Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Transfigured Life. We have a special guest here in the building. I'm always here rocking with Father Jonathan. And as you guys can see, here we have the comedian, the apologist, the gifted one here, Jay Dyer.
Give it up for Jay Dyer.
How you doing, Jay, I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me here. I'm glad to be here. It's honored to talk to you guys. Appreciate it.
Yeah, our pleasure and our honor. Thank you very much.
Jay.
We're going to kind of get right into it, and I want to begin by by by asking you a question. Undoubtedly, if you've been watching YouTube for a while, and I think you have, and if you've been watching Orthodox apology I think you have, can't fail to notice that there's been an abundance of podcasts and videos out there now by Protestants and especially Reform Protestants, Evangelicals, Baptists that are
attacking the Orthodox faith and church. You know, I recently heard some Presbyterian church out west even deny that we the Orthodox, have Apostolic succession. And so I'm sure you've heard some of these, But what do you make of what do you think of that, we're seeing more and more of them now.
I think one reason that we're seeing that is just everybody's got a podcast now. My wife and I were joking about this, like every like every people's grandmothers are going to start having podcasts soon ago. Literally everybody has a podcast, and I think every pastor now has a podcast.
So that's part of it.
But I also think that there's a realization that there's a lot of problems in the religious world, especially if you come from a Protestant or Roman Catholic background.
I mean, that's not to say there's no.
Problems in the Orthodox world, but every group kind of has its own youth unique problems, and so I think that a lot of people are sensing that questions are being asked that are very difficult. A lot of times Protestant pastors might not have the answers to these kinds of questions, and so they're going online, they're seeking out answers, and they're feeling the need to have to address why people are converting. A lot of people are converting out
of Protestantism, some to run Catholicism. But I think actually in the last three or four years, more to Orthodoxy. So I think there's a need to try to explain this, to say, hey, don't leave. You know, they've got problems too, and Protestanism can be defended. I don't think ultimately that it can, but I think that's the reason is that a lot of people are looking for more than what
they're getting at Protestant churches. So they're seeing a lot of you know, rainbow flags going up at Protestant churches, and that's making a lot of people, you know, dissatisfy.
This is not what you know historic Christianity is. So this is on the one.
Hand of search for authentic historic Christianity, there's a search for wanting to be you know, consistent with what the Bible actually teaches in terms of morals and that kind of stuff. People are craving that they don't want this, uh,
water down stuff. And even even in the conservative Protestant world, I think there's a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to the challenges that Orthodoxy and Catholicism are presenting, but more so Orthodoxy, because I think a lot of people are seeing, you know, really systematic level problems in the Roman Catholic world that perhaps Orthodoxy might have the answer.
To that's good, Luthor. Both you and Jay came out of that Milio. If you and I know you probably have different issues that you could point to. But Jay, what do you think are the man? What do you think are the two or three biggest issues that are bringing people over?
Yeah, you got a lot of a lot of people coming out of the you know, the Protestant world.
So what do you think is that that reason?
Probably the biggest let me see, the biggest two issues in the Protestant world would be and I don't know if there are in any specific order, just the ones that come to mind that I hear the most are questions like, well, you know, solar scriptura, which is really the essence of classical Protestantism. And it really doesn't matter what form you want to give to solar scriptura.
I know that there's different.
Versions of a different apologists that give different levels of a different.
Protestant apologists will recognize.
Some kind of place for tradition, perhaps maybe even all the way up to High Church Anglicans can concede maybe the most reverence for traditions supposedly, but I think there's
still a recognition that there's big heaping questions of ahistoricity. Right, the Protestant position is not historical, especially when we come to the formation of the Canon, when it comes to how the Bible came to be, when it comes to the actual practice of the church in first six seventh century, is the way that it operated with liturgy or you know, teaching profession of the faith in the liturgy and not so much people having to go and read the Bible on their own.
To figure it all out.
