not only in name, but absolutely in kind, and the Peripatetics, who blend the honest with the profitable in such a manner that they differ only in degrees and proportion, and not in kind. This is not a little difference in words, but a great one in things; but of this hereafter. Now, if you think fit, let us return to what we began with.With all my heart, says Cotta. But that this visitor (looking at me), who is just come in, may not be ignorant of what we are upon, I will inform him that we were discoursing on the nature of the Gods; concerning which, as it is a subject that always appeared very obscure to me, I prevailed on Velleius to give us the sentiments of Epicurus. Therefore, continues he, if it is not troublesome, Velleius, repeat what you have already stated to us. I will, says he, though this new-comer will be no advocate for me, but for you; for you have both, adds he, with a smile, learned from the same Philo to be certain of nothing. What we have learned from him, replied I, Cotta will discover; but I would not have you think I am come as an assistant to him, but as an auditor, with an impartial and unbiased mind, and not bound by any obligation to defend any particular principle, whether I like or dislike it.VIII. After this, Velleius, with the confidence peculiar to his sect, dreading nothing so much as to seem to doubt of anything, began as if he had just then descended from the council of the Gods, and Epicurus's intervals of worlds. Do not attend, says he, to these idle and imaginary tales; nor to the operator and builder of the World, the God of Plato's Timæus; nor to the old prophetic dame, the Πρόνοια of the Stoics, which the Latins call Providence; nor to that round, that burning, revolving deity, the World, endowed with sense and understanding; the prodigies and wonders, not of inquisitive philosophers, but of dreamers!For with what eyes of the mind was your Plato able to see that workhouse of such stupendous toil, in which he makes the world to be modeled and built by God? What materials, what tools, what bars, what machines, what servants, were employed in so vast a work? How could the air, fire, water, and earth pay obedience and submit to the will of the architect? From whence arose those five forms, of which the rest were composed, so aptly contributing to frame the mind and produce the senses? It is tedious to go through all, as they are of such a sort that they look more like things to be desired than to be discovered.But, what is more remarkable, he gives us a world which has been not only created, but, if I may so say, in a manner formed with hands, and yet he says it is eternal. Do you conceive him to have the least skill in natural philosophy who is capable of thinking anything to be everlasting that had a beginning? For what can possibly ever have been put together which cannot be dissolved again? Or what is there that had a beginning which will not have an end? If your Providence, Lucilius, is the same as Plato's God, I ask you, as before, who were the assistants, what were the engines, what was the plan and preparation of the whole work? If it is not the same, then why did she make the world mortal, and not everlasting, like Plato's God?

durée : 01:58:39 - Les musiciens d'orchestre baroques V - par : Christian Merlin - Après les Flamands et les Français, restent les Latins, les Allemands et les Britanniques parmi nos joueurs de viole, violoncelle et contrebasse qui forment le socle des ensembles baroque jouant sur instrument d'époque où les cordes graves se partagent la basse continue. - réalisé par : Marie Grout

durée : 00:28:25 - Les musiciens d'orchestre baroques V (4/4) : Les Allemands - par : Christian Merlin - Après les Flamands et les Français, restent les Latins, les Allemands et les Britanniques parmi nos joueurs de viole, violoncelle et contrebasse qui forment le socle des ensembles baroque jouant sur instrument d'époque où les cordes graves se partagent la basse continue. - réalisé par : Marie Grout

durée : 00:28:11 - Les musiciens d'orchestre baroques V (3/4) : Les Britanniques /2 - par : Christian Merlin - Après les Flamands et les Français, restent les Latins, les Allemands et les Britanniques parmi nos joueurs de viole, violoncelle et contrebasse qui forment le socle des ensembles baroque jouant sur instrument d'époque où les cordes graves se partagent la basse continue. - réalisé par : Marie Grout

