Reformed Baptist Or Orthodox? Which Is True? | Fr Jonathan Ivanoff | Jayni Jackson

Hey, what's going on? Welcome to Cleave to Antiquity. My name is Ben and today I'm joined by two very special guests. Father Jonathan Ivanov, welcome back to the show.

Thank you, Ben. Good to be back. Thank you very much for having me on.

Absolutely. And then remind me the pronunciation of your name.

Yeah, Janai.

Janai. Okay, perfect.

I was paying attention when I asked him that question. Next. There you go. So, uh, Janai, you're a reformed Baptist, correct?

Yes. Yes.

Why don't you, uh, kind of introduce yourself to the audience and then, uh, Father Jonathan, we'll we'll, I'm sure everybody knows who you are, but we'll we'll do an introduction for you, too.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I have uh, you know, I always been a Protestant. Um, I haven't always been in the Reformed Baptist uh, tradition within Protestantism. Um, but I I've as I've grown older in my life, I've kind of drifted definitely that way. Um, and so that is the current stream of of the particular tradition that I find within Protestantism that I feel like it's is the most faithful to the Bible. I'm not saying it's perfect, but you know, I'm convinced that it teaches a lot of great truths um uh that we find in sacred scripture. And so, you know, currently what I do is I I currently host a very small channel that actually goes by my name. Um, and my goal in that channel is really to kind of distill theology uh for what I call the least of these. My my channel uh podcast name is the Least of These Podcasts. And so because I I know typically in these conversations, uh, theology can almost be reserved for like the clergy, the the the Bible nurse, as I like to call them. Um, and I want to try to make it as simple for people and as understandable for people. And lately, you know, I've kind of found myself delving a little bit more into these uh, I guess you would say ecumenical dialogues. Uh, that's what they like to call it. You know, I've been talking with uh different Catholic apologists. I I just actually finished my conversation with Keith Nester, who is fantastic, by the way. I did one conversation with Joe Heshmire U from Catholic Answers, also um an amazing guest. Um and I'm happy to do my first, you know, Orthodoxy, uh you know, uh you know, have this type of dialogue. Um I've always been kind of interested to know what Orthodoxy teaches on this or that issue. I have a general idea, but I was like, what better uh thing to to have the the incredible uh privilege to to kind of learn about Orthodoxy from an actual Orthodox priest, you know, that's always amazing. So, yeah, I appreciate you, Ben, for having me on. Um, and also you, Father, uh, Jonathan, for being able to participate in this conversation.

Absolutely. Father Jonathan, you want to introduce yourself?

Uh, I'm Father Jonathan Ivangh. I am a Orthodox priest located in Long Island, New York at a church called St. John the Theologian out in a town called Shirley. And as I like to say, and only older people will get this, unfortunately. On on Long Island, we have four temples, as we like to call our our churches. There's the East Meadow Temple, there's the Seaccliffe Temple, there's the Dicks Hills Temple, and then there's where I am, the Shirley Temple. Okay, so enough of the bad jokes for now. Um, I've been there for 33 years. I was ordained one Sunday and I I went to St. John's the following weekend.

I'm saying there's an echo. Can you Janie, can you see if your computer volume is too loud?

Yeah.

Is the audio coming through your computer speakers or your headphones?

My uh my audio is coming through my uh

Not your input, your output.

Oh, yeah. It's coming through my my output is going through my speakers. So, I mean, not my speakers, my headphones. But give me one second. I need to plug in my camera before it dies. Give me one second.

Okay.

Yeah. Go ahead. Well, the echo is when Father Jonathan speaking, but that shows that uh

Let me try it again, though.

Tab open.

Do Do you hear the the the echo now?

When I'm speaking,

What do you guys think? Do you hear the echo now?

See, I'm not hearing it.

Yeah, I don't hear it either.

Oh, we can blame Jay then. Are they saying yes, they can hear the echo? Here, hold on. Let's try this now. Try speaking. Just follow Jonathan.

Okay. Uh, talking, talking, talking. Speak, speak, speak. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.

How about now? I just muted him so we can tell if it's his side or not.

Okay.

Hold on. You guys let me know in the chat.

Okay, everybody, let us know in the chat. Do you still hear it echoing? Only when Father John talks. Okay. So, let me let me let me try these and see if this helps.

You don't have a YouTube tab open, do you, Father Jonathan?

A what tab?

YouTube tab.

YouTube? No, I don't believe I do, but I can certainly check right now and see um if I do. No, just Bible gateways on. Um, chat, are you It's fine now. Okay. All right. So, let's uh let's hope that's the way to do it. Here. Try

Good.

Father, I'm gonna mute my mic and see if it's maybe me.

Okay, let's try it again. If we're talking, does the chat here? Um, chat, chat, chat. Do you guys hear an echo there? Well, it's not terrible, but it's still there. It's still going. It was cleave. Oh, it's someone says it was now that cleave is muted, it is no more.

Okay. So, they're saying it's me. Interesting. I wonder why it would be doing that now. All right. Well, we'll go ahead. We'll go ahead with the conversation. Uh, try talking now. I just want to make sure that everything is good.

Okay. Well, well, I was saying I'm a priest out here on Long Island and been here for 33 years. Originally from California. So, I'd like to say a shout out to all my homies from Los Angeles. It's been a long time since I've been there, but uh California really made me the kind of guy I am today. So, there we go.

Very nice. All right. So, uh I'm gonna mess up your name every time. I want to say I want to say Janie, but it's not Janie. You're muted.

Jai Jai.

Yeah, it's he Father Jonathan actually got it. But you could just say Jay like that's that's all right.

Can I some of us pay attention to our guest? Put it that way. Okay, there we go.

You're good.

Mr. Jackson, how about that?

Yeah.

Nice.

Absolutely.

So, you're so you're a you're a reformed Baptist. What um what what do you like about the reformed Baptist tradition? What drew you there?

Yeah. So I I believe that one I I'm convinced of of course the Baptist um uh position on baptism. So that's one reason. However, I I think I've become the most uh convinced of of course the reformed uh tradition on things, right? So obviously as Protestants, we believe in the five solas. you know, we're saved by grace through faith uh in Christ alone for the glory of God alone. Uh of course, holding to scripture alone as our ultimate authority. Um but more so in terms of reformed theology, uh I am convinced of like Calvinism for an example, I think that accurately depicts what scripture actually teaches. And so, um, that, you know, I guess you would say the reformed Baptist position kind of encapsulates everything that, you know, you know, I'm currently convinced of, you know. Um, so that's what I would say has truly drew me into the reformed uh tradition. Again, current when I first started out, I started out in more of a Pentecostal uh more hyperarism, if you will. Um, but then, you know, once I grew up, of course, was able to choose my own, uh, church tradition, things of that nature, um, I was introduced to RC Sproul. You know, RC Sproul really captivated me. He was able to break a lot of things down. Of course, for me, I don't just listen to, okay, what makes the most sense. I'm always like one of the things I appreciate about uh the tradition that I grew up in as it relates to like the Pentecostal type tradition is that you know we all were always taught to see exactly what scripture says right so like okay yes you can hear your favorite teacher but like actually go back check what they're saying um and see if that actually lines up with what the Bible is actually saying if that makes the most sense of course um I'm convinced that none of us will ever get that down perfectly. Um, but I do think the scriptures teach uh a lot of clear teaching. Um, that pretty much everybody, as long as you're willing to come to the text, actually challenge yourself, things that nature um because it's not exactly like the Calvinistic, you know, uh, understanding is exactly popular or booming. In fact, we're probably one of the most hated people in the Christian tradition um there is. So, you know, it certainly wasn't for his popularity. I would tell you that. Uh, you know, it was really because I just became convinced that's exactly what scripture teaches. But yeah.

In in what way in particular? Just the predestination bit.

So, no. Um, I mean, pretty much all of the the five different aspects in the tulip, right? Total depravity, you know, I believe that we are are dead in our sins, right? Um, and so I don't look at dead in our sins as merely uh just kind of like, oh, we're kind of sick, but actually dead, unable to revive ourselves. We need a uh miraculous work of the spirit, a regenerative work of the spirit for anybody to be made alive. Um I think we're all, you know, by nature uh children of wrath as Paul says. And um we love darkness. That's exactly what of course our Lord and Savior says in I believe John chapter 2. You know, the light has come into the world. We weren't able to to love the light because we loved our darkness. And so we it's because we had that heart stone. I don't know if I'm gonna necessarily go through all the five points, but like

Sure you you became you basically became convinced of tulips. You think that's that's what the scripture entails. I think one of the

You know because this is something that back I don't know if you know anything about me, but I used to be a non-denominational pastor. We would have discussions on you know reformed theology. We'd have you know discussions on charismaticism. I was against both of those things. That's both your backgrounds. It's kind of interesting. Uh but one of the things that I thought was helpful in the discussions on predestination because I think it can get confusing for people especially if they if they're taking just the Romans verses and they're running with that in order to reinforce their idea of tulip. The real line of delineation is are we predestined in accordance with God's fornowledge or is it capricious predestination? That's the real line of like delineation. Now, when you say capricious, what do you mean by that?

Just it's it's just, hey, you know, I decided eeny meenie miny. That's how we're going to do it. It's it's well, you what what they would word it more romantically. It's his it's his sovereign will to send little Timmy to hell and little Billy to heaven. It's his sovereign will. It's un it's unknowable why. Uh but it's ultimately not based off of anything they did. It's just this was predestined from uh you know before all ages etc. Yeah.

Yeah. Um and obviously Father Jonathan if you want to ever chime into any of this let let us know.

Well, believe me, I'm ready. But you go ahead.

Whatever you want, Father Jonathan.

Yeah, exactly. I I I want to make sure I'm respectful of you. But yeah, I appreciate that. We um what we would say is that ultimately right um anything that happens in this world because first we would start with just God's sovereignty right there's nothing in this world that happens that God is not aware of right I know a lot of people have the debates as it relates to like free will like how much uh you know control do do we have um again I like to just echo whatever scripture says says right I think scripture has made it absolutely clear that um if a person is saved it is first and foremost because of God's uh regenerative regenerative work right um you have to be born again um not everybody is born again those who are born again is because you know God uh you know gave them to the son of course the son keeps them and then he raised up up on the last day when Jesus was actually talking to the Pharisees and they were mumbling against him, you know, how does he call himself the good shepherd and all this stuff. And Jesus says, "Hey, you don't have to mumble amongst yourselves. Let me explain to you why you're not why you see me and hear me but don't believe. It's because you're not my sheep." I know that's a very hard pill for a lot of people to swallow. It's a very hard pill for me to swallow. Um, again, it wasn't like Calvinism was this like shiny.

Let me let me let me chime in here if I can.

First of all, you you say um that that you simply believe what scripture says.

So do the the other people who are part of the take your pick 20,000 30,000 40,000 different Protestant denominations. How do you know Jay that your interpretation is the correct one? Now, let me let me go on a little bit further uh before you answer. Ju just to kind of bring some things up. Um I watched your your video the other day, what Protestants mean by justification by faith alone. Uh you you had the clip from from Jay and Tucker at the beginning, that one. Mhm.

And there's something uh I I really would like to reference that that as we go through this this time together because you say a lot of things in there that uh we agree with that you present as things we don't agree with. And one of the things that I think you have to take into consideration is you you say things like, you know, when when you Orthodox think this or when you Orthodox believe that and you start referencing people like Jay or others that are on the apologetic side with us and then you know talking to folks like you. I think what you forget is when you look at people like Jay,

When you look at people like Ben, I should turn this way. He's over here. When you look at people like FA Father uh Steven D. Young, Father Andrew, Steven Damik, uh, Alex Saurin, uh, me even a little bit. All of us were in not only for a while the Protestant church, but I think all of us were in the reformed tradition for the most part. I spent my formative high school years and the first two years of college in Protestant reformed churches, Presbyterian, Campus Crusade for Christ. Oh, they'll be screaming and shouting over non-denominational. No, you guys were were Calvinists. I know. I was in it for a while. uh Intervarsity. Most of these things were were not only Protestant but reformed Protestant theology churches or or parurch organizations.

So these Orthodox apologetics uh uh people that we have um talking with guys like you and others and whoever, they came from the place that you are,

Right?

They're not Orthodox sprung from the ground from the cradle that have never met you, you know, folks like you or been in your church ever. They not only were in your church, many of them were pastors of your churches.

So when you say you guys don't understand, oh Jay, believe me, we understand very well. That's why we left it because we came to understand it very well.

Yeah. Okay. So here's what I would generally say. Like I understand um, you know, Jay claims to have come from you know, the Protestant tradition more specifically the reformed tradition um Ben comes from Protestantism etc etc. Uh, generally speaking, what I usually say is that, uh, referring more specifically to what Jay was talking about, um, you know, he was critiquing necessarily the Protestant understanding of doctrine of justification by faith alone and saying that it was merely a nominal, right, uh, understanding, right, that nothing really happens for the believer. you're just kind of like, "Oh, God looks at you, he says, okay, you're justified." And uh now granted, if that's not how Orthodox understand Protestants, that's one thing. Um, however, there were a lot of I don't know if you were able to to check out the comment section in there. There were a lot of Orthodox who was like, "Yeah, I don't I don't see anything that Jay said that was wrong." And I was like, well, historically speaking, Protestants talk about faith much more than just like,

Well, to just to clarify that, it seems like you misunderstood what he said because all he was saying was Luther borrowed from ideas of nominalism to comprise his theological views. It's not that Protestants in to believe and affirm that they are nominalists. Almost every Protestant denomination would deny the claim of being nominalism. The claim was very specific. He was citing a Lutheran theologian that was writing a uh writing a peer-reviewed paper.

Uh discussing Luther's use of nominalism and his theological views. It was a very specific claim.

Well, even even with that, now granted, I don't necessarily want to go down this road, but I actually looked at even that kind of claim. I mean, did Luther have uh some association with or some contact with I believe his name was William I forgot what his last name is but um he was popular in uh uh promoting and promulgating the nominalist idea at that time and Luther of course went to a kind of nominalist uh influence uh university but it's one thing to say that Luther's theology was, you know, influenced by nominalism in that more technical sense. And there's another thing to say that, you know, Luther had some connections with him because if you look at Luther's writings, he pretty much every time that he had an opportunity, he went against anything and everything that the nominalists were kind of teaching at that point. Um I think the positive now again I don't necessarily want to go down this route but I think the thing that I would caution so many people who would posit that theory and I know it comes uh uh he's getting this information from a Lutheran uh scholar but one of the things I would tell people is that you would have to uh show and demonstrate that Luther whenever he started to articulate the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone that he's not primarily um operating from the text of scripture, you know, whether it's Galatians or Ephesians or Romans, uh because whenever I look at Luther's writings, it looks like he's just trying to follow Paul's line of reasoning through and through. Now, we can ultimately disagree about that, but I think that would have to be the fuller claim. you know, maybe we can go in back and forth about that particular aspect of whether or not Luther was, you know, borrowed a lot of categories from the nominalist, you know, understandings and

Can I can I interrupt you for just a second?

Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead.

While what you're saying may be interesting, it's you're not responding to what I said. And when what I said was you seem to think we Orthodox don't know what we're talking about. And what I said was that practically all of our apologists who are online and who are fairly well-known are all converts from the Protestant religion. I don't know of anyone that comes from Roman Catholicism, for example.

And even though I was cradle, I as I said a few moments ago, I spent six rather formative years amongst the Presbyterians and and the evangelicals. So when you say in your video that we kind of misunderstand the Protestant standing and all of this kind of thing, we don't misunderstand it. We understand it very well. And that's why we all left it. And that's why we all embraced Orthodoxy. And that's why, wait, hold on a second. And that's why people by the tens of thousands, and I can back that number up, are converting to Orthodoxy nowadays because they are examining what you guys say. They're examining what we say, and they're evaluating, going back to the scriptures, and saying, "You know what? We think the Orthodox have the point here. So, uh I just want to caution you in your videos about assuming that we don't understand. This is my my point. I want to caution you about thinking that we don't understand the points that you Protestants are trying to make. My point would be I think we understand them very very well. Now, if you want to then start talking about some of these assumptions and things like that, I think that video that I referenced, the one you did was actually kind of a very interesting video. Um, and I I I enjoyed listening to it. I really have to say that truly. Uh, you were talking about about justification by faith alone. Remember that one?

Yep.

Okay.

I remember.

So, before I continue, I just want to give you the opportunity to respond. What what I was saying had nothing to do with Jay or or you were thinking of William Aam for example.

Yeah. Or or things like that. What I was trying to say is we understand the Protestant position pretty darn well because most of us have come from it. Now, how would you address someone who is thinking of leaving Protestantism in the same way all of these other guys did and coming over to Orthodoxy and listening to the guys that were Protestant and that are now Orthodox going, "Yeah, I believe the same thing. I see it the same way you guys do." What do you say to them that they don't understand?

Well, I I wouldn't necessarily start with they're not understanding. So, what I would generally say and and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't remember me uh necessarily cast an orthodoxy in totality. I I think I tried to frame the um discussion as like it doesn't seem like Jay was maybe understanding. Again, maybe I'm wrong about that, but if I extend it more broadly to every Orthodox person, my apologies there. Um, but

You didn't do that, Jay. Not in the video I saw. You were talking about justification by faith and you thought that we just didn't understand what the Protestant position on that was. In all fairness, that was what it was just that one area in the video that I saw.

Yeah. So, you know, but but what I would No, no, actually, let me remind myself of your question that you ended with. Uh, what was the question that you asked me? No, it wasn't a question so much as I just was was saying to you that don't assume that when orthodox get on and do a podcast about some Protestant position that we don't know what we're talking about.

Yeah. So, what I usually uh delineate because I think you end it with okay, what happens if a person goes to orthodoxy?

I'm sorry that question. Yeah.

Yeah. From Protestantism, like what do I kind of assume about that person? And generally speaking, I don't assume anything until you say something like, you know, let's say for instance, this is what I usually see in my comment section. Um, granted, is this representative of orthodoxy or whatever the case may be? No, not necessarily. But like let's say if I get a comment from an Orthodox believer and they're like, "Oh yeah, Orthodoxy or or or we believe that um, you know, the when Protestants say justification by faith alone, they're talking about you're justified just because you're you merely assent to kind of like a group of facts." And I'm like, "No, that's not what we mean by justification by faith alone." Now, and so that's where I would tell someone more specifically the minute and then if they say, "Oh, I came from Protestantism." And I'm like, "Okay, I understand you came from Protestantism." I'll even grant you though that uh from the Protestant background that you came from. Let's say you came from a non-denominational church that claims to be broadly Protestant. That maybe that's how what they taught. Although personally I would say you would need to kind of show that demonstrate that that's actually what they teach. But I'll even uh grant you that that's actually what they taught you that all you have to do is uh mentally assent to a couple of facts boom you're saved. You don't even when it comes to like once saved all always saved. You know, a lot hear a lot of Orthodox Christians that would tell me like, "Oh, so what you're saying is that all I have to do is mentally ascend to a couple of facts and then I can live however I want and then boom, I'm going to make it to heaven." I'm like, "No, no, that's that's not what we we mean." Again, you could say that you came and you were taught this specific thing. I can say okay now what I need you to do is show me that that is historically what Protestantism has taught right um and I'm not saying that what is Protestantism has historically taught as it relates to baptism obviously there's a disagreement about that but every Protestant tradition whether it's Lutheran Anglican whatever the case may be we all teach the same thing as it relates to uh the doctrine of justification by faith alone right um that is not a merely a mere assent to a couple of facts, right? We all explain that uh the five solas the exact same way. And so in those areas that every Protestant uh did historically uh agree and does historically agree, again, you can make some exceptions for this like liberal Protestant church or whatever the case may be, but I'm talking about the historical sources. If you can show me where historically we have articulated doctrine of justification by faith alone as mere intellectual assent and be like all right so I think that they you know you know this tradition or whatever the case may be has gotten that part wrong or whatever the case may I don't think you're going to be able to demonstrate that because every uh catechism every coun uh not council uh every uh what is it called creed things of that nature they all say the same same thing as it relates to how justification by faith alone is defined. And so what I was kind of commending

What well what Jay excuse me I just want to clarify two things with you two two things first before we go on. Number one, would you agree?

Mhm.

That what you keep calling Protestants is a very very wide spectrum of belief in which there is incredible differences on many many topics.

Yes, I would agree that we have incredible differences on different topics. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay. So what what what we probably could be focusing on uh in in our discussion tonight would be the what I would suggest we focus on perhaps is the reformed side because that that's your tradition. Um it's the tradition that that many of our apologists come from and things like that. Um, so if if we could if we could just kind of clarify that because I know for example if you start talking about the Anglicans or the Lutherans or the the Methodists or or whoever uh sometimes we're going to come across now you also keep uh you you mentioned in your um I think you mentioned in your video I probably have it the minute second mark down here someplace. Um you believe in what the scriptures teach, right?

Yeah. Yep.

Okay. I would like you and and you've been talking about the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. Right. That that's the phrase you used.

Right. Right. Yeah.

Okay. Fi tell me in the scriptures where it says that we are justified by faith alone.

So I think this is where I always encourage people to use the same nuance that we have with any other doctrine.

Wait, wait, wait. You're not answering the questions. Where in the scriptures does it say we are justified by faith alone?

