Protestant vs. Orthodox: Scripture and Tradition (Gavin Ortlund + Stephen De Young)

Could you speak to the Orthodox perspective? Why Sola Scriptura is untenable? What makes Sola Scriptura untenable from the Orthodox perspective? So if, if there is in the New Testament this affirmation of oral tradition, and there is, and I would argue that there is, how do we deal with the Protestant concern of Holy Tradition?

Hey everyone, this is a dialogue that I had on Sola Scriptura and Tradition with an Eastern Orthodox priest, the Reverend Dr. Steven D. Young. You'll hear intros of both of us in a second. I want to take too long here. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed it. Um, Steven D. Young has a PhD and academic training. He has parish experience and interpersonally, he's enjoyable to talk with. So, these are three things that can never be assumed and oftentimes, uh, are not the case in sort of online apologetics type things. And so, I just really appreciated, uh, getting to talk with him. Hope we can talk again. We had 90 minutes, that was the time frame, uh, allotted, but we got through a lot in that time frame. So, uh, let me know what you think in the comments about our conversation.

One thing before we dive in, though. This video is being sponsored by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I always want Truth Unites to be supportive of the broader church and of seminaries because seminaries are so important right now. And Trinity is a fantastic institution. You've probably heard me talk about it. I did a post-doctoral fellowship of sorts at TEDS for a year. I loved my time there. TEDS is very academically rigorous, uh, has a world-class faculty. They're committed to the inherency of scripture, but then within a broadly Evangelical framework. You'll also get different perspectives within that framework. So, I'm, I, I mention this because I think a lot of people who watch my channel should consider getting theological education. It helps you be more thoroughly equipped, not just for ministry or for academics, though certainly if that's your calling, but even just for life as a, as a follower of Christ. I've never regretted the investment that I've put into formal education. It's tremendously valuable. You get to meet people from all over the world. You get to be part of this vibrant community and you just learn so much. So, I'm going to share in the video description about their Master of Divinity program, which is academically rigorous in terms of theology, but also you get a lot of pastoral leadership training. And they have different start dates. They offer eight-week modular classes, so you can tailor your education to fit their schedule, uh, to fit your schedule, not theirs. Opposite of that. And, uh, and you can study online or you can study in person, uh, in Deerfield, Illinois on their campus. Their summer courses begin on May 13th of this year. Fall registration opens June 1st, and there are new scholarships available. So, check out Trinity Evangelical Divinity School at tes.edu. Truth Unites. Link in the video description. All right, without further ado, here is the dialogue.

All right, welcome to The Transfigured Life. Uh, met here with Father Jonathan and with, we have two special guests with us today. And I would, uh, introduce the first, uh, so Father, Father Steven D. Young. He is, uh, an author of multiple books, um, his latest being The Apocrypha, Introduction to the Extra, Extra-Biblical, Extra-Biblical Literature. Uh, he's an author, uh, pastor at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church and holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from Ambridge University. How you doing?

Good, good. Good to be here.

Nice, nice, nice. Outstanding. And as our other, uh, guest today, I think for most of our viewers who are watching right now, it's almost as if the introduction need not be made because they see the faces and they know exactly, uh, who these two gentlemen are. Um, Dr. Gavin Ortlund, serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai in Ojai, California. He's the author of several books, including Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't, The Beauty of Christian Theism, and Why Protestantism Makes Sense: The Case for an Always Reforming Church. He runs the YouTube channel Truth Unites. Dr. Gavin, welcome to The Transfigured Life.

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.

Wonderful. And speaking of that, uh, what we're going to do, so all our, our viewers tuning in, uh, understand that this is not really a debate. Luther and I are kind of averse to debates. They, we feel they really don't accomplish what we, what we would like to see discussions between Christian gentlemen accomplish. So, uh, we've got some questions we're going to pose to both of our guests today, um, and then after we ask, uh, these questions, we're going to, uh, ask them to engage in a discussion with one another that Luther and I will kind of take a step back from. Uh, that will complete the, uh, time we have today. So, that's the format. We're going to start with the questions. Um, I guess right now, and Dr. Gavin, you get the first one.

What is Sola Scriptura and what is it not? So, the caricatures of Sola Scriptura and how the historic Protestant view understands it.

Okay, thanks for starting with this question because I think this is really important. There are a lot of caricatures. If you read historic Protestants, you find out this is a very nuanced idea. To, to me, it's a very modest claim and a very reasonable claim and a very important claim. Um, so maybe some of the caricatures we could ward off. I often think of these two. One is that everything you have to, uh, everything you believe has to be explicit in the scripture. That is not what Sola Scriptura means. But we hear this a lot. You hear people say, uh, well, Sola Scriptura says everything has to be in the Bible. It's not in the Bible, therefore it is self-defeating. You hear this a lot. But, uh, even the strongest articulations of the related doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture allow for doctrines to be inferred from scripture, deduced from scripture. Many articulations of that doctrine are only speaking about what is necessary for salvation. There, there really isn't a mainstream historic Protestant view that says you have to have a chapter and verse for everything. So, that's not the target.

Another caricature is the idea that the Bible is the only authority, as though we're just sort of generally rejecting, uh, church history, church councils, church offices, tradition in a general sense. All of those things are tremendously valuable. Sola Scriptura simply means they're fallible. So, the intention of Sola Scriptura is not a rejection of the church, not a rejection of tradition, but a measuring of them by the superior standard of scripture. Francis Turretin, the reformed theologian, talks a lot about this. He basically says the, the issue of Sola Scriptura does not have to do with whether there is any judgment that belongs to the church in controversies of faith. It's about what is that supreme North Star by which everything else must be adjudicated. So, that, so that's what Sola Scriptura is: is the scripture is the only infallible rule for the church. In other words, after the apostles die, okay, the, the period of public divine revelation is over. There do not persist ongoing mechanisms of infallibility in the church. Infallibility meaning being preserved from error in some way. So, uh, in other words, the church in the post-apostolic era must measure herself according to scripture, and her pronouncements are fallible. They, they can err. That doesn't mean they always will, he, but they can err. They're not preserved from error. So, the, uh, the conviction that basically urged that is just our view of revelation. We would say, you know, in Galatians 1:18, Paul says, even if an angel preaches a gospel contrary to the one that we have preached, let the angel be accursed. The idea is we want to be tethered to the apostolic deposit. And I know we all want that in principle, but we would say the best way to know what is Christianity is to recognize there is something unique about scripture. In my debate I did about a year ago now on this, I talked about scripture being ontologically unique. When we use the adjective inspired to refer to the word of God, so the inspired word of God, we're trying to highlight a unique status that scripture has in what it is. Um, 2 Timothy 3:16, God-breathed. 2 Peter 1:21, carried by the Holy Spirit. Jesus quotes Old Testament scripture as God speaking. Romans 3:2 refers to the Old Testament scriptures as the oracles of God, or you could just translate that the words of God. So, we would say scripture is the speech of God, and it is unique and it is paramount. Just like in other religions, you have a, a sort of paramount set of texts at the founding of the religion that then subsequent members of that religion must look to as a kind of unique litmus test or standard. And, uh, basically, we just want to measure ourselves by the speech of God, uh, because it is superior to all post-apostolic functions of the church. That's trying to be brief so we have time for. Go back. That's a brief summation of, uh, what historically Sola Scriptura has been understood to be.

Now, I appreciate that, Dr. Gavin. One thing, I, I always appreciate about you, you do a really good job of explaining your position, and it's clear and it makes sense. So, thank you for that. Uh, Father, uh, Steven D. Young, if I may ask you, uh, what is Holy Tradition in the Orthodox faith? I know that's probably where Sola Scriptura and, you know, uh, Holy Tradition, you know, sometimes the views look a little different. But from the Orthodox, uh, position, what would you say is Holy Tradition and how does Holy Tradition relate to scripture?