In this episode of History 102, Rudyard Lynch and Erik Torenberg explore the rise of Rome, from its origins as a small settlement in Central Italy to becoming a dominant force in the known world, drawing parallels between historical events and modern-day societal patterns. They discuss themes of decadence, social cohesion, and the cyclical nature of civilizations. - SPONSORS: BEEHIIV | PLUMB Head to Beehiiv, the newsletter platform built for growth, to power your own. Connect with premium brands, scale your audience, and deliver a beautiful UX that stands out in an inbox. 

durée : 00:28:10 - Les musiciens d'orchestre baroques V (2/4) : Les Britanniques /1 - par : Christian Merlin - Après les Flamands et les Français, restent les Latins, les Allemands et les Britanniques parmi nos joueurs de viole, violoncelle et contrebasse qui forment le socle des ensembles baroque jouant sur instrument d'époque où les cordes graves se partagent la basse continue. - réalisé par : Marie Grout

durée : 00:28:11 - Les musiciens d'orchestre baroques V (1/4) - par : Christian Merlin - Après les Flamands et les Français, restent les Latins, les Allemands et les Britanniques parmi nos joueurs de viole, violoncelle et contrebasse qui forment le socle des ensembles baroque jouant sur instrument d'époque où les cordes graves se partagent la basse continue. - réalisé par : Marie Grout

This section is just Iliad but with Latins and Trojans this time. Listen to hear comparisons of Aeneas to Homer, Pallas to Patroclus, Turnus as furor, and whether furor can ever serve piety. FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRRAM:@bookinitpodCHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE:https://412podcasting.comSUPPORT US HERE:https://patreon.com/bookinit 

The Latins agree to stay for another year and to conquer the whole of the Roman Empire. They elect Count Baldwin of Flanders and Hainaut to be their Emperor and all seems well. It only takes a year for everything to fall apart. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The narrative returns as we head back to 1204 and the sack of Constantinople. The arrival of the Latins had actually splintered the Roman world into at least 13 different states.With a little help from the 2008 film 'Vantage Point' we will be following the different perspectives of these actors as they deal with the fallout from the sack.We begin with the story of Alexios V Doukas who fled the city just before it fell.Period: 1204 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He was born sometime in the mid-fourth century on an island in the Aegean. For a time he lived successfully in the world, receiving a good education in Constantinople, then serving for a time for the Prefect of the Praetorium. But, becoming aware of the vanity of worldly things, he answered Christ's call, gave away all his goods to the poor and entered a monastery in Syria. After four years in obedience, he came to feel that the security of monastic life was inconsistent with the Gospel command to take no thought for the morrow; so he withdrew to the desert, taking with him only his garment and the Book of the Gospel. There he lived alone for seven years.   At the end of this period he set out on an apostolic mission to Mesopotamia, where he brought many to Christ: the city prefect Rabbula was converted after Alexander brought down fire from heaven, and a band of brigands who accosted the Saint on the road were transformed into a monastic community. He finally fled the city when the Christians there rose up demanding that he be made bishop. He once again took up a solitary life in the desert beyond the Euphrates, spending the day in prayer and part of the night sheltered in a barrel. There he remained for forty years. His holiness gradually attracted more than four hundred disciples, whom Alexander organized into a monastic community. Each disciple owned only one tunic, and was required to give away anything that they did not need for that day. Despite this threadbare life, the monastery was able to set up and run a hospice for the poor!   Alexander was perplexed as to how the admonition Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) could be fulfilled by frail human flesh, but after three years of fasting and prayer, God showed him a method. He organized his monks into four groups according to whether their native language was Greek, Latin, Syriac or Coptic, and the groups prayed in shifts throughout the day and night. Twenty-four divine services were appointed each day, and the monks would chant from the Psalter between services. The community henceforth came to be known as the Akoimetoi, the Unsleeping Ones. (Similar communities later sprang up in the West, practicing what was there called Laus Perennis; St Columban founded many of these.)   Always desiring to spread the holy Gospel, Saint Alexander sent companies of missionaries to the pagans of southern Egypt. He and a company of 150 disciples set out as a kind of traveling monastery, living entirely on the charity of the villages they visited. Eventually they settled in some abandoned baths in Antioch, setting up a there a monastery dedicated to the unceasing praise of God; but a jealous bishop drove them from the city. Making his way to Constantinople, he settled there with four monks. In a few days, more than four hundred monks had left their monasteries to join his community. The Saint organized them into three companies — Greeks, Latins and Syrians — and restored the program of unsleeping prayer that his community had practiced in Mesopotamia. Not surprisingly, his success aroused the envy and anger of the abbots whose monasteries had been nearly emptied; they managed to have him condemned as a Messalian at a council held in 426. (The Messalians were an over-spiritualizing sect who believed that the Christian life consisted exclusively of prayer.) Alexander was sent back to Syria, and most of his monks were imprisoned; but as soon as they were released, most fled the city to join him again. The Saint spent his last years traveling from place to place, founding monasteries, often persecuted, until he reposed in 430, 'to join the Angelic choirs which he had so well imitated on earth.' (Synaxarion)   The practice of unceasing praise, established by St Alexander, spread throughout the Empire. The Monastery of the Akoimetoi, founded by a St Marcellus, a successor of Alexander, was established in Constantinople and became a beacon to the Christian world. 'Even though it has not been retained in today's practice, the unceasing praise established by Saint Alexander was influential in the formation of the daily cycle of liturgical offices in the East and even more so in the West.' (Synaxarion)

