Fr. Nicholas Louh: Well, good evening, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us tonight on this Tuesday, August 11, for another episode of Healthy Minds Healthy Souls. My name is Fr. Nicholas Louh, and I’m joined by my—dare I say?—better half, Dr. Roxanne Louh, who is a clinical psychologist right here in Jacksonville. The whole premise behind our show is to bring faith and psychology together to give you some practicality in your walk of faith. So we’re so excited that you’re joining us tonight. If you’re a first-time listener to our show, we want to invite you to join our social media platforms, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter; you can find all of them under the headings of “The Louhs.” You can also find out more about us and about our mission and our vision as a couple and in our church by going to our website, thelouhs.com.

We also encourage you to join our show tonight. We love the conversation. We love having a conversation with you, and you’re part of our family. So you can do so by going to ancientfaith.com and clicking on the Healthy Minds Healthy Souls banner, which is found right there on the home page of Ancient Faith. That way you can get involved right into the chat room. We’ve already got people joining the chat room, so: welcome to all of you as well. You can also email us a question during the live broadcasting of our show at ask@ancientfaith.com, and you can always call us live at 1-855-237-2346; that’s 1-855-237-2346.

Tonight we are so excited to have my former professor and teacher during my days at the seminary, Dr. Jeannie Constantinou, who is a professor of biblical studies and early Christianity at the University of San Diego. We’ve actually had her on our show a couple of times, and she also hosts her own show, an amazing show right here at Ancient Faith, called Searching the Scriptures, right here on Ancient Faith. And we encourage you, if you have not tapped in to listen to those podcasts, for sure do so. Presvytera Jeannie and her husband, Fr. Constantine, they live in the great city of San Diego, California. I’m not too sure if Presvytera Jeannie is on or not. Is she on?

Dr. Jeannie Constantinou: I am. I’m here!

Fr. Nicholas: Hi, Presvytera! How are you?

Dr. Constantinou: [Laughter] Hello, Fr. Nicholas. You must not have heard me when I checked in earlier. Yes, I am here, and, yes, it’s my claim to fame that you were my student. What can I say? My claim to fame now.

Fr. Nicholas: [Laughter] Well, I hope that I make you proud.

Dr. Constantinou: Well, you do. Thank God. Glory to God.

Fr. Nicholas: Amen. In all things.

Dr. Constantinou: That’s right. Thank you for inviting me. Hello, Dr. Roxanne. It’s nice to hear your laughter.

Dr. Roxanne Louh: Hi, Dr. Jeannie! How are you? It’s so good to see you again.

Dr. Constantinou: I’m fine. Yes, it’s so good to be with you both as well. And the name of the podcast is Search the Scriptures.

Fr. Nicholas: Okay, Search the Scriptures, yes.

Dr. Constantinou: That’s right. That’s what Jesus said. Just remember what Jesus said.

Fr. Nicholas: That’s right, and it’s definitely a podcast for our listeners. If you haven’t taken advantage of this great podcast that’s on Ancient Faith, please do so. It’s a great… In fact, our Bible study sometimes uses her work. Thank you again for all the work that you do.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, there are two of them, actually. There’s the original Search the Scriptures which has—I don’t even know how many—maybe 150 lessons on the Bible, but it stopped in the middle of the Old Testament. I hope someday to go back to it. But they asked me to start a live program like you have, so my live program, which is also Search the Scriptures, but it’s called Search the Scriptures Live, is on Monday nights at this time that we’re currently talking, five o’clock Pacific and eight o’clock Eastern time. We’re going to start going through the book of Romans probably in a few weeks, verse by verse.

Dr. Louh: Oh, wow. That’s fantastic.

Dr. Constantinou: I’m looking forward to our discussion tonight where our jumping-off point is this verse from Romans, but I’ll let you talk about that.

Fr. Nicholas: [Laughter] Okay, thank you so much. No, we’re so excited to have Dr. Jeannie with us. As many of you know, we have our very first book that’s coming out on October 6, and you can actually pre-order this book on August 25. What we thought, with the help of Ancient Faith, was just to have the extraordinary endorsers that we’ve had for this book just come on and talk to us a little bit about not only what spoke to them about the book but also how they feel it may be beneficial. We thought that we would kick off these shows that are on these different endorsers by having someone who knows the Scriptures very well, that studies the Scriptures, and asked Dr. Jeannie Constantinou to kind of talk to us a little bit about what we call our theme verse within our book called Renewing You: A Priest, a Psychologist, and a Plan; from the book, the theme verse that we find in Romans 12:2. And it says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed”—and this particular translation says: “...but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”

So, Dr. Jeannie, I just want to kind of start off by talking you for a little bit… First, thanking you for endorsing our book, but also asking you: In your reading of our book, what really spoke to you the most about the book?

Dr. Constantinou: Well, first of all, yes, I do want to congratulate you about the book. I really liked it because it does try to bring together spirituality and psychology and behavior. I think it’s very important, because we tend to sometimes think that we can segment these aspects of our lives, but really we can’t. Our mind definitely affects our spirituality and vice-versa, and what we do affects us. So I like the fact that you both brought together your talents in your unique areas and that the book really reflected both of those. It does talk about the psychological aspect; it does talk about the spiritual. It’s interesting, and it gives a lot of examples and things to think about, and very sort of practical steps for changing our lives. I thought it was very useful in that it’s not just a theoretical book; it’s a practical book. And I think also the little stories that you had, Roxanne, from your practice, and you from your parish, and also from your family life, little stories that illustrate little challenges that we face. I thought it was very effective. It was easy to read. It was interesting and useful. I think that’s a home run, because you had all the elements, really.

