LIVE With Orthodox Ethos: Why Eastern Orthodoxy?

Tick tock. Time to rock and maybe become Orthodox. Uh, how's it going everyone?

Um, as some of you have seen, the uh some of the Orthob bros are insisting that this is the time of the gathering when all the different denominations must gather and debate to see who is the true church and uh there can be only one. So, uh, here we are. And it's always a good idea if you're going to be, uh, discussing or debating to understand each other's positions.

So, um, to understand Eastern Orthodoxy, a couple days ago, I had, uh, had, um, Nick and Ben on with me, and they were answering lots of questions, but I did hear from some Eastern Orthodox Christians who um, said I should talk to a priest. And so, I sent out a couple of emails asking who I should talk to. And one of the people who was recommended most frequently was Father Peter Herses of Orthodox Ethos. So um he he volunteered to come on. So here we are.

And uh I told him he could. Um I suggested 30 to 60 minutes to lay out a case for Eastern Orthodoxy, but in reality he can speak as long as he wants. And he said um he told me beforehand I can feel free to uh interrupt if I want to ask for clarifications but um for here at the beginning here at the beginning um he can speak as long as he wants laying out a basic case and the reason for that guys is as soon as I started um uh discussing anything about Eastern Orthodoxy I became familiar with the criticisms against it and the responses to those criticisms but I wasn't familiar with the kind of overall like case of what would what would be the case for becoming an Eastern uh Orthodox Christian. So invited him on to explain that and uh so interested here in listening and uh I'll be monitoring the chat and trying to um trying to mark the most relevant questions and after he's uh laid out a case for us I'll we'll we'll switch it to to Q&A and um anyone who has questions I'll try to uh try to get we'll try to get through as many as we can.

Later on this later on this evening at 8. Um I'll be live with uh JP and um try to get AP on. Try to get AP on for that one. We'll see what happens. But uh yeah. Hey, before we before we get started, uh Father Peter, uh any you want to want to share a little bit about uh your background so people get to know you real quick?

>> Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me on, David, and for allowing us to give, as you call it, the positive case uh for the Orthodox Church as the church, the body of Christ that Christ founded. Uh and uh I'm honored and humbled to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to cover everything. Obviously, we could talk for weeks and weeks about all kinds of aspects, but we'll do our best to touch on, I think, what's the most urgent pressing questions that uh or present the the key factors, the key aspects of the Orthodox Church, which I think u are really important to understand before we can even go further.

As far as myself, I'm I'm a convert of 34 years now. Uh I was raised an Anglican. my father's name was priest and his whole parish became orthodox in 1992 about 150 people I was away I went and visited became orthodox very quickly after visiting for the first time uh and went eventually to Greece uh spent about 20 years in Greece or Daniel priesthood one second I I don't mean to I don't mean to interrupt but people are saying that you're you're it's picking up the wrong mic >> could you could you tap that mic real Oh yeah, it's picking up your computer mic somehow and not that mic. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So, we'll we'll go and pause here. No problem. No problem. This this hap this happens like 20% of live streams uh with all the uh >> because computers now pick up uh >> different mics and so on. >> Sorry, I thought I How about this? Are we better now? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. There we go. There we go. There we go. >> All right. I'm glad we got that. I'm sorry about that. I thought I >> Yeah, no problem.

So So yeah, just just back back up slightly and then take it from there. >> Yeah. So just a word about myself real quick. I went to Greece after a few years of being Orthodox, spent 20 years, was ordained of the priesthood and ended up getting my entire education there at the University of Tessani, undergraduate, graduate, and PhD. But mostly I learned from the monks at Manathos. And I was back and forth to Manathos dozens and dozens of times. Manos is the monastic center of the Orthodox Church. It's a thousand-y old monastic republic. Goes back to the first millennium. And there is really the heart of orthodoxy in terms of the spiritual life and the uh the uh spiritual authorities in the church uh the saints. And so that's where I feel like I've got formed more than anywhere even more than my PhD thesis. But glory to God I was able to do that. And then I eventually came and taught at one of our seminaries uh taught at a school. We opened up a school down here in Arizona, Three Hearts Academy. And now I'm pastoring a parish here in Florence, Arizona. We also have a publishing company uncommon press and we have the online um platform the Orthodox Ethos uh website YouTube and all kinds of social media. So that's probably enough about me. Thanks for having me on.

>> Uhhuh. And I have links I have links to uh to the YouTube channel and website in the description. Um so all right I think we can jump into this and now so yeah it would be basically if someone and uh everyone said everyone says uh something similar to what you were saying at the beginning that there there could be a lot more unpacking uh here and it could take uh weeks or months or even years to get to the bottom of some of these things. But uh if someone if someone were to ask you uh why he should become Eastern Orthodox uh what would your what would your thoughts be on that?

>> Well, I think my you know my role is is to hopefully present not my own opinion or thoughts but the diiacronic tradition and the teaching of the holy fathers, the apostles, the the saints from the ages. And so um the the number one problem that people have coming to even understand let alone become an orthodox Christian from the west is the problem of the 20th century but really the problem of the last 500 years in the west I would say or even a thousand years and that is the question of ecclesiology. What is the church? How do we understand the church? and it is the um the number one roadblock and I think hearing your discussions over the last few days trying to get you know as much as I could which is not much time in my disposal uh that's the the common theme the common thread uh of of of kind of objection or or scandal like what are they saying how could they say this how could they say that it comes back to a lot of presuppositions a paradigm here that we have that is very different in the Protestant world from the Orthodox world. So, I I've chosen to focus on on that and and I'm sure we're going to get into qu question answer. We can get into other questions. Uh but, you know, for deep dives, we can come back and do something just on icons or just on the mother of God or whatever. But really the question that is is presupposed in the in the in the debate and in the comments of the so-called orthobose and your response all of that is really and why people talk past each other is really because we have different presuppositions with regard to the church what is the church how do we become members of the church u so uh I think when you approach orthodoxy at least for me and my family it was another world when I the first day I went in I understood I was in a different world, a different understanding of Christianity and it takes a long time to get your head into that mindset which is a different kind of mindset.

If you were to take a family for instance and you say I want to understand this family but all you saw was from this curbside you know you observed their activities coming and going you observed their maybe you heard some overheard some discussion um you heard you learned about you know I don't know search online you got a picture of that family but you never lived inside their house you never actually understood their ancestors their history the presupposition so to speak of their life you would come to some very strange conclusion conclusions and I think that's the case because the Orthodox Church as the ancient church has an inner life that really is not meant to and shouldn't and is not easily shared with the the the external world so to speak. There is in the ancient church they had the inner life and then they had the kitigma the preaching and the preaching was Christ crucified. The inner life was things like that had to do with the mother of God or the Eucharist. And indeed, catechumans didn't even learn about these things until they were already baptized. And so, a lot of this stuff we're now talking about, it's online, but it's very partially presented in in peacemeal ways and people easily misunderstand because there's a lot of things that are assumed when we're talking about these things. So the best way to understand orthodoxy has always been to come and to see. So you've got to understand the presuppositions, you got to understand the paradigm before you can properly comprehend the historical practices, the history, etc. Uh and that's again why people are talking past each other all the time uh on the internet. Uh, so for instance, I just saw there was a screenshot you made a comment on or somebody made a comment on about a pastor baptizing someone and someone commented and said that person's not baptized. That was one of the few exchanges I saw and it was it was kind of shocking and ridiculous from the Protestant standpoint or even the Roman Catholic standpoint. The comment, but behind that comment is an ecclesiology. And this is it's it's and if you don't understand ecclesiology, it does sound bizarre. uh you've got to see the whole picture and understand the the integral unity of the mysteries with the faith and that's until you understand that you won't understand um why that reaction happened even if you might disagree with the reaction but you won't even understand why the reaction happened to begin with so it's here that I want to focus on ecclesiology and I think that's going to be the most hopefully profitable for everybody it won't be a stretch to say for instance from the Orthodox perspective just to give you a little insight um that in comparison to the very robust orthodox ecclesiology for instance I'm going to be talking about a little bit from this book here if you can see it it's a massive book it's a thesis of one of our saints in the 20th century a new martyr in Russia by named by St. Harian Troski we publish it in our press it's called dogma on the dogma of the church and he spends 600 pages going through the early church fathers on what the church is and so there's a very robust and and long uh held understanding of the church in orthodoxy whereas I would say that's not really found in protest or if it is there's a lot of different versions there's a lot of different versions and so even between protestants there's disagreements on how we understand the church, but so much more with regard to orthodoxy. So, let's talk about

>> one one quick thing. You said you said a modern modern martyr. You mean he like he was he was killed in Russia?

>> Yes. He was one of the many martyrs in Russia in the 1920s. He died in Slovki uh island prison monastery they turned into a prison. He died there in 1929.

>> Okay. Thanks.