He was born sometime in the mid-fourth century on an island in the Aegean. For a time he lived successfully in the world, receiving a good education in Constantinople, then serving for a time for the Prefect of the Praetorium. But, becoming aware of the vanity of worldly things, he answered Christ's call, gave away all his goods to the poor and entered a monastery in Syria. After four years in obedience, he came to feel that the security of monastic life was inconsistent with the Gospel command to take no thought for the morrow; so he withdrew to the desert, taking with him only his garment and the Book of the Gospel. There he lived alone for seven years.   At the end of this period he set out on an apostolic mission to Mesopotamia, where he brought many to Christ: the city prefect Rabbula was converted after Alexander brought down fire from heaven, and a band of brigands who accosted the Saint on the road were transformed into a monastic community. He finally fled the city when the Christians there rose up demanding that he be made bishop. He once again took up a solitary life in the desert beyond the Euphrates, spending the day in prayer and part of the night sheltered in a barrel. There he remained for forty years. His holiness gradually attracted more than four hundred disciples, whom Alexander organized into a monastic community. Each disciple owned only one tunic, and was required to give away anything that they did not need for that day. Despite this threadbare life, the monastery was able to set up and run a hospice for the poor!   Alexander was perplexed as to how the admonition Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) could be fulfilled by frail human flesh, but after three years of fasting and prayer, God showed him a method. He organized his monks into four groups according to whether their native language was Greek, Latin, Syriac or Coptic, and the groups prayed in shifts throughout the day and night. Twenty-four divine services were appointed each day, and the monks would chant from the Psalter between services. The community henceforth came to be known as the Akoimetoi, the Unsleeping Ones. (Similar communities later sprang up in the West, practicing what was there called Laus Perennis; St Columban founded many of these.)   Always desiring to spread the holy Gospel, Saint Alexander sent companies of missionaries to the pagans of southern Egypt. He and a company of 150 disciples set out as a kind of traveling monastery, living entirely on the charity of the villages they visited. Eventually they settled in some abandoned baths in Antioch, setting up a there a monastery dedicated to the unceasing praise of God; but a jealous bishop drove them from the city. Making his way to Constantinople, he settled there with four monks. In a few days, more than four hundred monks had left their monasteries to join his community. The Saint organized them into three companies — Greeks, Latins and Syrians — and restored the program of unsleeping prayer that his community had practiced in Mesopotamia. Not surprisingly, his success aroused the envy and anger of the abbots whose monasteries had been nearly emptied; they managed to have him condemned as a Messalian at a council held in 426. (The Messalians were an over-spiritualizing sect who believed that the Christian life consisted exclusively of prayer.) Alexander was sent back to Syria, and most of his monks were imprisoned; but as soon as they were released, most fled the city to join him again. The Saint spent his last years traveling from place to place, founding monasteries, often persecuted, until he reposed in 430, 'to join the Angelic choirs which he had so well imitated on earth.' (Synaxarion)   The practice of unceasing praise, established by St Alexander, spread throughout the Empire. The Monastery of the Akoimetoi, founded by a St Marcellus, a successor of Alexander, was established in Constantinople and became a beacon to the Christian world. 'Even though it has not been retained in today's practice, the unceasing praise established by Saint Alexander was influential in the formation of the daily cycle of liturgical offices in the East and even more so in the West.' (Synaxarion)