Right. So, this is, this is important to disambiguate too, because there's a major difference between the Orthodox understanding of Holy Tradition and the Roman Catholic Church's understanding of tradition, for example. Very, very different. The, the Roman Catholic Church's view is essentially that there is sort of propositional content of revelation that is not recorded in the scriptures, but that has been handed down orally somewhere in secret, maybe, right, and passed down, uh, from bishop to bishop or in some other way, uh, that is not what we're talking about in the Orthodox Church when we talk about tradition. So, the, the very short definition of Holy Tradition in the Orthodox Church is that it's the life of the Holy Spirit in the church. And what that concretely means is that, uh, over the course of church history, and really the history of God's people, right, we're so going back to the very beginning of humanity until now, the Holy Spirit has been active. Has been active primarily, but not exclusively, within the church. Within the assembly of Israel in the Old Testament, within the church from the New Testament to today. And the Holy Spirit's actions, being the actions of God, are infallible, right? Are perfect, are holy, right? And so, within that, the scriptures have a pride of place. This is another important thing to disambiguate. I doubt I'm going to disagree with any of, uh, Dr. Orland's positive statements about scripture. Sometimes this is framed as people who don't believe in Sola Scriptura having a lower view of scripture. We don't actually have a lower view of scripture. We have a higher view of some other things, right? Um, so the scriptures have this paramount place, right? And, and as he already referenced, right, St. Paul, in writing to Timothy, says that that scripture is Theopneustos, right? Meaning it comes from the pneuma, right? It comes from the Spirit of God. Uh, the Holy Spirit not only inspired the scriptures, right? Men wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, but, uh, the Holy Spirit has, uh, governed the transmission of the scriptures, handing them down to the present day, and copying and recopying and all this. And the Holy Spirit guides the interpretation and the application of the scriptures within the church. Um, it's important that this is a collective guidance and inspiration, not an individual guidance and inspiration. That's promised when Christ says, the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth. That "you" is plural. It's not a promise that every individual who reads the scriptures will always interpret them perfectly. And it is not a promise that any particular individual, including the Bishop of Rome, will always interpret and apply them perfectly. Uh, but it is a promise that when, that the church as a whole will be guided by the Holy Spirit in the way that she interprets and applies the scriptures, in the way that she acts and governs herself. And so, this is why in the Orthodox Church, we, we have these distinctions of authority, for example, within councils, right? And an ecumenical council has much greater authority than a local council because the ecumenical council is a greater gathering of the whole body of the church. The more of the church that is gathered together, right, then the more they will be guided. Their, the results will be the product of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Uh, any individual will, will get things wrong. Even collectives will get things wrong. Even the whole church can get things wrong for short periods of time, but ultimately, as the life of the church unfolds, the Holy Spirit guides, right, guides the church, uh, to what is right. And, uh, we see this, we see this with, for example, the formation of the New Testament. The New Testament is formed together over the course of a few centuries, but the same Holy Spirit who guided the writing of those texts guides the church to recognize those texts which he inspired. And so, over the course of those centuries, the church recognizes that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we would say, at the Orthodox Church, that the same thing happens, for example, with councils. When councils meet, it's not always clear. Did we get it right? Did we get it wrong? For every ecumenical council, there's a robber council that met a few years before or a few years after, right? And it might not be clear to the attendees, right, who's, who's, who are the ones who are really being guided by the Holy Spirit. But over time, right, God reveals to the church that, no, what was said about the doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea, this came from the Holy Spirit. What was said about the person of Christ at the Council of Chalcedon, this comes, this came from the Holy Spirit. And so, then that is recognized in a similar kind of way to the way that the scriptures were, were recognized. But the scriptures continue to have a pride of place within Holy Tradition, that's expressed very concretely in our liturgical life, in our worship, where the scriptures, uh, are not only read continuously and only they are read, right, but the hymns, the, the structure of the worship itself is replete with quotations, allusions to scripture. And so, the scriptures have this guiding and shaping influence over our faith through, through that worship. And the rest of Holy Tradition can be seen as a way of reading and applying the scriptures as guided by, as guided by the Holy Spirit.

Okay, very good. Uh, Dr. Gavin, I'm going to go back to you for our third question. Uh, Sola Scriptura is, is, I, I think I've spoken with enough Protestants to kind of, I think justify my saying this, is seen as a doctrine, is seen as sort of an official teaching. So, my question is, is Sola Scriptura, as a, as a doctrine or teaching, is it of divine inspiration or of practical necessity?

I think you're on, hold on, sorry, Dr. Gavin, I think you're on mute.

Thank you. You could have just let me go and I never, I would. Thanks for letting me know. I was hearing some background noise earlier, so I put myself on mute in case it was me, because I never know if it's me or not. But, uh, yeah, that's what I did too. Yeah.

Okay, so, so I would say it's not itself of divine inspiration. It's the effort to be faithful to that which is of divine inspiration. And to that extent, it is a practical necessity because, basically, uh, we need to be guarded against errors that can creep in among the people of God. Uh, and, and in these differences, Protestant to Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the church, I think is probably going to come up to some extent here, because when, when I'm talking, especially with, at the street level or, or just in the comments of videos, you know, you, you see how differently we are approaching that issue. That plays out into, uh, what to, what extent should we expect that there will be errors in the church? Sometimes I get the impression people are thinking, none of you, but just some, as I say, just in, in, uh, in the comments and other places, that people think the church is either perfect or dead. Uh, but the church can be alive. And would agree wholeheartedly with the, with, uh, what I take to be the definition of tradition that Father Steven mentioned, of the Holy Spirit's life in the church. We believe as Protestants, the Holy Spirit has never abandoned the church. The church never died. The Holy Spirit never forsook the church. But the church can be alive even while there are errors. I, I think that's an extremely modest position that I think we could agree upon. That errors creep in among the people of God, corruptions, deviations. I use the word accretion a lot to get at the slow growth nature of these things. The church is not perfect. And when errors come in, we need some sort of mechanism for discerning them. And a, a good parallel that maybe helps someone who's trying to understand a Sola Scriptura perspective from the inside out would be looking at the Pharisees and Jesus's interaction with them. Because here you have a situation where the Pharisees have a legitimate, God-given authority over God's people to teach them. Uh, Jesus says, obey the Pharisees, you know, uh, the Pharisees end up as the bad guys, but they had a legitimate role. Jesus said, they sit on the seat of Moses, so do whatever they tell you in Matthew 23. And yet they yoked people to error. And they did that by appealing to oral tradition. Uh, they could have made the same appeal of, uh, the life of the Holy Spirit in the church. Uh, they, they said, basically, there's an oral law for Moses, even as there's a written law, and they're roughly equal in authority, is a common view that you find. And, uh, Jesus opposes them in Mark 7, not for not for having just the wrong traditions, like making an error in elevating some traditions when they should have been elevating others or something like this, but for their inflated view of tradition as such. And he says, basically, many such things you do. So, they had a tendency to elevate their traditions too highly. And the consequence is this nullifies the word of God. This mutes and tames the word of God in its power to be a corrective over the people of God. And I do think a lot of the arguments I hear at, again, at the street level, especially against Sola Scriptura, could have been arguments that the Pharisees could have made against Jesus. They could have said, look, where, where do you get that in the text? Where is it explicitly said that this is the only infallible rule or something like that? But the simple fact is the scripture is unique. And it doesn't need to sort of anticipate those later errors that the Pharisees would make. And the basic reason I, you know, at the end of the day, at the bottom line, I just want to be faithful to Christ. And, as I study church history, I, I think there are errors. I think there are things that come into the picture. I'm sure we'll probably talk about some of the areas of Protestant to Eastern Orthodox difference, things like the intercession of the saints, icon veneration, things like this. I'm just firmly persuaded these things are later errors. They're innovations and accretions and things that you can pretty clearly see are coming in slowly over time after the apostolic age is long gone. And so, when that happens, just like the people in the first century needed to measure the Pharisees' claim of oral tradition, so the people of God in the church need to measure other claims of oral tradition. Because as you study church history, you see all kinds of things are are claimed in the name of apostolic tradition, but it's very easy for the telephone game to happen when you've got oral communication. It can get garbled over time extremely easily. In fact, we see that as early as the second century. So, the, the, the concern here is, if the church claims to be infallible, because I, we, we would want to say, absolutely, the Holy Spirit's at work in the church, and the Holy Spirit is guiding the church. But if the church claims to herself be tantamount in authority to scripture itself, to the very speech of God, then we have a problem. Because now we have no mechanism for measuring when are these errors coming in? And again, the, so the intention is, we want to be faithful to God. You know, Christianity is a revealed religion. This is something God has spoken in human history. And so we want to look to that era of divine revelation and measure later developments by that time period, and specifically, most exactly, by the scriptures, because they constitute the speech of God. I'll try to not ramble on too much here.

No, Dr. Gavin, thank you for sharing that. Uh, Father, uh, Steven D. Young, any thoughts?

Well, I think, I think this gets at, I think that really, that really well gets at some of the, some of the differences we have, right? Because I think, for example, the, the danger on the other side, from not having a means to correct the church, from our perspective, maybe the difficulty would be how do we then, uh, judge between different interpretations of scripture? Um, there have been times in church history, there was a time when Arianism was ascendant, and they were making arguments from biblical passages, which of course, we now believe they were, right, misinterpreting. And again, unlike someone from a Roman Catholic perspective, I'm not saying, well, the church ruled authoritatively on this, but again, it's something that happened over time that the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, came together around the correct, right, doctrine of the Trinity. And so, while it may not have been clear during the issue, today it is clear, right, that someone who rejects the doctrine of the Trinity as laid out at the Council of Nicaea has separated themselves from, from Christianity. And I, and I don't feel bad saying that. Um, so, um, that would be, I guess, the, the flip side danger. And I think the other thing that's going to come out is a difference in our view of revelation. And I'll be corrected on this if this doesn't represent your view, Dr. Orland, but, um, from what you've said so far, and this is fairly common within Reformed areas, there's, there's an emphasis on the idea of revelation as propositional, right? As statements spoken by God that are true, right? Over against, uh, our view of revelation would be more the actual manifestation in time and space of God, right? And revelation in the truth as Christ himself, right? The person of Christ, rather than certain statements or truths. And that may be a misrepresentation. We could get into that later when we, when we talk. Um, but I think that plays out here in terms of how the scriptures are understood, right? Letter, right? This statement is a true statement within the scriptures, versus this is a statement that points us to Christ himself.