I got I got you. I got you. But what I'm what I'm doing is just explain this because I know one of the things I also made a video on is you know of this kind of what I don't believe is a very persuasive uh critique of the doctrine of justification by faith alone where it's like okay where do you see the word alone like scripture alone grace alone Christ alone or something like that and what I typically encourage people is that like hey where do you see the trendy you're not going to find the trendy However, you will find the concept. And so, what I generally point people to is like Romans chapter 4, Galatians chapter 2, Ephesians chapter 2, right? Where Paul in each and every one of those chapters make it unmistakably clear that we're justified uh by faith apart from works, right? Um, and so if we're justified by faith and the word the phrase there is apart from works, my question is what does that mean? You know, if it means apart from works, that means whatever is considered works is excluded from your justification. That of course just leaves faith. He mentions two sides of the equation. You you leave out apart from works that leaves you with faith. If I say that you're justified by um I'm trying to think right now. If you're justified by belief and apart from any other thing that you do, then that just means that well I'm justified by belief alone. You're not going to see the word alone, but you're going to see that's the logical uh consequence of or or or you know that's the logical conclusion. There you go. That's the word I was looking for of saying apart from this. You know what I mean? So I guess

So in your understanding of the of the Protestant reformed tradition when at what point does justification occur?

Yeah, I I would say justification occurs whenever someone places uh saving faith in Jesus Christ. So whenever that moment occurs, right, that's when you're justified before God.

Okay. Is that when someone believes in their heart that Jesus Christ is Lord and that God raised them from the dead? Or is it when they're baptized? Or is it when they're sealed with the Holy Spirit at at prismation? Or at what point actually does that really happen? At what point can a Christian say I am saved? I am saved or I have been saved.

Yeah. So what we would typically distinguish is more broadly salvation uh which I think is is much more broad than just justification. So justification is that moment when someone has placed their faith in Jesus Christ for their salvation. That's when we say somebody is justified. So that typically happens before baptism uh before you partake of the Lord's supper which I would call the Eucharist before

Okay wait so so if someone if someone uh at at some point in time uh says oh I I I've come to the point where I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God and and and he's Lord and Savior and and uh he was crucified died rose from the dead and so forth just like the Bible says if anyone confesses these things they are saved. Are they a Christian at that point?

Uh yeah, absolutely.

And if they never get baptized, do they remain a Christian for the rest of their life?

So this is where I would make a distinction, right? So even though that's where we say that's where you are justified, we don't believe that saving faith is just this abstract concept, right? We believe that the person is truly regenerated, right? So uh this is where

Do you believe in baptismal regeneration?

No, I don't believe in baptismal regeneration. But every uh Christian believes that you are regenerated. Uh whether we

Wait if they don't believe in regeneration at what point if they believe in it at what point is regeneration taking place if not at baptism?

Uh the regeneration can take place before you place uh your saving faith. So God first regenerates you. This is more so the reform uh ordered salutas if you will. I'm sorry to interrupt, but maybe you might have to then explain what you mean by regeneration because it may be different than how we mean it.

Yeah. So, this is where you go from the harder stone if if we have Ezekiel 36. Um I I love go to that passage because that's where Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, we all agree that's passage is the promise of regeneration. And in that passage, uh God says that, you know, I will take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. That moment right there is where you are regenerated. Um and so when you are regenerated then you obviously have that um ability to place the saving faith and then from that saving faith comes everything else. And of course you're also indwelt with the Holy Spirit uh which by the way in Ezekiel chapter 36 27 Yahweh literally says the spirit will cause you to walk in my statutes. And so that's why I think the framing that often happens is that oh if you place your faith you can just not be obedient to Christ. And it's like no not if you're truly regenerate and end up by the Holy Spirit the spirit will cause you to walk in his statutes. It's literally what Yahweh says in Ezekiel 36 27.

Okay. So if if someone receives saving grace at the moment they confess Jesus Christ as Lord and believe in their heart that God raised them from the dead at that moment if they are justified if that moment they are regenerated it doesn't sound like they need baptism then do they

I wouldn't say like when you say need what do you mean by need there

Baptism is is the is the point at which saving grace and all of that that we've just mentioned uh are brought into their fullness into the life of that person into the fullness.

So what I would say is that again when you are when you place your saving faith in Christ, you're justified. Now does that saving faith remain dormant? No. Right? The saving faith is going to be what fuels everything else that happens in your uh Christian life. So, you know, uh, as Paul would say in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 through 10, I like to, uh, quote, we're saved. Uh, for by grace you have been saved. Um, this is not of your works. This is not of your own doing. Um, this is a gift of God. Okay, great. But then he goes on to say, those that are saved by grace through faith, we are created for something. We're created for good works. And so if you are saved by faith, Paul expects that works are going to be the byproduct of that uh salvific process that you just underwent. And so it kind of makes no sense, especially to a reformed uh Protestant to speak of like, oh, so if you're saved, you I guess you don't necessarily need to do be baptized or whatever the case may be. And it's like, no, that's part of the package. You know what I mean? like you don't it's although baptism is not the basis of your justification before God that doesn't mean that it's therefore not necessary you know um and so that's what we would we would kind of clarify

Okay, we're we're kind of all over the place now. I want to present you the orthodox view of of how this all works for us and maybe we can we can use some of that as a as a departure point to to further discuss how we understand all these things.

We do not believe in tulip. We think that's a kind of an evil abomination. Calvin was a really horrible person and and anybody that follows him, we just don't understand how someone can follow a person who declares a god who wants people dead, who wants to kill his own son, who wants to do all these other things. It's really an abomination to us. So, we believe and and before I I go on about how salvation works for us and things like that, let me let me just throw two things out out to you. Number one, you and I can talk scripture all day long and you can say, "Oh, I' I've got the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit leads me into all truth. I understand this verse to mean this and thus." Okay?

I can say the same thing. Now, where we agree, you know, hallelujah, praise the Lord. Where we don't agree,

Where you are clearly on the other side of something that I believe as an Orthodox Christian, which is clearly on the other side of something that you believe as a reformed Protestant. Then we have a conundrum. Who's right?

Because logically we both can't be right. It's possible we both can be wrong, but I prefer to believe that one of us is right and one of us is wrong. If we're both claiming the Holy Spirit, then we have a real problem as to who is right and trying to determine who is wrong. So, what we like to do as Orthodox Christians is we go back to a group of men we call the church fathers or the apostolic fathers. I know you you your reaction shows me that you know who I'm talking about. Now, here's the thing for us about them. These are men that not only knew the apostles, these are men that studied under the apostles. These are men who were ordained by the apostles.

They, you know, St. Polycarp is is one of the ones who says, you know, he could still hear the the thundering of John's preaching in his ears.

Mhm. So if these people were taught directly by the apostles themselves and if they, as I like to say, thought in Greek, prayed in Greek, wrote in Greek, studied the church, studied the scriptures in Greek, worshiped in Greek according to how the apostles taught them,

Wouldn't what they write and what they believe be worth looking at? Because we get accused by a lot of Protestants of oh you go to the church fathers you go to the church fathers we go directly to the scriptures. Yes. And that's where the problem begins

Is that you have one set I'm not saying you Jay I'm saying you know you have one set of interpretations and you have another set of interpretations. Who is right? I would like to believe that the people who were closest to the apostolic teaching and and and so forth who were there to receive the church the apostles left behind and pick it up and then run with it. I would like to believe they know what they're talking about. And when we look at the marks and the characteristics of the apostolic church, it's not the reformed church. There's liturgy, there's sacraments, there's hierarchy, there's baptismal regeneration, there's bishops, presbbittors, and deacons. There's just everything in our church that we don't see in yours. So tell me then why understanding the church the way I do, and we haven't even gotten to talk about salvation yet. Tell me why that understanding of how the church is and has been for 2,000 years would necessarily to a reformed Protestant be incorrect. What are we missing?

Yeah. Well, one, I I wouldn't necessarily agree that that's how the church was all restructured for 2,000 years. I think you would need to demonstrate that. But two, uh you mentioned something I thought was very interesting. you said you would like to believe that the church fathers, you know, uh, at least got something right or whatever the case may be. Um, and I would say I would like to believe that too. Uh, but I also understand that the church fathers, um, as great as they were, right? I love Clement. I love, um, a lot of these Irenaeus, I love Ignatius, I love all of these, uh, church fathers that a lot of people like to.

What do you love about them? I love that, you know, they they stood for the faith um and that they were unwavering in the midst of persecution. Um

Unwavering for a faith that you're about to disagree with and say they got some things wrong, right?

Well, I I wouldn't necessarily say that like as you're reading Irenaeus or or I don't know what church father y'all consider a saint or not, but let's say I think we all agree I was in the church or whatever the case may be. As you're reading Irenaeus, it's not exactly like he describes uh Theosis or all these other orthodox more specific doctrines um in his in his writings, right? Irenaeus, what I like to do as a a reformed Protestant is I like to let Irenaeus be Irenaeus, Clement to be Clement, Polycarp to be Polycarp, etc. Right?

But where did they disagree? Where did one of any of them and there's there's a whole corpus of these guys, at least half a dozen if not more, they all said the same thing. They may have come at from different different times. For example, one was in France, one was in, you know, here, one was there, one was in Greece. They all came from different times in different places, but they all said the same thing. Now, where would you point out that they were wrong?

Well, I wouldn't necessarily because one, I haven't read every single one of their writings. Um, I've read bits and pieces, so I don't necessarily know exactly where they would disagree on this or that issue.

Wait, you've read bits and pieces, but you admire them and so forth. I mean, you've got to really understand them more than bits and pieces, right?

Well, you can admire somebody uh who has stood strong in the faith without necessarily saying that they have to agree with me on every single issue. And this is where I was getting at. Um like I understand uh I guess I look at church history a bit more nuanced than a lot of people. For me, I don't see the church fathers as infallible, right? I think that they could make a mistake, right? Now, does that automatically mean that they did make a mistake? No, not necessarily. But they could. Um, in fact, I know you mentioned with Polycarp and how he talks about he hears the words of John echoing in his brain and things that nature. Um, you know, and these men were ordained by the apostles. Well, guess who else was ordained by the apostles? The Ephesian elders. And what does Paul do with them? What does Jesus say to them? Well, some men have crept in unnoticed, right? Uh and literally they're already uh dealing with this type of uh you know, individuals who try to want to lead people astray. These are people who were taught by the apostles, ordained by the apostles. The Galatians, they were already abandoning the very gospel that Paul wrote to them. So much so that he wanted to stop his missionary journey to go and give them a rebuke face to face. And so just because you have proximity to the apostles that doesn't guarantee that you are infallible in your understanding them things of that nature. So that's

So if you have proximity to the apostles and even that doesn't guarantee that you will rightly understand, accept and continue apostolic teaching. How can a Protestant church created 1500 years later do that?

Well, I think this is where we always are returning back to the scripture, right? And I know you mentioned uh that like, okay, well, they disagree on this or that issue as it relates to to scripture. And so, what does that look like? Well, I would actually say that in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, I don't know how familiar y'all are with that passage, Paul actually tells us that like look, there's going to be uh some people who build on Christ, who is the foundation that we all have to agree about. Um, and some people are going to or everybody really is going to build on Christ with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw. Right? The wood, hay, and straw are the type of material that doesn't sustain, that will ultimately be burned up. We will not receive a reward for it. Whether that looks like, you know, unbiblical teaching, whether that looks like um just not good works or whatever the case may be. Like Paul anticipates that the church is not going to look crystal per uh uh, you know, crystal perfect, you know what I mean? And crystal clear on every single teaching. And even I would actually say father uh Jonathan within orthodoxy there's much disagreement within orthodoxy you know. So this is

Give me three examples. Give me two examples.

Well, there is

Something, um, give me one example. Let's talk about that.

Yeah. Yeah. We could just give one example. I know there's some disagreement as it relates to like annihilationism. Um, and...

How do you define annihilationism?

So that's where whenever you die and go to hell, you get annihilated. That's what I'm talking about. So there's...

No, there's no disagreement about that, Jay. We are very clear about what happens at the judgment and those who are cast into the lake of fire and so forth and so forth. We're pretty clear about that. Now, if you're talking about universalism, um, we that is a doctrine that some people say, "Oh, you Orthodox disagree on universalism." No, it's been condemned by the church. Condemned by the church. We have no reason to say that we have any disagreements on that at all. Now, if someone comes along and says, "Oh, I believe in universalism," like David Bentley Hart, well then he's a heretic and he's an idiot and no one's going to listen to him on that kind of thing because he's wrong. The church has spoken and he's saying, "Oh, I disagree with it." The very definition of a heretic: I have another opinion, heresy, opinion than what the church does and he doesn't want to submit.

Right? So, in what I would say is, unless you're positing that every Orthodox Christian agrees on every single thing, whether it's primary, secondary, or even tertiary issues, um, which I don't believe that's the Orthodox claim.

Um, you know...

Primary, yes. On primary, yes, we agree on. There's no disagreements in the Orthodox Church on primary teachings.

Okay.

Absolutely none. So, how about the secondary and tertiary?

Define those.

Secondary is that they're gospel-related, but they're not necessarily tied to the gospel itself. Where it's like, okay, these are the set of doctrines that are related to that you cannot deny as it relates to your salvation. When I look at gospel essentials, this is where Paul makes that delineation in the sand where he says if you deny this, right, you're anathematized, right? So whatever you label in that anathematized box, right? And I know Orthodoxy differs in how big that anathematized box than Protestants do. Um, that would be the gospel essentials. Things that are not necessarily gospel essentials is things that won't anathematize you, but at the same time are very, very important because they start to poke at that gospel essential.

Okay, that, that, that's fine. Now, here's the thing. Um, we don't have these categories of primary, secondary, tertiary. We just don't have them. Everything for us is either you accept it all or you reject it all. You can't say I like this, I like this. It's not a cafeteria-style Christianity. So when you come into the Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church teaches that, person, here's what we believe and here's what we do.

Uh, if you want to become Orthodox, this is what you have to accept. There is no place for the person coming into Orthodoxy to say to the Orthodox Church, "Oh, I want to believe A, B, and C, but not D, E, and F." That person cannot become Orthodox because we present everything as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. So the idea of primary, secondary, tertiary, but I mean, you have to be a little bit more specific. I know the source of the scripture you just cited, but that has nothing to do with this. Everything for us matters because we can look at so much of what we do as having an apostolic origin. Therefore, it's very important for us to continue what the apostles handed down. Did not Paul say to Timothy, not to a congregation as a whole, but to Timothy, "Timothy, my son..."

Yes, Father Paul.

"...what I have traditioned to you, what I have passed on to you, the very definition of tradition..."

Teach to other men so that they can teach other men.

Now, the way I like to look at that is Paul is sort of like the first-generation Christian. He's passing on what he received from Jesus Christ himself, as well as from the other apostles...

Right.

...to Timothy, and he's saying, saying to Timothy, "Faithfully receive this. Faithfully pass it on so the people after you can do the same thing." And as I often like to say, when I ask Protestants, "Wouldn't it be nice to know what those third and fourth generation men were taught?" they would go, "Yeah, that would be really neat." Well, the Apostolic Fathers, we know what they were taught. We know what they were given, given, and we know what they received and what they handed down to those that were coming after them. So the fact that what we do can be seen as very different from what you guys do, 1,500 years later, trying to reconnect the church to a source that it had become disconnected from. I mean, you were, you guys, when I say you guys, I mean you Protestants, were already leaving a church that had already left the apostolic tradition.

So I hear you, um, on that claim. One, the first to to talk about the Timothy portion, I think where as it relates, one, if you notice what Paul is telling to pass down is the teaching. He doesn't mention anything about, like, you know, this understanding of apostolic tradition or apostolic succession as it relates to, okay, if you're not under this bishop, your Lord's Supper is ever invalid, or whatever the case may be. He's talking about teaching.

That was the teaching, though, by the way. You know that.

Well, I think we'll have to demonstrate that. But two, one thing that you don't see that Paul is saying is that, is that, uh, whatever is being passed down is being did so infallibly, especially as it relates to things that are outside of scripture. Inside of scripture, we see that Paul identifies everything that is labeled in the category of scripture as God-breathed. Okay? God's, uh, God's speech is infallible and therefore scripture is infallible. That's cut and dry. Um, but what remains to be seen is anything outside of scripture, where does, where is that promise, uh, given that that's also going to be infallible? Where does Paul or Christ mention that, you know, the, not just the apostles, but the successors to the apostles are going to be infallible?

Okay. Oh, that, that's a valid question. That's fine. That, that's a valid question. First of all, by the way, in the year 110, when Ignatius wrote his epistles on his way to being killed in Rome, he did teach that a valid Eucharist must be presided over by the bishop or someone authorized by him. So that, that's a teaching from the year 110. And if he taught it, I think we can safely assume, even though nobody else wrote that, that others were taught the same thing. He only wrote it because it may, maybe he needed to emphasize it or just encourage people to remain faithful to those apostolic ministers that had been appointed over them. But to your question, I want to ask, can infallible, excuse me, can fallible men teach infallible doctrine?

Can fallible men?

Infallible men teach infallible doctrine?

Yeah, absolutely.

How?

Well, that which is infallible is scripture. So, anytime that you're teaching anything in regards to scripture, it could be infallible, right?

Well, let's assume for that scripture is a problem issue here because, do you acknowledge that scripture as we understand the New Testament, let's just focus on that for a moment, because when St. Paul was talking about all scripture is inspired and all of that, he's talking about the Old Testament. And of course, back then, one would have to say, what list of Old Testament books would he have been referring to? Because clearly, we know from the gospels themselves that there were differences in what books were accepted by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and so forth and so on. The Sadducees did not read the prophets. Although they read Psalms, they didn't read the prophets. So how would they have known about the resurrection of the dead? And one of the gospel writers explicitly says that they who do not, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, which is so, you've got a differing list of books of scripture that was considered, you know, inspired back then. There wasn't the, the list of what we have now that was Old Testament. Um, there was a very different understanding of what even scripture was back then.

So, go ahead.

Oh, so what I was, one of the things I would kind of push back on is that I understand that the completed canon of the Old Testament, um, was given, uh, in Paul's hands at that point. But...

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Completed what? Wait. Completed canon. How are you assuming that Paul had a completed canon of Old Testament scripture?

Well, one, I think we would all agree that whatever is considered Old Testament, I know y'all have a much larger Old Testament than we do, but even within the Orthodox claim...

We have the New Testament, Old Testament canon.

Right. Right. Right. But even with the Orthodox claim, y'all don't believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, right? Because that's why I love talking to Orthodox priests, but correct me if I'm wrong. Y'all don't believe that those books became inspired at some council much later in church history, right? Like y'all believe...

We didn't wait for a council to tell us that they were inspired. We already thought they were inspired. Let me ask you this question. For example, I think that I'm not trying to do gotchas on you, Jay. I just want you.

Okay. Okay. Good. Now, now you have a conundrum to face. And that is that in the New Testament itself, we are presented with numerous examples of things said in the New Testament that cannot be found in the Old Testament. For example, in Jude, we see a reference to the dispute over the body of Moses. Do you know where that comes from?

Yes, it know where it comes from.

Enoch.

Where?

Enoch.

I just...

No. No. Enoch is a separate note. It comes from the, a book called The Assumption of Moses. Enoch is mentioned. Then we have even the reference to Jannes and Jambres. Who are they?

They're not found in the Old Testament.

I don't know.

Okay. We also have the reference in Ephesians when St. Paul was talking to the Ephesians on his way out. He said, and we remember the words of our Lord where he said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." How did Paul know that? Because it's not in the Gospels. And by the way, the Gospels weren't even written yet. So what I'm trying to just show you is that back then, and Father Steven D. Young does a masterful explanation of this in his book, "The Religion of the Apostles," um, that what was considered scripture back then, what was even considered Judaism back then, is not what is considered scripture today or even Judaism today. So there was a very different understanding of the world back then in terms of what Judaism was, um, how the apostles fit into it, what scripture was, how it fit into the work that they were doing, and so forth. There was a lot of stuff floating around called scripture that we only know through apocryphal sources or that we only know through the mentions in the New Testament, for example.

So the idea that there was a finished canon is just not historical at all. So, even if I were to grant you that point, because I think that's kind of like, I think it's an interesting conversation, but one, it's not a conversation that I'm necessarily prepared to have today, but two...

Fair enough. Fair enough.

...is a, I think it's probably besides the point. Is that what Paul says is that all scripture, which means whatever carries that title scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, Paul is identifying as God-breathed and, you know, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and, you know, the whole list that he goes through to make the man of God equipped for every good work, right? So that is the function of scripture. Whatever we would consider scripture today, whether, again, let's even grant for the sake of argument the larger Orthodox canon for a moment, it still remains the case that Paul says that all scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for those things, right? Now, one of the things I would say is that, and this is of course where we, not the only scripture, but I think this is one of the places that we can see, uh, that scripture is infallible. One of the things that I think is yet to be demonstrated is where are, uh, the apostles' successors, you know, said to be infallible or even tradition itself said to be infallible?

Because that would be the three, the three things. Like the reason why I'm convinced in something like Sola Scriptura is, yes, I think the Bible gives that positive understanding of Sola Scriptura, and I can list a bunch of different verses starting with Second Timothy. But I think more so than that is that I really haven't seen the Orthodox or even Catholic, but I'm speaking to Orthodox priests right now, the Orthodox case for tradition. And I think, I don't know if y'all would consider yourselves Magisterium, but, you know, let's just say tradition.

Not in the way the Roman Catholics do.

Yeah. Because I know y'all would disagree with them. And but I don't know if you use the term Magisterium.

No, but...

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's just, is it just scripture and tradition in Orthodoxy? Or...

