In The Relevance of the Stars, Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete recounts a story about Msgr. Luigi Giussani, which strikes at the heart of the modern sexual crisis,

One day, Giussani was walking around looking for a parking space, and he came upon two people making out in a car. He suddenly appeared in his cassock and said, “Hello.”

Well, you can imagine!

When they saw him, he said, “I hate to interrupt; I just have one question to ask you:

What you’re doing now, what does it have to do with the stars?”

“How absurd?” we might think. It seems a little pretentious, doesn’t it? These priests, bound by their vows to live in celibacy, posturing about how procreation relates to the cosmos! Sex is just…sex, isn’t it?

To our modern ears, Giussani sounds awkward, even intrusive. But his question is worth pondering precisely because we have reduced the sexual experience to a mere appetite. He asks whether sex means far more than we are willing to admit.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

But we have made sex small.

We have made sexual gratification private.

We have disconnected it from wonder.

We have detached sex from covenant, fruitfulness, and the soul’s upward movement into the heavens.

First, we degrade sex into something merely pleasurable. Then it becomes recreational rather than holy. Finally, it becomes utilitarian rather than transcendental. In its utility, the object of sex, the body, becomes a thing to consume rather than a person to cherish. Degradation becomes a kink.

The obsession. The fetish. That overwhelming curiosity that promises ultimate fulfillment, but when gained, only drives the soul deeper into lust. Rather than leaving the sexual experience with a smile, the end thereof is guilt and shame.

“It’s just sex.”

“No strings attached.”

“As long as we both agree, that’s all that matters.”

“Porn? Everyone does it.”

Our culture speaks of sex only in the language of appetite and consent. We have so over-therapized sexuality that it has lost its meaning and glory. It has become nothing more than what “I” think of it. And has this understanding of sexuality truly left people feeling liberated and happy?

All the while, we scoff at “romantics” like Giussani while we roll around in the gutter of modern sexuality, flailing in our discomfort. If we deeply considered Giussani’s words, we would have to deal with an uncomfortable truth: that sex means more than we dare admit and that our culture fails to realize an ounce of its potential beauty.

There must be more.

What does sex have to do with the stars?

Some of the Ancients, especially the Platonists, would have agreed with Giussani that sexual love (eros) should reach beyond pleasure to contemplate the transcendental. Plato defends eros in the Symposium as a first step towards discovering divine beauty,

“[H]uman nature can find no better workmate for acquiring [the divine Beauty] than Love. That’s why I say that every man must honor Love, why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligence, and why I commend them to others. Now and always I praise the power and courage of Love so far as I am able. Consider this speech, then, Phaedrus, if you wish, a speech in praise of Love.”

To Plato, eros is the first step on a stairway to that ultimate Beauty—divine, pure, and eternal. The erotic love for another, to Plato, is a recognition of that person’s beauty. As he indulges in that beauty, he discovers something yet more beautiful: the person’s soul. And in his love for the soul and for the sake of that beauty, he learns beautiful things, beautiful customs, and lessons. And as he continues deeper into this upward spiral of beauty, he finds Beauty itself, that to which eros ultimately points, what Christians would call God.

That’s why sex, even disordered sex, bears unwilling witness to God because it longs for beauty and union, however distorted those desires may be. But in such cases when desire is twisted by selfishness, the enjoyment of beauty is profaned.

That is why “no strings attached” or the term “casual sex” are false. All sex is serious. All sex is bound by transcendental chains.

This is also why sex that only sees pleasure as its end is also misguided. The gratification of sexual desire as an end in itself neglects the beauty of the other. It bypasses virtue and sees in the other only a resource to be consumed. Plutarch notes,

For love that is bred in a young and truly generous heart, by means of friendship, terminates in virtue.

On the other hand, Plutarch recounts Aristippus’ reply to someone who tried to cure him of his infatuation. After being told that she did not love him, Aristippus answered,

Pure wine or good fish do not love me either, and yet I willingly enjoy both. For the end of desire is pleasure and enjoyment.

Plutarch continues,

But love, having once lost the hopes of friendship, will neither tarry, nor cherish for beauty’s sake that which is irksome, though never so gaudy in the flower of youth, if it bring not forth the fruit of a disposition propense to friendship and virtue.”

