Papal Circularity, Ecumenical Councils & Created Grace: Flashback 2019! - Jay Dyer

we're gonna start with is the question of the Ecomunical Council. Certainty. We're gonna be talking about epistemology today, and that's why it's a specific, unique talk about epistemology and not just about the papal claims and the Church Fathers. You see, the papal claims in the Church Fathers requires giant explanations because of the fact that they're almost always taken out of their context. They're copied and pasted from Catholic answers pages,

and they don't take into account the context. For example, when you're an as in against Heresies makes this famous quote about out the church at Rome, you know, the Catholic answer stuff. They'll like, quote the paragraph just about the Church at Rome, and they don't finish the rest of the quote where he says why the Church of Rome matters. Does he say that it's an infallible charism

given to Peter alone? Absolutely not. He says the Orthodox position that Rome is pre eminent because it was doubly apostolic because of Peter and Paul. You see, because Peter set up churches in other places, like the Church at Antioch, and nobody believes the Church of Antioch has a patrine supremacy because Peter ordaned the bishop there. Right now, the Roman Catholics are aware of this, many of some of them, some of not many, some of them, and they come

up with infinite mental gymnastics. And we're going to that requires its own specific talk. We will eventually do that where we get through the specific papal claims, you know, from this father, this father, this father, and all the way up through to the split of the Eighth Council. And we're going to and the split is over the Eighth Council because actually, guess what, John the eighth pup John the Eighth signed the Orthodox Council. The Orthodox eighth

Council forbidding the Filioqui. Many Roman Catholics, by the way, who figured that out, they convert. Now most people again, there's always an infinite series of mental genetics. They're like award winning I know because I used to do it. They are award winning Olympic mental gymnasts. Uh, and it

never ends, and it's just a spiraling spiral, spiral of circularity. Now, let's talk about epistemic claims certainty in the Paopal issue and how ultimately it does relate to created grace, because this is going to revolve around a question of whether the individuals in the church can know truth. Now, ironically, Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestants all in some way will admit that individuals in the church can have certitude and

know the truth. The means by which we have that certitude, the means by which we can know these things is

where there comes to disagreement. So what we're gonna have to do, since this is a question of paradigmatic certitude, right, paradigm level certainty, We're going to have to question the paradigm itself, the authority in the paradigm within that whole worldview, to see which one is more correct, which one is coherent because we're at the level of final authority, we're at at the level of how do we know what's religiously true? So let's start with the Roman Catholic argument.

And I think that it's pretty I don't think anybody's going to dispute that it's pretty standard that the office of the papacy is the starting point. Okay, I mean, I don't just anybody disagree with that. I mean a Roman Catholic might admit that you could read the Bible, it's materially sufficient and all this kind of stuff, and you could convert, but typically speaking, the final say so

all TOI comes down to the papacy. They'll even say, for example, that the only way that we know the scriptures or the canon is because you know, in certain Western local councils, the pope affirmed the canon of Scripture. Now, the Orthodox position does not say the exact same thing about how we know the canon. We don't believe that it was just a decision of the Roman bishop in relationship to some local Western synods, which is typically how

the Romanclolic position argues. But that's what they'll say. And then then we'll say so. So you see Peter because he was given the rock, or because he because he made the confession, he was said to be the rock, and then the church is built on this specific special place given to Peter as the Roman pontiff and all of his successors. Right, Vatican one is pretty clear. There's

not a whole lot of dispute. I should probably pull up Vatican one because it's going to be relevant to the question of the ordinary magisterium as well, because the Romancalities are confused about this issue too, and they the same guy about Aquinas was arguing with me about this as well. So I actually found a good online Vatican one statement. Let's see if I can find that one again. I think this is pretty good, like a like a clear laying out version of it. All right, and let's

find the ordinary statement. Yeah, there we go. So in chapter three, section eight, right now, again, I'm going to say that we all kind of know the I'm going to read it. But we want to make two points here. We want to start with the point of the ordinary magisterium because Roman Catholics are confused over this, and in fact, the SSPX and the normative Roman Catholics aren't even sure.

They debate over this issue. They debate the status of ordinary magisterium and the desbate, they debate what is ordinary universal magisterium. So let's keep these facts in mind, because we're going to start to see how convoluted and confused this supposed simple system is. So let's see in that section chapter two, it says, wherefore we teach and declare that by divine ordinance, the Roman Church possesses a pre eminence of ordinary power over every other church. Right, this

is the statement of the supremacy. They are all in a hierarchical subordination. And it goes on to say, when it's matters of faith and morals. Now, first of all, that's pretty vague, isn't it. I mean, faith and morals could encompass anything and everything. The power of the Supreme Pontiff by no means distracts from the ordinary and immediate power of the episcopal jurisdiction of the rest of the

bishops have exceeded from the place of the apostles. So we have this idea that it's a college, but the college only has that role in unison with the living magisterial teaching of the supreme pontiff. He has, of course this whole jurisdiction over the entire church, immediate over his own church in Rome, and overall churches with supreme jurisdiction.

Now the again, and when we know when the statements are extraordinary, Right, extraordinary magisterium is the statement from the See of Peter with full apostolic authority for the whole church on faith and morals. Right, that's what makes it an ex cathedral extraordinary claim. And it is irrevocable and infallible. But that's not the only time that the church is irrevocably infallibly speaking, Let's put the quote up because people are going to say, I'm making it up or I'm not.

I'm making up quotes. He's making up quotes from literally God, I'm making up quotes. If they had, by the way, if they had just read the essay, they would have seen the whole force and flow of my argument and they would have realized that So what if I misstated the word substance or accident, It's still the same point

that it's created. But anyway, let's look at this statement on the ordinary magisterium, wherefore, by divine Catholic faith, all those things are to be believed which are contained in the Word of God, found a scripture and tradition, and which are proposed by the Church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by a solemn judgment that's extraordinary or in her ordinary universal magisterium. They're de fide. They are by divine and Catholic faith. That means dea

fidae in Roman Catholicism. Okay, de fide, not de juree de fide, that's means of faith dogma. So the ordinary teaching magisterium is de fide guided by the terrorism of Peter, just as the rest of the doctrines are just as the now. Again, the reason they make this distinction is that, well,

not everything has been specified right as extraordinary. But does that mean that just because it's not specified as extraordinary, it doesn't have to be followed and believed, no, right, because there are plenty of things that should, should and have to be believed that haven't specifically been dogmatically declared pretty obviously right in that scheme. Yeah, okay, so that's why it makes no sense to a lot of times.

You'll hear the myth of the trads they'll be like, excuse me, there's only three, there's only two, there's only three extra cathedral statements. Ever, no, there's not. That's not true. Everything in Denzinger you have to believe. You can't. You can't reject anything in Denzinger because what is in Dnsinger is both extraordinary and ordinary universal magisterial teaching. In fact, an argument could be made, and again I don't care.

The Romancavists can debate this all day long. I don't care what they what they think, they can debate it or what. I don't care what their position is. But they can't they can even argue amongst themselves whether they're catechisms are with or without error, right, because the catechisms are proposed by the Pope from the apostolic chair, with full teaching authority for the entire church on faith and morals.

So their argument that they make is that you can't have the pope teaching universally in an ordinary magister away for the entire church, and it be wrong. Yes, all Roman Catholics will agree that a pope could have an error, a private error, on some theological position, But that also raises another problem, because if he could have a private theological error, then he could also be a material heretic

or whatever. Right, Yeah, so then they have the debate like Taylor Marshall just had two days ago, about the mental gymnastics of what do we do if there's a critical pope? Because guess what, even all the Normies are now starting to wonder about Frank. They're starting to think, hey, maybe we got to revisit this question of Frank because is not very Orthodox and even the Norman Catholics are

starting to figure that out. So there is a bit of a dilemma then about how to reconcile the ideas of you know, Vatican One and all that to the promise of Peter. And yes, somebody was pointing out I should also mention Florence. Yeah, I will mention Florence because everybody brought this up. News flash. Uh, we're going to talk about pentarchy two. Yeah, I meant to write that down my piece of paper here. Pentarchy's not a magical formula for how orthodox he determines doctrines, by the way.

What we're going to see, by the way, is that when the when Roman Catholics try to learn about or come to Orthodox ideas, they tend to and I did this too when I was first looking at it. They tend to impose all of these Roman Catholic assumptions on it, like where's your final arbiter. Uh, if you don't have that, nobody knows what it is. Well, that's again, that's a Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the final arbner first of all. And they're gonna say, oh, that's Protestant, that's Protestant.

We'll see if that's Protestant, let's see here when we get to that. But I just wanted to make the point though, that first of all, we have to understand that that universal Ordinary Magisterium is for the entire Church, has to be believed along with the Extraordinary Magisterium and any typical before the existence of the SSPIX, any typical Roman Catholic dogmatic manual or essay or treatise that I've

ever seen. If you were to go to Catholic Encyclopedia right now and you look up Ordinary Universal Magisterium, it will say that it's guided by and protected by the Petrine Terrorism and all this kind of stuff, right. And then also I did want to point out I think there is a statement on absolute simplicity in Vatican one two. We're not talking about simplicity today, but there is a statement on God is absolutely simple. Yeah, completely simple, absolutely simple.

It doesn't matter either one same one. God is one, singular, completely simple, unchangeable spiritual substance. He must be declared to be in reality and in essence to sink from the world. We don't disagree with that. Supremely happy in himself. This is bizarre terminology and from himself an expressive and expressibly loftier than anything beside himself. And let's see, was there one more statement on and I think, let's see, this

is essentially tomistic in its construction. That's why, by the way, and this isn't the only one. If you read the essay that non other Roman Catholics can actually ever read,

they just bitch about. Well, if you read the essay about absolute simplicity that I wrote, eye cite the other previous doctrines on the simplicity from like the Council of Rhymes, God's Justice, this is wisdess, this is wisdom, etcetera, etcetera, and then the Catholic Encyclopedia on the explanation of what wisdom or what divine knowledge is what the divine attribute. Just look up the divine attributes and it says every one of them are identical to the divine essence, and

the distinctions are only virtual, nominal or conceptual. I don't care whether you use the words virtual, where they use the word nominal, whether they use the word conceptual, because it's all the same thing. It doesn't matter. And let's do this again. Even though I already did this, and the talks that we did on legs going to Sleep already covered this in the talks on absolute mutimplicity and

all that stuff, let's cover it again. See. I even know in the Catholic Psychopedia verd Is it's under the section about the divine knowledge is identical simplicity of God. They're all, all the statements are identical. They can't figure out what we're talking about. They think we believe in a bunch of different gods. All right, let's see what is it. What's the statement? Once again? Let's see, let's

start up at the top. It is true that no single predicate is adequate or exhaustive as a description of His infinite, infinite perfection. And that's this divine names right, and thus we need to employ a multitude of predicates. He's wise, he's just loving, et cetera. If as if at first sight, infinity could be reached by this multiplication of terms they're saying. But at the same time we recognize that this is not so being repugnant to the

divine simplicity. So they're not really distinct. There's not really a multitude of statements that are true about God. They're virtually nominally, conceptually distinct. I don't care which terms you want to use, pick any one of them, because they're not real. They're not in ry and while that truth and while truth, goodness, wisdom, holiness, and other attributes as we conceive and define them, express perfections that are formally distinct. See,

they're just formally distinct, conceptual nominal. Right again, open up the typical tomistic treatise. They're all going to tell you that it's not a real distinction. It's not even disputable, disputed, all right, as applied to God, they're all ultimately identical in meaning. Did you see that they are ultimately identical in meaning and describe the same ultimate reality. This is why Saint Basil says in letter two thirty four. If you add up all these attributes and they say they're

all identical, it's foolish exactly. So a little excursus there on absolute simplicity, again just as a reminder, because we're going to see that it's actually absolutely multiplicity that is the root of why the papacy comes to be an issue. It's the root of the whole problem because it's an over emphasis on oneness, because of the over emphasis on the unity of God, this modalistic conception, this Younomian conception, where all the attributes and all of the predicates are

absolutely identical in meaning in reality. That leads to this idea that the only way to distinguish the persons is by philioque And how many Roman Catholic Gufus apologists who don't even know the issue will say that there's no other way to distinguish the persons without the philioquay. It's

because they have no idea what they're talking about. They have no clue about why the Father is the soul cause in ark as every Eastern father teaches, every one of them teaches, the sole cause an ark of the Godhead is the person of the Father, not the common essence of God, the person of the Father. In fact, again, when I mentioned the Father as the cause of the Godhead directly quoting Saint John Damascus, what did doctor Feingeld say, You can't speak of cause in terms of the persons,

in terms of God. He didn't even know what was the common language of all the Eastern Church fathers. Even the Creed says, we believe in one God, the Father, not the common essence of God. There is one common essence of God, but it's the common essence the Father communicates to the Son and through that son to the Spirit.