>> Yeah. So before we can answer the question, is the Orthodox Church the one true church or the true church or the church? uh we I think we need to agree or at least we need to understand why uh there's a stronghold belief that there must be one church visible historical in time and space from the beginning to the end because I don't know if that's if that's not held then obviously the claim of the orthodox church to be the one church is going to be rejected before we even get down into the into the be introductory level. Uh so we have to get to the biblical and petristic teaching on the nature and identity of the church. It presupposes and means the identity of Christ because as scripture witnesses the church is the body of Christ. He is the head of the church. So before we can make a case for orthodox is the body of Christ, we have to first agree or at least be accepted a position that there is one church visible in history. And in fact there has to be there has to be from thatological standpoint. If it if there is not if that is now disintegrated into pieces then truly the Lord in his promises ha has fallen, has has aired. So if we accept this as a must because the Lord promised that he would be with his disciples and guide them in all truth. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. The marks of the church going back to the naan and constinopal councils in the 4th century are oneness but you can see this in the scriptures as well. oneness, holiness, wholeness, which they call Catholicity, right? We say one holy Catholic apostolic church. Catholicity is wholeness in Greek. It's not a universal geography, but it points to the totality and the integrity of revelation. And then apostolicity, which is just basically that the t the teaching of the apostles is the teaching of the church throughout the ages. So if we accept that there must be one church, then of course the question is which church? Which church? Because there has to be one church and it has to be visible as Christ was visible and walked on the earth. There has to be one church and it has to exist from the beginning of time and it will exist until the second coming. And is this church, the Orthodox church, that one church? Now, that's a a secondary question. I'm not even sure we're going to get to that, but let's just talk about for the for the time being. I will address some of that but let's talk about first of all that there is one body one church in time and space throughout history uh and I would say this as well uh that if there is one body of Christ then in vis in time and space visibly then then therefore Christ and his church are one and a seeker cannot come to Christ until and unless he comes to the church right they're one in the same thing you come to the body of Christ, you're initiated into the mystery of Christ of the church and therefore you have a life in Christ because they're identified. He's the head and the church is the body. And that's what we see in the Acts of the Apostles. When we look in the Acts of the Apostles, we see that they were all made members of the church through the initiatory mysteries. First and foremost, obviously, baptism. They were joined together in and through the mysteries, and they were all of one mind, it says, and they were all together in one place. I want to talk about this particular passage, Acts 2:1. It's very important to understand Pentecost and then the church because of course Pentecost is the so-called birthday of the church in at least in history. Um we see that they have one faith and they're all together in the one Eucharistic synies. And you can see that in the passage Acts 2:1. It says, "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place." And it's very important to understand the Greek here and then to interpret the Greek with the immediate successors of the apostles who write about and use this terminology. And that's how you know what this these terms mean for the apostolic church. The Greek here is epito of one mind or one accord. Epito is translated as in one place. The one accord points to the faith. It points there's no divisions. There's no schisms. They have communion. They're all in communion of one accord. That's the faith. The faith is confessed. And on the base of the faith, there's no divisions. We have oneness of mind on the faith. And we have communion in that faith. And then the one place it ends up surprisingly for an English reader, they're not going to understand this unless they know the Greek. It actually means the eukaristic synies. In other words, the mystical supper because that's what they do when they're all together in the church. That's what they were doing at the time of Pentecost. And that's what it means to be in one place in the church. And we can see that in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, the disciple of St. John the theologian. He says in one writing in his epistle 13, "Take heed then often to come together to give thanks to God and show forth his praise. For when you assemble frequently in the same place or in one place, the free the phrase is the Greek epito, the same one we see there in Pentecost, epito in the same place, the powers of Satan are destroyed and the destruction at which he aims is prevented by the unity of your faith." And that is the assembly of the faithful. That's what the epito means. And of course the assembly of the faithful was to pray together to worship and to do what he commanded which was do this in remembrance of me. That's the mystical supper. That's the eucharistic synis. Again he says in Ephesians 5 let no man deceive himself. If anyone not be within the altar he is deprived of the bread of God. He therefore does not assemble. He who therefore does not assemble in the same place, epito, again the same Greek phrase, he has already manifested his pride and condemned himself. So he's saying here, if you're not in that eucharistic assembly and you don't have the one faith, you're not a part of the church, you've condemned yourself. You've separated yourself off. He's he's condemning schismatic tendencies and and and schism. He goes in in his letter to the smeirnins he says it is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate in agape meal in other words to be together in communion. So the source and basis for the church and the episcopacy necessarily the successors of the apostles is found in the lurggical practice of the church as we saw in Pentecost right that's where it all begins in the eucharistic assembly in the doctrine of the church the faith and the eucharist are inseparable and in that context the church is born and the bishops and the successors of the apostles uh continues throughout throughout the ages. In fact, ordination of this day in the Orthodox Church happens right in the middle of divine liturgy in the Eucharist. So the doctrine of the church, the practice of the church, you can see this is defined in the same lurggical life and conditioned by the biblical doctrines of Christology and demonology. Now I can't get into all that today, but these things are actually inseparable. Christologology, understanding who Christ is, you have to understand his mission was to destroy the works of the devil. And so demonology, how the work the devil works and how his works are destroyed. That's the study that the fathers give a lot of time to is inseparable from understanding who Christ is because he's the one doing the the destruction of the demons. And those things go together. And when you understand these, then you understand the purpose and the nature of the church. much you have to understand those to understand the nature of the church only when one grasp the meaning of corporate communion of immortality and love through Christ epito in other words in the eucharistic synises as the main condition for salvation can one understand the life and doctrine of the church so here again you can't understand what we're talking about in orthodoxy or in the church if you don't get behind the statements that are made online behind the the sometimes very unfortunate vitriolic and reactionary statements of neophites that many many people they are very zealous for orthodoxy but they the baptism and crisismation is you know within the rear rearview mirror a few weeks or months and they don't have a lot of experience of how but also what they should be presenting so it's understandable there's a lot of misunderstanding online today um because again we're talking past each other we don't have the same presuppositions so I want to just double down on this whole question of the Eucharist because it's really important to understand the church. And I'm going to quote a long quote here from Father John Romanes who's who's a contemporary dogmatic theologian and hopefully it'll be helpful but it's difficult but hopefully it'll be helpful for a lot of people. He says and understand the church is identity and the truth of the faith both unity in Christ that's what we're talking about when we're talking about divisions between Protestants Roman Orthodox right what is the how do we how are we one in Christ right so unity in Christ that happens in the church and dogmatic truth can only can come only by a profound understanding of who the devil is what are his methods and how he is destroyed by God in Christ by the Holy Spirit epito in the eucharistic synises. So it's not just understand the devil, it's to understand how he's how he's destroyed and he's destroyed within the eucharistic within the church's life of prayer. And that's clear in the writings of St. Ignatius for instance all dogma is implied in the eucharistic experience and which in turn is the test of all heresy. So St. St. Daeus for instance says our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. Opinion here is dogma. That's that's it's not like a I have an opinion. It means our our understanding our confession. So our confession of faith and and the Eucharist again are inseparable. You can't understand one if you don't understand and live the other. Heretical teachings concerning the trinity, christologology, sin, grace, mysteries, ecclesiology, and even marology, the mother of God are indeed heresies because they overthrow the sociological presuppositions of Eucharistic life. In other words, question of salvation in the Eucharist, these heresies and other heresies overthrow and don't understand don't get to the heart of these presuppositions of the Eucharistic life and therefore thereby they distort the meaning of the corporate life of love epito in the eucharistic synis in the resurrected flesh of Christ. So here you can see that everything depends on the life of the church in the Eucharist and in between the faithful which is a process of restoration, return, transformation, healing, salvation. Healing, salvation really the same thing. The life-giving resurrected flesh of God is the anchor of faith and selfless love and is given to the faithful in the eucharistic sences by the spirit of the father. Each eucharistic gathering, God gives us his uncreated life-giving energy to partake through the flesh of Christ and thus reveals truth reveals truth by his holy spirit at each gathering therein. So it says in John 16:12-16, "For when he, the spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall receive of what is mine." And so we're talking about here the lifegiving flesh, the Eucharist, and disclose it unto you. He's going to give us not just ideas. He's going to give us life. And what is life? He says, "I am the life. I am the way." Right? I am the truth. And he says, "You must eat my body and drink my blood to have life in you." Dogmatic truth is an everpresent and existential reality fully manifested by the Holy Spirit at every eucharistic gathering. The infallibility of the church people say why is it how can you understand orthodoxy? Why is it infallible? How is it infallible? The ecumenical councils are they infallible? Here he says the infallibility of the church expressed in ecumenical councils and elsewhere is rooted in the very life of love in the eucharistic sinies. to infallibility is a moral experience and so cannot be separated from the life of selfless love in the mysteries. Only God is infallible and this the body of Christ shares directly and existentially in the corporate mysteries of unity wherein the very powers of falsehood and division are destroyed by God himself who is his who by his holy spirit forms his son in those who believe in him. So obviously only God is infallible but by participation as apostle Paul says in the divine nature which happens in the eucharistic sinies in the divine mysteries by participation the body of Christ also shares in the divine energies one of which is this destruction of falsehood this destruction of division St. Ignatius says, "For when you assembled frequently in the same place," again, we're talking about the eucharistic synergies, the epito, the powers of Satan are destroyed. That's when the powers of Satan are destroyed. When we're all together in one faith and in one eucharistic synies in the church and the destruction of which he aims is present pres prevented by the unity of your faith. So the the the Satan aims to destroy and and and and overcome the church. He does that by perverting the faith, bringing about division between the faithful and then separating them off from the eucharistic sinies. As long as the faith will remain in one faith and in one eucharistic assembly, he is powerless. And that's why the church can talk about not airing, right? Because of God's presence. The minute that is uh departed from, then we have errors and delusion. So the doctrine of the church is found throughout the scriptures. It's not just in the early church. Uh this whole book which is dedicated first and for foremost to the to the scriptures and a whole chapter massive chapter on the doctrine of the church in the scriptures but then all the early church fathers and the and in particular how they're fighting the heresies of the day. So they were fighting the gnostics, the Marcianites and the various heretical offshoots already from the very beginning. The Judaizers is a great thing. We could discuss the Judaizers. I think is a lot there that is really instructive for our day to understand properly the church and its response to heresy. But right from the beginning, from the very beginning, the Judaizers were fighting against the apostle Paul and the the apostles uh on key issues, but not nearly as big as the issues we deal with councils. And yet he says about them, they're preaching another gospel. So that's very instructive. We'll come that back to that. So let's let's go to the to some of the scriptural passages which help shed light on the church and why it's one it's holy it's Catholic it's apostolic and then we can go further on why orthodoxy is that one holy catholic apostolic church. So begin with John 17:11. Holy father keep through thine own name those whom thou has given me that they may be one as we are. Neither pray I for those alone, but for them which also shall believe on me through their word. So throughout all time, all the successors of the apostles he's praying for at this moment, that they may be one as thou, father are in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. So right here we immediately see the church is one. Church is and has to be one. The Lord is praying for them that they have this oneness and the oneness is based on the oneness of the Holy Trinity. It's a clear definition of the essence of the church. The church cannot be a thousand pieces. And if people say, "Well, the church isn't a thousand pieces, but it's invisible." Well, Christ wasn't invisible, and therefore, his church cannot be invisible. It has to be in time and space, just like he was. And he established it on Pentecost in time and space, and they were all baptized into a particular group of people with a particular faith in a particular gathering in one Eucharistic Assembly. And therefore the church is truly the continuation of the incarnation. It's in time and space. Christ throughout the ages as St. Ignatius says for for example St. Augustine says. So it's based on the unity of the persons of the Holy Trinity. It was for this that men might be made a unity. The church that is that the Lord Jesus Christ prayed to his heavenly father. So human nature itself before this unity could be realized had to be recreated and that's what the whole life of the church is about. The mysteries Pentecost baptism crismation the Eucharist all of these are to recreate human nature to make it be able in the son of God as the foundation the church has as the foundation the incarnation of the son of God and all of that which is implied by that. Therefore, they are able to be truly united. It's not a human organization. It cannot be united in any way but in the Holy Spirit and in the faith uh that has been brought brought down to us by the apostles. Uh the church has to be constantly connected to God. There can't be a moment when the church is disconnected in any way. And of course that happens in the mysteries in the Eucharist. uh the in everything is in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ especially spoke of the Holy Spirit as being of and being reborn of him throughout his entire parting conversation at the end the great high priest priestly prayer. Here the Lord's speech and at the end after the resurrection here the Lord's speech is perfectly clear and distinct. He says, "I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter, that he may abide with you forever, the comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. He shall teach you all things and bring you all things to remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you." So his church is the supernatural, if you like that phrase. It's kind of a little bit misunderstood in the west. Gracefilled joining of men reborn by the god man and into uh a union of love. That's the church. So it's not it cannot be um 15 or 10 or even two. There cannot be two. It is one. It's unified. So he talks about the church as akin to a tree for instance right and he says in 1 Corinthians 4 for instance 21 it's talked about uh that how the uh world persecutes in diverse ways the church vanquishes the world only by the spirit of meekness talks about how the church remains one and so with the church's nature necessarily thus one Uh uh it's impossible to see organic unity with two separate trees growing up next to each other and talking about a unity, right? There's only one one fold and one shepherd. The Lord talks about there's one fold and one shepherd. Spoke the Lord spoke of this same unity in his high priestly prayer asking that they all might be one. uh and in the gospel there's no trace of the idea of that the church is a community of morally perfect. So sometime sometimes people people make a mistake in looking at the human side, the sinful side of the philanthropic body of Christ, right? The God man. He takes us sick people in into the hospital, the church. And then they look only at that side. They don't understand that the church is is Christ, Christ throughout the ages and the body of Christ. And so they see the human side and they say, "Well, uh, these people aren't perfect. There's all kinds of sinfulness and therefore division is a natural thing for the church. But it's this community is for those working out their salvation. A community in which the Holy Spirit is guiding them to perfection. Right? The seeds of the new spiritual life gradually spring forth in the members of the church influenced by the full diversity of various individuals. The same seed produces different yields. And so the church is a community of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the son of God. This is one definition. There's many definitions in in apparent in scripture. People were born by him and and the Holy Spirit, united in love and attaining perfection under the incessant action of the Holy Spirit. So from the beginning, there's no way there's no sense that Christianity is apart from or could ever exist apart from the church. In fact, the whole idea of talking about Christianity is really a sociological late idea. There is no such thing spiritually speaking, dogmatically speaking as Christianity. There's only the church, the body of Christ. That's what Christ left. He didn't leave a religion. He didn't start a religion. Christianity, the church is not a religion. It's not a h human uh in sense in a sense not a humanmade or human uh defined thing. It's a uh divine human organism. And so from the beginning, the church was set aside. And it's important also uh to know that the early church community very much understood itself not unlike the people of the old covenant. Right? They didn't have this idea uh of um that we have today of Christianity being many different uh communities without an organic unity between them. uh he they they use the in the old the same old testament terminology eklesia from the Hebrew kahal if I'm saying it right it's the same exact meaning they they got the meaning from the old testament and eklesia was the Greek version of that and it's in the septuagen as well and so the phrases that you see all over the new testament ecclesia to eklesia to ecclesia that's from the uh the Hebrew and from the beginning they adopted this term which is closely linked to the Old Testament terminology which establishes a oneness very clear definite demarcation of the community. Uh you can see for instance in the 110 instances in the New Testament of the word church 90 of them are specifically for local synies local communities eucharistic synergies a particular city or local Christian community and of course it's presupposed that there's a worldwide visible earthly church that's being spoken about but those are the instances when it's used. So it's a particular people and you can see this in in in one Peter 1 Peter 2:9. Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people eclein is the Greek. All these are really pointing to very very much uh the old testament the Jewish understanding which is a strict distinction and a partness. Right? Paul says come out. He quotes the Old Testament. Come out. Don't be separate from them. There is an idea that this is a a remnant. It's going through history. It's a particular identity. And it's it's not unlike the Old Testament u outlook on the people of God. And so very definite and actual entity as the Hebrew nation of the Old Testament had been. And so the the unity, the oneness is everywhere in the early church. Um so for instance it would be very uh mistaken to talk and think think and try to find a gradual development of the idea of the church in the apostles uh words. The apostle Paul for instance in all his epistles that make any reference to the church. This idea is so permeated with wholeness and oneness as to preclude any discussion of there being a gradual development of the idea of the church in the apostles own writings from the beginning in his struggle against the Judaizers and and all of his writings. It's very clear he has the church ever before him. It's not a development. He's not thinking about it over time. And just to start with the apostle Paul, he talks about the body. The body is an organism. It's one blood united uh through flows throughout the whole body. It's the members of the body are united each other by their very existence. An organic connection throughout the whole all the members of the body. And so it's explicitly a single organism, a single indivisible life. That's what the apostle Paul has before him as the church. And of course through the eukarist and through the the communion in the eukarist. Uh along with that there's one spirit. He talks about one spirit, one body, one spirit throughout. The body is in fact perceived as an organ of the spirit. The human spirit lives in this tabernacle and also departs from it. So both and right, it's both one body and one spirit and they have to both be together. And so if you have a a lack of organic unity, you don't have the body of Christ. And so if there's divisions and they don't have communion in the Eucharist to between them, then you have a break and you have a one of them is no longer a part of the organic continuation of the church. That's what the church understood always in the early church as schism. In fact, St. Johnum says it's worse than heresy because there's no reason. Heretics present a reason for to be divided, right? The faith, they say the faith has been corrupted. But schism is even worse because they don't even present that. but they leave because of pride and arrogance or whatever it might be. But no one con there no there was no no early church idea that one could be in schism walk away not have eucharistic synergies not have the same faith certainly and still talk about the one body of Christ that just doesn't exist in the early church and you could read this 600page book and see it again and again and again. So um I could go on and on here. There's tons of material. I don't want to bore people. I want to go back to uh a few points on the definition of the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. After you go and you you see this and you see the scriptural passages and the presuppositions for the existence of the church as we talked about it's very understandable why the fathers of the second ecumenical council in Constantinople in 381 added to the Nyine creed and created the one creed the Nyine Constanopople creed which then was defended and supported for forever until today and and recited at every divine liturgy every morning, every evening in the Orthodox church that creed uh is a confession. It's not an acknowledgement. It's a confession of faith of what we believe and accept as reality. Right? So we believe it says there in the one holy Catholic apostolic church doesn't say we acknowledge it or we recognize it. We believe in it. So what do we believe in? We believe in Christ. So it's here very clearly saying that we believe in the church as Christ as the body of Christ. This is a confession in Christ. It's not acknowledgment. It's not something that oh it existed in history. And so to be an Christian you have to believe in the church. And of course you have to believe in it as one holy catholic and apostolic. We put our faith in the church. So when we hear the pro in the Protestant world people talking about Christ over here, church over there, that doesn't exist in the Orthodox world. You can't talk about these things as separate realities. You can't talk about many churches. You can't talk about a divided church. You can't talk none of that makes sense because the church is Christ and we believe in the church because the church is Christ again. And it's very it's a it's really foundational and it's going back to the 4th century that we have this faith. Um so St. St. John Krasum says this as well in his uh commentary on the Apostle Paul. So as an apologist for Christ and I think a lot of us you know online are saying we're an apologist for Christ. You must necessarily be an apologist for the body of Christ. You can't be an apologist for Christ and not an apologist for the body of Christ for the church. For the two are inseparable. The body of Christ has Christ as the head. Indeed he is all in all in the church. And as Christ the church is rightly understood to be the continuation of the incarnation, Christ under the ages, right? He sits at the right hand of God the Father with our flesh. We just celebrated today in the Orthodox Church, the ascension, an amazing crowning of of the economy of salvation today. And in there, we see this amazing recognition that our human nature, our flesh, our human nature sits at the right hand of God of the Father. The angels worship our human nature in Christ. It's mindboggling. This is how much he wants us to be exalted. That's why we talk about in the Orthod church theosis, God's by grace. Because right there in the in the ascension, it's obvious that that's the end of our salvation. That's what he wants by grace, not by nature. We're not gods by nature obviously, but by his gift, he wants to make us like him in full in the full sense of the term unto eternity to become like him. That's why he became man to make us like himself. That's theosis. So he sits at the right hand of God and the father in our flesh. He cannot be considered apart from his body after the incarnation. There's no more talk of an disincarnate logo. This is why them is a total delusion. It's why all these contemporary movements you see the pope going to the Middle East and talking about the religions are willed by God. It's a total delusion. Total departure from Christianity. God help all those who would follow such an idea because he from the time of his incarnation is inseparable from his flesh. That is the body of Christ and in time and space that's how we come to know him and through him and through the church and in the church. So he can't be considered apart from his body. Our human nature which he has put on Christian Christologology and ecclesiology are inseparable. He's manifest. He's revealed. He's present in time and space in history. He is as he walked on this earth as the theanthropos the god man necessarily here and not there. This is the scandal, right? This is a scandal for the rationalists. How is he here and not there? We want a Christ that's kind of everywhere according to our measure, according to our our desire, but he is here and not there just like when he walked on on the face of the earth. It's that's the necessary understanding of the incarnation as body of Christ. I'm talking obviously the Holy Spirit is everywhere present and fill us all things. Obviously, there is no life without the Holy Spirit and providence of God. We're not talking about that. We're talking about as body of Christ as the church throughout history. The hard saying, this scandal of the particular to quote an Anglican scholar does not undo or undermine that he is simultaneously on the throne with the father and in Hades as we sing and chant uh during holy week but for us and for our sake he became man logos sento this is the great phrase uh of St. St. John the theologian which is so at the heart of everything. He became man and it is precisely in the hyposatic union of the one who is omosio of one essence with the father and of one nature with us. the union which is our salvation and which takes place only in him that is in his body in the church that's where it's in the mysteries how are we connected to his salvation how are we connected and become participants in the partakers of divine nature as the apostle Peter says where how in the mysteries in the baptism crisbation the eucharist the priesthood these are the means these are the connection it's Christ giving and giving in every mystery that's how we unite to to him in in body and soul Right? Because we're not just gnostics. We don't believe just the soul. We have a body. The whole man has to be die, rise, and commune and partake of the divine energies. So in the Eucharist, of course, inseparable from baptism, presupposed by baptism, crumation, we must die. We must rise so we can be partakers of divine nature according to the apostle Peter. So this is the order of salvation. and to become a new creature and to be refashioned according to his image and likeness and that happens in the church in the body of Christ in the mysteries. The Lord said at one in the same time it is better even needful that he depart so that the Holy Spirit would come and yet he also said he would be with us until the end of time guiding us into all truth ensuring that the gates of Hades will never overcome his body the church. And so Pentecost established the of his church marks the end of time, the last days. For it is the beginning of the end of his coming and is the fulfillment of his work on the earth.

Pentecost is the aim and fulfillment of the nativity, of the crucifixion, of the resurrection, of the ascension. It is the coming of the kingdom on earth. And it is thus an everpresent reality and not a point of time in the past. It is not something that happened once in Jerusalem. It is not past tense. It is continuous present like repentance, which is return communion, in other words, which has a beginning but never an end, like we never stop repenting.