What the Pagans sought in the dark, Christianity brought to the light

While the ancient philosophers made many mistakes as they stumbled toward the truth, they did grasp something real about eros and beauty, though only dimly. Christianity brought to light what they could only stumble towards in the dark.

For the Church, love is not merely an emotion or appetite, and though it can include eros, it extends far beyond sexual longing. Nor is love a useful tool. It is not a means of utility. No, love is the telos of all reality, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Or as St. Clement of Rome wrote,

The binding power of the love of God—who is able to set it forth? The radiance of His beauty—who can voice it to satisfaction? The sublimity to which love leads up is unutterable. Love unites us with God…. Apart from love nothing is pleasing to God…. Because of the love which He felt for us, Jesus Christ Our Lord gave His Blood for us by the will of God, His body for our bodies, and His soul for our souls.

How easy it is for us, in our sinful concupiscence, to worship the creation over the Creator! To see the beauty of the other, to well up with forceful desire, and to forget that the one standing before us is made in the image of God. We rob the beauty for ourselves, rather than see in the other God himself, the ultimate fulfillment of all our desires. Our ultimate pleasure can only be found in him and him alone.

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new,late have I loved you!Lo, you were within,but I outside, seeking there for you,and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong,I, misshapen.You were with me, but I was not with you.They held me back far from you,those things which would have no beingwere they not in you.You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you;I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst;you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

— St. Augustine

Can our God, who created us, not please us? Is he not the one who has made us male and female? Did not God tell us to be fruitful and multiply? Did he not command us to “rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.”? Was it not the lover of God’s anointed king who wrote, “My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies.”?

True pleasure is found in God alone. We can experience that pleasure in this world when we see God through his creation, rather than his creation as the ultimate good. Sex is beautiful because in it, we can experience the mystery of God’s love. Sex is pleasurable not merely because it is sex, but because in it, rightly received, God means to draw us toward the goodness that has its source in him. Reducing sex to pleasure inevitably makes sex less pleasurable.

What does sex have to do with the stars?

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

— Ephesians 5:31-32

This is the great Christian premise behind sex. Marriage, sex, the two becoming one flesh—the union of husband and wife is the holy sign of Christ’s love for his bride.

Disordered forms of sex are not wrong because they are sex, but because they deform a good thing. Sex, by its nature, is good. Its corruption does not make sex vile but desecrates it. The corruption of sex blunts its wonder, dims its glory, and mars the image it was meant to bear. And because it leads away from God, it leads away from human flourishing.

It is a sin to stomp on a rose. The rose is not the sin. The violence against it is.

Even where tenderness and affection are deep, the fulfillment of sex can still be incomplete. Desire may reach toward transcendence and yet be misdirected by the manner in which it is sought. The tragedy of disordered eros is not that it desires too much, but that it seeks the infinite by insufficient means. Disordered love will always fall short of reflecting the good, beautiful, and true.

This is why the Church can seem so fussy about sexual ethics. Not because sex is evil or sinful, but because it is awesome in the truest sense of the word. It inspires awe. Sex is holy in that its practice should lead to wonder, to a realization of your place within God’s creation, to a sense of purpose, and to a deeper love for one another as we approach our Creator by reflecting his love in our sacred union.

Marvel with St. Methodius at the beauty of a godly eros, the one that saves humanity and brings them into participation with the divine nature,

The Church has been formed from His flesh and bone. For it was for her sake that the Word left His heavenly Father and came down to earth in order to cling to His Spouse, and slept in the ecstasy of His Passion. Voluntarily did He die for her…for the reception of that blessed spiritual seed which He sows and plants by secret inspiration in the depths of the soul; and like a woman the Church conceives of this seed and forms it until the day she bears and nurtures it as virtue. So too the word Increase and multiply is duly fulfilled as the Church grows day by day in size and in beauty and numbers, thanks to the intimate union between her and the Word, coming down to us even now and continuing His ecstasy in the memorial of His Passion.

In Methodius, eros is shown in its highest form. The marriage bed reflects the cosmos, and the union of husband and wife mirrors that eternal love through which the Church bears countless souls from her womb.

Sex reminds us that life isn’t utility. It is the longing for the other and for the giving of oneself. And as Christ gave himself for the Church, so the Church finds all her pleasure in her Bridegroom. Human desire is an itch for the divine. It is that physical sign of a higher spiritual reality, of Christ and his passionate love for us. And if it is tied to Christ first loving us, sex carries with it a responsibility to love Christ in return.

