Protestantism & Evangelicalism Refuted - Orthodox Theology - Jay Dyer (Half)

you boys and girls. You can take your notes here. The nerds are pleased. And we got one hundred and third. Last time I did a weekend stream, I got like three hundred people right away. So where is everybody partying tonight? What is tonight? Is this party night? Is this fish fry? Is this the feast of Saint Booz tonight? Anyway? So maybe with the aid of dry erase board, we can help you kids get along in the world. Maybe if you're good, I'll draw you a bronie all right now,

will be taking questions. Of course, We've already got a couple of super chats. Appreciate that go. We're going to talk about I'm gonna I want to try to go pretty hardcore. I want to go in depth because I've had so many questions about doing, you know, reputation of Protestantism over the last few years. So we've covered a lot of ground with Catholicism. We've done a lot of theological issues related to Rome, but we haven't really done

a whole lot of protest and apologics. And we're going to do some of that tonight, so hopefully we can hit all the majors. I've got with me my seven Ecumenical Council's book from the Chaft set, so we'll be diving into some of that, looking at the councils. And yes, we will be doing the papacy very soon. In fact, there was going to be a debate and surprise, surprise, he wasn't ready to do it, which is what we always find. And yes, we will essentially probably work through

the famous of ab gatea the papacy. This is one of the classic critiques of the Roman Papacy by a convert from Rome to Orthodoxy, So some of the other books that would be relevant in this for newcomers, I always recommend The Experience of God to Everybody by Father

Stunny Lloyd. This is a classic of Orthodoxy, so that's a good one to get in terms of what we conceive of as a holistic view of salvation, theosis or identification in Christ by Paniotis Nellis, so that's another good one you can get trying to get the light right, so it doesn't there you go, there's a There are sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas on Mary why She's stay at Tokos, and of course the writings of Saint Cyril against this Storius on the Unity of Christ, and John

mcguckin's book Saint Cyril of Alexander and the Christological controversy will will play a central role in the theology that we're gonna be talking about tonight, because most Protestantism, whether it knows it or not, falls into Nestorianism. So we'll get into all that later on. But uh, for other options, people going what they think is other routes, I recommend the set of a conciesst Delusion by John Pontrello, good book.

He was influenced by my work. I can't get the light right set of a conscious delusion, so that we don't go down that road, that mistake. Let's see what else have we got here. Michael Welton's book is pretty standard. Two Paths Roman Orthodoxy Michael Welton, Two Paths, that's a good book, one of the Catholic stuff, because I'm sure we're gonna have a wide audience here different theological views.

And then, of course it's always important to understand the cosmic scope of Orthodoxy as opposed to the limiting scope of all Western theology, whether Roman, Catholic or Evangelical. And to begin to understand the cosmic scope of Eastern theology, you need to understand Saint Maximus and to understand that Christ is by his incarnation united to all human beings, universal human nature. That's why all men are resurrected. That

is the universal teaching of all the Orthodox fathers. After Augustine, the scope of salvation begins to be limited, particularly in terms of the elect or the predestined, and Rome certainly goes down that route. So then you have the loss of the cosmic scope of the redemption. However, Roman's eight Paul very clearly says that the scope of redemption is cosmic. And then of course you can read Lars Thurnberg's summarize work there Man in Cosmos on Saint Maximus as well.

And then for worship, of course, Orthodox worship, it's a big deal for many of the Protestancy evangelicals. Orthodox worship is based on the continuity of worship in the Temple and the Synagogue. So I would recommend Orthodox Worship a live in Continuity with the Synagogue Temple in the Early

Church by Williams and Anstall. And for maybe something a little more on the scholarly side of things, if you're interested in just the historic the Orthodox Liturgy by Hugh Weybrew the development of Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine era. So those are some introductory books that are worth checking out if you are because everybody always asks for books. I have already linked below the recommended reading section. And tonight we're gonna be talking about not just the Bible,

not just theology. We're also be talking about a lot of history. Now I have old essays that everybody could read and Jason. Also, I worked all day to day basically fixing old articles. So I fixed another thirty or so, so you can go and find all those in the archives. But I have old articles that deal with the canon of Scripture, the septuagent, the use of the Deutero canon by the early Church, the Catechism. Get ready, what are

you talking about? Catechism? Get ready? Yes, microcosmo media, right, yes, exactly. So basically in the archives you can find all the kind of stuff that I'll be talking about in written form. So and no, I'm not referring to them, You'll just have to dig them up. We're all going to be just going from memory here. So I've put enough time into this. I can do all this off the cuff over the years. So now I would not do a drinking game based on the names I use. All right,

So where to start with Protestants. Well, it doesn't really matter whether we start historically or whether we start biblically. Both are going to be problematic. So I think if we, let's see, I want to be able to pull up the Church fathers to have the quotes ready for you when we refer to that. Let's see here, So similar

to the critique that we had with with Rome. We're going to see that there's a different anthropology, there's a different theology, a different eschatology, a different ecclesiology, a different sacramentology across the board for pretty much all forms of Protestantism. And you're going to notice as well that the absolute divine simplicity doctrine of Rome will really condition absolute divines,

will condition the theology and Protestantism as well. The difference is that it will condition the theology in a different direction than it conditioned the Roman theology. Roman theology, of course, was a lot more make sure my volumes levels are right here. Roman theology was a lot more philosophical than

the truck of Protestantism. Of course, Protestanism, seeking to out of the humanist tradition of the Late Renaissance, returned to the original sources, the idea of being able to just go back to the Bible, just go back to supposedly the original sources, the original texts, right, the Greek, the Hebrew, and then we could we could purge the Church of all of its accretions, all of its man made traditions, all of its bogus ideas and doctrines that had that

had crept in over the centuries. Now, as Orthodox, we do not believe either the Roman Catholic doctrine or the Protestant doctrine, so we will agree that there are problems on both sides. And one thing I'm going to recommend to you that shows this the same point about basically falling on two sides of the same coin, is the

book by doctor phil Schard Church gives Them a Papacy. Now, the best part of this book, which you can still get online Amazon, I think has it pretty cheap, is the chapter about I think it's the last chapter about the Trinity affecting Rome and how the papal doctrines are connected to the philioque right, because again, absolute divine simplicity

conditions the entire Roman scheme. And the reason I recommend that on the Protestant stream that we're talking about is because it's going to be the same issue in Protestantism,

except on the other side of the dialectic. So whereas in Rome the papacy begins to be viewed as necessary because of error on the Holy Spirit and then thus basically not understanding the power of the Holy Spirit to guide the Church within history Pentecost right because of an error quite literally on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, you're going to have a displacement of the doctrine of

how man understands and perceives doctrine in history. So what happens is that Rome sets up this external juridical means by which we supposedly know doctrine and theology, and the papacy is supposedly the solution to this. We get the idea of the great imperial God, Emperor of the Pope, who makes the final decisions, supposedly, and that's the only way to know what's true or false. Now, if you know anything about basic epistemology, you know that this just

moves the problem back of stuff, doesn't it. There's no insurance policy that you know that you're interpreting the papacy correctly. In the twentieth century, papacy bears that out perfectly, because nobody is sure what to do with Vatican two, and there's a million different interpretations of Ettikan two. So so much for the easy, simple jurisdictional perfection interpretation of the papacy, and wider Catholks believe that because they believe in classical foundationalism.

This is a view of epistemology that is connected to classical apologetics and approaches to anthropology and epistemology, and it's connected ultimately as well to tonism. And we're going to see that. Of course, in the Protestant tradition, the early Protestants, they continue all this, right, they continue classical foundationalism, they

continue the classical apologetics. They have the same epistemology. Basically, there's a good book on this about similarities between Calvin and Aquinas, because it's something it's called Calvin and Aquinas. I read that many many years ago, back when I was a Calvinist. And the point being is that the anthropology that you get in Protestantism is not really any different than the anthropology that you get in Rome, except that they see the fall is basically different and having

different effects. So you get a little bit more fleshed out anthropology and scholastic speculations. I cannot get this right without light shine off of it. All. Right, here we go. I have to hold it like this down here, right, So we're going to see that Orthodoxy has a different view here on all these and also has a different view of anthropology that is neither Roman nor Protestant. So a couple more terms we want to keep in mind here.

We don't believe in classical foundationalism because that's essentially an empirical view that would arise after Aquinas in terms of how man knows God and does theology. Hence we get natural theology. Hence we get the idea of we can look at the natural world and we can reason back to a generic first cause a right, the generic creator. In Roman theology, we're gonna call this an analogia us

right now, there's a corollary in Protestantism called analogia fe day. Okay, So these are two more terms we want to be familiar with because they have a lot of impact on the history of Western theology. And what again, I want to show you consistently. And the reason I'm bringing up both Rome and Protestants here is because it falls on two sides of a coin. So the analogy of being, this is the tonistic idea again that created order. You

can reason back through cosmological succession to a first cause. Right, this is the whole aerosol first cause stuff. And since all things possess all things possessed being, there must have been a first being, and it's a supreme being, some kind of generic supreme being. This is all the garbage traditional classical apologetics of aquinas in the Western tradition, which

led directly to atheism, because those arguments are bad arguments. Now, in contrast to this, the Protestants came up with a different idea of how man knows and approaches God, because they have a different anthropology, and they have a different conception of the fall, they have a different conception of salvation, different conception of what grace is and how man is saved, and so likewise, knowing God required for them a different approach,

which they called the analogia fide or the analogy of faith. So, because man has fallen, he can't really reason from the natural order properly back to some first cause or some creator cause. Instead, he needs revelation precisely because of what we might call the noetic effects of sin, this is the mental right effects of sin upon humankind, and because they're so severe in the Protestant tradition, when we speak of Luther or Calvin or the Calvinist tradition or the

Puritan tradition. We have to understand where this theology leads us, right, and we're going to see that this doesn't work. So what happens in the Protestant view. We're going to speak classically here of the Reformed tradition, the Presbyterian tradition, the Calvinist tradition, and also by extension, we could apply it to the Lutheran tradition as well. The noadic effects of sin, this is the mental effects of sin, and they are such that human beings cannot properly interpret the natural world

without revealed information about the natural, namely scripture. So this leads to solo scriptura. The effects, the extreme effects of sin after the fall, have so damaged human nature, catch that human nature, that human nature itself is almost sinful. Now you get different approaches to this. Now, Luther writes a book called Bondage of the Will, where essentially he affirms this. He affirms the Manichean doctrine that human nature is inherently sinful. He says, man is an ass that's

either written by God or the devil. So he explicitly denies the power the energy of a natural human will in mankind. Likewise, Calvinism, although it affirms the goodness of the human will, in most cases, the human will has no ability whatsoever to move towards God. It is dead in sin. Man has no natural ability at all. It's been destroyed as a result of the fall, and hence

their doctrine of total depravity. Now, total depravity doesn't just affect the movement of man's will and conversion, it also affects how he interprets scripture. This leads to the doctrine of the fallibility of man in interpreting scripture. And what happens, of course, is that this is one of the chief reasons that they reject the infallibility of the papacy, because of the noeedic effects of sin. There's no such thing

as an infallible interpreter. But now both of these problems run into Both of these positions run into a little bit of a problem when we consider the fact that the noeedic effects of sin also seem to affect the believer in interpreting the scripture too, don't they Well, yes

they do. If the effects of sin are such that, as the Westminster Confession of the Calvinists say, even after conversion, sin is still affecting you throughout your life daily, right the way that even if you try to interpret the scriptures, you're still dealing with the noetic effects of sin, even if you've been regenerated now. But the problem is that you don't ever then get to any potential certitude or

what we might call infallible certitude. Doesn't matter what you put in whatever interchangeable terms you want, The noedic effects of sin already conditioned the impossibility of certitude when it comes to understanding scriptures or relationship with God, because ultimately you don't even know if the psychological subjective belief that you have that your quote saved or the one of the elect is not a delusion. And many of the

Puritans suffered with this psychological delusion. And what do the Protestants say, Well, they just had to fall back on Well, the spirit will assure you if you're elect. Okay, but how do I know, Well, if you bear the fruits, if you bear the works worthy of repentance. Well, but how do I know I'm not bearing dead works that I think are true works? Right? You see, So there's this never ending sort of introspective pietistic lose yourself in gobbledegook.