So let's get back to ecumenical councils. Now. The first point is that we want to understand that, just on a really obvious level, the claim that we have doctrinal religious epistemic certitude can't be said to be on the basis of the papacy, for the simple fact that the papacy came into existence, you know, at whatever point you want to chart it, we would say the Bishop of Rome evolved into having this these exorbitant claims of universal premiscy.

It wasn't that way at the beginning. Obviously, Rome had a premacy of honor that evolved to be this sort of out of control thing. And by the eight hundreds and John the eighth signing the Eastern eighth Council and forbidding the Philioqua, that's when the real problems start. And then of course you have you know, ten fifty four and all that, and really again comes to the four in the situation if you read sat Photius's Mistagaugy of

the Holy Spirit. But Saint Photios also has essays or letter excuse me, where he talks about Frankish missionaries coming into Bulgarian areas and spreading the philioquay in the Creed. But the Creed had already been signed by Pope John the eighth saying don't add the filioqua to the Creed. But if you're a Roman Catholic, you say, who cares?

Because the Pope can reverse that. Now they will say they won't believe that, they won't believe that that John the eighth signed the Eastern eighth Council and forbade the Creed. But he did, and I'm going to let me show you the proof of that. That's in Father Dragas's essay. That's why this is a really important piece that I always. I'm adding it right now to the links in the stream here. I don't know if has any one of them read this. I mean I've been linking this and

putting this in here. I'm gonna put at the top for you guys, right there at the top, right, so that should be there. I'll even put it in the chat for you guys can read that. Be a big boy and read that. My chat's not showing up here? Where's my chat? Let's see refresh this. I can't see what's going on in the chat. Am I just talking to nobody? Is this is this even working? Can you guys hear me? You guys are talking about Joel Osie. Can you guys hear me? I just want to make

sure I'm not yapping into the ether to nobody. Okay, so, uh we got I just want to I want to say that I want to remind you guys that let me know if you guys can hear me, so I don't just keep you happening. I know the chat's always behind in this, in this and obs and all that. Okay, good, So we want to remind our guys. Here are listeners what the doctrine of divine simplicity, says again, do I need to just put I'll put the New Advent article on the divine nature and attributes there for you. Make

it simple. Again, this shouldn't even be disputed. Anybody can open up the volume one of the Suma and the first few questions that deal with divine knowledge, divine unity, divine simplicity. Uh, and it's all going to tell you that they're all identical and they're only distinguished in terms of a virtual, terminological or conceptual sense. They're not really in reality distinct. And the argument is that we have to guard the unity of God that way or else

we'll be try try theists or multiple theists. And these same Goufhases will turn around and tell you that there's a real distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit and it doesn't divide or cause composition in the Godhead. I mean, this is serious mental illness here that these guys can. On the one hand, they say, yeah, there's a real distinction between Father's son and spirit, but it's relational. I don't care whether you call it relation. Is it

real or not? Right? Did the Son become incarnate or did the whole trinity become incarnate the Son did, right, So he's really distinct from the Father and the Spirit. Yes, okay, so there's a real distinction in God that doesn't destroy the unity of God. It doesn't result in composition, and it doesn't result in division. So you already agree with us that there can be distinctions in a thing that don't destroy the unity of a thing. Now, so let's

keep that in mind. We will be refreshed on our essence, energy ads issue. And then when we start to think about the ecumenical councils, and we say, and we keep in mind that. Okay, So the pope, the papacy as conceived of as a Vatican one that's what I was reading earlier. By the way, Vatican one. I'll have to stick that in there, though I think I'll make up

all these Vatican one quotes. What we need to be the case is Vatican one's definition to all have always been true, all right, So it needs to be true if it's going to function as a starting point for epistemic certainty religious certainty. Did Isaiah have knowledge and certitude about God? Did Noah? Yeah, they did? Okay. Did the apostles in the person of Christ in front of Christ, was the was the papacy there yet?

of the Lord appeared. Those Theophanes. Did they have to write to Rome and see if the Theophanes were real? Did Paul submit his letter to the Romans, to the Romans, to the church at Rome. He wrote a letter rebuking the church at Rome. Did he submit it to them for their approval so that they would No, he wrote to them with authority. Okay, So right off the bat, again, it's very obvious that on a basic epistemic level, religious certitude does not come from merely having or saying there's

an external juridical guy who can make a decision. Okay, So, but what if we tried to argue that that now things have changed because of Pentecost and because of the coming Christ, and so now it's different. And now there is a juridical guy who sits in a magic throne and knows right, game of thrones and type of stuff, and that's that's how Jesus organized it, right. So so

maybe it wasn't true in the Old Testament. They could have a direct kind of intuitive certitude or whatever kind of experience the prophets did, and they knew God existed. But now it's different. No, no, wait a minute, I thought Pentecost was supposed to be a better state of being than in the Old Testament. Pentecost is supposed to come to bring what would the Roman Catholics say, infallibility to the church. Who's the church ultimately the pope. So

Pentecost is really in their mind just for the pope. Now, this is completely foreign to the mind of anybody who knows orthodox theology, because we would look to the earliest days of the Church and you can see that, for example the letters of Ignatius or in Irenaeus. The fullness of Catholicity exists in the local bishopric. There's nothing lacking. The local bishop has just as much spirit as the

dude in Rome. There's no layers. This is not a chain of being where the pope is like closer up to the top of the chain of being, and all the rest of the podunk bishops out in the world are like way down. They're like they're floating there on, almost falling into non being on this big chain of being right up or closer to the absolute simplicity of perfect monad units or whatever it's to be. No, the power of Pentecost is fully present in the entirety of

the church. Pentecost didn't hit Peter first and then spill out to everyone else. It just happened in the room to all of them. And if you remember what we said to Nick in the debate when Nick was bringing up all this stuff, every single statement that said to Peter is also said to all the other apostles. There's no indication that the other apostles only got that through Peter. Did Jesus say, Peter, I breathe on you, now breathe

on them. No, he breathed on all of them. And again, this is the Apostolic model of the college, the collegiality, the college of the apostles. Look, for example, two chapters. After the statement of Matthew sixteen, Jesus says, surely, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven. He's not talking to Peter, He's

talking to the whole all of them. And he says, and I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything, my Father will do it for you. So this is actually a promise of answered prayer and binding and loosing. Yes, it does apply to the episcopate, but it also, in a way applies to all of the body. And what the Roman charaturist does is restrict this, in this bizarre legalistic pharisical Talmudik way, to only the guy in Rome and only the people

who are under him. But whether it's breathing on the entire apostles, the College of the Apostles, and saying whoever sends you remit, they're remitted, whoever sends you retain, they retained, Or whether it's the ability to sit on thrones and judge, does he say that's only in reference to Peter, and who Peter gives it to. No, he says that you will all right. At the last submer says you will all sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes. When we look at the new Jerusalem in heaven, does it

have one cornerstone? No, it has twelve, because it's a cube with twelve foundation stones upon which are all the twelve apostles. Okay, it doesn't just say, it's not like one little Peter block and then everything kind of stacked on top of Peter. And if you remember the famous prophecy I think was in Isaiah that Nick said this was about Peter. No, the New Testament interprets the prophecies of he who has the keys and opens and shut

as Jesus and the apocalypse. It's not Peter. Now, in the process of the Church coming to need government and to set up government, they modeled it on Everybody knows this. Even the Roman Catholics know this. They admit this. It's modeled on the Old Testament. Sure, and this model on the Old Testament in the method of levite priest or excuse me, yeah, levite priest high priest. Right, so there's only one high priest and he is in Jerusalem, and then you have levitees priests and levit.

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role high priest. You see, what I'm getting at is that in Orthodox theology there's a real sense in which because we are the body, and every single lay member is fully a member of the body and fully participates in this experience of Pentecosts through chris mation, Chrismation is each person's personal Pentecost. What's the point of christ Nation, your personal Pentecost if you can't be led into and

know the truth and know the Spirit. What did Jesus say, I will send you the Spirit and he will guide you into all truth? Is that just a statement to Peter, No, it's a statement to the all the Apostolic college there. So, what I'm getting at is that it's not by accident.

At the same point in time where there is a massive division on the question of the Holy Spirit, in confusion over the hyposthetic origin the Spirit, his eternal manifestation, and his economic sending, it's not accidental that that's the same period in which we have the other aberrations, such as the rise of the papal supremacy, universal God Emperor doctrines,

especially under the period of the Franks. I mean the papacy goes into it goes to Avignon, France, the See of Peter in Avignon, France for one hundred years almost, and three different guys are claiming to be the pope in France. And you think that there's nothing to the Frankish thesis, Give me a break. Obviously it's a tool of political power. Oh but wait a minute, Wait a minute, you were gonna you were going to say that that

orthodoxy was a tool of imperial power. Wait a minute here, that's actually a problem for any church ever in history. The claim to be a church is dealing with political power, and so instead of cesero papism, you just have paper cicerism. Right, Charlemagne and the Franks and the Carolinian theologians specifically, they begin to make changes, such as the movement away from the stat from icons to statuary. Not that I'm making a huge deal about that, but the point is that

this is where you start to see marketed differences. Right, the selivent only clergy, if you're not aware of it. The Council of Trollo, which is accepted it and I see it too, affirms married clergy and the West surprise rejected it at this point. Now their response is that, yeah, but we don't care what councils say, it's only what the Pope says. So ecumenical council once again doesn't really mean anything except rather just what the Pope confirms. Right,

And we're going to get to the objections. I know what you're going to say. You're gonna say, yeah, but but you don't have any way to know the difference between a true council and a false council. Basic bitch argument. Dude. I'm going to settle that for you. That's nothing, that's not that's a dumb objection. Before we get to that, we're going to talk about the rise of Snodl church government, right, because first of all, we don't think that the church

requires ecumenical councils to be governed. No, it doesn't. There was no ecumenical council for the first three hundred years the church is being persecuted. Were their councils? Yeah? There were? Were they binding? Yes? They were? You see, So it's the the wrong mindset. It's the Protestant Catholic dialectic mindset to approach church history and church government from the vantage point of Well, I only care about what's infallible and

what's not infallible. That's all that matters. Is your council in follim or No, that's not the attitude. Do you see the church fathers when they discuss the Council of Gangra or the regional councils of Africa or whatever. Are they just sitting there saying, oh, what's infallible? What has the pope be creed? No, they talk about them as authoritative because they were Orthodox bishops, Orthodox Catholic bishops. Okay, Now, yes there are situations where false councils would arise, but

again we're going to get that in a minute. Before we get to that, though, we want to look at the model of the church government that arises in Acts fifteen. And keep in mind too, before I talk about Ax fifteen, remember that the papacy is the supposedly the final are okay on the questions of certitude and authority in the Romancalolic system, Right, it's the final arbiter. What's the basis for this claim? Well, they'll say Matthew sixteen. So the

basis for the papacy is Matthew sixteen. Yes, And how do we know that Matthew wrote Matthew and that's supposed to be a canonical gospel. Well, because the Church confirmed by tradition Matthew's gospel. So the papacy is vindicated by Matthew sixteen, and Matthew sixteen is vindicated by the papacy. This is a circle. This is a circle here. Now you say, well, I wait a minute, Jay, you talk about transcendental arguments. Those are circles right at ultimate paradigm

level argumentation. That's circular. Jay, You're being inconsistent because you make circular arguments all the time at the level of worldviews and paradigms. Yes, I do, because I don't believe in the epistemology of the Roman Catholic system, which forbids circularity. The Roman Catholic scheme, it's epistemology, it's anthropology, it's tomistic system adopted generally. And what we see in Denzinger and what we see in Aught or any of those Roman

