"America Will Become Orthodox!" Saintly Prophecy or How To Read the Church Fathers in Context?

A single sentence from a saint can inspire a whole generation, or mislead it. We open with the line many Orthodox Christians have heard, “Saint Paisios said America will become Orthodox,” then slow the story down to ask the question most of us skip: what was actually said, to whom, through what translation, and with what intent? That one case becomes a clear window into how patristic quotes and saint sayings spread online, especially when memes replace sources and confidence replaces context.

Translations shape theology. We dig into why older patristic translations can smuggle in legalistic language, and why terms like “atonement” and “substitution” carry baggage.

Cloud of Witnesses, Jeremy Jeremiah, Mario Andrew, and James St. Simon talk with Father Joseph Lucas about how patristic quotes get distorted and how to read the Church Fathers in context without turning memes into theology. We trace how the Orthodox Church leans on consensus, careful sourcing, and prayerful practice so our reading leads to repentance rather than argument.

• the Saint Paisios “America will become Orthodox” quote and why its original context is more tentative
• why unsupported “floating quotes” should not shape doctrine or spiritual decisions
• authority in tradition through ecumenical councils and the consensus of the Fathers
• reading individual Fathers through the lens of the wider patristic tradition
• why Saint Augustine needs careful, contextual reading alongside the Greek Fathers
• the difference between modern online apologetics and patristic apologetics with oversight
• why ancient rhetorical attacks do not translate well to today’s debates
• how translation choices can import legalistic or forensic connotations
• why “the theologian is one who prays” matters and how Saint Mary of Egypt models it
Please, if you haven't already, give this video a like. Let us know your thoughts down below. Subscribe if you want more content like this. If you haven't bought the book yet please go check it out I would recommend it highly. You can find this entire conversation at our Patreon right now.

Father Joseph Lucas, author of How To Read The Holy Fathers, helps us build a practical framework for reading the Church Fathers and the wider Orthodox tradition responsibly. We talk about patristic consensus, why ecumenical councils carry unique weight, and why later “compiler” saints can guide ordinary readers toward what the Church has truly received. We also tackle tough edges like how to approach Saint Augustine carefully, how to think about figures like Origen, and why you cannot build a full Orthodox theology on one favorite author.

We then turn to Orthodox apologetics today: what it gets right, what it risks, and why ancient debate tactics do not map neatly onto modern online arguments. We close with translation and theology language, including how certain English terms can carry legalistic baggage, and we return to the heart of the Fathers: theology that forms prayer, repentance, and transformation, beautifully embodied in Saint Mary of Egypt.

That “famous” Church Father quote might be fake or twisted. We talk with Fr. Joseph Lucas about reading the Holy Fathers in context, spotting meme theology, and staying inside the Church’s consensus.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:00

St. Paesios said America will become Orthodox.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Yeah, so so that I know the I know the person who heard that quote. That phrase goes back to Evagrius, um, which he himself is uh is a little bit of a you know uh peripheral character in the in the life of the church.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Of apologetics is different from what we see kind of in the online space because that's part of what is attracting and even winning some people over into orthodoxy.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Saint Draco Sosum uses the same kind of insults against the Aryans as he does against the Judaizers, you know? So they can use it like, and it doesn't mean he's anti-Semitic or any more than it means he's hi Jeremy Jeremiah here, super excited.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Father Joseph Lucas, the author of How to Read the Holy Fathers. If you haven't picked up this book yet, what are you waiting for? It is absolutely fantastic, it's such a breath of fresh air, um, getting real practical uh guidance from a scholar and an expert on patristics. Uh, it is, I would say, an invaluable book, and we are so grateful to have Father uh Joseph joining us. Today the topic is very important and is how do we read the fathers in context? What does that mean? We start off the conversation with a kind of controversial issue. The quote has often been said that America will one day become Orthodox. Let's give Father Joseph's take on that. Enjoy this conversation. Please, if you haven't already, give this video a like. Let us know your thoughts down below. Subscribe if you want more content like this. It helps others find this as well. We hope you enjoy this episode. See you at the end. Enjoy.