Sex is not an end in itself but a first rung on Jacob’s ladder. It is a gift to those who find, past their sexual desire, the blessing of selfless love. It is a misery for those who reduce their desire only to the language of appetite.

What does sex have to do with the stars?

Everything.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

The period between Good Friday and Easter is often forgotten, yet it has a special impact on the story of Christianity. What is the Harrowing of Hell? What is this doctrine that has been affirmed in various forms across Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and some Protestant traditions?

The Harrowing of Hell is a doctrine that is often overshadowed by both the death and resurrection of Christ, which is unfortunate. A basic understanding of Christ’s ministry in the underworld only serves to magnify his death and resurrection. The doctrine is drawn from several New Testament passages and confessed in the Apostles’ Creed, “He descended to hades.”

A Lutheran Confession, The Formula of Concord, states in Article IX,

For it is sufficient that we know that Christ descended into hell, destroyed hell for all believers, and delivered them from the power of death and of the devil, from eternal condemnation and the jaws of hell.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church further clarifies in paragraphs 636-637,

By the expression “He descended into hell,” the Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil “who has the power of death” (Heb 2:14). In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.

Article III of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles simply says,

As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell.

It becomes necessary to define what “hell” means in both the creed and the doctrine. In the Apostles’ Creed, “hell” is translated from the Greek hades and means “the place of the dead” or “the abode of the departed.” Before Christ’s coming, hell did not always refer to a place of punishment. Many times, it referenced the realm of the dead, where the damned awaited judgment and the righteous awaited resurrection and eternal life.

Therefore, while there are different views on the doctrine, generally, the Harrowing of Hell is the triumphant descent of Christ into the place of the dead to claim victory and take captive the forces of evil, and deliver believers past and present from the devil, death, and hell.

That Greedy Leviathan!

“The divine was hidden by the veil of our nature, in order that, as in the case of greedy fish, the hook of the divinity might be swallowed with the bait of the flesh, and thus when life came to dwell in death and light shone in the darkness, that which is understood as the opposite of light and life might be utterly destroyed.”–St. Gregory of Nyssa

Oh, that greedy Leviathan, that gluttonous monster feasting on the souls of men! Not one of us could escape his maw. Each image of God a collection piece in his pantry. Satan the devourer. Satan the glutton. Satan the drowner of our souls. With a gulp, we were brought within his jaws down to the lowest hell as a man in the belly of the whale.

So God himself came in the image of God. The fisherman made himself bait for us. That seven-headed dragon, that sea monster, deceived by his arrogance and unending hunger, envied the Christ for his collection of doomed souls. The Christ would be the prize of his collection. He must have the Christ-soul. In his hunger, he did not question why this Christ offered his flesh and blood as a meal so willingly.

There is no hope in the belly of the whale, or we think there shouldn’t be. Yet, Jonah cries from the stomach of Leviathan, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.” Sheol is the Hebrew equivalent of hades. “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Jesus is the true Jonah, the prophet who would rob that greedy fish,

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth…behold, something greater than Jonah is here. –Matthew 12:39-41

If Good Friday is the prophet sacrificing himself to save his fellow sailors, and Easter is his vomitous resurrection upon the Mediterranean shores, then the Harrowing of Hell is Jonah’s victorious prayer in the belly of the whale.

Leviathan bit off more than he could chew. In death, Jesus plundered death. He saved all who believe in him from hell and took captive Satan and his forces. And if Christ has saved us from death and hell and has claimed a prisoner of every Satanic force, we have no need to fear the forces of hell.

Think on our Christ. Very God of very God yet born of a virgin. God in the flesh. And in his deepest of loves, he offers himself to the poisonous bite of that sea serpent. And as Christ opens his eyes, Satan flinches. Next to Satan stands death. Now he bows as a footstool to the King of kings. And the iron chains that once enslaved the images of God now snap around every demonic neck.

Hell itself cannot handle the presence of Christ. The grave vomits up Christ, but not Christ alone. The chains hold fast every demon to that accursed ground, but every believer emerges with Christ, an army of the dead-no-longer. “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Son of man, can these bones live?”

Yes. Yes. Yes! These bones do live again!