When when people start to realize that, when they see what's in the ecumenical councils and the canons and even the earliest councils you know, prior to Iicea and Caira, Gangra, you know, you see these so called Catholic and I say that is in the sense of orthodox Catholic elements. People are seeing that and realizing that, you know, this is this, this isn't Protestantism. So I think that's probably the biggest And then number two might be.
Questions that they have about.
The morals changing in the in the world of Protestanism, and again that that doesn't necessarily go for the conservative Protestant evangelical groups. But I think in the Protestant world, like the I mean, I don't know the numbers per se, but most, you know, all the mainline Protestant nominations in the US they pretty much liberal in the.
Nineteen twenties and thirties. Uh.
And by that I mean not just you know, caving into higher critical textual scholarship, but also morals. They began to cave on moral questions and issues. And so I think that those are probably the two biggest ones, you know, the history of the church, the Bible, soul, scriptura.
And then I think there's other issues too.
Like this debate world you know that pops up on in the internet. You know, Yeah, there's a lot there's a lot of you know, great chats and discussions and debates going on that. H that's probably a big factor as well.
Wow, I agree, Yeah, yeah, there's definitely definitely a bigger debate will happen out there.
I see that.
Well, yeah, real quick, I noticed. I don't even know this until a few days ago.
Uh.
And obviously I'm not I'm not a.
Huge fan of TikTok because it's you know, obviously it's a Chinese sort of surveillance app. But I am on there just to put out clips and stuff. And I didn't realize that I could go live on there until fairly recently, because you've got to.
Hit a certain tier of subscribers or something.
But I went live on TikTok and turns out there's this giant world over there that's different from you know, YouTube and these other places. There's there's just masses of Protestants over there. Calviunists are arguing and going crazy. Muslims are going crazy on TikTok. So I've kind of stepped into that whole other.
Mess of getting on TikTok.
And but that's a whole nother, you know field for potential, you know, new audiences, and TikTok tends to be a lot of twenty five are really young people over there as well.
Yeah, kids are always dancing on TikTok and stuff like that.
Now, but now there's a whole debate world because they have live streams, so you can live stream for you know, long long form on TikTok.
Now, so there's always people debating over there.
Oh my gosh, well fascinating.
Well let's let's dive into some calvinism. I know that you you yourself used to be a Calvinist. I was a Calvinist as well. You know what what led you specifically out of that? Jay, What are some of the issues that you started to see with it? What was your progression out of that.
I'm curious that Father Johnathan, did you have a background Protestant? Did you convert or were you raise Orthodox?
Well?
I was theoretically I'm a cradle but when I was a when I was in high school around tenth grade, I started going to a Presbyterian church and attending their Bible studies and their youth pastors. I have to give them a lot of credit. They they taught me Bible, you know, they really did, and that that has literally stayed with me for fifty years.
A lot of what I learned there.
But they didn't teach a lot of theology. It was here's what the Bible says, and you know we we kind of read it and read it and read it and kind of memorized it. So I didn't learn a lot of theology. So I have to say, I don't really come from that kind of a background.
That experience.
My experience Joy goes well that that background and not all Calvinists, right, We're not saying this all calvin but it's definitely like a debate world for real. When it came to that realm, it's like you weren't Calvinists enough at times, you.
Know, yeah right, yeah, yeah yeah.
Like so I got into that when I was about nineteen. I got into reading scriptures from an evangelical Bible study I was invited to when I was eighteen, and then kind of eventually wandered my way into reform Baptist stuff, like you said, because I went to a Reform Baptist Bible College for a.
While and there everybody, you know, all the young guys.
All we did was just kind of, you know, talk about church history and biblical theology all the time, and so we would get into these debates about well, you know, what about you know, the church fathers, they taught this and that. And I remember there was a really formative situation where I ended up stuck at Bible College throughout the whole winter break. And so now everybody else left and I was stuck there for the whole you know, three or four weeks or whatever it was, and I
didn't have anything else to do. So I decided I was going to read The City of God. So I read from the beginning all the way up until about page nine hundred, and I wrote down all these I wrote down all these questions because there was nothing else to do.