Did Saint Paisios Predict America

SPEAKER_02 1:43

It is often said, and I've heard it said at our parish, um, that St. Paisio said America will become Orthodox.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, so so that I know that I know the person who heard that quote uh personally. I've known him for years. Uh the original quote was a lot more penative, like perhaps America would become this is when Saint Paissius met an Orthodox uh man from America that I know from um who was uh at that time a member of the uh of Rokor, I think he was. He's in the OCA now, um, who went to Mount Athos. He was considering monastic life. He spent some time on Athos, he met Saint Piasius. They were speaking through a translator, so that that he this person doesn't speak Greek, so they could they can't they couldn't comment on the original structure of the Greek phrase, but it came across something like, oh, he's an Orthodox, a devout Orthodox from America. Well, perhaps America will become Orthodox someday. So it was more tentative, but the way that the quote's been related over the last 20 some years, 25 years or so, it's become more like, oh, St. Plitius said America will become Orthodox someday.

unknown 2:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

I would love for that to be true, right? Yeah, I would love for that to be a prophecy that comes true, though I know the original context was not saying that per se.

Why Misquotes Spread So Easily

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Um, so so I would so that's that's a good example of why we have to be cautious. Right. Like, for example, the the the meme comes around sometimes, the so-called quote from St. John Chrysostom that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests and bishops. As far as I've been able to find, the earliest quote of that, claiming it was from St. John Chrysostom, is in in one of the reformers' writings in the 16th century.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

I don't know where that came from. It's not been found to be attributed to St. John Chrysostom. Um, and it seems too convenient that a a reformer would use this to kind of talk about how tainted the clergy are. Now, is it true that the clergy are more responsible for what they know? Of course they are. That is biblical. Right. But it comes across as a little bit of a jab, you know, against the hierarchy and the corruption of the hierarchy and things like that. So we just have to be very careful. Um we if we see if we see references to the fathers out of context, like in a meme, a quote in a non-academic work where it doesn't have a footnote, we should take it with a grain of salt in most cases, I would say. We should say, oh, maybe that's true. We certainly shouldn't base our our theological or religious understanding on this displaced quote, right? This this I'll say disembodied quote. It's like floating around like a ghost somewhere. It doesn't seem to have, we don't know its real existence, right? If it's embodied somewhere. Uh now, if we have some pretty accurate, if we if we see a source, like if you see a quote, even if it's on a meme and it says from chapter 25 of the latter of divine ascent, all right. Well, that's something you can verify. You can go read chapter 25, it's probably in English, which that one is, and see if that's actually, and maybe it's from a different translation than you're used to, but maybe the gist is the same. Um, but yeah, so there's so there, so we just have to be a little bit skeptical of these random patristic sources that show up um in different places and make sure that we're not we're not basing anything on that, right? We're not like altering our lives around this quote that might be completely misconstrued or even made up, you know, sometimes they're fabricated.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yeah, when you take one father and you apply him, even if he is correct on on certain things, but you kind of base an entire theology, an entire soteriology on one church father and how dangerous that is. Can you speak to that, please,