Well, there are some people who would say that, Jay, but we would say there's tradition, and then in tradition, tradition gave birth to the scriptures because they came out of the life of the church. And tradition operates within the life of the church. We can't separate scripture and tradition. This is the kind of either-or battle that we see in the West all the time. You know, faith and works, scripture and tradition. No, scripture came out of tradition. It was the church that breathed the New Testament scriptures, that gave birth to them, that brought them forth, and that saw to it that some scripture never came forth historically. We know Paul wrote a letter to the Laodiceans. Why don't we have it? We know that he wrote three letters to the Corinthian church. Why don't we have all three? But certainly within, uh, Peter's lifetime, um, you know, because he references letters of Paul in the plural, I don't assume for a moment that every Orthodox, that every church that Paul founded or was founded by others had the corpus, the complete corpus. But certainly, because it took time and it costs money to copy those letters and then transport them from church to church, they couldn't all have had them, but some did, and they were known, and they were copied and passed around. Um, so we, we would concede the point, um, that yeah, we do believe that all scripture is inspired by God, to include New Testament. Okay, so we, I'm messing you when I say otherwise. So we would believe that. Um, but we just have to be careful to think that everything that needs to be known is in scripture and that tradition offers nothing that can complement it. Now, what we would say is nothing in tradition, nothing in tradition, can contradict scripture. Does that make sense? Nothing in tradition can contradict scripture. Why? Because tradition answers questions where there are a lot of questions to be answered. For example, what kind of worship do we find in the New Testament that is authorized by the apostles? What did they teach in terms of how to worship? We know that this was not a subject that was left to everybody's choice. They didn't say to the Corinthians, "Okay, go at it." To the Galatians, "Go at it. Do whatever you want." To Alexandria, "Do whatever you want." No, they gave guidelines and rules. And by the year 150, we have St. Justin the Martyr, St. Justin the Philosopher in Rome, writing to the emperor and outlining for him the Roman rite at the time, the Roman liturgy at the time. And there are portions of that liturgy that he highlighted that he talked about that are still done, 1900 years later. We still do those parts that are common to other parts of the world. So where are these to be found? You know, where are these, um, rules about how to worship, for example, to be found if not in the tradition of the church? And nothing we do in the tradition of our worship contradicts anything the scriptures say. The scriptures say, "Hold to the patterns that you were shown." It says it in Hebrews and it says it in the Old Testament. What were those patterns? They're not talked about much in the New Testament.

So, it's people under hearing those words, "Hold to the patterns," knew what they were talking about.

This is where I actually would disagree with you. Um, first, I think one of the pivotal questions, whether I'm talking to, again, I'm just going to say, talking to Orthodox Christians, is that, well, where, how do we know the difference between a later church tradition and an apostolic tradition? What criteria are y'all using to delineate that? Secondly, um, I think we can know what true apostolic tradition is. Um, again, we actually can follow the pattern that we see throughout the Old and New Testament. So, like, for instance, in the Old Testament, because I had a series of videos on sacred tradition, because I really wanted to wrestle with the Catholic and then later the Orthodox understanding of sacred tradition. I know y'all have kind of different understandings, but there's kind of some overlap. And one of the things I've noticed is that in the Old Testament, there was this thing called tradition, right? We see it, uh, pop up in scripture with the Pharisees. Now, I want to be careful here because I don't want to insinuate that Orthodox or Catholics are Pharisees. That's not necessarily the point that I'm making. Um, but what I'm showing you is that there was this claim that Moses had passed down an oral body of teaching that was on par with scripture. And yet, you know, one of the things that we see now, no one is, as far as I'm concerned, and again, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Father Jonathan, none, none of us would say that that oral body of teaching that the Pharisees were holding to is one, infallible, and two, uh, you know, a part of that divine revelation, right? And so my question is, is like, okay, so what criteria are you using to distinguish that from? And because that seems like a very similar situation, right? Oral, uh, what we say the true oral teaching that was passed down from Moses that we ought to hold to that is divinely inspired was what was ultimately written in the Torah, in the Prophets, things of that nature. And we see this, uh, pattern in redemptive history where, uh, God's appointed messenger, he spoke orally. He even taught orally, right? I'm not disputing that. But then what did God command them to do? He commanded them to put, pin a parchment or whatever the case may be, or pin the stone, probably back in that day. Put it down in sacred scripture so that we have conserved it so that we're not asking these questions of how do we know, you know, what's truly apostolic or truly Mosaic or whatever the case may be. And then that was the pattern in the Old Testament, whether it was with Moses, the prophets. And then what we're saying as Protestants is that that's the pattern with the apostles as well. And yet, I know we have this claim of, well, we believe that, you know, this other body of teaching is also apostolic. And the claim and insinuation there is that it's divinely, divinely inspired, right? Um, it has originated from the apostles and therefore God himself. Well, that's a pretty big claim. So now I need to see what is the evidence. You mentioned, who was it? You said Ignatius. I forgot the point that you made, but you said that we would like to assume that this is what is the case that XYZ. Well, what I'm saying is that as a Protestant who wants to hold to exactly what Christ taught, the apostles taught, I'm going to need something much more than just an assumption, right? I need to know like, what was actually given by Christ and by his apostles.

Okay. Well, let's answer that question. And the answer is the Apostolic Fathers. We have the writings. We have a lot of writings, as a matter of fact, from the men who lived in the first 300-year period before Nicaea. I'm sure you know what Nicaea refers to, 325. And unlike what most Protestants claim, Nicaea had nothing to do with putting together the canon of scripture or making Sunday the day of worship or a lot of the other nonsense and straw men that Protestants like to set up for Constantine. These things had already been established for the most part. There were official councils held later regarding the canon of scripture. That's a different issue. But you just asked the direct question, how do we know? Because we have the writings of those men who wrote in the year 90, 100, 110, 130, 150, 200, 250, and going on and on. And they all say the same thing. There is an astounding, thundering similarity between everything that they write, no matter where in the empire they are, no matter what decade they write from or what century they write from. And these writings are easily found and read and accessible to the public. You can go online and read them, and it's remarkably consistent. Now, to go back to your what you were trying to say earlier about tradition and Moses and so forth. The earliest writings of the Old Testament, um, we don't know exactly when they were put down, but we do know that you have a huge span of time between when various books of the Old Testament were written. And if you're going to point to any one particular book and draw some sort of teaching or doctrine from it, you've got to ask the question, if that is from only a little bit of time after, let's say, the Assyrian or Babylonian captivity, then what did the Jews believe before that? If they believed it, then there was an oral tradition that was active that was later written down. Okay, fine. That's what a lot of Christianity really ended up being because there were no script, gospels for the first 30 years. So someone had an oral tradition that they kept writing up. Paul knew about it in Ephesus. He quoted Jesus saying something. But when you mentioned the traditions of Moses, there are the traditions of Moses that were good, and then there were the traditions of the Pharisees that came later after the Babylonian captivity. And it was a lot of those traditions, the traditions of the Pharisees, that Jesus was pointing to and saying that these are the traditions of men. That these are traditions. Do what they say, but don't do what they do. So even Jesus said, "They sit in Moses' seat. They sit in a seat of authority. Do what they do, but don't do what they do." Oh, I'm mixing it up. I'm sorry. Do what they say, but don't do what they do. Do what they say, don't do what they do. Okay. So clearly, and then remember also in the New Testament regarding the validity, um, oh, that's a word we hate, but regarding the validity of oral tradition, do remember that St. Paul said to the Thessalonians at one point, "Hold fast to the traditions which I have given you, whether by word of mouth, whether orally, or whether written." So there was an equal weight given to authority, whether it was proclaimed verbally, orally, or whether it was written down in a letter. And clearly, you know, we have to ask also, and again, Jay, this is where Orthodoxy would argue for the kind of, like, what I would call common sense.

St. Paul was in Ephesus for three years. We have one short epistle from him to the Ephesians, but he was there for three years. He was in, um, in Thessalonica for a year and a half, and we have two short epistles to totaling what, eight chapters maybe? So what did he tell them all during that time? Well, again, other than the fact that the churches in Anatolia pretty much don't exist anymore thanks to Islam. What we find in Greece where Paul went are vibrant Orthodox communities continuing the tradition that was established when Paul was there. So I think the concern about what those teachings are that the apostles handed down is clearly seen in both the writings of the Church Fathers for hundreds of years following Paul's visits to these places, as well as the living tradition of those things which have been done again and again and again the same way for the last 2,000 years.

So I appreciate that, Father Jonathan. Uh, but here's where I would push, push back a little bit. One, again, I concede for the sake of argument that the apostles, just like the prophets of old, once taught orally, right? In fact, I would say that every piece of divine revelation that we have was once only preserved in oral form, right? What I'm pointing to is the pattern in redemptive history that what was once taught orally is then therefore written, right? And what I see, especially since we wouldn't necessarily say that what the Pharisees considered oral tradition isn't valid, is that what I would see is that we're kind of, we're getting to the New Testament and we're kind of breaking from that redemptive historical pattern. And so now, I love that you appealed to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2:15. I love that passage. Um, from the Protestant perspective, we would say, "Yeah, absolutely. 2 Thessalonians, if I'm, I'm maybe going to debate necessarily the dating of Second Thessalonians, but some put it like the third Pauline letter. Some would say it's like the second one. Either here nor there, it is very early on in Paul's ministry. Paul only met with the Thessalonians originally, it was for like a week and a half, and then later he spent a little bit more time with them.

A little bit? He spent a year and a half there.

Right. Right. And so here we see that clearly, uh, Paul is very early on in his ministry at that point. Yes, everything was oral, and it's becoming inscripturated. And then Second Timothy is the very last letter that he writes in his earthly ministry. And look at what Paul uses as kind of like the capstone to his portion. He's saying, "Look, Timothy, all scripture is God-breathed and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, to make the man of God complete." Now, one of the questions that you kept coming back to is, okay, Janai, have you ever wondered, or maybe many people ever wondered, like, oh, what were the other things that Paul or the other apostles have taught? My question is, what are the other things? I understand that question. However, I don't think it's the right question. I think the major question is, what did Paul identify as the source that is able to make the man of God complete? Because if he's complete, there's nothing that's lacking. Which means that anything else that you have outside of sacred tradition or sacred scripture, maybe it came from the apostles or whatever the case may be. I can even grant you for the sake of argument that, let's say, icon veneration, you know, whatever the case may be, all that came from the apostles. The problem is that Paul literally said what is contained in sacred scripture is able to make the man of God complete. What I hear from either Catholicism or Orthodoxy is like, everything in scripture isn't really able to make you...

No, no, no. We do not say that. We do not say that. That is not...

So I know y'all don't. I know you don't say that. What I'm saying is...

Nor do we infer it or anything else like that. No, everything in scripture is. But there are traditions that can certainly augment and clarify and enhance and things like that. You mentioned earlier that the word Trinity is not found in scripture. That's true. The Muslims love to point that out.

However, just like you talk about justification or other things being induced from things scripture says, the Trinity is there. As you would probably agree.

Mhm.

A word was concocted to give further definition to it. And later Nicaea was called to give even further definition to that doctrine of the Father, the Son.

At Constantinople, a little bit later on, the Holy Spirit. So these things, in time, there are words that are used to, there are teachings that are used, rather, to expand, to clarify, to enhance, to maybe even break ground like Tertullian did with the word Trinity, trinitas, not used before. But it doesn't, it doesn't take away from the core of the teaching. And I think that's important and needs to be stressed. So, I mean, and I hear you, but and it would be one thing, Father Jonathan, if the understanding was, hey, those other things that aren't necessarily found in scripture, we think they're really important. Right? But and this is why I said, and I know I probably haven't phrased it right because I know Orthodoxy wouldn't say that these other things, you know, scripture isn't able to make you complete, but what I'm saying is that if a teaching is not found in scripture, right? I think you would need to explain to me why I should believe that I need that teaching in order to make me complete. Because certainly, and correct me if I'm wrong, if we're looking at something like icon veneration or saint veneration or whatever the case may be, which I would not say is found anywhere in scripture, right? You could argue that it's found in tradition. What I'm saying is that why do I need to do that in order to make me complete? You get what I'm saying?

I hear what you're saying.

So that's...

So that's... Let me take an easier example.

Okay.

Um, Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, we like to make this sign of the cross. This to us is a very big deal. We make it a lot. It's part of our worship. It's part of our private prayer, etc., etc. If you were to say to me, "Why do I have to do that?" And I would say, "Well, it's an apostolic teaching." And you would say, "Well, how do we know that?" We know it because, do you know who St. Basil the Great of the Cappadocian Fathers is? Okay.

So, he wrote around the year, what, 350, something like that, a book called "On the Holy Spirit." Remarkable book in which he makes the case for the Holy Spirit being God without ever calling the Holy Spirit God. It's a very, very wise and wonderful book to read. But in that, he talks about traditions that were handed down from the apostles. He mentions praying east. He mentions lighting candles. He mentions making the sign of the cross. He talks about a hymn that we use in our vesper service, "Gladsome Light," being very ancient. That these things were passed down from the very beginning. Now, the Bible may not justify doing this, but St. Basil says it was something that was taught by the apostles and was taught to him from a very early age. Uh, so, again, someone can say, "Well, you know, I like the Orthodox Church and I might want to join it, but why do I have to do that?" And our answer would be, because the apostles taught it. And in many cases, we can show where the Fathers actually said, like I just gave you that simple example of St. Basil and the sign of the cross, that this is something that was passed down by the apostles from the very beginning and continued in the church to this day. Now, you bring up...

Go ahead.

Oh, so the... Hopefully, you can keep that. Actually, I'll let you finish because I have a portion, but I don't want to take away from anything that you...

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. So, but and you bring up a much more difficult thing to talk about from the scriptures, which is icons and icon veneration. But let's remember that the, um, the problem we have with Protestants opening their Bible and saying, "Oh, look at the commandment. It says, you know, thou shalt not bow down to any graven image." Actually, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, if I'm not mistaken, it says, "Thou shalt not bow down to any graven idol." It specifically uses the Greek word *eidolon*, which is a very different word from *eikon* or image. So you have *eikon* or image, and you have *eidolon* or idol. And the commandment says, "Don't bow down to any graven idol." Now, there's a big difference between idol and image. Now, what's interesting to us is that the proper translation of that commandment should be idol. Because if you're going to say, "You shall not make for yourself any graven image," how then do you explain just several chapters later in Exodus, the Lord God saying to the Israelites, "You shall weave cherubim into the tent of meeting. You shall weave seraphim into the tent of meeting. You shall make these statues of beaten gold of the winged cherubim and put them on either side of the ark of the covenant." What are those if not idols? Because they fit the image of, they fit the explanation of a graven image. But that's not what they are, because clearly, if God says to the Israelites, "Do this," they're going to do it. So there must be another meaning to what a graven image refers to in the commandment. And of course, we know what it means because we know how the cultures of the time and the civilizations of that time made their images. They would take a tree, they would take a stone, they would carve it into something, and that tree or that stone would be their god. The Israelites would never do that. We would never do that. An icon for us is not our god, but it is an image of a holy one. And it's that image we venerate, and the prototype of what we venerate passes to them. It's very simple, actually. And one more thing, Jay. Okay. We also know, if you've heard of the Dura-Europos synagogue, we also know...

That there was a synagogue in the town of Dura-Europos, which today is in modern-day, I want to say, Iraq, of a synagogue found dated back to around the year 250 to about the time that the town was abandoned, actually. But this synagogue had existed even perhaps before then. And the interior of the synagogue is filled wall-to-wall with images, with scenes of the Old Testament, similar to what we put in our churches today. The same, very same concept. These kind of images are also found in the catacombs. Certainly, the early Christians could not be accused of idolatry by putting images of Christ, the Virgin, saints, and martyrs, and angels, and things like that in the catacombs. So there must be a different understanding than what the average Reformed Protestant understands that scripture to be. And I think that's a fair way to phrase the way in which any kind of argumentation has to proceed forward.

Yeah. Uh, and here's what I would actually say. I can actually grant you for the sake of argument. I don't necessarily think you'll find any disagreement with me as it relates to the scripture. God commanded them to create the statues of cherubim, pictures in the temple, things of that nature. Even within the catacombs, all of that stuff. However, I think it's a different claim though to say that they were bowing down devotionally to them. I think that's the thing that would need to be demonstrated and need to be proven because we can't merely assume that, okay, because they had a cherubim, you're bowing down to it. Um, I don't think there's many Jewish scholars at all that would actually go on to argue something along those lines. But neither here nor there. I again, I'm actually granting for the sake of argument that let's say, hypothetically speaking, icon veneration was truly apostolic. I don't, I'm not convinced that it is. But let's say it was, that the apostles taught this. The problem is that Paul still would say that, hey, what's in this scripture is able to make you complete. So my thing is like, why do I need to do that? Second thing, though, even going back, so coming out of the hypothetical for a moment, because I know you mentioned St. Basil, the, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, right? And you had mentioned that, you know, that's part of the reason why they do the East-West situation. And he's like, well, the apostles taught them. And my question is, is that how do we know that this comes from the apostles and not necessarily later church tradition teaching and things of that nature? Because, and the reason why this is important is because in the Council of Nicaea, the very council that you brought up as it relates to the Trinity, part of the debate between the East and the West is that they both claim that the celebration of Easter was their, their versions of it, was apostolic. It came from the apostles themselves. And yet they clash because it was opposite. And they had to agree, interestingly enough, that, you know, what, actually, let's lay it down. Let's come up with a new tradition in which the whole church can unify behind and things of that nature, which I think is absolutely beautiful. It's a beautiful demonstration of our Christian liberty. But what I feel like is interesting here is that here's two competing claims of apostolic claims to apostolic tradition, and yet both of them ended up being wrong. Otherwise, you wouldn't imagine any of them would kind of back away from that position if it truly came from the apostles. You would actually see either the East or the West stand their ground and being like, nope, we know this came from Paul or James or Matthew, or whatever the case may be, right? But yet they don't do that. And so what I'm saying is that we, I can't assume that just because I see a claim that this is apostolic, that that very well must be apostolic. Because again, what are we saying whenever we're saying that something is apostolic and that we must hold to it or keep to it? Well, we're saying that's part of divine revelation itself. That it not only came from the apostle, but it came from Christ, and ultimately Christ is God. So, um, if that is going to be the claim, I don't think it's outside, you know, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to say, well, can I see the evidence? Right? I don't, you know, for and so that's where, as Protestants, we hold to what Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 6. I know that's probably, I don't know if it's a passage that many are familiar with, but this is where Paul, after talking about, you know, all the things that he talks about in chapters 1, 2, and 3, and then in verses 1 through 5, he literally says, "Look, don't hold me or Apollos to these pedigrees and things of that nature." You know, leave the final judgment up to God. And then he says in verse 6, right after that, he says, "I am using Apollos and myself, right? Throughout this whole situation, right, whether in chapter 3, in chapter 1, in chapter 2, I'm using us to show you, to teach you the principle of what it looks like to not go beyond the scriptures." That's literally what he says there. And so, as Protestants, we're saying that, all right, now that we have the scriptures, Paul has taught us this principle. He's already foreshadowed that this principle is going to be in place and that we're simply not trying to go beyond it. Right? If you want us to go beyond the scriptures and hold to something else that's outside as a second stream of revelation or whatever the case may be, you're going to have to show us how it's truly apostolic. Merely saying that this person showed up 400 years after and saying, "Oh yeah, this is also apostolic." And I don't see any evidence of that other than that person's claim. I don't think it would be unreasonable for a person who is trying to hold to what God actually taught to say, "Yeah, actually, I don't think I'm putting my trust in that. I think I'm going to stick with what Paul said is able to make the man of God."

Let me, let me ask you a question. Um, that, that, that's in the spirit of what you're talking about, but which is a slightly different topic. Um, are you familiar with the teaching in the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, they teach the same thing of something called the Ever Virginity of Mary?

Yes.

Okay. Before we go any further, let me ask, how do you understand that teaching? I'm sorry I have to ask that because, Jay, I've asked other people this question and I've gotten different answers. So I just want to make sure that you understand it the way we understand it.

Yeah. So the perpetual virginity, that's basically the idea that Mary has never had sexual intercourse, things of that nature. Um, I believe that's what. Now, granted, here's actually why I'll qualify. I'm not necessarily too sure of what Orthodox would believe about this. I'm much more familiar with what Catholicism says about it. But I, I guess Orthodoxy would agree with it.

Yeah. We believe that she was a virgin before,

during, and after giving birth.

Yeah. Okay. So I was...

Before, during, and after giving birth. Now, it doesn't say that. One can argue, one can argue from the scriptures that this is the case.

And the key is in Luke, of course, because he's the one who says, "And Joseph knew her not until she had given birth to her firstborn son." And of course, the key word there is the word "until."

Now, I'm not going to, I'm not arguing about that word. I want to bring up another, another point. Um, the, the, the, what I would call the founding members, the founding men of the Protestant Revolution, Protestant Reformation, John Calvin, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, and I think I would even throw in there Martin...

Kimnitz.

No, it starts with a B. I can't remember his name. He came a little bit later.

Uh, or Melanchthon, or any of them. Um, but, but those three in particular,

as I said earlier, these are men who knew Greek, could read Greek. Okay? They were Greek scholars.

Mhm.

When they began their break with Rome, they did not give up that teaching. In fact, they affirmed it in sermons. And I can quote you from them because I had to do some work on this about a year or two ago. They quoted them in their sermons, and even Calvin, some people say, "Well, Calvin eventually gave it up." No, he didn't. I can show you sermons 20 years apart where Calvin's, both given after the Reformation started, where Calvin affirmed the Ever Virginity of Mary.

Now, it would be interesting to me. It's interesting to me because today Luther's spiritual descendants, John Calvin's spiritual descendants, and so forth, all would reject that teaching, but they didn't reject it. So, what do we know today that we didn't know 500 years ago that would cause people today to reject something that their spiritual predecessors actually accepted and affirmed? Because this goes to the question that you just brought up. How do we know? How do we know it comes from the apostles? How do we know that this is what they taught?

Well, I think, I think this actually precisely illustrates my point. I think many Protestants don't hold to it. Not to say, and this is where I actually would say this, Protestantism ultimately doesn't live and die off of...