Catholic dogmatic statements is a classical foundationalist of pistemology. And there's no disputing that. There's absolutely no question. I mean, that's absolutely the kind of epistemology that Aquinas teaches. For example, he does not adhere to any kind of a priori argument for the existence of God. When he talks about he cites the ontological argument, and he says in assuming when he cites Anselm, he refutes it. He argues against asel, and he says that faith is over here in the

realm of science, and knowledge is over here. Now they do overlap, but they're two different realms. So knowing thing knowing things according to natural reasoning and science that has a level of certitude, because it's in heracle that issues of faith don't have the same kind of levels of

certitude authority. No person who believes in a transitional argument can hold that because a transcendental argument, and that type of argument is premised on the rejection of classical foundationalists epistemology, because it doesn't work. It's circular, and it wouldn't be that way if that view didn't exclude circularity. But every one of them will say, we believe in the laws of logic, grounding foundational maxims that are self evident. Right,

these things are certain, that's the stuff we know. This other stuff, this theology stuff, revelation. We might can have a reasonable certitude about those things. But what we know with more certainty is things like classical foundational axioms, laws

of logic, law of non country, law of identity. This is why they have a problem with not submitting their doctrine of simplicity to revelation, and instead they start with philosophic simplicity, definitional philosophic simplicity according to what Aristotle says must be, not according to what Moses and Exodus right and up into the gospels. Not what they say about simplicity, not what simplicity is according to Saint Paul, or the inner gaya of the spirit, the operations and energies of

the spirit distribute the gifts of the spirit. Right, that would mean a distinction between essence and energy. Right. So no, it has to be read and retooled and reformulated according to hellenic simplicity. And every one of them who ends up debating me at length about this issue eventually says that you can't have a distinction in God that's real, because that would be a violation of accidents and substance,

and God has no accidents. Yeah, but we're not what simplicity is on Aristotle's definition, or mimi and IDEs definition, or Aquinas quoting both Aristotle and Miamides, or Aquinus quoting just Aristotle throughout the first few questions of the cinema about God's simplicity. And again watch them all. They're gonna run, They're gonna go crazy and take everything inside out of

context because they can't follow a simple argument. I mean, the stuff is complex, but the argument itself is quite simple, right, which is that, why are you deriving what simplicity means from Aristotle or from Plato or from the Monad Because that's not what the Church fathers did. In fact, Basil went to great links to argue against hellenic philosophic simplicity.

Read the refutations of the Unomians. When the Church Fathers argue against the unuimions, they say, you're using Hellenic philosophic simplicity that we don't adhere to. When Saint Max disputes with purists, he says the same point. He says, you're using dialectics from the philosophers and not going by what the gospels say, because revelation is what's certain, that's more certain than the laws of logic. In fact, the laws of logic are grounded on revelation. That's the transcendental argument.

It's the other way around. In Tomism. The laws of logic certitude about mathematical principles, these kinds of things that's more certain, and then you have these other things like revelation that we can we can maybe tack on persons, right, it will establish the existence of one supreme super essence. This is what volume one, assuming the Countragentelis, does and then in the next volume he moves on to say, all right, let's tack the persons onto that. No, no, no,

that's not how it goes. That's not how it goes. It's revealed that God is Father and personal. First, we don't start with us. It's of God. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, as the Creed says. So with that in mind, we can now see why it's in our scheme. Circularity is not a problem because we recognize at fundamental paradigmatic level circularity is inevitable. But on the Roman Catholic scheme, you're not supposed to be circular.

It's a violation of classical foundationalist reasoning and logic. And yes, that's somewhat anachronistic because classical foundationalism is the term that comes centuries after a quitnas. It doesn't matter, it describes the same idea, the same principle. I remember debating a Dominican once and he said, he said, the laws of logic are what are certain? The teachings of revelation are maybe ninety percent certain, maybe eighty percent certain. Do you

see the stupid stupidity of this view? Any knowing atheist would point out, any clever atheists would point out that how is your God the true God when something like the laws of logic, which in your worldview are actually based on him, are more certain than him. That's dumb, That's stupid. If God exists, he is the basis for the laws of logic, Okay, then he's the presupposition of the laws of logic, not the other way around. The laws of logic aren't a God that we then subject

God to. It's the other way around. And that's why when you understand what I'm saying, and then you go and look at what Paul says in Act seventeen, Oh, you realize he's not saying classical apologetics. He's saying what Jay says. He says, Greeks, your religion is foolishness, right, the wisdom of this world is certain. Paul says, no, no, no, no. You just said the wisdom of this world is certain and reasonable and rational, and then we tack on revelation

on top of it with whatever kind of word. No, no, no, the wisdom of this world is foolishness. Does that mean Plato or Aristotle can't say true things. No, it's nothing to do with whether they make true or false statements at times. Has everything to do with the ultimate grounding of our authority and our belief systems, and that ultimate grounding and authority is Aerosol's metaphysics. No, it's revelation. Let me give another example. In Fulton Sheen's book Life of Christ.

He begins the book I remember reading that many years ago, and I thought this would be good, This would be good. He begins the book by saying, I'm not kidding, and now I'm going for memory. So if you obsessive Roman Catholics out there, if you find one word that I misquote going from memory ten years ago, that's not going to work to go crazy have a victory parade. But going from memory what he says, and every Roman Catholic who talks about the Gospels will say this very there's

a lecture work. Scott Hans says the exact same thing. I remember, this comes to mind any kind of Peter Kreeft typical apologetic manuals. They're not going to differ. They're going to say, if we say, how do we know that the scriptures are inspired? How can we know if revelation found in scripture is actually inspired? Fultensten starts off by saying, we don't come to the Bible with any

presubpositions of divine inspiration, certitude, infallibility, or authority. We treat the Bible like any other book in the world, and we apply the neutral scientific methods of textual research and higher criticism, and we can come to a reasonable conclusion that, with a large degree of certitude, it's highly probable that the Bible and its texts are very likely inspired. What now,

what does in revelation itself? Right? We all let's take some text that we all agree on, right, like the Bible or the Gospel of Matthew, for example, the be Attitudes. Does Jesus say that, no, he says, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words won't pass away. And he says, truly, I say that not one jot or tittle will pass away from the law until all things are fulfilled. In other words, scripture and what's revealed is the pre eminent authority, even over your reasoning, even over

your academic sciences. Now, the academic sciences can do great things to vindicate all kinds of the scripture, and anybody who doesn't understand that or that I say that, is just completely confused. Of course it can't. But we're not talking about the production of evidentiary justifications or the aid of evidentiary pieces of evidence. We're talking about the certitude at the most fundamental level. Right, So we're saying that

the revelation is really the grounding here. And even the Roman Catholic system when it says that the papacy has proven from Matthew eighteen, even that is admitting that really this is coming from revelation, right, Okay, And then how do we know, according to Fulton Sheen and all the other classical apologists in that Goofy system, how do we know that these things are true? Well, we apply the sciences of textual studies and research. No no, no, no, no, no,

we don't. Now again, I'm not saying you can't do textual studies, but textual studies don't give you the certitude that you're seeking. Does revelation of itself that way? You see, we're at the point of revelation as our final authority, and what can it appeal to. It can only appeal to itself. There's no other authority that God's going to appeal to to vindicate God. So at a fundamental, basic level, it's self referencing. And the mind of the classical foundationalist

says that that's crazy, that doesn't work because that's circular. Yeah. Bro, all world views are circular at base. That's the point. Because every position, whether you're an atheist or whether you're a Muslim, or whether you whatever you are, cult doesn't matter. You are grounding foundations are going to be circular. At some point, they will be self referencing. This is what no Tomas can grasp because a self evident maxim like

the law of non contradiction. Okay, it's fine to talk about that as self evident a certain way, but even a self evident maxim doesn't make any sense apart from being grounded in a world where self evident maxims are even possible, namely in a Christian world. So self evident maxims, the laws of logic are transcendental proofs of the God of the Bible. They're grounded in Him. They don't exist on their own. They're not autonomous. Man's reasoning is not autonomous.

It doesn't have the ability to figure out the mysteries of the universe apart from divine grace and revelation. Now, it can get some things right, right. I mean, when an unbeliever discovers something true about earthworms and he says, oh, this proves dorminism. Okay, so maybe he's figured out something true about the earthworm, but that doesn't prove his whole worldview. It also doesn't prove that natural reasoning can prove that

there's a super simple, generic substance that's crazy. No, it can't, and even if it did, that's not God. I am not joined with the Jehovah's witness in doing apologetics. We don't have the same God. There's not a common apologetic argument between a Jehovah's witness and a scientology proponent and me. But in the Roman Catholic scheme. There is you're doing the same apologetics of all the other world religions that believe in an absolutely simple super essence. That's not our God.

That's not our God. Our God is I am that, I am personal, I am he, I am I is he is personal. It's not I am essence, I am it, I am super super essential, super moanad. I am he he Father personal He. Thus we come back to the question of revelation. It's not settled or known by human autonomy. Human autonomy does not put We don't put God's relation there and say I the human court of rationality and

higher critical reasoning, we put God's word on trial. We put revelation on trial today, and we will see if it matches up to our human reasoning capacities. And guess what in the history of this approach, where do you think it led directly to higher criticism? And what do you think higher criticism came up with. We have judged guilty. You are guilty of fraud. This is not the word

of God. This is the word of men. Our reasoning and our higher critical standards have determined this because we judged it on the basis of neutral facts, neutral reasoning, neutral logic, neutral laws have shown this to be completely inadequate. That's what happened in history, Dude. Why did that happen in history? Well, because, first of all, the entire approach is wrong. There are no neutral laws of logic. There

are no neutral reasoning approaches because men aren't neutral. They are either in rebellion against God or seeking God right Romans one. The whole world has fallen into idolatry and is in rebellion against God, according to Romans one, and so none of them are neutral, none of them, No human beings are neutral. Romans three. There's no neutrality. If an unbeliever discovers something true, it's in spite of his unbelief.

When we were debating with that pagan guy, all of his objective truths and principles are what he wants out that come from Christianity, but he doesn't want the Christianity also wants all this pagan nonsense on top of it. So if he does things that are true and good and right, it's in spite of his unbelief. In the same way logic, the laws of logic are theory laden. They don't operate independently. They don't operate on their own.