Consensus And Authority In Tradition

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Father?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Sure. Uh yeah, I mean, there are, first of all, there are uh there are certainly historically the way the church has operated over time, um, there are levels of uh authority in you know in the in the tradition, right? So for example, uh the the ecumenical councils have a greater authority than any one individual father, right? Because what are the ecumenical councils? They are an expression of the consensus of the fathers. Right now, at the ecumenical councils, there are um there are uh, first of all, there may be a certain saint who was instrumental in that council, like for example, Saint Cyril at Ephesus being physically present there, you know. Um, but also there are many texts that are alluded to or referenced directly or cited in a in a sort of authoritative way, and you find them in the acts of the councils. Uh sometimes you see it in the way that certain uh dogmatic canons are written, um, you know, the way they're composed. Uh uh, so for example, again, uh Chalcedon has the tome of Chalcedon. We can see exactly what's in that that tome. We can see how, you know, what words are taken out of works of St. Cyril and so forth. So that those are um, you know, they're they're using certain saints' writings in a very authoritative way. So so looking at that way, right? Uh, also looking at how later fathers use earlier fathers. So, so for example, when you get to someone like Saint John Damascene and you see who are the main fathers, because he has a pretty good um you know scope of different of the different fathers before him from the centuries leading up to the eighth century, and how is he using them? Which ones does he quote more? How does he quote them? That creates a greater level of authority. And and so when we look at St. John, we're looking at him as a compiler of earlier fathers, uh, just the same way we look at St. Theophilic of Okrid as a compiler of earlier patricic commentary on the Bible, you know, and so we see these. Um I've recommended in my book that probably the average reader should never read origin because of they're not going to discern where the problems are in origin, right? But they could read certain things that uh are quoted in the Cappadocians that they take out of origin that could be useful, right? Because they they act as a filter for what is actually good or canonical, um, you know, when you read the Cappadocian Fathers. So, so this is kind of a general idea we have is that first of all, we have this idea of consensus, which you find first in Irenaeus. St. Irenaeus talks about consensus. There's the famous um sort of tome of Saint Vincent de Aron, which is also about how consensus works. This tends to be the way the church operates. There's a greater consensus that we stay within and outside that consensus. There might be some blurriness, a little bit of murkiness outside that we're like, well, we're not sure about that. Or it's it's certainly not a formal doctrine of the church. And within that consensus itself, there are certain places where that is expressed very clearly. Count major councils, collections of works of the fathers, um by later fathers, or by the church in general. The problem with St. Augustine, and I and I I do think he's a saint, um, is that uh is that he became pretty much the only go-to Latin writer in the in the medieval west. That's the problem. The problem is you don't have a lot to choose from. You have you have a bunch of interesting people like you know, like Julius Africanus and people like that, but they're not really major fathers. You have really Saint Cyprian of Carthage, but he doesn't write a whole, it's not a whole lot from him, right? Um, he's one of the earliest ones. Tertullian's a big problem, right? He's another prickly pair, because he, you know, he leaves the church. Um but you have Saint Cyprian, then you have Saint Ambrose, who's you know, and Saint Ambrose is fluent in Greek, so so Saint Ambrose is heavily influenced by his reading all the fathers from the East.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Which is after the western.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Right, and St. Augustine could not read Greek. Um, and he himself is constantly editing himself. He's retracting things, he has books of retractions, he is uh certain books of his, he's refusing to have them uh uh copied later in life, saying, No, no, don't copy that one anymore for distribution because I don't agree with everything in there. So he himself, it's just that we have a huge volume of his surviving writings, yeah. And no one in the East has ever sat down and gone through and made a kind of canonical collection of what, first of all, what he stood by, because there's things that he retracted that we'd have to go by and say, okay, what did he stand by throughout his entire life and say, this is what you should read, right? That hasn't been done. I've heard people make attempts at that and start saying, like, look, you know, St. Augustine, let's listen to what he says about what he says, you know, because he'll he, you know, we need to start taking that seriously, the things that he took back or things that he changed and so forth. Um, things he might have overstated later on that he kind of uh, you know, moderated a little bit. But most of all, we should read an individual father through the lens of the fathers at large, through the consensus. And I would say even more so, we should read Saint Augustine through the lens of the Greek fathers. Because since he could not read Greek and he was trying to reinvent the wheel sometimes, like in Daytrian Tate and other works, um, we should we should be very cautious and look at how many of those ideas were understood in the Greek fathers, and then kind of filter Saint Augustine through these Greek fathers.