That's why the Orthodox have no understanding of this soteriology which says once for all saved confession and we're forever saved. What does that mean? Just repent once, return to God. It's a continuous repentance. It's a continuous return because God is infinite and there is no, no end to returning to Him and being with Him. It's ever from glory to glory, greater and greater. And so, continuous life in the church, in Pentecost.

Holy tradition, properly understood, is the life and witness of the Holy Spirit. That's all it is. When we talk about holy tradition, we're talking about ideas of Pharisees or something like this. Paul talks about tradition. The passing on of it. It's literally the passing on. That's what the Greek word is. Of what? The life, the witness. They were eyewitnesses. They passed on what they lived and believed. And that is in the church and it goes throughout these end times, right? Because the end times are from the first to the second coming.

So, in light of this, having said all that, the eternal now within history, the everpresent today of salvation, which is the life of the church, it is extremely telling and quite indicative of the truth of our faith that we have never had a movement akin to the Reformation or a reaction like the Counter-Reformation. Indeed, not only this, the Reformation, but much more that is integral to the DNA of Western Christianity today is absent in the Orthodox Church. We don't have that spiritual makeup that included scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the era of revolution, the French, although it visited us later with Marxism in Russia.

These disruptions, these upheavals, including the many divisions within Christianity in the West, acted as a wrecking ball to holy tradition. From our perspective, that's what we see. We see a wrecking ball to holy tradition in the West because of the extremes and the actions and reactions. So, the whole apostolic, patristic experience that we had as common in the first millennium, we don't see it anymore when we look to the West.

The history of the West for the past 500 years or more could be characterized as a constant, endless pendulum swing from one extreme to another, leveling the royal path, the narrow way, undermining and upending Catholicity or wholeness, dissolving unity of experience and thus of confession of dogma.

One of the big differences, David, between Orthodoxy and Protestantism, at least in my reading of the early missionaries that went abroad, and they talk about this. They say, "Theologies divide, experience unites." That was one of the calling cards of, say, some of the missionaries to Africa. This is impossible in Orthodoxy. Experience is theology. Without experience, on the basis of our experience, in our experience, theology is born and understood. We say a theologian is one who prays. So, prayer, the eucharistic assembly, the life in Christ, and theology are inseparable. So, we can never talk about theologies in the sense of a speculative theology, right? I, I speculate about what God, what do you think here? What do you think there? We have different, we have different, you know, ideas about God or ideas about salvation. No, it can. It's impossible for that to happen because of the inseparable connection of experience and theology. And so, the tragedy is they've got to the point where they believe that theology is an obstacle or it's just a speculative endeavor or it's a, what they, some people call theologum. We have various opinions about God. Well, none of that is patristic or apostolic. That's not how it has ever worked.

So, there are many people wandering today, wandering in search of that wholeness that should be integral to life in Christ, precisely because, although they instinctively know it's supposed to be there in church and in Christ, they lack it. If you're seeking wholeness, it means you don't have it. Many are those today who go out in search of the experience, the spiritual power, the gifts read about in the Acts of the Apostles. They have gone out in search of the power of the Holy Spirit precisely because they lacked it. They saw it nowhere around them and even believed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

Others are ringing the incessant bell of renewal, speak with enthusiasm of revival or of revitalization. Their search for the road of return to the Holy Fathers. This was a major movement in France among the Fathers of the Vatican II Vatican Council. Return to the Holy Fathers. But in this desire, from our perspective, for renewal or return to that which has been lost, they thus confess the gap that exists between their experience and that which is described in the Acts of the Apostles in the lives of the early Church Fathers.

There are those in a very secularized Christianity, which is, of course, the spirit of antichrist. That's what secularization is. It's the spirit of antichrist, the throwing out of the church and making it under the world. They seek a kind of aggiornamento, as we read about in Vatican II. They're bringing in the church up to date, or among Protestants, you hear *reformanda* or constant reform. But from the Orthodox perspective, this search for a part of paradise which has been lost is apparent. It is apparent that the timelessness of the kingdom, the *theodoric* presence of the Holy Spirit, the living tradition of the living God has been forfeited for human or temporal ideas or movements which are always in need of correction and updating. The eternal life and the grace of God breathed into the soul of the church has been lost and replaced by a precariousness or a weakness of religion.

So, in spite of our weakness and sinfulness, as I say, the Orthodox Church is the right church with all the wrong people. The members of the Orthodox Church do not need to search and go out and try to find and reform or renew or anything like that because we have the experience and spiritual authority of the Apostles in our time. It continues to be seen and felt, lived in the successors in practice of the Holy Apostles today, the charismatic elders of Orthodox monastic life. And this is where Mount Athos is a massive difference with the West. Like, if you don't, if you want to understand the heart of Orthodoxy, you understand Mount Athos. Mount Athos is the center, spiritually speaking, of spiritual vitalization and life for the Orthodox Church.

Orthodox Christians do not need to renew anything dead that's lost, like a holy tradition, because the holy tradition remains alive today in the contemporary saints, just like in the faith once delivered to the Apostles, the same experience, indeed, of the Apostles. So, the word of these great saints today is always up to date. It's always relevant. And their teachings are never in need of reform because they are living in the day of salvation, the eighth day. Their teaching flows from the permanence of eternity. They're not teaching us from their ideas or their experience, but from the eternity that they live.

So, you ask me for a positive case for Orthodoxy, and you know, we could talk about many, many things. We could talk about the inseparable nature of holy tradition and holy scripture. How you, you can't understand scriptures, it's a closed book without the experience and the wisdom of those who've come before us, like the Apostles, but their successors. You can talk about, for instance, the meaning and authority of ecumenical councils and how ignoring them or denying their authority is necessarily outside the boundaries. You're necessarily outside the church if you deny the authority of the councils and you do not seek to follow those Fathers who laid down the boundaries. You can talk about many things, but the most important thing for the positive case of Orthodoxy today, and with this I'll kind of wrap it up, is the fruit, right? The Lord says, "Judge it by the fruit." So, what is the great fruit of the Orthodox Church? As a friend of mine, a fellow priest, says when challenged by various Protestants who are challenging Orthodoxy, he says, "If your understanding, your practice of Christianity is better than that of Orthodoxy, then you should have better results than we find in the Orthodox Church." And to everyone who criticizes or rejects the Orthodox Church as being anything but less than the pillar and ground of truth, his response is, "Show me your St. Paisios."

And who's St. Paisios? This is a book that we translated from Greek, myself and Bishop Alexi of Alaska, who's a hieromonk from Mount Athos. This is a contemporary saint. He reposed about 30 years ago, and his disciples are well known to myself and to others, and we were asked to translate into English this life. This is a catechism. If you want to be catechized in the Orthodox Church, read this book, and you'll get the full, unbelievable life of St. Paisios. He just reposed, as I said. And so, who is, show us your St. Paisios. Look at St. Paisios' life, and then find an equivalent in the Protestant world, and if there is, then I would be, you know, hard-pressed to continue as an Orthodox priest.

Orthodox Christians have never, never have to ask the question, "What would the Apostles do or say if they lived today?" because we have the same experience and the same apostolic witness in our saints today. We can say, "Come and see. Encounter the continuation, incarnation, the present-day Apostles." The book right here, this authoritative biography, is just one of many in the Orthodox Church today that show forth the saints today of our church as successors to the Holy Apostles, literally the same gifts, wonderworking, casting out demons, clairvoyance, prophecy. All these things are apparent in the lives of these saints, and so they are the link that goes, that guides us all the way back to the Apostles in terms of experience. And so, here in this book, you see before you the timeless realm of godliness, the eighth day of salvation, and it is manifest in our time, in our space. And that is another reason why we believe in the concreteness, the scandal of the particular, that the church is here and not there. It's in the lives of these saints that we see that the same faith yesterday, today, and forever. Yes, there are aspects of the external side of the church that change, of course, but the heart of the church, the life of the church, the truth of the church, the way of the church, the ethos of the church is unchanging because the saints show it forth in their lives that it has not changed.

So, I'll stop there, and I look forward to your questions, and hopefully, this has been helpful.

>> Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. And there were people who wanted me to interrupt at various times. I just didn't want to rather, rather hear you out. You, you were mentioning theosis, and you, you talked about it, you talked about it briefly, and I've heard about that, but I was wondering if you could just expand upon that a little bit.

>> Sure. Sure. So, we were created in the image and likeness of God. In the scriptures, it says that in the Old Testament, and we fell away from both. According to Orthodox theology, the image was darkened or smeared, let's say, but not totally lost, but the likeness was lost. And the likeness, of course, is found in the virtues. What we see in the Lord's life, in the saints' lives, we see the great virtues of our Lord. And so, in baptism, in the mysteries, in the life of the church, we're restored to the image. The image is found mainly in the, what's called in Greek, the *autexousion*, or the self-determination, what we sometimes translate as free will. It is what God gave to us and was reflected the image of God in us. And He is the prototype. Christ Himself is the prototype of Adam and all human beings. So, we're made in Christ's image, and we're restored to that image in baptism. We die and rise, and we become new creations. But the likeness, the likeness is not given. It has to be in synergy. "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling," the Apostle Paul says. That's the acquiring of all the virtues. And when someone arrives at a great degree of that, makes much progress, sees and experiences eternal life here, sees Christ face to face, lives the experience of transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and many, and this is again apparent through thousands and thousands of pages. I don't know if you can see behind me, but these massive books of 700, 800 pages. We have 12 for one for each month, and they're the lives of the saints. And you find again and again throughout the 2,000 years the same similar experience of God. And we see in there that they achieve the likeness. They acquire the virtues. They become like God. That's the purpose. Again, at the right hand of God the Father is our human nature. He wants us to be totally rejuvenated, renewed, and made perfect. And that perfection, of course, is never ending. So, the scripture actually doesn't say "be perfect," but "be, go on becoming perfect" or "be perfect" again into the future. It's a continuous present. But that great achievement of or in God through Christ in His life, that is salvation. That's what salvation is. It's theosis. So, it's or acquiring the likeness of God, again, all the virtues. It's not by nature, of course, that man has likeness to God, but by participation, by the gift of God to us. It's, if I could give it, as I said, the *rouini* in his show years about a year and a half ago, the best example I think in terms of just a simple analogy is, according to St. Paisios, he gave this example, and that is that all, everything we do, all, all the things we do, the asceticism, the fasting, the prayer, the writings, the apology, whatever it is, everything we do is zero. And they all take on value because Christ, the one, is put before them. That's where all the value is, right? If you have a thousand zeros, but you, you have nothing, but you put the one before that, you become a trillionaire. And so, that's how it is in the life in the church. Everything is Christ. He is all in all. But our human effort, the zeros, is absolutely essential. In fact, it cooperates and it increases His in us, His grace. It, it allows, rather, Christ to be increased in us. Like, our main job, at least in the beginning of the spiritual life, is to get out of the way, right? And not become obstacles to the visitation of grace. But as you get further and further, and you see in the lives of the saints, they cooperate and they become harmonious. They become one with the will of God. And then you see the theosis in their lives.

>> So, um, if I'm just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly. So, um, like in Genesis 1, where it says that we're created in God's image and likeness, you're drawing a distinction between image and likeness. The image is marred, but it's just something we have automatically in being created as what we are. But the likeness we've lost, and then by focusing on >> God's grace, by God's grace >> we get the, we can grow in the likeness and be, and through through attaining the virtues. Just want to make sure I've got the >> So, likeness is basically the virtues, right? The acquisition of the virtues. Um, but when you're talking about acquisition, this does not mean that there's a human acquisition of, like, you go out and you just grab it. It's always, like I said, the one, and then the zeros. It's Christ in us and with us. We say yes, with the Mother of God, like she did say, "And accept the will of God and embrace it." And so, all the saints had great zeal and love, *eros*, right? Love for God. And that, that side of our salvation which we bring to the table, which is necessary. He says, "All who would be my disciples, pick up your cross." Right? So, there's a free will there. There's a decision on their part to become disciples. It's not forced. It's not automatic. They desire it. And they allow then God to be the great physician and work healing within us and restoration to the likeness. So, yeah, likeness can be, can be seen as within the virtues. So, today I was, you know, angry, but by God's grace, by abiding in Him, by repenting continually, by prayer, prayer and fasting, by patient endurance, and all the rest that entails the spiritual life, I, in two or three or four months or years, I don't have the same reaction. And life things are transformed. And God forbid if that wasn't the case, why are we Christians? Like, why become a Christian if today I'm the same as I will be in three years and 10 years and 40 years? That's a tragedy. That's not Christianity, right? We need to be constantly being transformed and returned to paradise and beyond paradise. Christ is not just returning us to paradise. He's going beyond paradise because He is the second Adam. He's not just saying, "Go back to what we had," but even greater. If Adam and Eve had remained faithful, they would have seen greater things in paradise than what they had.

>> Um, quick, quick follow-up to that, because, um, what, what you just, like, sort of the process you described there of turning to Christ and then gaining the virtues by God's grace, I think like tons of Catholics and Protestants would describe the same sort of thing going on in their lives after they convert. So, like, would that, would that be false in their case, or what would that be?

>> Well, I can't comment on what's happened in their lives. Obviously, I could only speculate, and speculation is not a very good idea. So, all I can say is they should, as we do in the Orthodox Church, run to the saints, which is God's working in every age, right? Working out salvation in the lives of men in every age. And you look in them, and in obviously the scriptures, but also in thousands and thousands of different incarnations of Christ, so to speak. You look and you see in a mirror, and then you can take your temperature and you can say, "Am I truly making progress? Am I really transformed? Do I have and see the virtues that you see the workings out in the saints?" That's what the church constantly gives us that ability to come to self-knowledge. So, I would say everyone should do that. And Orthodox Christians, I constantly harp on my parishioners and the people online, "Read continually the lives of the saints," because they are the ones that Christ has shown forth as Christ, the same under the ages, the holy ones throughout the ages, that He is dwelling in and showing forth His salvation. So, it's that's what we would do in the church, and I would encourage everybody who's not Orthodox to do the same, and then they'll see. They'll see, "Am I like the saints of old?" I mean, if you don't want to read contemporary Orthodox saints, go back to the first millennium, for instance, and read St. Sabbas the Sanctified, or St. Anthony the Great, or any number of great saints that everybody recognizes, and then you'll see also if I'm, you know, working out the salvation like they have, and what God has done through them.

>> Um, and this is in a different direction. These are just, I, I want to get to questions from the chat, but there are, uh, a few different topics that I was wondering about a little bit. You were mentioning issues in basically in the West over the past five centuries and so on. And there's, I remember Jordan Peterson, I forget who he was talking to. Jordan Peterson was talking about sort of, I, I think I think he was talking about the sort of a Catholic direction or like a Protestant direction. And there's kind of a, either either direction to an extreme would lead to sort of a different problem. So, like, if you went too far in a Protestant direction, where if I disagree with you, I'll just go off to my own church or something like that, then the sort of end result of that would be every person is his own church, because we're going to, we're going to always disagree on something. I think that that would be an exaggeration. I don't think you'd really end up with that, because if you have, you know, allegiance to the scriptures as you're supposed to, there's going to be something restraining that complete division. But, you know, the idea is if, hey, the tendency is just separate when we disagree, that would be like the extreme end result. Whereas the, if you go in the opposite direction of, to avoid that, we have to have this allegiance to a person, whether, you know, the Pope or to church authorities or something like that. Like, what happens if someone, you just think someone's wrong, and like everything, everything you're reading and everything you can process in your mind is just, I don't see that. That seems, that seems wrong. But I can't disagree with it because then, then I'd have to go like, start my own church or something like that, and I'd be like the Protestants. And so you'd sort of be bound to things that you don't see and maybe you think are completely wrong. So, yeah, how, just want your thoughts on that.