It's just me and in Louisville, sitting there by my well, and I didn't know anybody. So I just read that the whole time, and I wrote all these questions.
And I took him to a couple of the of the professors, a couple of them are still pretty still teaching Baptist Bible College stuff. And I said, here's all these questions. I said, I don't understand how we could believe that. You know, we like Augustine, if you know, he's got all these things that we think are just you know.
Catholic crazy accretions.
And I didn't get very good answers, so I'll just leave it at that. But eventually they said, well, you might need to leave this this Bible college.
This might not be for you. So I didn't.
I wasn't ready for any changes at that time. But at that time I was more so thinking, I'm I think I believe in an infant bat Baptism. I think I believe in pedo Baptism, and I was reading a bunch of reform stuff from Bonson and rush Juni and
Van Till and all those people. And so I found a PCA church at that time that I liked, which is the Conservative Presbyterians, and met one of the elders there, got to be kind of friendly with him, and we He introduced me to a lot of stuff that ironically would later point me in the direction out of out
of Protestantism. And so in some of the circles of Presbyterians, there was a movement back then that's now kind of attached to Doug Wilson's stuff, which is kind of people looking into high church, you know, liturgy and that kind of stuff in the in the Protestant reform world. So I was kind of introduced to these questions at that time, but I still wasn't ready.
I remember, I'll try to make this short and don't want to ramble a whole time, but.
I met with some Catholic priests just out of curiosity, because I wanted to know, well, what do you guys teach about, you know, Augustine and Grace and all this stuff. And I remember having you know, one on ones with several Catholic priests, and they said, well, here's the Catholic Catechist them and I remember getting that, and I remember reading through about half of it, and I was like, now, I don't believe a lot.
Of this stuff. This stuff's crazy. So I wasn't ready for.
You know, Mary and stuff, and I thought all that was out there and wild. So but I did have a gradual movement towards reading more and more Church Fathers, and so for me at that time, it was really just I.
Didn't know about Orthodoxy yet.
This was like, this is about two thousand and one, and so I bought the Church Fathers, the Schaft set, and I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna have to start reading this. So I started reading Jerome, and I started reading Ambrose, and I started reading Cyprian, Saint Cyprian, and I started noticing, well, they don't.
Teach anything like what we teach. So I was at a crossroads.
And all I knew about at that time in two thousand and three ish, the only things on the Internet that you could ever find were Romechalic stuff and like Calvinist Protestants everything that that was the debate at that time, right, all the blogs, all the stuff, all the forums. You know, you would just see people debating on blogs and websites and forums back and forth. So I just thought that
that was the extent of the debate. I didn't even know about Orthodoxy except for I'd heard there was a book by you know callistos Ware about Orthodox Church, but I didn't have it, so I just didn't think anything about it. Plus I didn't live with anywhere near an Orthodox church. So that was probably the hardest decision for me actually in my life at that time, because I was really I mean I was a huge student of Bonson van til rush JUNI I did a semester at Bonson's.
There used to be think of Bonson seminary, So I was learning apologetics from doctor Bonnson.
Like father father Johnathan.
Said, you know, we were just like I mean, it was just Bible NonStop. I mean, we we were like temultic Jews with the Bible. I mean like we were just studying it NonStop. I mean we would have h we'd have morning Bible before church church was like two hours of lectures from Bible. We would have Sunday night Bible study and then we would have Winnesday and Friday
meetings to read, you know, reform theologians. It was crazy because if you don't, I don't know if you guys know, but like in the Bons and Russian stuff, like, they were theonomists, So they have this very high view of Biblical law, and so there's a lot of you know, emphasis on what relevance you know, the Torah has for today. Now they're not messianic news or anything like that, but they just have this view that a lot of those laws are applicable to to today.