@therydealongNEW YORK, NYLATIN & HIP HOP TALK SHOW

Did Tyler Aki drop the ball as his one-year anniversary approaches?

A conversation with Alessandra Bucossi (Ca' Foscari University, Venice) about the text "Against the Greeks" and "Against the Latins" that were produced by writers taking sides in the Schism of the Churches (Rome and Constantinople, of Greek and Latin, or Catholic and Orthodox, as we would call them today). There are many of these texts and they contain fascinating material, but have yet to receive the attention they deserve. Alessandra is our guide through the jungle. Check out her co-edited volume Contra Latinos et Adversus Graecos: The Separation between Rome and Constantinople from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century (Peeters 2020), and the Repertorium Auctorum Polemicorum de pace et discordia inter Ecclesiam Graecam et Latinam.

Full Text of ReadingsWednesday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 493The Saint of the day is Saint Albert the GreatSaint Albert the Great's Story Albert the Great was a 13th-century German Dominican who decisively influenced the Church's stance toward Aristotelian philosophy brought to Europe by the spread of Islam. Students of philosophy know him as the master of Thomas Aquinas. Albert's attempt to understand Aristotle's writings established the climate in which Thomas Aquinas developed his synthesis of Greek wisdom and Christian theology. But Albert deserves recognition on his own merits as a curious, honest, and diligent scholar. He was the eldest son of a powerful and wealthy German lord of military rank. He was educated in the liberal arts. Despite fierce family opposition, he entered the Dominican novitiate. His boundless interests prompted him to write a compendium of all knowledge: natural science, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics, and metaphysics. His explanation of learning took 20 years to complete. “Our intention,” he said, “is to make all the aforesaid parts of knowledge intelligible to the Latins.” He achieved his goal while serving as an educator at Paris and Cologne, as Dominican provincial, and even as bishop of Regensburg for a short time. He defended the mendicant orders and preached the Crusade in Germany and Bohemia. Albert, a Doctor of the Church, is the patron of scientists and philosophers. Reflection An information glut faces us Christians today in all branches of learning. One needs only to read current Catholic periodicals to experience the varied reactions to the findings of the social sciences, for example, in regard to Christian institutions, Christian life-styles, and Christian theology. Ultimately, in canonizing Albert, the Church seems to point to his openness to truth, wherever it may be found, as his claim to holiness. His characteristic curiosity prompted Albert to mine deeply for wisdom within a philosophy his Church warmed to with great difficulty. Saint Albert the Great is a Patron Saint of: Educators/TeachersMedical TechniciansPhilosophersScientists Saint of the Day, Copyright Franciscan Media