They're not abstract and personal principles that float around just there by which we then judge God. If God doesn't exist, there are no laws of logic. There are no objective principles. They only make sense if God exists. It's a complete reorientation of your thought process. You have to reorient your thought process. You can't say Jesus is Lord and then turn around and say, oh, but not in the areas of textual criticism, and not in the areas of how

we vindicate and look at the scriptures. You don't believe that he's lord. There is he lord over textual criticism too? Is he lord of the laws of logic? I remember when I asked that Dominican guy that he was like, what, I don't even understand. You're talking about the laws of logic. It is more certain than revelation. Is Jesus the lord of laws? Of the laws of logic? Do they not arise from him?

wisdom texts in Solomon wisdom. The logos that's out there in the world that the Greeks are looking for is the wisdom that Solomon's talking about in Proverbs one through ten. You see, when we understand that Christ is the source of these things, that Christ is the lord of logic, that the wisdom that exists anywhere in the world is ultimately His, then you have the right attitude to understand that there's not.

their meaning in him. Logic has its meaning in him, not independently of him. It's not neutral. There's no neutrality, and that's what they can't grasp because once they grasp there's no neutrality, they would be forced to our position. So let's bring it back then to the papacy. Let's

come back to Rome and the vishop. So with this in mind, we start to understand that, like the video that I just put up, thank you to Lewis for pulling that out that epistemically, in terms of epistemology, knowing things, certitude, knowing religious beliefs, having certainty about religious beliefs, it makes absolutely no sense to say the confession that we have theological, and many of those points where Mechalics do confess with us theologically, they'll say, yeah, Jesus Lord, yes, I believe

in the sovereignty of God, I believe in providence. I believe that logical truths ultimately have their grounding in God. But then they turn around and they don't. They're not consistent with it. They'll turn around and say, but there's neutrality in these things, right, I mean scientists are neutral. We approach the Bible with neutrality. No human being approaches the Bible with neutrality. According to Paul's very clear teaching, there is no neutrality.

all paradigmatic. They're all conditioned by the presupositions and the paradigm. That's why tomism doesn't work, not just in terms of absolute devienne simplicity, but in terms of epistemic systematic approaches. It's a wrong epistemology because it's a wrong anthropology. Why is it wrong because it doesn't believe in the news. They believe in a body and a soul, and half the time the soul is identified with the intellect in

their anthropology. Hence why being studied is so important. Hence why Barleem rebuked Saint Gregory and said, your monks aren't studying, they're just praying. Yeah, but Paul said, the wisdom of this world is foolishness. And in all those chapters where Paul talks about his vision, Paul is talking about what

Gregory is talking about. You see, So when you make fun of us and you mock the things that you don't understand, it's the very thing that Paul's talking about when he had his vision, when Paul was translated into the third heavens and saw the uncreated light, he's talking about the noose. And that's why Paul says, to pray in your body and your soul and in your spirit, in your nows. Noos is a faculty given to man by God for knowing God directly. Roman Callochs don't believe this.

They've never believed that that It's not anywhere in their doctrine anywhere nowhere gone lost because it's a development that happened in the East. Now, because we believe that there is body, soul, and noose, we have a triparteipe view of man. We believe that the heart and the mind have to be working in harmony. Can't just have intellect. You can't just have a hamster wheel of intellect running trying to figure this stuff out, because it's not a science.

It's an existential change and conversion that affects the whole being body, soul, and news, the whole being of man. And by soul we mean man's inner soul, his the seat of his desire, his heart and intellect right and then the news again being the faculty by which we know God directly. So we believe that in Eden, God created Adam with that faculty to know him directly. Now, after the fall, the noose of man is darkened. This

is not Plato's news, not the same thing. Plato believes that the Trinity is some kind of weird monad diead triad noos that kind of like just happened. That's not what, has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Totally different. But in our view, if you don't understand that as part of the anthropology, then it makes no sense to you. Why as as Orthodox, we believe that you that you can know God directly, and here's where the Roman Catholical said.

But if you know God directly, then then you're a Protestant. That's the Protestants say, Prota, the Holy Spirit guides you, and you know truth directly, and you don't need the pope. So it's just you and the Bible. You become your own pope. It's just you and you're sect over there. And there's a million popes as many popes as there are Protestants. Every Protestant is his own pope. Now what we say is these are two errors feeding off of

one another. We don't believe either one of these, and the functioning of the church and the first millennium did not operate on either of these ways. Okay, So let me show you here and we will look at the famous quote from Now. I've read about six or seven

of Ratzinger's books, so I'm not speaking from ignorance. Now Again, part of the reason that there might be some confusion about me just recalling from memory quotes, I have a really good memory so typically speaking, but yes, guess what, I'm not infallible in my memory, so sometimes I'll get things wrong, and I don't always remember every quote exactly correct, right, But typically speaking, the point that I'm making is not I'm right most of the points that I'm making. So

we're gonna look at this Benedict quote here. We want to see what he says about the early Church, because we're pointing out here that the papacy again, is not just a thing that that somehow magically solves questions. It's a thing that kind of rows up over time. And it helps to see that because then you understand our vantage point. You understand that you don't you're not gonna come to trying to understand orthodoxy with a Roman Catholic presupposition.

I read this one back when I converted to Roman Thossism a long time ago. Principles of Catholic Theology. He says, against this background, we can now weigh the possibilities that are open to Acumenism. The maximum demands on which the search for unity must certainly founder are immediately clear. On the part of the West, the maximum demand would be that the East recognized the premacy of the Bishop of Rome in the full scope of eighteen seventy Vatican One. Well, yeah,

that's Roman Catholic dogma. Right, of course, they have to accept the full scope, and in so doing they would submit in practice to the premiscy as is the Uniates accepted. Yeah, that's why they are Uniates. On the part of the East, the max demand would be the West declare the eighteen seventy doctrine of premacy erroneous and in doing so submit in practice to a supremacy such was accepted within the WA's This removal of the philia, okay, the creed and

including the Marian dogmas of the nineteen twentieth century. As regard Protestantism, the maximum demand of the Catholic Church would be that the Protestant ecclesiastical ecclesiological ministers be regarded as invalid and that process be converted to Catholicism. Yeah, because that's what's always been the case, is that whichever position is true, we know that it involves the conversion of the heterodox. Now, while the first three maximum demands are

unanimously rejected by Christian consciousness, no they're not. They're rejected in ecumenism. So Benedict doesn't believe Vatican one. He's searching for a unity that we can all agree on that doesn't reflect the maximum demands of Vatican One. It's a no brainer that this is obviously not the teaching of

Vatican one. Yeah, exactly. Now let's get to one of these other key key quotes are now and we're gonna deal with the nonsense objections of and again, I have read these books, and you can believe me or not. I don't care whether you believe me. I know what these books teach. I've read them. There's all kinds of modernism in Benedict by the way, for the people who think he's some kind of super trad yeah, right, give

me a break, dude, Page one. Nor is it possible, on the other hand, for him to regard as the only possible form and consequently binding on all Christians. The form of this premiss he talking aout Vatican one's so

that was taken in the nineteen twentieth century. Right, So we can't continue to expect the Orthodox to accept Vatican on the symbolic gestures of Pope Paul the six And in particular, he's kneeling before the representative of the ecumenical patriarch, the schismatic according to this quote, right, or an attempt to express this. So he's saying that we can't continue to expect the Vatican one definitions to be binding upon

the Orthodox. And then finally we have the best quote of all, which is I'm gonna make the point most forcefully here and again I have read this book. It's not taken out of context. This is what the book is saying. Because Benedict has always been a rabbit ecumenist, as have all of them. Francis is not some radical in the sense of ecumenism. He's doing the same thing.

They all did, so, he says later on at page two sixteen two seventeen, Patriarch Athanagaris, from their vantis point schismatic, spoke even more strongly when he greeted Paul the sixth and the final, against all expectation, the bishop of Rome is among us, the first among us in honor. So he was stating what the Roman views of the Orthox view has always been. It is clear in saying this that the patriarch did not abandon the claims of the

Eastern churches or the knowledge of the premiscy of the West. Rather, he stated plainly what the East understood as the order, rank and title of the equality of the bishop in the Church. And it would be worth our while to consider whether this archaic confession, which has nothing to do with the premiscy of jurisdiction, but confesses a primacy of honor. That's our view, and agappe if it might not be recognized as a formula that adequately reflects the position that

Rome occupies. So it's not binding upon the churches. Right, we should not choose the maximum road of Vatican One, and we needn't expect anything more than was operant in the first millennium. What here he is admitting. He's going to admit that in the first millennium of the Church, in the first millennium, the operation of the Roman bishop.

historically functioned. In other words, Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of the premiscy then has been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When Patriarch Athanagaris, on the occasion of post visit to the Finar, designated him as the successor of Peter, most esteemed amongst us as one who presides in charity. This great church leader was expressing the ecclesial content of the doction premiacy as it was known in the first millennium.

Rome must not ask for more. Booh yeah, So here's Ratzinger. The supposed trad admitting that Vatican One was not the way the Church operated in the first millennium, and that this tradition is absolutely correct, and that's what had been formulated in the first millennium. Absolutely By the way, he goes on to say all kinds of even crazier stuff, especially his quote about how the resurrection isn't that's a doozy from rent Singer. Anyway, We're not going to go

in all that today. But now we bring all that up to point out that that even amongst your supposed greatest theologians, the admission is there that the Church of the first millennium did not operate according to the definition of the Vatican ie monarchy. Of course not. We know that. We have argued that for a thousand years. We know that because Revelation says that it didn't operate that one.

Let's look at the Council of Jerusalem first Synod. Now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter, and when there had been much dispute, Peter rose up and said, men and brethren, you know that a good while ago God chose among us that my mouth would be the means by which the Gentiles should hear the

words of the Gospel believe. So, God, who knows the heart, acknowledged them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us to the Jews, right, and he made no distinction between them and us, purifying their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why do you test God but putting a yoke on the next of the disciples that they are not able to bear. But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved in the same manner as these. So this

is the beginning of the council. The council opens a uh oh, Peter spoke, I guess that means Vatican One's definitions are all true. Because Peter spoke, no, let's read on. Then all the multitude kept silent and listened to Barnabas and Paul declaring, how the miracles and wonders this is about whether Gentiles needed to keep Mosaic law right. So this is what the Jerusalem Council is about, right, And so Barnabas and Paul had worked miracles amongst the Gentiles,

and after that they became silent. James answered and said, so, James is the Bishop of Jerusalem. Okay, so now we wouldn't we don't argue that. Oh well, okay, so Peter spoke first, so he's number one. Barnabas and Paul are then the secondary apostles right after Peter, and then James speaks. The point is not you can't read into the ordering this. Romancas love to do this where they say like, because you know Peter said it first, then he gets the

special gift. Okay, but what a minute, Peter walked on water and then failed. I don't see any Roman Catholics reading into some mystical meaning about how that means to see if Peter is going to fail when Peter was trying to walk on water. No, no, no, it's a very selective reading of these mystical meanings. Right, So so Peter spoke first there for Vatican one. Oh wait a minute, here, let's read on. Men and brethren, listen to me. Simon has declared how God did at first visit the Gentiles

to take out a people for his name. And with these words the prophets agree, and then he quotes the Psalm, or he quotes David. After this, I will return and the tabernacle of David will be rebuilt. Excuse me, it's Amos nine, not David Amos nine eleven. We did a talk on Amos. Go listen to that, so that the rest of the gentiles might seek the Lord. Right, So the gentiles being brought into the church predicted in Amos. He's arguing known to God from eternity or all of

his works. Therefore I judge. Therefore, I judge that we should not trouble those from among the gentiles. And then he lists basically what were the statements to Noah. Right, So the reaffirmation of the Noea covenants here, that that's really all that's necessary if the gentiles are going to come into the Church, that they abstained from things polluted by immorality or polluted by idols, from sexual reality, from

things strangled, and from eating blood. For Moses has had through many generations, those who preach him in every city, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath. Then it pleased all the apostles and with the whole church to send men, to send chosen men of their own company with Paul. And they have a letter right about the decree of the council. Nothing about Peter presiding as pre eminent. They're in Jerusalem. The final judgment appears to be given by

it James. Therefore I judge this and then the decree early canon law. Nothing about how this decision was made with the universal approval of Peter. Right, it's collegial Peter, Paul James. The apostles are all making this decision because it's a college of apostles. Where is the premissy of Peter here? Where does this anything like Vatican One? No, not at all, nothing like it. So that's why the doctrine evolves to get to the point of Vatican One.