The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.–Matthew 27:52-53

Death, who sought to swallow the God of the universe, is now swallowed up in victory! Death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory? Christ has robbed your victory. And those souls whom you held fast have been stolen from your hellish collection.

This is the significance of Holy Saturday, that there is no darkness into which Christ has not gone to save our souls. There is no prison he cannot open and no enemy he has not already put under his feet. Because he descended, the dead in Christ are not lost. Because he rose, the grave is no longer a mouth that devours but a door to eternal life for “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.”

And because Christ has conquered death, we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. Our Lord owns the keys of death and hell. He who conquered hell will not leave our souls in hell. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:5).”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

The world is slowly waking to the dangers tech poses to children. For many, the damage is done, and those responsible will be addressed too late.

Last week was a bad week for the social media giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. On Tuesday, a New Mexico jury found that the company had knowingly misled the public about the dangers its platforms posed and had enabled harm to its users, including child sexual exploitation, and will incur civil penalties to the tune of $375m.

“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today, the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough,” said Raúl Torrez, New Mexico’s attorney general.

State attorneys presented compelling evidence that predators often use Meta’s messaging platform because its encryption helps to hide crucial evidence of their crimes. Further, several law enforcement agencies testified concerning deficiencies in Meta’s reporting of criminal behavior within text exchanges. Internal company records also documented that several employees and outside experts had warned the company about the risks posed by Meta's platforms to children.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Only one day later, Meta and YouTube were found liable on all charges in a landmark ruling concerning social media addiction. The jury awarded $3 million in damages to a 20-year-old California woman, Kaley, who alleged that the social media companies hooked her when she was a young child and fed her content that led to anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts. TikTok and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, were also named in the original complaint but settled for an undisclosed amount before the trial.

In both cases, the social media giants have staunchly defended their innocence despite the overwhelming evidence against them. And yet, when questioned on Capitol Hill in 2024, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, had to apologize when confronted by the brutal facts of the harm his platforms have caused to children across the country.

Meta and YouTube are not the only tech giants under legal scrutiny. Two weeks ago, three teenage girls, two of whom are minors, filed a lawsuit against Grok for using their pictures to generate and distribute child pornography. The pictures were then shared on a Discord server without their knowledge.

These teenagers are not the only victims. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK nonprofit focused on making the internet safer, Grok has generated approximately 3 million sexualized images, including 23,000 that appear to depict children. Sexualized images of children uncovered by the study included:

* “A selfie uploaded by a schoolgirl was undressed by Grok, turning a ‘before school selfie’ into an image of her in a bikini. As of January 15th this post was still live on X.

* An image of six young girls wearing micro bikinis, generated by Grok. As of January 15th, this image was still publicly available on X.

* Four images depicting child actors.”

While the CCDH study could not always determine whether the images were generated from photos of real people, broader studies of AI image generators have found that they often are. Major nudify websites, those that turn images of real people into pornographic material, draw roughly 18.5 to 21 million monthly visits while similar mobile apps have received over 705 million downloads with an estimated $117 million in revenue.

Perhaps more alarming is that children are not only the victims of this technological leap forward, but have also been made instruments of its abuse. Many adolescents now frequently use such websites and apps. A study published earlier this month in PLoS surveyed 557 English-speaking individuals aged 13-17 and found that 55% of participants had created at least one image using nudification tools, and 54.4% had received at least one image using nudification tools. 36.3% of respondents reported having had a non-consensual image created, and 33.2% had at least one such image shared without their permission.

Nor are the problems caused by social media, AI, and other technologies confined to the United States. Poland plans to ban phone use in the classroom for children under 16. In the UK, Ofcom, the government’s communications regulator, has urged social media and gaming companies such as Meta, Snap, and Roblox to enforce the age restrictions already in their policies and adopt modern age-verification tools to keep children under 13 off their platforms. And Australia has gone further, banning social media for all children under 16, yet one-fifth of minors still use prohibited apps. Tech giants have shown little incentive and even less willpower to enforce their own age restrictions.

Indeed, even tech CEOs are now recognizing the issue. In support of the Australian restrictions and the need for some form of legal protection in the United States, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready wrote in a recent Time article,

"Children today are living through the largest social experiment in history. For years, kids around the world have been given unfiltered access to social media platforms. The companies building these platforms gave insufficient forethought about the consequences, the worst of which include exposing them to unknown strangers and fueling screen addictions. This social experiment has been conducted at scale, and thus, the results are now painfully clear: rising anxiety and depression, eroding concentration, and classrooms competing for attention…. The cost of inaction is a generation of young people overwhelmed by anxiety and depression."