>> You're absolutely, you're absolutely correct. And then we recognize that those two extremes. We talk constantly about the royal path in the Orthodox Church. The Fathers talk about the royal path, which means the high ground and avoiding the two, two extremes. And that's constantly the temptation. We would say that that's not possible to maintain outside of the grace of God and outside of the patristic teachings. You can easily go off, and that's what happens in every schism and every heresy is that they go off. Heresy is taking one part and against the whole, right? So that's whenever you see that, you lose the Catholicity, the wholeness of revelation and an experience, and you go off to one extreme. I mean, the Orthodox are the first who said and called out the Pope as the first Protestant. That's how we understand it. He protested against the synodical system, in other words, all the other bishops, and he walked away from the communion of the church. And he added to the creed, and he added the *filioque*, the famous *filioque*, "and the Son." And when they called him back, he said, "No, I am all-powerful in the church. I don't need to listen to you," even though his predecessors had agreed in council in 879 not to do that. He walked away. Pope Sergius IV. So, we recognize that he fell into that error. And so, in the Orthodox Church, and you can see this very clearly throughout history, all the great struggles against heresy, we don't, you cannot support the idea of a blind obedience. There is no blind obedience on matters of dogma and ethos. Now, there could be a blind obedience in a monastic life to an elder in the sense of, "Go take out the garbage." All right? Do your ascetic struggle, say your prayer. That kind of trust and obedience can be very profitable. But in terms of dogma and ethos, in other words, life, truth, the way, the things that are vital that have come down to us, the entire church is co-responsible. And many times throughout church history, you've had monks like St. Maximus the Confessor call out patriarchs and emperors, and St. Mark of Ephesus, or St. Athanasius the Great, or any number of, again and again throughout church history, we have challenges and difficulties, and you never know exactly where the Lord is going to raise up someone to steer the course back to the royal path. So, there is no blind obedience in the church. There's only obedience to Christ in and through the Apostles of our day, the bishops, the spiritual fathers, the priests. And so, that means you have to know your faith. That means you have to be responsible for your faith. What we see in the West in the Reformation, but even pre-Reformation, is the dissolution of this royal path, this balance, this wholeness. And that's why you have this, these extremes, the extreme extremities in the West, and you have, you know, one group focusing on one thing they feel that the other previous group had lost, and then the next group saying, "Well, you have lost this, and we add to that," and it just goes on and on and on until there's dissolution. You have thousands of different groups. That is a testimony to the loss of that balance, that Catholicity, the royal path that you see in the lives maintained in the lives of the great Church Fathers and the settings.

>> So, what would, what would, if there's no blind obedience, what would, what would happen if, what would happen if, say, I was in, I was in church, and something was proclaimed that is official, official teachings, and I, I just, I think this is wrong. This doesn't, this doesn't, I can't see how this could be right. What happens in that situation?

>> Well, a lot of things happen. You can go back in church history. You can see all kinds of things. For instance, in the 4th century, St. Basil the Great talks about Christians gathering outside in the desert places to pray because their churches have been taken over by Arians. Or you have St. Gregory the Theologian in 380, and he's in Constantinople, which is the center of the Roman Empire, and it's the center of power in the world at the time, and the entire city is given over to Arianism, and he is in a small little church, and he's praying, and he's baptizing the Arians and the Eunomians, and he's bringing them into the church. And within a year, by God's great providence, Theodosius comes to power, he's Orthodox, he calls the Second Ecumenical Council, that's where we get the second part of the creed from that council, and Orthodoxy is reestablished. But he didn't go along with the patriarch or the powers of the day. Or you have any number of examples of resistance to *koinodoxy* or the powers. I mean, the church is constantly fighting against the powers of this world, and the devil uses mainly the governmental authorities. It's almost, again and again, the emperors in the 4th century who pushed again and again Arianism, or the emperors in the 7th, 8th century that pushed Iconoclasm, or the emperors in the 14th and 15th century that pushed the false union with the Pope, and we have the false Council of Florence, and the powers of the, in Russia, that killed and martyred and destroyed the Russian Church in the 1920s and 30s. The Orthodox Church is the most martyred of all the Orthodox, all the Christian confessions. There's no doubt, no comparison. We have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of martyrs from Islam to the Communists. I mean, the church has been constantly persecuted, and there's, you know, endless examples of confessors. And so, there's no delusion in contemporary Orthodoxy, even with the various isms that are affecting our life today in the church. We have the same struggle and the same tension, and the same, it is a great and difficult thing to walk the royal path, to walk that tightrope. We call, we talk about the spiritual life as a tightrope that you walk between two extremes. You're constantly almost falling off to super-correct Pharisaism on the right, or liberal, you know, worldliness on the left. It's just a, it's just a struggle every day to not fall into the extremes.

>> Um, along those lines, you were mentioning the, the schism. Before, before that, was, was the church united on a, like a succession of popes in terms of the popes being like the linchpin or the foundation of unity? Is that what you mean? Or what do you mean?

>> I'm, well, yeah. I'm just wondering like if there's a, if there's a split, but before that, there was, there was unity on like having having a pope as an authority, and there's a split. I'm just, it's just silly. I'm just wondering why, why wouldn't the Eastern Orthodox Church just get a new pope and say, "We reject that one."

>> Well, we certainly did. We certainly did reject the Pope in the 11th century, and he rejected the Orthodox Church and all the bishops in the East. And that's that schism, that departure, has never been healed, obviously, and it's gotten worse and worse and worse over the last thousand years. But as far as the first millennium, the Pope from the Orthodox perspective was, I mean, there were many holy Popes. We have many saints that were recognized as Popes of Rome, and martyrs and confessors and all the rest. But they were seen as a very dynamic and powerful and important church, a local church, the Church of Rome, from the early days, because of the witness they gave as the center of the empire in the first 400 years to the powers that be. And you had Christians from all over the empire who made their way to Rome and were martyred, and that definitely increased the prominence and the trustworthiness of the church in Rome. Unfortunately, things are very different at the end of the first millennium. You have a very corrupt, I mean, there's a time in the 10th century that's called the time of *pornocracy*, where you have essentially very, very licentious people heading up the church in Rome. Now, that's not necessarily a, you know, means that the church was lost, but that definitely is connected. The loss of ethos is definitely connected to the loss of the dogma. In other words, accepting the reversal of previous Popes and accepting the *filioque* in the creed is not just a bad idea. It's the fruit of a loss of the ascetic life, the Orthodox ethos, and the Orthodox balance in life. So, the Popes, unfortunately, over time, they lost that preeminence. They lost being the first among equals. They were basically taken over by powers of this world, as is the temptation for every local church, always there at the doors, power of this world gaining more power in the world. Eventually, the Pope ends up saying that no one can be saved outside of me, and he likens himself as over all the all the empires of the world, etc., etc., etc. I mean, these are recognized as signs of departure from the wholeness, the Catholicity of the church. So, that's what happened from our perspective over time. But the early church, the first, you know, thousand years, at least much of the first thousand years, they were Orthodox. They're considered Orthodox by the Orthodox Church. We have them in the *synaxarion*, in the lives of the saints. And the church was, you know, more or less united. Now, there were, we can talk about the roots of this schism. We can talk about why we, you know, there's a lot of things we can talk about, but that's the general, general outlook.

>> Uh, different, totally different direction, but it was just something I was wondering because, uh, again, new to this. So, like, back in the day when I'd hear about like Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox, I just thought that was like just regional things. But so anyway, I looked it up and there it says there are 15 to 17 different autonomous churches or something like that. Kind of a minor issue, but I was wondering why 15 to 17, like, are some inquirers? I'm not sure exactly how many.

>> Yeah.

>> Kids I have. Um, and then, and then like what, what are kind of like the, like, kind of the differences? You don't have to go into a ton of detail. I'm just wondering like to what extent are there, if you say there are autonomous churches, then I'm guessing they have authorities in there that wouldn't be, wouldn't be allowed to change the fundamentals of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but would be allowed to make rules on other issues. I was just, I'm just wondering what, what the.

>> So, these are administrative decisions, divisions over time, just like, I mean, from the time of the ancient world, we had administrative divisions along the lines of the Roman Empire. That's why we had five patriarchates. It wasn't because the church was local. There were all kinds of bishops all over the Roman Empire before Constantine came to power, before Theodosius and all the rest. But the church was organized as the hospital, so to speak, the spiritual hospital of the Roman Empire. It was organized according to the Roman Empire's organization. That's why you have five patriarchates. Ultimately, the church, of course, saw it as a utility in that and embraced that. Over time, over the last millennium, the same, you know, reaction and and and dealing with the administrative needs of the local churches in the various Orthodox lands, whether they be Serbia, Romania, Georgia, you know, you have these local Orthodox churches. By the way, that's not just in the second millennium. You have an autocephalous church in the fifth century, 400s and 430. The Third Ecumenical Council recognizes Cyprus as an autocephalous church. So, autocephalous churches, you know, autonomous, autochephalous, self-governing churches, is not something that is post-schism. It exists in the first millennium, and it's perfectly acceptable for that. And that's what the patriarchates were. And so, now, as the mission went further on to the Slavs, and then throughout the Balkans, and over time, because of different political dominations with the Ottomans, the church said, "You're self-governing here. You're self-governing there. You're self-governing here for the purposes of the pastoral carrying out of salvation in that time and place." It's really not a big deal. There's no division in terms of faith or morals or ethos or communion. It's all one church, just an administrative difference depending on the needs of the local church. And so, America has the same issue, except we're very, very slow in getting to be a well-organized administrative unity in America. America is a very unique place. There's a lot of reasons for that, and none of them really have to do with the ecclesiastical life of the church.

>> Do, do leaders from like across the spectrum get together for certain things?

>> Sure. Sure. We've had, we've had gatherings of the so-called primates or heads of the local churches quite often in the last 20, 30 years. We had one in Crete, which is highly contested as it's, you know, the decisions made, but it was nonetheless a meeting of all the heads. But there are representatives meeting often. It depends on the needs. Look, the church has always been very local, right? The church is local, in other words, where the bishop and the people and the priests and the people are, that's the, this is according to St. Ignatius, the Catholic Church. In other words, the fullness of the church. Where Christ is in the Eucharist is the fullness of the church. So, we think of the church like this. There's a local church here, there's a local church there. Whether it be the Church of Greece, and the Church of, you know, Russia, or whatever it might be, or even just two local dioceses. What it is, is in that totality, in that place and time, is Christ in the Eucharistic synaxis, in the faithful life of the faithful. And they look at the other church as if in a mirror because they see Christ. Each one sees Christ in the other. In other words, the Orthodox faith, the Orthodox life, and the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so, they recognize, "Oh, that's an Orthodox church." In other words, the church that Christ established. And each locality lives out its faith. In so far as we need to interact and we need to be, you know, cooperate for bigger issues, whatever they might be, we interact. But the, the sanctification and the, the gospel is a local event, right? It's my parish here, my people, this is where they're going to be sanctified. And so, the church is always very personal and local, and it's the way it's organized and it works that way. For that matter, the sanctification of the world is one person at a time. And so, the best thing I can do, the most important, or the first thing, not the best thing, is to work on myself, to learn myself, to come to self-knowledge, and to become like Christ. And then that's the best way I can help everyone around me. If I don't do that, but I try to help other people around me, well, that's not going to be very helpful. That's very human and not very spiritual.

>> This is, uh, this is, uh, this is weird. You mentioned, you mentioned Crete, and I just realized I never, I never shared this with anyone, but it's, it's an odd little, it's an odd little story. I just wanted people to be aware of because I don't, I don't even know if it's relevant, but anyway. Yeah, my dad, when I was young, was a drug dealer. But back in the day, if you got caught for a crime, they'd tell you, you could, they'd suspend your sentence if you go join the military. So, he got a five-year sentence, they told him they'd suspend it if he went and joined the military. So, he joined the Navy, and he eventually ended up stationed in Crete. And then I went over there on the during the summer to visit him. I don't know, I don't know if you know anything about my background, but I was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder when I was 18. So, I'm technically a psychopath. And so, I never, I didn't have like a conscience. And so, I would, I would steal anything. It didn't matter, family, friends, I didn't care. I would steal things. But I was in Crete, and I was hanging out with these Greek kids. And we went to, it was like a little, I don't know, it's not a monastery, it's just a place you went and visited, but it was like inside this deep cave that was like, I don't know, seemed like a quarter of a mile through the cave. And you got to the very back, there were bats flying around, then you get to the very back, and there's like a little, there are icons back there and so on. But went to this little church when we got out. And the other kids left. And there was a, there was a plate with a big pile of donations on there. There's no one there. The place is totally empty. And there's a big, there's a big plate of money there. And I was, I was totally about to steal it. And then I was like, "Wait, no one else is stealing it. No one else is stealing the money. Maybe there's some reason not to steal this money that I don't know about." Okay, I'm not going to, I'm not going to steal this money. And anyway, it was, I was always puzzled by that later because, I mean, I once stole a, I once broke into a church bus to steal a thing of lollipops that they would give to the kids and stuff like that. So, I was always puzzled by that, um, by that later on. Never figured out why, because I wasn't thinking in terms of right and wrong. I just thought, "No one else on the planet is stealing this money, but I'm about to." Maybe there's something that I'm not, that I'm not aware of, that there's some reason. Right now, anyway, little side note.

>> Maybe, maybe the guardian angel of that chapel whispered in your ear and prevented you from sinning.

>> That, that's entirely possible. Uh, all right. So, I felt the grace of God from that chapel and you said, "No, I'm not going to do that."

>> Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was confusing to me for years because I normally did not, did not stop what I was doing for any reason.

>> By the way, I don't believe in a lot of those labels. And I think those labels are garbage. When people tell you at 16 or 18, you have X disorder, I just think that that's a lot of nonsense because the grace of God can heal everybody.

>> Oh, yeah. And I mean, I, yeah. I wonder about the labels, too. What, what, what are actual, what's real are like, like kind of symptoms, patterns of behavior, and then they collect symptoms, they collect symptoms and then and then give it a label and so on. But I definitely had the symptoms.

>> You know what the cause of that is? Demonic. You need, you need exorcisms and baptism is what you need because that's the cause of that. I mean, you did, I don't know if you've had that, you know, tried to have that in the last years, but that's, these all these sins behind the passions are the demons, and the demons are working constantly on us to go deeper and deeper into systematic sin. So, we become like trapped in the life of sin. But it's demonically inspired. Especially the psychological problems today. Why do we have so many problems today? It's not just, you're a bad boy. There were a lot of bad boys in history, and we didn't have this kind of epidemic. It's the demonic is more naked in history than ever. It's walking naked through history today. And that's why it's impacting everybody's lives. And, uh, anyway, that's another topic. Go ahead, go with your questions.

>> Um, yeah, I have, uh, I have a few more questions, but I also want to respect the people in the chat and try to get to some of their questions. So, I'll jump into some of these. And there are multiple questions along these lines. I can kind of lump these together, but Sunrise in Paradise said, "Ask him why he definitely a big issue." But ask him why he worships icons. Asking on behalf of Protestants. And then AP, I normally wouldn't snitch on someone texting me, but he's, he's been talking trash about me over in the chat. So, yeah, fair is fair. But he, uh, he messaged me and said, "Ask, if I don't venerate icons, am I going to hell?"