Well, thanks for those comments. And maybe I could just give a brief parenthetical, sort of clarifying remark about that, because, um, I can understand why you're saying that and where you're coming from, because there is in the Reformed tradition, sometimes you see that emphasis. On the other hand, you also have these great, uh, biblical theologians emphasizing the narrative character of scripture, like Ridderbos, Vos, people, some of these Dutch Reformed guys. I wouldn't, I wouldn't at all say it's, it's an if difference of propositional versus some alternative. That's not the contrast in my view. So, I would say the difference is the n, again, the ontological uniqueness of scripture as such. Most of which is narratival. Most of which is not, uh, is more rete and is not, is, if the Bible's anything, it's not an abstract philosophical treatise. You know, it is a story first and foremost. That's the backbone, that's the skeletal structure. Things like a epistle or law, these are the organ and tissue. So, that I think we might have a lot of agreement there. I would say with regard to maybe something we can talk through at some point, is with regard to the matter of interpreting scripture. I would say it is true, and actually it's a historic Protestant emphasis, that the church, and I'm hearing some background noise against, so I don't know if anybody wants to, I think it might be you, Father Jonathan. The little, that's okay. No problem at all. I do. Hey, we all, it keeps it lively, right? Um, but, uh, the, so historic Protestant emphasis is on the necessity of the church unto the word of God, including in so canonization, uh, preserving the scriptures, preaching the scriptures, translating the scriptures, and interpreting the scriptures. All we would maintain is that those interpretations are not tantamount to the scripture with respect to infallibility. They're revisable, they're fallible, they're not the speech of God. And, you know, the danger here is, if you say they are the speech of God, if you say the church itself is infallible, you know, the confession of De Fide says the church is not inferior to the scripture because she is likewise infallible. And if we say that, then the concern is, you know, what happens when you have something, it's great when you have Nicaea I, but then what happens when you have Nicaea II? What happens when you have something that does need, in my opinion, to be reformed, to be revised, and you're yoked under it as an immovable, uh, verdict. So, that is where the, that's where I would locate the difference.

Yeah, so, um, yeah, so if you want to add on to that, uh, Father, you can. But I did want to ask, in light of what, uh, Father, I'm sorry, I said, said Father, in light of what Dr. Gavin shared earlier about, you know, pretty much whether Sola Scriptura is of divine inspiration or practical necessity. Could you speak to the Orthodox perspective why Sola Scriptura is untenable? Like, what makes Sola Scriptura untenable from the Orthodox perspective? And I know you kind of shared a little bit, but if you want to, yeah.

I can, I can at least develop that a little bit more. Um, so there are a number of issues that we would have with it from an Orthodox perspective. And I'll try to condense this under a couple of headings. One of them, I think, is that, uh, it moves the authority from the Holy Spirit himself to the written text. Now, certainly, I, I think Dr. Orland would say the Holy Spirit's inspiration is the origin of the authority of the text, right? And the authority that stands behind it. But I think in, in the Orthodox tradition, we would want to very much keep the Holy Spirit as that locus of authority. And, uh, in terms of a biblical basis for that, I think St. Paul speaking continuously about walking according to the Spirit and even contrasting that with the letter as a way of contrasting the way in which a Christian reads and keeps the commandments of the Torah with the way a non-Christian Jewish person, specifically a Pharisee, would try to keep the commandments of the Torah. Um, that he is sort of moving past the written text to the authority that still remains within the Holy Spirit, who is, who is God himself. Um, I think one of the difficulties that I already mentioned then is judging between interpretations of, of scripture. If everything is revisable, right? So, I know Dr. Orland doesn't, or at least he just said he doesn't want to revise anything about Nicaea I. I know a person who identifies as a Biblical Unitarian, who identifies as a Protestant, most Protestants would not accept him as a Protestant, but, uh, who wants to revise Nicaea I and wants to revise it based on his reading of the Bible. And so, while Dr. Orland is located within a, a Protestant, a historical Protestant tradition that very much accepts and endorses the earlier councils and the later ones finds more problematic, uh, that division is based upon, again, a certain reading of scripture, which is appropriate if you're Sola Scriptura. But from someone outside of those circles, what is the concrete difference between what my Unitarian friend is doing with Nicaea I and what Dr. Orland is doing with Nicaea II? Uh, from someone who isn't involved in the internal Protestant discussions. Uh, and I, I think on a very practical level, and I don't mean this as a cheap shot, but I think within Protestantism in the United States and Europe, we've seen certain people take semper reformanda to an extreme of everything is always open to question, everything is always revisable. If I can frame some kind of scriptural argument, we can ordain women, we can change our views on moral issues, we can, we can do all these things. Um, and so, I, I find, and I know, one, one reason why a lot of people are coming to the Orthodox Church now is because they find the idea that nothing is revisable very attractive. Because even in the Roman Catholic Church now, it seems like just about everything is revisable. But in a worse way, because they don't even feel the need to make a scriptural argument. They can just have people in magisterial authority change their mind, uh, and issue something different and contradictory to previous statements, uh, by the magisterium. Um, and, um, so, I, I accept and appreciate Dr. Orland's clarification in terms of propositional revelation, and I, and I think that's good. And, uh, and referencing Dutch people is a good way to come close to my heart. So, um, the whole Dutch ideal at school, interestingly, this is just kind of a side, but Anthony Hoekema in particular from that school, uh, argued for starting to use Orthodox Greek, uh, theological vocabulary to get away from the Latin vocabulary that he thought was sort of stifling discussions, right? Sort of framing everything in a Protestant versus Roman Catholic way. Um, but I, so there's, there's still though, or at least maybe this isn't quite the same issue. Uh, I frequently hear, if we get very concrete about some traditional things that we believe in the Orthodox Church, say, the fact that we believe in the Orthodox Church that after the death of Christ's mother, the Theotokos, that her body was taken up into heaven. We haven't dogmatized this the way the Roman Catholics have, but this is something that we believe. Frequently, when I hear that discussed, especially in Protestant versus Roman Catholic discussions or debates, the question is all about, well, when do we have a text that says this? Right? It doesn't say this in scripture. When in history do we first get a text that says this? And I think that misses the fact that we would say that it's something that happened, right? Historically. So, the, the origin of that belief for us as Orthodox Christians would be the fact that it happened, and then that people remembered it, and at some point someone wrote about it, and at some point one of those things that someone wrote about it managed to survive to the present day, right? We don't know how many things were written about it that didn't. There might have been people who opposed it, who knows, right? But we don't know. We just have what we have. Um, and so, um, I guess that we, I want to clarify that, uh, again, this distinction that for us, tradition is, is based on something that we believe happened, that God did, that the Spirit of God did, not any of the places where it later got written down, right? Which are not scripture, right? And do not have the, and none of those writings have the authority of scripture or even authority within the church. So, that's a clar, a related clarification.

I think Luther, should I comment on those comments? Direction? Yeah, no, Dr. Gavin, your thoughts on that, go ahead.

Okay. Um, I appreciate starting off with some of your earlier comments, Father Stephen. This emphasis upon, we have that which is unrevised, and we need to be anchored upon that. I think existentially, many of us, myself included, feel a deep longing in our hearts for this anchor, uh, amidst all the turbulence of the modern world. In principle, we'll agree on that, that much. And we would say that unrevised deposit, uh, wouldn't include ecumenical councils. So, that would be where we would differ. We would say it's, it's the deposit of faith, and that, uh, we look to the scripture as the supreme North Star for how we locate that unrevised body of teachings. And then from distinguishing among the ecumenical councils, Nicaea I to Nicaea II, I would say, uh, we can do so, I would say, clearly on the basis of scripture and also the early church. I would say the deity of Christ versus icon veneration, these are very different in terms of, I mean, I, I never want to be insulting, but I would say there it's, uh, resounding in terms of the, the scriptural, uh, attestation, uh, to, to different directions on those two different issues. And I would say, I, I, people really don't like this when I say this about Augustine, um, but I would say that even, uh, a theologian of as great stature as St. Augustine of Hippo, who wrote more on church authority and tradition than all the other fathers combined, arguably, he wrote so much about it. I would say he's pretty clear and emphatic himself that the councils, even what he calls the plenary councils formed for the whole Christian world, can get it wrong and be corrected by a subsequent council. So, I think that's a, I think that's a reasonable view to say that the deposit of faith is that unrevised thing, and the councils aren't necessarily infallible or unrevisable. On Mary's Assumption, I would say the big question is, did it happen? And I, I, I appreciate, you know, the comments. It's true that we shouldn't just say, well, when's the first text we have, and then that's the, the, the only way we kind of measure this. I would say we need a holistic look at, just, should we accept this as true? And, and I would say it's not just late attestation. And my videos on this, I've talked about its appearance first in heterodox contexts, like the Book of Mary's Repose. That's the first time it comes up, and it's in a Gnostic text, which is extremely demeaning to Mary herself, as a text which we all, which offends all of us. Second of all, I would say it's the numerous counter-testimonies. People who are listing bodily assumptions to heaven, and it's always Enoch and Elijah, to the tune of dozens of times in the first four centuries of the church. Never once is Mary included in these references to all the people bodily assumed to heaven. It's, uh, when you do start seeing it come up, it's referenced as a late development. And the, like Epiphanius does his investigation, and whatever people try to say he affirmed it, I don't think he did. But even if he did, his objective findings of his research, of his search, uh, about it is, no one knows her end. So, it's, it's what's positively portrayed in the historical data. And I, uh, you know, appreciate others have a different take, but just for my conscience, trying to follow Christ, I don't think I have a reason to say that dogma is true. I, I don't think it did happen. I mean, I, you know, if someone says, I should believe this, and I should enter the one true church, which holds this, I would just say, why? You know, I don't see any evidence for it at all. It, I, I would be arbitrary if I just did that. I would just be suspending my critical faculties of thought if I said, I think the bodily assumption of Mary did happen, uh, because it, it, because the, the historical evidence for it is so, it's almost the polar opposite of the resurrection of Christ, where you have this, you know, independent multiple attestation within decades. And here it's the opposite end of the spectrum. So, that, that, that's a concern. Is it, did it happen?