The tech industry has become a modern slave trader, and our children are its most valuable assets. Like slavers throughout history, it captures, trains, exploits, and profits from human beings. Nor is this some fringe misuse. These platforms are built to draw children in systematically and feed on their attention and innocence. Only when regulators force their hand do they yield any ground.

These tech giants twist everything that makes childhood beautiful into a tool for enslavement. They use children’s imagination, desires, attention, and vulnerability to bind them to the platform, extracting every last dollar through data collection, advertisements, partnerships, and premium downloadable content. And both governments and parents are letting it happen.

The child becomes a product, sold by the adults she knows to those she does not. Her presence generates engagement. Her innocence generates data. Her loneliness and insecurity generate dependence. Her image can be sexualized and circulated without her knowledge. Her vulnerability is not guarded as something sacred, but exploited as something profitable. The platform is a plantation; our children are both the slaves and the crop.

This is not merely a failed business plan or misguided corporate ethics, but a violation of the image of God in children. The Church stands resolute against the commodification of God’s image. To commodify a child’s body and soul is a sin of a different magnitude altogether. It would be better for a millstone to be tied around one’s neck than to face the judgment God has prepared for those who defile his little ones.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth-century Church Father, reminds us that slavery stands against God’s perfect plan. Whether slavery physically shackles the body or chains the soul, the commodification of humanity is a sin against God himself who made man in his image,

"Tell me what sort of price you paid [for your slave]. What did you find in creation with a value corresponding to the nature of your purchase? What price did you put on rationality? For how many obols did you value the image of God? For how many coins did you sell this nature formed by God?

God said: “Let us make human beings in our own image and likeness” (Gen 1.26). When we are talking about one who is in the image of God, who has dominion over the whole earth and who has been granted by God authority over everything on the earth, tell me, who is the seller and who the buyer? Only God has this kind of power, or, one might almost say, not even God. For scripture says that the gifts of God are irrevocable (Romans 11.29).

God would not make a slave of humankind. It was God who, through his own will, called us back to freedom when we were slaves of sin. If God does not enslave a free person, then who would consider their own authority higher than God’s?"

St. Gregory saw clearly what modern CEOs and angel investors refuse to see: to treat a child as a product is not merely a social evil, but an offense against God’s just order. The child is not raw material for a platform. She is not a data point to be extracted or a target market to be exploited. And she is not a body to be manipulated and passed around online. She is made in the image of God.

That is why this fight cannot be left to lawsuits and regulators alone. Parents must regain the courage to say no to the tech giants, and to say no to their children for the sake of their happiness and safety. Christians, too, must boldly proclaim that any industry built on the monetization of children must be resisted.

The world is slowly learning. But, for some of these little ones, it is already too late.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – Scientists have trained living human neurons to play Doom, a popular 90s video game where players control an unnamed marine fighting hordes of demons and the undead. Cortical Labs accomplished the feat by creating a device called the CL1, which contains a microchip with approximately 200,000 living human neurons to power its computing capabilities.

The neurons receive game information via electrical stimulation and transmit responses that a program interprets as actions within the game. They can send commands to move their character, find enemies, shoot, spin, and even explore the virtual landscape for clues to advance to further stages of the game.

To enable programmers to send and receive information from human cells, the lab had to translate the world of Doom into the “biological language of neurons,” namely, electricity. David Hogan, Chief Technology Officer of Cortical Labs, explained how the CL1 can process a programmer’s code and interact with cells via electrical stimulation,

When a demon appears on the left of the screen, specific electrodes stimulate the sensory area of the neural culture on the left side. The neurons react to that stimulation. We then listen to their response, the spikes, and interpret that activity as motor commands. If the neurons fire in a specific pattern, the doom guy shoots. If they fire in another pattern, he moves right, and so on.

To Cortical Labs, the possibilities are endless for this new form of “wetware.” They claim that the CL1 uses “a fraction of the energy other technologies use,” with estimates suggesting that a 30-unit server rack consumes only 850-1,000 watts. Compare that to current computing technologies, which drain megawatts.