And the Roman Catholics know this, and that's why they have the idea of doctrinal development, the development and evolution of doctrine. In fact, they make the argument that, well, yes, it's true that at that time the doctrine of patrine premascy was not what it was that Vatican won. But that's because it's like a seed that's planted and the seed grows into a tree. Initially it's a seed becomes

a tree. That's literally how they argue for that. I mean, it's like Bonker's level, right, And we just saw rat Singer says, come on, Let's be honest, it wasn't that way. Now we have to understand that this is not just about a question of this guy having the right to decide doctrines, because that's not what the doctrine of papal

infallibility and supremacy comes to mean. It moves from this to being galactic god emperor and the guy who can, at the time of unum sanctum excommunicate anybody in the world and presumably the entire world if you wanted to. And they even have ridiculous debates about this, like what if the pope excommunicated everybody? But I mean there's literally like absurd level debates in you know, like scholastic neo

scholastic type stuff like this. It's laughable. But so it moves from that to Peter having not just a spiritual authority but a literal universal world leap. If you enjoy this video, be sure and take use of the promo code for the show sponsor. For this channel sponsor, which is chalk dot com. That's choq dot com. You can find the links in the description below the video. You get fifty percent off any of the great organic actually better than organic supplements that they offer at chalk dot com.

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combating the toxic culture that we live in. I also would say, if you want to get access to my books, head on over to the shop at my website and get signed copies there. Thank you. Our authority that he is over every monarch in the world, and in fact, every monarch eventually has to submit to him. Now again, we believe that the Church is superior to the monarchy,

there's no question about that. But the idea that Peter is supreme over all monarchs and that ultimately what Jesus is saying here is that Peter's descendants in the papacy are to live in giant palaces with the Vatican Bank. That's what this justify. Okay, so this is not just a theological quibble. This evolves to be galactic God emperor, and that's why it's insane. It's madness. And all of

the sata's the set of acontess clowns. They realize how crazy all this is, but they believe it all the way up until point X y Z right, and sate of acontasm is not going to get you anywhere you are going to be. You will despair eventually because sixty years no pope. Now there's never going to be a pope. Oh, Mary's going to come and there'll be an apparition and she'll restore the papacy. Oh, it's the end of time.

That's why there's no papacy. No, no, sorry, But Vatican one says that the successors of Peter continue until the end of time, and the Church, if the gates of Hell cannot prevail against it. In the Romankeelic view, necessitates there being a living magisterium in communion with that guy in Rome in that chair until the end of the world. That's what it says. It doesn't say at the end of the world it's done, and then there's one hundred years of no pope. No, it says until the very end.

So you have to be in communion with Frank to be a Roman Catholic. Ah. But wait, Frank and Vatican two have obviously contradicted everything that came before. Oh well, let's invent a host of myths by which we can mentally gymnasticize and soothe our conscience and make ourselves feel like we're still Roman Catholic even though we're not in

commune with anybody. We're LARPing online, or we are attached to some group over there that doesn't even have a bishop, or literally that thinks that all of the bishops have died. There's no bishops left in the world. Maybe a priest or too. If the church has died, then the church has died and you're not in the church. Time to rethink things. Bro, it's the wrong sect that you're in. That's why you're caught up in an end Times cult. You might as well be at John Hagen's church, right.

And it all started from the stupidity of the circularity of how we base our beliefs and our claims on philosophical nonsense, the idea that the papacy is proven from the Bible, but the Bible is confirmed by the papacy in the fifth century. It's circular. So what if it's circular, Well, classical foundationalism doesn't allow for its circular arguments. And if you're to give up your classical foundationalism, you can't be

a Thomist anymore. Okay, well i'll be. I'll be a non Thomas Droman Catholic, and I'll go to a Byzantine right church. Why do you care about being in communion with people who go to mosque services, who pray towards Mecca. Pope Urban the Second called a crusade Benedict and his whole crew attend mosque services and pray towards Mecca. It's

not the true religion. It's not authentic Christianity. It's an aberration. Again, why do you think after this this kerfluffle around the year one thousand, soon after that, the Church of Rome, this is what you guys believe, it moved to Auvignon, France in a palace. So Jesus's intention was for the See of Peter to be in Auvignon, France for one hundred years, with three different guys claiming to be the

legitimate successor to Peter in France. In France, and you have this mythical idea that the Roman Catholic Church has consistently maintained this undefiled unity throughout history and wasn't a tool of politics. Give me a fucking break, dude, total lying to yourself, lying to yourself. Everybody knows the Sea of Peter is not in France because a bishopric is supposed to be where the bishopric what's set up? Okay, if the patriarch of Moscow comes to America, America doesn't

become the seat of the patriarchy of Moscow. Right now, let's talk about some of the next that some of the more so. Now then we see the So that's the problem of the circularity. That's why this position. Remember this position. The whole point of it is to make it easy for the Roman Catholic to know the dogma. It begs the question. It moves the problem back a step.

How do you know that you are properly interpreting when it is the ordinary, universal, infallible magistarium Because you see, ordinary, universal, infallible magisterium comprises what the Church has always taught. Well,

that requires a lot of reading, doesn't it. That requires you, as an individual knowing a lot about Church history, and a lot about the Church fathers, and a lot about all these endless papal decrees and all of these endless canon law and all this endless ecumenical council stuff that takes a long time, doesn't it. Yeah, right, that's why people go get doctorates in theology. But I thought that the point of the papacy was to make it simple so that the average Catholic can know what's true and

what's false, what's heresy, what's orthodox. Really it does that really work? Though? I mean, it sounds good on paper, condu doesn't it. But wait a minute, when we start looking at the actual workings. That's why I read thank you to Lewis. We re uploaded that that clip from

that old talk. It's right below this video uploaded. The papal circularity problem within the realm, the confines of Rometholicism, the problem is still there, people chasing their tails because when you actually want to try to apply this Roman Catholics can't agree or figure out what's dogma and what's not. Especially since Vatican Two, it's nothing but sixty years of confusion. And it's not just sixty years of confusion. There's confusion

before Vatican two. There's confusion at the time of Vatican One. What is doctrinal development? What does that mean? The evolution of dogma? What and why is Ratzinger saying that Vatican One was not the mindset of the church in the first millennium. And you'll say, yeah, but that's his private opinion. It doesn't matter if it's your private opinion or where you write it. If it's wrong, private opinion or being

wrong does not exclude a person in traditional Catholicism from heresy. Now, they might not be a bad willed heretic, They might be a material heretic or whatever. They might not be formally heretical, they might not be fully heretical, or event all the different terms in scholastic neologisms you want, doesn't matter, because again, the point of all of this, the point of dogma, the point of denzing, or the point of all this was supposed to be so that we could

know what the dogma was. But then when we start buying all the encyclicals and we buy Denzinger and we start reading it, you start feeling like a bit of a Protestant, don't you, Because you're not a Protestant with the Bible anymore. You're a Protestant with the papal encyclicals. And that's why Vatican One didn't just say that you have to be in communion with the history work Magisterium. It says that you have to be in communion with

the living successors of the Bishop of Rome. That are the guy over in Rome, not the guy in Kansas, not the guy in Fillmore, New York. Not those guys, the living successors until the end of the world, and not until the end of the world, and then one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years of no pope. Obviously that's a sect. Obviously that's not the church. Now let's get to some of the critiques of our review. You guys

don't have a way to know what the ecumenical councils were. Now, first of all, again let's take just the bold faced claim that we know what the councils are on the basis of what the Pope says. Excuse me. The Pope declared at the eighth Synod, the eighth Eastern Synod, not the eighth Latin Synod, the eighth Eastern Synod, that the philioque should not be used, and he ratified that eighth

Eastern Synod, that is proven in the essay below. So just saying the pope, you guys don't follow John the eighth who said to not use the philioquay, and then the Philioka was added, and then now at Vatican two for the purpose of the Uniates, even the Uniates don't say philioqua in the Creed. This is ridiculous. This is

nothing but a dimission of our view. And the schismatic weirdos who act like all of the Eastern Catholics are crazy because they now revere Pope Gregory Palomas after John Paul the Second or whoever said that it's okay through Revere Gregory Palomos. It makes no sense because Barlem and Gregory had a debate and they don't believe the same things. You can't believe and not believe the philioque right, it's not they're mutually exclusive views. You can't believe in absolutely

simplicity and believe in the uncreated energies. They're mutually exclusive views. That's why there were synods declared. I mean, in the Rabic Catholic view, orthodoxy is schismatic and heretical. You can't reconcile it. And if you're a UNI eight, you have to accept the Council of Trent and purgatory. Now most of them don't. That's why it doesn't make any sense. So all the union Ads ought to be schismatic because they don't accept Trent. Most of them they don't accept

all this filioquay nonsense. They didn't recite in the Creed. How do you have the same faith if you get two different creeds. Obviously it's not the right church. You've got different creeds in your church. Your church says the creed without the filioquay is okay for the Uniates. The Creed with the filioquay is okay for the Latins. That's two different creeds, dummies, and Constantinople Nicino Politan Constantinople creed

Niceno Constantinopolitan creed says not to change it. That's why if you read the drag Us essay that I put below, he shows you that even up to the eighth, even up to Pope John the eighth, there was the agreement on the basis of the Canons of contentinoble One that you can't write a new Creed. And I went by the way, and I looked up Roman Catholic scholars who admit this. They say, yes, John the eighth did affirm that, and then they turn around and say, but yeah, but

so what because later on we changed our mind. This position is madness. It's just what it's sola papa. That's all Roman Cathosism is. It's not concerned with tradition. It's not concerned with ecumenical councils, it's not concerned with collegiality, it's not concerned with the Bible. The only thing it's concerned with is the papacy. The only thing that they

do apologetics for is the papacy. They'll talk about these other things, but their argument in any of these realms, whether it's the phillyoqui, whether it's absolute simplicity, whether it's any of these things, they just go back to the papacy. Mc key's, m key's, m key's keys mac kei's, because that's all they are is apologists for the papacy, because there is a vicious need to vindicate this gigantic man

made system, which is obviously an aberration. Now. When Paul wrote to the Church at Rome, he warned them that they could be grafted out. It's an odd thing to write to the Church at Rome, isn't it? In Chapter eleven, beware you gentiles that you might be grafted out? Does Paul? Does Paul conceive of, uh, the the Jews in Rome like theyre being a Jewish pope, and that because you know they won't be, they won't be grafted out. I mean, I'm just trying to think of the mental gymnastics that

a Roman Catholic would say to explain this. Well, Paul is only speaking of the gentiles in the Church of Rome being grafted out. Of course, because of the Petrine promise and supremacy, there will always be a Jew there in Rome that will never be cast down. No, this is nonsense. Come on, he's saying. He's warning the Church at Rome, which is almost all gentile. Right you too, you gentile, gentile church at Rome, you can be grafted

out too, just like Jews were. If you're haughty. Very interesting that Paul would warn the Church of Rome of being haughty, prideful and being cast out. Well, they had reason to be prideful because they were doubly apostolic. As Irenaeus says, No mention anywhere of divine infallibility being the basis for their pride only because they're doubly Apostolic, and every Orthodox icon makes this point. Right about Rome, it's Peter and Paul, the feasts of Saint Peter and Paul,

and they are both holding in our church. The let's see, I'm gonna get I gonna put a thing on the screen here for everybody. They're both holding the church, all right. It's not Peter holding Paul holding the church. Peter and Paul have absolute equality. Peter might have a placement of being first, but absolutely nothing in the New Testament anywhere about the supreme, jurisdictional god powers of Peter and the Roman Catholic said know that. They say, yeah, but it developed,

it's a thing that developed. No, it doesn't. Our theology doesn't develop. That's why you guys don't even care about the first thousand years of the creed, I mean of the church, the first thousand years. You guys don't even They don't even care. All they care about is what the popes have said. They don't do theology, they do

papal apologetics. Now let's look at Nicias Canon six, because this is one of the best clearest arguments, and we'll go through all of the casustri and all of the endless mental gymnastics that they use on this one as well. What does Canon six of Nicias say, let the ancient customs customs in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis prevail that the Bishop of Alexandria has jurisdiction in all these since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also likewise

in Antioch and the other provinces. Could it be any clearer? Absolutely nothing like Vatican one here this conciliar statement that Rome accepts. They accept Canon six unless they just arbitrarily decide to reject it. Right, I mean, part of what was ecumenically accepted is that the honor given to certain preeminent cities. This is going to get us to the point of talking about pentarchy, because pentarchy is nothing but

a canonical honor. Has nothing to do with how we determine well, I want to say, nothing to do, but it has nothing to do with what makes something religiously true or false. We'll put it that way. It certainly goes into when we look at councils and when we look at synods. Right, was it recepted, did important churches receive it? But guess what this is what no Roman Catholic can grasp. Every bishop is equal. Even if Bartholomew suddenly thinks that he has papal powers, it doesn't matter.