Fr. Nicholas: Thank you.

Dr. Louh: Thank you! Thank you, Dr. Jeannie. I was super thrilled to be part of the Ancient Faith Women’s Conference—I believe it was just last year. I loved your talk as well, because you talked so much about the mind. As we were writing this… We were in the process of writing the book at that time, and I just remember listening to you as you spoke about that, that very rarely do we hear anybody bringing in how our flesh is attached to and part of the spirit, and they interact, and when we try to coach the one without the other, it’s a losing battle. So sometimes we know things very much in our heads and in our spirit, but we really have a difficult time applying them, as we like to say, on a Monday morning, after we leave church on Sunday. I was so enthralled by your talk as well, and actually think that’s probably on as a podcast now that people could go back and listen to.

Dr. Jeannie, how do you see folks really benefiting from that? As you read that, what spoke to you most? How do you see that being most beneficial for Orthodox Christians or for anybody who, in their walk of faith… what do you think they’re going to gain from that book?

Dr. Constantinou: I think they are going to gain… First of all it’s nice when we realize that we’re not alone in the things we do and the challenges we face, because we live in our own little world in a lot of ways. I was thinking about this. Sometimes when you hear a comedian give a stand-up routine and he says something funny that you’ve experienced in your own life, and you laugh about it, and sometimes you think you’re the only one that thought that or had that experience… First of all, the book is relatable, so that makes it very useful. And it really gives thoughtful and concrete steps, but nothing that’s really overwhelming or very heavy or very difficult, so I thought it was really useful, and that sometimes is too rare these days, I would say, especially in my world, where we tend to be very theoretical and very analytical, so it’s really nice to have something that gives very basic steps that you can use to help yourself to get yourself to the place you want to go in your life.

Fr. Nicholas: You know, it’s so funny that you mention that, because I think that for us, growing up, as many of you may know if you’ve been listening to our show for a while, is that I’m serving the parish that I grew up in, so it’s one of those things when oftentimes I would hear the priest give a sermon on a Sunday or be at a presentation that I would hear during the weekday or a service, and oftentimes I would process that analytically, but I wouldn’t know how to apply it practically. And I feel like one of the things that we were trying our best—obviously, with God’s grace and his help—is to really provide what we hope will be a book that really shows the vulnerability of a priest and a psychologist who don’t have everything all together. We’re still trying to figure it out ourselves; we don’t have this magic ways of dealing with these things, but we wanted to kind of share our vulnerability, but at the end it’s to give some practical tools that could really help people in dealing with their struggles. We selected eight of those topics, as you know, from our book, but I loved moving from that theoretical to the applicable: How do we apply this in our everyday life?

As I mentioned to you earlier, Dr. Jeannie, one of the really theme verses of this book that is coming out for pre-order on August 25 is from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, which to me is one of my favorite books, and I’m probably not allowed or shouldn’t say what books are my favorite, but I truly love the book of Romans because of the depth which St. Paul speaks with and just the way that he kind of concretizes our faith in a way that is so, for me, practical. But in this Romans 12:2, he talks about this renewal, and I would love just to get your take on how do we, as Orthodox Christians, understand St. Paul, first of all, in the book of Romans, but secondly, what is he intending when he’s talking about when there’s supposed to be this transformation, this renewing of the mind.

Dr. Constantinou: I’m glad you brought that up, because Romans is an absolute masterpiece; it’s a total masterpiece, really an astonishing composition, and has so much meat in it, so much to think about. You could really spend your life studying that letter. I think that you hit on something very important, because what happens, very often, for many Protestant Christians have co-opted Romans, and it’s like their book because they’ve built a whole theology around the idea that if you confess Jesus Christ with your lips, then you’re saved and that’s it. And also because Martin Luther was prompted to start the Protestant Reformation when he read a verse in Romans which said we’re saved by faith, not works of the Law. So that became the foundation for the Protestant Reformation, and the emphasis was on faith. A lot of people read all of the other books of Paul, and they created a whole idea of Paul’s theology based on that very narrow reading of the book of Romans, that all we need is faith and all we have to do is accept Jesus.

But this verse and countless other verses in Romans and in other epistles of St. Paul show us that it’s not enough just to believe in Jesus; we have to change our lives. And we start with the renewal of the mind. We have to change the way we think about things. We have to decide that we’re not going to live a sinful life any more. And even if we’ve been struggling for many years to live a Christian life, each of us has our little challenges and we have to make a decision: “I’m not going to do that any more” or “I’m going to change this about myself.”

Paul really includes in Romans and all of his epistles requirements for action. It’s not good, and it’s certainly not sufficient, for us to be passive in our acceptance of Jesus Christ. This is very closely connected with the whole Orthodox idea of salvation. That’s why it’s important, and that’s why it should not remain theoretical, because, well, Protestant Christians believe all you have to do is accept Jesus Christ and you’re saved, that’s it; there’s nothing for you to do. That was not the belief of the early Church. Instead—and this is the theology of the Orthodox Church because we follow the early Church—what we are expected to do is to transform ourselves, to become God-like, to model ourselves after Christ, just as St. Paul said: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” Do the things that I told you to do, live in this way, give up these kinds of sins. Don’t visit prostitutes, like he had to tell the Corinthians. You can’t do that sort of thing. You can’t live that life and say that you’re transformed.