When this is all because of the errors of Protestantism based around faulty human anthropology. They have the wrong anthropology and they have the wrong anthropology because they departed from what the Church had already established in terms of the medical councils. In terms of Christology. You cannot have proper Biblical orthodox anthropology without the right Christology, because that's how

we are. That's how the Church has fleshed out what proper anthropology is through the centuries of the council's debating and settling christological disputes. And because and the reason for that is because the christological disputes solidify the Biblical revealed tradition about what it is to be human and what the fall is and what Christ did in the incarnation. That's why we're going to see, for example, that the Council of Ephesus, we'll talk about the deifying flesh of

the Eucharist. Christ deified his flesh and the incarnation, and then by extension in the Lord Supper, the Eucharist, we participate in that deified humanity. Now that's not at all believed by any Protestant sect out there, and I don't care about Anglicans and all their speculation. That doesn't matter because it's all the same nonsense. It's all the same gobbledygoog.

But we want to start there because we already see from the outset that the systems of whatever form of Protestantism right, or whatever form of Catholicism it's contrasted to, they really exist. Prot exists as a kind of negation of Rome. It doesn't exist as a historical phenomenon that has a lineage that it can trace back, because as soon as we start going into the ecumenical councils, all those ecumenical councils refute every aspect of protestantsm across the board.

They believe in tradition, they believe in the real presence of the Eucharists. They believe in icons, they believe in relics of the Saints. They believe in confession to a priest. They believe in the visible body of the Church. They believe in they believe in a historical succession of the Church. They believe in oral tradition, they believe in the episcopate, uh, they believe in basically any anything but Protestantism. There's there's nothing about the first millennium of the Church that is

Protestant except for the heresies. And this is what's amazing and why everybody, for the most part who really delves into church history in the first thousand years of the Church Fathers will usually convert either to Roman orthodoxy is because they realize that, uh, they didn't teach Protestanism, and in fact, the same heresies that the early Church Fathers

battled pop up in Protestantism. For example, example, Jerome wrote against heretics who devaught, denied the relics, right, who denied the goodness of the sacramental aspects of creative, creative creation and the created order. Right. Jerome has multiple treatises against this. Jerome has treatises defending the perpetual virginity of Mary. All right, So if you're new to the Church Fathers and you start reading that, you're like, WHOA, You know, I wasn't

really expecting this. I myself was Calvinist, and Calvinists all hold Augustine in high regard because they thought he taught the doctrines of grace. Right, Apparently that's all that matters is as long as you get this doctrine, this generic idea of the doctrine of grace correctly, that's true salvation is actually having a proper understanding. So it's like a rational mental state that is true faith, which is defined as a proper understanding of salvation by faith alone, through grace,

by faith through grace, etcetera. Exactly what that means, well, that requires a whole bunch of scholastic litigation and reading giant Puritan tones to try to figure this out. And then hopefully you're not deceiving yourself by thinking that you're

one of the elect when you're not. So again, it's not hard to figure out when you do begin to delve into the Church Fathers that although these so called Protestant Reformers wanted to maintain Orthodoxy so called, they end up messing up on the doctrines of christology and human nature and they don't even know it. And that's because Protestantism essentially arose out of an attempt to go back

to Augustine. And it's that simple. But that only works if Augustine was fundamentally correct on most of his points, and he wasn't right. That's why orthodoxy is universal. Orthodoxy believes in the common ideas of the Church fathers. We don't exalt one guy. We don't exalt the Bishop of Rome, we don't exalt Augustine, we don't exalt one guy over there acquit us to be our so called pre eminent theologians.

That's not universal, that is local, that is that is not that is fundamentally contradictory to what we would say about the Catholicity of the Church, which is ironic because both Protestantism and Romanism to try to somehow claim Catholicity anyway. So we start with the notion of how do we know what's true? And we mentioned solo scriptura. Well, it's not very difficult to break apart the idea of solo scriptura, even from scripture itself. Scripture itself does not tell us

which texts were supposed to be in the canon. And anybody who's read anything about the history of canonicity or the compiling of the text into what would become the Bible knows that this was done over many centuries in the early Church. Now we don't have, for example, a statement that the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew.

The apostle there's no biblical statement to prove that. It's a aspect of tradition that went into the decision of the Church fathers to include Matthew's Gospel in the can Now, that wasn't the only reason that Matthew was included in the canon. It was included because it was handed down

in certain bishoprics and known to be authentic. So there's a liturgical aspect of canonicity which no Protestant knows or understands, which is that if they were going to have these synods and councils to determine which text would make it into the canon, it would require more than just some guy reading it and saying, I feel like this was written by the apostles and it aligns with the Restroscripture

because I read the other parts of scripture. That's presupposing what the scripture is, and that's what's in question, right. So there's multiple synods that are happening throughout the first several centuries of the Church. We don't have to just point out Roman Catholics always say the Bible was the decision was made by the fourth and fifth centuries by the Roman Church. No it wasn't. It was longer than that, and there was not even a definite canon by the

fourth and fifth centuries in the entire imperi. So it's many, many, many centuries debating when the normative canon would be settled. And even still when you factor in the idea of tradition oral tradition, there's still minor variances. Even amongst Apostolic churches to this day, there are still divergences. You know, the Slavonic canon is a little bit different than other canons, and that's because we don't have the sole scripture review. That's not a problem in our church and our tradition,

but it is a problem in Protestantism. So the more uneducated versions of Protestantism, in response to these kinds of issues, they'll fall back on stuff like King James only, which you know, is really really absurd, but it doesn't even

really deserve to be to be dealt with. But sticking to the main point, one of the things that would go into, for example, the decision of canonicity would be whether it had Apostolic pedigree, whether whether the church fathers felt like it could be attached to one of the apostles like Matthew, whether it had been read in the electionaries.

This is something Protestants don't anything about. But from the early stays of the church, because the church comes out of temple slash synagogue worship, they had what were called electionaries and electionaries or old collections of texts to be read in the church services, essentially a liturgical type document, and a lot of those electionaries had ancient readings in them. Okay, So it's not just a question of let's go back to the ancient church and see who had the most

copies of Matthew's Gospel. Right. There wasn't just written copies of Matthew's Gospel. It was also in the electionaries. It was also in the liturgy, the daily readings. It was also in church fathers. Church fathers would copy, you know, proof texts in their writings. Okay. So all of this goes into the decisions of canonicity over many centuries. And I will give you for example, there's a Protestant scholar named Lee MacDonald who is a Baptist who wrote a

book about the formation of the Canon. And at the back of Lee McDonald's Baptist book on the Formation of the Canon, he is a Baptist liberal I should admit. And I'm not signing him because I think he is a reliable person. I'm signing it because here is a Protestant. Let me let's see here, let me pull it up for you. Yeah, who charts all this out for you?

And he's like, well, you know what, I guess if this is true, then we've got to be liberal, right, So in other words, he in order to maintain the Baptist nonsense, where else could you go but be liberal since this is true? Right, because there's no solo scriptura for centuries right now, we haven't answered this. Not just

be liberal. It's the orthodox tradition, right. Tradition is a big part of how this canon is brought to be, how it comes to be over many centuries, and you can't divorce it from the oral tradition, the liturgy and the decision of the church in terms of the bishops. Wasn't a decision that the Bishop of Rome said if this was all, if the early Church fathers had the Vatican One view of papal infallibility, all anyone needed to do was just ask Peter's magical Church of Rome, which

one is the true canon, and they would know. But guess what they didn't know. Did you know Athanasius had to go to Rome and argue with them about the inclusion of the Book of Revelation. Yep. And Lee McDonald's book in amazingly in the back includes all of the differing canons of the church fathers. Right. So Origin had a list, Athanasius has a list. Other church fathers have a list. Right, So you can't just treat the church

fathers like solar scripturia, which is what Protestants do. They'll try to like mine the church fathers as if the writings of the church fathers in just another version of solar scripturial, like a very Talmudic type thing. No, because they didn't have the same canon. So there's absolutely no way for the Protestants to get out of this or to figure this out. And I spent a long time

as a Protestant on this very question. I've read probably fifteen books on this question from Protestant scholars and academics. Another one I can recommend that will illustrate all of this is the famous evangelical scholar F. F. Bruce's book The Canon of Scripture. Now. Elf FF Bruce is a scholar who is a conservative evangelical. So we had Lee McDonald with his sort of liberal leanings because he couldn't

figure out how to make sense of this. And here is a conservative evangelical and guess what his book makes all the same points I'm making to you. These are Protestant evangelicals who are realizing, Oh, the retard Baptist answer as to how we got the Bible is retarded. It's not true. So what do they do, Well, they just presuppose that the spirit guided the church. Oh no, wait a minute. Now, if the spirit can guide the church in the decision of the canon, maybe the spirit can

guide the church in other decisions. Has it ever occurred to you as a Protestant that maybe that's the case. Well, it is, okay, So there's no there's absolutely no solution to this as a product. And in fact, when we read Second Thessalonians two what is it thirteen fifteen? Yeah, fifteen. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and the traditions that I delivered to you,

whether oral or written. So Paul and Second thessaloni Is two fifteen commands the church to continue to keep the orld traditions because there was no Bible at this point. Do you understand that there was not a Bible. They were using the most of the time, the Septuagint, the Old Testament Greek. Most of the quotations of the New Testament from the Old Testament are from the Septusient, not all, but most, and there are many dudo canonical citations. By

the way, the New Testament references the Deuial Kennon. Did you know that Protestants, Yes, it does in many places, and so do all the Church Fathers. Now, I remember when I really dove into the Church Fathers back when I was about twenty three twenty four, and I started

noticing all this this. It really shook me because you know, I had spent many many years in and apologetics as a Protestant, you know, really trying to hammer down this stuff, and realizing that if we base our belief system as a Protestant on the Bible, it also requires that there be some kind of guidance or certitude about knowing that we have the right canon, because guess what, not everybody has.

Everybody has the same canon of scripture, do they. The Protestant canon is different from the Catholic The Protestant canon is different from the Orthodox canon. So if the Bible alone is true, then it requires that we be certain about which Bible, don't we right? So how do we know that we have the right Bible? Well, we assume that the Holy Spirit properly guided the Church to collect these documents together. But guess what. This decision, as everybody knows,

was made hundreds of centuries after the time of the Apostles. Now, if you read my essay The Biblical Nature of Sacred Tradition and jas Analysis, you will see where I go into extensive detail about numerous examples of tradition, not just in the New Testament or in Paul's you know, admonitions or whatever. For example, if we think about the fact that from Genesis to the time of Moses, nothing that

we know of was written down. It was an oral tradition that was handed on from the patriarchs through the Family of God. Essentially at that time that was in covenant with God. The other nations, pagan nations, as far as we know, did not have the revelation of the covenant of God except for maybe a couple examples of Melchizedic or job. So from the time of you know, Adam,

eve Seth Noah down through the patriarchs Joseph, Abraham. We don't know that any of that was necessarily written because the Torah is from the time of Moses, which is a significant number of millennia right after Adam. So for all of these centuries God can preserve the revelation. Orally, that means we know that there's nothing that's inherently flawed or there's nothing outside of the power of God keeping him from preserving oral tradition. God can do anything he wants.