>> Okay. Well, first of all, worship and veneration is a term in Greek that's two different things. And yes, it sometimes overlaps even in English. But there's a clear difference theologically and spiritually, as laid down by St. John of Damascus, who I know you've read, in his defense of Orthodoxy, or rather, attack on Islam as a Christian heresy. He has a great defense of the veneration of icons, one of the most important in those days of Iconoclasm. Uh, so to get to the answer more specifically, worship, *latria*, is for God alone. And veneration is for our fellow man or things of God. And we see that throughout the scriptures and throughout church history. And indeed, in the East, contrary to the West, it is very common for people to bow to each other, to kiss each other, to kiss the hands of other people, and no one thinks that you're worshiping another human being when you do that. So, part of the visceral reaction of Protestants is simply their lack of any experience of Eastern culture, even far Eastern culture, like Japanese. They bow to each other, and nobody's expecting that to be some kind of worship. So, there is a clear differentiation between worship, which is for God alone, and veneration, which is for God's image. By the way, we are God's image. And so, we're respecting God, Christ, through our neighbor and showing love and respect. And you kiss the little photographs that you have in your wallet of your long far-off mother, father, sister, brother, and nobody thinks you're worshiping your brother or sister when you're kissing that picture and weeping because you haven't seen them in two years or something. Nobody's expecting you, calling you a worshipper of icons. So, let's, uh, let's do a little.

A little more serious. I think it's just not very serious to to accuse the Orthodox of worshiping anything created. Read the Petristic literature. Read the defense of the icons in the 8th century. There's three great treatises you can read. They're all in English. St. Max, St. Theodore the Studite, St. Germinos, patriarch of Constantinople, and St. John Damascus. Three, not two or one. Three great petristic defenses of the veneration of icons. Uh none of that nobody ever thought Christian the great Christian people of the 8th century when they were dealing with iconoclasm they did not embrace iconoclasm. I I don't think it's it's smart to embrace iconoclasm. You're not with the great saints of the church when you do that.

Um and uh AP then this came up. I I I forget if it was yesterday or the day before but um.

I'm sorry. Who's AP?

AP, my friend, the my friend the apostate prophet. He's a catechumen. He's a catechumen.

Oh, yeah, okay. You're talking about how.

Riv, yeah.

Yeah, okay. We've corresponded. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so he said to ask if I don't venerate icons, am I going to hell? And he's asking that because the other day we were uh the issue came up and we were looking at Nicaea 2 where it says something if anyone doesn't venerate or kiss the icons, let him be anathema and so on. And um AP was saying that it's more of it's more of a reaction to the iconoclasts, not saying everyone is doomed if they don't venerate icons. And I'm saying, well, it kind of sounds like it's saying like you're you're doomed. So, just wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I think you need to always look at things in context, otherwise you'll misunderstand them. And this happens all the time, right? We make mistakes on people's motivations and their understanding. So, let's look at it in context. Right now, the church is coming out of about 70 years of harsh persecution. We're talking martyrs, confessors, and there's an ideology that's in power for decades and decades. The emperor is wielding power. And he's saying anybody who venerates icons is a heretic and needs to be, you know, thrown away, exiled. We have many branded. We have saints that are branded, right? Literally, their foreheads were branded like animals. The the great uh brothers Sedics, Theodore, the Branded, etc. So you put it in context first of all. Secondly, uh the fathers are absolutely responding in a spiritual and theological way to make it clear that if you uh continue after the council, right, they've established orthodoxy and they're saying if you continue in stubbornly resisting in this with this mentality with this ideology of the iconoclast and you do not venerate, like you don't you you have theology is not just a mental idea. We're not ideologists here. We want people to actually live out the faith. Right? So if you come to the churches and you say with your nose up, I refuse to venerate because, you know, I'm an iconoclast. I think these things are idols and I think that kissing them is uh is idol worship, which is what the iconoclasts say. I mean, they had they were much more nuanced than we think, but they had this basic stance, right? The Orthodox said, "No, this is not worshiping the wood. It's the veneration of the person depicted. It's the worship of Christ or who's depicted, etc." So it is associated with an ideological heretical stance and therefore if they kept it and they acted on it and they lived it, they were anathema. And what does anathema mean? It literally means they were I mean the word etymology has to do with being lifted up. It's what Paul says when he says throw him out and maybe he'll come to his senses. Satan will bring him to his senses. He no longer listens to the church. By the way, that's in the scriptures and it's in the Acts of the Apostles where you need to listen to the apostles, otherwise you can't be a part of the apostolic community because it's that disobedience and that arrogance is not going to be salvific. It's not about some authoritarian hardcore coming down on people. It's about that stance is not a stance that will lead you to communion with God. It's all about salvation. Everything the church does is about showing the path to salvation. And so it is pointing like any other heresy. If you stubbornly maintain the heresy, you can't be in communion with Christ. You can't be in communion with the church. It's not something that they established in the 8th century. They've done that in the previous eight six councils for other theological areas. Some of them would be even more uh hard for contemporary men to understand, right? Even more theoretical. Let's say this was very concrete and it had a concrete expression, the heretical teaching. And so therefore it needed a concrete boundary laid down. And that's what they did in the council. They laid down the boundaries. They said, "Here, we want you all to stay on the narrow path of salvation. Here's the boundary. If you say Christ is not God, you can't be on the narrow path of salvation. If you say the Holy Spirit is not God, second council, you can't be on the path of salvation. If you say that God Christ is not holy God, holy man, and from the beginning notorious, you can't be on the path of salvation." Same with the Monophysites. Same with the other Monopathites and the other heresies. So, it's a pastoral strictness, but it's all about salvation. Why would you not show veneration to Christ? Well, there's something wrong with you. You're not you're not on the narrow path of salvation. It's that simple.

Um, yeah, on that issue, but it's not it's not just it's not just Christ. They're they're the icons of various saints and so on, though um if you let's suppose let's let's suppose someone's Eastern Orthodox and just doesn't just doesn't venerate um icons of saints, would he be would he be in trouble?

Well, why? First thing, as a pastor, I would ask you why? What's your problem? He might say, "Well, I'm just I really have like problems with germs and I don't like the the thought of putting my mouth on the glass." Okay, you're not you're not an iconoclast. You got a you got a problem with trusting God and we'll work on that. It depends on what why they're doing it. Are they if they're really heretics and they don't want to venerate it because they think that the image of Christ, in other words, the saint is not worthy of veneration. The question is why? Why do you not want to show respect to what God has is his friends? These are his friends. They're in heaven and they're alive in heaven actually. They're not dead and Christ loves them and we love them too. Why don't you love them? Let's talk about it. It's a pastoral question for me as a pastor. It's not I'm not going to come down hard. I understand there's a zillion and one people with all kinds of ideas. We got to work through that. It's not a problem.

Um, one one followup on that issue. I don't know if it's going to um it might come up uh things might come up more uh as we're going through questions, but um I asked I asked Nick and Ben and they gave me they gave me their thoughts on this, but I don't know if that's an official position or this was just their uh their thoughts on it, but um.

Who's Nick and Ben? I'm sorry. Forgive me.

Oh, yeah. Uh, so it's Nick, Fearless Truth, and uh and yeah, Ben. They're they're or they're Eastern Orthodox Christians. And so I had them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I know who they are. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. So I just I brought them on there and I was going through a video of a Protestant who was laying out objections to Eastern Orthodoxy and I had them on to give their responses to those uh those 10 issues. Um, but yeah, so their view their view was that this goes back to the apostles, that the apostles themselves and that that early church would have been um venerating icons and that this would have been part. So I was like, you know, the Ethiopian eunuch converts and he's baptized, did they like tell him he needs to get some icons or give him some icons or something like that? It's basically um two so it's kind of two issues. One, did it was it a thing back then, but we just don't find them um mentioning it in the book of Acts? And two, did they regard it as like an an essential part of being a Christian?

So the principle is there in the scriptures, the principle of veneration. We have people venerating the items of the Apostle Paul. We have people venerating uh the in the church we have such things from the first century like the holy cross. We it's been maintained and and kept and we on Mount Athos we have the largest piece of the true cross and the signs of the crucifixion are in it. I've venerated many times. This goes back. The the the um the belt of the Mother of God has been maintained and and preserved. The the gifts of the Magi. We have on Mount Athos. I mean, these things have been in the possession of the church for 2,000 years. They're obviously treasured and venerated. For us, it's just not even an issue that this has always been the case. For instance, we have the the Apostle Luke. He is considered to be the first iconographer and he painted the first icon of the Mother of God. And we have that according to the tradition and we have several of these in the Orthodox Church. So, in the Orthodox world, this is a this is not an issue. But if you don't have any experience with all the I mean in the lives of the saints for instance, we have the the Mandylion which was according to tradition the a miracle that happened. The ruler of Edessa could not come and see Christ and he sent his servant and the servant wanted Christ to come to Edessa and meet him and he could not and so he wiped his face and the image of Christ was was maintained on this and it was sent to him. So the principle according to Orthodox tradition and experience has always been there. You can say, "Well, I scoff at that and I don't believe the Orthodox tradition. I don't trust it." Okay, that's fine. You can do that. But for us, this is a no-brainer and it's not really even a question. And you have also historical examples, which I'm not really up on, but I know I've seen my my colleagues uh talking about it quite a bit uh of historical examples going back to the early days of the church in the catacombs or in in places like Mount Sinai and other places where you have a very robust um example of images. Now people say, "Well, they didn't venerate them." Okay, we don't know. Actually, you say they didn't venerate them. We say they did, but they were there and they were making them. The Christians were making them and they were honoring Christ through making those images. Why wouldn't they show any respect? I mean, what is veneration? It's respect. It's showing respect and honor. You mean they dishonored the images that they had in the in the catacombs? Why would they do that? I mean, I think people are just searching for ways to you know sow doubt. But if you have a good disposition and a good mindset, you can say that makes sense or you can say I refuse to accept that because the Seventh Ecumenical Council is you know comes down hard on iconoclasts. Yeah, okay, you can do that too.

Um, one sort of uh connected issue to what I was pointing out um is you you earlier you mentioned you brought up Acts chapter 2 and uh something I've been wondering. I also asked Nick and Ben about that but like your thoughts um in Acts chapter 2 you have uh you have uh you know you have the miracle people here um hear the apostles speaking in their own language wherever they were from. Then Peter gives a sermon. Then you have tons of people converting and it says and they were baptized in uh 3,000 were added to their number. And that's the pattern you see in the book of Acts. You see, you know, Ethiopian eunuch. He believes, he converts, and he's baptized there. And so I was wondering because um this was a couple weeks ago when I was talking to Andrew Wilson. I said, "And my friend AP is is Eastern Orthodox." And he said, "No, he's not. He's only he's only a catechumen and until he's baptized he's not Eastern Orthodox." But um it seems like well, so back back then you convert and you get baptized, whereas now it's like uh it could be a one or two-year process before you're baptized and considered a Christian. So is the view that like these stories were telescoped and back then, no, they they were waiting before they were baptized? Or is it did it change for some reason along the way? And if so, kind of why why would that change?

Sure. Yeah. No, there's definitely there's definitely uh um historical evidence that shows that the church pastorally felt it a good, especially in the 4th century with St. Cyril of Jerusalem, for instance, in his Catecheses. It's pretty clear that they took a long time to make sure that these pagans who were coming over uh truly were understanding and desiring uh and changing their life before they were baptized. So there was a longer catechumenate. Um, but it was based on the apostles and so it was three years actually in the 4th century because it was three years that they were with Christ according to holy tradition. Was three years they were with Christ? So the the church in the 4th century uh had a three-year catechumenate. Now, we only do most of the time one year. I I'm a proponent for further catechumenate, but I would say that uh Andrew was wrong. A catechumen is not not in the church. It's a unique it's a unique thing. It's like it's like people who are in the in the olden times when you wanted to get married somebody, you you were you were engaged, right? You had the aravon in Greek. So, they had the divine service. They had prayers written over them. And so they were not married, but they weren't not together. And so there's a state here for the catechumen. He's in, he's learning, he has a desire, he's being prepared, he's confessing his sins, he's praying, he's learning everything. He's going with the church. He's in the church's prayers, at least up until the gospel. And so I wouldn't say that he's not a part of the Orthodox Church, but until he's baptized, he's not going to be the equivalent of married. And that's when you know the marriage happens and the blessing comes and then they're truly living as husband and wife and that's when the soul is let's say married to God in the baptism dies and rises. So yes, in one way they're not and another way they are. So it's a process and by the way, the pastors can change that. A pastor could do it in a week and I've seen that happen if there's a need and the pastor can do it in three years or five years. There's there's examples of people many years because they weren't prepared. They didn't do what was necessary, but they didn't become prepared. They didn't become what they needed to be in order to receive the grace in the mysteries. Right? The whole point of the catechumenate, the whole point is to prepare them for baptism. And they it's a process and and it's a it's a process of purification and a changing of life. And some people takes a long time. Some people doesn't take that long at all.

Yeah. The I mean, the idea the idea makes perfect sense. It's it's uh if if you're going to become a Christian, you should know what you're getting into and that that that time that time would allow you to kind of like weed out people who aren't serious. Uh but yeah, so now yeah, I'm just wondering if it's if it's based on the um the the apostles and their time with Jesus and then later it was this extended period. Why would why do they kind of I mean that's all you see in the book of Acts is you convert and you're baptized.

Grace, the grace that came down upon first of all, those people, a lot of them were already with uh possibly a part of the following of of the Lord, right? This is just after the Lord's this is just a few weeks after the Lord's crucifixion. The people in Jerusalem weren't totally foreign to the Lord, right? They might have been listening to him for years. So we don't know exactly the state of them first of all. Secondly, the grace of Pentecost on is unique in that time and space, right? It came down upon the entire community in Jerusalem. So, it, you know, it's it's um perhaps there's been well, there's been other examples in church history like the baptism of Rus, the whole Russian people with Vladimir, the baptism of the church of the people of Georgia. There's maybe historical examples of mass baptisms that didn't take nearly as long, but I don't I don't think it's some dogmatic issue. I think it's just a pastoral question.

Okay. Um.

Yeah.

And this is a this is a big one and I've gotten conflicting this is an interesting one. Um, I've gotten conflicting responses on this and I'm wondering if um, yes.

I'm wondering if this is if this varies because you have the the different uh, autonomous churches, but yeah, I've had I've heard from some and a matter of fact, when I had um when I was with uh, Nick and Ben, they seem to have a a little difference on this, but sometimes I hear we know where the church is, but we don't know where it's not. So we don't know the situation of people of of everyone outside the church and we can't make a call. And then I've seen others saying nope, you are definitely not a Christian except in a loose sense of to distinguish you from like atheists or something like that. We could call you a Christian but we don't really mean that you are like like an actual Christian. So we have um Father Peter, please expand on the Eastern Orthodox view to those out of those outside the church. I think many are missing the nuances and use a black and white approach.