There are so many instructions it just baffles me that people can think that your behavior doesn’t matter. What they will say is that, if you really believe in Jesus, your behavior will change. Well, that’s true, but there’s more to it than that. We have to actively pursue a life of virtue. We have to cleanse ourselves. Jesus said it! Do you remember? I remember being struck by what Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I said, “How is this possible?” And in Luke, he says, “Be holy, as your heavenly Father is holy.” It’s not enough to say, “Yeah, well, I’m trying, I’m kind of…” No! We have to really… if we expect to be united to God, because that’s what salvation is: it’s union with God, and only Orthodoxy teaches that. Not in a Hindu sense, where we become oblivion and become part of the Brahmanat and reincarnate and reincarnate until we are just absorbed into god. We don’t lose our personhood, but we are truly united to God, and that’s impossible, because God is holy, if we are not also holy or at least on a path to holiness.

That was kind of a long answer.

Fr. Nicholas: No, no, no, I loved it, and I loved how you stated actively doing this. I think that’s one of the key things that we were hoping as well, because this whole prefix of re-, like again and again and again, it’s almost this continual return back to doing this again and again and again.

Dr. Constantinou: Exactly.

Fr. Nicholas: I think that’s the beauty of the Orthodox Church, and in my studies, where there’s this constant falling down, get back up, falling down, get back—back to that image that Christ created us to be, getting back to that newness that he created in us. We can’t do it apart from him, obviously, as we know through Scriptures, but it’s that returning to him.

Dr. Louh: But it does require so much intentionality.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, that’s a very good way to put it.

Dr. Louh: There is no way that we can become like him without that level of self-awareness and intentionality. I know in the Christian world I often hear people speak about being afraid to be too focused on the self, but our version of connecting to the self is in order to renew it back in him, that we are checking ourselves, because it’s so easy for us to react without thinking in heated moments. When we start to develop a little bit more of intentionality and mindfulness, we actually begin to notice things in our mind and can change them before their impact, before their impact, before we live in ways that are unlike Christ. Even thinking about what we hear in 2 Corinthians 10:5, it says, “Bring every thought into captivity, into the obedience of Christ.” Every thought is pursued and caught. Can you imagine?

Dr. Constantinou: Can you imagine being capable of that level of concentration? It blows your mind.

Dr. Louh: Yes, it’s intentionality. It’s constant mindfulness.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes. How would we change if we did that! But forget about that. How would we change if, instead of checking our phones every half-hour, we said a prayer every half-hour?

We talk about the active nature of this. It’s not—I’m glad you brought this out, Father—it’s not because we believe that we can earn our salvation or we get some kind of brownie points or something like that. It’s not about that. It’s because when we do these things we begin to change our mind and our attitude, and that’s part of conforming ourselves to Christ. So we become Christlike, because he didn’t just talk the talk; he did things. He helped people. He showed his love, his mercy, his forgiveness. It’s not that we do these things mindlessly or think that we somehow earn our salvation—we don’t—but the only way we are saved is to become like Christ, and that requires a lot of effort. As you said—you nailed it, Dr. Roxanne—intentionality, because that means you have to think about what you’re doing every day.

Dr. Louh: Why do you think St. Paul saw so much of a need for renewal of the mind? What do you think was motivating him?

Dr. Constantinou: Okay, well, I’m glad you asked that question, because whenever— And I love your choice of verse, by the way, to make that sort of the focus of the book. What we always do in biblical studies is we always look at the context in which something is said. So that’s chapter 12, verse two: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Let’s look at what he says in chapter 12, verse one, leading into that, which will help us to understand; and then we’ll also look at verse three, okay? He says in verse one, “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” So he asks us to become a living sacrifice. How can there be a living sacrifice? Sacrificial animals… Remember, when St. Paul was writing this there was plenty of animal sacrifice in the Greek temples and also still going on in the Jewish Temple. How can we be a living sacrifice, and what does he mean by that?

We have to become holy. In other words, we put ourselves aside, exactly as you were mentioning before, Doctor. We put ourselves aside, and we think about God. We become, we dedicate ourselves entirely to God. Just as animals, sacrificial animals, had to be perfect—you couldn’t bring God a lame animal (or the gods) or a spotted animal or a disfigured animal; it had to be perfect—we are also called to present ourselves—because he talks about our bodies. So it’s an active thing, to live a life of holiness. We have to be pure and unblemished, and this is really what God wants. That’s our offering; our offering to God is ourselves, in a life of holiness. That’s what Chrysostom says.

Dr. Louh: Like putting off ourselves, from Ephesians, right? Where we belong to our former man.

Dr. Constantinou: That’s right, and putting on Christ.

Dr. Louh: And putting on Christ, putting off our desires.

Dr. Constantinou: Like when we’re baptized. That’s exactly it. So how can we do that without the renewal of our mind? You can’t live a holy life if your mind is still darkened. St. Paul always talked about both behavior and attitude, and in the next verse, which was your focus verse, he talks about the renewal of the mind. Well, the word there, “mind,” is the word nous, which is very famous in Orthodox theology. Very often it’s not even translated, because it’s much more than “mind.” You see, when I was talking about mind… I have a book that’s going to be coming out also in the fall, Thinking Orthodox, which is about the mind,—ctually it has to do with the next verse after yours. [Laughter] So maybe we’ll talk about that…

Fr. Nicholas: So if you’re getting our book…

Dr. Louh: …then get the book, step two! Dr. Jeannie’s book!