You know, what does the Angel say, is there anything impossible for God? No, of course not. So there's nothing inherently wrong about oral revelation being preserved from Adam to Moses and Joshua. So when we serve at the Old Testament, we realized that all the patriarchs operated through this kind of infallible oral tradition, that they maintained a right. So that, by the way, shows that they weren't purely infallible, totally depraved human beings because they were able to preserve this

revelation they were certain about it. Now we also when we read about for example, Abraham building an altar, we know that he wasn't given a written textbook to instruct him how to do this. But he had at least some sense of direct revelation with God or something of that nature, or he knew in terms of the oral tradition that had been passed on him how to do this. So even ceremonial aspects of the way Abraham acted or keeping of the Sabbath, for example, even that preceded the

written text of the Mosaic Law. So when we keep that in mind, then we can move into like the historical period, for example, and we see second second Chronicles twenty nine or Hezekyah talks about stationing the leevites in the house of the Lord with symbols, string instrument, harps, according to the commandment of David, Goad, the Goad, the king seer, and Nathan the prophet. For thus was the

commandment of the Lord by his prophets. The leevites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets. We do not have a written record of what David commanded concerning these things. Furthermore, it is also clear that King David flourished some two hundred fifty years before the time of King has Akiah, so it might be argued that this was David's opinion concerning worship, but we know

that God doesn't typically tolerate human opinions in worship. So this is the irony of kind of the regulative principle of many Protestants is that the way that has Akaia knew this was because of the world tradition. So again I'm not saying that that means we just make up stuff. It's rather that there was a body of doctrines handed down even at this time, which was being passed on.

And yes, it does get corrupted. Jeremiah talks about the corruption of human opinions being added on, and it's the same thing that Jesus rebukes in his day about the scribes and the Pharisees. But the fact that there were corruptions does not mean that there wasn't still a solid, true revelation from God. The mere fact that we have

the Old Testament in our scriptures shows that. So the point here is that for the Protestants, for the Evangelicals who aren't aware of this, we start to realize that out the Old Testament, there's many examples of traditions that are cited in what Protestants believe is the word of God that are not part of the canon. We read in numbers twenty one, there's a citation of the books

of the Wars of the Lord. We read in Joshua ten, the Book of the Just, we read in Second Kings about the Book of the Just, we read about, the Book of Nathan the Prophet, we read about Let's see, there's a whole bunch of these, the books of Ohias the seal Anite, the Book of Ido the Seer, They're all quoted throughout the Old Testament. And nobody knows what these books are. They're lost to history, but they were not viewed and at that time as lost to history, right,

they were cited. So those books had true tradition that, in God's providence, did not make it into the canon. But the point is that there was oral tradition, were extra canonical traditions that were true. And this is the

same attitude of the Church today. So this is why, for example, in John twenty it says Jesus did many things, and he did countless signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book John's Gospel, but the ones that I have written for you are written that you might believe that Jesus is the son of God.

And he says later in John twenty one, if there are many other things that if Jesus did, if they were already written down, I would suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that could be written. So the point being is that you'll see examples of this. For example, Paul in Acts will quote Jesus in a sex in a text that we don't have any reference to Jesus saying it is more blessed to give than to receive, but Paul quotes our Lord as saying this.

Now we'll see other examples like, for exa, a protest will cite Acts twenty twenty seven about the full Council of God, which they assume means only written texts. But it doesn't because when Paul preached, for example, an Acts, we read about the story where he preached all night long, and you know, somebody fell asleep and fell out of the window and broke their neck basically, and Paul healed them. That entire sermon is the Council of God. We don't

have that sermon, but he preached an entire sermon. You see. So the Apostolic preaching was authoritative and it was inspired. It wasn't just the written text of Paul. It was anything Paul taught, because Paul had the Holy Spirit. Now this is I'm making these points because these are points

that Protestants don't usually think about. That's why we read, for example, for this reason, without ceasing, Paul says, because when you receive the Word of God, you heard it from us, and you welcomed it not as the word of man, but as it is the word of truth, which effectively works in you who believe. That's first Essaloni's two thirteen. So paul oral preaching, he calls the word of God. You see, because Protestants have all these dumb things where they try to say, oh, it's only the

written thing Paul was only reciting. Was he just reciting the Bible? Of course not. No, he was preaching orally for hours from the Old Testament, right and whatever gospel he might have had. And here specifically and for Assonians two thirteen, he identifies his oral teaching with the Word of God. So, in other words, the oral teaching of the apostles was also infallible. And this is why he commands the Thessalonians to continue the oral traditions. He says

this also to Timothy. He says to Timothy, hold fast to the pattern of sound words which you heard from me oral that the good thing which was committed to you will be kept by the Holy Spirit dwells in us. So Paul believes that the passing on and he ordained Timothy right by laying his hands on him Apostolic succession. And then he tells Timothy, lay hands on men after you,

but not hastily. Apostolic succession. And he says that the Holy Spirit will keep that inheritance, that will keep that tradition. That's Apostolic succession. Second Timothy one thirteen. He also says to Timothy and Second Timothy two, you, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace of Christ. And the things that you have heard from me, these commit to faithful

men who will teach others. Did you hear that the things you heard, the oral teaching that I gave you, commit that to other men, and then they'll pass it down. That's apostoltics succession. And that's the oral tradition being passed down. That's what all the church fathers teach. They do not teach sola scriptureup and even if they did, which they don't, but even if they did, you don't have the right canon. No Protestant believes in the Deutero canon. They all follow

Luther and Calvin and rejecting it. So, by the way, you wonder why there's higher criticism in Protestant churches across the whole world, Well, maybe because your founders saw fit to toss out books they didn't like.

of God is that which was preached to you. And again, that wasn't just reciting Bible texts, right, because they weren't sol scriptura. They didn't have a canon. Yet this is how stupid it is for Protestants to use all these texts as if it presupposed soul scriptura. There wasn't a canon yet when they were writing this. John hadn't even written The Apocalypse. So Peter understands that the oral preaching he did was infallible and it was aspired revelation from

God just as much as the written texts were. So you'll get Protestant. Even James White will admit this, and some of the debates that he does. But this is when you count. When you factor in the fact that other texts of the Bible had not been written yet, then the whole Council of God doesn't make any sense on their Protestant argument, How could it be the whole Council of God that Paul is instructing them to follow, namely solo scriptura, when the whole Council of God had

not been revealed yet it's retarded. We read in Colossians four, salute the brethren who are at Laodicea Nymphis and the church that is in his house. And when the epistle shall have been read with you read the Epistle to the Laodoceans We don't have Paul's Epistle to the Laodioceans. Okay, so even aspects of what Paul taught or wrote have been lost to history in God's providence, Now is that part of the whole council of the Word of God. Protestant now say why he got lost? It doesn't matter.

But again, the point is that there was no canon. They didn't have a canon. Right. You can't read into the mind of the first century Church five hundred years, six hundred and seve hundred years before canon came about and assume that they're teaching sol scriptura. They're not. Jesus doesn't teach script Jesus refers in many cases to oral tradition, and in many cases in the New Testament, the deteral

Canon is cited. Now, these basic facts completely destroy the Protestant position of sola scriptura, like there's no refuge for any of it, because the entire thing is erected on stupid assumptions, namely the assumption that anytime I read something in the New Testament is talking about sola scriptura, which is the sixty six books of the Protestant Canon that I presuppose. I mean, that's so stupid now we have, let's say, one example from the Early Church, which is

the Council of Gangra. And I believe the council it's a local syna, but it just it gives you an example of the Early Church in the three hundreds. And I believe the Council of Gangra is reaffirmed at later ecumenical synods if I'm going for memory. But this is a local synod of many bishops of the Early Church,

and again about three twenty five. And it goes on to talk about the necessity of keeping the oral traditions, of keeping all of what was handed down, and it talks about discipline in the church and the tradition of discipline in the Church. It was already, by the way the Apostolic Canons. If you read the Church Fathers, or if you have the Church Fathers say, you'll see that the volume on the Apostolic Canons, this is the normative approach of the Early Church to doctrinal questions that came up.

By the way, it excludes effeminate dresses, for men don't dress eminently, but it says, make sure in all things that what we've been delivered in the Holy Scriptures and in the APIs traditions are observed in the churches. Now you can go with the stupid you know, seven day av in this type nonsense of saying, oh, well that's three hundred. That's around when Constantine he messed the church up. That's when it got messed up. I s when the

system of Antichrist entered the church. Well, Jesus says, the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church. And there were no Baptists in the third third century, There were no Baptists in the fourth century, there were no Baptists in the fifth century. There were no Baptists in the sixth century, except for heretics who had very similar views to the Baptists, right, the Rebaptizers as they originally

called the Anabaptists. Right. So the early Church in countless examples, and again you can read my essay just for a few examples will affirm the necessity of keeping the Apostolic traditions. Now, if we look at for example, Nicea, which as an important canon excuse me, counsel, when it came to determining the canon, it would it would be important. We do not find anything resembling Protestantism in the many Canons of Nicea.

We find Constantine making Nicia civil law. According to page eight of the chef set, we find baptismal regeneration taught. In Canon two, we're told that there's no immediate episcopacy allowed for converts. Episcopacy that's bishoprics. Now, every Baptist, by the way, it will affirm that they believe in the Niceno, constant and Apolitan creed because it teaches the deity of Christ.

But now wait a minute, all these people who they believe teach the deed of Christ, they teach all this Catholic stuff that I'm talking about, and Athletic can be Orthodox, right, we are Orthodox Catholics. Canon three talks about clerical celibacy, that there was a widely established practice of clerical celibacy. It also wasn't enforced by the way Roman Catholics. Canon five talks about lynt and it talks about the Eucharist

as an offering. Canon six talks about the major Metropolitans and the raising and lowering of certain jurisdictions, and how it is a custom for the Bishop of Rome to have the first among equals status. So, by the way, every Orthodox person, for a thousand years knew what Canon six of Nicia says and has nothing to do with papal supremacy. What does it say is the reason for Rome being mentioned a custom, a tradition. It doesn't say

anything about magical petrine supremacy. It says that Rome because it's doubly apostolic. If you look at every Orthodox icon of Rome, it's the Church of Rome, it's Peter and Paul, and they're both equal holding of the church. That's why Santa Renas calls it doubly apostolic. And he says it's to be followed because they teach rightly. He doesn't say it's magically delicious. He doesn't say that has a magical terrorism of Matthew sixteen. No, it's called in Canon six

of Nicea a tradition. It's a tradition to have the honor given to the Roman bishop and then after him. Likewise, it says, did you know likewise, so listen to this. The Bishop of Rome is to have jurisdiction like Alexandria, and likewise Antioch and the other provinces retain their traditional privileges. It's customary they have limited jurisdictions. The jurisdiction of Rome is likewise a limited jurisdiction of Antioch and the others.