Well, as we move on to our next, can I just briefly say what really, oh, yes, of course. Go ahead, Father.

Yeah. Um, so, just couple quick things. One, again, we have to always remember the first thing we have is not necessarily the first appearance, right? It's the first thing that's survived to today. Um, and in terms of things showing up in heterodox, I mean, the first place where there's a division between the, the sort of classical Protestant division between the ceremonial and civil and moral law is a Gnostic letter from the second century, right? That, that doesn't mean Calvin doing that is a Gnostic, obviously, right? No, no one sensible would say that, right? Um, but, and I just wanted to clarify again, that it's not a dogma for us. We don't say that it's a dogma. This is just something we believed to happen. And for us, it's parallel to Moses' body being taken up into heaven, which is alluded to in the scriptures, right, by St. Jude, uh, but is not stated there, but was around, you know, clearly as a tradition in the Second Temple Jewish period, and then is reflected there.

Okay. Well, Dr. Gavin, I'm going to come back to you for, for this question. And, and I was going to begin by asking, what, what's the Protestant concern with, with Holy Tradition? But let me elaborate on that question just very briefly, because what, what I hear you saying, and what I hear a lot of other Protestants, especially Calvinists saying, is that, and I know you might disagree with this particular statement, you alluded to it in the first, your first answer, is that for you, Sola Scriptura doesn't necessarily mean that it's only in the written text. I think you said something like that. Did I understand, okay, that's what I thought I heard you say. And I'm not going to hold you to it, but how do we take then the, the written text, which also does say when St. Paul says to the Thessalonians, hold fast to the traditions which I have taught you, whether by word or by letter, thereby, sort of, um, uh, blessing, if you would, the idea of oral tradition. We know St. Paul lived in certain cities for as much as three years, I think Ephesus was one of them. What did he teach these people in those three years? We only have, um, one small letter from his time there. How do we deal with Paul saying to Timothy, Paul representing the first generation of Christians, Timothy, let's say representing the second generation because of his youth and living longer than Paul did, probably, what I have taught you, teach to others, so that they can teach others. So, we've got first, second, third, fourth generation kind of being represented there. And I've often asked Protestants, wouldn't it be nice to know what that third and fourth generation were taught? Well, that's what the Apostolic Fathers are. So, if, if there is in the New Testament this affirmation of oral tradition, and there is, and I would argue that there is, how do we deal with the Protestant concern? How do we answer, how do we understand the Protestant concern of Holy Tradition?

Okay, make sure I, I'm not on mute here. Okay, yeah. Um, the, the concern here in response would be ambiguity about this word tradition. We would say that of course, uh, in the New Testament, you have oral traditions. Of course, this is during the era of public revelation, while apostles are alive. They're writing to local churches, uh, the, the Thessalonians, for example. And, you know, Sola Scriptura is not opposed to that. What it's saying is, but, but here we get into the ambiguity of the word tradition. And what we're saying is, after the apostles die, once scripture has, uh, no more scripture is being written, the apostles are all out of the picture, and the post-apostolic church is rumbling forward. Now, how do we function? Because we only have access to those apostolic traditions from that time by means of a fallible transmission process. And when the earth, so with the word tradition, when early Christians like Irenaeus appeal to tradition, they're often referring to something very modest. They're, they're not often talking about a, a separate norm or something like this, but they're often talking about what is coincident with the content of scripture. As you go forward, there are different uses of that word tradition. Martin Kempton, his eight, uh, uses of the word tradition as it's used in the church fathers, and he says only the eighth is the one that is at, at odds with Sola Scriptura. Basically, to kind of cut to the chase, what I would say is the concern from a Protestant would only be with traditions that don't have a plausible relationship to apostolic teaching and yet are commanded to be received and venerated with with equal reverence as the scripture itself. And the, the concern here is with the telephone game, with the garbling of the, uh, transmission of apostolic teaching. And again, as I mentioned this earlier, but as soon as you're, you're already getting this in the second century, where you'll have these disputes come up, and each side will appeal to apostolic tradition to ground their view. In the date of Easter controversy, this gets very heated. You've got, you know, the bishop of Rome is ready, he doesn't do this, but he's ready to excommunicate people over this dispute. Both sides are appealing to apostolic tradition for their view. And that's a relatively factual question, when did Easter happen? The third-century dispute about the rebaptism of those baptized by heretics, same thing, both sides appealing to apostolic tradition. Irenaeus, uh, he appeals to apostolic tradition for some eccentric views that very few of us would accept today, like Jesus dying as a middle-aged man, or however you parse that precisely. So, we would say, uh, there's, there's a difference between what the apostles themselves taught and that which is bequeathed to us 2,000 years later through a very fallible transmission process and a sort of generic appeal to tradition. It can become a kind of wax nose where we can just turn it to anything we want. It's very easy to make a claim of oral tradition, just as the Pharisees did with an oral law from Moses. But when we look at the actual things on the table, whether it's, we talked about Mary's Assumption for a second, and I've mentioned icon veneration, and we've talked about Nicaea II. I would just say, um, I don't think this, the claim at Nicaea II is also this is apostolic. The claim is, you know, we follow Paul and the whole apostolic company. We add or subtract nothing from the church. We follow the ancient legislation of the church. Uh, the iconoclasts are the intrusive innovators rejecting this tradition. Uh, and yet, we just want to follow our conscience because I, with all my heart, don't believe that was an apostolic tradition. I don't think the apostles did bow down before images and pray through them as a window to heaven. I think that's very manifestly a later innovation. So, this is the concern that things get smuggled in under the label of tradition because that word is defined in different ways. There's fallibility in the process of how TR, uh, tradition is transmitted. The scriptures are, come to us. There, there's no major dogmas at stake in, in the issues of textual criticism. They have more of a fixity to them. So, that's why we want to look to them as the North Star.

Dr. Gavin, you said a lot of important things. Uh, Father, Stephen D. Young, your thoughts?

Well, I think there's an issue here in terms of, uh, phenomenology, basically. Um, not the scriptures themselves, which again, I agree about the scriptures themselves, but the fact that we only have access to the scriptures by our act of reading them and then interpreting them. And that's where the fallibility enters in. The fallibility is not with the scriptures. The fallibility is with our reading and interpreting and applying them, especially when we're doing it, right, as, as individuals. And so, and I think that is, that fallibility is sufficient that we effectively end up in the same situation that Dr. Orland described regarding, regarding Holy Tradition, right? In the sense that, someone, yes, can misinterpret, can claim something as tradition. Someone can take something that the church does and say, oh, well, this is why we do it, or this is what that means, and be completely wrong.

Right, completely wrong. But someone can also read a passage of scripture and interpret it completely wrong. And groups, and, and of course, anyone who holds to sola scriptura has to accept that because they can point at, if not other Protestant denominations, they could point at the Mormons, the Jehovah's Witnesses, right? Any number of other groups, they're clearly sort of outside Protestantism and outside Christianity, uh, that nonetheless make claims that, "Oh, well, we're getting this from the Bible or that from from the Bible." So that's certainly possible, right?

Um, but I would also say, and this is something I've said about sola scriptura before, sola scriptura, I think, arose when it did in the 16th century in the Reformation because it was serving a very practical purpose, right? It was doing work for the reformers because in their concrete historical situation in the 16th century, you had falsified documents from church history that the Roman Catholic Church was using to support its claims. You had falsified and just generally false attributed works from church fathers that were being used to support papal claims. And so when the reformers say, "Look, this Hebrew text of the Old Testament from the local synagogue, we know Rome hasn't gotten their hands on it, right? We know this goes all the way back, right? And this Greek New Testament, right, that Erasmus is now published, at least the parts that the church didn't meddle with, the Roman Catholic Church didn't meddle with, right? That we got from the Byzantines fleeing Constantinople as it fell, we know Rome didn't have their hands on this either, right? So we know this goes back to, because the Old Testament even before the apostolic era, we know this hasn't been tampered with. We know we can trust this. We need to base things on this." That makes eminent sense. It makes eminent practical sense in that milieu.