If you'd like to donate to WALKING WITH DANTE to keep it afloat without sponsors, you can give some a little in any currency using this PayPal link.Sordello stands amazed in the presence of the great poet Virgil. The pilgrim Dante? Seemingly forgotten.Sordello wants to know how this classical poet got into Purgatory. So Virgil offers an explanation that reiterates what we know about Limbo but also redefines Limbo and perhaps causes Dante the poet to trip across the wires of his own thinking.Join me, Mark Scarbrough, as we watch Dante renegotiate the presence of Virgil in COMEDY once again, ever trying to come to terms with a pagan poet in a Christian poem.Here are the segments for this episode of WALKING WITH DANTE:[01:43] My English translation of the passage: PURGATORIO, Canto VII, lines 16 - 36. If you'd like to read along, print it off, or continue the conversation with me, please go to my website, markscarbrough.com.[03:49] How is Virgil the "glory of the Latins" as Sordello claims? What does that mean to Sordello (and to Dante)?[06:02] There are at least two ways to handle Sordello's claim: 1) Latin was Virgil's vernacular or 2) Virgil showed the capabilities of language itself.[10:28] Apparently, Sordello isn't bothered by Virgil's eternal status.[11:14] Virgil offers an overview of his journey. His. Is it his? What of Dante the pilgrim?[15:22] Virgil seems both to reiterate and to redefine our understanding of Limbo.[19:07] Dante wants the human will to be the mechanism of salvation but that notion runs contrary to the Christian doctrine of original sin.[21:40] Dante is renovating Virgil because Virgil is the prime way Dante can renovate classical learning.

Scientific thought was rejuvenated in the 10th century as the Christians in the north came into contact with Islamic culture in Iberia.  Gerbert, a monk from Aurillac in Southern France played a key role in this process, introducing to Europe many innovations, such as the abacus,  the armillary sphere and new mathematics.  In doing so he revitalised teaching, particularly of the quadrivium and demonstrated to the Latins the advanced knowledge of the Greeks and Arabs. Contact: thecompletehistoryofscience@gmail.comTwitter: @complete_sciMusic Credit: Folk Round Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Where is the attack of a bass anyway? Damian talked about wireframing production, mixing on small speakers, Pro Tools editing by hand, recording modular synths, pen and paper producing, how to get wide bass, and why you don't need no stinking mono! Get access to FREE mixing mini-course: https://MixMasterBundle.com My guest today is Damian Taylor a 10 x Grammy nominated producer, engineer, and mixer best known for his work with Bjork, The Prodigy, The Killers, Arcade Fire, UNKLE, TR/ST, Odette, The Temper Trap, City of the Sun, and Dizzy and recently for Bomba Estéreo's album “Deja” picking up 4 nominations between the Anglo and Latin Grammys, including an album of the year nomination at the Latins. Damian has also been a guest on the podcast previously for episode RSR316 where we talked about his background in recording. Damian hosts an online community The Complete Producer Network is a positive and supportive place for folks to talk about all aspects of creating and releasing music at www.completeproducer.net and there are a few music production programs within the network. The Mix Accelerator Process is all about ensuring your vision and creativity are in the driving seat when you mix. The Beats Accelerator Process establishes the foundations of instant creativity through a drum programming and practice system. Damian's Online Studio makes the community, learning, networking and collaborative aspects of multi-room studio facilities available in an online format for people anywhere in the world. Thanks so much to Colin Ramsay at GPS Management for making our introduction. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS! https://UltimateMixingMasterclass.com https://www.Spectra1964.com https://MacSales.com/rockstars https://iZotope.com/Rockstars Save up to 50% off products, use code ROCK10 to get an additional 10% https://jzmic.com Use code ROCKSTAR to get 40% off the Vintage series mics plus get a FREE shock mount ($120 value) https://www.adam-audio.com https://RecordingStudioRockstars.com/Academy Use code ROCKSTAR to get 10% off https://www.thetoyboxstudio.com/ Listen to this guest's discography on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7yxD0GXOlhzpAAgcDVEwtW?si=79598e25e8e54b50 If you love the podcast, then please leave a review: https://RSRockstars.com/Review CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE SHOW NOTES AT: https://RSRockstars.com/406

Remember way back when the Trojans were “eating their tables”? Well, in Book 11 their tables seem to be turning. Seems like just yesterday Aeneas was raging as Rambo and Turnus was carrying himself with Hector-like respectability. Sed ecce!—Aeneas is handing out truces like sticks of Big Red and actually validating hurt Latin feelings, while Turnus' allies are turning against him and blaming him for the whole mess. Even old Diomedes is once bitten, twice shy, telling the Latins there is no way he's tangling with Venus or her son ever again. So that's it? It's over? Not quite—Turnus has a couple of aces up his sleeve, including a spear-swift, water-walking, grain-skipping warrior maiden who is juuuuuust over the horizon.