And everybody who's honest with Nicia knows that they didn't think Rome was what Vatican one says. Do you think that at Vatican one, the exact same mindset of what's going on at Nicia was that it translates. Of course it doesn't. Do you think that, Nicea they thought that the Bishop of Rome could depose anyone in the world. Of course not. That's because he's a Roman patriarch. And the Canon seven makes this clear. When Canon seven and Icia says that it is a custom about the Bishop

of Jerusalem, these are customs. Canon eight is about the ordination of novations being valid. In other words, all of this is a million miles away from anything Protestant or Baptist. Canon eleven is about the sacrifice of the Eucharist. Canon twelve says that you can be in the military. There's nothing Unchristian about being in the military, which disproves pacifists. By the way. Canon thirteen is about ancient canon laws that retain to the reception of the Eucharist from the

bishop at death. You know, any Baptists to do that. I don't never heard of that. Let's see Canon eighteen is about the offering of the body and blood of Christ on the altar. Wow. Anyway, there's more canons, but you get the point here. The point is that every Baptist on the one hand, or Protestant or whoever, doesn't have to be out to somebody's using them as an example. They will refer to Nicea as something that is the you know, the great pinnacle of church fathers, defending the

deity of Christ against arias right. And every Baptist believes that Jesus is divine. Well, they're supposed to, and they tend to believe in the creed of Nicea and Constantinople One, hence the Niceno Constantinopolitan creed. But in fact, when we read what the mindset of all of these Orthodox Catholics was, they would not hesitate to call these people lunatics, idolators, and pagans, which the early Reformers did. So there's nothing at all about this council and these canons that is

all favorable to anything Protestant whatsoever. Now, in response to this, most of the time the protests say, yes, we know that We don't care about your man made councils. Dude. Now wait a minute, you don't care about man made councils. But how the canon of Scripture come to be? Where did it come from? It came from these councils, and not just one of them, many centuries. Well, I'm going to trust that God led these men to put the can Wait wait a minute, you believe they're all idolators

and and and phonies. They're apostates, they're the Church of Anti crash. But they put the Bible together. This is other utterly retarded. This is nonsense. Now I want to look here briefly at a couple more points on the canon here. Uh, and I have reputation of the prostant Canona Scripture, which is a very scholarly work that I did about twelve years ago, ten years ago somewhere in there. Uh, and we look through you know, if if let's tell

what I did in this this uh. This article was a Protestant, famous Protestant Ian Paisley who says that the Jews did not accept the dudoconical books. Let's go with his first argument, they were not part of the oracles committed unto them Romans three to two. Therefore they are not written in Hebrew. This is false. Paisley makes no

distinction between Jews of the Diaspora and Palestinian Jews. Palsinian Jews eventually rejected the Septuagent, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament composed in the second third century b c. At Alexandria. It is well known that the Septuagent was the Bible of the Diaspora Jews of and the Bible of all the early Church, the Old Testament Bible. Furthermore,

it's also a fact that the Septuagent contained the Dudoconical books. So, for example, if you look at Oxford Church historian Paul Johnson in his book History of Christianity quote, there was already in the first century a huge Jewish diaspora in the Mediterranean, and they utilized the Greek adaptation of the Old Testament, the Septugent, which was composed in Alexandria and

used amongst the diaspora. Lee McDonald that are referenced earlier says in the formation of the Christian Biblical canon, it is most likely that these dud Chonical books were considered by the Jewish community holy or sacred well before the time of Christ, and they were thus inherited from Judaism. There is evidence that at least some of the non canonical books of Protestantism had their origin in the land of Israel, and were translated and transported there from Israel

to Alexandria. Probably whether the Jews lived in significant numbers where they lived in Roman Empire. The grandson of Ben Syak, that is, the writer of the book Ecclesiasticus, lets us know that he was translating for Jews in Alexandria. The New Testament also has countless allusions to the judo canonical books. Did you hear that the New Testament has countless Of course it does. Anybody who reads about it knows that the oldest collections of the Old Testament scriptures by the

early Church contain the Duchonic literature. Of course it does. Fassett's Bible Dictionary the Protestant Text. Protestant Dictionary says apocrypha the writings in the Septuagent first and second Ezra Tobad, Judith Esther Wisdom, Ecclesiaskus, Barrack, Song of the Children, Susannah Bell,

and the Dragon. The Protestant in Nelson's Christian Dictionary says the Septuagiant incorporates all of the Dudo chronical books, with the exception of Second Esdras, and they are not differentiated from any of the other Old Testament books in the Septuagent I mentioned F. F. Bruce earlier in his book Kenneth Scripture, he writes, whatever wording of Stephen's defense in Acts seven may owe to the narrator, the cons consistency with which the biblical quotations are read from Stephen in

Act seven are from the septuagent. As soon as the Gospel was carried into the Greek speaking world, the Septuagint came into its own as the sacred text to which the preachers would appeal. It was used in the Greek

speaking synagogues throughout the Roman Empire. Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly, Anglican writes in his famous Early Christian Doctor's Book, it should be of the Old Testament, thus admitted authoritative in the Church, a different canon from the masoretic Palestinian Jewish canon. Of course, it did, and the Protestants all follow the Palestinian Jewish canon. It was always included with varying degrees

in the so called apocrypha or the dudocononical books. This is the reason for this is that the Old Testament which passed into the hands of the Early Church was not the masoretic Hebrew text, but the Greek text known as the Subtuagin. There you go. F. F. Bruce writes, Yeshua bin Syra was in Egypt in one thirty two BC, and he translated his book The Wisdom of Ecclesiasticus or Syric,

from Hebrew into Greek. Lee MacDonald again writes that the dudochroonical books were transported from Israel into from Hebrew and into Greek at Alexandria, on and on and on and on and on. Charles Pfiffer's book in the Dead Sea Scrolls on pages sixteen seventeen says all the same stuff. Now, Ian Paisley, who I've chosen as just one Goufus evangelical example of why he thinks he has the right Protestant canon. His next argument was, the New Testament never quotes the

Deutero canon, and the Early Church never used it. This is utterly retarded in idiotic. Ecclesiasticus is cited in John Second John ten Ecclesiasticus eleven thirty one. Ecclesiasticus eleven eighteen through twenty is cited as in Jesus's Parable of the Wealthy Farmer Luke twelve nineteen. Jesus' statements about the I making the whole body dark in Matthew six twenty two are a reference to ecclesiastic As fourteen eight through eleven.

This is my article I wrote ten years ago. Wisdom twelve and thirteen are exact parallels to Roma's one Do you hear me? Wisdom twelve and thirteen exact parallels to Roma's one. Wisdom two contains a lengthy prophecy of Christ. Wisdom, too, is a lengthy prophecy of Christ, and the Church fathers all used it of Christ. Wh I think the Jews rejected the Judo canon because the Church fathers were using it and the apostles were using it to prove Jesus.

In the Old Testament, Hebrews eleven five eleven thirty five refers to women and children who refused to be delivered from death and accepted martyrdom to achieve a better resurrection. This is second Maccabe's Seven Dummies. Now there's a whole bunch of more examples, but that should suffice. Let's see from Protestant Jan D. Kelly again, it should be observed that the Old Testament, thus admitted as authoritative in the Church, was bulkier and more comprehensive than the Hebrew Canon. It

was the Septuition. And let's see Nelson's Christian Dictionary once again. Protestant. The early Church fathers Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origin consistently cite the dudoconical books. Christians made extensive use of them for apologetic purposes because of the text referred here. They utilize them for the incarnation the logos the Son of God. However, the Reformation leaders were instrumental in completely rejecting the duo deudro canon and thus refuse to ascribe

to them the status of Word of God. Now, anyone who spent any time in the post Apostolic Fathers, whether it's Clement Ignacious Origin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, they know you will know that they frequently cite the decononical books. So it is athenacious. And these are all the church fathers who determined the canon. Right, So if some Guphas says, well who cares what the church father said, Well, these are the people who determine the canon Guphus. That's

why final Paisley argument. Ian Paisley says, the Synod of Laodicea, the local synod which many Roman Catholics will refer to, and the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon do not accept the dudo canon. Once again, Ian Paisley is completely idiotic and knows nothing about what he's speaking. Laodicea was a regional synod, and it was actually a series of synods over many years. And again, the canons, as we saw from Lee McDonald's if you read his appendix in his book, there's a

whole list of all the different canon. There's canon, there's all kinds of different canons. There's not one canon. So there are some people who doubted the Book of Revelation. There are people who doubted the Gospel of John. Many thought the Gospel of John was gnostic, not universally, but some thought this is dubious. Now we all know today that This is ridiculous. The Gospel John is not gnostic. But there were some areas of the church in the

early Church period where people doubted it. People doubted the Book of Revelation. They thought it was too crazy, too wild. Again, Athanasius had to convince Rome to include Revelation. So it really doesn't matter that Ian Paisley finds a list of a canon in Laodicea where they're not mentioning the Duro canon. Secondly, the fact that it's not mentioned in the normal list doesn't mean that they didn't cite from it. That's why it's called the Duduro canon, right. It doesn't even in

our churches. It's not accorded the same status as the rest of the text, but it is part of the Bible. By the way, you have to read first and second Maccabees to properly understand preterism. If you don't read Versts Second Macabees, you can't understand the Book of Daniel and Ezra Ezra also Verst and second Asdris. That helps vindicate the timeline of what Daniel talks about in his prophecies.

So it's only shooting yourself in the foot and doing damage to your own religion when you toss these books out, because those books actually help vindicate preterism and the destruction of the temple in seventy eight. And by the way, if you read the Orthodox Study Bible, you get all that. All of that is in the study notes under the deduoconomical books. If you read through the entire Orthodox Study Bible, you will get all this. You will understand why it

is the Deudero Canon is there. It's there for historical testimony to the theological points and timeline of things like Daniel, the prophecies of Daniel. Now this is look at let's look at how stupid this is. Leo, the Great Pope, Saint Leo at Chalcedon frequently cites the dudoconical books as scripture. And this is one of the key arguments that Ian

Paisley thinks proves the Dudero Canon isn't scripture. By the way, why is he citing Catholic Orthodox Catholic synods to prove his point that itself disproves him because he doesn't accept their authority. Another point, too, is that the Senator of Leo Deicia is one of these many synods that does not accept the Book of Revelation at scripture. Oops, So

that doesn't work, does it? No, Because we don't go by what one local synod you know, in the year three point forty one decided about the scripture in the Canon, and nor does Ian Paisley and his goofy examples here. And when we think about the Council of Chalcedon, why would we cite Chalcedon. Calcedon speaks of the Bishop of Rome as the first patriarchate along with Alexandria. It speaks of apostolic succession, It speaks of the canons and councils

that teach apostolic succession. It speaks of hierarchy, it speaks of monasticism, tradition, et cetera, et cetera. There's nothing Protestant about that. How are you going to use that in your dumb arguments? So thus, and much more could be said on this, but the point is that it's easy to operate on assumptions and think that you're right and think that you know what you're talking about about the

church fathers or the history or how this happened. But that's very different from when you actually go and you read the Church fathers. When you spend thirteen years reading them, then you start to realize that not only were they not Protestant, teach anything anything Protestant, anything approaching close to Protestantism. And if we just let's if we consider this historically. I'll show you this very boring book by Alistair McGrath, which I did read a long time ago, back when

I was still Protestant. I think it was right around the time I was leaving Protestantism. This came out somewhere in there. But this very boring book is funny because here you have a Protestant basically doing historical theology, Alster McGrath's Eustacia Day, and it's about how nobody taught justification by faith alone. Oops, no orthodox father, no Western Church father, no far Church writer, no liturgy, nobody. Now, goofy evangelicals say, so what the church? The church went into a blackout?

Excuse me? I thought, the gates of Hell can't Preveilicans the church. Uh. And by the way, so where was this doctrine? Who who was there that taught this? Well some of them will say, well, they were there, We just we don't have any evidence of the true Baptist believers of you know, first Baptist Church of Laodicea and two hundred a d. But they were there. There, there was a Blood River Baptist Church in Rome, and they were hidden, and they were in the catacombs. It was

a secret church because they were being persecuted. Now, wait a minute, No, in the first three hundred years of the church, all the people who were the Orthodox Church fathers were being persecuted. The Baptist gufuss were not being persecuted, namely because they didn't hardly exist if you want to

link them to heretical group. So the point is is that this has been well documented amongst the Orthodox Church fathers and amongst Protestant scholars and academics of the history of the Church and history of theology, that the early Church doctrines are not the Protestant doctrines. So we know that they didn't have solo scriptura. We know they didn't

have solo fide, which are the hallmarks of the prostant Reformation. Also, by the way, I want to there's a series that I would recommend if you want to go down the route of getting deeper into this. I have I think I've read almost all of Pelican's books pelican Yuros of Pelicon, but his the best history of theology is probably you know, if you don't want to immediately dive into all the writings of the Church Fathers, which I would actually recommend

that above, most people just start reading secondhand scholars. Why aren't you reading the actual Church fathers? You know, same idea of the Bible. You read the actual Bible and the Church Fathers for yourself. That's not Protestant. It's not any more Protestant than when Roman Catholics go read the posts for themselves. Is that Protestant? So Pelicon series is a classic. I read this ten years ago, the Formation of the Catholic Tradition volume one, and then you can't

see volume two on here. But then it goes up to medieval and then Reformation and then modern is Jesus book. Sorry, he has a book on the Canon two that's not bad. Shows that, you know, the Protestant conception of how the Canon came about is nonsense. But Pelicana eventually ended up Orthodox. Actually, if I recall, he was a Lutheran who converted to Orthodoxy. So that is a good series if you want a scholarly approach to the history of theology. Right, So there's

different kinds of theology. Right. There's patristics, which is the writings of the church fathers themselves, or the lives of the Church fathers or will it really lives of the Church fathers would be hagiography, lives of the saints. There's also church history, which is not necessarily the history of theology. But you know the Ecumenical Councils book that I have here with me. This would be like you know, canonics or that would be like studying church history basically, and

obviously there's some overlap. But then there's also the history historical theology, and that would be what Pelican's series is historical theology. So if you want a theological overview of the history of the Church, then I would read his five volume series. Now, the point here was to show essentially that just in the in the terms of the Solas in Sola Scripture, was to show that the Bible doesn't operate in a vacuum. It does it doesn't come to you outside of a historical context and outside of

the liturgy. The Bible is actually a liturgical document, and it was meant to be read. This is why all of the church fathers, or excuse me, that's why the apostles talk about the Word of God, which you heard from us, right, So it's it's a it's an oral proclamation. Certainly the texts are written, and certainly they should be read and must be read, but they cannot be divorced from the church. This is why Paul says to Timothy,

the Church is the pillar and ground of truth. He does not say the Bible is the pillar and ground of truth. He says the institutional historical church. And this is why when we begin to move into reading the church fathers, when we read Ignatius, when we read Aaronaeus, when we read Clement, when we read Ambrose, when we read Augusta, and when we read Jerome, we find that they don't teach anything approaching Protestantism, none of them at all.