The perpetual virginity of Mary. A Protestant is >> That wasn't my point, though. >> No, no, I I got you. But what I'm saying is that a Protestant is free to accept, reject it, things of that nature. And ultimately, all of it is because they're holding to what is taught in the scriptures. If you wanted to say that, oh well, it does it says until and so it could possibly mean that she just didn't, you know, have sexual intercourse with Joseph for that remaining of time while she's, you know, uh, between that particular age range, whatever the case may be. And we're free to say, yeah, I don't necessarily I'm not necessarily convinced. I don't I'm not convinced one way or the other. Oh, somebody brings up Luther, Calvin, Zwingley, whatever you want to mention, they believed it. And we're like, okay, good, good for them. I I'm just not convinced of it. Uh, now, if the reason why you're impressing upon this to me is because you feel like this is part of apostolic tradition. That then brings us back to the million-dollar question, which is how do we know? Because we can very easily easily explain how Calvin and uh Luther had that conviction. I mean Calvin I mean not Calvin Luther was literally coming out of Roman Catholicism and that was one of the beliefs like Luther was um a monk in that uh system and he was trying his hardest to be the best Catholic that you know different Catholics may differ in that you know I know there's some debate there but neither here nor there they're coming out of a context in which yeah that was just held and they never thought to to question that for whatever reason. Maybe they were convinced of the until argument. Cool. However, the situation is is that I don't think anybody is going to be resting upon like, oh, perpetual virginity to Mary can be substantiated just by scripture alone.

I don't >> It can be by the way that that and again that that's not very important. It can be by the way substantiated when you look at that verse. You can actually you can absolutely substantiate it from the Greek in Luke's gospel because the word yeah I I'll do very quickly the the word aos which is the Greek word that was translated until >> right >> the Greek word aos means that something was was some action was happening up to a certain point and after that point a historical point a cultural point whatever you want to call it after that point in time it just continued the same in the same direction. What the word until means in English is that a certain action happens and then after that point in time it changes direction and and does something else. So Joseph knew her not Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary until Jesus was born but then he had sexual relations with her. And the fact that there are brothers and sisters mentioned in the Gospels proves that. But that's not what the word aos means. It doesn't mean that he didn't have sex with her and then when Jesus was born, he then could have sex with her. That's not what it means. AOS does not mean the same thing as the word until. Why did the the English uh translators pick it? Because it was the only English word that they could use to translate the concept at the time. And the translations are an issue that we could probably have a lot of fun talking about. Where does the word atonement, by the way, come from? Most words used to translate the English New Testament come from someplace or actually I should just say the Bible in general come from someplace. But did you know that the word atonement is a madeup word that was made up by the translators of the Bible when they were trying to think about what word can we use to translate this Greek word into English. There was no word that that that um that that could be used because it didn't exist. So they came up with the word at onement atonement at one meantment because the concept is the is the reconciliation the bringing together of two things. There was no word that that could express that at the time and atonement is now seen as the word that expresses that. So there are all kinds of things that that we could we could we would have to look at and I would hope look at objectively and agree that there are ways of understanding things in light of what the apostolic tradition presents to us because apostolic tradition doesn't contra uh uh is not contrary to scripture. It affirms and upholds scripture and actually is a guarantee of it.

So again, this is where I would I would say I I know there's arguments for, you know, Mary's perpetual virginity that the brothers and sisters doesn't really mean brothers and sisters. Maybe it means, you know, step brothers, stepsisters or cousins and things that nature. Although I don't I'm not necessarily convinced about any of those arguments because that's not exactly the most uh consistent reading of any one of those passages. And granted, I don't I'm not necessarily interested in debating that. Neither here nor there. Even with something like with the perpetual virginity of Mary, this is clearly not something that is remotely related to the gospel. Was not something that the apostles necessarily prioritize as something that Christians must affirm upon threat of being, let's say, anasmatized. Now, granted, I don't even know if in orthodoxy you are anatized if you don't believe in Mary's perpetual virginity. But if if you do, that further illustrates my point. >> Only if you don't kiss icons. It's an accretion. We don't believe in that. >> Oh, okay. Well, so wait, >> that's a joke. And anybody who knows me and what I some >> No, no, you're good. You're good. You're good. So, so like for for us, we would say, okay, where where is this being one, how do we know that that's actually apostolic? Because there's also people within church history, and I'm sure you're familiar with it, uh, Father Jonathan, that didn't believe Mary's perpetually a virgin, right? Um, now granted, you may say, >> so, but not not in our church. >> They may have been in some other church. They may have been schismatics. They may have been heretics. It's like the people that don't believe that the Eucharist is truly the real presence of Jesus Christ in that bread and wine. Same thing. The the early church fathers, the apostolic fathers said that only the heretics and the schismatics don't believe that. Only the heretics don't believe that. So, um again, we're we're very clear on who believed and who didn't believe what and when and all that kind of thing. And no one in the Orthodox Church ever disputed Mary's ever virginity.

>> Okay. But but here's the here's the portion the the question though. Why does that have any bearing on what you know what's the basis of my >> So you're asking why do we have to believe in it? >> Yeah, basically. >> Oh, very good question. I I like that question and here's here would be my answer because it was part of God's plan of salvation. And to understand God's plan of salvation in its totality we have to understand why he picked that virgin and not some other virgin. Why all generations will call her blessed, why it's important that she remained ever virgin and so forth and so on because that was part of God's salvific plan. His plan did not include just Jesus being born, crucified, died, rose again, etc. That wasn't that was only part of the story. It's the center of the story, but it's still only part. And everything that came before Mary, John the Baptist, the entire Old Testament prophecies and things like that all pointed to this this time when the Messiah would come and come in a certain way. He would appear in a certain way. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name will be called God is with us. Well, interesting that that in the New Testament what was quoted was not the Hebrew text but the Greek language Septuagent text >> because the Hebrew text does not say virgin. It says young woman. Now, one could argue that's what a virgin is. But the Greek when it was translated was very specific and we would even say inspired to make clear that the young woman was to be a virgin.

>> Okay. Now, but here you're giving me, okay, she's supposed to be we we all Christians would agree that believing that Mary was a virgin prior to having of course our Lord and Savior is like, yeah, that's exactly what the teaches. But the the issue though is believing uh believing that it's necessary to believe that she was perpetually aversion that for whatever reason it would have been somehow looked down upon or whatever been a stain on her uh on her as an individual if she would have had sexual relations with Joseph which by the way is scripture never uh depicts as something that's inherently sinful. In fact, it actually depicts it as something that's glorious and actually warns us against abstaining from sexual relations with our marital partners and stuff like that. And so, like my portion is that there's a lot more >> St. Paul says abstain for a period. He doesn't say abstain forever. >> Well, I mean this one is like it's forever. So, it's not even just a period. Just it's actually her whole entire life, you know. So, that that doesn't put us in any better situation. So, not only do you have to reconcile the brothers and sisters argument, which again I don't think is a very good argument, um, but two, you have to, you know, reconcile that point and understand why exactly are we putting and all of that, not even getting to the the foundational point of all of this, which is why is us needing to affirm that Mary was not a virgin in in the period that she was conceiving Jesus and before she was conceiving Jesus, but affirming that she was a virgin after she was conceiving Jesus like >> because of prophecy because of Old Testament prophecy. Jesus had to be born as one of us >> and he had to be born like us. In other words, there had to be a birth. But his birth was supernatural and it had to be very clear from his birth that this was a supernatural being being brought into this world. And if if if that woman is going to give birth to a supernatural human being who happens to be the only begotten son of God. >> Mhm. >> I mean, I can think for myself, and again, I'm only speaking for myself. If my if my wife did the same thing, I'd be thinking twice about whether I would ever want to have sex with my wife understanding how sex works because the son of God just came through that that vagina. I'm I'm just not going to do it. And I think Joseph probably understood the this the same way that there just were some things you don't do that are so holy that you don't interfere with the rest of uh of the course of history here.

>> Yeah. But see, here's the issue with that, right? I I appreciate that response, but that response is nowhere to be found in uh the sacred scriptures, right? That type of portion is what I would say is a fittingness argument and a danger. It it is found though, Jay. I just mentioned Luke and Joseph and Joseph knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son. That's the verse right there that that upholds Mary's ever virginity because he never had sex with her before she gave birth and she he never had sex with her after she gave birth. That's what the word aos in Greek means. >> So I I hear you. I would disagree necessarily. >> It was a scriptural teaching that she was ever virgin. >> No, no, I I would disagree with you though until with that point. And I think one of the proofs though is the fact that they had brothers and sisters who I don't believe especially how Matthew and Luke describe these brothers and sisters. They don't necessarily seem like they're just cousins or even step brothers and sisters. Um I don't think any of that is substantiated in in the text. But even with that though, right, Mary Well, actually, maybe we can just agree to disagree on this point because to be honest, Mary's perpetual virginity, I know that's very important uh on on y'all's uh side of things, but for for us, it really honestly it just it doesn't have any when you hear the apostles talk about what the gospel is, one of the things that you're never going to see, you're going to see born of a virgin. But you're not going to see this language of her being a perpetual version or anything like that. Um, and again, we're kind of looking at I see it as more of a pious position because it kind of requires that oh, if Joseph was to have intercourse with Mary, as if that is somehow sinful when the whole >> J do do you realize that in in in Middle Eastern culture and especially in Hebrew, there was no word for cousin. >> You said there was no word for cousin. >> There's no word for cousin. And in Greek as also as a matter of fact there is no word for cousin. That's what the word adelos means. >> It means a brother or a close very very close relative. Someone who might be a step the concept of stepbrother halfbrother. That concept did not exist. I think you can you're shaking. You understand what I'm saying. That concept did not exist >> in the Old Testament and it did not exist in the New. >> You had you adopted a kid. He was your son. You had uh kids with multiple wives. they were all brothers and sisters, whatever. The concept of half step and all of that kind of stuff did non-exist. But it also existed with the cousins that we would call today cousins. That word, that concept, that word did not exist back then. And so Adel fel, you know, that's what it was used to describe people that were a very close familial lineage to you. And you know, I I would actually just leave it at me just agreeing to disagree and things of that nature only because for me, I didn't necessarily come as prepared to talk about Mary's perpetual virginity. Um, >> and so I certainly don't want to get beer too much out of my league because I haven't looked all the way into the different creek words here. Um, and so I'm definitely open to this actually being legit. Currently, I'm not necessarily convinced, but you know, I'm open. You know, >> Jay, let me let me ask you a question. Do do you personally uh do you feel comfortable calling the Virgin Mary blessed? >> Yeah, absolutely. Scripture does. >> Do you think, honestly speaking, do you think many people in your church also feel comfortable calling her the Blessed Virgin Mary? >> I would say a lot of Protestants would uh call her Blessed Virgin Mary. Yeah. I don't think that's necessarily Well, actually, here's what I would say because one of the things I like to do is leave room and say that are there probably protestants out there for whatever reason. I haven't met them. I've been in a lot of Protestant situations. I don't think anybody has an issue with saying blessed Virgin Mary, but maybe they're out there. You know, I'm I'm willing to to definitely grant that for sure.

>> Okay, that that's fair. And and from our side, of course, she herself under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, "All generations will call me blessed." >> So if she said it and people refused to, then then we go back to your question from earlier. If if people don't do that, are they somehow lessening the message of salvation given to mankind? That that's not that's a rhetorical question, not not one we have to address here. >> But do you think in general >> in general >> Mhm. that the Protestant church, let alone the reformed side that you come from, do you think they honor the Virgin Mary too little or just about right at this point in time? >> That's a good question. Um, it's honestly Thanks. >> Yeah, it's it's honestly also a very difficult question because I would not necessarily uh claim exhaustive knowledge of every Protestant out there. Uh I think that a lot of Protestants generally speaking uh at least from my experience and from my exposure they would say they would probably honor Mary just right. They typically affirm everything that scripture affirms about her but you know keep themselves from going into the more pious I guess you would say uh practices of venerating her and things of that nature. And so obviously that's where we would see things differently but like they would I know a lot of Protestants who would say that yeah this is um you know she's blessed she's virgin uh she is many of them would say mother of god I love to say what scripture says where she is the the mother of Jesus um and who is god of course um I know there's some debate about that but even if you qualify exactly how you articulate mother of god I only say Mother Jesus who is God's because I think it's more theologically precise.