Uh, part of, I think, the issue though, is that we're not in that same situation now, right? So even if we want to talk about iconography, we now have archaeologically recovered first-century synagogues in Galilee, some of the ones that Christ went and preached in, right, according to the scriptures, right, that have iconography, right? Whereas John Calvin will say there weren't any icons before the fifth century. We now know that's just not true. He didn't know, he couldn't know any better, right? He was working on what he had. But we now know that's not true.

Um, we now have, we now know and are able to assess which of these documents from church history were, were falsifications and which weren't. Uh, which texts actually go back to the fathers and which are phony, right? Um, we have a much better picture of what Apostolic Christianity, what Second Temple Judaism, especially now that we have the Dead Sea Scrolls. We have a much better historical understanding now. And so I think, and I think Dr. Ortland appreciates this to some extent because he very frequently makes historical arguments based on these things we know now, right, in favor of his positions. Um, and, and I think we have to allow the context and these things we know condition not the scriptures, but our interpretations of them, right?

Uh, or interpretations of. That's good. That's good. Um, Father, uh, I keep saying Father, Dr. Gavin, forgive me, Dr. Gavin. Um, it just, it flows out so naturally. Um, I got five kids, so it's, you're not my father though, you're my friend. Um, but Dr. Gavin, if, uh, if you may, you could, you could add a thought to what Father Steph, young, if not, I do have a final question for you. Okay. Just briefly. I think Father Steph is totally fair to point out what is a real, a genuine weakness in the Protestant world, and that's the, um, proliferation of division. Though that is often exaggerated, but it is still a very real problem in differing interpretations of scripture.

Um, but I would say though, that is different from the point I was bringing up because we do not claim infallibility for our interpretations. So it's not a falsification of our system. Whereas, uh, appeal to Apostolic tradition, that can be the case there, depending on how that appeal is made. It depends on the details. But I just want to make one quick clarification and maybe just, maybe just gesture toward this, but not develop it, and we can return to if we want. That's, uh, the issue with icons is not the presence of religious art in buildings or on the catacomb tombs or on, you know, engravings on furniture, anything like that. That's all, uh, not the issue. The issue is veneration of those images. And so that, you know, that would be the specific theology that is required and upon which anathemas are given at Nicaea II. Praying through the icon as a window to heaven, a theology of figural representation, what is given to the image passes through it to the prototype. Okay? That practice is the target there. That, that then we will, we'll need to get into in terms of the historical data for that. I'm firmly persuaded there isn't a historical case for that. I just don't, I think it's, I think it's clear that that is a late accretion, slowly coming in late in the patristic era. But I know we'll have differences on that. But I just wanted to flag, kind of, that's where we're, we'll need to kind of probe that issue. Yeah, for sure.

Um, well, Father Stephen, I don't know if you want to later, uh, address that more so in the conversation time that you guys have. Um, okay. We'll leave that there. Um, I'll just leave you guys with this final question before we go to that, that conversational time between you two uninterrupted. Um, so I know a lot of times, like, and you had a really cool six-minute video on sola scriptura, you know, the little, um, but I think one thing that is more, you know, highlighted today, more so from, you know, the historic Protestant position, is we're, we're, we're just basically saying that it's the only infallible authority. So the question that I kind of have for you both is, is there any infallible authorities outside of scripture? And I know Dr. Gavin, uh, views on that. But, uh, Father Steph, D. Young, I don't know if you want to. Yeah, I'll go first and then, and then he can respond. You know, um, because I'm pretty sure he could just do a no.

Um, so from my perspective, I think from the Orthodox perspective, the framing of the question needs to be shifted a little. In the sense that, um, again, for me, the locus of the infallible authority is the Holy Spirit. Is, is God himself, right? That is the locus. Um, there is nothing outside of scripture that is scripture. We would agree on that, obviously, right? Um, but, um, if the infallibility is with the Holy Spirit, then that authority is carried by wherever the Holy Spirit is working, right? And that includes and is preeminently the scriptures. Um, but where the Holy Spirit is working, and the way we verify that is the collective church, right, verifies that, right? I may think when I get up and give my Sunday homily, I may think, "Oh, you know, I am, I am speaking the words of, right, the Holy Spirit." And I may be horribly spiritually diluted, right? That's, I'm not in the practice. I've, I've sometimes heard even infallible pastors get up and say, "Oh, the Holy Spirit put this on my heart to say to you," and then they'll say something about the Greek that is completely wrong. And I'm like, you know, they used to stone people to death for that in the Old Testament, right? I, I wouldn't go there, um, I do not do that, right? So, but, um, and that's the check, right? So, I, I think when I'm reading the scriptures, right, and I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide me, right, to see the truth, how I find out if that happened is in consultation with the rest of the church. And if the conclusion I come to is, "Wow, the ecumenical councils are wrong," I feel like I have to humbly accept that maybe the Holy Spirit is not guiding me to that conclusion, that maybe I'm getting it wrong. Um, and, and so that, that is sort of then the, the, the check on it, right? That is the check on that authority. But wherever God acts, obviously, this is a toy, right? Wherever God acts, he acts perfectly, infallibly. It's the recognition of that where there can be some subjectivity. And I think the, the recognition of that happens through the church because a text by itself can't do that. Someone has to be reading and applying the text and comparing their reading and interpretation to another, right?

Great. That's good. Uh, let me just start by saying, kind of a parenthetical comment of just dating my appreciation for our, our dialogue right now. I actually find it really fruitful and interesting when Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians talk. Um, I'm, I more commonly do dialogues with Roman Catholics, not because I choose to, but I think there's just probably more opportunity for that that comes my way. Um, I, I'd really like to do a lot more with some of the other Eastern traditions. But, um, I think these are really great conversations and I have great respect for Father Stephen. So this, I just, I didn't say at the beginning, I just want to be really clear about that. I'm really honored to be having this conversation.

Um, just, uh, some comments on this. I mean, some areas maybe where you could find some levels of agreement. I would say the Holy Spirit works in different ways in our individual lives and in the corporate life. And so, uh, there are lots of ways that the Holy Spirit is at work, both individually and corporately in the church, that don't yield infallibility. Um, in, in my tradition, the Reformed tradition, we speak of sermons as the word of God, and we say the Holy Spirit is speaking through the preacher. Um, but we don't mean it's the inspired word of God, every word is carried, it's infallible. This is a more general work of the Holy Spirit that doesn't, is not serving as the guarantor of that specific result as we, when we think of like scripture and something like that. When it comes to the Holy Spirit's work in the church generally, I can certainly understand the, the concern here. And some Protestants, not, not the best representatives of our tradition, but some Protestants act in a highly individualistic way with respect to the Holy Spirit's work in the church. And so it, it is like, you know, "Well, who cares what, what church history says?" or "Who cares what the broader church says?" and that kind of thing. That really isn't my heart at all. When it comes to something like Nicaea II, I would say I'm agreeing with some of the other councils at that time, Hieria to some extent, the Council of Hieria, but even more so in the West, the Council of Frankfurt. And I think the Holy Spirit's at work in the Council of Frankfurt as well, uh, for my vantage point. And I would say the difference between Frankfurt and Nicaea II is a lot of politics. I would say that's a huge factor in that. The difference between Hieria and Nicaea II is a lot of politics. Empress Irene wants to do something and she does it. And that's, uh, doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but it's the point is, it's not like we Protestants are coming along and saying, "Well, who cares what the whole church does?" No, I mean, we call Nicaea II an ecumenical council as a technical term that kind of follows, uh, the, the custom of usage and what came to be recognized as such. But at the time, it was extremely political, bitterly, uh, militant, just, uh, as grizzly as people can imagine if they look into the history of what both sides, okay, this is everybody, this is not one side or the other, what both are doing, and the torture and mutilation of the bishops and monks on the other side is brutal. And so, whatever we make of that, it's not the Protestant position that we sort of reject the Holy Spirit's work in the church generally. What rather what we're saying is, um, where is that work of the Holy Spirit that is guaranteed to be infallible? Um, and, uh, so I close those comments there. I have a guy coming to my house and I'm so sorry about this, but I might need to go unlock the door and let him in and I'll be back in about 30 seconds and then I got to run up two flights of stairs out of breath when I come back too. I really apologize, guys. No, it's totally. Give me 90 seconds and I'll be right back. Go. You got it. Yeah, this is very, this is a very interesting conversation to me because there are an awful lot of things being said here that need that that we need to go back and reexamine. And I just want to let all our viewers know. He got let in on his own, so I'm good. Oh, that was quick. Okay. I just let all our viewers know that, uh, the Transfigured Lives next episode in two weeks is going to be just Luther and I going back over this discussion and giving our own analysis, our own expert interpretation and analysis of things being said and so forth. And, uh, I hope you'll all look forward to that because there's a lot of commentary that we can't provide right now because we want to keep this session moving forward, but we are going to go back and and revisit some of the things, a lot of the things that are being, uh, uh, said and discussed here. And so we'll be doing that in two weeks. So a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot of fun. So, uh, we want to move now from a kind of a Q&A that's been going back and forth to, uh, an 30 minutes of open discussion. The, the floor is open to both scholars to have a, a charitable discussion and understanding concerning the Protestant and Orthodox approaches to the rule of faith. So, um, we, we've spoken of a lot of things. This may be an opportunity to go back and revisit some of that or to bring up anything else or new items that contribute to this discussion about, uh, sola scriptura, holy tradition, and the Protestant and Orthodox views of each. So, um, whether that's in the, in the, the perspicuity of scripture, you know, perspicuity, the canon, what you guys want, or stuff that you guys mentioned before. You guys have the next half an hour. And Father, do you, Father John, you want us to just remove ourselves from the background? Let them do their thing. Yeah, we're going to, we're going to remove ourselves from the background. And we want these two fine educated gentlemen to be able to go right at it. So, uh, um, Father Stephen, I, I'll give the floor over to you first. And let's, let's do that. Sure.