They all teach Apostolic succession, They all teach Abstock tradition, they all cite the Dudo Canon. They all believe in synodal church government and ecumenical councils. Eventually, on and on and on the point being the fathers of our church, right, they do not teach Protestantism. They don't teach any aspect the Protestantism. Now, one thing they do teach is that you can, in the context of the Church read the Bible.

And there were periods in the post Tridentine era of Roman Catholicism where Rome did try to forbid people reading the Bible, mainly because they wanted to be fair to Rome. They were trying to protect protect against faulty Protestant translations, which there were actually many Protestant translations of the Bible after the first Bible translated into English. By the way, it was a Catholic Bible, but the Tyndale Bible and

other others were fairly notorious for not being very good. Yes, Calvin does the Judoo canon I've read, I've read the entire Calvin's Institutes fifty fifteen, fifty nine whatever. The later one is, the two volume one, but Calvin does not rank them as canonical. All right, now we're going to move on to the point here was that what this is how we have to approach the questions of how the Bible came to be before we can try to just assume and claim that we have the right Bible.

Because if the Protestants don't have the right canon, then sol scripture doesn't work, and they don't and if, for example, Wisdom. I remember having a Protestant friend I used to argue with old Time and you finally got furious because, well, you believe that if something is prophetic and preaches Christ, then it's inspired, right And he said yeah. And I said, well, do you think Wisdom predicts Christ in the text that I mentioned earlier? He said, yeah, it does seem like

that's predicting Christ. And everybody admits that was written before the birth of Christ. I was like, well, how come that's not in your canon? He said, well, the providence of God determined that it would not be in the canon. I said, well, who were the instruments of the providence of God? Well it was the historic Church. But that doesn't mean that they're right about everything. Oh okay, so I will follow the Church in the selection of the

book that I think is inspired on everything else. However, though, I'm going to go to the book that they gave me to determine that I don't think that they are the church. It really makes no sense at all. But if this guy were to admit that I was right. Guess what. He couldn't be getting his Protestant pastor paycheck anymore, could he. No, he would be kicked out of his made up Protestant sect, which was quite literally a denomination invented within the last ten years. So Luthor didn't convert

to Orthodoxy because he wasn't Orthodox. He was a man of Quean and he did not believe in the Orthodox inception of salvation. That's one Luther didn't become Orthodox, all right. So before we move on to the next section, here we mentioned a couple solas here, let's talk about let's do some of these super chazz while they're here. Anthony Cavalho ten dollars? Are you too white to grab early shekels? Or do you have enough in you to go for the gold? Ha ha haha, Thank you, Anthony, appreciate that.

Benjamin and Green on Angry Gnostic five New Zealand dollars, Process House Sola, Scripture Calxi of Magisterium. What is the

bonding authority in Orthodoxy? Well, this is why Orthodoxy doesn't attempt to create a single external juridical authority, because that doesn't work as a In other words, our worldview is based on transcendent truths, right, And when you talk to a Protestant or when you talk to Roman Catholic, they're both, as we said earlier, trying to essentially erect some kind of public juridical thing that everybody could point to to say,

there it is. That's the final deciding factor there. And we know because it's public and everybody can see it. But as we said, all that does is move the problem back a step. Right, And having spent ten years in Rome, I know how it works. I can attest to that fact because as soon as you start trying to figure out who's interpreting the popes or the councils correctly in Rome, there's a million different debates and nobody

can know, nobody can decide for sure. And it doesn't matter how many times the pope reaffirms something or restates something. You have to still assume that you are properly reading the pope. You see. So this is a problem of circularity that the Roman Catholic epistemology thought it could solve by just adhering to classical foundationalism, right. And this is the older medieval entomistic way of viewing human anthropology in

human nature. It's called classical foundationalism. That's why I mentioned it a minute ago. I'm getting a echo here. Let me fix that. So I mean, let's draw some come on now, okay, so we have I'm drum a little pope figure. So here's our here's our little pope figure here with his xis. Okay, all right, make sure my he's getting some feedback there. Had to fix that. So here's our little pope figure. And here's a little We're

gonna put a little lowly normy Roman Catholic guy here. Now, Pope figure just decides one day that it is time for an infallible declaration. Now he doesn't just simply cite in the document that it is infallible, which would make it pretty easy for everybody wouldn't know. What he does is he says that with full apostolic authority, uh, from the chair right here, he's gonna be proclaiming it in his proclamation bubble, I decree blah blah blah blah blah

blahlah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And then later he issues an encyclical that helps interpret this. And then later there's I don't know another, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issues a proclamation that helps interpret this, and then later there's another I don't know, papal whatever, it doesn't matter. Just come up with all the different layers and levels PC papal claim clarification, papal claim clarification. Now let's say this is how because also works. I'm

not I'm not joking, right, this is really how it works. Okay, Now, what is what is necessary for something to be ex cathedral from the chair? Well, it's for the whole universal Church. It's proclaim a full Apostolic authority right from the chair and supposedly or I'll put an inverted cross on him here, since they they love those inverted crosses in Rome just because of Peter. Ye're right. Now, here's mister lowly little Catholic guy here, And I'm not joking. This is how

comical it is in the world of Rome. About Now, how are you going to understand this miasma, which, by the way, cannot actually be understood without being situated within

the last two thousand years of supposed Roman dogma? Right, this is on the Catholic view, right, So you need a little bit of context of the last two thousand years, don't you to understand from the Apostolic seat chair Proclamation xxxx, which is also clarified in encyclical BCD, which is also clarified by the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith with

Ratzinger as its head supposedly years ago. With all so then the papal clarification that comes later down the road, and here's a you lowly little Roman guy, and you think we just need the pope to solve these questions

of theology. It solves it, does it? Really? But see what we've already done is we've introduced the mysterious chair of authority that isn't always made clear when and yes, Roman Catholics will debate ad nauseum which statements are ex cathedral and which ones aren't, which shows us that this whole nonsense doesn't really do anything like it's supposed to.

It doesn't solve the problems it's supposed to. If we're all sitting around for decades debating which ones are the ex cathedral pronouncements, that's because it just moves the problem back a step? Can you not see that? So here's lowly Roman Catholic, Now what does he do. He says, all right, I'm gonna interpret this, so in his mind, he's got to be sure that the interpretation of all this layers of gobbledinggook is proper, properly entering into his

mind and interpreted correctly. Now, guess what every Roman Catholic will tell you to do in this process. Oh, you can't just do this. This is kind of this is kind of Protestant, bro, it's kind of Protestant going directly to these papal proclamations. Assuming that you can figure this out, Oh you also need to Before you can do that, you need to go talk to your local priest, because your priest is there, Father so and so, Father Brute,

father breath, father Bruce is there to help you. No, no, no, you need to go first to Father Bruce, who will then interpret this for you to help you. That's not really works, right, But now wait a minute. Father Bruce is less than Orthodox, right, He's less in the romancallic sense. He's less than orthodox. We've all been complaining about Father Bruce for so long for having X Y Z heresy. Right, So how do we know that Father Bruce is going

to help us with us? Well, he's probably not. So now we're gonna have to ex out Father Bruce because we've decided he's not Orthodox. We're gonna have to go over here to Bishop Williamson in the SSPX, who's over here with his rival group. Maybe Bishop Williamson can help us out because he's faithful to tradition and he's not afraid to talk about conspiracy subjects. So now we're going to ex out Father Bruth and we're going to go

over here to Bishop Williamson. And Bishop Williamson is going to help us interpret this, and he tells us don't worry about any of this because this is not faithful to tradition. Now wait a minute. You see what we've done here is just a vicious, nonsense gobbledegook circle of trying to figure out the very thing that this was supposed to solve for us. But it doesn't, does it. And Vatican two makes that abundantly clear that you are in no better spot than the person that you make

fun of as Orthodox. Yeah, you don't have a pope, you don't have a way to determine what the infallible dog is. Have you actually been in Rome for any number of years neither do you. So that's how Rome Catholicism really works, and that's why Orthodoxy says it's a scam. It's a big heresy, and it doesn't solve for you the problems that it pretends to solve, and it doesn't

grant the unity that it pretends to grant. I can go to a Novus Orto chapel that is in full communion with Rome, that has never been excommunicated or rebuked, that will teach me freemasonry is good, that will teach against Roman Catholic classic doctrines. They'll have a liturgy that's worse than an Anglican liturgy. They'll have Zen meditation services,

and that's perfectly okay. And then I can go across the street to a Fraternal Society of Saint Peter Church, which is supposed to be the same faith, also in communion with Rome, that has a completely different liturgy in Ethos, to Zen Buddhist Novasorto Church. And then I can go down the road to the set of a contiest chapel that says that the other two are complete lunatic heretics. Now, who's right out of all these? And guess what you can't just say the pope. The pope decides. Now, does

that mean that we're in Protestant land. No, because when you read the church in its first thousand years, when they had all the same problems that we have today, what do they do do? They just say, hey, Bishop of Rome, what do we do? And then the Bishop of Rome just basically said do this, do that, do that, do that, that that, and then everybody was happy. No, they called councils. Did the Bishop of Rome convoke the Ecumenical council? No, he did not. The emperor is called

the ecumenical councils. The emperors called every one of the argumenical councils, not the Bishop of Rome. Now, anyway, we're not here to talk Rome here today, but we're trying to illustrate a point here about the problem of both Protestant and Roman Catholic anthropology and epistemology. Now, what's the answer, Well, specifically on knowing God in Orthodox theology, the key here is that we don't set up dialectics. Okay, so how is it is a Christian going to know God or

no truth? Well, first of all, that can't be divorced from the action of the Holy Spirit, right, So in that regard, a Protestant would say something like the Holy Spirit has to enlighten a person to know God, and we would agree. So in that regard we sound like we wel might agree with a Protestant, but we're not Protestants. Why well, because we know that in the history of the Church there are synods and councils that have been set up by God to ferret out truth from falsehood,

to excommunicate people, and so forth. So there we start to sound like we're Catholics, right, but we're not. We're not either one because we believe the historical formation of the Church was always sinodal and that Christ set it up that way. And the reason that we don't need the super bishop is because Christ directly is the super

bishop of his church. He doesn't need a vicar on earth with a giant palace and a bunch of castrated boys singing gay songs to him, which is quite literally what the Renaissance popes did, especially when there are three of them, two antipopes and one supposedly valid pope, living in giant French palaces castrating boys to sing pretty songs to them. No who in the right mind could think that that is the legiti, I'm a succession of the Apostles. That is preposterous. It's it's what the f dude, And

yes they did that. So, by the way, the abuse probably wasn't just in this twentieth cent the twentieth century, was it? If they were castrating little boys to sing pretty pretty little girl songs to them, something tells me those Medici, you know, Borgia characters were pretty degenerate. I don't know how Christ in their minds could have anything to do with that nonsense. But if you're a Roman Catholic, oh, I was way. It was so way it was, and that's you know, the pope is the The pope is

the the bridge between heaven and Earth. And as Unum Sanctum calls him like, it's almost like he's like another He's like a bridge between the Trinity and man. It's the pope utterly blasphemous stuff. So this is why we what you have to see is that the doctrine of the papacy evolves, and even the Roman Catholics admit it evolved.