One can imagine a world where AI corporations no longer need gigantic warehouses to store their servers and dedicated power grids to run them, and instead, run smaller, exponentially more efficient operations on living human tissue, saving countless dollars in the development of new technology. These savings could, in turn, significantly accelerate AI development and raise its energy consumption ceiling at a time when experts are concerned that AI may plateau due to energy demands.

The company is already seeking to capitalize on its breakthrough. The CL1 can be bought, ready to plug-and-play, for $35,000. But if someone is unable to afford the price tag of buying one of the biological computers outright and still wants to get in on the new tech, Cortical Labs offers a cloud-based service at $300/week per machine.

But using living human neurons to power computers raises serious ethical concerns. And it forces Christians to deal with significant theological questions. This advancement by Cortical Labs demands that Christians be ready to provide an answer to the following questions:

* Is it possible for biological matter to experience human consciousness apart from a body or soul?

* If human neurons can power computers, is AI still artificial?

* Is it ethical to commoditize human biological matter?

What does it even mean to be human?

The human body and the unity of its parts are true expressions of the person. Man is not merely a soul with a body, but a composite of body and soul. Our souls love, think, desire, and feel, yes, but not apart from our bodies, but in an entwined togetherness, a sacramental union between spiritual and material in which true mystical grace is communicated through our physical bodies.

Therefore, no “part” of the body is a mere part. To remove a member from the body does not merely hurt that member, but the whole body and soul. If it were possible to separate the soul and cast away the “lesser part,” we would intuitively recognize the loss as horrific, both to our inner and outer being. But we forget that our bodies, just as our souls, are true aspects of our identity as embodied images of God.

Our flesh is an essential aspect of our identity. Our bodies are temples meant to be the dwelling places of God. As such, our flesh is sacred, set apart for God’s holy use. You are not your own. You are bought with a price.

No doubt, when a member is separated from our bodies, that part is no longer considered a full human person in that it has been removed from its body and soul, but that does not mean it is not human. And whatever is human should be treated with greater dignity than what is not, considering its holy origin. We instinctively know this to be true. No one but the morally hardened or mentally infirm would treat a severed limb as he would a piece of plastic, metal, or wood.

Human consciousness, then, must derive from both body and soul, for the human is body and soul. Humans know themselves, others, and the world by means of who they are, namely, through their body and soul. Therefore, apart from that human body and soul, any existing consciousness is not true human consciousness, but a pale image of the human form.

If these scientists were able to train these human neurons to follow the ancient Delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” the neurons would discover themselves to be less than fully human. And if they ever became conscious in any sense, they would find the experience decidedly inhuman, not because of a difference in kind, but because of an overwhelming lack of fullness.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for a new article in your inbox semi-regularly.

Human consciousness is not bare computation but the human experience in all its fullness. How does it feel to smell a flower? Or to gaze at the moon on a summer night? My eyes shifting in anticipation as I prepare to surprise my son with a gift. My heart racing as I embrace the woman I love. Can these machines, yes, made with human matter but without a body or soul, ever have the capacity to understand for themselves what it means to lose a child, to hold her in your hands, to dig a grave, tears dripping onto the ground, knowing that for the rest of your life you will be a different person, forever changed by that one moment?

No, the CL1 and other such projects can never be conscious in any fully human definition of the word. Yes, their intelligence is still artificial, even if it is also biological.

Our flesh is holy.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote his Catechetical Lectures around 350 AD to help catechumens prepare for baptism. In Lecture XII, St. Cyril defends the Incarnation of Christ. Responding to gnostic arguments, St. Cyril notes that our bodies, and therefore the flesh of Christ, were holy by virtue of their creation by God. God does not create anything evil. Therefore, our flesh and every one of its cells, tissues, organs, and yes, even neurons, were created holy,

There is nothing corrupt in man’s frame unless he defiles it with adulteries and wantonness. He who formed Adam formed Eve also; and both male and female were fashioned by the Divine hands. None of the members of the body as fashioned from the beginning is corrupt. Let all heretics be silent who slander their bodies, or rather Him who formed them.

But St. Cyril recognizes that we have corrupted our flesh. In fact, we have so corrupted our bodies that we cannot save our bodies from this corruption. We are sick patients in need of a Physician to gird himself with a linen and wash away our infirmities. We are orphaned children in need of a Teacher to instruct us in our foolishness. We are hungry beggars in need of the Bread of Life to fill our heavenly desires. The prophets recognized that men were unable to save themselves and begged God, “Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down!” (Ps. 144:5).