Dr. Constantinou: Mine is more theoretical; still, it does talk about some practical elements. But the point is “mind.” There are really two words used for “mind”: nous, which is what Paul uses in your verse, and then phronema, which is what he uses in the next verse, which is the subject of my book, the mindset, the mentality. So what is nous, and why did he choose that word instead of phronema? because he could have said, “Be transformed by the renewal of your phronema,” but he didn’t say that; he said nous.

First of all, let’s talk about transformation. That’s the goal of the Christian life. We just had the feast of the Transfiguration last week. That’s what we’re supposed to be: to be transfigured, to be transformed, to be changed, to become holy, to become God-like. That’s our calling, and we were made for that purpose. So the Fathers of the Church said that the nous—which is just the Greek word for the intellect, the mind in the sense of intellect—the mind of a human person was created in order to know God or with the capacity, we could say, to know God, because God made us to eventually live in union with him, to share his life. He didn’t make us just to decide what we’re going to do on Saturday night and what we’re going to cook today and what clothes we’re going to wear, what next car we’re going to buy. Those are the things of the world. All those things will pass away.

So he created us to know him, and to… So there is a part of us that is made to know God, and the Fathers of the Church called that, or they used the Greek term, the nous. It means “mind” in the sense of intellect, but not in the way that we usually think about the intellect, that is, reasoning, that we come to know God because we’ve learned about him. It’s part of the idea of transformation that the nous, the ability to perceive and understand God, becomes brighter, more capable, when we change our behavior. That’s why he’s talking about renewal.

How do we renew our minds? because the nous, the ability to comprehend God, is darkened by sin. It distorts our thinking. It makes it difficult for us to have a relationship with God. So the renewal begins at baptism. This is when we become that new person. We die with Christ and we rise with Christ, and we’re supposed to spend the rest of our lives in this process of constant renewal, as Father said, never thinking that we’ve arrived. We will never arrive. We will never arrive. It will continue in the next life, this process.

Fr. Nicholas: Right, and that I think is a major distinction between us and some other churches. For many of them, they’re more of a formula-based salvation, where if you do this and say this, then it will equal this. And for us, it is the journey of that constant renewal that one goes through. I love what you were saying, though. I love your talking about the nous as to know God. Is it fair to say that we know it through our intellect, through an intellectual…?

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, that’s part of it, but it’s activated by prayer. They call it the intellect, but we really cannot understand God. God is beyond our comprehension. It’s intellect in the sense that it gives us knowledge, but it’s spiritual knowledge. We can study, we can memorize all the theology books in the world, but that doesn’t mean we know anything about God or have had any experience of God, you see.

Fr. Nicholas: I love that. We actually have a caller from Detroit. Is it Gia that’s on the line? Gia, are you there? I’m not sure; maybe Gia might have hung up. Let’s continue the conversation. I think one of the things that for us was in writing the book just kind of studying that verse was also trying to understand… In your own studies of St. Paul, was there really this concern at that time with the mind and the power of the mind, the power of our thoughts? If so, maybe you could expound a little bit on was that really a need that they were struggling with, as we see so prevalent now in our society.

Dr. Constantinou: I don’t know that they, that it was a part… Obviously, in antiquity—and St. Paul grew up in the Greek world; he was Jewish, but he understood Greek culture, and Greek culture was also very interested in mind. I mean, the word nous was Greek, and it was used in Greek philosophy. So they were very interested in mind, but the word “psychology” is from the word psyche, which is “soul.” So they really saw a connection between the mind and the soul. The ancient Greeks, the pagan Greeks, not just the Christians, but even it was part of ancient Greek understanding of the mind, is to involve the soul. I think one of the major shortcomings in our culture is to try to divorce the two, and that’s why it’s so wonderful when there is a psychologist who brings the soul and the mind together, because you can’t really heal one without the other. So many psychologists really think sometimes that religion is a problem, and they try to divest people of religious notions and think that they’re going to be better off if all they do is apply their human reasoning. So they’re not really healing the soul, and in the Church that’s what we’re all about. That’s really the true psychology, the healing of the soul.

Dr. Louh: That’s the struggle in psychology. There’s really no boundary for the self and for the soul, so the mind gets lost in what it’s seeking. When you sort of bring the spirit in and you bring spirituality in and you bring your faith in, then suddenly the mind knows where it’s supposed to be going. There’s suddenly now a compass, and we’re not just wandering and looking and searching for this never-ending sense of well-being. That really is the beauty and that’s the synergy, because—

Dr. Constantinou: That’s beautiful.

Dr. Louh: It really creates something very, very different. It’s a struggle sometimes, working with folks… I work with a variety of different backgrounds and religions and ethnicities, and I can tell you that it’s more of a wandering struggle in a desert without a compass to help somebody without knowing where they want to go.

Dr. Constantinou: Or giving them some goalposts, some telos.

Dr. Louh: Right, and then where do those goals come from? They’re from our value system, and where do our values come from?