Everybody knows that even these positions of patriarch are made up by the councils. They're honors given by the councils, and they move. They're movable. Sometimes there's a patriarch that created it a council, sometimes there's one that's moved elsewhere. In preeminence or honor, they're just titles of honor because of these being important cities. The patriarch of Constantinople has absolutely no more power than bishop whoever of po Dunk Tennessee. Literally.

I know that's hard for you Romanchathlics to fathom, but pentarchy is no magical formula for Orthodoxy has nothing to do with the magical formula of five by which we determine if the three of the five have done it fought no total nonsense, total ignorance. By the way, the fact that these people making these arguments are going to this level of stuff shows they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. They're just making this stuff as

they're making it up as they go. They're reading like the most basic bitch stuff, right, Catholic answers cut and paste to answer this stuff. It's childish, childish. Notice that the Canon says that it is a custom. It doesn't say de jura or dvina. It's not it's not divine law. It's a custom. And the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome is likened to the custom of the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Alexandria and Antioch. Now they know that

this is problematic. So what they do is they say, well, this is not talking about the universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. This is only talking about the jurisdiction that the Bishop of Rome has in Rome, because of course everybody knows the Bishop of Rome has a universal jurisdiction. Really, really, why is that universal jurisdiction nowhere else in here? I mean, this is a ridiculous comparison and a confusing comparison and

a nonsensical comparison. If everybody supposedly here understood that the universal jurisdiction was just a given, come on, No, that's extremely weak. Furthermore, when we read the fathers of this time period, they don't teach the universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. Now the Roman Catholics say, oh oh, yeah,

but Athenasious appeals to Rome. Appeals are made everywhere all the time, to different bishoprics, And if Athanasius thought Rome was Orthodox, then it makes sense for him to appeal there. But appeals are made all the time to all kinds of different places. So the fact that an appeal is made is not a proof that they believed the Bishop of Rome had universal, infallible, pre eminent authority over church

and state. By the way, now when we start asking about the universal power of the Bishop of Rome over the state as well, guess what all of those documents that were used to prop this up in the late and early Middle Ages, like the Simachian the documents of Pope Simachus, the Galesian de Credos, the Donation of Constantine. Nobody admits anymore that those are real. Everyone admits, the

Vatican admits. Every scholar in the world, the Vatican across the board for a long time admits those are forgeries. The documents of Pope Simachus, Galatian decredles, the false degredles, as they're known as the Katina Greca that Thomas Aquinas cites against the Greeks for the philioque and for the premacy and infallibility of the Bishop of Rome. The Katina Greca is a forgery. It's not real, and nobody believes

that Katina Greca. Now there might be some guy David Bowden in his trailer in Kansas might believe in the donation of Constantine, but nobody else in the world believes in the donation of Constantine. And these were crucial to proving the temporal supremacy of the Bishop of Rome for centuries. Now, when I was a Roman Catholic, I thought, well, yeah, but okay, but maybe it doesn't really matter because we don't really need that to prove what is a theological doctrine.

But it's not just a theological doctrine. That's the thing. You see, this is not just confined to the room of theology. This evolves into a temporal worldly empire with a giant international bank. Let's look at the obvious here. Do you think that's what did Jesus really have in mind, that there be a giant international Vatican bank in palaces. I don't think so. But just on its surface here

we see that very clearly. This canon likens the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome to Egypt, to Antioch and Alexandria. Now these are important cities because these are cities where the apostles set up early seas. These cities of themselves possessed no magical authority. There's nothing magical about any of them.

In fact, when we look at the Apocalypse in chapters two and three, there are pre eminent cities there that you know, John wrote the Letter to the Seven Churches, right, the Apocalypse is a letter that's written to those seven churches of Asia Minor. Some of those churches don't exist anymore, and that's because they were warned. In the letter to those churches, Jesus says, if you are not faithful, I

will remove your lampstand. So there's no magical city anywhere that doesn't fall under the threat of the covenantal curses. By the way, did you notice that Jesus's statements to the seven churches perfectly mirror the covenantal curses of Deuteronomy. Yes, Jesus reaffirms the Covenant curses and blessing, because he's the one who gave the covenant curses and blessings in Deuteronomy, and he does the exact same thing to New Israel the Church in the Warnings and blessings to the seven

churches of Asia Minor. So when Jesus looks at the churches, he says, you either be faithful, or I will remove your lampstand. I will cut you out right, removing the lampstand, being grafted out, being cut out, all the same types of statements, same thing Paul said in Rome's eleven. Therefore, no magical, special, juridical, perfect infallible status to the Bishop

of Rome. And by the mere fact that at the Sixth Council the entire Church thought that they could excommunicate the Bishop of Rome, it proves that they didn't believe in the Vatican One view of papal supremacy. It doesn't matter whether Honorius was or was not Orthodox. Let's just set that aside for a moment, because what is demonstrated by the excommunication of Pope Honorius is that the mindset of the entire Universal Church at the Sixth Council had

no problem whatsoever doing it. Therefore, papal infallibility is not the universal teaching of the Catholic Church. The Orthodox view is the universal teaching of the Orthodox Catholic Church. So pentarchy, there's nothing magical about five cities or five patriarchs. I mean, the Moscow patriarchate didn't exist in the first century. In the third fourth century, right, other patriarchates come to be

that don't exist. The patriarch of Constantinople nowadays is a title of honor, and he's not even a patriarchate of a patriarchal city anymore. It doesn't even make any sense anymore. It's just a title of honor that's retained, and he's no different than my bishop. He may think, and as many patriarchs and popes have thought. He may think. They may think that they have universal bishopric powers and authority,

and that they're God emperors on earth. But that doesn't make And again, let's take it back to the level of simplicity. Or if Vatican One's definition a papal supremacy was true in the first century, and if that's how the true Church viewed it, why were all these church fathers so varied in their view of Matthew sixteen. Why wasn't it pretty universally understood? Why didn't everyone just write to the Bishop of Rome? Why do you even have

a council? Councils are a waste of time an effort, and in these centuries, traveling hundreds of miles to some council it could be life threatening. What a ridiculous hassle. Just write a letter and ask the bishop. Basically, the Bishop Rome could just sit there reading letters all day, or moving around to different churches, or send his leagates out and they could just decide every matter. Why waste the time of debating in a council? I mean, look at the show image here, the ancient icons show a

bunch of people seated debating matters. What a waste of time? Just as the pope, it's that simple. Why he doesn't need all these other people. He is the super bishop. What a waste of time an effort? And what is canon sick showing you it's very obviously collegial, it's limited jurisdictions. And you say, and the Catholic just make it up. They just say, yeah, but it's understood that he also had universal jurisdiction. No, it's not. Why is that now

we're mentioned, don't you think they would say that? And they'll say yeah, But they sent it to the papal legates for ratification. They sent it to every bishopric for ratification. Okay, Sonodal letters were sent to all of the bishoprics and the key, especially the key metropolitan aias, because they were the most important, because they were some of the biggest churches. So ratification itself cannot function the way the Roman Catholic wants to. For how we know what's the true and

a false council. I'm gonna throw you for a loop here because guess what, there's no external, magical, juridical formula anywhere that can solve the issue of true and false because it begs the question ultimately if counsels are reflections to the teaching of Revelation. In fact, the liturgy actually two Sundays ago, if you were there, if you were paying attention, you noticed that on or a Sunday of Orthodoxy, the liturgy says we agree with the fathers and the

Holy Teachers when they agree with Revelation. That's in the liturgy. Now, this is another thing that the Roman Catholics bamboozled by this question of how will the faithfull know what's true and false if they don't have a pope. What do you think the liturgy is for? The liturgy is there to teach you and catechorize you. When you go to it, and when you listen and you pay attention to what said, you get the correct theology. The liturgy is the teacher.

We don't need the pope when we have a local liturgy that perfectly embodies and teaches the wholeness of the faith. The wholeness and fullness of Catholicity is present in a local bishop. And this is what they can't grasp, which is that Orthodoxy is local and decentralized. And we think Jesus set up a local, decentralized church. He didn't set up a superworld bureaucracy in one city that has a super spirit. Right, everybody else has a little bit of

the spirit. But in Rome they have the super spirit because they have the super bishop. If the church has the sacraments, and they have the Dogma, and they have revelation, and they have the liturgy, and they have Pentecosts, and when you've been christmated, you have your personal pentecost you have everything you need. There is no need for the infallible Bishop of Rome, because the Holy Spirit is our teacher.

That was the point of Pentecost, and the fact that even the Old Testament saints who didn't have Pentecost could know the faith and know the truth without the Bishop of Rome. It's looney tunes. It's silly, it's childish to think that that guy is the way to know true and false. It begs the question, how do you know you're interpreting the papal documents correctly? You don't, Well, I just read it. I just read it, and I can see what's clearly true. Really, have you ever misinterpreted a

papal statement? Have the papal statements always been clear? Why are their clarifications on the clarifications and then clarifications and the clarifications of the clarifications of the clarifications. It's a system of circular absurdity. And again, if we move up to okay, so the question of floor, oh well, wait a minute. At Florence, the entire Orthodox world agreed with Rome and accept the feel like, no, they didn't. The whole reason Mark of Ephesus is a saint is because

he didn't accept the agreement of Florence. I mean again, And the only reason they would make that argument is is as if it takes five of the pentarchy tempt No, it doesn't, it would take all the bishops in the world.

Most of them did, but it took contramundum, athanacious contramundam. Now, the mere fact that the Orthodox Church has existed for the last thousand years without the pope proves that the claim that we can't exist as a church without the pope is wrong. And even your own papal church admits that we have existed for a thousand years without the papacy. How did we do that? If to leave the papacy means your church falls apart, on the contrary, your church

is falling apart. Certainly, our church has problems. We have many problems. We have to deal with all kinds of nasty problems, and we have to have some of the same problems. But at the question of truth and falsehood, ultimate certainty, ultimate authority impairs paradigms. The system of Rome is a house of cards because it's built on that one guy. So if everything that's built on that one dude doesn't work out, if it doesn't, if that doesn't stand up, the whole house of card falls. Our system

is not built on one dude. It doesn't destroy Orthodoxy. If Bartholomew is a heretic and he is, doesn't destroy Orthodoxy. If Bishop ware says something heretical, it doesn't crumble Orthodoxy. If half of the Orthodox world goes into apostasy, it's not it's a tragedy. But the Orthodox Church isn't doesn't end because of that. That's why Jesus created a decentralized church. He didn't build it on one galactic god emperor in three guys fighting over who's the successor of Peter in

France in the Middle Ages, that's looney, that's crazy. So the fact that Saint Marco of Emphysis did not, with the other patriarchs, sign the Union of Florence. Proofs that, I mean, that's fully in accord with Orthodox ecclesiology. It's unfortunate that those other ones did sign the Union of Florence. But that's not a proof against Orthodoxy. That's only a proof against Orthodoxy when you have a misconception about our ecclesiology.