Um, what to pick up on first? So, um, maybe kind of where we, where we, uh, where we just left off. I, I think it's important in terms of ecumenical councils because you point to sort of the historical, the ugly, messy historical realities, right, under the surface. And many, I mean, Chalcedon, if you ask any non-Chalcedonian group, they're gonna, they have a lot of mess they'll talk to you about there too, um, uh, behind those, those decisions. It's very important though, that what has authority in the Orthodox Church is not, quote unquote, what really happened or a historical reconstruction of what was going on on the ground, but what is authoritative is how that council was received by the church, which again, we believe was guided by the Holy Spirit. Um, so that, this is an internal thing. There are certain revisionists out on the sort of liberal fringe of of Orthodoxy, for example, who want to promote universalism and so they want to kind of relitigate the fifth ecumenical council. Well, was Origen really condemned? Was universalism really right? And the question is sort of irrelevant from an Orthodox perspective because the way that council was received by the church was as a condemnation of universalism, a condemnation of Origen, and, and that is sort of what has the authority. And I would compare that to a lot of modernist, you know, our 19th-century German friends when they try to read especially the Old Testament and try and do these reconstructions of what really happened. That's not authoritative. The text is authoritative. The way the text of scripture records those events is authoritative, not what you think actually, right, might have happened. So that's a clarification, I guess, on that and how that functions, right?

Um, yeah, and, and one little note on Frankfurt. Eucharistic adoration also emerged from Frankfurt, which is I think something you and I would both have a problem with in the Roman Catholic Church, right? So, as a Protestant, I would not be quick to endorse Frankfurt very fully. That's, yeah. Well, I mean, sometimes when I and I will point out a historical fact like this, people will say this of like, you know, I'll point out something that Augustine taught that's an undercutting claim to the opposing side, arguing from the consensus of the Fathers as though Augustine is ours, he's our father, not yours. And I'm opposing that. And then people say, "Oh, what are you saying Augustine was a Protestant?" You know? And that's, I don't approach history like that as though whether it's the Council of Frankfurt or Augustine or anything is sort of neatly on one side of the polemics that we face today. These historical realities are are messier. And a lot of times they frankly, they're going to challenge all of us, a lot of times. And for every single, and every single Christian that is alive today. So I'm not trying to appeal to Frankfurt as as infallible or wholesale agreement or that kind of thing, but I'm just trying to point out, I mean, and, and I want to agree with your point about violence too. I'm not saying Nicaea II is wrong because it was, there was politics and violence involved or something like that. That, that's true for lots of councils. That doesn't really determine it fully, though. It's good to know. But the more, more the point there is, it's not me versus the whole church. Rather, you have this seesaw power struggle back and forth between these two parties going on for hundreds of years. And it actually, in the West, is a long time before Nicaea II kind of fully is embraced everywhere. So that was more the, the general point there. I'd be curious to know, how do you know the Holy Spirit, um, is guiding the church such that Nicaea II is right and Frankfurt is wrong? How do we know this? You know, what, what specific, what is the specific grounding for that confidence? Why couldn't it be the case that just as all throughout the Old Testament, you have idolatry creeping in, just as throughout church history, we've got lots of erroneous councils, you know, we've talked about, we've got for every good council, there's a robber council. I would say there's some mixed councils, you know, the councils are are tough to adjudicate. How do you know what's the confidence to know for sure that Nicaea II didn't get it wrong and and wasn't an intrusion into the life of the church? Um, it seems to me to be a little bit of an arbitrary judgment. I mean, it's not like Nicaea, it's not like Nicaea II had more bishops at it. It's not like it was less controversial. Uh, it seems to me to be an after-the-fact judgment that could just, in fact, I would say it looks to me like it could have so easily gone the other way. You know, if Empress Irene hadn't come into power, I really, uh, it all looked like it was going towards the iconoclastic side in the decades leading up to that. So, um, I, I, I'm curious about where you find that confidence to know for sure that's the Holy Spirit's guidance rather than an innovation. Yeah.

Um, so first, most of the things you just said about Nicaea II, you could say about Nicaea I. The Arians looked ascendant in the decades leading up to it and could have, I mean, the, the, the personal chapel to St. Constantine was an Arian, and, you know, and so could very easily have have gone the other way. But I mean, ultimately the answer to that question from an Orthodox perspective is the last 1200 years of history in which those findings have been affirmed and reaffirmed and reaffirmed, not just by other councils, but in practice by what we perceive to be the whole church. And for us, that's a reflection of what Christ meant when he said, "I will send you the Holy Spirit, and he will lead you plural into all truth." Right? That, that, that is an expression of that guidance. So, yeah, it requires time. We, we can't do anything quickly in the Orthodox Church.

Um, one last little note on Frankfurt. And then back to you. Uh, it's not just that, oh, there was this thing you agree with Frankfurt said and a thing you disagree with. Those were part and parcel of each other. The, the primary theological argument that was being made by the Franks on this was that iconography could not function that way, the way that Nicaea II claimed it did, because icons were not *homoousios* with what they represented. They said the Eucharist was *homoousios* with Christ after being consecrated, and therefore that was used to justify Eucharistic adoration at the time. They just said the Eucharist is the only true icon, which again, I would have a problem with. I think you would have a problem with that's, um, and then that led to Eucharistic adoration. And so my comment was not just, "Well, there's other things that council said you disagree with," but there's bad theology at work right undergirding those, those decisions. I'm more familiar with that argument coming out of the Council of Hieria than Frankfurt, which is why I prioritize Frankfurt when I read the Frankish theologians. I mean, if I'm not, actually, I can't remember. Maybe there's things there that I am not familiar with. My awareness is their arguments were primarily on historical grounds, on, uh, other theological grounds. I mean, they're saying, you know, that the, they're basically just going on and on about about the Council of Nicaea's use of scripture and just the mangling of scripture. They're pointing out a lot of the historical falsities, you know, attributing things to Basil that Basil didn't actually say at Nicaea II. The Frankish concern with the East, I think, was far more to the extent that Eucharistic theology would come in. I would see that as just one small piece of the pie. And I'm actually, so, I, I, I feel more in line with the Council of Frankfurt, uh, than, then, um, I, I think against it. But maybe there's other things there we need to parse. But I guess on, on the broader question, if you said, "Okay, we know Nicaea II is correct because of the subsequent 1200 years and the time and so forth," doesn't this make the church a law unto herself? Because it's not all Christians who affirm the Nicene Creed who agree with Nicaea II. Like I said, it's in the 1100s and you've still got significant opposition to Nicaea II in places like Western Europe. So, you know, basically, that sounds to me like it's making the church a law unto herself, in that basically, if we agree on something and our, our church agrees on something, and then it just persists over time, we know that's right. I still don't see why we have confidence to know that. Think of in the Old Testament, idolatry comes in among the people of God, and it persists for long periods of time. I, to me, that's a, a flimsy basis for having a guarantee that something is correct or pious or true. I'm curious what you think of that.

Well, I mean, clearly, and this is something I think we agree about, if something is a clear violation of scripture, because again, I'm not trying to relativize scripture's authority in any way, right? We agree about that. And so, for example, idolatry comes in, persists, but is a gross violation of the Torah, right? And so, I mean, I think that's part of the core difference here. Is I think you see the veneration of icons as a gross violation of the scriptures, and I do not, right? So I see this as something that has not only persisted, but something that has persisted which is consonant with the theological position of Nicaea I, for example, um, and we can get into that, that, that the theology surrounding icons is based on theology that went into the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. Um, and I think that all of that is is consonant with scripture. So it's something that is consonant with scripture, comes into the church, and persists, right? Then I think we could say this is, this is the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Yeah.