Online Apologetics Versus Patristic Debate

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Talk to me uh a little bit about um how uh what you point out is the goal of apologetics is different from what we see kind of in the online space, because that's part of what is attracting and even winning some people over into orthodoxy, but that isn't necessarily the heart of apologetics that you talk about.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yeah, I I think I think it's often well intentioned, not always. I there's there are a lot of guys who get into apologetics just because they uh because of their egos. And, you know, but but I think a majority of the people that I've met who do apologetics, their intention is because they there's they love orthodoxy and they feel like they're doing something positive to bring people to orthodoxy, in theory. Um and my opinion has changed a little bit because in the early stages it didn't seem like it was having much of an effect. Like when I first saw the apologists coming out, like maybe 10 years ago on YouTube, it seemed like it was uh it certainly wasn't convincing a lot of the opponents to take orthodoxy seriously. But that seems to have shifted. It seems that now orthodoxy is kind of in its ascendance right now. People and the arguments have gotten a lot better, a lot more fine-tuned from some of the apologists, and even some of the people they're debating now, if you've probably seen, have converted to orthodoxy in the end, which is amazing because I never thought that was going to start happening. But I think some of them have gotten better at their craft, and orthodoxy is becoming more approachable at the same time for many people. So, so I have I have become a little more um like open to the role of this modern version of apologetics. But what it what I I want to make sure people don't confuse it with is that it's not the exact same thing, oftentimes, as what the church fathers did. Because the church fathers who undertook this were oftentimes doing it in some kind of official capacity. So, for example, not not always, but many times, for example, you have a uh a bishop defending the faith against other bishops, or a presbyter who's a trained theologian um defending uh the faith against you know, against this or that uh you know, other presbyter uh who's teaching it falsely. Um you have, you know, for example, St. Athanasius defending the faith against Arius. Here we have a bishop defending the faith against a presbyter, you know, teaching the wrong thing, just spreading it to other bishops. Like these, there are there are a lot of times these things are happening in more official capacities. Um and uh, you know, or St. Gregory Palomas and his role defending the faith against Varlam and the kinderness and these guys. There's there's some sense of official capacity here. And they're there they would be doing it with the blessing of their spiritual fathers and or with the backing, for example, St. Gregory Palamas, the backing of the monks on that Athos or in his corner as he's defending this tradition. You know, so um there's always the danger that that when people undertake apologetics, that it becomes about themselves and how smart they are and how well they can argue. So that's why it has to be done, it has to be taken, uh, undertaken with extreme caution, with spiritual guidance, spiritual oversight, maybe from um their spiritual father, their priest, or what have you. Um one thing that does concern me sometimes is they will read an ancient um you know, a patristic uh debate, so to speak, right? And they will assume that they can use the same sort of like approach to your opponent as was used back then. Uh, I think I mentioned briefly in the book something called sogos, which is a Greek term for a type of rhetoric where you can point to the person's moral failings, like known moral failings, as evidence that that's why their ideas are also a failure. Right? It's it's it was very common. Everyone did it in the ancient world. It's not ad hominem per se. It's not just like, yeah, not quite the same as ad hominem where you just attack the person and call them a jerk or something. It's basically saying, well, you know, the fact that you've been married five times and you claim to be a devout Orthodox Christian is is it just makes further clear why you have such terrible doctrines, you know? It's that kind of thing, like your moral failings and and so forth uh are a sign of your theological or or conceptual failings, right? Now that was that was an acceptable approach, and the opponents did it, the or you know, the orthodox defenders have done it, the opponents did it. Um they did it about whole groups. So, for example, St. John Chrysostom uses the same kind of insults against the Aryans as he does against the Judaizers, you know? So they can use it like, and it doesn't mean he's anti-Semitic or any more than it means he's he's he's uh he he personally he doesn't personally hate the Aryans or the Jews in you know Constantinople. He's talking about how some of these moral failings that happen that they see publicly are connected to this lack of correct faith and doctrine, you know. Right, right. So that's one caution I would say is uh is that what some people reading the fathers wanting to just adopt the patristic way of debating. Well, you can't do that when your opponent, first of all, does not live in that that world. And as the no as an Orthodox apologist, he probably doesn't live in that world either. He's not so in engaged in the fathers that he's seeing the world the way that the fathers do, probably. You know, that that uh even if we can go again uh very deep into the fathers, I think the best we can become is bilingual, right? To see the worldview and speak in the worldview of the fathers, but still know that we're living in you know the post-Enlightenment age. But certainly adopting some of their approaches and thinking we can like attack and insult, you know, uh the people that we're debating, I don't think it's helpful. I don't think it's helpful. I think and I think that a lot of it might stir up uh a young man watching it who has lost a testosterone, but it's but it's probably going to also turn off just as many people as as it as it kind of um uh stirs up, you know, in a positive way.

Translation Bias And Loaded Theology Words

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Um can you talk about good translation versus what maybe? I mean, is Philip Schaff horrible? Can you just give us some guidance there?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

They're not horrible, and a lot of people cut their teeth on it. I mean, I read the I read most of the Shaft series in my 20s. Right, because that's uh you there used to be you could get it from Erdmans for like a really big discount, and I'd saved up and I bought that whole thing, and you know, and I read through. I I I think I used to read about 20 to 40 hours a week back in those days. The good old days. I got to the whole thing in you know, maybe about but maybe about a year and a half, two years. I don't know exactly exactly, but yeah, but um yeah, I think the the question would be, first of all, um, when you read it, just you remember that it's it's it's they're all Protestant scholars, right? They're all Protestant scholars, so therefore I'm not saying that there's a explicit bias, but there's gonna be an implicit bias, right? A lot of times they're looking at the the Patrologia Greca series, but they're translating it from the Latin side, right? Because it's a parallel Latin-Greek text with a Latin translation of the original Greek from the fathers. Yeah, and many of them are choosing English words that align with the later, much later Latin translation of that father. Um, so they will come across maybe, like for example, references to uh salvation language will oftentimes in the Latin translation have a more forensic word, a more legalistic sounding word. And the particular, the the translator of that particular work, the modern 19th century English translator, is looking at the Latin and choosing that Latin word, right? Whereas the Greek word doesn't necessarily have all those connotations attached. Words have connotations, right? There, when you use a word like uh substitution, which is I know there's a lot of talk going around about substitutionary atonement right now, and what do we think about that? When you use a word like substitution, uh there are definitive connotations. And I used to use the word more openly uh some years ago, and I've moved more and more away from it because you can't get rid of the connotations, right? Right? You can't get rid of the like um uh like even the word atonement, which is definitely there's no Greek word that uh uh aligns with the word atonement per se. Um I remember Father Andrew Louth telling me, I never use the word ever. He said, because it's just there's no one Greek word that means what they mean by atonement. There's nothing you can translate into the word atonement per se. Um, you know, there are different words in the in the in the King James that get translated as atonement, but that's not what it means per