Dr. Constantinou: Exactly. The values of the world, which would never bring them comfort, which will never give them peace. So St. Augustine famously said, “Our souls do not rest until they rest in thee,” right? Speaking to God. That’s one of his most famous quotations. Because he sought to find fulfillment, happiness, and nothing fills that void except for God, and that’s part of the problems that we’re having in our culture. People are looking, and they don’t know where to look, because religion has become a set of ideas that we must intellectually accept, assent to, or intellectually reject. It’s not… This is what’s unique about Orthodox Christianity. It is the totality of your life, and that’s not to say that other religions don’t also have a sense of wholeness, but I don’t think to the extent that we do, because Western Christianity has highly intellectualized faith and the religious experience, and really divorced it from the deep… Why do people become Christians in the first place? Because it made sense, because somebody gave them a pamphlet and they became convinced? They became Christians because they experienced Christ! at a very deep… It’s all about the experience and the sense of transformation when they met Jesus Christ or later the apostles.

Fr. Nicholas: Let me ask you just to kind of pause and follow up with the nous and the spiritual knowledge that we’ve been talking about, and ultimately this renewal.

By the way, if you’re tuning into this show, please, if you’d like to ask a question, we’d love to invite you to do it either through our chat room, by going to ancientfaith.com and clicking on the “Healthy Minds Healthy Souls” banner that’s right there on the main home page of Ancient Faith. You could also call us live at 1-855-237-2346; that’s 1-855-237-2346. And feel free to email us a question during our show at ask@ancientfaith.com. We’re speaking with Presvytera Dr. Jeannie Constantinou, an extraordinary friend of ours and someone who has most recently reviewed our book, Renewing You: A Priest, a Psychologist, and a Plan, and that’ll be coming out in October, and you can pre-order it as of Tuesday, August 25.

But going back, Presvytera, to that verse in Romans 12:2 and specifically how St. Paul uses that word, nous, and how we’ve as best as we’ve been able to kind of define it as a spiritual knowledge, can you help our listeners understand: What does that… How do you see that spiritual knowledge in a practical way? What would you encourage our listeners, as they’re kind of tuning into that verse, of “constantly renew your mind”? [What does] that spiritual knowledge look like and [how does it] take shape?

Dr. Constantinou: Well, primarily through prayer and participation in the sacraments, going to church. That is the main way, because that is how all the saints came to know God. Many saints were illiterate, or even if they were great Fathers of the Church, they’re not great Fathers because they went to school. I mean, Gregory the Theologian, I think had counted 13 years of graduate school; he was at school for a long time, but his understanding of God does not come from that intellect. It is the nous; it is the purification. Spiritual purification allows us to see God. That’s why Jesus said, “The pure in heart will see God.” It’s purity that is required to see and to understand God.

The verse begins with: “Do not be conformed to this world,” and I think that’s really where the challenge lies, because every day we are bombarded with messages from this world that tell me I’m not attractive enough, I don’t have enough money, I don’t drive the right car, my kid didn’t graduate summa cum laude so I’m not as good as the other mom. All of these measures that the world gives us about standards that we’re supposed to achieve for things that are really just fading away, passing away. It’s the fact that we not only try to come closer to God through prayer and the spiritual life, but we also have to recognize the encroachment of the world and its thinking on our values. I think that’s the real challenge, because we don’t think about it; we just go floating along.

Dr. Louh: Exactly what you just said. We don’t think about it. I think that so many people, including myself, including Father, none of us, we’re not perfect either. It is so hard to even know when we’re following the world versus our faith. We don’t even know.

Dr. Constantinou: That’s right.

Dr. Louh: It’s amazing if you even just try to sit and dedicate yourself to prayer, how quickly you might find yourself wandering into other territories, and your thoughts get lost in so many other places and you have to bring yourself back. Or even if you sit down and try to actually read the Scriptures. How often we get distracted or: “Oh, I want to answer the cell phone or check my email.” It’s really… We’re always being led. I think that it is, without discernment, we just don’t realize. How do we acquire the mind of Christ and renew ourselves on his purpose if we don’t even hear or notice when we have wandered into unhealthy places?

Dr. Constantinou: That’s right. We don’t notice it, we’re not paying attention, and we’re just going with the flow. Sometimes part of it is busyness, not dedicating a certain amount of time, not being mindful. So we have to be very mindful of this, and the more we try, especially to exercise discipline in our thoughts… That we say, “Okay, I’m not going to check the phone for half an hour.” And then we are tempted: “But I really need to know if this person got my text.” You know, the world… We’ve only had our cell phones for, like, ten years, and the world didn’t fall apart. My husband left the house this morning without his cell phone. I think it’s so funny. “Oh my God, Fr. Costa left the house without his phone!” Like, for most of our marriage we didn’t have cell phones and everything was just fine. But, you know: “What if he needs it? What if something happens?” These thoughts come into our heads. We need to really learn to control our thoughts, and it’s these little steps of discipline that we decide that we’re going to take: “No matter what, I will not look at my phone before this time.” Just practice doing that. That’s what fasting is about.

Fr. Nicholas: Absolutely.

Dr. Louh: Exactly.

Dr. Constantinou: That’s all it is. It’s about telling yourself, “I’m not going to do this,” and disciplining the self.

Dr. Louh: We have a question that came in from the chat room, from Gia who I know was trying to call in and had some technical difficulties, so I want to go to that question because I know she’s been waiting quite some time. She says, “Do any of you have suggestions as to how I can have intentionality without going too far in the other direction and end up becoming me trying to seek perfection or be a perfectionist with that?” She says, “I really struggle with this, especially because I’m ill and on disability.” I imagine maybe that Gia is probably home more, and it’s probably a lot easier to seek perfection with that intentionality. But before we comment on that, Dr. Jeannie, do you have any thoughts on that?