Yeah, that's a great question and I appreciate it and I'll do my best and please ask more questions if I'm not sufficiently answering your question. Um, so let's take the the the quote first. "We know where the church is, we don't know where it is not" is a misapplication or misunderstanding of another saying that was given earlier by another theologian. "We know where the Holy Spirit is, we do not know where the Holy Spirit is not." And that's much closer to reality. But the idea that "we know where the church is, we don't know where it is not" is really not consistent with Orthodox ecclesiology because the church is Christ. And in time and space, we encounter Christ. If we don't know where he is, uh, not, that would imply that we are fuzzy on the boundaries and we're not really sure who he is. And I don't think that's accurate. I don't think that's Orthodox ecclesiology. We have certainty absolutely about who Christ is. We're his members, right? We're part of his body. And so we understand the boundaries about our about who we are and they're actually actually eucharistic and they the Orthodox faith shows where the boundaries. What they're trying to do in that original saying, "We know where the Holy Spirit is, we don't know," is is is understandable. The Holy Spirit, let's just back it up a minute and look at the Patristic teaching on the actions and the energies of the Holy Spirit. And this is a little bit maybe a learning curve, but it's super important and it and it solves all this problem because essentially this is a big doesn't have to be a problem. It's understandable once we get into it. The Holy Spirit, the grace of God, absolutely is everywhere present and fills all things. We pray that every day and and we say that without the Holy Spirit, there would be no creation. There would be no providence of God. There would be no one would come to Christ except in the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit on one level and in one way is everywhere and all people are partaking of it to later greater or lesser degrees depending on their disposition. That divine energy or operation or grace, there's different names for it, is one thing. And how he acts and how he operates for those who want to be a part of the body is another thing. In other words, when someone becomes a part of the body of Christ through catechism, through baptism, now they're entering into the life of the church and the the grace or the operation or the energies of purification, illumination, and glorification or deification, the stages of the spiritual life are opened up to them because it's a prerequisite, my free will. It's a prerequisite, my initiation into the life of the church. And so the Holy Spirit is working in different ways inside and outside of the church, right? And and the the presuppositions have to be met for you to enjoy and participate the life of the church in the purification, illumination, and deification of the human nature. But is everyone, including many Protestants, Roman Catholics, enjoying the operation of the Holy Spirit in terms of God's providence, in terms of God's love, in terms of God's uh guidance toward Christ? Without it, there would be no hope of salvation. So obviously, but that's not purification, illumination, that's not the life of the church. So, um, what do we when we talk about who is a Christian? Because I think you mentioned that as well, and I think it's important to make this distinction. You can talk about Christians and you can say a Christian, let's define terms because most of the time we're not defining terms and that's why we have misunderstanding. Who is a Christian? A Christian, if I say, if I say, and I load the term, a Christian is one who follows Christ, is a disciple, wants to be a disciple of Christ, believes he's God, then there are two billion Christians on the face of the earth. But but the church doesn't understand Christianity only. That's not enough to give the term Christian. Why? As a Christian according to St. Paul is one who puts on Christ in baptism. So now the question is, where where and how do I put on Christ in baptism? Well, in the church, of course, because that's the initiation into the life of the church. So this immediately begs the question, well, where is the church? What is the church? And here we are back to the main question of ecclesiology. Where and how do I enter the church? That's the big question, right? And if if I say, "Well, you can enter the church outside of the Orthodox Church without the Orthodox faith, disconnected from the Eucharistic assembly." Well, then I've just denied everything I just told you. I've denied the right the teachings of the scriptures and St. Ignatius because he doesn't say that. He doesn't say there's a division in mysteries, division in faith, the division. He says they're all together around and below and with the the bishop. And so there's a there's a thousand and one ideas today in the ecumenical movement in the West about what is the church, where is the church, and everything. Throw those out. You can come back to them if you want, but throw them out and go back to the ancient church. Go back to the fathers. Go back and get clarity. And then come back and entertain the ideas of the 20th century. And then you'll see the differences, similarities, I think the chasm between the two. And then you'll have clarity on what the church has always taught and always believed in terms of its own self. Right? This is a question of does the church know itself? Of course it does. Christ knows himself. We're members of the body. We know who we are. If we don't, God help us. What are we like split personality? We don't know who we are. I don't think so. So, is that help clarify or do you need more to clarify the boundaries and clarify the meaning of these terms?

Yeah. So just to clarify, in basically the the true sense of the word Christian, um Catholics, Protestants, anyone outside of the Eastern Orthodox Church would not be um part of the body of Christ and would not be a Christian in a true sense. Is is that correct?

Well, if the body of Christ is the Orthodox Church and if the mysteries are one, then those who participate in the mysteries in the Orthodox Church are in the body of Christ and therefore they are participants in the mysteries. Right? You these are not like ideas that are hard to understand. The implications are hard to accept. But if you can understand the ecclesiology and that there is a Catholicity, there's a wholeness and there's an integrity to it. At least on that level, on an intellectual level, you can understand the Orthodox position. This is not so much a comment on them. It's a comment on who Christ is. I'm talking about who Christ is and where he's found. That's what's at stake. Not are you a good person? Are you a lover of Christ? Are you virtuous? I don't have any say on that. I'm not the judge. I don't know. I don't know uh a lot about myself still. I'm trying to determine who I am and how close I am to Christ. It's a constant struggle. But the church has has never doubted its boundaries, its identity for 2,000 years. And we shouldn't start now because there are a lot of people who misunderstand us.

So, so um if someone let's suppose someone's in like school or something like that um let's suppose his family's atheists, he starts um he starts reading the Bible. He comes to believe, let's suppose he he's thinking about things, takes a philosophy class, starts believing in God, then he investigates, starts reading the Bible, believes in Jesus, believes that Jesus died on the cross for sins, rose from the dead, that he's Lord, believes in the Trinity. Suppose he never even heard of like the Eastern Orthodox Church.

They're amazing like that. Yeah.

Yeah. So so basically would he.

They're not Orthodox Church.

Would you agree he's not a member of the Orthodox Church?

Yeah.

Right. Okay. So, he's not a member of the Orthodox Church. And we and the Orthodox Church knows itself. It knows its boundaries. It knows where it is. So, we say that he's not a member of the church. He's not therefore a participant in the mysteries. Is this a commentary on his eternal salvation? No, we don't know. We're not judged. God is the alone the judge. And so, it's a commentary on who Christ is and where Christ is found. That's what we're talking about. And that's a teaching that we've received. And by the way, we've received it for 1700 years at least until the 4th century. And we believe in it as a dogma of the faith. We confess, "I believe in one holy Catholic, apostolic Church." This is not about that hypothetical person or about David Wood. It's about what has been handed down to us. We're going to guard that. We're not going to innovate. We're not going to change. It's not a comment on what God will do with every soul. And he can do whatever he likes and he works miracles throughout all creation and he does all kinds of things that he he desires. He took the thief on the cross and put him into paradise. I am not commenting on what God does or does not do with that person. It has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

Does that make sense?

Um, this is uh this is not something I'd be wondering, but we have an Oriental Orthodox here, so I figured I'd uh just toss that in there. But he says Eastern Orthodox. Make sure I want make sure I answered your question though. Is that a sufficient answer or do you have do you want more? Because I think it's a really important topic.

Yeah, understanding.

Yeah.

Yeah. And if if if other if other people um.

We can always address it in the future sometime if other people um are want to hear more. Uh Eastern Orthodoxy is incoherent. Ask them about the three chapters, especially the letter of Abas. That's why you should be Oriental Oriental Orthodox. I I only I only brought this up because there there are tons of questions and tons of uh tons of really really important questions. I just had no clue what this is about, so I I put it up there.

Sure. Well, just to help you understand the context, uh it's not something I'm going to get into. Obviously, it's a very involved uh question which I'm happy to talk to on another, you know, come back on the show or whatever you think or do a livestream myself. But the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon was called uh and at that council the doctrine of the two natures was taught and preached and defended and there was a segment of the church mainly at that time in Egypt uh that did not accept the council uh led by Dioscorus, the Patriarch of Alexandria. There's much much more to the story. In fact, what's really interesting is what my friend Craig Truglia over at Orthodox Christian Theology is doing. He's going back in history and he's looking at the canonical and the historical uh which we're to many people are very ignorant of. Like you are not alone in the vast ignorance on this topic in the English speaking world, right? Most people have no clue. Uh but what's really interesting I think we need to go deeper in is after the Fourth Council, what happened? And there's a whole history that people don't understand and it's very important to understand the history to understand the Orthodox rejection of the so-called Oriental or Miaphysite or Monophysite. There's various names people give for their own reasons. Uh traditionally they were called Monophysites. Today they reject that term. I really don't care. But the essence of it is they did not accept the Christology of the fathers which was defended again and again and again at the next three four five ecumenical councils depending on our numbering. And so uh that's the historical context. Uh they did not uh continue with the church. They eventually got their own hierarchy later on and they've been in schism uh and they've taught according to the Orthodox Church the heresy of of Monophysism ever since. That's the Orthodox basic position and it's a it's not really in question. Although there are people in the 20th century academic theologians who like to act like uh there's been a big misunderstanding. There has not. The church is pretty clear again and again in ecumenical councils what the boundaries are.

Um, how do question how do the Eastern Orthodox determine who is authoritative?

I'm not sure if they mean historically or like now or.

Well, we believe the saints are authoritative and all of us follow uh Christ in and through the saints of every age. So at the beginning of ecumenical of almost every ecumenical council they began the decision with the following phrase in Greek, "epomisi," which means "following the holy fathers." So the church always had a very strong consciousness that the faith that we are going to lay down here at this council or decision is that which has always been taught and has been handed down to us by our fathers and we're not innovating. In fact, innovation was considered absolutely impossible and unacceptable and it had to be shown that it was the faith that has always been taught and that was that was again and again and again throughout church history. So the authorities in the councils were the fathers that came before us and those are following the apostles. And that chain is what the Lord himself talks about in the scriptures. They he talks about if they listen to you, they listen to me and they listen to the one who sent me. He sets up the apostolic succession. He sets up the idea that they're going to forgive sins. I mean, how can a man forgive sins? Well, Christ through them forgives the sins, right? It's Christ doing everything in the church. And so, he wants to work through mankind. He wants to through through his disciples in every age. And so, if you're not following those before us, you're not following Christ. That's that's how it's been understood for 2,000 years. And so, the authorities are the fathers, the consensus of the fathers. And then when the fathers get together in council and the whole church accepts that council, that takes on a great a great deal of authority in terms of dogmatic uh teachings.

Uh, next one here um this this caused uh this was an issue earlier in the chat. I saw a bunch of comments on this but um someone said uh "call no man rabbi, father, master." Matthew 23. Why do they dress, act, speak like the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked harshly in the same chapter?

Yeah, just share my my brief thoughts on this because I refer to you as uh I referred to you as Father Peter and it's something I had to think about because I went to uh I went to Fordham, which is a Jesuit school. That doesn't mean all the everyone's uh all the professors are Jesuits. Most of them weren't. I mean, there were I was in the philosophy graduate school. There were there were atheist professors and so on. But sometimes sometimes a professor was a Jesuit and so I was huh, do I call do I call him father? And so I had to I had to I had to think about it a little while but I was like, I'm not convinced that that Jesus was just ruling out calling calling people father, even though if you just took it extremely literal, you'd conclude that. But I'm thinking, I mean, if you really took it, you you couldn't even call your own, you know, your own dad father. So there's that issue. So I don't think he was ruling that out. But then later uh Paul says Paul says to the Corinthians, "I became your father through the gospel." So Paul didn't think it completely ruled out being a father, not even like in a biological sense, but in a like a kind of spiritual sense and so on. Uh, but I've never been terribly clear on it. But yeah, what are your thoughts on that?

Well, in Acts 7:2 he says, "Men, brethren, and fathers," for instance, or in Romans 9:10, he says, "Not only this, but when Rebecca also conceived by one, even by our father Isaac." So he used a term, Paul used the term. So it's not a prohibition against the term per se. Teacher, for instance, the Lord says, "Don't call any man teacher." Do we do we stop using the term teacher? No, obviously we don't. So, the Lord was criticizing the Jewish leaders who love the place and honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogue and salutations in the marketplace and being called rabbi by men. All right, so that's the problem. It's the love of power. And he was using this exaggeration, this hyperbole to show the scribes and the Pharisees how sinful and proud they were for not looking humbly to God as the source of all their authority, their fatherhood, and their teaching. And so they they instead of setting themselves up as the ultimate authorities, father figures, and teachers, uh, that's what they were doing, right? So, um, the the Lord, St. Paul says, as you said, "You have many teachers in Christ, but not many fathers. And I have fathered you in the faith." So this whole the whole idea is just an unfortunate problem that I think is mainly a reaction against uh Catholicism in the Protestant world. It's um not really a problem for the church for 2,000 years. Really a a modern problem that certain people misunderstood this. As far as dressing, acting, and speaking like the Pharisees. How does he know exactly how I act and speak? I mean, and how does he know the Pharisees how they spoke? I mean, this is a a really a pretty proud comment to throw out. Uh, what how am I speaking like the Pharisees exactly and dressing? What I'm dressing is a traditional dress that people have worn for hundreds and hundreds of years. I don't think the Pharisees wore a cassock. I And this is just general dressing that goes back to the early church and the early fathers. You would be um you would see all men wearing this kind of clothing. It's the the pants and the modern clothing is about what 500 years old, maybe even less, 300 years old. Um, so I don't know. I think it's a pretty superficial unfortunate uh approach to things.

Uh, here's a here's a good one. Um, what is the Eastern Orthodox Church gospel?

The gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of salvation that he has brought to the earth and that we can be saved in and through his death, resurrection, ascension, and all that takes place. He has saved all humanity. None will remain in the grave. He says all will rise. The question will be, are they rising unto life or unto judgment? Right? So the great news first and foremost is that man will no longer eternally forever be in the grave separated from soul and body. But that's not salvation, right? That's the first resurrection. The second resurrection is when you're united in communion with Christ. And that's the great news. The good news is that he now has opened up for us to be in communion with the with Christ, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit. He says, "I will come and make my abode in you." I mean, that's an amazing thing. I said earlier that the mind-blowing thing, the gospel is that he with our human nature sits at the right hand of God the Father. Today we're celebrating the Ascension, and that is amazing news. It's it's an amazing thing to even consider that he's elevated us above the angels and they worship Christ and he has our human nature. So in a sense, they're worshiping in Christ our human nature, the angels. So much so does he want to elevate us and that's of course what we talk about theosis, right? So it's far more than some moral legalistic message. It's a message of eternal life, total transfiguration, transformation, becoming new creatures in in God. And that's why we study the lives of the saints because we see the gospel in practice in the saints and that's and that's so encouraging. When you read the life of this man who lived just 30 years ago, he reposed and he and you read and you feel like you're reading the New Acts of the Apostles. The kind of life he led is phenomenal. And there's many like that. We have somebody here in Arizona who just reposed about seven years ago and he they're writing and collecting all the material in his life. And he he has so many gifts that God gave him for the sake of the salvation of his neighbors. The good news is in the Orthodox Church, in the church today, in this world, there are men who are being transfigured, transformed, and made like unto Christ. And therefore, the salvation is real. It's it's it's in our reach if we uh repent and we follow uh the Master.

Here's one uh I was also interested in. Um, his humble servant says, "Can he tell me where I can find the official biblical canon for the Eastern Orthodox Church?" And I think, see, yeah, I I read I I basically read that um some of the different um autonomous churches, they they have no difference on the New Testament and they take the Septuagint as the Old Testament. But as there were some minor differences as far as I think Third and Fourth Maccabees and First Enoch where the canon actually differs. But I only read that in a Reddit article. So I wanted to eventually ask about that but since it came up, ask you about that.

Yeah, I mean, the the differences are very minor and they're different. They have to do with uh just a few of the wisdom literature, I think, or the like Maccabees. But I from my understanding, at least in the Greek Orthodox world, which is what I I'm familiar with, there is throughout the Orthodox uh Greek speaking world, there is no differentiation. If there is, it's a very minor thing in a in a couple of the local churches because of the uh scriptural uh like the manuscript history and what's come down to uh to them. But um I don't I don't know, you know, the the what matters is the ecumenical councils and the the teachings of the ecumenical councils of what they've given. If there's some differentiations in local churches, I don't know. I don't know more more why that would be the case. It never really brought up as an issue among the Orthodox. I don't know why this is such a big issue for Protestants. Exactly. Why why is this a huge issue? The church, the scriptures live and are read in the church and the church, you know, they don't they're not the scriptures aren't for like, you know, publication and and and and proselytization. They're used for the the life of the church in the church. And so the church kind of knows its own what what it has and what it what it uses. It doesn't it's not an apologetic question for us.

Yeah. I think the reason it comes up is because one of the one of the most common things that Protestants hear from Catholics and Orthodox is, "How do you know what the correct canon is without um without the church councils?" And so I think they're responding to that. "Well, you even have disagreements on the canon. So why should we why should why should you guys be making the call when you even have disagreements?"