Theologian Means One Who Prays

SPEAKER_01 20:46

se.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

You can talk about that story of Saint Mary of Egypt and why that the theologian is one who prays concept is so important.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, yeah. And that's a of course that phrase goes back to Evagrius, um, which he himself is a is a little bit of a you know uh peripheral character in the in the life of the church. I I deal with some of these characters who we don't want to read, we read them through the lens of other texts, like we read him through the lens of the philocalia, because that's a that's a text uh included of his in the philocalia is a text that we should read. It's absolutely read. It's uh important text, but yet we might not want to go off into all of his texts, you know. But that particular quote is sort of a canonical quote, if you will, right? That's been taken up by the church because it's true and represents the life of the church. And um, and somebody like St. Mary of Egypt, who never had any of this education and training and so forth, uh um does represent that that um you know that that life of prayer that leads to a deep understanding of of who God is, who we are in relationship to God. Because that's ultimately what a theologian is. A theologian is someone who comes to know God.

unknown 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

And by coming to know God is able to share that experience with others. Sometimes in very lofty words, like some of the church fathers do, sometimes in extremely simple words or actions like St. Mary of Egypt. Her life coming down to us teaches us that, you know, I mean obviously the the oral tradition that Saint Zosimus passes on to St. Sophronius, who records the text right for us, he himself was probably very theologically astute. But still it is her life, her words, her actions that are being passed down as this model for us. And we are if we if we are reading the church fathers and they're inspiring us to be like her or to live that life, then that then they've accomplished their first and primary purpose, which is to lead us into a deep relationship with God, a deeper um you know life of repentance and transformation in in uh in Christ. So that's that's their primary purpose. And um for that for that reason alone the the reading of the church fathers is something we we highly benefit from. I know not every church tradition, not every local tradition has this, but um particularly in the Slavic tradition, maybe you do this as well in the Antiochian tradition, on the fifth week of of the fast, we do the whole canon of Saint Andrew and we read the life of Saint Mary in there. That's what's in the Saint Savotipicon. Yeah and so and so uh liturgically we're reading her life aloud. And so everyone there is getting exposed to this patristic text like this aesthetical text uh along with a patristic work which is the canon of Saint Andrew you know and and you see in both of these works you you are at that service suddenly a patristic reader right because you but through your ears you know you're you're hearing this and knowing how to read the fathers properly will prepare you more for that service. What what am I supposed to derive okay so I'm not uh living the exact same life as her I'm not going to go out into the desert by myself for 40 years and be alone I'm not I'm maybe I I'm not a priest like Saint Zosimus among priest you know um you know that's going to experience but through their testimony uh and understanding what what that testimony is we can then apply it so there is always that practical side one of the most beautiful things about Orthodox theology um is that it is always pre preeminently practical right it's applicable to our lives when you think about for example all the the uh the highfalutin language about the Trinity and the incarnation when it really comes down to it you can sum up much of it in a saying something like St. Gregory's saying what is not assumed is not saved right a very simple encapsulation of why those why those theological ideas make any difference to us whatsoever.

Final Takeaways And Support The Show

SPEAKER_02 25:15

It's because knowing that is to teach us that we have a loving God who wants to heal our nature wants us to participate in his life uh his nature in some way and reading the father's helps us uh to to not only to know that intellectually but to to motivate us to drive us towards that that reality you know I think that's highly important look at that you made it to the end if you haven't bought the book yet please go check it out I would recommend it highly uh maybe for a a hostel celebratory um gift to yourself or to a friend or family member how to read the Holy Fathers by Father Joseph Lucas um we hope you enjoyed this conversation remember all of our content is available early as well as uncut and unedited you can find this entire conversation at our Patreon right now. It is the best way to represent uh and to support Cloud of Witnesses. We really appreciate you. God bless you. We hope to see you on the next one. Bye bye.