Dr. Constantinou: You know, I can relate to that, because a lot of us have this kind of perfectionist streak, especially in certain areas of our lives. I think that you simply have to continue to remind yourself that there is no perfection, and once you begin to think that you have achieved some level of perfection, you’ve lost it automatically, because without humility… I mean, we’re supposed to… The whole idea of this transformation, of acquiring holiness and a pure heart, is that the closer we get to God, the more we realize that we’re nothing! We don’t have that, we’re filthy, we’re sinners. You can’t… You have to disabuse yourself of this idea to begin with. Just start taking the path, and every day ask God for forgiveness and try to do better, but you’re never going to achieve perfection. It’s never going to happen.

Dr. Louh: Exactly. I was just going to say that that really is something that we seek a result from.

Dr. Constantinou: It’s a trap.

Dr. Louh: It’s something that we connect with the process on, that it is something that we are something that we are constantly seeking, not necessarily looking for the specific outcome when we’re done. It’s the journey and the process of intentionality rather than the outcome of it.

Dr. Constantinou: But we also have to recognize—excuse me for interrupting there, Roxanne—we have to recognize the spiritual traps, because when we embark on that path to try to become a better person, to renew ourselves, the evil one says, “Wait a minute. I thought I had this one under control. Now I’d better do something. I know what I’ll do. I’ll make her obsessive.”

Dr. Louh: And he uses her vices like that, too, the intent for that, anyway.

Dr. Constantinou: Exactly. He knows our weaknessess, so he feeds into that. So you have to read the lives of the saints, remember your own limitations and your own sins, and go to confession and just don’t get so full of yourself. [Laughter] Sometimes we have to remind ourselves. It’s just the little things, but we have to remember that there is an evil one who is planting these ideas in our head, and then what happens is we think we have accomplished something and now we’re okay with God, and that’s when we know we’ve lost everything, whether it’s in the fasting or the prayer or whatever. It’s not a checklist of deeds to be performed.

Dr. Louh: It looks like we have a call coming in from Michael. Michael, are you there? Michael, can you hear me?

Michael: Presvytera, can you hear me?

Dr. Louh: How are you?

Michael: Great.

Fr. Nicholas: Hey, Michael.

Dr. Louh: Welcome to the show.

Michael: Hey, Father.

Fr. Nicholas: Hey, buddy.

Michael: Listen, I know with what’s been going around, like everything’s been destroyed, been vandalized and everything, I think that’s really what’s been setting people off. Until then, you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you see you’re finding God in there. You’ve just got to know where to go and where to look at it. That’s, I think, where people are getting really confused there for a second. I mean, I know people are still saying we believe that there is a God, but we need to find out where he is. You need to do more than that. You need to look with your own eyeballs. You need to see with your heart that he’s there. He’s not going to come to you and say, “I’ve got a question for you.” He will help you in your time of need.

Fr. Nicholas: I love that, Michael. Michael is one of our dear parishioners here in Jacksonville. Michael, you’re absolutely correct. You know, Presvytera Jeannie, I love during the lenten services we talk about the soul, and we talk about it in ways where we say in the Greek, “Psyche mou, psyche mou, my soul, my soul, why are you sleeping?” I think what Michael is bringing up I think is so true, that sometimes all of us can find ourselves in that trap where we’re just kind of journeying through life, just kind of going through life as opposed to growing through life. Really, just our soul is sleeping. I just think that… I’m sure that you… I love what you were saying earlier about the importance of us being intentionally in prayer, going to church… I know that obviously now that’s difficult, but still we can do it even virtually, we can participate.

I think at some point, because I think in life one of the ways that the devil confuses us—and that’s why I think that one of the great… many of the Church Fathers talk about this great virtue of diakresis, discernment, it’s to be able to discern, like: Soul? Is my soul sleeping? Not to do that in an analytical way, which we see oftentimes in the West, but really it’s only tested within the realm of the Church and through, obviously, confession and prayer.

Michael: Yes.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, yes, indeed.

Dr. Louh:Thank you, Michael, for calling in.

Michael: You know what? Actually I thought of something else. One of my co-workers—I didn’t know this until yesterday or something, but she tested positive for COVID; she had been really sick. So just keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Louh: We sure will, Michael.

Michael: She says she’s feeling better, though, but, I mean, I don’t want to chance that and have it pass around to somebody else.

Dr. Louh: Thank you, Michael. Thank you so much for the call as well.

Dr. Constantinou: Thank you, Michael.

Michael: God bless you guys. We love you.

Fr. Nicholas: We love you, too.

Dr. Louh: We love you, too. It looks like we have another phone call coming in from Kyle. Kyle, are you there?

Kyle: Ah, yes, can you hear me?

Dr. Louh: Yes, we can hear you. Welcome to the show.

Kyle: Oh, thank you for having me. My background is a Catholic background, and so you guys kind of touched on a little bit the idea of intellectualism and just the idea that we can arrive at knowing God through reason and applying reason to things that we know theologically and how that kind of relates to Orthodoxy and our understanding of how we can interpret things or take theological truths that we know and to what extent that we can know them, because to an extent, from my experience with Catholicism, that they kind of see that experience of seeking God intellectually through reason as another path; why are you dismissing that path, essentially, when it could potentially lead to theological error if you think that this reason… You could reason your way into error, essentially, if you try and use human reason to try to fish out what God intended in the theological sense. I wanted to get you guys’ thoughts on that.