Yeah, but it's an inner church reality. But I think the point of the Orthodox is that the how did you get the Bible? How did you get the scriptures? How did you get the New Testament? Mainly the New Testament, all the writing New Testament was it not in and through the church of the first four or five centuries until it was solidified and it was used. So the Christians who lived in the first, second, third century had nothing like what we call today the New Testament in in form, right? So they were living according to the the the oral tradition that they heard from the apostles or whatever writings that they they collected on a local level. And so the point is that the church precedes what we understand as the New Testament. If you were a Christian in the first 100, 200 years, you couldn't go to the Bible or the scriptures to get the the Protestant approach to how do you know how do we know what we know? What's the authority? That didn't exist right in practice. Uh the what it happened in practice is you had a local church, you had a bishop, you had a priest, and they were authorities for the church. That's that's still the case, by the way. But it it the the the idea or the the choice of of the contemporary Protestant would not have existed in the first 300 years. So it does I think cause a little a little bit of a question mark like, is this the methodology that the church has always had? No, it's not. So maybe it's not the authority that they think it is.

Um, here's an interesting one. Before you became Eastern Orthodox, what source did you use to verify their claims? And did you use the Bible to check their dogmas or church fathers? And uh I said that's an interesting one because um um at least at least among the Orthobros, at least among the Orthobros and this is this is kind of what bothers me most about them, even even more so than than than a lot of the other issues, um in their sort of zeal in their sort of zeal to um to insist on church authority, they act like scripture just is hopelessly confusing. I'm not I don't think that's any sort of official position or something. That's what they sound like. They sound like they're mocking a a person's ability to even understand the scripture. I understand there are all kinds of passages that um that you know are ambiguous or could lead to different conclusions, but uh I think most of the Bible's like really really clear. Um, but the the question that arises after that is if your ability to interpret scriptures is so flawed that you need some other authority to tell you what it means. Well, how do you.

Verify you? It seems like you have to use your brain to determine which church authority to listen to. And so you'd still be using your brain because you have different, you know, you have different people. You have you have you have to decide, okay, Catholics or Oriental Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox. I have to pick to see to see who I think is actually right. And so you'd be using your brain for that purpose. And uh so anyway, yeah. Yeah.

The idea is uh how would you if you're outside of the Eastern Orthodox Church, what would you be checking to determine that you should go to the Eastern Orthodox Church? Well, the idea is that um we're not going to run to the authorities that have come down to us. Like the approach would be what has the church consistently said? What is the witness of the saints? The consensus of the saints. What are the ecumenical councils taught which the whole Christian world embraced? I mean Protestants embraced ecumenical councils early on. They embraced the veneration uh uh the ver at least not the veneration they embraced the virgin u ever virginity of the mother of God. There are a lot of things that once upon a time in the Protestant and the Roman Catholic world in the West long after Orth they departed from the community of the Orthodox Church, they were still maintaining those things because it had been handed down to them. And so I I guess the question I didn't have these kind of problems because I sought out the continual perennial consensus of the fathers and the teachings of the ecumenical councils which the church gave us and gives us as signposts on the on the path of salvation.

So should I have doubted all that and is and taken myself as the authority of scripture? Is that the better approach? I'm going to sit as an authority and I'm going to say uh, you know, I'm going to judge all the practices of the early church and the church fathers and the disciples of the disciples under the prism of my little pea brain and I'm going to say, well, I think they're wrong on that. Is that the approach? No, we don't see that approach in church history or and the and the disciples of the disciples. Um, the Lord himself said, I will be with you unto the ages. I will guide you in all truth. I will send the Holy Spirit. Isn't that a promise mean anything to us? Like, shouldn't we say, well, okay, that probably happened at least for the first couple hundred years. Let's at least give the benefit of the doubt, right? Maybe Christ uh got busy in the 4th century or something after Constantine was all lost, which is absurd, but anyway, let's just imagine it. So, let's go to the first 400 years. Do they have the Eucharist? They have the Eucharist. Why don't Protestants have the Eucharist in the sense of the understanding of St. the episcopacy so many other things like shouldn't we sit at their feet? Aren't they authorities in our life? I don't understand why I ignore all of them and act like the Bible came out of heaven. Isn't that a little It almost reminds me of Islam or something or some kind of other kind of religion. Bible just drops out of heaven and now it's it's got this magical authority. No, it's a part of a community. Tertullian said to the heretics of his day, "The Bible is off limits to you. You have no access because you don't have the context or the life in order to understand it." That was what he was saying to the Gnostics of his day in the third fourth third century. This was the this was the understanding. The church guarded the scriptures as its own and it and it guarded it's the interpretation of the scriptures and it said to the various Gnostic heretics, you know, not only did you get wrong, but you don't even have really the authority to talk about it because you don't stay with us. You don't you're not obedient. You're not humble. You're not following the fathers that came before us. So, I'm not really sure why I would stand as the judge of all these men, these holy men who were followers of the apostles. Why would I put myself in that position?

No, I yeah, I think uh as far as this question, I think it's just um, you know, the Eastern Orthodox Church says you have you you should come you should come to this church and if you were looking around and you saw various churches saying no, come to this church like like what are you using what are you using to make that decision? Like I'm guess I'm guessing combination. I'm guessing combination I'm guessing combination of Bible and church fathers, right? Because you're saying the Bible, the Bible would lead you to >> Jesus Jesus making sure the church is at least to a large extent getting things right. And so even if you look to the first few centuries, you'd have the church fathers and you'd kind of take all that into account. >> Yeah. And the Bible is not is has a context. That's my point. The Bible can't be taken out of that context. And the context is the early is the apostles and what they the the Holy Spirit inspired them to write what they wrote, right? Who's written some of in some cases written 30, 40 years, 50 years later, right? So the Holy Spirit inspired them, we trust the apostles that they gave us the witness true and we trust the their disciples that they passed on the scriptures as they were revealed to the the apostles. So if I'm going to trust the apostles and their disciples with the scriptures that I point to as authority, why don't I trust them? Why do I separate them off and I don't pay attention to what St. Ignatius said for instance in the second century? That's not it's not like two different things. It's together. Those are those are inseparable. I have to trust both, don't I? Why do I call into their question their witness, but I accept the scriptural uh witness that they gave to me because they gave it to me. We wouldn't have it if they hadn't passed it on, they hadn't copied it, and they hadn't given it to their disciples. We wouldn't have the scriptures today, right? >> We have uh the apostles like Paul didn't pass down their apostle office and authority. The apostles made delegates, not fellow apostles. What do you think? >> Yeah, they made bishops. And that's right there. The apostles did not have successors as apost apostles. In other words, we don't talk about apostles in the sense of the apostilhip. The actual they were the 12. Paul was also considered an apostle by God's Christ's own command. This they're they're still the successors of the apostles even if they don't have the apostle unique apostleship, right? They're the disciples and they're the successors and they govern the church. They govern the church throughout history. So that's that's a we don't have any problem with with that statement and doesn't really matter with regard to authority. Doesn't change the question of authority.

>> Um, I know the response to this one, but someone's asking, mother of God, did Mary give birth to the Father? >> He needs to he needs to study the scriptures a little bit. Obviously, she didn't give what are you implying that as mother, you the problem is the mother of God title, I guess, right? Theotokos from the third ecumenical council. Yeah, that makes them an historian. I don't think they want to be a historian. In other words, the church absolutely in the person of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, and others, absolutely rejected the rejection of the mother of God title is precisely to show not that she gave birth to him eternally, but in the incarnation, right? There's there's the economy, there's the theology or the eternal relationship of the three persons of the Trinity. Then there's the economy of salvation, which is obviously what's at stake there. And in time and space, she gave birth to the God-man. Now, did she give birth to the divinity in terms of his origins? Obviously not. That's not what the title is pointing to. But he's still God and man, and therefore the title is pointing to his divinity. It's the defense of his divinity. That's why the church says to this day, every service I do, we say through the prayers of the Theotokos, that's a Greek term for God's birthgiver or the birthgiver of God. We say that intentionally to say he is God. It's a defense of his divinity. Are you are you seriously against the defense of his divinity? I hope not. That's all that is. It's not some delusional idea that she, a human being, gave birth to the eternal Logos. That's comical.

Uh, here's a good one. Father, here's how then do the Orthodox evangelize, especially in Protestant dominated areas like the US? >> Well, we don't have five-year plans and all kinds of uh programs. What we have is the spirit of God. And God is the one who is constantly, as it says in the Psalms, chasing down every soul and desiring to make them uh participants and communicants in his uh his divine economy. And so what the I need to do most is to become a place, our community becomes a place where transformation, new creations are being truly made. And so when that person walks into the door, they actually have a place to become a true Christian, a transformed human being. In other words, I work on myself and then God can work through me. As long as I'm an obstacle through my passions and sins and delusions, well then he's not going to send anybody and he probably shouldn't because I'm going to be an obstacle to him. So the work of God through us, yes, he works through us. He he chose that. That's how he chose to work through human beings to bring about the salvation of the world to be preached throughout the all of creation. And yet we can become like the Pharisees, bigger sons of hell, right? We can become obstacles. So the first thing is to not be that obstacle, to work on myself, and then he'll have somewhere to send his He knows the hearts of everyone. He's bringing everyone to salvation. He's working right now in David's heart and all you people are listening out there. He's working. I'm just trying to be faithful. My job is to be faithful and not innovate and not put in my sauce and and corrupt what's been handed down to me. And then if I do that and I live and I with zeal to follow uh his example and become like him, then there's a chance that maybe disciples could be made in our community.

>> Um, this one question to priest, are you certain you have eternal life? So this is on the issue of uh this comes up repeatedly, basically assurance of salvation. So, are you certain you have eternal life? >> So, what's eternal life? We got to define terms. People love asking questions. I don't know if we understand the terms. Eternal life is Christ himself. And anyone who's baptized in the church puts on Christ. And we participate and we commune of his mysteries. We commune of his body and blood. And we have him running through our souls and bodies. And so, eternal life is already in this world in the church. The kingdom of God has already come. It's in the church, in the mysteries, and in the life of of of Christ. So, yeah, we have eternal life. Of course, can I lose it? Absolutely. Judas lost it. Many other people have lost it. Heretics have lost it throughout the ages. I can choose not to embrace eternal life. I I might maybe today I do. Tomorrow I do. But then maybe the third day or the 30th year, I get tired and I walk away. So, I have it. God's given it to me. But will I have it? Uh, I've got to continue to be repenting and continue. It's got to be a continuous present. Otherwise, then we're in the realm of I don't have free will and then we're in realm of Calvinism. And so, the Orthodox are definitely not Calvinists. That's not an Orthodox Patristic position. We believe that, you know, the Patristic teaching on the question of free will. And so, um, we believe people can walk away from Christ. And there are many who have. They've denied uh when they're faced with persecution or martyrdom. They've denied Christ. They've walked away. We have many, many witnesses of that. So, um, yeah, we have it, but we can lose it if we want.

And father bless, what would you say is the biggest Christological difference between East and Western understanding? Is it the role of the incarnation in our redemption? >> Yeah, that's interesting. I I think highly recommend anyone to read the writings of St. Hilarion Troitsky, the one I brought up earlier in the stream right here, and we have a second volume out of his writings. This is a Russian new martyr and a great great Patristic theologian from Russia in the early 20th century. And he talks a lot about the question of soteriology, salvation, uh, and going back to the fathers and and bringing that. But I think yes, I think that ultimately uh the biggest problem is the implication of the incarnation for our lives and for the church and what the church is. In other words, Christology and ecclesiology, what that means, how that works. And St. Hilarion is one of the best contemporary authors that points all these problems out. Um, and if so, yeah, that's where we have big differences and it's always been the case uh because the big problems that that brought about the division a thousand years ago with the Pope were uh yes Trinitarian with regard to the Holy Spirit, but really the deeper problem was ecclesiology, right? What is the church? How does it work? And behind that was a loss of the ascetic presuppositions, the Hesychast life uh of uh of the church in the West. I think that ultimately was corrupted or lost among certain and so then they lost the the rudder and then they were able to adopt something which even their predecessors had rejected, which is the Filioque, and then things got worse, you know, as the pendulum swings started to go a little by little faster and faster. So, um, but it's so it's really been for a thousand years we've had a problem with understanding the church in the West. And that's u it has to do with our experience of the church as Ortho I beg to differ. If you can't find Jesus outside of a church, how did you find Jesus to begin with? So I guess the idea is in order to even want to go join the church, you would seems like you believe in Jesus in order to want to go to church. So >> I didn't I didn't deny that. I said you can find Jesus as a disciple from a you desiring Jesus, but you can't put him on in baptism outside the church because they're and the mysteries are one. You can definitely follow Jesus. People, millions and billions of people follow Jesus, but that's different than becoming one who has put him on in the mysteries of the church. And that's what the strict definition of Christian is. But there are absolutely millions, billions of people who want to follow, seek to follow, struggle to follow Jesus and to put his uh teachings into practice. You've already you've already touched on this um but uh it keeps coming up but uh so yeah I I I think the reason this keeps coming up is because a lot of what we hear a lot of what a Protestant would hear from an Eastern Orthodox Christian is identical to what we'd hear from like a Catholic Christian or an Oriental Orthodox and it would be we're we're the apostolic church and so go with us. Though. >> Well, yeah, on a on a superficial level, there's a similar claims, but I I don't even know if there really is anymore. After Vatican II and among um certain uh, you know, Oriental so-called Oriental groups, there seems to be this common conviction that even though there's ecumenical councils and and there's, you know, clear rejections of Nestorianism or Monophysitism or in the case of papal claims, even though there's been clear synodal decisions and and a rejection of these teachings, somehow we're all still apostolic churches. So I don't think we really have the same understanding of the church. I think they have embraced a fairly ecumenical idea in the 20th century. Now, some people might really like that because it makes just personal relations a lot easier. But is it the perennial teaching of the fathers that's come down to us? That should be our preeminent concern. We want to we want to believe what the church has always taught. That's one of the things that go Christ promised that he would leave a church, a people that would be faithful to what the apostles taught. And it would never be a period of five, six, 800 years where it was all lost. It was, you know, there's various theories. It was all lost from Constantine until, you know, I don't know, Zwingli or Calvin or Luther. Now, that's just not what the church believed ever, and it certainly wasn't what the church believed in the first 400 years. So that idea that ecclesiology is I think untenable. Um, but in the 20th century, there's a lot of desire to kind of say, well, look, yeah, we got this ecumenical council between us, but really we're all apostolic churches. Apostolic succession in the Orthodox Church is both the apostolic faith. It's presupposed and the actual ordination that goes down throughout the ages, the laying out of hands. Right? If you don't have the faith, the laying on of hands, what is it going to do for you? We don't have some legalistic uh Latin idea about about apostolic succession. Apostolic succession presupposes apostolic faith. If they've walked away from the faith by adopting heretical doctrines, what's what does it mean to have apostolic succession anymore? So, we don't have the same teaching with the uh with the Vatican. We don't have the same teachings probably with uh people in the in in the Far East or the Near East. So, uh, again, the the claims, why why I believe Eastern Orthodox claims o over I don't know if you need to, you know, I'm beginning more and more over over the years just to say go read the lives of the saints. Don't don't don't don't try to figure it all out with your with your head and and try to become some kind of PhD expert on church history and dogma, everything. Yeah, do that too if you want. But ultimately, that's why he ended with the fruits. The fruits. And if I if you read the fruits of the church in our day, I I think it's it's a done deal. Like that's why you should embrace Orthodoxy because you will be healed. You will be transformed if you follow these examples in our day. And there are many, there are many. And um, that's the best that's the best witness that Orthodoxy can give today because at the end of the day, you know, those things will come and I can we can talk about them. We can go on. We can have 10, 15 live streams about each aspect if you want and we can make the case. But if I don't actually get healed by becoming a Christian and become transformed and become like Christ, what's the point? I don't get it. I'm not I'm not here just to be right. I want to be transformed. I want to become a new creation that Christ desires for me.