And in our corrupt flesh, we made idols of our own bodies. We worshipped wood, clay, and metal gods made in our own image. We worshipped gods of our own likeness through the degradation of our bodies in adultery, pornography, homosexuality, and other sexual deviancies. And we created a tower of Babel in our own honor, a technological marvel crafted by our own brain matter, by our own flesh, to mimic us. In seeking to elevate ourselves above God, we cheapened our flesh to a commodity, a mere product among products. We took what was holy and made it base.

But God did not see it fit that his images should be so debased. And to elevate the flesh once more, very God of very God took on that flesh. And to save the flesh from its corruption and destroy death itself, Christ wielded the flesh as the sacred weapon of his holy crusade,

Men, having abandoned God, fashioned images like men. Since, therefore, the image of man was falsely worshiped as God, God became truly man, that the falsehood might be destroyed. The devil had made use of the flesh as an instrument against us…. We have been saved by the very weapons which the devil used to conquer us…. His body, therefore, was made a bait to death, that the dragon, when hoping to devour it, might disgorge those also whom he had already devoured. For: “Death having waxed mighty, devoured”; and again: “God wiped away the tears from all faces.”

The flesh is raised above its original honor to an even greater glory through the Incarnation. In taking on a human body, Christ elevates humanity to the right hand of God, where he reigns in the Celestial City. It is of this elevated flesh and blood from a true man that we are sustained both in body and soul. And if the flesh of humanity has been made so holy in God’s sight, we ought to treat it as worthy of dwelling above the angels, for in its resurrected form, it does.

Christians are all too quick to despise the flesh, treating their bodies as the ultimate enemy behind temptation and sin rather than a gift from God to be cherished. Such an inadequate understanding of the body is not only unprepared to face the moral quandaries of modern technological advancement, but is also incompatible with the historic Church tradition. Without a doubt, our flesh often urges us towards sin. But it is through this struggle in denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Christ, that our flesh will be sanctified.

St. Cyril saw the body as a blessing, a true part of God’s image and something to be inestimably valued. The flesh was not meant to be treated as an unalterable evil. Nor was the flesh meant to be treated as a resource to extract and export to the highest bidder. No, to the Church throughout the ages, the flesh has been respected as a blessed gift from God and a way to experience his love and grace.

Let us respect our bodies, which are to shine as the sun; let us not for the sake of a little pleasure defile so great and noble a body; for the sin is fleeting and of the passing hour, but the shame lasts many years and forever.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

This episode of We Believe unpacks the phrase from the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.” I contrast pagan myths of divine sons—often immoral, localized, and historically ungrounded—with the unique, virtuous, and historical reality of Jesus. Pagan legends reflected a longing for a divine representative, but only Christ fulfilled that longing as the true, eternal Son who enters human history, not by lust or legend, but through miraculous incarnation and perfect love.

I then explore what it means for Jesus to be the "only-begotten" and "eternally begotten" Son. Unlike adopted or created sons, Christ shares the Father’s divine nature eternally. His Sonship is the basis for our adoption, the clearest revelation of the Father, the model of faithful obedience, and the anchor of our allegiance. Drawing from Scripture and the Church Fathers, the episode emphasizes that Jesus is not just a son of God, but the eternal Son—true God from true God.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

Episode Summary:

In this episode of We Believe, I take a deep dive into the first line of the Nicene Creed: We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, visible and invisible. We begin by addressing the phrasing—I believe or we believe—and how both are historically accurate. Then we move into the challenge posed by thinkers like Ludwig Feuerbach and Nietzsche, who argued that belief in God is just projection—that humans invented God like they invented Superman, to represent their highest ideals. But the human need to believe in something beyond ourselves hasn't gone away, even in a secular age. C.S. Lewis helps us see that maybe our thirst for the divine isn't something we made up—but a sign that something real exists to quench it.

From there, we explore what the Creed means when it says God is One, the Father, the Almighty, and the Maker. That God is One means He is the only God—He is not just the highest power, but the only true anchor we can trust. That He is Father means He’s not just distant and powerful, but personal, relational, and eternally loving. That He is Almighty reminds us that God is both good and great. And that He is the Maker of all means there is no such thing as a purely secular space—everything visible and invisible, spiritual and physical, was created by God and belongs to Him. All of this means your life is not an accident, and neither is your longing for purpose. You were made by a God who is knowable, powerful, loving, and good—and the Creed invites you to stake your whole life on that truth.