Dr. Louh: Go ahead, Presvytera.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for your observations, Kyle. I talked about that; I’m talking about that in my book, Thinking Orthodox, that that’s an entirely different phronema, an entirely different mentality that the Catholic Church has from the Orthodox. Sometimes Protestants will look at us and think, “Oh, they’re just a form of Catholicism,” and we’re anything but that, because you’re exactly right. The Catholic Church emphasizes the use of human reasoning to arrive at theological truths, and the Orthodox Church says you can never come to know God through human reasoning, and instead the reasoning will often lead you to heresy. I give some examples of that in the book.

They not only emphasize that; they believe that that’s the most important thing: faith and reason, and faith and reason do not ever conflict, and all theological truths have to conform with reason. But that’s why they have departed so dramatically from the thought of the early Church, and that’s why there are so many varieties of thought within the Catholic Church, because if you’re just depending on human reasoning, people can have different opinions, arrive at different conclusions, depending upon their initial premise.

So you’re exactly right about that. This is why we don’t place stock in human reasoning, because the early Church did not. We didn’t believe that we could come to know God through the application of our minds. What is Paul talking about? He’s talking about the renewal of the mind, not knowing God through the application of human reasoning. Instead he talks about how that’s impossible. For example,  we preach Christ crucified. That doesn’t make sense according to the human mind, and yet that’s the teaching of the Church. So you’re exactly right about that, Kyle.

Fr. Nicholas: Thank you, Kyle, for your phone call. I’m sorry, go ahead?

Kyle: Oh, thanks, yeah. Thank you. That reminds me, I think it was Pope John Paul II who said that prayer arrives to God on the wings of faith and reason, something like that.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, he wrote a whole document called Fides et Ratio, Faith and Reason. Even the canons of the Catholic Church and the Catechism says that what we need to do is heal wounded reason.

Fr. Nicholas: I love that.

Dr. Constantinou: That’s very striking from an Orthodox perspective. In order for us to be correct in our thought about God, we have to heal wounded reason. We talk about the healing of the soul, not of our reasoning. Thank you, Kyle. That was really great.

Fr. Nicholas: Thank you, Kyle, for your phone call.

We have a question that came in through the chat room, Presvytera, that I think is quite interesting. It’s from Victor, and he writes:

I believe that vigilance is so key, that we are in a spiritual battle, as referenced in Ephesians 6. Can you speak to some of the ways the enemy will attack, and how we can flee to Christ with sincerity of purpose?

Dr. Constantinou: Oh boy.

Fr. Nicholas: We’ve got four more hours, so let’s… [Laughter]

Dr. Louh: That’s a question for a show… That’s a great question.

Dr. Constantinou: It’s so individualized. How does the enemy attack? Of course, I’m not a nun or something. Really, I generally don’t talk about… I’ll answer the question, but I don’t talk about spiritual things, because I’m not a person of deep prayer. I really believe that these kinds of spiritual questions are best answered by a monk or a nun who’s had years of deep prayer. They have insights that we don’t have. I pray every day. I’m trying to pray more often in the course of the day, but I’m not a spiritual person by any means, the way a monk or a nun is, who literally tries to pray 24 hours a day.

But I will just share a little bit from my experience and my husband’s experience. What does he do? First of all, he tries to distract us, give us excuses for doing things like not going to church—that’s different now in the COVID, but even watching the church on the streaming—not going to confession—“Oh, I haven’t really done anything that I need to confess.” As soon as you think that, that’s from the evil one; you should run to confession. Giving all kinds of excuses for not doing the things that you know you need to do.

But what I think is the most striking for those of us who are in the Church who are struggling to live a spiritual life, it kind of goes back to Gia’s question, is that the evil one uses our good intentions against us. He tries to make us think that what we want to do is good, when really it’s the first step to something that is really going to be very harmful to us. That’s one of the main reasons why we have the sacrament of confession. It’s not just to confess our sins, but to talk to the priest about what’s going on in our lives, because we can be very convinced we have this great idea and this is what I want to do, and the priest is going to say, “Now, wait a minute. That could be a big problem.”

So he uses all of our good intentions, or something like this: let’s take the Bible. You decide: I’m going to read the Bible every day, and so you do. That’s a good thing, right? And so you get ideas in your head: I read this in the Bible. It says this about the priest. Our priest is not doing this. We’re calling him Father; it says here, “Call no man Father.” Or whatever it is. My point is that sometimes when we embark on the spiritual path, he fills us with ideas of pride, with delusions, we begin to judge others—“I know what I’m doing; I’m living the right, orthodox life, and this person isn’t”—and so he destroys us by our good efforts. So he is like the lion that’s always roaring and prowling and watching for us, so we have to always remain vigilant and always, especially keep humble.

Dr. Louh: Absolutely. All of those temptations of the flesh, and playing on our deepest desires and weaknesses, I think the ultimate goal is to depart our souls from living the fruits of the spirit. So that’s often the result of him having toyed or toiled in our minds, with the result that we depart from patience and goodness and gentle[ness] and kind[ness], and we begin judging and reacting. I think that’s why so [many] of the Church Fathers write about spiritual discernment. If you just think about St. John of The Ladder, in Step 26, he says, “Discernment is real self-knowledge. It is the spiritual capacity to distinguish unfailingly between what is truly is good and what is opposed to the good, distinguishing the will of God at all times,” because what is he doing? I feel the evil one is often trying to overwhelm our lives and steer us away from the will that God had planned for us, the things that he was encouraging us toward. And he’s successful when we do that, when we fall into that in our minds and follow those temptations of the flesh.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, he’s successful and needs discernment, but the problem is that unless we are very spiritually advanced, we don’t have the capacity for discernment.