This is why Cardinal Newman had to write a whole treatise defending the evolution of doctrine to explain how the early Church didn't believe in the Vatican One definitions of the papacy. Well, because doctrine evolved to that, that's preposterous, doesn't evolve, and only Orthodoxy strives to adhere to the ecumenical formation of the Church. Now you say, but there haven't been ecumenical councils for Orthodoxy. Correct, There doesn't have to be. There's no promise of Christ that there will

be an ecumenical council every century. There were no ecumenical councils for the first three hundred years of the church, and Orthodoxy does hold to binding doctrinal councils after the Eighth Council, and yes, there are eight ecumenical councils if you're Orthodox. Ecumenical only pertained to the Empire, and once the Empire was gone, there weren't ecumenical councils. There were still binding councils, and every Orthodox person still has to

follow binding medieval councils. Now you say, how do you know which ones are true? Well, that's why there's no simple answer to anybody's position about how you know what's true and what's false. First of all, the Church we know from Christ's words will always be guided into the truth, and we won't be let into error when it comes to major doctrinal issues. Right. That relies on understanding the scriptures. My understanding the scriptures relies on the testimony the Church.

Me understanding the testimony to the Church, and the scriptures relies on my having the spirit hopefully right. And so, in other words, there is no classical foundationalists public juridical thing that you can set up that is the public proof of truth, because truth can't be had by mere empiricism. It's not a merely empirical thing. It also requires the spirit, and the spirit's only had in the Church. So, in other words, there's not an easy answer to that question.

And it's also not answerable on the phony answers of Protestantism and Romanism. Now Protonism and Romanism, if you remember earlier we talked about them having Here's how we're going to answer the question for you. By the way, the answer is direct knowledge of God. That's how. Now you said, now, wait a minute, if you believe that you can know God directly, now you're starting to sound like a Protestant. Again,

what do we always talk about avoiding in Orthodoxy dialectics? Right, So this is key to understand here, and this is what all the Protestants and Roman Catholics don't understand, is that you don't need any dialectics. You want to throw them all out because you don't want to set the one against the many. This is what Protestants do. Roman Catholics do it by setting the pope over the church. They don't have a harmony of equality in the church.

They don't have every bishop having essentially the same power and function of the rest of the apostles. No, they think that Peter is somehow some galactic emperor. Did Peter act like a galactic emperor in the New Testament? Did he have a giant palace in France with castrated boys under him and zillions of dollars? No? No, that's not how the church operated. The church is not to be set against scripture. Scripture is not to be set against

the church. That would be a dialectic. The individual believer is not set against the rest of the church. The rest of the church is not swallowing up the believer. So, in other words, the direct knowledge of God that we read about in so many Orthodox fathers. The direct experience of God via the noos and knowing God is not set against church or tradition or community, the community of the church, and it's not set against the scriptures. It's not a dialectical either war. It all works in harmony.

The direct knowledge of you that you have of God comes through your direct knowledge of God, or it comes through the scriptures. Right. We experience these things in all of these ways. So in this this is why many people speak of Orthodoxy as experiential as existential. That's not to equate it with the lunacy of modern existentialist philosophy, but rather to say that there really is no external proof,

just in the same way as in apologetics. We can't set up some external earthworm proof that's going to convince all the unbelievers of creation, because it's a system wide thing, right, and it's all it all kind of coheres together, So you can't like take one thing out of it and set it up over here and say, look at I'll just prove to you the Bible. And if I can just prove to you the Bible, then you're gonna then you're gonna believe the Bible can't be divorced from the Church. Right.

The Bible can't be divorced from tradition, the Bible can't be divorced from liturgy. None of these things can be divorced or taken out of the context of the rest of them. And you can't divorce the church from the historical experience of the Church. You see, So there's no mental, calvinistic spiritual church. That's not the historic church. Okay, there's no invisible mystical spiritual church that's not the actual visible church of history. All of God's covenants and history were

visible bodies of people. There's no invisible church. There's only one church. That's why Jesus says there's one shepherd and one flock. Anyway, so I went way off on that question, but hopefully that answers your question there. The answer is that Protestants don't know the faith from sola scriptura or

analogia fide any better than Catholics and their magisterium. Those both of those just moved the problem back of stuff, because, as we saw in the Protestant tradition, the noetic effects of sin have so damaged you that you really can't interpret scripture at all properly because you never escape the noetic effects of sin. In classical Protestantism, you are always under the noetic effects of sin, and they are always it's always skewing your interpretition. So you can never have

infallible certitude about any of the doctrines. So, how, by the way, does any Protestant argue for the transcendental argument? How does he argue that God's existence is certain when he also confesses the noetic effects of sin? Exactly? Yeah, so much for certitude and consistency there. Now, what is missing in all of these views, Well, both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism long ago dumped the doctrine of the news.

Only orthodoxeology holds to the essence energy distinction, and only orthodoxology holds to proper Christology, And only orthodoxeology holds to the news. The doctrine of the news is the faculty that man has for knowing God directly. It is the eye of the soul, It is the eye of the heart. Right the church, fathers and elders and many spiritual writers will speak of it in different ways, but they're essentially speaking of the same thing. And the news is not

the same thing as intellect. It's not the same thing as ratiocination. Merely rationalizing things are merely having a psyche, the soul and the heart functioning in unison with repentance and turning to God is what cleanses the news to see the world correctly. So man cannot properly interpret his world without repentance. Now, this is why you might say, well, annoying it, you sound like a Protestant. No, no, we're not

Protestants because we do not believe in total depravity. We do not believe in any of the Protestant doctrines, and so we do believe that grace raises man's nature. Oh no, wait of it. Now you sound like a Roman Catholic. Now we don't. We're not Roman Catholics because we don't believe in natural theology. Right, if you read Father's stun Eloys book, you will see the first chapter rebukes natural theology and critiques Tomism. So we are neither Protestant nor Catholic.

We have a different view on all of these things, and they have different views on all these things. Now, the News, as we said, requires a ceasis ascetic practice to control the passion, so that the passions don't cloud or nows the fall clouded the news, and the news is not what Plato talked about. That's something different. We just simply believe that when Paul says, and this is what Saint Gregory Palamos when he quotes Paul, that man's

faculties are body, soul, and spirit. That's noos. Man's spirit is his noos. Not exactly the same thing as the Holy Spirit. Obviously, because we participate in the energy of the Holy Spirit, we are not merged with the person of the Holy Spirit. That would be heretical. So what I'm getting at is that we don't believe in analogia fe day, and we don't believe in analogia, neither the Protestant nor the Catholic view of knowing God and knowing the world and knowing the scriptures. We believe in the

power of the news. And you will find at Orthodox Info good site. There are multiple essays there on the news. Let's see if this is the one I'm looking for here. Yeah, well, there's one at Ortho Christian by Father Whitford that's pretty good. But this is this is important because this is a different anthropology, you see, and it is nowhere in Rome

and is nowhere in Protestanism. So again I'm stressing the fact that we have unique different approaches to anthropology, which condition why we believe what we do about man and man understanding the world and understanding God. So the point is that it's neither Protestant nor Catholic, and we don't believe in analogia entus or analogia fide. Both positions are problematic and essentially corruptions. And the reason that the West

went with that was because of Augustine. Augustine has essentially a dual view of man body and soul, or soul essentially becomes equated with intellect. To my knowledge, he does not at all teach news that man has a news, and that's because he was very influenced by this sort of dualistic anthropology of Platanism, the body and soul, right, the soul is always fighting against the body, this kind of a thing. So anyway, so that's why we don't

We can't believe in either. So it wouldn't make sense to talk about solo scriptura because number one, God is not equated with the text Jesus says you follow the scriptures because you think that in them you have salvation. What it is then that testify of me? Right? The scriptures are a letter, They're a text, They're not a person. They testify to the relationship that you should have with the divine person. That does not mean that they have

errors to go against the modernists here. All right, let's move on to the next question here, Damon Paffen Wrath, my grandfather isn't a weird Armstrong at church? He argues for worship on Saturday. Yeah, I'm familiar with the garner Ted Armstrong cult Worldwide Church of God. They believe they're one of the preachers of British Israelite theory. This is all just really goofy stuff, and anybody who has any knowledge of church history would avoid that nonsense. And in fact,

I think very recently though they were converted. I think James White supposedly converted or helped convert the Armstrong Church to his version of the Trinity, which is funny, it's not worthodox at all, but it's ironic that I think James White claims or he claimed that many years ago, ten years ago, so, that he converted the Armstrong Ends to because they used to be anti Trinitarian or something

to that effect. But the reason that we do worship on Sunday is because when Jesus resurrected is called the Lord's Day, and it's called the first day of the week. And in the Book of Acts, the church gathers together to break bread, which we believe is the Eucharist. It's not just eating cracker snacks. It's not just eating crackers and drinking Welch's grape juice like Baptists think. It's actually the Eucharist. So that's why we meet on Sunday, and

it shows the supersession of the Mosaic administration. By the way, the Orthodox Church, though, does still reverence the Seventh Day Sabbath. We do still in the liturgy. There is still reverence and honor on every Saturday, because there's a liturgy every Saturday. Best way, there is still reverence paid to the Sabbath. So we technically speaking, we actually don't completely reject the Sabbath.

So anyway, but as for the Armstrong Church, I mean, I'm sure you could find plenty of instances of online stuff refuting the rest of their gifty nonsense. I mean, it's just a cult started by some businessman. Any church started by some businessman, come on, that's come on, there's no businessman church. That's the true church. I'm gonna start my Shawnees Church. I'm gonna start up Shawnee's big boy Church. I'm gonna start up. Actually, all all the Protestants they

look like businessmen. So I guess technically every Protestant church is businessman church, isn't it? And they act they act like businesses. Right, it is like a business So I should I'm wrong there. Actually most churches are businessman churches exactly. What's that one goofball? Businessman church isn't funny? How that? Like the Protestant churches evolved from Luther and Calvin. And

let's look at what do we get in the Protestant world. Now, yeah, you get like female trans bishop, you know what I mean? So I guess I should say the megachurch. Megachurch pastors are like businessman pastor. Come to business church.

one that comes to mind. There's some kind of weird stories in there which nobody has to believe every story in a book like that. But Eric, I would say, read The Soul after Death by Father Rose Hans Lah five dollars seriously. Looking at Orthodoxy, do they consider mary sinless? Well, there's some debate actually in the history of Orthodoxy about this question, and there's not really a simple answer to it, because we don't view sin in the same way that

Roman Catholic or Protests do. By the way, so for example, in Protestant tradition, humanity after the Fall basically takes on a sin nature, which ninety five percent of Protestantism actually confuses into like Manicheanism, where they think that human nature itself has somehow become inherently evil. That is Manicheanism. There's nothing that God creates that actually possesses evil. So evil isn't part of human nature or inherent to human nature.