He was born sometime in the mid-fourth century on an island in the Aegean. For a time he lived successfully in the world, receiving a good education in Constantinople, then serving for a time for the Prefect of the Praetorium. But, becoming aware of the vanity of worldly things, he answered Christ's call, gave away all his goods to the poor and entered a monastery in Syria. After four years in obedience, he came to feel that the security of monastic life was inconsistent with the Gospel command to take no thought for the morrow; so he withdrew to the desert, taking with him only his garment and the Book of the Gospel. There he lived alone for seven years.   At the end of this period he set out on an apostolic mission to Mesopotamia, where he brought many to Christ: the city prefect Rabbula was converted after Alexander brought down fire from heaven, and a band of brigands who accosted the Saint on the road were transformed into a monastic community. He finally fled the city when the Christians there rose up demanding that he be made bishop. He once again took up a solitary life in the desert beyond the Euphrates, spending the day in prayer and part of the night sheltered in a barrel. There he remained for forty years. His holiness gradually attracted more than four hundred disciples, whom Alexander organized into a monastic community. Each disciple owned only one tunic, and was required to give away anything that they did not need for that day. Despite this threadbare life, the monastery was able to set up and run a hospice for the poor!   Alexander was perplexed as to how the admonition Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) could be fulfilled by frail human flesh, but after three years of fasting and prayer, God showed him a method. He organized his monks into four groups according to whether their native language was Greek, Latin, Syriac or Coptic, and the groups prayed in shifts throughout the day and night. Twenty-four divine services were appointed each day, and the monks would chant from the Psalter between services. The community henceforth came to be known as the Akoimetoi, the Unsleeping Ones. (Similar communities later sprang up in the West, practicing what was there called Laus Perennis; St Columban founded many of these.)   Always desiring to spread the holy Gospel, Saint Alexander sent companies of missionaries to the pagans of southern Egypt. He and a company of 150 disciples set out as a kind of traveling monastery, living entirely on the charity of the villages they visited. Eventually they settled in some abandoned baths in Antioch, setting up a there a monastery dedicated to the unceasing praise of God; but a jealous bishop drove them from the city. Making his way to Constantinople, he settled there with four monks. In a few days, more than four hundred monks had left their monasteries to join his community. The Saint organized them into three companies — Greeks, Latins and Syrians — and restored the program of unsleeping prayer that his community had practiced in Mesopotamia. Not surprisingly, his success aroused the envy and anger of the abbots whose monasteries had been nearly emptied; they managed to have him condemned as a Messalian at a council held in 426. (The Messalians were an over-spiritualizing sect who believed that the Christian life consisted exclusively of prayer.) Alexander was sent back to Syria, and most of his monks were imprisoned; but as soon as they were released, most fled the city to join him again. The Saint spent his last years traveling from place to place, founding monasteries, often persecuted, until he reposed in 430, 'to join the Angelic choirs which he had so well imitated on earth.' (Synaxarion)   The practice of unceasing praise, established by St Alexander, spread throughout the Empire. The Monastery of the Akoimetoi, founded by a St Marcellus, a successor of Alexander, was established in Constantinople and became a beacon to the Christian world. 'Even though it has not been retained in today's practice, the unceasing praise established by Saint Alexander was influential in the formation of the daily cycle of liturgical offices in the East and even more so in the West.' (Synaxarion)

We discuss what happened once the Latins started looting. How were the Byzantines treated? What was taken and what has survived? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Latins assault the city and Alexios Angelos Komnenos flees. Alexios Angelos becomes Emperor and empties the treasury into the Crusaders' hands. But when he runs out of money the two sides face an inevitable confrontation.Period: 1203-4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Manuel deals with the aftermath of the Battle of Myriokephalon. He is left out of an Italian peace conference and must negotiate a peace of his own in Anatolia. He continues his efforts to position Byzantium as a friend of the Latins. And we look at his church and financial policies.Period: 1176-80 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.