Fr. Nicholas: Exactly.

Dr. Constantinou: For the discernment of ourselves. Somebody might share with me a problem that they’re having; I’ll say, “I can see right away what the spiritual problem is,” because that’s not my problem. They’re asking me for some kind of advice. But if it’s in my own life, I don’t see it as readily, unless you’re extremely advanced—we’re talking about the saints, the monks and the nuns, people who spent decades in prayer. That’s why, when we say we have to have discernment… But we can’t expect to rely on ourselves. We have to have spiritual guidance.

Fr. Nicholas: Right, and just to add to what you were saying, Presvytera, oftentimes I try to share in my own walk of faith that I’m the last person that I should be trusting.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes.

Fr. Nicholas: To be quite honest with you, even in our own walk of faith, that’s where the dependence on Christ and on the Church is so important, that “apart from me, you can do nothing.” Even when people ask us questions about how we would relate to this issue or what [are] our thoughts, it’s still filtered through the lens of our own personal experiences and our own personal thoughts as opposed to going through the lens of what the Church and the Tradition of our Church speaks about. Again, left on our own we will always make this kind of an individualistic kind of approach.

One of the things that we try to do in the book is we share that sometimes even as the great divide between faith and psychology, one of the concerns that we have… Oftentimes we see that when you’re using psychology as opposed to… on its own, it’s once again this self-dependence that one is relying on as opposed to having a godly dependence and having his… the traditions of our Church, through the Holy Spirit and through the Church Fathers and through the life of Christ become the lens or almost the lighthouse that we look through, that that becomes how we shape our lives as opposed to just depending on ourselves. I think that’s just so important that as listeners and people that are trying in our walk of faith, that’s the importance of that constant return, that constant renewal back again to what God yearns for for us.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, that renewal, because we don’t have the strength to do it ourselves. If we think that just by sheer will we’re going to accomplish these things, it’s impossible. We need Christ, and Christ is the one, is our strength. So we have to always turn back to him and pray and ask for guidance and strength, and like you said, not be so self-centered. Part of it, I think, are challenges, because we are… I want to say exactly by nature, but there is obviously a tendency since the Fall to be centered upon ourselves and not to think of the other. So when we can break ourselves out of that and think of others, then we’re not simply catering to our self-will, our self-desires, and feeding the passions within us, the desire for all of these things that are ultimately meaningless, because they actually take us away from God.

Dr. Louh: Absolutely, and it is near impossible, as you’ve said, to do any of this if we’re not prayed up, connected to our spiritual… our priest, and through confession… Those are such strong entities that we have to rely on. I think when we bridge psychology with faith, we realize that there [are] really two things that work at all times when you’re accessing that spiritual advice, you have to then take it home with discernment and check in with yourself regularly, because again how often we receive this spiritual advice, and then we go home: we’re not tuning in and checking in to catch any of it. So it is I believe a synergy of working in this constant pattern of renewal within myself, discerning within me, and taking it to my spiritual counselor. And I’m constantly back and forth, so that you have some boundary of protection within yourself, because I think that the fear is that we go, we receive it, we receive guidance, but then we’re not catching ourselves every time we’re falling. We’re waiting for the next confession to clean it all out and fix it, communion, and… wow.

Dr. Constantinou: And you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, right?

Dr. Louh: Correct.

Dr. Constantinou: Not really getting anywhere. Yeah, it’s true. Go ahead, Father.

Fr. Nicholas: I was just going to say, Presvytera, just because we have another show coming on right after this show, with Fr. Tom Soroka, who is interviewing, by the way, a very good friend of ours, Marlena Graves, so we’re excited to hear that show. But, Presvytera Jeannie, I wanted to just thank you again, not only for the endorsing of our book, but just taking time to always be so supportive of us, for being an amazing teacher to me, and obviously having you on our show tonight, talking about how St. Paul approaches this renewal through the word of nous. We’re so grateful.

We do encourage our listeners—I’m sure many of you are already fully aware of how amazing Dr. Jeannie Constantinou is, but if you don’t know already, her podcast is Search the Scriptures. You can find it here live on Ancient Faith on Monday evenings at 5:00 p.m. Pacific, 8:00 p.m. Eastern. And also, be on the lookout for her book: Thinking Orthodox. It’s going to be coming out also in the fall, and so, Presvytera, thank you for…

Dr. Louh: Thank you, and we’re excited to read that, too.

Dr. Constantinou: Absolutely. Maybe we’ll talk again about the mind, later in the fall.

Dr. Louh: I would love that. We would love that.

Dr. Constantinou: This was great. This was a really… Thank you so much for inviting me. I enjoyed our conversation and your wonderful listeners.

Fr. Nicholas: Thank you.

Dr. Louh: Thank you.

Dr. Constantinou: Your blessing, Father. Thank you, goodnight, and your blessing, Father.

Fr. Nicholas: The blessings of the Lord.

Dr. Constantinou: Thank you. Thank you, Father.

Fr. Nicholas: And I also wanted to let all of you know that our next show is going to be on Tuesday, August 25, and on that show we’re going to have New York Times best-selling author, Gary Chapman, who wrote The Five Love Languages, who’s going to be speaking with us live. So make it a point, on August 25, Tuesday, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. That same day we’re going to have an opportunity for all of you to pre-order our new book, Renewing You. Thank you so much, everyone. God bless you, and stay strong in your walk of faith.