Uh, here we have, "I'm concerned that David Wood isn't genuinely wanting to learn anything, but is so upset at what's happened that he's doing this to compile content to be able to later on use it in a disingenuous way." You heard it here, folks. Uh, David Wood always has bad intentions. Um, this is a this is a kind of a um this is a kind of follow but I heard I only heard this recently and it kind of made me think but it says um Orthodox says continuity with the first thousand years of church history is the deciding factor. For example, Catholics themselves admit that the Orthodox are stagnant and unchanging in their traditions. And I didn't quite understand it, but yeah, I have seen some Catholics saying, and I again, I don't fully understand, but it was something like because they have a Pope who can make who can decide on certain changes or something like that moving forward that it's better than, you know, better than not being able to change. And the reason the reason I was wondering a little bit about this is um cuz me and AP have talked about this, but like in the realm of of politics, like you have you have conservatives and progressives and they fight and now they're now they're like super polarized. But like in a in a healthy society, you'd want both. You'd want a conservative force that's like conserving the good and right things and you'd want some sort of progressive force that's making changes where changes are are needed. But yeah, if you if you understand more about what what this is between um >> yeah, >> Catholics and Orthodox, let me know. >> Yeah, let me just say first of all that I think that the fact that you've had me on shows a good disposition and I think you're going to continue in that good disposition. I don't agree with doubting your motivations. Uh secondly, um this is pointing just to say that in their criticism even or in their more let's say critical or cynical stance, they're still recognizing that they can't find anything in Orthodoxy that wasn't also in the first millennium. That's what this is about. This is the point is that even those who say we're not the full true church or we're not in, you know, underneath the Pope and we have deficiencies is what they talk about, they still recognize the faithfulness to the first millennium. But as far as your point about living, look, the Orthodox Church has a living tradition. We don't have a dead tradition. We have the tradition here is the life of the Holy Spirit. That's why I keep pointing to contemporary saints to show that it's not just maintaining a museum. It's not a liturgical continuity for the sake of liturgical continuity. It's a life that then having faithfulness to what Christ has given to us brings forth eternal life to contemporary human beings. That has to be the case, right? What church would you want to go to just because it's a museum piece? No, the church today is the same church experientially, spiritually producing saints just like in the first and second and 15th century. Um, but as far as being open to change, yeah, the change is going to be there in terms of pastoral work, in terms of maybe even cultural issues, in terms of organization, I think the church can and should change in that sense, right? Time and place, pastoral discernment, but it should never change in terms of the revelation. It should never turn change in terms of what it means to be a saint, the criteria for holiness. It should never change in terms of the wisdom of the demon of attacking and resisting the demons, right? The demonology, the the great teachings, I have some in the back here, the Philokalia, these great amazing teachings of all the church fathers that we've collected. These are this wisdom is perennial because human nature doesn't change, right? We wouldn't change the teaching in that gate that was given to us in let's say the 4th century by some great ascetic like St. Savas or St. Anthony the Great. We wouldn't change their wisdom to update that because they were healed and we want to be healed. And so that's been proven to heal, right? It's like a doctor who comes along and gives us a great healing. We're not going to say, "Oh, well, that was 500 years ago. Why should we apply that healing?" No. Uh, that's a healing. It's a human nature doesn't change. We need to have that knowledge. We need to apply that medicine. It's uh that's perennial. Doesn't change.

>> Uh, the one true church is the pre- Nicean beliefs. Just like Uman burned the Qurans, Romans burned and seized the churches that didn't go with oh this apparently someone is rejecting the Trinity that didn't go with the Trinity that is not in scripture pre- Nicean. So I think yeah, I think the idea here is person is saying um uh that was imposed on the church um post Nicaea and that therefore you should ignore everything that happened because that was imposed on people and so only trust the you only trust what came before it. >> What was imposed exactly? >> Uh, yeah. At first I was just at first I just thought the person was saying don't trust the church after Nicaea, but it sounds like the person is rejecting the Trinity and saying that this was imposed osed on Christians post Nicaea and therefore if you go pre- Nicean then you'd reject the truth. >> So he doesn't think he doesn't think the Gospel of Matthew is legitimate where they say baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So the Lord is baptizing in created beings. Obviously that's uncreated. That's God. Why would we be baptized in something that's created and corrupt? Just the scriptures, just that's what I'm saying. People can read the scriptures and get the craziest ideas. It's right there in the Gospel of Matthew and the and St. Basil, St. Basil and all the others in the 4th century were simply defending what had been handed down to them. If you don't believe that, then God abandoned his church. But he's he's then a liar. Christ is a liar. He didn't stay with his church. He couldn't he couldn't overcome Constantine's, you know, machinations or this is this is not serious. Uh, this is a this is a common issue and I I see it in lots of comments here. Um, but it doesn't have to be one denomination. We followers of Christ are the church and are very visible. So that seems to be a common view that the real church isn't some specific institution. It's just the body of believers wherever they may be. All over the planet regardless of what denomination they are. So what are your thoughts here? >> Well, sure, that's one that's a Protestant ecclesiology. That's their belief and it has to be their belief because there's hundreds if not thousands of different kinds of Protestants and so they have to have that ecclesiology. The question is, is that what the fathers taught in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, nth 2,000 years? Is that the constant teaching that the church is not a visible organism? Didn't we just read it? Didn't you just hear St. Paul talk about soma, the body, and all the implications of his ecclesiology or St. Ignatius, etc., etc. So you can have that teaching, but that's not the teaching that came down to us from the very beginning and was maintained. And and therefore, if the teaching is not the same, then the experience is not the same because the experience is the source of the teaching. And so you can follow a teaching that came in the 15th or the 20th century or wherever, even the 10th, 6th century, if it started with somebody at some time, it's not what Christ revealed to us and gave to us. And you can prove that one is one this way and the other another way by going and following the Patristic consensus, the teaching of the saints, generation after generation, year after year from the beginning. You could it's not hard. Like God is God has revealed this to us. He's given to us the means to do that. We can do it uh if we need to do that. I just think you need to encounter the saints in holiness and then you'll be convinced that it's the same church as the apostolic church. But many people won't do that and so they can go through the whole, you know, diachronic witness, council after council, saint after saint, and and find the the the golden chain that has come down to us. That is possible to do.

>> Uh, if we choose the church because it is pretty, you forget the real history of Christianity. Orthodoxy is like the Sufi branch of Islam, mystic, affected by pagan and non-biblical traditions. So I think the accusation here is that people like the general like uh aesthetic of the Eastern Orthodox Church and are drawn to that and then to the mysticism. But the claim here is that the mysticism was influenced by something apart from >> Christianity. >> Yeah, that's just baseless nonsense. Forgive me, JMC. Who believes that and what scholar? I mean, where do you get this stuff? It's just nonsense. You're ignorant of Orthodoxy. Go read the lives of the saints. Go read church history. You don't know what you're talking about. Has nothing to do with Sufi anything or anything mystical. We don't believe in mysticism. That's a Western interpretation of Orthodoxy in a sense of mystical meaning in incomprehensible and nonsensical or something. I mean, there's obviously a negative connotation here and is a liking it to something in a in a pagan religion like Hinduism. So, you know, if that's if that's your level of analysis of the great church fathers and all the saints coming down to us, I'm sorry. That's tragic.

>> We have, does the Eastern Orthodox Church affirm penal substitutionary atonement in any sense? >> No, I don't think that's a consensus of the fathers. Certain there there are saints who speak uh like that. There are saints in the later history of the church where we had a big influence and by scholastic or academic theology from the West where you hear that language, but no, that's not the consensus of the fathers. You don't see that in the ecumenical councils. You're going to have to get you're going to have to pick and choose here and there to try to support that claim. I don't see it.

Um, you've you've addressed this in in different ways throughout this, but it keeps coming up um in similar and related fashions, but why can't the single body church not the e not be the ecumen uh not the ecumenical church, basically mere Christianity that accepts that accepts Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox? >> Yeah, I mean, I I grew up reading C.S. Lewis. I I like C.S. Lewis and, you know, appreciate uh a lot of what he did, especially his criticism of education in the West and all kinds of stuff. His Mere Christianity was a very Anglican text, which uh is an attempt to find what you can find in Orthodoxy, but in a way that doesn't require uh, you know, departing from the Anglican branch theory. Uh, so the branch theory and that whole idea is very late. So it's unique to Anglicanism. It's not a Patristic teaching, and therefore that's why it has to be rejected. Uh, that mere Christianity uh is not what we see in the church fathers. They don't they don't relativize um the body, right? Because what you want to do there is you want to have a common teaching. What's what's the thing we all agree on? Let's find the common thing we all agree on. That's Christianity. Yeah, but the there's a the scandal of the particular, the incarnation throughout history. It comes down to us and it's and there's a there's a historical reality to it. It's not just about what we're taught or our ideas. It's not an ideology. It's an experience. And that experience is taught and handed down. That's how the Lord set it up. I know it's a scandal to your rational intellect. I know you have to crucify your intellect. Guess what? That's what he wanted. He wants you to crucify your intellect. That's what he said to his all his disciples, pick up the cross and follow me. One of the ways we crucify and we're we're crucified with the with the Lord is we when we run into a logical or rational walls, we realize that wait a minute, that can't explain the super rational. I have to go above and beyond that, right? I don't and and also part of this is, oh, wait, that means that I have certain implications of sociology. That's how they always, well, I can't I can't embrace Orthodoxy because what does it mean for all the a non-Orthodox? Those kind of machinations in your mind are not are not um they're they're traps. They're traps. You got to get beyond that and embrace the truth and leave the judgment and the salvation of the world to God. Right? This is the same trap that perennialism falls in. Perennialism, if you know what perennialism is, it's this idea that there all the religions are actually, you know, externally different, but esoterically they're the same. You know, people like Schuon and Guénon and other people in the 20th century. And it's actually a big intellectual movement even among Christians. The idea is, well, yes, we you, you know, Sufi Islam and different parts of Eastern religions, yes, there's a huge difference in terms of the externals, but it's the same God working salvation and there's a common, you know, God who's working behind all these forms. And ultimately, we have and the reason why they want that is because they cannot they want to explain why didn't Christianity totally evangelize China? Well, Christianity was only in the West. Okay. Well, then that means we have to explain how, you know, the Chinese are going to be saved or we have to explain about what what India is. And they, they, they have a very rationalistic approach to trying to and they want to figure it all out. They have this need to figure out and explain uh history and the the results of history. And so, if you're doing that and you're trying to the same thing with Christianity, I don't think you're going to find the narrow path. I don't think you're going to unite. And it should be about where can I go? Where am I going to get healed? Where am I going to follow the saints? Where do I become like a saint? Where does that experience that's the same yesterday, today, and forever? How do I participate in that? And then the rest after the fact will be understood. You can't understand it all from a distance. Does that make sense? I don't know. I'm kind of rambling, but I'm trying to help people get out of those boxes that they're that they're in.

>> Um, all right. This gonna this gonna have to be the last one, but I'm going to bring up a related a related issue. Um, but was the Corinthian church an Orthodox church? If so, please explain why Paul said what he said in 1 Corinthians 1:14 to 17. So, that's where um I would back it up further to verse 10. But this is where Paul in verses 14 to 17, that's where Paul says he wasn't uh uh he wasn't baptizing many people. But uh the passage say so this is one unlike um it seems biblically it seems like there's hey don't divide, don't divide over over uh o over most things it but there are obviously there's obviously a place for division over really important things so it's kind of like where the line is drawn. But let me just read the passage for everyone, then I'll bring up one more passage. But so 1 Corinthians 1 starting at verse 10, Paul says, "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I follow Paul,' or 'I follow Apollos,' or 'I follow Cephas,' or 'I follow Christ.' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power." And then I'll I'll just add one more passage um that I I I keep thinking about as far as like where to draw the line at as far as like divisions and so on. But uh beginning of Romans 14, Paul says, "As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls, and he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind." So these would have been pretty, you know, you know, special days, uh, holidays and so on, eating, dietary restrictions, these would have been pretty big issues in the first century church. And Paul's saying, "Hey, what whatever whatever perspective you take on some of these issues, uh, even if he regards someone as like having a weaker faith, um, he's saying don't get divided over that and don't uh >> uh kind of don't be jumping on people over these over these differences." So, uh, yeah, that would kind of be the the the last issue, then we'd have to wrap up. But like we certain issues you don't want to be divided over, >> and other issues you would say, "Okay, we we can't you can't cross that line." So, what are your thoughts there? >> Well, the Lord uh I mean Paul and the apostles called the council of Jerusalem over the question of the Judaizers and that council and many other councils after it dealt with those things which were u doctrinal or questions of revelation or questions of salvation and the integrity of the church, etc. These things are personality and other issues which are not touching upon the mysteries uh and the and the integrity of the church. They're not touching on the Eucharist. They're not touching on the faith. No one here is challenging uh with doctrinal heretical teachings like the Judaizers in this passage at least. It's a rhetorical question. Is Christ divided? Of course, he's not divided. So why are you why are you dividing yourself over over personality, over following one person another? We're all of Christ. But it's the church here that he's in the church talking to the people of the church. But the Judaizers didn't have this approach. He didn't have this approach for the Judaizers. He said they were preaching another gospel, right? And and you might consider this, the Judaizers question was much less problematic, let's say, in in terms of just the extreme distance from uh and revolution from the u the church's life than let's say the 4th century Arians or many of the heresies that circulate today. And and yet we say, "Oh, no, these things aren't important." So Paul over the fact that the Judaizers said they're another gospel. They're they're totally other. They can't be that that does not lead to salvation. They had a council over it and they said, "It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us." That phrase is basically saying, look, here's the boundary. Nobody can dispute this. The church has spoken. And so now you have a boundary they've laid down. And that's what happened in the ecumenical councils later on. And that's what happens when you're talking about serious uh challenges to the integrity of the gospel and integrity of the church's unity. But here, you know, you have Paul saying, "Look, I came to preach the gospel. Don't make me uh this, you know, divi divided between my brethren and between you." Uh, that's what he's I see him saying here. It's not on the level of the Judaizers or of heretical teachings.

>> All right, everyone. Uh >> that makes sense. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. Um, all right, guys. We have to wrap up now cuz I'm going to be on with uh JP and Mhler here in a few minutes. Uh AP I think wants to jump in. They want to discuss uh the issue of icons and basically the historical sources on that. So, we're going to check that out. But uh, yeah, I'd love to have you back in the future on some more particular issues. Might might do a poll at some point and say what what are the issues you got what are the issues everyone wants to see discussed in in more detail and then um see who wants to uh talk about that. But, uh, any final words or or thoughts before we And by the way, everyone, again, uh, uh, YouTube channel and website are in the description if you want to go check out more. Um, uh, but yeah, any any final final thoughts? >> Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on and God help you and give you strength and wisdom as you go forward trying to understand the Orthodox Church as far as you go. And, uh, I would recommend um, there are several very good people to have on if you want to go deeper on particular topics. uh and I can recommend those off you know offline, but there are there are a number of people who are very well versed in particular things like just one comes to mind is Craig Truglia on the question of for instance uh the the first millennium and the question of marriage, divorce, which I know is an issue people bring up, or on icons, he's done a lot of work on icons. Um, or uh my friend reader Paul Trinka is very good on the question of uh presuppositions and sola scriptura. I mean, there are many things that one could discuss, but I chose this and I think it's the most important because really that's what you're talking about many times like authority, the church's identity, what it means to be uh unity, you know, the oneness of the church, all these things are a common uh objection or problem for the Protestant world. And so if you if you figure that out, you understand it, you come to an understanding of the first at least the first millennium, I think then the other things heal themselves. I don't think the other ones are harder. Uh, you know, there's answers for those, but this is this is the elephant in the room for most in the West. They've got to come and crucify their mind on certain things and accept and follow the saints of the first hundreds of years, but certainly the first millennium. And that's what the saints always did. And that's what it means to be a Christian is to follow those who come before us faithfully maintaining the tradition. So, God bless and thanks for having me. >> Yeah. Uh, so thanks again to father hears for joining us and sharing and uh be uh see you all in a few minutes and uh we'll we'll have more discussions in the future. Thanks everyone for watching. Sorry sorry sorry we didn't get to well I I don't think there's a situation where we're going to get to all the uh all the comments or super chats in in a situation like this but um got to got to a lot of them. So all right, thanks everyone. Catch you later.