>> Are you uncomfortable saying mother of God? >> It's not that I'm uncomfortable. It's that I understand that there are some and I've ran into a lot of different Catholics and Orthodox who misunderstand Mother of God where they >> we don't misunderstand that. >> No, no, no, no. So, it's not just you. I'm talking about like on individuals that I've ran into where they would start to speak of her and maybe they were horribly catechized. I'm actually willing to grant this point. Maybe they weren't catechized as as well enough or whatever the case may be, but they can start to speak of her in ways that we would only speak of her uh speak of Christ or someone in the Godhead. Um and so in part of that they would say, "Well, it's because she's the mother of God." and then to go on to say something else. And I was like, yeah, I I hear you, right? See, I'm I'm with you with calling the theo her theotokos, right? Because we all understand what we should mean by that. That is uh affirming Jesus deity, not necessarily elevating Mary to some, you know, semi- divine status, which I know orthodoxy doesn't necessarily teach. Right. So, I want to re >> we definitely do not teach that. >> Exactly. So, but I understand that there's other people who become a bit more confused. And typically what we do in these conversations whenever we say mother of God, we instantly qualify it by further explaining what exactly we mean by that. Because let's say you're talking to a Muslim for an example and it's like God had a mother and it's like yes, God had a mother. Jesus Christ is God and he had a mother. You know what I mean? But are you asking if Yahweh, you know, uh, the God the Father had a mother, then we would be like, "No, you give >> We're not Mormons that way. We're not Mormons." >> Yeah. Exactly. So, and you see how we're starting to qualify. So, I don't personally I don't think it's as theologically precise of a uh term. Hence why I say Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is God, because that's essentially where we're going with this. We're not saying that Mary's the mother of the Godhead, you know. Um, >> and we're not saying that. We never have and we never will. I know. I know. As we like to say, when we call Mary the mother of God, Protestants go, "Oh my God, you can't say that. She didn't give birth to God." Who was it that she gave birth to? Jesus. What was Jesus God? And she gave birth to God. Yeah. In in our own hymns, we often clarify that by saying, "Thou who gave us birth to God, the word." Mhm. >> So we make it very clear what we believe in. So where we might be general and people can't point to that and say, "Oh, that proves you believe thus and so." It does not because elsewhere we might clarify in the hymn, this is what we mean by that. We know what we mean by what we sing and what we pray and what we teach. And it's not quite fair, as I said at the very beginning when you and I started talking to Orthodox, oh, you don't understand this, that, or the other thing when half the people, in fact, if not all the people out there podcasting right now on our side are former Protestants. We know very well what we're talking about. What one of the things I would honestly say to this is that if we're going to use that necessary criteria, we could say that any Orthodox person that becomes a Protestant, well, they know orthodoxy, but we understand a little bit things a little bit more nuanced and that just because you came out of something, that doesn't mean that you uh properly understood it. So, like for instance, there's so many people that came out of uh whatever religion that you're probably uh thinking of thinking of. pick your religion uh or pick your tradition and they could have came out of it. They could have actually been a part of it, but they probably weren't uh the best in terms of articulating exactly what that other tradition articulated. So just because you came out of Protestantism, that doesn't mean that that automatically gives you the stamp of approval that you're like, >> but but Jai, how do you how do you how do you u um justify that? And we're talking about justification earlier. How do you justify that statement when all of these people coming out of Protestantism are saying the same thing? >> I mean that's you can find any massive group of people that would probably come out of something and probably say the same thing. There's so for instance there's a lot of Catholics or Orthodox who would come out of orthodoxy who would come out of Catholicism and they would say oh yeah we came out of it because we feel like orthodoxy uh you know engages in idolatry. >> I could easily say that oh yes y'all probably perfectly understand orthodoxy. Yeah. Who who better knows orthodoxy than y'all? And they're all saying the same thing that they all engaged in idolatry, you know. But I think y'all would understand that uh they I don't think they truly understood orthodoxy. And I would say this. I would say fair enough, right? Hence why I don't judge orthodoxy based off of who came out of it. And it's like, oh, this person came out of he maybe he was an Orthodox priest. I think Gavin Ortland actually had an Orthodox priest. I wouldn't necessarily take everything that he says as >> Oh, he's been on my show twice and he's been on other people's shows and and things like that. Um >> No, no, I'm talking about the Orthodox priest that came out of Orthodoxy into Protestantism. I forgot what his name is. I think it was Jonathan something. Um, and but what what I'm saying is that just because he came out of Orthodoxy, just because he was an Orthodox priest, that doesn't mean that I just take everything and anything that he says that's just canon, as gospel, it's like, oh, this is what Orthodox believe. No, I have enough respect for y'all to try to go and find the strongest uh arguments that you know y'all would make for your tradition, whether it be the councils that you would uh you know point to, whatever official statements that you would point to. And I try to say, okay, let me not find the lowest argument for like why orthodoxy is wrong, like oh, they believe this. I want to find the highest. So, one of the things I'm doing and then I'll pass it back over to you. One of the things I'm doing is reading over John of Damascus, right? Um, and I'm I'm I haven't been too deep into his his works, but I know that's a a a saint that I believe is very revered in Orthodoxy, if I'm not mistaken. Right. So, yes, >> I'm I'm going there. I'm actually I've actually told my subscribers that I plan on looking at the different, you know, ecumenical councils that Orthodoxy would affirm. And so what I want to do is I actually want to do the homework to understand exactly what what y'all believe and why you believe it, right? And if I find somebody who maybe is even claiming to be an Orthodox apologist, but if I see that uh it doesn't look like they're fully representing it or it doesn't look like a lot of Orthodox people are saying that, yeah, I probably wouldn't make that argument. Then I'm like, I'm probably not gonna spend that much time on that uh argument because it's y'all would tell me that's probably not the strongest argument for this or that. And so I'll just move on because I want to know and this is why I encourage other people to do with Protestantism. Even if you meet some Protestants who would say, "Oh yeah, I'm Protestant and all I believe that you have to do is just mentally ascent." understand that there is a bigger swath of Protestants who would say no that person doesn't understand the gospel. That person doesn't understand justification by faith alone. What we mean by faith is trust, dependence, reliance upon God to save us for, you know, um to to save us from destruction, to save us to glory, etc., etc. And it's like, okay, if you're going to critique Protestantism, critique the strongest version of it. Because conversely, I think that's what y'all would expect us to do as it relates to Orthodoxy. And both of us, whether or not we both see each other as Christians, we both claim to follow Christ, who gave us the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And so that's what I try to model in my channel. I I try to be as respectful to my Orthodox and Catholic, you know, uh, counterparts and say that, you know what, I want to, even if I disagree with y'all, I want y'all to leave my videos saying, okay, I disagree with Janai, but I cannot I cannot say that he didn't at least try his best to steal the Orthodox or the Catholic position and things of that nature. Um, >> and Jay, I appreciate that, by the way. I I appreciate you saying that. I do. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah, you know, and I I just want to say I appreciate this conversation with you. Uh uh, Father Jonathan. It has been a pleasure to actually have this talk. Uh again, I hopefully maybe down the line, Ben, let me know if you're open to it. I'm always open to having conversations. Uh, I actually want because I feel like with these response videos, we ended up talking past each other, words get exchanged, XYZ. I think we all do better whenever we're talking straight to each other um, and asking the different clarifying questions, really putting our feet to the fire, etc., etc. So, I appreciate this uh, conversation happening. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I think it was a great talk. Thank you both for coming on. Do you mind if uh, can you stick around for just a little bit to answer some of the super chats? Sure. >> All right. >> Yeah, I think this was a great a great discussion. Thanks for coming on the show, Janie. And thank you. Uh or I'm sorry, how do I say your name? >> Janai or J. >> Yeah, sorry about that. Jai, thank you. Yes, Janai. There you go. Uh Father Jonathan, thank you again for coming on the show. Always good to have you on. >> Uh George Patton says, "Recommend him Religion of the Apostles. Read the book there." >> Okay. by Father Steven Young. >> I'd highly recommend that, Jay, you I think you will find it uh intriguing. That's a good word to use. Very intriguing. >> Gotcha. Gotcha. He's religion of what now? >> Religion of the Apostles by Father Stephen D. Young. D capital Y O N G. Yeah. >> All right. I love Father Steven D. Young. He's nice. Jai. >> Here's a question from Blake. He says, "Does uh does Janai agree with John Piper's belief that Jesus was damned on the cross?" >> No. >> Hopefully that answers. >> There you go. >> That's That's one That's one belief of Calvin's. I'm glad you don't hold to. >> Yeah. I wouldn't say he was damned on the cross. No. >> Okay. Uh Thomas says, "Uh, Jania, if the Holy Spirit is God, how is it possible he fails to lead the church into all truth, not just some baseline?" >> All right, Jana, if the Holy Spirit is God, how is it possible it fails to lead the church into all truth, not just some So, this is where it's a very good question. Um, one I would say that the Holy Spirit leading uh one I would say that that that promise to lead uh someone to all truth is actually given to the apostles but more so I believe every the Holy Spirit leads us all into uh the truth. Now, I think the debate is over what do you mean by all truth? Because I think we whether you're Protestant, Catholic, or orthodox. Uh we wouldn't necessarily say that the Holy Spirit is just going to give you every truth known to man. Like how literal are you taking all truth? I think uh the truth that he's um referring to there is uh is Jesus is a lot of the truths that we um that that becomes more articulated as the gospel essentials. Um, but I think we also have to work to hold to the words of Paul here that gives us a little bit more nuance where he says like we in this life are going to see through this mirror dimly, right? We're not going to understand every single page that you probably see in sacred scripture. There's probably going to be disagreement about this or that, let's say even tertiary uh issue until we probably end up dying. Um, now it doesn't does that mean that we're never going to arrive at any truth? No. Uh, but I think we all would agree that you would have to qualify all truth there in some sense. Now, I would say that the all truth that's being referenced there is the truth that um eventually gets pinned to paper um as it relates to the scriptures because again, he's talking to the apostles here. But you know, even if you want to apply that more broadly to the believers who also have the spirit, again, we all understand that every believer isn't necessarily going to arrive at the truth, you know, in that um sense where it's like every true thing, right? But we will all every true believer will arrive at the truth, all capital letters, which is Christ himself. Hopefully that answers, you know, the question. I know we may have some disagreements here, but that's off the top of my head what I would say to that. >> Good question. >> Father Jonathan, any comments on that one? >> Well, the reason it's interesting to me is that has the Holy Spirit led the Orthodox truh church into all truth andor has the Holy Spirit led the Protestant Reformed Church, for example, into all truth. If you say yes to that, then you don't know how to account for or answer the huge discrepancies between what we believe and and and disagree on. >> E Williams, $2 for the Godlogic defeated fund. I heard I heard David Wood screaming about me right now. So, I can't I can't wait to go uh tune in and watch him call me bald or something. How do How do you know your 66 book canon is true? The classic. The classic >> that my friend will require. I actually have a video on this. Um by the way, uh it's I don't know what the title is, but it was something about the cannon. I think that's a conversation that we probably do not have enough time here for. I think there is a good case to be made for the 66 book canon. Um I I would say that everybody agrees actually on the 66 books. Where we differ is on the extra books that you will find in Catholicism orthodoxy. Um and so we know for sure why the 66 books cannons are true. What exactly was the criteria that was used? Obviously, that's a bit more debated. Um, but I I think that would say that uh that's where we would have and we would ultimately say that no church council created the canon. Uh we would all affirm uh at least if I remember Father Jonathan mentioning that we receive the inspired books that was already inspired whenever they were written. Um, and so I believe what exactly did Christ the apostles recognize as that Old Testament because we agree on the New Testament, that Old Testament cannon. I think that's the point of debate, but again, I have a whole video uh dedicated to that. All right. The >> there's a lot there's a lot I would want to say on that subject, but >> you you could I'm not I'm not holding you back, Ben. I'm not holding you back. I know. >> I mean, I would just say based off based off of what standard would you accept the 66 canon? Because when you when you even look at like any senate any of the early senates now granted we would say >> like you said it's not the senates that are that are making these books inspired it's them recognizing it right but if you were to look at any senate any of the early senates none of them hold to a 66 book canon they all include some manner of apocryphal books dudero canonical books Jerome would call them even Jerome like Wes Huff likes to appeal to Jerome I did that a lot as a Protestant too he would call them he would call them apoc apocryphal, but his definitions mean something different than what the modern Protestants would mean by it. And even he would affirm a 73 book list. >> He just calls the dudero canonical books ecclesiastical texts. So he uses very nuanced language, but you're not going to find, and this is something if you continue to do research in this, you can look at the uh Council of Rome, >> which Jerome was actually at. You could look at the Council of Carthage. Uh you could look at the Council of Trulo. You could look at the council of Jerusalem. You could look at the can uh the canons that are affirmed there. The canalists that are affirmed there. All of them are going to affirm affirm duderoconical texts. Even the individual lists by uh people that people like my friend Dr. Gavin Ortland >> will cite on his on his show. Uh they'll even affirm dudero canonical books like Baroo in their lists, but he'll try to say this is like close enough to the Protestant cannon. All of them will affirm dudero canonical books. So I guess the real critic >> increasingly by the way >> increasingly by the way. >> So I guess the real the real place that I would point you to pull a thread would be based off of what standard is it merely a 66 book list minus any dudero canonicals? What precedent is is there for that? And then if you research what the early reformers actually held to as far as the cannon goes and why they were removed, >> it'll probably shock you. Um, but I would just encourage that as a thread to pull. >> Right. >> Um, first Janie, uh, oh, sorry, Janai, thank you for having I'm gonna keep messing up. I'm so sorry. >> No, that's all right. >> I have I have a friend named I have a friend named Janie, so I just Yeah. >> No, that's all right. That's all right. >> Second, are you aware of the great scholarship like Dr. Jason Staples showing traditional Protestant definitions of justification is incorrect. Also, Matthew Thomas. >> Uh, no, I am not familiar. You said Dr. Jason Staples. Give me one second because I always like to look this stuff up. Um, no, I have not looked into that. But even if you wanted to try to argue with that, again, this is where I would say that the strength of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone is that I wouldn't even you're in defending the doctrine. I wouldn't even appeal to someone like Martin Luther, Calvin, whatever the case may be. Um, I know a lot of people would say, "Oh, but you got to go to where it was articulate." It's like that's a much more nuanced conversation that we could have another day. The fact of the matter is is that is this what the Bible actually teaches? If it's yes, then that's true and then we have to necessarily deal with all the other uh other things. And so again, if you're understanding Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone as we are justified by that true regenerate dependence, reliance, etc. on Christ to save us, then okay, you have the right aim. if you want to show me through scripture whether or not that's false or whatever the case may be, we can have that discussion. Um, but you know, if you're just merely gonna quote some Luther person or Luther or Calvin or whatever the case may be, like I hear you, but you know, it is kind of besides the point at this point because we as Protestants would say that the doctrine of justification by faith alone comes from scripture itself. So, you would have to tell show us by scripture how that doesn't line up or how that doesn't add up. But, you know, hopefully that answers the question. >> Really, it wasn't even a question. It was just a comment. >> Any comments? >> Not on that one. No. >> Okay. I would also recommend for you um I would recommend to you to look at McGrath's scholarship on imputed righteousness, stating that it wasn't present the first thousand years of the church. uh as a Protestant scholar that comes to the same conclusion there. Um just for further reading, uh Thomas says uh is the church of the is the church or the Bible the ground and pillar of truth? Until Luther was that church understood to be visible or invisible? >> Yeah. Uh I appreci uh thank you for this question. However, I think it's the wrong question. First, everybody understands the church is the pillar of budget of truth. That's literally what scripture says. Second, I would question this person of what they mean by that because depending on what they mean, I think Father Ste uh Father Jonathan would kind of push back here because if you mean that the church is somehow the um the source of truth as if the church creates truth or something like that, then we would >> sharply disagree. I don't know if that's the orthodox position. >> Well, how is that different from being the pillar and ground of truth? >> Yeah, absolutely. Again, a pillar, what does a pillar do? It upholds. >> Pillar and ground. Pillar and groundwork. Pillar and foundation. >> I got you. So >> the foundation and the support, >> right? So the the whole purpose of the church uh as Paul as Paul is saying is to uphold and support the truth, right? And actually, interesting enough, in Revelation, I encourage everybody to go look this up. Um Jesus actually refers to the church of Ephesus. He warns them. He says, "If you don't repent, um, basically, I'm going to go in and remove your lampstand." That's very important because that is their covenant standing, their covenant responsibility to do what? What does the lampstand do? It holds up and it supports the light, right? And so, as you can see, just because you have the responsibility to uphold and support the truth, which is Christ, which is his word, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be infallible in doing that, in fulfilling that uh responsibility. Uh, >> you don't think the church is infallible? You don't think the church, the body of Christ, is infallible? >> Do I think we're infallible? No, I don't. >> No, that's not what I said. I said you you you just said something. My response is, do you think the church as the body of Christ is fallible? >> Yeah, absolutely. We're fallible. >> How how can the body of Christ be fallible when Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against it? >> Well, this is where I would actually again great great portion. This is where actually >> or is this a matter of definition? Maybe do we have to define what we're talking about here? >> No. No. >> Ties into the next question too. Even with uh you mentioned the gates of technically it's the gates of Hades not the gates of hell. Uh hell is gehenna which Jesus refers to in other places. Uh this says the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. The gates of Hades which also in the Greek Septuagent is sh. Shol is the ram of the dead. This is that promise of the final resurrection. Uh the church which is the true body in Christ. Every regenerate uh believer which Jesus is referring to here. Every single regenerate believer who places their faith in him will be resurrected at the end. In which is the picture that we get in Revelation 20 where death in Hades is thrown into >> well even those that haven't placed their hope in him are going to be resurrected. Everybody's going to be resurrected on the last day. >> Absolutely. Everybody is going to be resurrected but not everybody's going to be uh is going to prevail over the gates of Hades. Right. Because remember, Hades is going to be thrown into the lake of fire as well as the people who um did not ultimately place their faith in in Christ. And so that's why I would say like even with something like that, that's not a promise of infallibility. That's a promise that we're we're going to overcome uh death itself. So uh I I wouldn't necessarily say that. But to this question, it says uh is the church the body of Christ? >> It was kind of already what we were talking about. >> Oh, okay. Okay. >> That's that's why I pulled it up because it dovetailed right into it. >> All right. >> Father Jonathan had the mind meld with the super chatter. He already knew. >> Yeah. But yeah. >> Um here you go. Uh did God the Father pour his wrath out on the Son? >> Did God the Father? Man, y'all are taking me into the depths of portion. I'm gonna have to say pass on this one. my mind we have covered so many topics today my mind is drawing a blank and I don't >> welcome to the depth and beauty of orthodox >> I'm going to the only reason why I'm going to say pass is is because I feel like man oh my goodness we talked about from justification to the cannon to everything that I'm like I I forgot what what scripture would say with this so I don't want to say something that >> Lord Dless says I will send you the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the father seems very clearly the trinity is biblical and is what Christ taught. >> Let me let me quickly say something about that. It it I I am amazed at the number of Protestants that defend the theoquay the Latin word which translates and the son in the altered version of the nying creed that the Roman Catholic Church and most Protestants say they believe that the holy spirit proceeds from the father and the son. The Orthodox Church is the only biblical church who adheres to the biblical principles and the biblical truth as Jesus himself spoke them which says that the I will send you the spirit even the spirit of truth who proceeds from the father. He said nothing more and yet the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant churches have seen fit to keep this interpolation which is anti-biblical. So we believe that the holy spirit proceeds from the father and the father alone. sending the spirit is a different issue. The pro the the idea of proceeds is a matter of origin. The idea of sending is a matter of mission. The spirit proceeds from the father but Jesus and the father. It also says in the scriptures send the son uh send the spirit. But those are two different concepts proceeding and sending. >> Yeah. Um, >> this looks like something that we already addressed. Uh, is the is the church the bride of Christ is Christ, not the perfect bridegroom able to perfectly lead his bride? I think Father Jonathan, you're just uh, you're mind melded with this super chatter because he was asking the same thing along the same line of reasoning you took that entire discussion just a moment ago. >> Here's what I would also add to this. Um just because as as the bride of Christ is not merely referring to some institution. It's referring to every single regenerate believer, right? And so is Christ able to be the good shepherd of his his people? Yeah. But has I guess now the question is it's like how do you understand the bride of Christ? Like do you think we could just not make mistakes? Well, obviously everybody would would disagree with that. They would say, "Oh, no, no, it's the institution." And it's like, but if you look at how Paul is using the bride of Christ, that's referring to every regenerate believer. You know what I mean?

So, uh, unless you want to say that, uh, the regenerate and unregenerate believers, even within something like Orthodoxy, makes up the bride of Christ, which I don't think Orthodoxy would do. Then we would say that he's referring to when Paul mentions the bride of Christ, right? Uh, he's mentioning that every regenerate believer, which as Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, we're all going to build on Christ with a mixture of materials, good, uh, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw. It doesn't make Christ in, um, a faulty foundation. It doesn't make him not a good shepherd. The good shepherd is going to keep his sheep and ultimately raise them up on the last day. That's what makes Christ a good shepherd. He's not promising that we'll never make mistakes, that we never sin, that we never X, Y, and Z, that we never get something wrong. Um, you know, things of that nature, right? But he promises to raise us up on the last day.

So, I guess I, I'm very interested and maybe this is a conversation for another day of like, what is the criteria that people are thinking that would make Christ out to be a good shepherd? Because if you say, "Oh, it has to be nothing but solid. The church has to only articulate nothing but solid doctrine all throughout church history." One, I don't even think that would would fly because that's definitely not going to be able to be a very good argument because you could sound so, um, uh, find so many places, uh, where the church got something wrong, right? Uh, now you could argue was that infallible teaching? Whatever the case may be, that's really besides the point. The point the matter is that we had to wrestle with certain heresies or whatever the case may be. The second thing is that, um, how much doctrine can you do? What's the benchmark, benchmark of, uh, doctrine that you feel like you have to get right for Christ to be a good shepherd? Is it everything? So, we just be a monolith and everybody only has, you know, every single, whether it's, uh, uh, primary, secondary, tertiary, or whatever dairy that you want to pick. Like, how much do we all say, "Oh yeah, we all agree before Christ is therefore labeled a good shepherd, right?" I don't even think that's a script criteria that scripture gives. And so that's why I would kind of caution people be like, uh, Christ is a good shepherd whether or not, um, you know, and of course, he, he, he sends a spirit to make sure that, um, that that we're, we're guided into the truth and things of that nature. But Christ being a good shepherd doesn't stand or fall on our faultiness or on our fallibility. I would caution people, uh, from from saying that because it's like you're, um, you're, you're kind of putting God on the trial here. And I don't know if people realize that, but that's neither here nor there. That would be my two cents. I just wanted to chime in on that one.

>> Any thoughts, Father?

>> No, I, I'll let some other people ask some questions. Yeah, I could probably stay for two more and then I'll probably have to, uh, hop off.

>> By the way, >> um, where do you find a list of required doctrines in the Bible? Also, did the apostles ordain successors? Why listen to you instead of them?

>> Um, so, very good question. Uh, the first question I'm going to have to pass, not because it's a bad question, but because it requires way more time than I have to spend here. Uh, the second question, uh, did the apostles ordain successors? Uh, if you mean by did they ordain presbyters or elders and things of that nature in the church to lead the church whenever they >> they take their office when they pass.

>> Yeah. But see, here's the thing, even with office, like what are we talking about the office of the apostle? Because we wouldn't say the presbyters are apostles. We would say, or Orthodoxy would say, if I understand this correctly, that the elders succeed their authority but not >> to succeed him in the apostolic ministry.

>> Yeah. So, I mean, I would say that they ordained elders, but elders are not apostles, and I don't believe that the elders inherit the apostles, I guess you would say, the totality of the apostles' authority. Obviously, I think they were commissioned to, uh, shepherd the church, right? We definitely see that in scripture. Um, but obviously, they don't inherit every authority that the apostles have. Otherwise, we'll have elders to, to this day, writing scripture and things of that nature, which obviously nobody believes.

>> Um, well, we do, we do have successors to the apostles today. They're the bishops of the Orthodox Church. And we actually see this in the, we see this at the end of Acts chapter 1 when Judas, when Judas, uh, dies, he's replaced by Matthias. So,

>> And what is, what does Matthias become an apostle?

>> He, he replaces him in the apostolic ministry.

>> I got you. But Matthias becomes an apostle, not a presbyter. Right. So unless no,

>> This is, this is where I would say for anybody who uses Matthias as an example of apostolic succession, I just need you to be consistent, right? Because Matthias is described as an apostle and scripture actually tells us why they replaced Matthew is to fulfill the prophecy of, uh, what we see in Revelation with the 12 foundations.

>> They didn't replace Matthias. Now, who you talking about?

>> I mean, not Matthias, uh, Judas. I said Judas. Mentioned Judas. I'm sorry. We know why Judas was replaced, right? Peter actually tells us why, right? And Judas, uh, Matthias becomes an apostle. He doesn't, he's not an elder, uh, inheriting apostolic authority. If that was the case, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

>> He was an apostle. He already had apostolic authority.

>> If he's an apostle, he has apostolic authority. He was given that by the election of the other college of apostles to replace Judas. He was in, it says he was enrolled with the 12.

>> Right?

>> He was one of the original,

>> He became, he became one of the 12 apostles, though.

>> Yes. Right. Correct. We never said he was a presbyter. We don't teach that. We've never said that.

>> No, but what I'm saying is that if we're talking about apostolic succession, which that's not talking about someone, uh, who is a presbyter succeeding an apostle, right? That to use Matthias as the example, what I'm saying is that you'll have to be consistent, right? Because Matthias inherits all the authority that, uh, the other apostles had, right? Like, is that so? But we wouldn't say that by the presbyters, right? So, like, for instance,

>> whoever y'all would say, I don't even know if y'all would agree with Roman Catholics and saying that, I don't know, the bishop of Rome, the Pope, or whatever the case may be, who claims to have apostolic secession from Peter and stuff like that. I don't think y'all would say agree with them that, you know, the bishops of Rome can write scripture like Peter did or do the things that Peter did, right? Like, I don't, so there's a cut off to how y'all would necessarily understand absolution. And my point is, is that I don't see any of that criteria. Now, granted, again, this is a conversation for another day. I know we probably don't have time because I don't want to, uh, put, uh, Father Jonathan up against time necessarily speaking, but what I'm saying is that I don't necessarily see the apostolic session proper anywhere in scripture. I know people like to make a argument from history. I think that gets a little bit dicey in my opinion, but I'll leave it, leave it there.

>> Well, what, what St. What St. Paul said to Timothy, which I quoted earlier, is an an exact exposition of passing on apostolic authority.

>> Yep. We agree to disagree. But you're disagreeing with scripture at that point.

>> Not necess- Well, because if you're talking about again, authority to do what? Authority to teach. Again, that's not,

>> Authority to teach, authority to preach, authority to bind and loose, and authority to establish presbyters and new churches, to establish, uh, successors to what he was down the road.

>> Well, see, that's the, that's the key thing at the end, to successors to what he was. What, who was Paul or Timothy?

>> No, I'm talking about Timothy.

>> Okay. Well, if you're Sabathon's successors to Timothy, I mean, yeah, absolutely. No dispute there. Timothy inherited that position and that authority to do those things from Paul himself, who received it from Christ himself.

>> Right. No, no, I'm not disagreeing that Timothy had authority. I'm,

>> Apostolic authority. Did he have apostolic authority? Jay,

>> Timothy, did he have a, was apostolic authority passed on to him?

>> So, I, no, I wouldn't say apostolic authority in terms,

>> Apostolic authority ended with the twelve apostles when they died, depending on how you're defining it. Yeah. So, like, if you're, if you're saying, did, did Paul, uh, ordain Timothy to preach, to teach, to ordain other presbyters or deacons, right? Um, I'm trying to think of another thing, but,

>> To bind and loose, that was another authority.

>> Let's even say to bind and loose, right? Uh, which, you know, is given there. And I would say yes, if that's all you're saying as what encapsulates apostolic authority, then sure, we can actually agree on that. But from my understanding, I don't think that's all that Orthodoxy would say is apostolic authority, right? There's a little bit more there. Yeah. It's, it's the, the authority that when your time to to leave this world comes, you have to pass that on to to successors who will take, who will gain from you everything that you could do and were given by your predecessor by his predecessor going back to the apostles themselves, >> right? Yeah. And, and I would say that extra, whatever is past that list that we kind of had some agreement upon, I, I would say there would need to be further conversation, further, uh, portion for that. But I'll just leave that, leave that there.

>> Okay. We could, we can maybe talk about that some other time.

>> And I, I'm definitely open to talk about it some other time, too. By the way, if you want to have me on the channel again, I'm, I'm certainly open.

>> Awesome. Well, I think, uh, I think Father, you said you had a, a hard cut off at at 8. So,

>> I, I could, I could sit for one more question.

>> Sure.

>> Okay. Last one here, the final question, and then Father Ron's gonna come on and hang out with me, and we'll read the rest of these. Um, for Father Jonathan and Jay, what does it mean for one to be justified? It's al, it's often used synonymous with salvation. Is it a ticket to heaven or what exactly does it do to a person?

>> Okay, I, I'll go forth real quick because then I'll have to get off. Um, to, to be justified is to mean to be made right before God. To be made right before God. And when God makes us right, it's not based on anything we have done, nor will it ever be based on anything we can do. It's, we are justified by faith. But that is a starting point and it's not synonymous with salvation. It starts us on the road to salvation. Remember that the word to save and salvation come from the same root, which means to be, to be delivered, to be rescued, you know, and so forth. So, we are being rescued from sin. We are being delivered from eternal separation from God. So, to be justified by faith means at that point in time, we have begun a process, the process of salvation. Uh, St. Paul talks about, I have been saved, I am being saved, I will be saved. But all during that time, we are engaging in a, in a further process called Theosis, which we do equate with salvation. We think Theosis and salvation are pretty much the same thing. And the salvation of St. Peter talks about is becoming a partaker of the divine nature of God himself. Becoming a partaker of the divine nature. That's what St. Peter says. So, we believe that justification, we have to be justified because we have no other way to be made righteous before God on the things we alone have done. I, I think Jay and I would probably agree on some of the basics here because I, I listened to his, the thing, the recording I mentioned earlier in the, um, in our talk here, and, and there were some things that I, I agree with that. So, the, um, the, the, I'm reading the question again. Is it a ticket to heaven? No. Uh, what does it exactly do to the person? It gives that person an opportunity now to live a life according not to the flesh, but according to the spirit, to live a life according a God-pleasing life according to the way in which we walk according to the will of God. I'll stop there and give Jay some time.

>> Yeah. So, this is the, the conversation I was so, so prepared to have because I actually, um, tried to get enough study into what, like what Orthodoxy talked about and taught as it relates to Theosis. But actually, a lot of what Father Jonathan said there, I would actually say, yes and amen. And I love his distinguishing, uh, point about there's a difference between justification and sanct-, not sanctification, salvation, because salvation is a much broader, uh, group that encompasses justification, but justification is not to be included, uh, not to be confused with everything that goes, uh, goes on with salvation. I think where we would disagree maybe is that, you know, what is the basis of our right standing before God? I would say that is by faith apart from works. Um, and so we would, as Protestants, we would affirm that, you know, us being glorified, us being, uh, partakers of, of, of Christ, uh, us, uh, participating in the sacraments, all of that stuff is, is beautiful. All that stuff is included in salvation more broadly. It's just not the basis upon which that, uh, that you are justified. Those are things that you know, are, are sprung from the, the fact that we are justified by God on the basis of, of faith. Um, again, I think this is, ah, this is a conversation Ben, you have to bring.