There's no magical five. It's not grounded on the magical five. If it was grounded on the magical five, for three hundred years, there weren't the magical five. I mean, Nicia, you start to have this discussion in Canon sixth there of these important cities, there weren't. There wasn't a magical five in the second century, and not everybody knew what the Church of Rome was doing. How are you? How were you in the second third? For any of these

early centuries. Do you think they had time to follow the soap opera drama of Vatican Insider, to keep up with the latest tweets from Frank to see who's Orthodox and who's not, what they should and shouldn't do. It would take years for something to reach Rome and be disputed and then be written back and then have an exchange back and forth for years. Read their letters of Basil, Read the letters of Augustine. I've read them right. It's

years of back and forth. So it's loony tunes to think that the Church could be grounded on these appeals to Rome. And by the way, if you make the argument that everybody was appealing to Rome to subtle things, then you prove my point about councils being superfluous. If just appealing to Rome was the way the early Church settled things, there was no need for councils. The mere fact that the councils existed, that they were called by the emperors proves I review. Now they said, well, wait

a minute, though, you don't have ecumenical councils anymore. Ecumenical councils existed and are defined by the term ocumene. The ocumene is throughout the imperium. So yeah, they only make sense in that way because the meaning of the word is in accord with the totality of the empire. When the empire ceased to exist, no, for us, there would not be ocumene councils. But guess what, there were no acumenical councils for the first three hundred years, would the

church do well? They had synods? They had synods in here they're talked about in this book. Right, there are local synods prior to and I see it. The senat of Ancaira is prior to a Nicea and Caira is three fourteen and it's a local cyna that talks about canons and rules that were set up for the governance of the church. Now, this synod had nothing to do with knowing what the Bishop of Rome thought. And similarly,

canons are had throughout the church. This but for example, an Caira, the capital of Galatia, is a regional council with about a dozen bishops present. Okay, and it basically settled if you basic canon law, things about who can attend the Eucharist, what happens to people that are lapsed, this kind of stuff. Uh and bishops. Right, where is the appeal and decision of the Bishop of Rome in

this council? Oh, it's not there, but didn't need well, I thought that all the church fathers would appeal to Rome. Now this is is the local senence sinodal Okay, So if the church can function sinotally for three centuries, without necessarily any appeals to Rome or without an ecumenical council. Then doesn't that seem to suggest that the normative ecclesiological governing of the church is sinodal. Yes, exactly, of course it does. Now, then when controversies raged throughout the Empire,

you have the institution of the ecumenical councils. Now we affirm the ecumenical councils on the basis of the fact that they're true. I know that's a kind of a shocker here, But there's no magical formula to a council that makes it true because it's a council. Of course, Yeah, we don't believe that. We don't believe that it's because we give it the title ecumenical council that that makes it true. Because there were robber councils and false synods.

But the only way ultimately to know what's a false council and a true council is the exact same epistemic dilemma that the Roman Catholic has in describing or figuring out a false true a false pope from a true pope. It's no different. It's the exact same question and dilemma moved back a step, so just to say, the only way to know the difference between a true and false council is by the pope begs the question that the pope is Orthodox and he's a true pope and not

a false pope. And even all the Roman Catholics who just follow Frank are wondering is he a true or false pope? And even when they go back in history and they look at people like John John the twenty third or do excuse me twenty second who was excommunicated. Oh, he was ex communicated, but uh, yeah, he was still pope, And who cares. We don't. We don't care about the

stupid debates because they're using sonodal church government. Now the Roman Cathicals say, yeah, but yeah, but but it was this, the sonodal stuff can be true, and it's still true that the pope is infallible. Why are they had synods that have no mention or interest in the Bishop of Rome that are making canon law, governing the church sonotally for hundreds of years before the first Ecumenical Council. If it's not what we say it is, it's obvious our

view is correct and caira gangra. There are canons and synods that govern the church locally. So it's only when the emperor and then when we begin to have the conversion of the imperium all right, Constantine, Theodosius, et cetera, et cetera, that the councils can become empire wide, imperial. That's the meaning of ecumenical council. So it doesn't become a question then at that point of the number of people there right, it's not ecumen because it's five hundred bishops.

Some councils had a very small number of bishops. Some councils had hundreds. So it has nothing to do with the number any more than it has anything to do with that number of pentarchy or five cities, has nothing to do with it, no. So that's why for us, for example, even after the split between East and West, the only reason we don't talk about ecumenical councils is because the okumen A pretty much cease to exist right out well after the fall of Byzantium. But we do

have synods and councils that are binding. The Palamite synods and councils are binding on orthodoxy and the fact that we sing that in the liturgy, and we talk about those synods and we just what last week, two weeks ago honored Saint Gregor Palomas and the uncreated Light, and it's in the sonoticon of Orthodoxy two. So you have to believe those things. They're not optional, right, And so this is even this is a misunderstanding that Orthodox have too, right.

I mean, it's not like I mean, imagine being in a church in the three in the year three hundred. No Orthodox person would would would would say, well, we haven't had an acumenical council yet, so no teachings are binding. That's that's absurd. Let's retard it. Right, But there are some Orthodox people who have this mindset that the only thing that's binding on Orthodox is the the Seventh sent No, that's not true. It's not true at all. The medieval

synods are binding. Now, ultimately, why are they binding? Ultimately it's a question of what's true or false, And there's no way to get around that question. It doesn't matter whether you're Roman Catholic, whether you're Protestant, whether you're Orthodox. Nobody has a magical formula for the ultimate question of whether this thing is true or false. Okay, you can't just say, well, we know it's true false by a whole bunch of people deciding it. No, a whole bunch

of people can be wrong. Okay, well we know that it's true false because the pope decided it. No, because that begs the question that you are correctly interpreting the pope and that it's a true pope not an anti pope, which by the way, there have been like forty Ani popes that it is the that the Pope is himself Orthodox, etc. Right,

So no, it's not true. And if there are Orthodox who are misinformed who think that just because it's not an ecumenical council, it's not something that we pay attention to or but I mean, the liturgy is not an ecumenical council, and every Orthodox person follows the liturgy. So this is really a weird Protestant or even Roman Catholic mindset. Like the only way we know what dogma is, the only way to know dogma is to know it individually

and personally. So now at this point in the Roman calics, well I wit a minute, though, see see this is where you lose me, because you're starting to sound like a Protestant. You're sounding like the guy who says that we was the Holy Spirit guides me. Here's the difference between us and the Protestant. We don't believe that the Holy Spirit has deemed to guide people as atomistic individuals.

No church father ever taught that. Nobody ever taught that in history of the church until after I don't know Adam Smith and the economic revolution. This idea of atomistic individualism is what are the means? Well, the only way that we're going to know the means by which God ordained to guide the church is to go back to Revelation. Right. So you're so, what an't it? This is circular? Yes, it is circular because at the question of ultimate foundations

of paradigms and worldviews, circularity is unavoidable. So what makes a council true? It being true? There's no other way to answer that question. We would even say the same thing about a pope. What makes a pope a true pope?

That he's orthodox, not a magical formula. Not magically. We're going through some right, you know, white smoke burning in Rome and some guys who wear creepy red capes making some decision that no, there's no, there's no infallible guy that the Holy Spirit is guiding these clowns and mobsters in Rome. And yeah, they are clowns and mobsters, all right,

and everybody's starting to figure that out. That's who the Spirit is guiding to be the the cart of Jesus on earth, a bunch of mobsters, give me right, come on, So no again, everybody who existed in the year three hundred knew that the Church was governed by scripture, by the bishopric, the local bishops, and this synod. There hasn't been an ecumenical council. Does that mean because we've had three hundred years of Christianity and no ecumenical council, nobody

knows what the church teaches? Did everybody just right to Rome, Pope, tell us, please, we don't know what Christians it is. We don't trust reading the Bible and going to the liturgy unless you interpret the Bible and the liturgy for us. This is this is why they should have shouldn't they? I Vatican One was true in the year three hundred. Did anybody do that? No? Now, let's fast forward up

past these regional synods, just for a brief moment. I want to think about something here, which is that Rome admits that John Damascus is a doctor of the Church. Now that one of the reasons I continue to go to John Damascus is because not just the fact that, you know, as a Protestant, I read him and he, you know, changed my mind on things like icons. But as I delved into defense of the Orthodox Faith, my assumption was that Aquinas is teaching nothing different than than

Saint John of Damascus, because they both like Aristotle. So it's gotta it's got to all be. In a court, there's no way that there's two different sis. It's got to all be. It's just got to be. But I hadn't really read and understood John Damascus at that time. I didn't understand that he talks about God having one energy and many energies. I couldn't make sense of that. I didn't know what that meant. I couldn't understand what he meant in book three when he talks about the

uncreated energies deifying Christ's humanity in the incarnation. It didn't make sense to me why. I mean, well, I mean, I'd accepted what he said, but I just assumed that, well, that's no different than what Aquinas teaches. But then it's not, you see, because eventually when you really understand the difference and why one of them is teaching, for example, that the grace that's given to Christ and the incarnation, the grace that Christ communicated to his human nature, and the

incarnation is created. It's a created, habitual grace. Let's see that, because they will lose their mind thinking that I'm making this up. Let's find this quote and we're going to see why they created grace. Stuff matters. By the way, somebody says this, the drag Us link is broken. Okay, let me let me reget that. Reget the link again. Here. I might have cut the HTM off there by accident. Let's see. Let me put it in the chat. Let me try that link. Okay, the link works for me.

I've tried it twice. Now. That's an important essay, really important essay. It was one of the first when I was when I was runan Catholic and started to look at Orthodox. It was one of the first essays I read that was really kind of whoa I never really I didn't know anything about you know, John the eighth and the eighth Council. But I did want to show you this quote about the grace. I'll get so many messages I can't keep up. The source inside the link

itself is broken. So the essay has a citation in which the link is broken. I can't I can't help that the link inside that old essay is broken. I mean I can look for that. Just use wayback machine. See if you can pull it up on wayback machine. Rome didn't recognize the Council of eight six nine's for over two hundred years before the reverse course exactly exactly. So Jeff Jablonski is making a great point there. Yeah.

I mean you'll find you'll find Roman Catholic historians kind of go back and forth on what happened at the Eighth East and the eighth West. But typically they will they will say that it that it was ratified, but that later some decision was made. Otherwise it doesn't matter, because the point is that John the eighth ratified the Eastern eighth Council and didn't want to use the feel okuayh. So here is the statement from I think this is ought.

I'll put the link because everybody's gonna crazy put their links, making up quotes, right, So here is the well, I need to screenshot it. No, Lincoln, let's see here. Okay, So here's the the Aught quote about Christ's humanity having created grace. And you'll see as we get to the created grace part towards the end that this really just kind of lines up with the argument I was making the whole time. Even the grace and the incarnation in Christ.

Humanity in Rome's rhetically is created. Ought says, by reason of his endowment with the fullness of created habitual grace, Christ's soul is accidentally holy. Right. So this is where I when I was talking with classical theists, and I said that At says that the infused it's the infused substance,

when I should have said infused accident. Right. But the point being is that even the Roman Catholic scheme, even that system, recognizes that what Christ does to his humanity and the incarnation is the exact same as the type of grace that we receive ourselves, because we're participating in his body. Right. And this is why St. Cyril, when he argues against the Storists, he uses the argument from the Eucharist. He says, the Eucharist is not just the body and blood of some man, it's the body and

blood of God himself. Therefore it's participating in the uncreated energies. Right, this is what Maximus argues against purists, It's what the Sixth Council is teaching. It's what Book three of Saint John Damascus argues in on the Orthodox Faith. And it's clearly once again contrasted here with Christ's soul is endowed with the fullness of created habitual grace. His human soul obviously, right,

that's created grace. And when we get again, when we get to the to the list from Aught, we're going to go through every one of the points that Ought talks about to see that I am right and you are wrong. And we will go to a bunch of other Catholic authorities and writers to look at the what

exactly it means when they say created grace. So let me see if we so people are saying that within the drag as essay, there's a link that's broken and and yes, that is an old website, So I would try a wayback machine because most of the time when I've had I've had to do that with this site. In GeoCities type site before. Most of the time I've been able to find whatever link was broken with way back.