Evil is, as the Church fathers say, only the move of the will away from the good. That's it. So we do inherit something. We do pass on something which is in the Orthodox tradition called ancestral sin from Adam. But it's not a thing that immediately puts us under the hell fire status that most of the Church believes. And this is why the Eastern Fathers consistently don't teach this. Now that's a little abtuse, but if you read the Orthdox Study Bible page on ancestral sin, it's a very

good explanation of that. So I would recommend that in the Orthodox Study Bible. But there's different debates, and there were debates in late Middle Ages between the East and the West over Mary and Mary status. And so sometimes if you had fathers that were more influenced by Western theology, and if they use the term original sin in a more Augustinian sense, it just depends on what you mean

by these terms. Right, It's not like the terms are inherently bad, but for example, we do believe that Semipalagianism is wrong. It's actually condemned the councils of the Orange. The sinods of Orange are reaffirmed in the Ecumenical councils. So so no, we don't believe that in the sense that Mary somehow had to be immaculately conceived for Jesus to be who Jesus is. But there have been certain Orthodox theologians who have believed that God preserved Eve from

the taint of ancestral or original sin. And it's a very difficult debate at times. But if we think about the fact that there is a seminal transmission an aspect to original sin, that is there hence the virgin births right, and we when we understand that Jesus this is a very difficult doctrine that actually I was corrected on a couple of years ago because I was mistaken on this.

But Jesus did not take on fallen human nature. And that's not because of a sin nature, but it's because, as Saint John Damascus and other Church Fathers teach, he actually assumed the humanity of Adams as it was in Eden. So Jesus's humanity is not fallen. And that's why Saint Maximus teaches that Jesus did not possess a nomic will, that is, he did not possess a discursive will of Oh, I don't know what I should do today. Maybe I

should do this, maybe I should do that. And you can read Saint Maximus on why Jesus did not have a nomic will, and that's because he wasn't fallen. Now he did, however, will undergo death. But that's not because he was a son of Adam in the sense of this a corruptible nature. He was not corruptible. His flesh was incorruptible. So what I will say on the Mother of God is to read Saint Gregory Palamas's Little book, Married the Mother of God. So that's the answer to

that for you. But we don't have this is not the space to really go into the into depth on the difference between ancestral sin and original sin. So what she sinless, Well, she could be preserved from sin by God's grace because of it being like Eden, right, and there's nothing preventing grace from doing that. And that would not mean that she wasn't saved. It would mean that she was saved. She wouldn't just saved from following, she was saved throughout her whole life. And again this has

been debated. Just read read Saint Gregory on it. Please post YouTube videos on your website and make NB three I do for everything, so thank you, Nigel, Nigel. But every YouTube video goes on the website, would you talk about Guruism and Orthodoxy and how to avoid it for example,

Romanidies Disciples Bulgakov Disciples. Yeah, I mean there's you know, this is no there's no easy answer to anything like this, because any group that you're in, there's going to be Guruism and there's going to be weird, weird ideas, so there's going to be you know, I mean I have friends that like Bulgakov. I think that Lawsky is correct that Bulgakov is just basically bringing German idealism into Orthodoxy and we don't need that. We don't need German idealism.

And he's also an ecumenist and was rebuked for being a humanist. I'm not going to go into the old calendar stuff that's used to divide people. That doesn't mean that they don't have a point about ecumenism. They do but the old calendars are all divided amongst themselves. Anyway, So Romanites read my giant essay about Romanites and they are cultic. One of my good friends, we're not really friends anymore because he is a cultic Romanites follower. And

there's plenty of stuff in Romanites that's just ridiculous. Anyway, I don't know what to say. I mean, you know, the way to avoid it is to the more conscious you can be of the totality of the of the

Church's tradition east and west, right. I mean, one of the things that really brought me out of the cult of roman Now, I was never in the Cult of Romanites, but was reading the Church Fathers and the fact that the Church Fathers talking about the logoy being archetypes and patterns, and that there is an analogia in Romanites, says there's not. So do I go with the common mind of countless Church Fathers or the weird ideas of Romanites himself. But

so many people don't read the Church Fathers. They just read one guy, just read Romanites. Here's my guy, right, I'll just follow him for the next ten years. So the best way to do that is to not get stuck reading one guy, Timothy Rainfield five dollars, what is your refutation of soul scripture and solo feede. Well, we cover that in the first hour. So the refutation is that,

first of all, sol scriptura is not biblical. You cannot find a list of the books of the Bible, and the Bible and the history of the formation of the Canon, even from all the Protestant scholars liberal to conservative, confirms the fact that the Church created the Canon, it put it together. And if you want to believe in sol scripture, it logically follows that the decision of the books that went into the Canon are also infallible. That leads to

the infallibility of the Church. So lafide, Well, this is a little bit of a more involved question which will probably be in the talk for subscribers. So we're already going on two hours here and this is also going to be a half and half, so subscribers to Jay's

analysis will get the full talk on this. So I'll answer sola fide in depth probably by tomorrow in the subscribers talk, but we went into a little bit of it earlier, but I'll go into more detail with how all of the covenants in scripture always have covenant requirements. And when Abraham, for example, was required in the Covenant to follow God and to be moral, you can't. We don't set that over against the fact that he was

saved by grace. Okay. So in other words, grace and works are not antithetical when you understand that grace can move or impel or not impel. That's not the word grace can can bring about good works? How's that? And this is actually actually Augustine has insights on this when

he's writing against the Donatis and against the Palladians. He does have insights on this, which is fine because actually, as we said, the Synative Orange, which is ratified by later ecumenical councils Orange one and Orange two, condemned semi Pelagianism. So Orthodoxy has to also condemn semi Plagianism. Anyway, I will go into that as I said, solofide as not being sensical in the Reformation sense, the prison sense when

we get to the second hour. Another point too about solo fide is that it rests on Asaurianism, and the way it rests on Assorianism is that you have this penal de claration in Protestant and Calvinist theology, where this

is the classic reformers, they all teach this. Now modern some of the modern Protestants and Calvinists and so forth might shy away from this because it's obviously retarded and blasphemous, but the older ones do and they teach the luther even teaches us calvin that the Father damned the son as the payment right, so we owe God an infinite payment of hell, and so God damned the son to

pay for the debt or whatever. That either requires that Jesus be a human person who got damned, which is an Astorianism, or the Father damned the son, which splits the trinity. So that is the chief most blasphemous, wicked doctrine of all Calvinism and Protestantism is the splitting of the trinity in the idea, the stupid idea of the Father damning the son. And that is absolutely historic Protestant theology. It's a historic Lutheran and Calvinist theology. It's the it's

taught by Charles Hodge, just taught by the Puritans. Yeah, the Father didn't damn the son. It's completely stupid and the only way you could come to that conclusion is if you have a historian Jesus, a Jesus who could be damned while the son of God remains in the Godhead. That's an Astorianism. To a Jesus who's the son of God and then a human Jesus who's damned. That's I mean, come on, Anybody who knows what Nestorianism is and knows that it's condemned and why it's condemned is because it

leads back to Arianism, knows that this is retarded. And yet how many of the classical reformers teach this stupid doctrine. Let's see Troy Sampson two dollars, Thank you, Troy Sampson again, ten dollars. What's the difference between Oriental and East Orthodoxy. Well, Oriental Orthodoxy be two different branches. You could be the Nestorian Syrian Church which still maintains a Nestorianism which I just talked about in Syria, which they do still exist.

Or it could be the Orthodox so called who are Monophysite or Monothelite right, Coptic Church of Egypt or Egyptian Tawahido Church right or excuse me not Egyptian. The I just went blank. Who's the Tewahido? You know what I'm talking about? Anyway, they are not with us because they essentially followed Ay. There were two ways to read the Council of Chalcidon. One way was the Kirillian way and

the other way was in a Nestorian way. So what happened was the tragedy was that after the Council of Calcidon, in the West, by the way, still kind of did this. They will the West will erroneously at times view the incarnation as an addition formula. So they'll view it like like who is who is Jesus after the incarnation? And this is why this is the problem's too. This is why there were later councils is because there's two different ways to read the tone of Pope Leo at the council.

So there's this is the wrong way to do it, which many, many, many Western and Protestants read it this way, and this is Jesus is basically an addition formula, and they'll read it like this. They'll read it like Pope Leo's ton teaches that Jesus is a human nature plus his divine nature and this equals divine person Jesus. Now, everybody who's Orthodox and who is familiar with Nestorianism knows that that is wrong. That is the wrong way to read pop Leo's tone. But many of the Monophysites did

read it this way and they were correct. They're not correct, but I'm saying they were correct when they said, if that's what Leo means, this is wrong because this is not right. Jesus is not the product of some addition formula to give us a divine person Jesus. Right, that's not right because it's not a divine nature that smushes with a human nature. Or the divine nature did not become incarnate, did it. No, it did not. It's a

divine person from all eternity who assumes an impersonal human nature. Right. So this is the correct formula. This is the correct way to read it. Jesus is a divine person from all eternity, right, second person of the Godhead, and he assumed an impersonal human nature. So this is why Saint Cyril was correct against Nestorias to say that the sole subject of all the actions of Christ. There's only one

subject present for every action of Christ. Whether it's being crucified, whether it's walking on water, whether it's the breaking of the bread the loaves. The only person, the only person present is the divine person. That's why we're not in historians, right. So this is Saint Cyril's basic model here. So now one could read then the tone of Pope Leo at Councildon in either the Karellian way or in the addition

formula way, which is dumb and Nestorian. So that's why there's later councils which came along to say, no, it's not we're not talking about an addition formula where a divine nature plus a human nature equals the Jesus, the divine Jesus. That's not that's not that's not right. So that's why they got mad. They said, that's what that council means. We don't want any of that. That's an historian.

Leo is basically reaffirming Astorianism. So then we get the monofusus that Jesus essentially is one incarnate nature of this of there's one incarnate nature of the logos. And the preason for that is also because unfortunately Cyril did use that phrase, but he used that phrase when he was trying to stress what he talked about as in hypostatized.

This is an important term in Eastern theology, okay, And what he means is that it's the same point he was making when he talked about Jesus as the sole subject of all of the actions of Christ being a divine person. There is no human person in Jesus at all. There's a fully human nature, but no human person, And we do that to guard the salvation as a whole. Everything hinges on this. Why, because the only person present for all of those actions is a divine person who's

in hypostatized in a human nature. So, in other words, when Cyril says there's one incarnate nature, he's talking about the fact that when Jesus is walking around doing what he's doing, there's only one Jesus there. And any of the actions of God, the energies of God, whatever, they're all personal, they're all in hypostatized. In other words, there's no abstract divine nature. There's no abstracted Jesus. The only Jesus is the one who came in the mode of

human nature. The sole subject of all the actions of Christ is one divine person, the eternal logos. And this is why we're not a Nestorian. This is why Jesus is not a human person. This is why he's an eternal person. He's the logos, he's divine. This is why there's no hippie Jesus, there's no buddy Jesus, because he is the pantocrater, the eternal Lord. Now he's fully human. He cries, he hungers, he experiences and has and possesses full humanity as a human soul. He has a human will,

he has a human body, flesh right. But his humanity is human. I mean, excuse me. It's not fallen, it's incorruptible. It's essentially the new atom. So when we understand that, then we understand that any other scheme even and this is really bad. In the Protestants, they don't even know that they're a Nestorian because they don't know this whole debate.

They don't realize that in order for their their redemption theory to be true, penal redemption theory, the penal atonement view of Protestantism, they need to have the father essentially condemn the son right. So if the father damns the son in the in the Crucifixion. How is this possible, Well, he either has to be a human person who gets damn and then we're back to the Nestorianism, or it's the father splitting the son and damning him and that

the Trinity gets severed, which is completely retarded. So penal substitutionary atonement theory in the reformed classical Lutheran sense is utterly blasphemous and not true. So that's the That is the easiest way, by the way, through refute Protestantism. But most Protestants don't even they're not even they're not anywhere near this. They have no idea when you start talking about in hypostatized and they don't know what you're talking about. And this is in the theology of Saint Cyril, is

called hindosis henotic theology. So I'm going to tell you the book for this, all right, So this is important for understanding Saint Cyril hinnosis henotic theology. And the best book for this is this book. Well, actually there's two, but John mcguckin's book is really good because, Yeah, when I became orthodox, I kind of struggle with this issue, or when I was first reading orthodox I should say, well,

what about the Oriental ord. Maybe they're right. If you read mcguccan's book, Saint Cyril of Alexander and the Christological Controversy, it will settle this issue. There's also right here the Unity of Christ by Saint Cyril, and anybody who reads these will completely leave Protestanism. That alone is enough to annihilate all forms of Calvinism and Protestanism when you understand

their penal substitution moment nonsense, because it's not trinitarian. You have to be anti trinitarian to be consistent with their penal substitution view of what happens to the Father and the Son and the crucifixion. It's just it's completely retarded. Also, you want to read Saint Maximus, his small work, his Dispute with Paris, because the Monophysite problem becomes the Monothelite problem.