>> We will, we may have to to continue that. We, we miss it.

>> Jay, I want to say I enjoyed speaking with you and I thank you for the, the, the civil way in which you approached our discussion. I, I hope you, you saw the same from me. I love such discussions of civility where we can discuss as gentlemen and not start throwing the vitriol at one another. And, um, I want to express to, to Cleave to Ben, my appreciation for having me on the show and having Jay on the show. Uh, I hope to our viewers, this was interesting, helpful, uh, enlightening, um, all of that kind of stuff. Um, and, um, I gotta go. So, I want to thank everybody and say good night and God bless you all.

>> All right. Well, I'll see you, Father Jonathan. I will see you as well, Ben. I appreciate you for having me on, man. I appreciate it.

>> Absolutely. Thanks for,

>> You want to have me on to talk about a topic, whatever the case may be, I am here. I promise.

>> Sounds good. All right. Thank you so much for hanging out with us.

>> All right. See you.

>> All right. All right. Now, Father Ron's going to be joining me in just a moment to go through the rest of these questions here, but I'm just going to go ahead and get started. Uh, I believe you're either apostolic or restorationist because you claim to restore true doctrine. Why is that not the case in your view? Well, you know, it's interesting because most, most Protestants, whether they, uh, understand it or not, they do kind of hold to a form of restorationism if they say, because even, even he was saying in his responses, oh, well, like the reformers, I don't necessarily have to agree with them. Oh, well, these church fathers, I don't necessarily have to agree with them. So, there was like some vague point in which I guess the Reformation was an attempt to restore the church that had fallen away or something. I would, I mean, it just doesn't seem like there was any any foundation for the belief other than this is just what I feel the scripture says. Uh, at what point do you receive the Holy Spirit? Is it after you say some words or, yeah, he answered that actually earlier. He said it was when, when you believe in Christ, when you come to faith in Christ. So that was his answer. So, Father Jonathan actually pressed him on that kind of early in the discussion. Um, and he said he doesn't, yeah, basically it's just whenever, whenever you come to faith rather than when you're baptized, chrismated, etc. Um, how can an infallible book have a bunch of fallible interpretations? Doesn't this make truth relative? Well, I think that, I think the better critique would be under the solos scriptura model, how, um, if you're, if you're incapable, if you're incapable of making an infallible interpretation, how do you have objective truth in your paradigm? The answer is you can't. Welcome, Father Ron. Welcome to the show. Good to see you. What a wonderful talk, huh?

>> Well, Father Ron's about to crash out.

>> No, it's because I missed 80% of it. So,

>> Oh, no worries. I'm so glad you're up here to hang out with me, though. This will be fun going through the rest of these questions here. So, what did you think of the discussion?

>> Well, what I heard, um, I mean, I was on chat a little bit. I, you know, how things go with me. I forget as quick, exit my mind as quickly as it got there. So, I don't even remember what I said. I know I was going back and forth with on a few things. So, um, I know I was talking about Matthias, but then I had to, I dropped off there halfway through it. So, you're going to have to remind me. Uh, Ben, so he's a, he's a reformed Baptist gentleman. I mean, we covered all sorts of different topics. Some of these questions are going to reflect those topics. So, I'll just pull them up and we'll address them as they, as they come in.

>> Well, somebody said, "Good thing you missed it, Father." So, there you go.

>> Good thing you missed it. Lord have mercy. I thought it was, I thought it was a good chat. I think he has, he has a couple of, a couple of bridges to gap. Uh, gaps to bridge. You get what I'm saying?

>> Yeah.

>> Anyway, he's got, he's got, he's got some work to do. Uh, I think one of the more glaring things when, when they were talking about the perpetual virginity, I mean, every reformer, the ar-, the exact, this is, this is one thing that I find interesting. The arguments that he was giving are the exact arguments that the reformers themselves said were bad arguments. Let me, let me find this real quick. Perpetual virginity. Here you go. All right. So, one thing that I was going to bring, I didn't want to interrupt, uh, Father Jonathan because he was cooking. He was cooking real good. But check this out. So, this guy's a Calvinist and he doesn't realize that he's appealing to an interpretation of the scripture by an Arian gentleman named Helvidius, who said that the brothers of Christ were his blood brothers. Even John Calvin said that this, uh, this argument shows excessive ignorance. He says, Helvidius displayed excessive ignorance in concluding that Mary must have had many sons because Christ's brothers are sometimes mentioned. And John Calvin actually expressly, uh, uh, affirms his belief in the perpetual virginity and condemns the view of Helvidius. There are three historically. There's the view of Jerome. Jerome is the view that, uh, he says, you know, basically the brothers are cousins. Epiphanius says these are, uh, brothers, uh, from, uh, the first marriage, uh, of, uh, yeah, the first marriage. Helvidius says they're blood brothers. So, it's a, three different views. Um, Calvin, I believe, held the cousin view. That's why brothers are in quotations here. But this is in his Harmony of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And this is his commentary on Matthew 13:55. So, kind of interesting to see that the exact arguments that he uses are ones that Calvin explicitly condemns. Um, how can you cite scripture without having a way to determine scripture infallibly? If you say the Holy Spirit, welcome to Mormonism. Yeah, exactly. There is no way to determine objective truth. This is just like an atheist argument. Any thoughts on that, Father Ron?

>> Um, I'm just really quickly looking up. Sorry, I'm still back in Genesis 13.

>> 8.

>> While you pull that up, I'll address this one. I think this is actually very pertinent, um, because if you do not have a mechanism in your paradigm to have infallible interpretations, uh, well, then you don't have access to objective truth. It's not that objective truth doesn't exist. It's that you don't have access to an objective interpretation of that truth. So, how do you receive it? How do you receive it through a fallible lens? Well, then how could you be sure that any interpretation is correct? Now, Janai mentioned something, or Janai, sorry. Janai mentioned something, uh, earlier. That name is always gonna mess me up. Uh, he mentioned something earlier. He said, actually, we can have infallible interpretations. Um, I didn't want to interrupt, but I did want to press on that a little bit because I think that's an interesting concession for a Protestant to make because that would actually disprove solos scriptura. You're now affirming something infallible outside of the scripture itself. You're saying your interpretation can be infallible. Now, he's saying the interpretation can be infallible because you're interpreting the scripture. Well, then why can't our interpretations be infallible? It doesn't make any sense. So, he's saying, he's saying the church can't infallibly interpret it, but the individual can. It's a massive double standard. It's not, it doesn't make any sense. Um, so, real quick, in Genesis 13:8, where Lot and Abraham, says, "Abraham, Abram, excuse me, said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we are, well, some my translation says kinsmen, some say brothers." That word is exactly adelphoi. Adelphi, which is basically what is used in the New Testament. Um, and so here, Abram is talking about his nephew.

>> So, there's right there. That wasn't hard.

>> Yeah. Another one that I wanted to bring up when he was talking about the until thing because he was saying, "Well, that doesn't make sense as far as like the reading goes." Well, if you were to actually read, like, well, does, uh, does Christ stop reigning after all of his, uh, enemies are under his feet?

>> That's right here. 1 Corinthians, uh, 15:25. Let me go down to New King James. For he must reign till he has put all his enemy, uh, his enemies under his feet. So, does this until here indicate, uh, he's just going to stop reigning? So, Christ no longer reigns after his enemies are put under his feet. That doesn't make any sense. It obviously implies a continuation.

>> Yeah, I'm just going to check Matthew 1:25. While you're, while you're going on here.

>> Uh, for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified. How does this align with faith alone? Yeah, it doesn't. That's a good point. Father Jonathan is cooking. Yes, he was. Absolutely. I'm appreciative of him coming on. He was locked in. He was real locked in for that discussion. That was good. Um, for Father Jonathan and Jay, what, what is the Christian life supposed to look like and how much should it look different from the rest of the world? That would be a good question for you to answer, Father. What is the Christian life supposed to look like and how much should it look different from the rest of the world?

>> Uh, well, you know, if we love one another, by this all men will know that you are my disciples. Mhm.

>> And that love is not the love of the Gentiles, which, you know, it says in Matthew, like, what credit is it to you if you lend and expect to receive back, I think it's Matthew or Luke, and there's other criteria if you're just like the Gentiles. I mean, no, that's the difference though. We are called to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us and, um, you know, walk with them an extra mile and all that stuff, which is not in the Old Testament.

>> That would be the major difference. And I think, I mean, you think about it, Ben, if you have a people doing that, and that's why I like to use Aristides of Athens, his apology, where he describes the early Christians who do all that stuff. How can that not be attractive to people? How could that not produce converts? How can that not, you know, um, be a light to the world? Let's put it that way. Something that completely would be so different. And I think if I could, that would be the bare minimum. I mean, so that would be my answer.

>> Yeah, that's a good question. What identifiable visible communion possessed the authority to teach, ordain, preserve scripture, condemn heresy, administer the sacraments from AD 100 until the 16th century? And why? That's a great question. Well, I, that, like, if we, if we had another discussion, um, you know, in the future, the ground and pillar of truth thing, he was saying something along the lines of, well, it only upholds truth. Okay. So, in your view of what the church is, you're saying it's an invisible church. Do the 40,000 different denominations that disagree with one another uphold truth? No, absolutely they don't. They disagree with one another. So, that alone should disprove Protestantism.

>> Uh, yeah, and I was in chat talking about that, that when he said every regenerated believer, that's almost verbatim what Martin Luther said,

>> You know, that it's a, it's a gathering of hearts.

>> Yeah.

>> Not an actual. And you know what verse I like to use? Um, that not many people are familiar with, but I do use it, um, and that's the one in Acts, um, see, watches. So, I think it's Acts Solomons. Let me just try one thing here. Oh boy. Uh, uh, where it talks about how they were gathering. Um, yeah, right here, uh, Acts, Acts 5:12, uh, Acts 5:12, it says, "Now many signs and wonders were done among the people by the hands of the apostles, and they were all together in Solomon's Portico. None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high honor." Well, that doesn't sound like an invisible gathering of hearts to me. Mhm.

>> So,

>> Lenny says Christianity was corporate before it became book first. You had to go to the group of true believers instead of going out and buying a scroll. Very true. Very true. Uh, where do we see word of God only meaning scripture? Yeah, exactly. You have to establish before arguing using verses. We just say word of God, right? Jesus is the Bible. Don't you understand this? Jesus is the Bible. It always devolves into some form of this argument. Nobody's ever proven that infallible teaching was only written down. You have to presume that. Nowhere in the text is a principle proven. Well, that's a good question to ask. So, he did concede that the apostles had this ability to, uh, interpret the scripture infallibly, or rather, not interpret the scripture, to make, to teach infallibly. That was a question that Father, uh, Jonathan said. And so, if he can, if he concedes that, my question would be as a follow-up, where does that cease in the scripture? Because it, it doesn't, like, where does it cease that the church leaders have this ability, right? It doesn't, it doesn't say that anywhere. So, even by solos scriptural standards, it would fail. Uh, Father, bless, could you talk about how Jesus and the adulterous woman doesn't appear in scripture until the fifth century? None of the big four codices have it until tradition tradition included it. Well, you have commentaries on this by the church fathers in the second and third century. So, just because the modern manuscripts that we have today, the remaining manuscripts, surviving extant manuscripts that we have of these particular documents, uh, we don't have earlier ones, and that doesn't really mean much because we have second and third century commentaries on these verses. And you can go and verify that yourself if you go and you read, um, you can use, you can use the various Patristic applications like the Cina Bible app or these types of things, and that'll give you a good thread to pull because you can go verse by verse and look at Patristic commentaries. So, if you wanted to, uh, look at those verses and see Patristic commentaries on the adulterous woman, you can use that application and kind of backtrack it from there. Any thoughts, Father Ron?

>> Uh, no, I, I didn't know about that. I knew that that was an anomaly, the inclusion of th-, that story, uh, being very late. Um, I was not aware.

>> Just an extant manuscripts. Yeah. But we do have early Patristic commentaries on it.

>> Okay. So, okay, that's, I, I'm, I sit here educated.

>> Uh, if I can find it, I'll, I'll look that up too. Did Christ's spirit and the apostles fail to accurately preserve the teachings and guide the church? Yeah, that was kind of came up in the other, uh, question earlier where you're asking about, did the Holy Spirit fail to preserve the church? It seems like he held to some kind of form of it fell away. Even the reformers were wrong about certain things, but for some reason, it's not an issue. Uh, St. St. Irenaeus is quite literally one of the first saints to clearly define Christ Christus Victor, apostolic succession, the Eucharist, Theosis, and the authors of the gospel. No way this guy is denying that. Yeah, that's interesting because Irenaeus explicitly teaches Theosis and against heresies. He says, uh, this is in Against Heresies, uh, 4, uh, 38, 3-4. "We have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods." What does it sound like to you?

>> That sounds like, that sounds like Theosis. The guy was like, uh, the guy was like, "No, Irenaeus did not teach Theosis." I don't know who's, who's telling him this, but it's the opposite, though. If you have a dispute in your church, do you go ask the ancient churches like St. Irenaeus says? That's a good point. Yeah, because if he's going to appeal to him, that's literally what he says. That's interesting. Or who do you ask? That's a good,

>> You know, that is a good question because he talked about again, this, you know, the gathering of regenerate believers, the regenerate believers being the church, but then there goes any, any church discipline.

>> Right.

>> At all.

>> Yeah. How do you excommunicate someone if it's a visible,

>> Um, or just discipline them like, I mean, you know, I mean, that's that's an extreme form of discipline, but I mean, even just sort of spiritual guidance and etc. I mean, ultimately, there is something to be said about, um, if I give spiritual guidance that I have a tradition backing me. Mhm.

>> Um, I have these fathers and ascetics and holy monks and holy nuns that have walked this path, thank God, on my behalf, that I can draw from and they have gone through and they, they are very, very, um, astute and well-versed about the passions, etc., etc. I mean, can you, what I don't think Rick Warren is astute about the passions. I don't think so. I mean, um, or am I, or am I dating myself when I say that? You know, I'm talking about Rick Warren.

>> Mhm. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Okay. Like that's, sorry, that's in my day.

>> He's got the, he's got the, uh, Purpose, what is that? Purpose-Driven Life.

>> Uh, yeah, Purpose-Driven Church or something along that line. Yeah.

>> I think that's what it was. Yeah.

>> It was a long time ago though. He was saying he was saying like, you should set a quota for how many salvations you bring. You got to set a quota for how many salvations you bring into the church. And so by salvation, he means like somebody just said the Jesus prayer, like that's all you got to do.

>> That's a win for you, Rick Warren. And now he's saying, now he's saying you got to ordain them women. You got to ordain women.

>> These women need to be preachers. I need to be taught by Pastor Susie up there at the pulpit. At the pulpit. Uh, wouldn't your worldview be nonsensical in any other tradition? Do we go to contemporaries to understand Plato or try to work it out ourselves? Yeah, that's a good point too. You want to, you want to understand what the ancients taught, right? Like, even ancient philosophers, you would go to contemporaries of those people. This is why people are consistently comparing and contrasting the ancient philosophers rather than saying, this is what, uh, Billy Bob from, you know, Liberty University has to to say about Plato. It's a good point. How do you know if someone's a man of God if he's preaching holding his Bible? That's what you got to hold the Bible open so they know you're more authoritative. I was taught that, by the way. I was taught that by my,

>> Yeah. You got to preach with the Bible open so they think you're more like authoritative. That's why you got like the Baptist preachers are always preaching with the Bible open in their hand.

>> And they're, look, right here, the word.

>> Listen here.

>> I'm standing on the word.

>> Yeah.

>> That's what you got to do. You look more, you look more powerful. That's right. That's right. The word Trinity is literally church tradition. dish not be allowed to use the word but in this discussion as part of his tradition, but the word, but or the word Trinity. Oh, because he's saying, well, to be fair to him, I don't think he, well, it did seem like he rejected like all of church tradition in this discussion. I'm sure if he, if he pressed him on it, he would say no, he, he doesn't, but it certainly is a selective acceptance, but he'll learn. Yo, yo, back to you for the goal. So true. So true. Which we did hit. Chris Lala fireball averted. The last one we almost didn't hit the goal and Chris Lala literally manifested in the chat and he was in the chat. He literally popped up in the live stream. Uh, don't go beyond scripture. Does that include any scripture written after Paul says not to go beyond scripture? Why doesn't the Deutero- Oh, why doesn't the Deutero-canonical count? That's a good question. Yeah, because don't, don't you think Paul was, because he was using the Septuagint, don't you think he was using the deuterocanonical books? I mean, they, if, like, uh, Jesus is talking about Hanukkah, where is that recorded? That's recorded in the deuterocanonical books. Oh, and also, I think the wisdom literature has, has well, I mean, inspired or given material for John's gospel. So, I'm talking the wisdom literature like the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach, in the deuterocanon, not, not Proverbs and Psalms.

>> Jake says, are there videos of Cleave preaching? I deleted every single one of them off the face of the internet. Well, you know what? There might be one. There might be one me preaching preaching about Israel. I was preaching about, uh, uh, how dispensationalism is fake and cringe. Um, why is he not questioning where the 66 book canon is in the first few centuries? Well, to be fair, we did get to that later on in the discussion. That did come up, the canon question. Uh, Father Jonathan raised that to him, which I thought was a, a good application of that talking point. You wouldn't go and pick up the book of Muslims or Buddhists and argue they simply got it wrong this whole time, but now you interpreted the text correctly. Well, to be fair, some of the anti-Islamianity, uh, apologists do do that. They do actually do that. Uh, but that's also because they're Protestants. I think the more, the more strong anti-Islam arguments are the ones where they say, "This is what the originals thought and you guys don't teach this way anymore." You know what I mean? Like, you guys have liberalized a little bit. What? Because there's a lot of interpretations they apply today in the various sects that they don't apply in the same way that their, uh, their ancients, quote unquote ancients, uh, would apply those texts. I need all the prayers inquiring currently. God bless you. Absolutely.

>> Also needs a cookie. It looks like,

>> That's true. He also needs a cookie. From medieval nominalism, sacred mysteries became suspect as external assumptions rather than constituents of reality itself. Does J reject God's works through material, i.e., the incarnation?

>> Yeah. Did he say anything that would indicate sort of like a either an historian view or a deistic view? I wasn't, that's why I matter.

>> He just said, he just said, um, well, he said he rejects that he, he rejects that the Father damned the Son. So, he rejected that. He said that he would affirm a cautious affirmation of the term Theotokos. Cautious affirmation.

>> But also, I think I remember him saying something about either that or I'm think, you know what, I think I'm getting him mixed up with the guy last night on Alex's show. Um, did he say anything about,

>> That guy looked like a bald, a bald JD Vance meme.

>> You know what I'm talking about? Hold on. I'm gonna find.

>> Well, I mean, me.

>> No, the guy, the guy that he was talking to last night here, hold on.

>> Yeah, I know. I remember with a bigger beard. Hold on. Look at this. Duttony, the guy you were talking to last night, Alex, like this. That's what he looked like. I promise I'm, I'm not making this up. Let's go. I want to go back to Alex's stream. Exactly what the dude looks like. Let's see. Let's see. Yeah, that's, that's exactly what he looks like.

>> Like that, but with a beard. It's exact. That's a, that's a one to one.

>> Real high-tier commentary. I got no other comments on the debate other than he looks like a bald JD Vance with a big beard. All right. All right. Enough, enough of that. Thank you for becoming a member. I appreciate you.

>> Uh, I'm wrong, but that's neither here nor there. Yeah. Well, there were a lot of concessions. I, I grant that. When he said, for the sake of argument, I'm going to grant you icon veneration is apostolic. I don't know if you saw. I like looked at, I looked at the camera. I'm like, that's a big grant.

>> Yeah.

>> That's a huge grant.

>> Icon veneration is apostolic.

>> Uh, for the sin of factions, heresies, exclusive from the church from Christ's kingdom per Galatians 5:19-21. If the church is made up of an invisible electross institution, yeah, how do you identify a faction? Also, do you know what? Those are great questions. They can't, they can't identify a faction. Because you can't, from their view, if you like, the body of believers is just whoever, like, says they believe in Christ or, I'm sure he would, he would say those who are regenerated.

>> Yeah. Well, that's like the guy last night. Well, if everybody's a faction, then there's no faction, right?

>> Oh, yeah. That's right. If everybody's a faction, then there's no faction. If everyone's a believer, then there's no believers. You know,

>> That's funny. That guy was wild. JD Vance was off the cob last night. Let's see. Would you say the great commission implies apostolic succession? Make disciples of all nations. Clearly outlines a master disciple relationship.

>> Um, I think it does. Um, yes, obviously. Um, yeah.

>> Absolutely. Your interpretation all hinges on you not knowing Greek. That's a huge issue though. The, like, the until thing, not realizing that that's also used for a continuation is massive. And then you, like, you wouldn't be able to, like, if you were to say it always implies change, you wouldn't be able to cite verses like this. First Corinthians, "must reign until he put all enemies under his feet." Christ doesn't stop reigning, folks. I know. Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. Christ doesn't stop reigning. Sorry if I spoiled the book for you. It's, it's, it's been out, you know, the New Testament's been out like 2,000 years. So, you've had enough time, I think, to read. So, that might not be too much of a spoiler. Uh, Ezekiel 44:2, "This gate is to remain shut. It shall not be open, and no man shall enter through it because the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered through it." Very true. Yes. Prophecy of the perpetual virginity. Absolutely. And I remember that, like, the Indiana Brunner guy on X was like laughing at that. You guys are, you guys are saying this is talking about lady parts. You're gross. Like, it's always like an incred-, like argument from being scandalized. Never substance. You know what I mean?