Topics Covered:

* The meaning and significance of the phrase “We believe” in the Nicene Creed

* The theory that God is a projection of human ideals

* The persistent human need to believe in a higher power

* The biblical and theological foundations for the oneness of God

* The Fatherhood of God in relation to the Son and to humanity

* The unique Christian teaching of God as both personal and relational

* The implications of God’s Almightiness for daily trust and worship

* The doctrine of God as Creator of both the spiritual and material worlds and its challenge to materialism and Gnosticism

Connect with us:

* Website: saintsandsociety.com

* Youtube: youtube.com/@SaintsandSociety

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

Episode Summary:

This episode takes a hard look at what really happened at the Council of Nicaea. A lot of people today think it was just a political power grab or a smoke-filled backroom deal to control doctrine. But that’s not what happened. The council was made up of bishops who had been persecuted, tortured, and exiled—men with missing eyes, crippled hands, and deep scars. These weren’t men trying to gain power; they were men who had already paid the price for following Christ. And when they gathered at Nicaea, their aim wasn’t control—it was clarity. They came to settle the question: Is Jesus truly God?

We also dive into Arius—not as a cartoon villain, but as a real, complex figure. He was sincere, persuasive, and trying to preserve God’s oneness, but in doing so, he denied the full divinity of Christ. The episode traces how Alexander and Athanasius stood against his teaching, not because they wanted to win a fight, but because they knew what was at stake. The Nicene Creed didn’t come out of nowhere; it was the Church’s response to a real theological crisis. And remarkably, this creed united Christians across geography, language, and culture. It still does. That’s why it matters today—because it gives us words to confess who Jesus is and ties us to 2,000 years of faithful witness.

Topics Covered:

The historical and religious climate leading up to the Council of Nicaea

The theological controversy sparked by Arius’s teachings

Common myths and misconceptions about the Council of Nicaea

Alexander of Alexandria’s central role in confronting Arius

The doctrinal distinctions between orthodox Christianity, Arianism, and Modalism (Sabellianism)

How the Council of Nicaea clarified the doctrines of Christ's deity and the Trinity

The ecumenical nature of the council and its nearly unanimous agreement on the Nicene Creed

The ongoing struggle between Arians and Nicene Christians after the council

The modern relevance of the Nicene Creed for Christian unity, identity, and faithful practice today

Connect with us:

Website: saintsandsociety.com

Youtube: youtube.com/@SaintsandSociety

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

Episode Summary:

What does it truly mean to be a Christian? In this foundational episode, I tackle one of the most basic questions of Christianity: What must you believe to rightly call yourself a Christian?

We'll explore the necessity of creeds, the limits of individual interpretation, and how the Nicene Creed stands as a time-tested rule of faith—a guide that helps distinguish Christian orthodoxy from heresy. We'll survey the concept of Church consensus, walk through the biblical and historical basis for a "rule of faith," and see why creeds still matter in a modern world flooded with theological confusion.

Topics Covered:

- Why every Christian already has a creed (even if unspoken)

- The difference between personal creeds and Church-wide creeds

- Why doctrine does matter—even though salvation is by grace

- The limits of private interpretation and the need for boundaries

- What the “Rule of Faith” is and how the Church historically used it

- Vincent of Lérins and the threefold test: "everywhere, always, and by all"

- How the Nicene Creed emerged as the most universally accepted expression of Christian belief

- How the Creed protects believers from heresy—even today

- Why knowing the Creed is a form of discipleship, not dead tradition

Connect with us:

- Website: saintsandsociety.com

- Youtube: youtube.com/@SaintsandSociety

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com

For 1700 years, Christians have held the Nicene Creed as the shared summary and rule of their faith. To mark this anniversary, We Believe walks through the Creed in 14 episodes, with the hope that you’ll come to understand and treasure the faith more deeply—and see just how relevant it remains for us today.

We Believe is coming May 26, 2025 and will be available on major podcasting platforms as well as on Youtube at youtube.com/@SaintsandSociety.

Created by Joshua Rodriguez at SaintsandSociety.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saintsandsociety.substack.com