But let's see, it looks like there's what's the part that I mean, the essay is here, what's the part that's broken that matters? So you're talking about the first link that's at the very top. That's just the same essay, right, It used to be at I think that was tr Valentine's site. He used to have all these orthodox essays up, so orthodox outlet for dogmatic inquiries. This old site just mirrors the essay, So it's not the broken link is not a substantial link unless you mean something within the

essay that I'm not that I'm not seeing. But no, as well, by the way that in that essay, Photius, Saint Photius says that the Bulgarian missionaries were Franks spreading the Philly oquay, and he does not mean Franks in a generic sense of Westerners. He means Charlemagne Franks. He makes it clear somebody was challenging me on that too, and I was right. Okay, So we got these points

on sanctifying grace that we want to get to. Uh now again, I promise you that we are going to do a talk where we go through the papal claims claimed by claim of claim like the big ones, the important ones. But what we wanted to focus on today was the circularity. So now on the question of individual certitude and the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Let's see, I wanted to make a few points on this because let's see I was making I had a discussion with

Lewis about this I wanted to make. So he was asking a question like, so, how would we respond to like a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, Like if we're making this argument about the Roman Catholic, then it sounds like we are saying the Protestant view, like, oh, it was just the Holy Spirit. God's the individual. Well, again, there's no magic formula to know true truth or falsehood

apart from directly knowing God. And in fact, there's a statement from Saint Gregor Palamus where he says essentially that same thing. He says, there's no there's no external phenomenon out there that's going to grant you the certitude that you get from revelation. So there's this is why it's an initiatory religion and experience and not a rational one. I'm not saying that it's irrational, but it does transcend rationality.

It doesn't mean you can't have certitude, but certitude is a gift of grace that comes in the context of the Church. So there's no way to grant that certitude merely by reason to people outside of the experience of God directly. So that's why it really is a direct perception knowing of truth and God directly. Now does that mean that we're gnostics and we don't have any created phenomena that's involved in this religion. Do we just forsake

everything created and like retreat into some gnostic thing. No, because Christ took on matter, right, He's sanctified matter, So we would say then, I think that if the individual can know directly, and he can, then we've already kind of made ground and made progress, even in contrast to the Roman Catholic system, And the Roman Catholic is already halfway agreeing with us, because again, the pragmatic point of the papacy was so that the individual could know truth right.

So we're agreeing that the individual can at least to some degree come to truth right, and we're agreeing with the product the Protestant says the same thing, Yes, the individual can know true. Okay, So what happens is that we get the idea, as we said earlier, of the self evident, neutral maxims that are supposed to be the judges of the truth. That's where it starts to be a problem for the Roman Kulic because there aren't self

evident maxims that aren't theory laden. They are, So as a Roman Catholic, you can't, on the one hand, adhere to a foundationalist classical foundationalist epistemology of neutral, non theory laden beliefs and then turn around and say that ultimately the individual can know truth. So what we're disagreeing on ultimately is the means. And when we start to ask the question of the means, it comes down to a

difference of epistemology and a difference of anthropology. That's why I mentioned the doctrine of the news, because that's the one thing that the Roman Catholics the Processts don't have. They both believe in the exact same dichotomy doctrine of man, that man is a being with body and intellect, and that knowing God involves. For the Thomas, the analogia entus knowing created effects and never God directly himself. There's no

doubt about that. Again that even I think was at one point pretty clear in the discussion with classical theists is that we're not ever knowing and experiencing God himself directly. It's always only created effects. So even if they say that the real presence is in the Eucharist, it doesn't really matter because you're not really going to God because you're still only getting created effects. It also makes no sense to say the Eucharist is the essence of God.

That's crazy. Nobody believes that, although they're confused about it. That's the point. So what we're ending up differing on is the means that God has chosen for us to come to, and no religious truth. Even the Roman Catholic will agree that the Holy Spirit has a role in teaching the individual. So it's a question of the means that's the real point of departure, and not just the means that God has ordained to bring us to truth,

but the anthropology to get to that truth. So Rome has analogia entus, the analogy of being for knowing and predicating about God right the divine names, even though in the divine names, by the way, Dionysius says their energies right as I showed you in the thing I tweeted, I have to I mean again, just go read the divine names instead of trying to argue with me. People need to read these actual documents. There's three places where he talks about the energies in the divine names Dinasius.

That is point being Quitas relies on Dinysius pretty heavily. That's why I'm bringing them up. But instead of the analogia inis and created grace in Rome for knowing God and experiencing God, in Protonism, you have what's called analogia fide in Algia of faith, by which they just mean the Bible, the canon of the Protestant Bible, of course. So what we have here is is two different schemes of knowing God, analogia inis anologia fide. Orthodoxy doesn't believe

either one of these. Orthodoxy does have the Bible, it does have a canon scripture, and it does believe that that's the word of God in terms of Christ revealing himself to us through that means. And we have an analogia in the sense of the uncreated energies, right, the operations that come down to us. Saint Basil says in a letter two thirty four, whether God's wisdom, his justice, his mercy, these energies are operations that come down to us.

We do. We can make an analogy to human operations, right, uncreated light, you can make an analogy to created light. They're not the same. But we can speak of God as Father as an analogy to humans as father. So there is a valid analogia in Orthodoxy, and this analogy is taught by Saint Basil, is taught by Gregory Naziana Zeus, It's taught by John Damascus very clearly in his book. This shouldn't be debated. But there are a few small areas of Orthodoxy that will say that there's not even

any apps. Roman idea says there's absolutely no analogia at all period, which is not true. That's completely incorrect. That's why he has to go so far as to say that scriptures don't even matter. Can't you can't call the Scripture as a word of God, because that would be the sickness of religion and analogia. His error is in mistaking the analogia entis for the logi.

Let's stress that the Protestant is in no better position than the Roman Catholic actually on this stuff, even though they might think they're in a better position because they don't believe in analogia entis. If they're like Calvinists and they think they're skirting around that and they're saying, oh, it's just the Bible, right, the canon scripture is our analogia, our true analogy. It doesn't work because even still in the Protestant scheme, you're never actually interacting with or touching

upon the Divine. There's no direct experience of the divine at all. Ever, in that they also only believe in created grace and created effects, because the Bible is a created effect. So what the Roman Catholic tries to do with the analogia of things out there in nature and the analogia from scripture to the divine essence. Right, absolute divine simplicity means that we are predicating analogies from creatures up to the divine essence, which is nothing like creatures.

By the way, Paul says in next seventeen that the divine Lussia is nothing like created things. But because of absolute divince siblicity, the Roman Celics make this confusion. So neither analogy andthis nor analogia feedde are correct. The analog whether it's in scripture or whether it's in nature, are according to Saint Maximus, according to Saint John Maamascus, according to all of our teachers, the uncreated logoi the logie

that's the solution to this dilemma. And it's never going to be solved by these guys until they actually just do their homework, until you actually just read the Eastern fathers themselves. You have to go and read them. There's no other way around it. Okay, So I'm gonna take questions because I'm sure there's gonna be a million questions. And again we are this is just the talk on circularity and epistemic claims. This is not the talk on the various misuses of papal stuff. But let's talk about

created grace, because this came up again. So we've been talking about the creative grace. I'm saying that the Roman Catholic and the Protestant both have the created grace problem. The Roman Catholic position is not unclear and it's not undogmatic. Let's take one. This is father Barker Baker. I've got it listed on the well here. If I don't say the exact name right, they'll say I've made it up. Let's see, it's all got to be very precise. Real

is made up? Father? What is this guy's name? Barker fundamentals? Loos is only three? By ignacious press? What is sanctifying grace? Justifica? And you'll notice by the way he uses almost all the exactament terminology I used in the discussion with uh classical theists, except that again I misspoke, and I said created if you used subs and not accent. Again, it doesn't matter, because the force of the argument still holds justification as the spiritual process by which a person through

faith in Christ receives sanctifying grace of God. We've already considered the major aspects of actual grace in this essay, which we will look into, and then so we will look into the ess to the issue of Saint Frankrace. The question we want to answer is what is it? Baltimore Catechism says that the grace of God confers in our soul's new life, that is, as sharing in the life of God himself. Oh oh no, wait a minute, the life of God isn't created, is it? No, God's

life is uncreated? Question one eleven. What is this new life? Is it a created gift of God to men? And notice how clear and simple and straightforward they are. Right, They don't launch into endless nonsense. They just outright say what's very obvious and what any Roman Catholic would say when you go ask them, Go ask any priests and they'll tell tell you this or is it the communication of God himself? Now? Remember how I argued from Trent right, and those guys didn't even know that what I was

that I was quoting was from Trent. The guys on Twitter losing their shit, They thought that they got me and the quote was actually Trent itself talking about the Canons, and they thought I made it up. No, I got it from Denzinger seven ninety nine. Because I've read Denzinger twice. It doesn't mean, by the way, I might not misstate a word every now and then. Right, the most common opinion on Catholic theologians is that sanctifying grace is a created,

supernatural gift. We're talking about the gift itself, the grace itself. We are not talking about the bread and wine and the Eucharist. We're not talking about waters of baptism. We're not talking about an angel. Okay, because every Roman Catholic he tries to deal with this, We'll say, well, but there's created things that are grace, therefore it's created grace. No, we're talking about the gift itself. We're not talking about water and bread and wine. We're not talking about sacraments.

The grace itself is conferred on the believer, and it is really distinct from God. Can you read that? The Council of Trent said, the sanctifying grace is God's justice, not by means of which he himself is just, but by which He makes us just. So it is not God's justice or righteousness, or love or glory. Can you get this through your thick Roman Catholic skulls? It is not God's justice. It is a created, supernatural gift created. Can you read that? And every Roman Catholic I ever

asked says the same thing. And then they go on to say, well, but it does prepare you for the participation in the divine nature. Now, wait a minute, those two things don't make sense because the divine nature is not created. Now why are the confused on this? Because of absolute divine simplicity? And because the Roman Catholic Church rejects the essen synergy distinction? Okay, not rocket science. This is not hard to get. It's not hard to figure out.

What does Father Harden say? Now, I don't feel like this is on my wall in the group. I tweeted all this stuff. So if you want, if you think I'm making it up, I don't feel like clipping every single one of these pages, you can just go and find the quote in Father Harden. I mean this is a common book too. Everybody's familiar with Father Harden's Catechism used to be in every bookstore. Even secular bookstores carry this catechism. What is creative grace? It is something create?

What is sanct fying grace? Something created giving to us by God which gives us a created likeness of God's nature and life. Uh oh, exactly. It is a supernatural gift infused see into our soul, a positive reality, spiritual, supernatural and invisible. It's a created, supernatural gift. It is not God's nature, likeness or justice. It is created. There's only two types of things, created and uncreated. So that's Father Harden's book. I'm not misquoting it. You can go

look for yourself. This is uh the Bishop of I just went through listing all the different typical teachings that I could find. The Bishops of Australia have a lengthy essay on grace and if you want the links, they're all on the page. This is not even controversial. It's like you guys are trying to trap me, play gotcha on something that's not even that controversial. So what if I use the wrong word? If the point is that it's still created, bro, what does what do the Bishops

of Australia say? By the way, if if if it's if the Romanchanic Church is the true Church. Why can't they just say the uncreated grace, like the sixth Council in John Damascus, in Saint Maximus against Piros, say why do we have to have all this confusion? Why can't they just know that every church father in the East, who dominated all those councils, teaches uncreated grace and Theosis. Half of these guys don't even know what you're talking about.

You top theos. I've had Roman Catholics at the time you say theosis, they think you're talking about paganism.