>> Oh, did you see, um, Taco Talks was on Brian Perspectives today?

>> Was he that now? I just, I, I, I, I haven't seen that guy for a long time and so, um, I don't,

>> With God the other day.

>> Oh, okay. I mean, maybe probably because I blocked or muted him on that.

>> That's probably why.

>> That could be it.

>> Moly Roofing with the big hundo there. Janai, Janai, we love you, brother. You are getting there. Father bless. There you go.

>> I mean, I didn't want to say it, Ben, but his name, every time I saw his name, I, I thought of Janine, which is a song from Trooper. Do you know the group Trooper?

>> Well, I mean, it's, it's J.

>> Yeah, it's Janine, but I couldn't help but thinking of Janine. It's a great song. If you like, if you really want to hear a great song from the 70s, Janine by Trooper. Question for Janine. When St. Paul says scripture is sufficient, how do you know the label scripture is understood the same way as you do a rigid list? Two, since that is your list, wait, two, that is your list since LXX is quoted in New Testament. Yeah, this is just another rearticulation of the canon conundrum. How do you, how do you know he's talking about your list of books, which there's no precedent for the 66 canon? Cleave, the chat, so true. I didn't want to interrupt Father Jonathan's cook session. He did very well. I was planning initially to kind of chime in, but he was just, he was in a flow state. I didn't want to interrupt it. So, I thought that was good. Uh, Jade, Religion of the Apo, yes, this is a second, uh, recommendation of that book. Very good book. I love Protestantism because I started to understand it. It's on a foundation of shifting sands to keep reinventing itself since the Reformation. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, if you, if you're disagreeing with even the reformers, that's a pretty solid point that maybe things have gone off the rails a bit, huh? Right.

>> Um, yeah. And a lot of these guys are, I mean, because Calvinism has carried through since the Reformation, but really, it's there's, you know, it's the radical reformers also that picked it up, and the radical reformers and the Puritans are the ones that came, the ones that came from England to New England in North America. Again, I'm not, um, I'm not an expert. That's what I've been studying in my book on the prognostics about how, how in spite of everything, Calvinism is the one sort of thing that everybody sort of clung on to as being the modus operandi of their theology. This commenter says, "Is Cleave grifting by taking huge amounts of super chats?" Yes, I am the number one liar and grifter according to JP Uncut. So, you can't take that title away from me. But here's the thing. At least I admit it. I admit it. I admit, yes, I am the number one liar and grifter. I, I grant what, what was the guy saying? I grant it all. I grant that. I grant just grant everything. And then if you grant everything, you grant nothing. Father Ron, don't you?

>> Oh, yeah. There you go. Yeah.

>> If you grant everything, then you grant nothing. This is the high-tier, high-tier strategy.

>> Yes. Cleave tricked these poor people and stole their money. Baha, that's true. Cleave to griftiquity. You know what's so crazy? Anytime these guys do a response video, why is it the only thing they say about me is that I'm a liar? That's all they say. It's like, you can't have a disagreement with somebody. They always got to be lying. That's so, so silly. It's so goofy. Like this David Wood gentleman. He's responding to our video yesterday, which is interesting because the subject of the video was, uh, hey, maybe we

should put an end to the endless back and forths. Here's where we're at right now with it. Let's let this be the final one. If you guys stop, we'll stop. And then I was planning on having tomorrow. By the way, announcement tomorrow if they're still on, if they weren't lying to me. AP said he's coming on the show to hash out some of his disagreements. And so was supposed to be Thaddius from Reasoned Answers, that guy that was accused of doxing Sam Shimone or trying to.

But here you go. Before they go on the show, of course, they've got to go live and poison the well. Cleave to deception. Orthobros split over Sam Shimone Alliance versus God Logic, David and AP. I don't recall setting up an alliance. I don't recall that. I recall hosting Sam on my show once to get his perspective and then having AP and the other dude on my show afterwards to squash all the beef. But they don't care about that. They just want they want endless drama. They want it to never end. This is what they want. So, >> sorry. >> I don't care. Keep talking about me, fellas. >> Who's AP again? >> Apostate prophet. >> Oh, right. Yeah. >> That cacuman guy. Yeah. Cleave to deception. Notice that's all they do. They just say it like Cleave's a liar. Cleave's so mean. He's such a big meaty liar. And I'm literally not mean at all. I like David Wood. I don't care if you say like mean stuff about me. I haven't even seen the show yet. So, I'm assuming I'm assuming they're going to be saying some nasty stuff. I really don't care. David Wood, if you would like to discuss this stuff, we can talk. We're both men. We can have a conversation. No big deal. We can talk. You don't have to. I mean, he's got me blocked, so I don't think he necessarily wants to engage, >> but if he wants to, we can come on and talk.

Uh, this guy, David Wood, >> Have you ever had him on before? No, I've never had David on the show before. >> I I normally wouldn't platform the guy because he's uh you know, he has admitted to >> doing terrible things with minors when he was 18. So, >> yeah, I thought I heard something like that. Um Okay. >> Yeah. Lord have mercy. >> Yeah. But >> but somehow somehow people still do shows with him. God Logic is doing a little tour with him, >> presenting him on like a big platform or whatever, you know? So, I don't know. That's just it's insanity. An entire church stopped in their tracks and said, "We have returned and are now becoming Orthodox." Yeah, true. That is true. That we were talking to a Pentecostal church in the background. Um me and Alex. And >> this is so funny. The way whoever wrote this and said, "Now we're becoming orthod." >> Yeah. Well, basically basically that is true. They they basic they made a huge um you know kind of 180 and uh they're interested in entering into the Orthodox church. Uh me and Alex are going to go talk to them a little bit more about it, but yeah, they're pretty firm in the decision.

One of the hurdles to orthodoxy in America seems to be the distinction between veneration and worship. It's all one thing according to most Americans. Yeah. Well, and then they don't realize they do it in their everyday life. like hand over your heart when you're, you know, doing the pledge of allegiance or whatever, like, you know, saluting people or kissing your cross, >> right? >> Kissing a picture of grandma. >> Um, Antioch was mentioned in Acts, was a true early church, is still Orthodox today. When and how did it fall specifically? Yeah, exactly. That's a good point. That's a good point. The continuity question is huge. Um, >> did did you guys talk about that? >> No, he he didn't have enough time. He had that he had like a like a just over two hour time limit, I guess. >> Okay. Okay.

>> What What is the difference between mental assent and your definition of trust? Isn't your definition of trust just a greater version? Yeah. Ex. Well, that's like I didn't want to interrupt Father Jonathan, but what I was going to say is like, okay, you say it's not nominalism, but he literally says like you receive the Holy Spirit when you have faith in Jesus. So define define faith for me then. And he would lay out like these concepts, right? >> Okay. Um, so I would say, okay, well then let's examine that. Would you say like, okay, genu genuine faith is evident by what? You'd say works, right? That's it's the evidence of your faith. It doesn't contribute to your salvation. It's just a evidence that you are saved. Now, what I would do from there is say, okay, now do your works contribute towards you staying in the faith? Do your works help you uh does prayer help you grow closer to God? Does reading your Bible help you grow closer to God? Does church attendance help you to grow closer to God? Does it help you finish the race? If the answer is yes, well, then congratulations. You're a synergist. You're no longer a Calvinist. Um so at least from our perspective you would be having a synergistic understanding um if the ultimate goal if the ultimate goal is to finish the race.

>> So what do you think these people are afraid of? They seem it seems to be I mean again I don't know if it's fear exactly but it seems to be like like you and I are talking like no problem like okay like you we're baptized and we have to you know repent and do good works etc etc and it seems to be no problem for us but for them it's kind of like oh no no no it's like it's all done you're you're in there like basically you're in the kingdom you just got to you all you got to do is produce what what is why is it so difficult for them to accept accept this as a as a as an understanding, I guess. Is there do you understand what I'm getting at? >> Um, I think it's because they spent a lot of time listening to John MacArthur. They spent a lot of time listening to these modern preachers that basically hammer this idea in their head. If you sit under that preaching your entire life and they say anything you add to anything you add to your faith as a requirement is going to send you straight to hell. You listen to that for, you know, 25 years, however, I don't know how old that guy is, but you listen to that for the entire time, it's going to be kind of hard to break him from that presupposition until you absolutely break down that paradigm for him, you know? >> Mhm. >> Because that's what you hear. You hear you hear that from uh you hear that from uh uh you know every reformed preacher basically. Uh the biggest qualifier in my mind of truth is if they teach a different gospel passage. I don't understand what this is saying. You get it, Father Ron? >> Um well I think that's from Galatians but I'm not sure what the first part means. >> Mine of truth is if they Yeah, I don't know. I think that needs more.