I'd be curious to ask about, kind of, for, for me, when I study the issue of icon veneration, I read through the anathemas given at Nicaea II, and they're making certain historical claims. So they're claiming, I mentioned before, they're about a practice, kissing, lighting candles, deep kneeling, and bowing. The theology for surrounding this practice is very specifically laid out as figural representation, what is given to the image passes through to the prototype. So there's a very specific theology and then a claim of history surrounding that theology. And when I study the early church, I would say, you know, you mentioned like a gross violation of the Torah. I mean, I wouldn't be necessary to go that far with that language. It all, that would be necessary for my concern would be to dispute those historical claims of Nicaea II. And I would simply say, you know, look, if something's infallible, it's not going to be wrong. But this looks wrong. Uh, I, I just am really persuaded that, you know, I go through the anti-Nicene period about what Christians taught about this, and you, I just lay out the evidence, and I, I look at it all, and it's overwhelming to me. And then, you know, the responses are saying, "Well, they weren't condemning cultic use of icons as such, they were just condemning the pagan practice." And I'm like, that's not what they're saying. They're all these early Christians for centuries. I mean, you get to Eusebius, the father of church history as he's often called, and he's saying somebody's requesting an icon, and he's saying, you know, he's on the stricter side because there's a range of aniconism. So it's not all the same. It's, I'm not trying to act like everybody had the exact same view. But the idea of doing what Nicaea II commands, I don't think that's represented at all in the early church. So that would be the concern here is this really looks like not, it basically looks like the, the historical claims of Nicaea II are simply wrong. Uh, it, we don't have an apostolic practice here. This looks like it's something that just overwhelmingly from the historical evidence we have comes in in the fifth, sixth century, around this time. All the early Christians are opposing it. In the fourth century, you start to get more images, but it's, but anything like a cultic use of images and religious practice and prayer and this kind of thing is extremely controversial and opposed and so forth. So I guess I'd be curious to hear, kind of, your thoughts on the historical claims of Nicaea II, and do you think those are tenable? How do you, how do you, especially, and here's why it is so painful, is I know what they also meant by anathema because they also defined that as complete separation from God, being condemned on the day of the Lord. This is another thing that I feel like I'm getting gaslit when I point out these, not from you, but just in general, I point out these Eastern Orthodox historical claims, and then people say, "Oh, no, anathema, there it's making it sound like anathema isn't that bad." And I'm like, "Well, look, condemned on the day of the Lord, completely separated from God, that sounds pretty bad." You know? And so for an anathema to be attached to this specific set of theology that's, and in historical claims that very overwhelmingly to my conscience seems like late accretion, not apostolic practice, um, that really puts me in a bind. And at that point, I, I must respectfully and with love in my heart for Eastern Orthodoxy as a legitimate Christian church, but not the church, I must just dissent from that, from that council, on grounds of Christian precedent and on grounds of scripture. Right?

So, um, let me, let me start with, with, uh, what, what I meant by this being based in Trinitarian theology. So the, the first person, again, the first document we have that's made it down to us that uses the argument that "what is given to the image passes to the prototype" is St. Basil the Great. And he's using this to explain why Christians are monotheists. You think that's actually from Basil? Yes, yes. He's using. Play. Why? Because one of the critiques of Nicene Trinitarianism that he received was, "You're worshiping three gods," because you're offering worship to the Father, you're offering worship to the Son, you're offering worship to the Holy Spirit. I apologize. You're you're right. That's, that's Basil. You're right. You're right. In my mind, I got confused there for a second. In my mind, the concern I have is it's talking about the Trinity, and it's not image. There is the second member of the Trinity, but that principle comes from that, right? That, so if you're worshiping the Son, the Son is the express image of the Father, so that worship ultimately is going to the Father. We're worshiping one God, the Father, right? Which is how the Nicene Creed begins. Um, and so then that understanding, right, is also present in, very present in early Christian ethics, even in the pages of scripture, right? In the Orthodox Church, we just had the Sunday of the Last Judgment. So we read the parable of the sheep and the goats, right? And "whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me." Right? Man is created in the image of God, right? Whatever respect or disrespect we pay to our fellow humans, we are ultimately paying that respect or disrespect to God, right? The love or lack of love we show them, right? So it's not that loving our neighbor is opposed to loving God, right? That those are the same thing because the love we show to anyone is really showing love to God. And so I see that theology, and I see it too as being a reapplication of that to, you know, if I pick up a photo of my wife and I kiss it, right? I'm obviously not cheating on her with a piece of paper, right? I am loving her, expressing my love for her, right, through through that means. Um, I think there is that. So, but the, the reason I wanted to bring up that Trinitarian element is Eusebius of Caesarea was a semi-Arian, at least a semi-Arian, if not an outright Arian. So, so it seems reasonable to me that he would reject that theological argument, right? That he would reject that theological argument in terms of the Trinity, maybe in terms of ethics and in terms of iconography, right? That makes sense to me.

Um, my concern with some of your presentations on this has been that most of the early Christians you present who opposed iconography don't have "Saint" in front of their names for various reasons, right? Also, we have to consider that if something is a practice, right? If something is a common practice, then we would expect that the people we find writing about it are going to be the people who disagree with it, right? If something is just something that everyone's doing every day, um, they're less likely to write about it unless there's someone who comes and opposes it, right? Someone who comes and says, "You shouldn't be doing that." Well, now we have a discussion, right? And I think we apply this to, I would say that the doctrine of the Trinity was believed by the apostles, for example, right? And so, you know, well, why isn't there anything, you know, laying it out, you know, very directly? Because I don't believe the Nicene Creed is original, right? Why isn't there anything just laying it straight out? Well, no one was coming and challenging it, and then when it comes and it's challenged, well, now we have to start talking about it. Now we have to articulate this in an authoritative way, right? And say, "No, this is so." It's in, in reaction to a challenge that that gets articulated. And I would, I would present one additional piece of evidence in terms of actual veneration in the Jerusalem Talmud. It states, uh, that people lining up to kiss images is idolatry. And I would present that pagans did not do that. That's not how pagan worship worked. They didn't form a line and go kiss the idol right in the middle of the temple. This sounds to me a lot like Christian practice. Now, we could argue about whether it was universal Christian practice, whether whether it was just something that some rabbis saw some Christians in Syria or somewhere doing, right? That's, but it's at least evidence that there were some Christians who were venerating icons in that way, in the second, third century, that the rabbis said, "No, no, no, no, that's idolatry. Don't do that." Right? And at that point, it seems that Jewish synagogues still had iconography in them. So it's probably a very direct, you know, Jewish people don't do that with the images in your synagogues. And then of course, later, in reaction to Christianity, they stripped, they stripped all of those out and became extremely aniconic, more than they had been previously.

Okay, on Eusebius, think what is, what I would say is he's he's making a historical claim. So it's not just his own. The now, it might be shaped by his theology to some extent, but the way he phrases it, basically, "Who has ever heard of this?" is a tough thing to attribute to just his theology. And when there's so many voices like this, it's not just one or two, it's, it's everybody, whether they're saints or not. Um, it, it seems to me to be basically the unanimous and resounding testimony of the early church that you don't bow down before an image and pray through, through the image. And I would say getting from the Trinity, the, that what's given to the Son of God passes to the Father, or something, or anything like that, to a liturgical practice of bowing down before an icon, especially when the object of prayer may not be God, but some, some other entity, maybe Mary or a saint or something like this, that just seems to me to be, uh, to put it mildly, a, a stretch to get from point A to point B there. That the, the issue at hand, that this, the claim of Nicaea II is a historical claim that the apostles generated icons and that that's the ancient legislation of the church from which we add or subtract nothing. This is the unbroken consensus. And I just think that claim is, is, you know, I just think it's wrong. I, in the depths of my heart, I can't accept that. The Trinity, you brought up the Trinity. I would say the Trinity, I mean, you got Jesus from the mouth of Christ himself. You got baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. The building blocks are all there. I see that as a different kind of development. I would say the development in the under, there's real development, but it's this foundation that has the basic pieces. You have monotheism explicitly in the New Testament. You have, uh, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit linked in important contexts, such as the, the early baptismal formula. Um, you have explicit and repeated affirmations of deity to the Son of God. I would say that's a motif throughout the Gospels for which he's crucified for blasphemy, for forgiving sins, and so forth. It's, it's certainly clear in John, but I see it in the synoptics as as well. So you've got, you know, these basic building blocks, and then the church's understanding of that is is growing, um, in, in the technical vocabulary, in the clarity, in the, uh, opposition to heretical alternatives. But the thing is, there, you know, immediately, you're baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Okay, it's not perfectly understood, but it's there. Icon veneration seems to me to be different from that because I, I just don't see it there. Right.