There's one will and energy in Christ. Right, well, maybe there's not one nature, but there's one will and energy in Christ the disputations with Puris. So what those two works will show you is the how it's based on dialectics. The Monothelites, like the Monophysites, had a dialectical theology, where they felt like human nature was essentially in natural tension

with God and God's grace. And by the way, guess what, that's what Calvinists teach, right, So the Monothelites also taught that there was one energy in Christ, one energy in one will. Well, one energy in Christ means that in the incarnation, the divine energy, the divine nature, the divine power, overcomes and in a way supplants the human and that means that in salvation. Right, you can see how this leads to Calvinism, the divine energy, divine work supplants and

basically replaces the human will and energy. Why because humans are so fallen that their natural state is always in perpetual tension with God. Total de pravity. Well no, the as Saint Maximus says, grace is completely natural to man. There's nothing more natural to man than grace. And that's because we don't believe in total pravity anyway, Thank you, Ron Park. Also, if Free Choice in Maximus Confessor is still available, it also highlights these but it has been

It looks like there's a paperback for fifty bucks. Okay, yeah, so this was out of print forever and ever and ever. But it also now that's not it. It also makes the same points yeah by doctor Farrell back when he was Orthodox, free choice and maximous confessor also makes all these same points. So there is that and that that solves the issues with Oriental Orthodoxy and uh, Coptic stuff. By the way, Coptics are so goofous. Uh if you

read Pope this is how dumb Coptic stuff is. Pope Shanalda, who is the I think I mentioned this on one of the other streams. Oh crap, I think I said, hold on, it's gonna take me a second to find it. He doesn't believe in deification. He thinks that he thinks dedification is a pagan So let's see. I think this is it. It sounds like a Baptist wrote this, like this is the degree of theology that you get in

the I mean, these Coptic churches are. It's kind of sad. Actually, I shouldn't be, because they have cut themselves off for all these centuries and they basically just became a kind of a state church. I'm not saying that the church and state shouldn't have a relationship. I'm just saying, when you consider. All right, let me dig it up because this is important to see. All right, where did I say that to you? I'll see he's got an essay

about against deification. Could you imagine this an Orthodox so called writer against deification? Oh? Here it is.

and all those clowns, they act like Coptics are all Orthodox. No, I'm sorry, but somebody who argues against dedification is not Orthodox, so thought audit. I don't know what that is. I'm guessing it's a kind of a funny thing against thoughts. Karl Marx there, thank you, child of Grace five dollars. What happened to the Jerusalem Church? Do you mean the Patriarchate of Jerusalem or do you mean the church in Acts fifteen? So sorry, I'm not sure what Jerusalem Church

you mean. Joline Kay, ten dollars. Thank you, Matthew Kitchen. Have a blessed liturgy tomorrow. Everyone. Thank you, Matthew. You two. David Daily own ten dollars. Any thoughts on Eastern Right Catholics, in particular the Melchite Catholic Church, Greek Caeloic Church that hold the first seven councils, Well, okay, well that doesn't make any sense because you can't be a Roman Catholic

and only hold to seven councils as orthodoxy. This is why the stupidity of Eastern Rite Catholicism, because the Tridentine doctrines are binding on the entire church. You can't be a Melchite or Eastern Right Catholic and reject purgatory. You can't reject, you know, the definitions of Trent. They're binding on the entire church. That's the point of the papacy. So it's a position that is completely double minded and makes no sense. Two dollars Doorman three to sixty Galactic

Emperor sound something from DBZ, Yeah, it does. I guess, so five dollars. Greetings from the Schofield Belt, that is the Bible belt. But the Schofield Bible Belt. I guess that's a good one, white top high speed drifter two dollars. Is Orthodox Faith tied to ethnicity? No, it's not, because the church is Catholic but is also ethnic. If you read the Canons of Chalcedon, you'll see its exact same way.

They all meet together, and there are ethnic bishops talking about their respective ethnicities and metropolitans and groups and areas. But that does not mean that we identify the church with ethnicity, even though ethnicity is an important component of the church, just like gender. Gender is an important component in the church. It can't be wiped away or thrown away.

But we also wouldn't identify the Church with gender. But the reason that the Orthodox faith has historically been tied to ethnicity is because the kings of various countries converted. If natural theology is bunk, how did an aristotol or reason to the uncaused cause? Well, the question here is what is the deity that he calls the uncaused caused?

Did you have you looked at the fact that Aristotle caused the uncaused cause multiple gods in certain sections of his writings, and in other sections he calls it one God. So Aristotle's uncaused cause is thought thinking itself. God is not thought thinking itself. God is not the monad of Plato. God is not any of the stupid demonic doctrines of the Greek philosophers period. He's not any of them. So those arguments don't work, and they're not any good. Now

is it true to say there's a first cause? Correct? There is, because I can, as an Orthodox person interpret that according to revelation, according to tradition, to scripture, as God is the first cause. Right, But who is that God? Well, if you're Orthodox, he has a believe it's the Trinity. None of these other groups believe it is. So I do not have common cause with a Muslim and a Jehovah's witness and a whatever other goofy sect in proving God,

because we don't believe in the same God. So you can't have an apologetic argument on the side of a Jehovah's witness and a Muslim and an Orthodox person altogether arguing against an atheist, because it doesn't work because the arguments that you're trying to prove, you're trying to convert the atheists too, are not to generic theism, but to the theism of revelation. The god of Exodus three fourteen, who says I am that I am, is not the

uncaused cause of Aristotle. So there you go. And if you read Saint Maximus, and if you read Father stan Eloy's book, you'll see why natural theology is not true. And natural theology leads to the atheism of Rome. That's why Rome is a perennial Vatican to ecumenicist organization because it's based on natural theology, which is which is faulty.

So how did Aristotle reason to the uncaused cause? Well, because not everything the unbeliever says is false, right, Paul says in Romans one, everybody knows that there's a god. But hey, by the way, you may show here's the easiest way to show you natural theology is bunk. Hey, I believe in natural theology. There's one divine cause and he's Satan. Yeah. See, Can I join with a Satanist who believes that there's one cause for the universe? Of

course not. So that's retarded, and any smart atheist will completely dissect natural theology and reasoning back to an uncaused cause to show how stupid it is, and they should. They should one more quick question. All wait, let's see slav k thank you for good stuff. Why are accumenists against proselytizing and less than enthusiastic about mission work because they're not Orthodox? Because you can't accept We should say

too that there are different senses to ecumenism. So originally ecumenism meant ecumenical councils, right, the word ecumenism comes from acumenical councils. The acumenical councils were all called to reconcile the church right in terms of debates and disputes. Now, the ecumenists believe that the church is not one though, so they essentially err on the doctor of the Church, and they don't believe that there's historically one Orthodox church.

That's why it doesn't work with Orthodoxy or any group that claims to be the true church. Now, original ecumenism, what they even call the Acumenism of return, is what the modern ecumenists have rejected. So there have been periods when Orthodox theologians went into ecumenism many decades ago, with the intent of the Ecumenism of Return, which was to convert people. And that's not wrong. That's what it's for.

When I go on shows with atheists or with Roman Catholics and I engage in or an evangelical in a position of agreement and then we talk about other issues. I'm interested in the ecumenism of return. That's why I do apologetics. The ecumenists do not do apologetics because they don't believe in the ecumenism of return, and in fact it's a stumbling block. So the churches, like middle of the road type groups that will, on the one hand, will do apologetics and try to convert Protestants and people

like that and atheists. Right, they're correct in that regard, but they also want to placate the ecumenists and not convert people. Now, many of the handbook of that, for example, the Greek Orthodox Archidiocese of America, it's handbooks says do not convert people. That is not true. You cannot tell people not to convert people. That is apostasy. So they're wrong. So the ecumenism of I'm okay, You're okay is different from the ecumenism of return, that is, convert become you must.

So that's why they don't do mission work, is because they don't believe the gospel. Jesus says, go out and convert the nations, and they are essentially apostate. So it depends on which acumenism you mean. If you mean the ones that are against proselytizing, they're wrong, and the fact that they don't proselytize, and the entire church, entire history of the church is proselytizing. Church fathers debating with heretics to convert them proves them wrong their phonies. One more

quick question is the shroud of turn legit. I don't don't. I don't follow that. I've never found that. Plus it's not so what if it was, like, what does that prove? I mean that kind of I'm not saying there aren't miracles, but you know, what does Jesus say. Jesus says, a wicked generation first after miracles, and no miracle will be given to it of getting feedback again here, So I don't pay attention to the shroud of Turin or any

of that because it's not gonna. I mean, if you if you already believe and have faith, then you're going to interpret it as something vindicating Christianity. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not I'm not into the shroud of turn stuff. So could it be legit? I guess

it could be, but I mean I don't. It's like with the people who argue to me, it just it just gives too much credence to bad argumentation because it's not a good apologetic argument because you're never going to get people to do DNA analysis on some blanket in a church in fr Answer or wherever it is. I mean, how is that gonna get That's not going to convince anybody anyway. But does that mean that I think it's not legit. I don't have any opinion on it. I've

never really paid attention to it. Benjamincollins One pound advice on avoiding false information? False? What kind of false information? I mean, there's not really an easy answer to a really broad question. So it depends. I guess it depends on if you mean false theological information. You know, there's just not an easy example except to you know, trust God and seek the truth, and you know, Jesus says my sheep will hear my voice, and I know them, they know me, and they will be let into truth.

So God is good and he's not going to lead you astray if you seek him out with all your heart. So when it comes to ferreting out trimp false information, I mean God gave us logic and reason for a reason, and you know, knowing basic logic, knowing basic facts about how to reason and argue, that's one of the things that we promote here. That's a big way to not be duped and to be able to sift through true and false information. Right, So logic is not antithetical to God.

It's not an enemy of God. It's not That's is all modern pietistic nonsense that scientism promotes and that purveyors of Protestantism promote, or Pietism. They say that the faith is not logical, it's incoherent. Just take a leap again, How contrary is that to what we read in Saint John Damascus when he writes very lengthy philosophical and apologetic treatises. That's the tradition that we follow here. We're not interested in Pietism. So I would say just try to ground

yourself in the church. Fathers. Try to ground yourself in scripture, read your Orthodox, study Bible every day, try to pray every day, go to the liturgy, and you will know. You will know when people are telling you false information. But now if you're talking about analyzing geopolitics or the news media, that's a little more you know, that takes

a little more practice. You know, I've been doing that for a long time, so I can pretty well spot, you know, fake news, fake information, false reports, because I've studied psyops and I know how a lot of that stuff works. So it comes a little easier to me just because I'm I have a pretty good trained eye at spotting nonsense in the news or or propaganda. How to spot propaganda and spotting phonies in terms of you know, different organizations like you know, why won't you go on

this or that show? Well, maybe I can spot phonies. That's why I'm not saying that everybody has told no to the phony. I'm just saying that I have a pretty good track record of people that I'm not associated with being phonies, so I make the decision who I want to associate with. So I would say you gotta do the same thing. Can just use basic common sense most of the time. It'll be fine again. God gave us common sense for reason. It's not antithetical to theology.

Randy Churchill fifty dollars, Thank you. Randy. Did the term federal referring to Adam's headship as a term come to existence after Calvin? Is there a historical understanding of federal headship or is it just a way to refer to the juridical understanding of protest servation. That's a good question. I mean, I don't think the term federal itself would

be necessarily excluded from patristic discourse. I mean, you know, the way athanacious and on the incarnation, the way he speaks of the role of Adam and the fall in Christ is there's nothing wrong with legal language. I mean, paul Us this legal legal language. It's just that we can't understand