>> This guy says, "Do De Deuteronomy 4 bans images because you heard a voice you didn't see a form. When God revealed himself, the fact that God had not taken form fulfills that in John 14:8, icons celebrate that thought." Well, there's images. No, there's images before in the tabernacle. There's images on the curtains. There's images on the ark. There's images on the staff that Moses had. So, no, I would disagree with your I would disagree with your conclusion. Uh, what? Yeah, that's a good What's the personal incred Yeah, exactly. You can't just argue from being like, uh, oh, can you believe this? Wow. You have to actually have a a point or saying like the Matt Dillah Hunty, I am not convinced. I am not convinced that I exist. I could be clashing atoms in the in the void. Uh I could be a hallucination in the mind of a snail. I am just not convinced. I am not convinced that this police officer is giving me a speeding ticket. I am just not convinced. >> Would he be convinced if he flew into a tree at 60 m an hour? >> This could be a happy accident, you know. Uh uh Janai, did you know faith alone is actually in scripture? Yeah. James 2:24, you are not justified by faith alone. They hate that argument, by the way. They get angry when you bring that up. You ever notice that, Father Ron? >> Yeah. And I know Ryan from he needs God.net sort of handwaves it. Basically, he'll he'll say it, he'll acknowledge it, but then he'll make sure he moves on. So it's kind of a strategy of his where he says yeah it does say that but and then he'll give this whole diet tribe of complete utter vomit if you don't mind me saying by what mechanism are the rep robate resurrected if there's no mechanism how is that not the nominalism we're always complaining about with prop I think they don't realize their view does dissolve into it they just make they don't understand what or they won't accept entailments. I am just not convinced that is an entailment of my view. I am just not convinced that I am a nominalist. They won't take the name. And of course, he said earlier it would have took too long to get into the back and forth. Uh Jay literally said, "Yes, Luther fought against the nominalists, but he used uh nominalist ideas to formulate his theological concepts." Uh so he was saying like well don't you understand Luther was not was not a nominalist because he fought against the nominalists. Yeah, we don't we don't say that he claimed to be a nominalist. This is not this isn't even like this isn't even disputed among scholarship. This is just >> uh apologists not necessarily knowing what the scholars say on the issue. The scholars don't matter though. It's what my Bible says. Until they need them. >> That's true. >> Until they need them. And boy, sometimes I'm sitting here watching stuff and they do that and I just like not screaming literally, but I'm like inside like, "Stop that. >> Bible only." >> Why are reprobate resurrected? Cuz God says so. How's that not? Yeah, exactly. You changed your name. I am now A WOMAN. WHOA, wait a minute. Uh oh. Uh oh. Name it. Name it. Claim it. Sister. That's somebody said I was close to screaming last night. Clipped. It's over. Now David Now David Wood's gonna do a live stream saying uh cleave to cleave to gayquity. Good grief. That's funny. Um, how do you know That's funny. How do you know there are even any? It's I like I like my username because it's easily mockable. I laugh about that all the time. It's like cleave to father Peter here has called me by accident cleave to iniquity. I was like oh good grief. I thanks thanks father. I appreciate it. Or cleave to grifting. It's funny. How do you know there are even any regenerate believers if they're in churches you would affirm do damage to the gospel or teach heresy? Yeah, exactly. Well, the b well the church is a ground and pillar of truth. It means it upholds truth. But also the body of believers is the church and that's a bunch of different denominations that disagree with one another on everything. So nobody holds it. The truth is your own personal truth. If everybody upholds it, nobody upholds it. >> So true. If everyone upholds it, nobody I almost asked him the Alex Saurin question. I almost I almost asked the Alex Sorin question. >> Who has the keys? Is it everyone? Is it everyone? If everyone's got the keys, no one's got the keys. >> I think this one's going to live on for a while. That's good. Uh, Micoy Roofing with the big old Supa. The big old Supa. Father Jonathan. I think we have the same chair. LOLs. Well played. They're chair maxing. Their same chair maxing. My chair is conveniently never in view because it is very short in the back. Thank you for the big super chat, bro. I appreciate you supporting the stream. If uh if Matias was placed in the office of bishop as a KJV says, does that mean he could forgive or retain sins? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, that's kind of what that's kind of what Father Jonathan was pressing him on. He's like, "So, you didn't think he he replaced them in apostolic ministry?" And then he was asking the same question about was it Titus or Timothy? One of the two. He was asking the same question about them. He's like, "So, you don't think they took their like they they received apostolic authority? You don't think they got that? He said something strange. He said otherwise, what did uh Janice say? He said otherwise we would have elders today. Like he thought the office of elders stopped. You you notice that? >> Something like that. Um, but I thought that he wasn't incorrect. I thought what he was trying to say was there was and I would say this there's a difference between an apostle and a bishop and because an apostle is and I was on chat saying Matias topped up the 12 because that was the 12 has a function in Acts as the new Israel and so and then and then what I really I mean and some people have heard me say this Matias if you look at the it's kind of neat if you look at the the two contenders Matias and and Eustace and and um Eustus has this big CV, right? Like, and if you look at his CV, you'd think, "Oh, just pick him." And that's very much like when they were picking um I think they were something in Samuel um when they were looking at David and um but anyway, Eustace has this big CBA and then it just says and Matias and then the lot fell through Matias. And so it's kind of neat that um the guy that looks like he has the best CV like going like he's like number one contender is not the guy that God wants. And by the way, Eustace means justice and Matias means grace. So there's more to it in my reading, but I've always said that he tops up the 12 as 12 because the 12 have a function in the text. That's just the way I look at it. We love you, Father Ron. There you go. W Father Ron in the chat. Jay Jay just accepted Sam's apology. Thanks, Orb Stewie. Did he send me the send me the uh send me the clip. I didn't see that. I've been streaming. I've been streaming, dude. I've been streaming, bro. I've been streaming. I didn't get to see it. Is God all powerful? Well, this guy's saying he didn't. I don't know. Let's see. Says, "Cleave to deception. Orthobros split." Oh, no. It's over. Well, to be honest, I don't know about y'all, but I put my in real life friends over internet friends. And I consider Jay an IRL friend. So, you know, if he if he's upset with somebody that I have on the show, you know, I obviously defer to my friend's perspective, especially one that's been in the space much longer than me. You know what I mean? Uh that's called being a it's called being a friend. If uh if God is all powerful or is God all powerful? If so, we can have infallible interpretation. Don't need a pope for it. If not, Christianity is false. What about the what's the I'm I'm confused about the pope part. We can have infallible interpretation and don't need a pope for it. Well, the church Yeah, the church has that the people with the like so the this is interesting. Cleave check your DMs. >> DMs by the way. I know that um I was on chat talking about um because he was talking about Father Jonathan was talking about uh when Jesus in John 17 said um uh the spirit who proceeds from the father and I I think I went back and forth with some Roman Catholic on that and very very surprising answer. I don't recall it. I I'd have to dig it out. But very very surprising answer that they came up with that which was I'm going to say categorically an argument from silence. Uh but not surprised that they would, you know, have an answer for stuff like that. Obviously they would. So this is uh this is Jay's tweet here. He says, "I appreciate your comments and I forgive you. I would als I would ask you also forgive whatever things I said that as well. We pray for you as well. Thank you Sam. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Look at that. So that's Sam logging back in to apologize to Jay about the thing he says about the wife and orthrose when they were when they were going back and forth. Jay logs in and says, "I appreciate your comments. I forgive you. I would al I would also ask you forgive whatever things I say as well. Beautiful. Look at this or the orthodox rec reconcile maxing forgiveness maxing. This is beautiful. Look at that. Isn't that awesome? The good the good ending here. I mean this is >> this is a wonderful thing. >> Is he Roman Catholic? >> Sam. Uh I he's I don't want to >> cite it wrong. I think he's a Syrian church of the east, but he goes to a Catholic church. >> Okay. >> Yeah, >> cuz they let they let them take the sacraments. They let them take the communion there. >> If you're a Syrian, you don't have to like go through some kind of like reception thing. Or ortho bros. Or bros, is he? I don't know if he is actually Roman Catholic. I think he's >> I mean, I thought he was. >> No, I think he's a Syrian. I think he just goes to he just goes to an Orthodox or a Roman Catholic church. >> The same guy said he started as a Syrian Church of the East. So maybe he's moved on. I I kind of lost track. Honestly, I I've only seen a few videos his very long time ago. >> If that if that's correct, then I apologize for getting that wrong. >> But >> yeah, that's so isn't that that's beautiful. I mean, that's that's that's a wonderful thing. It shows that even in the online space, you know, we can be forgiving and uh Yeah, that's awesome, dude. Heartwarming. Yes, that's good. So, the Grifters are isolated. Sam Shimone is at peace with the Ortho Bros again and everything is back. Yeah, that's right. Well, that's what that might be why they're quaking in their boots doing the the panic stream here. Cleave to deception. We got to take that we got to take that cleave down. We got to take him down. Well, to be fair, I think it would be nice if if uh Thaddius, you know, who I really don't have anything personal against this guy. I don't really have anything personal against anybody, but if Thaddius wanted to like stop the the like the constant back and forth with Sam, I think that would be good. If David Wood wanted to stop the endless uh slopfest against us, that would be good. I mean, he literally was like going on there like trolling and saying, "Oh, the Orthodox church is run by Vladimir Putin." I had an elder from my previous church who had a good relationship with uh message me and was like, "Ben, why did you convert to Putin church like like people are actually believing what he's saying and he's trolling?" So, I mean, at some point it's going to go too far. I think it's already kind of gone too far with the re with the receipts that are showing this guy was trying to get Sam's info or at least that that's how it comes across. I know he said he wanted to give his perspective. I just want to make sure if he comes on the show that he's not being like insulting or whatever to my previous my previous guest because I'd like to instead of it continuing and this being this big perpetual nonsense cycle, I'd like to just have it end there, you know? Wouldn't that be wouldn't that be nice? That's probably naive of me to think, but you know, I try to be a peacemaker where I can. So, uh, it'd be cool if we could keep it theological discussion instead of just endless cycles of invective nonsense. Uh, Deuteronomy 4 referring to images of Yahweh. I was making a pro icon argument. Yes. Yes. Okay. Um, Father Ron, if you had a chance to review St. Mark the Aesthetic on those who think they're made righteous by works, thank you both for all your work. I I think I remember this person asking me before. I have not. I I apologize. I don't >> I read it. It's in the filicia. >> Oh, >> so he basically says uh you don't you're not like it's not your works alone. It's not your works alone that that make you righteous. It's cooperation with the Holy Spirit. So, >> okay, >> it's just affirming orthodox teaching. It's just saying like your works aren't like meriting >> God's favor. It's uh more like a medicinal cooperation. >> But yes, it is very Yeah, there you go. I've I've reviewed that. Alex says it's very good. I only reviewed it because Bryce Bryce J in his Discord server, he's got a bunch of links at the bottom and one of them was the filicia. So when I was bored one night and I couldn't sleep, I just started reading through it. Um cuz reading makes me tired. Uh let's see. Not that I would recommend that Discord. It's full of it's absolutely chalk full of latinizers and subversives. So I do not rec I do not recommend that Discord server. Uh 2 Corinthians 6:1. Grace can be vain though it is a gift. What do they even say against this? Make a distinction of graces. Probably thoughts. What are your thoughts, Father? Just reading the verse, not to accept. Oh, I have to go back. So, not to accept the grace of God. And so, it says here, uh, grace can be vain though, though it's a gift. It's it can be received in just a second here. Receive the grace of God or accept the grace of God in vain. Uh, what do they even say against this? Make a distinction of graces probably. Oh, you know, I don't know if they make a distinction of graces, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. Um, but I think that's actually a good verse to consider because it definitely shows that there's a something that you contribute. Um, and you and it's interesting because it would I would say what's in question is that if you have the grace of God and you so does that mean then if you accept it in vain, does that mean it doesn't produce good works? Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, I'm just I'm just thinking out loud right now about that. I never really thought about it because I know with them it's like, well, okay, if you have if you're saved, if you're have saving faith, you'll you will automatically produce good works and this will be the the outcome of your salvation. But then what about this verse then? >> Yeah. >> I mean, I think that puts it into question. I don't know. You can't contend with my argument equals nuhuh nuh-uh uh cleave to nuh-uh fallacy. So true. Uh Epic XC says Discord is basically just make a cult simulator. Very true. I remember back when I So you guys probably know this. I've spoken about this several times. I used to run this discord back in the day uh where it was the it was the scripture alone discord server. It was the largest Protestant discord server on the platform at the time. It's probably not anymore, but several years ago it was. And uh we would deal with this random like discord cult that would come up and they were trying to like I don't even know what their goal was but they would try to tell people if they commit one willful sin they're damned to hell forever because of the verse in Hebrews it says like you know if you sin willfully uh you know there's no hope or whatever. So they're trying to use that to say like oh one willful sin separates you from God forever. So they just like freak people out. They would isolate people in DMs and you see these kinds of subversive groups everywhere. So like Discord is like a haven for the latinizers. It's also a haven for French um uh French groups of every theological bent. It's a it's a good place to get groomed. That's pretty much its only use. Um I I actually don't really use it for chatting anymore at all. I only use it for resources. So if you're using it for that purpose, it's good. It's It's a good way to do like do your notes and stuff like I used to back in the day. I had all of my notes on Discord. Then I got sick of the platform and I moved them all to Google Docs. Then Google Docs gave me gave me a whole bunch of issues. So I just went back to I put them all in a private Discord server for just myself and I just coordinate them based on categories. Like perpetual virginity, uh here's like a bunch of different resources on this subject or real presence, here's a bunch of resources on this subject. And that'll just be like each channel and I organize them based on that. I need to dump more into there because I keep seeing all these awesome resources and I get lazy and I don't feel like like as I'm watching YouTube or something or I'm reading or I'm doing whatever um I don't think to like I don't know I've just been lazy the last like month or so. So anyway, >> well if you're lazy I don't even know what I'm Anyway. Well, >> like you're pretty organized. >> Nario says, "I only want to get groomed by my barber." That's a good point. Oh, good grief. Well, you know, I will say this in the um in this in this crazy YouTube online world where there's drama flying back and forth, I will say one benefit of being engaged in this discourse here is it has served to make me more humble by taking the barrage of insults people throw at you. I already had a pretty thick skin, but I think being on YouTube has helped me to have an even thicker skin. And it it helps in situations when you're dealing with either difficult people or family members or whatever that are particularly incendiary. you. It helps you to be more patient in those situations because imagine if I imagine if I crashed out and I like freaked out every time somebody insulted me online. I'd be crashing out 247 on YouTube. It would be my that would be my entire show just me constantly crashing out. It would be uh it'd be a Yeah, Cle's a hustler. Cle's a hustler. Well, I do this because it's fun. I have fun doing these shows. This is my entertainment. This is more fun for me than playing a video game. This is more fun for me than doing basically anything else other than uh raising children and uh uh bringing them up in the Lord. Those I put those two things before the YouTube stuff every day. Um and it should stay that way. That's got to be your priority. But other than that, this is um you know, and also the wife. Other than that, this is uh you know, this is what I'd rather be doing. It's fun. Shirt fund. Thank you so much for the shirt fund. I appreciate you. I should get some more shirts. I feel like I have a lot of them already, but people are saying I keep repeating. I got to get even crazier polos now. Or should I change the aesthetic? Father Ron, should I change my aesthetic up completely? >> Well, I don't know because I was thinking myself getting one of those shirts. >> You should watch. I'll get a shirt and you'll have already >> That'll be That would be awesome. All right, Father Ron needs the Hawaiian shirt. Alex, you gotta get the Hawaiian shirt. Father Timothy, you got to get the Dude, it's got to be the Ortho Bro uniform. The Hawaiian shirts. That'd be so based. That'd be hilarious. >> You know what's funny? I saw that you you know that reformed pastor guy uh father >> uh uh well that could be one of two people. >> His YouTube channel's name is is literally reformed pastor. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. That guy. Yeah. Yeah. >> I saw him I saw him in a video not that long ago. Here you go. Oh, yeah. Here you go. Look at what he's wearing. Look at this guy. He's about to become orthodoxy. He doesn't even realize it. See? Hold on. Check this out. So look at him. Look at him. This is reformed pastor. Look at what he's wearing. Do you see? Do you see this? Look at this. >> Oh, yeah. >> He's about to become Orthodox. Don't tell me there weren't signs. >> Don't tell me there weren't signs. Look. All I'm saying All I'm saying All I'm saying is go look at my old videos. Okay. Look at this. This is how you know. This is how you know you have uh you've been you've been sniffing the incense a little bit. You've got the you've got the incense sniffing beginning. Look at my oldest videos. Okay, look. It's just me. I'm just wearing my church shirt because this is our little revival church t-shirts. Okay, at the beginning there were no uh there were no uh shirts like that. Okay, now go look at by the time of my like announcement or whatever. Let's see if I can even get there. Be a lot of scrolling. >> You're kidding me. >> I make I make a ton of videos. Hold on. Go. >> Yeah, I see that. Hold on. Let's see. Let's see. Before the announcement. Hold on. It's going to come. The change happens. Oh, here you go. >> Here you go. Javier Purdomo, I'm on here with the Lutheran guy. I've got the I've got the Hawaiian shirt on. Uh >> oh. Uh >> oh. Not Not actually a conscious choice. I live in Florida. We all wear Hawaiian shirts. But look at >> So now you've got reformed pastor. He's about to be gum. This is what's gonna happen. >> Yeah, he's on he's well on his way. >> I would, but this this guy just made a whole video where, you know, I wouldn't mind I wouldn't mind chatting with him, but he's kind of a he's kind of a snake, this guy. He had on um Father Sarah from Holland and then he was smacking him in the comments of that video and then after >> Yeah, he was smacking him in the comments. Oh, >> and then after that, um, he tried to get me to give him Father Steven D. Young's contact info, and I just didn't care. I'm like, I don't I don't really like you, so no, I'm not going to do that. I didn't rep I didn't respond. I just I'm like, I already know how you treated Father uh Sarapim Holland, so I'm not going to let you do the same thing to Father Steven Young. Um, not that he would get the better of him, but just that he's he's an insultter. Uh, so the guy does the same thing with that one slop video. What's his face? Lying for orthodoxy, reacting to the other Paul. And then he's like, Cleave is such a vicious liar. He's such an evil, evil, slimy lying Cleave. And I don't like him. And did I mention I don't like him and that he's a filthy stinking liar? So this guy is like a snake. He's trying to like be nice. He's like, "Oh, would you please give me Father Steven D. Young's information. Please, I love you, Cleave. Would you please be so sweet to me? Please. By the way, you're a filthy stinking lying alo bro. And I hate you. I hate you. >> You know what? Um, you know, I uh I myself have tried to probably stupidly and foolishly, so maybe it's okay, tried to have discussions of people like David Wood. I mean, this is a while ago. um other people, you know, and they all they're challenging and wanting to talk to uh and to to debate or and so I go on there and they just completely and utterly ignore me. I know what's going on, of course, but um the strange irony, Ben, is that they probably could mop the floor up with me um because I'm not quick on the draw. So, and yet like you know what I'm saying is like >> you got to you got to use more rhetoric, more invective. Father Ron, you got >> Well, I know that, but I'm I'm still I'm not I'm not >> I'm I'm struggling even with just you and me, let alone some another interloc interlocutor. So, um but but it's probably good because like my my version of discussion is not anything what you guys do. It's completely the opposite. No, I would not destroy them. would destroy them. >> No, not at all. No, they that trust me, I would. >> My issue is is I'm not fast enough and so I get steamrololled over very very quickly. So, >> you got to have like you got to have anytime you do a debate >> and I'm I'm missing it. I'm missing it. I want a debate so bad. My first my first debate back though has to be with like an evangelical or something because right now the Roman Catholics hate me, the Monophysites hate me, the Protestants hate me, and they're all in a blood rage because we've been taking all their all their people. They've been converting to Orthodoxy. So, they're all in a blood rage. So, what do they want to do? Oh, they want to punish a witch catum. They want to punish me. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Well, you know what? I mean, that's that's good and all, but let's say like >> if I take my first debate back with like a Roman Catholic, well, you know who's going to be teaming up uh in the in the comments? The Latinizers are going to team up with the Roman Catholics. The Protestants are going to team up with the Roman Catholics. The Roman Catholics will. The Monoposites will. Why? Because they're all accuminists. But you know who they won't be accuminists with? The evangelicals. They won't. It would be too much of a It would be too much of a uh a blow, a gut blow to them if they if they teamed up uh against an evangelical or for an evangelical. So yeah, it's wild. Babe Mer, that would be w that would be unwatchable. That guy just barks. I would I wouldn't mind I wouldn't mind having a conversation with him. uh or JP or whatever, but that would just be complete and utter slop. Um anyway, everyone versus orthod It's true because we're not accuminists. That's why that's why that's why they're upset at us. That's why the monophysicites are upset. Most of the Roman Catholics are upset. The Protestants are upset. Now, there's some Roman Catholics that aren't. Ashe is cool. Um >> yeah. Um, I don't know if he's on the chat, but um, seems that you both you and Alex have befriended him and had him on the shows and >> and that and um, I think who's another Roman Catholic you like, Alex? Somebody tell me. Debate Whoa. Debate Rouslon. I would have a I wouldn't debate him. I would have a friendly chat with him because we were we were relatively we were we were we were friends. I don't think that necessarily is so much I mean I don't have any I don't have any dislike for him personally. Sam. Yeah, Sam. Talon Papist. I don't like that guy at all. Yeah, I would I would say I would say Sam. We're becoming more friendly. Um, debate me on seven figures. Yeah, true. Rouslon was my homie. That's right. We was homies. Well, that's that's so sad. It's so sad cuz like I managed to maintain a friendship with Redeem Zoomer this entire time. And then you notice what he does on X? I don't know if you saw this. He promotes a video that's just attacking my character. This is what the guy does. It's not It's not even good arguments. And he says, "These are good arguments against orthodoxy." And he promotes the other Paul's character attack video on me. This is what he's promoting. So, we've been friendly the entire time. But he says, "Follow the other Paul on YouTube and watch this video he made addressing EO arguments." He's not even addressing EO arguments. He even admits this. He says, "I'm addressing basically like a caricature." Like he doesn't think it's a character, but it's basically a caricature of what what I put forth. So he he says like he's comfortable using the Russian Zorist line of reasoning or whatever to say that that is schism, but he says, "Oh, on its own, normally I wouldn't say it's actually schism, but I'm just using Cle's words against him." Yeah, but you clipped out the part in which I was talking about they separated from the church. Dude, that's why the Anglicans are schismatic. They separated. Well, they're a schism of a schism. I've said that multiple different times. But he thinks that he thinks that because he takes half the argument, attacks half the argument, that somehow justifies him using less solid arguments because then he's just saying, "No, Cleave is not the actual orthodox position. It's just Cleave doesn't actually know it because it took half of an argument." It's just it's sophistry. It's all it is. It's it's just slop. But now Zoomer is promoting this guy's stuff. So, I mean, it's unfortunate. I'm not going to say I'm not friends with him because of it, but it's just it's sad cuz we were very friendly. So, this kind of tells me how he actually feels. You know what I mean, Father Ron? >> Well, yeah. Um, >> like I get it. We're We're in the opposing We're in the opposing camp, but you're not going to catch me like actively going out of my way to promote a guy saying Richard Redeem Zoomer is like a, you know, I don't know, whatever. or whatever character trait. >> Mhm. >> It's like a you know whatever. >> It's disappointing. >> It is disappointing, but whatever. It is what it is. Just pray for him. I'm sure I This came after I posted the video or the multiple posts of people converting to Orthodoxy from Protestantism. And he replied to one of those. So, I think maybe he was frustrated. They're losing ground. So, he needed to try to do something about it. And he's like, "Okay, what can I do? I'll promote other Paul because he frustrates Cleave. He's only frustrating because the guy's an idiot. But anyway, uh let's see. I want to debate Joe Heshart. That would be a good debate. Yeah. Yeah. That is showing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is what it is. Pray for him. I'm not gonna say I'm not gonna say like me and Redeem Zoomer aren't still friends, but it is a disappointing development. It is all it always is. I mean, if that if that kind of stuff happens. I was always kind of put off by that. I thought he was okay and had a decent sidekick for David. Uh but he has that need God smile and he's kind of Skittles, too. Maybe a S for No, I don't think he's Skittles. The stuff with his family stuff. Look, I get the theological disputes. I I do think I think there's a case to be said about if your own wife is supporting your son's decision to to be a trun that should disqualify you from doing ministry. I get that argument. I get that being made as an argument. I don't know if endlessly I don't know how do I even want to articulate that. I I understand it's a crappy situation and he's come out himself and said he doesn't he doesn't like that his wife does that but at the same time at a certain point you do have to exercise headship you know uh that would be my ad and I I reached out and I spoke to him because you know I have I have experience dealing with and mentoring people who have suffered from this particular uh sin from this inclination and they've come out on the other side. Fine. I remember there was when I was a Protestant pastor, there was a young lady that came into uh came into the church. She was living her life as a man and uh we mentored we mentored her. It's not like we sent her off to some camp or anything. We just went through the scriptures with her. We got her involved in the life of the church. We, you know, um I mean, we gave her the truth. It's a sin. You know, you shouldn't, this is a this is a perversion of uh uh you know, God's plan for you. This is not the way that he wants you to live. Uh so I mean we laid it out to her uh but she ends up you know repenting and no longer identified as a man and then she was received into the church and she was baptized in baptized in the non-denominational context. Unfortunately she was extremely obese and she passed away a year after her baptism. So >> Lord have mercy on her. But, uh, you know, I have I have empathy for his situation cuz I've mentored people who struggle with that attraction. You know, I've got people in my own family that have struggled with that attraction that still do. And I tell them exactly the way it is. Look, it's a sin. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. You know, I don't I don't approve the lifestyle. And I'll I'll I'll open up to you guys because I'm sure um you know I I'll open up to you guys because I'm sure uh you know it's gonna come up eventually. Uh and I've talked about this on the show previously, but I'll just tell you as it is. You know, my when my dad is a good guy. I I think I have great parents. Um you know, unfortunately there were some issues with uh being faithful to my mom at one point in the relationship. So my mom decided that she wasn't a fan of men. All right? So she started to pursue women and that's what ended up happening there. Now I've made myself very clear that's not a good way to live. That's sinful. It's a sin according to Christ. It's a sin according to the scriptures. A sin according to the church and you shouldn't live that way. But that is a complete far cry from just like allowing your family member to do that. Especially it's like a different dynamic when it's like your wife is like approving of your kid like transitioning or something where it's like a family member that you love but you let them know and you press them on this and you say look this is not the way you should live. It's very clear this is harmful. And I think kind of coming up in that background you can kind of see the the effects the fruits of people living this lifestyle. It's depression. It's mental illness. It's higher rates of disease. It's higher rates of basically, you know, I I can't say the word on YouTube because of toos, but you know what I'm saying. Uh ending ending it basically higher rates than that. Higher rates of almost every single negative statistic that you could think of. >> So there's a million and one reasons even from a temporal sense not to live in this lifestyle. And something that I always say to the people when I was running the mentorship program and when I was a when I was a pastor and I would mentor people and this was particularly effective with with individuals. It's different with your family because your family sometimes doesn't want to listen. Um though you keep trying and you pray for them and then you know uh you know God's grace he can work on their heart and and and change it. That absolutely can happen. But I would tell people that are suffering from that don't believe the lie that society tells you. You are not your sin. You don't have to identify as your sin. So to identify as like I am gay, you are not your sin ontologically. It's something that you do and a behavior can be stopped. That's something that can be stopped. You are not your sin. Otherwise, I would be um I don't know name a name a sin. I I would be greed. I would be uh wrath. I would be like I am wrath. Like imagine me identifying as wrath, right? like you don't do it or like I am lust, I am uh jealousy, envy, whatever, insert, insert sin. That's just not the case. That's a lie that society tells you because they want to tell you that you cannot change. So for those that are suffering with that, that would be my word of encouragement. Don't believe the lies that society tells you. You can change. You are not your sin. You are not trapped in this lifestyle that leads you to mental illness, that leads you to depression, that leads you to higher rates of disease, that leads you to higher rates statistically of wanting to Uh-uh. You get the point. You're not trapped in that. There is hope, and that hope is in Jesus Christ. And you can find healing.

In Christ's church, through repentance and submission, and doing everything that's entailed, uh, you know, to to receive the Eucharist. Any words on that, Father Ron?

>> I mean, I think you said it very well. You know, the only thing I would add for me on not only this, but a number of different um I guess temptations and weaknesses etc. in of of this type is that I always feel that ultimately it is a a um a individual personal issue um that has to be has to be met at the level of the person.

>> Um, in in other words, I I when at least pastorally, I avoid >> categorical statements with specific persons. I always I always believe that there's something behind you could say that about anybody about any sin. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, I could, you know, I could. But the truth is, ultimately is that something about in that person's past got them to this point. Mhm.

>> And um, and so that's why >> for me, >> you just got to get to know the person and >> and be patient and be loving and be be there for them.

>> Well, you know that that I want to I want to touch on that before you move on because that is a huge point. There's something in that person's life that has led to that. And just based off of my experience, I've seen it both ways. I've seen people go from obviously I I exist. So obviously, you know, my dad and my mom at some point, right? They made kids together. That doesn't happen by accident. That takes a little ef that takes a little bit of effort, just a little bit. Um, so I've seen it I've seen it from the one way and then I've seen it from the other way. I've seen people go from living that lifestyle to living a normal life, right? So this implies that this is something that could be changed. Why? Because this is a behavior. This is not who you are ontologically. Ontologically, there's no like gay gene. Like, it's not like something like show. This is something my wife says. She says, "Show me one gay baby. They don't exist. There are no gay babies."

>> You know, >> the room like goooo gaga.

>> Yeah. I think the deeper um sort of way I look at it is that even like you talk about your parents um you know you said obviously you're there and and in spite of what happened after um ultimately ultimately it's it is it's in a weird weird way a whether it's perverted or correct it's still a form of love. Um, and so love produces um a child and um, so you are a product of that love no matter how fleeting um or seemingly misunderstood. Um, I mean, if I've heard you correctly.

>> All right, let's let's wrap this up because I I do I need to go do my evening prayers with the kids. Um, Father Ron, any good St. Nario quotes?

>> Well, I already answered this person. Sorry. No, unless I pull a book off my shelf.

>> Sorry. Hawaiian shirt maxing preparing for paradise. So true. The Hawaii. This is a This is a sign of you're you're undergoing fossis. That's what it is. You you you've sniffed the incense. Uh, best of luck talking with those walking Chihuahua. I don't know how it's going to go, but you know, I don't know, dude. I'm a big proponent of Look, it's kind of like the dude said, I thought this was a good point. All the back and forth response videos at a certain point, they just become unfruitful. So, why don't we just talk like David Wood, let's talk. Let me let me ask you why you feel comfortable doing ABC123 and then you can press me on some of my stuff. It doesn't have to be a debate, but we could just talk like men, you know, like if you if you have something, it seems like it seems like he's certainly trying to make it personal. I don't have anything personally against him. I have concerns with some of his actions that I think should stop. I I don't necessarily think he's qualified to be doing what he does. I don't know. It's It seems to me like if you have if you're attracted to minors, you probably shouldn't be doing like public events and being platformed for these types of things to teach people spiritual things. That doesn't seem correct to me. Uh, we was business pastors. So true. So true. Good to see you, man. All right, y'all. Yeah. Dang, bro. That's kind of like what we've been saying this whole time, right? Exactly.

Well, Father Ron, I appreciate you coming on the show. Please keep me in your prayers. Um, because, you know, I'm going to be received into the church August 5th. So, pray for me uh, you know, and uh for my family as well. And then also pray for pastor uh pastor Jacob who is a uh Pentecostal pastor who him and his entire congregation want to enter into the Orthodox church. Um, so that's awesome. So pray for him as well. Me and Alex, we had a discussion with some other Pentecostal people and they displayed that to their uh congregation. They were pleased with that discussion. Um, so yeah, they're they're making the decision to journey into the church. Uh, so pray for them as they navigate all of those twists and turns because there's a local element there of Pentecostals that are really pushing back on their decision. So that was the context of mine and Alex's discussion with them. Uh, so awesome. Pray for them. Go subscribe, by the way, to Remote Orthodoxy. Let me pull this up real quick.

Father Ron, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you spending some time.

>> Can I uh make a confession?

>> Yes, go ahead.

>> I actually looked up the cost of flights to come to your reception. It was prohibitively expensive, but if I could have been there,

>> Don't dox me though. Don't dox me, Father Ron.

>> No, I would never dox you.

>> Okay. Okay.

>> No, don't worry about that. But I mean it I wish I could be there.

>> Well, I I appreciate that, uh, father. I really do. Um, yeah. I mean, it's huge. hard to hard to believe it's already been like a year, right? It's a it's a beautiful thing and I appreciate all the clergy that have been so so supportive um and have really been pouring into me. It's been a beautiful journey, you know, just to see the Orthodox community really does even if you were the Orthodox community really does know how to forgive. I'll say that they really do know how to forgive because think about this. I was I was an enemy of the church for quite some time. I wasn't just ignorant. I was I was an enemy of the church for quite some time. But when I when I repented, when I when I said, "Look, I was wrong. I made a huge mistake." And uh, you know, I'm dedicating I'm dedicating my efforts to undoing those mistakes. the Orthodox community really did forgive and not only forgive, but they rallied around in support and I'm grateful for everybody's support. So, keep me in prayers. Um, I mean, it's just it's just beautiful. I mean, I I can't even I can't even really speak to the beauty that I've seen in the church, not only on a personal level, um, but from the clergy, from you, Father Ron, from Father Steven D. tong um, you know, all the other clergy that supported me. Father Tom Soka who by the way will be on the show Thursday. He's going to come hang out and my own priest obviously um, very thankful. So I just want to say thanks to everybody. So go support Father Ron. Please subscribe to his channel. Remote Orthodoxy. He does excellent, excellent, excellent exeetical vid uh videos breaking down passages of the Bible in ways that you would have never thought possible. Diving into the depths, diving into the richness of the scripture and in the Greek in the original languages, showing sometimes what is often lost to modern ears, especially those of Protestants. So, excellent work, Father Ron. I appreciate you coming on the show.

>> Well, thanks, Ben. Have a good rest of your night everybody.

>> Bye for now.

>> Y'all have a good night. Till next time.