Oh, I should respond to your other point about, yeah, you can, if, no, no, no. I, I talk much. You, you go. So, well, I think the bridge between that Trinitarian principle and an iconography is man being made in the image of, of God. And that that ethical, the way that plays out as an ethical principle. Because for example, in our Orthodox tradition, at a funeral, people come and venerate the body of the person, right, to pay respect to them. And again, that's not some kind of worship directed toward them. That's not, that's an honor, right? And we, and we believe it's appropriate because, right, this is, this is the image of God, right? Um, so, I mean, ultimately, the historical question, we can't solve without a time machine, right? In the sense that if we had a time machine, we could go back, we could go to a church of the second century and see if they're kissing icons or not, right? Settled, right? But, but again, you know, the, the, the unanimous part, right? A couple of conditions is that one is, we always have to condition all of our statements on this by from the documents that we still have, right, available to us today. Um, this appears to be so. I think it has to be conditioned by who those documents are from. Again, there's an awful lot of people on the list opposed to icons who don't have "Saint" in front of their names because they, they were dissident in other areas, meaning they were possibly dissident in this area, whether it was directly connected or not. Um, Eusebius makes some fairly wild claims. I think in the case of Eusebius himself, for example, he says that St. Photine, who is the Samaritan woman who Christ spoke to at the well, in in St. John's Gospel, made a statue of Jesus that was still there to that day. I don't think that's accurate. I don't think that happened, right? He, he makes claims like that. That's certainly a historical claim that's even one related to iconography. Um, he invents John the Presbyter to be the author of Revelation because he didn't accept it as scripture and tries to parse a quote from Papias that we don't have the context for to try to make that real. Um, Eusebius was highly theologically motivated in how he framed history. And that's, that, I think that example of John the Presbyter is a good example because it's, "I reject the Book of Revelation, therefore it can't have been written by an apostle, therefore I will come up with a way to say there was this other John who wrote it so I can reject it while still accepting St. John's Gospel and at least the first Epistle of St. John as scripture." Right? That, that's a theological motivation to reconstruct history. So I think Eusebius in particular is is pretty problematic in that, uh, in that way. Um, so I, I think, you know, um, when we can see, okay, here's all the theology, here's why they would venerate icons, here's why it would be acceptable. Who clearly it was a practice because the iconoclasts rose to oppose it, right? So at least by that time it was a practice, right? Yeah, right. Um, and there are at least hints like from the Jerusalem Talmud that there were other Christians doing it. But when we say the whole church, right, obviously we're, we're not excluding that they were dissidents, right? So when we say the whole church believed the doctrine of the Holy Trinity at Nicaea I, we're not denying that there were Arians. We're not even denying that at one point the Arians were more numerous, right? There were dissidents, sure. And the Arians were more numerous at certain points than the, than the Trinitarians, right? But what we're saying is the faithful church, right, which may have been a faithful remnant, which may have just been St. Athanasius, though I think that's exaggerated, right? They held to the doctrine of the Trinity. I, I'm making a different claim when I, when I see the Hieria. You know, in other words, another way I could phrase it, maybe, is to say all the evidence that we have and if, favors the view that any sort of cultic use of images was resoundingly rejected by Christians for the first 500 years of church history. If you don't like Eusebius, chuck him out the window and just go with everybody else, okay? It's everybody. It's everywhere. It's resounding. It's clear. It's bright. If there's, is vague there, right? So some of the theology of Nicaea II, bow down to images and pray through a window to heaven, that is resoundingly rejected. I would say if there's anything we know about the early church, we know that's not what was happening. That that is as clear as anything about the early church in my. I profoundly, I profoundly disagree with that. I think the, can you name any from dissenters? Can you name any advocate of icon veneration before 500 AD? Well, what do, what do you mean by advocate? Someone who expressly describes that particular practice and says, "This is good, and we should all do it." Says anything remotely positive about it? Well, I, I don't think there was a need for that if it was the general practice. Okay, well, that seems to me to be assuming the very consequence we're trying to get. But that's, that's this is part of the ethos of how the church fathers work and the councils work. Well, you got two dozen people all opposing the practice. Wouldn't it need to be defended? Well, and it, and it begins to be. But if those people are people who have been excluded from the church, so Tertullian was excluded from the church for whole other reasons, right? Even if you think Tertullian was right about iconography, he was wrong about a whole bunch of other things. And you don't find a ton of people refuting Tertullian's other errors. He was a monist. He's outside the church, right? So we don't need to go in and refute him about iconography. We've already settled this. He's outside the, he's outside the church. Well, let me just make one final comment, and I know we're near the end of the time, but the concern I have is inconsistency in how historical claims are made because there's a, on the one hand, there's historical claims made from the Eastern Orthodox Church at Nicaea II, for example, that we've mentioned, and also in general, there's this appeal to be the one true church. But then when there's, I would say resounding counterevidence to a particular claim, then there's, you know, "Well, we don't have all the information." "Well, something didn't need to be opposed yet." There's all these kind of qualifications. And I, I guess I just feel that there's an inconsistency in how history is being wielded at that point. And I would just go back and just respectfully state, I, I don't think there's anything in the ballpark of, uh, anything, any sort of evidence or reason to think that early Christians before the year 500 AD, frankly, we could push that date a little bit actually, bowed down before images and prayed through them as a window to heaven. I, I just think the evidence is against that claim. And I think reactions to that feel like they're trying to get around the evidence because, I mean, fine, take Eusebius and Tertullian off the table. It's still everybody else, you know? You see what I'm saying? It, it's everybody, it seems to me. So that, that's my final comment.

Yeah, well, I'll, I'll just say, um, and this maybe is on behalf of my Unitarian friend. He makes substantially the same argument about the doctrine of the Trinity, right? Well, and I've explained already why I, I see the Trinity. No, I know, I know. But I'm just saying, he, on the historical level, in terms of the historical argument, right? Terms of theological argument, I totally agree with you. But he makes the same historical argument. He says, "Show me somebody who is teaching the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity before Nicaea II." Or show me, right? He makes those same kind of. Can you offer me any proof that from a church father in the second century where he defines it the way Nicaea defines it? Right? It's like, well, but that's not the argument I made. That's not the argument I made because I said, you know, in the New Testament itself, we have all the pieces for the Trinity. So I would make a distinction in that way. And I think we have the building blocks for the veneration, the veneration of icons, the principle that the honor paid passes to the prototype, etc., etc. I think we have those building blocks there too, right? But you are asking me for more than just where are the biblical building blocks for this. You are asking me for historical account that this was happening. Yeah. It, we just differ on whether that's a building block or whether that would be a building block for that. But, but let me just say, Stephen, Father Stephen, I hope I didn't interrupt too much or press you there at the end, but I, I really appreciate the conversation. I know we'll differ on a lot of these things, but I'm, I'm enriched by it and I, so thank you.

Well, thank you both. Father Stephen, Dr. Gavin, it's been an honor and a pleasure having you on our podcast, and it has been absolutely fascinating listening to both of you go back and forth. And, uh, interestingly enough, finding agreement on points here and there. I think that's important. I know that when I speak with with anybody who's not Orthodox, I do try and find not what we disagree on first, but what do we agree on? Where are the common agreements? And what can we build out from based on those common agreements? So, it, it was good to hear in this back and forth that there were times when when both of you said, "Yes, I can see and I can appreciate that," or agree, or whatever. So, I, I'm encouraged to, um, uh, to hear that from both, both of you. And, uh, on behalf of Luther and I, we want to thank you again for being here. Uh, to all of our, um, um, subscribers, and we hope if you're watching, uh, this episode and you're not subscribed yet, please do. You'll get automatic notifications of when our new episodes drop and other things. Um, but to all of our viewers, know in two weeks, Luther and I are going to go back and do an analysis of this, uh, discussion and put our own thoughts and, um, things like that into the, into the things that were brought up. Father, if I could jump in, that was fun. Uh, you know, both of you guys are both class personified. So appreciate you guys having this discussion. U, you know, I know I forget who mentioned it between you two, like, usually the, the conversation is more so on the, you know, the Roman Catholic and the Protestant. And it's, it's refreshing to see more, you know, Orthodox conversations, you know, on the table. So, uh, definitely appreciate you guys. I don't know if you guys have, uh, you know, any, any parting thoughts. I, I do want to plug some of the stuff that you guys are doing, some of the work. I know, uh, Dr. Gavin has, uh, you know, "What It Means to Be Protestant" popping out in, I believe it's August of of this year, right? That's right. Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. Yeah, book coming out, "What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Ever-Reforming Church," that's coming out in August of 2024 from Zondervan. And then people could check out my YouTube channel, Truth Unites, for other things. Stay in touch with me for sure. And, and Father, Father Steph D. Young, any, any cool things you're working on right now? Well, I can only semi-announce this because the details are coming into shape, but sometime this fall, Lord willing, uh, I've got a book on, uh, St. Paul coming out, uh, that Dr. Ortland probably won't like, uh, but, or at least we'll disagree with. He might like it and just disagree on a bunch of things. Um, but, uh, I've got some other books out, you can find those. Uh, I've got a couple podcasts, "The Whole Council of God is My Parish," Bible study going verse by verse through the Bible, and, uh, "Lord of Spirits" podcast, people have probably heard of, uh, that I co-host. Um, and a bunch of other things. But that's, that's, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, no, I look, I look forward to that, that book coming out, St. Paul. I appreciate you, uh, down in Miami, you signed this for me there, uh, Father Lucas' Church. No, that was great. Well, guys, thank you so much. Um, you know, we really appreciate it. And, uh, yeah, I mean, we look forward to, you know, future, future conversations. So you guys have a, a blessed one. Thanks. Meet you. Thanks, Father Jonathan. Thanks, Father Stephen. Really grateful, honored to be involved.