So, you know, it was it was.
Really difficult to move away from that because I was still wedded to it.
But one of the things that really stuck with me.
Was when I read Russiani's book called Foundations of Social Order and there was a chapter on the Ecumenical Councils, and so rush Janey ironically had this high view of the ecumenical councils. And I was starting to read The Church Fathers at that time, and I had read Cyril and I'd read Ethesis, so I knew kind of what it was all about. And then rush Janis take and Foundtions of Social Order was actually that.
He thought, I'm not joking, he's he thinks that Cyril's.
Position is in the storis disposition, and so rushing you got it completely backwards. And that really shook me at the time, and I just I didn't know what to do. I took that to my reform pastor and said, hey, this is this is totally backwards.
I mean, how could he mess up that? You know that big?
And well we're all fallible, Yeah, we're all fallible, but I mean that's a pretty big mistake if we're going to be saying why we're not why we're reformed. So then I decided it was going to be an issue of not so much this church father versus that church father.
What's the root of Protestantism.
Well, it's it's ultimately, if you're a classical Protestant, it's Bible alone.
It's sole scripture, that's the ultimate primary authority.
So I figured out I'm going to have to answer this question of how did the canon come to be? And I listened to tons and tons of Roman Catholic and reform debates. I went back and be forth, and at that time it was all you know, James White debating athletics, and it was Jerrymagticks debating Bonnson, and you know, reform to Catholic debates was about the extent of all you could find.
And I went through all those and then I just said the best way to do this would be to read.
A bunch of the Protestant evangelical scholars on the history of the formation of the Cannon.
And so I read F. F.
Bruce's book, and I read Lee McDonald's book their Evangelical scholars, and here they are admitting, oh, yeah, of course tradition plays a key role.
In the Bible. Coming to me and I'm like, what so again?
And you and you know, you take these questions to your Protestant pastors and well, you know, I don't know.
I've never read that. Yeah, I haven't looked at that, but.
I'm sure we can find somebody that knows. And then they'll refer you to, you know, some professor at Reformed Theological Seminary or Westminster or whatever. And you know, I just never really got good answers, and so I decided I would have to be Roman Catholic. So that led me to the Roman Catholic world still didn't know about Orthodoxy.
When when I bought the church.
Father said, I just assumed that the Western church fathers had it all right, right, So I just started reading Jerome, and I started reading you know, Ambrose and Cyprian and Augustine, and I just thought, oh, well, Chris System and you know, he might be all right. And Cappadocians maybe they're cool, but there's no pressing need for me to read them. We all believe in the Trinity, right, I mean, they were defending the Trinity. Why do we need to We
don't need to rehash that debate. Yeah, So long story short, Yeah, went I went in that direction. I left the Reformed Church. I started attending a local Catholic church in two thousand and three, went through what they call Catechumen r CIA, and UH spent.
About ten ten years in the Roman Catholic world.
UH got really serious about attending the traditional Latin Mass.
Did that for many, many.
Years, drove for two hours for probably five or six years to do that in Memphis or nashvillecause the only place that would have the Latin masks that I could go to.
UH.
And then I and then I got to this point where it was like I was so immersed in church history I got really into Tonism and all that, and it was like, well, what am I going to do with pre post Vatican two. Long story short, that got me looking at the Orthodox question. I encountered Orthodox blogs in two thousand and six for the first time. I wasn't ready to convert, but I would hash it out. I'd argue with all these different people that were online
the Orthodox world at that time. Yeah, and so that kind of led me just to start reading Eastern Fathers, and that took me another ten years. I wasn't ready to, you know, because I mean I obviously think, well, maybe you're just unstable and you're just converting to one thing of the next. I would actually take long periods of time, right, I was Ronancallay for about ten years, and it took me another ten years before I decided that I would go into Orthodoxy. I mean I held off for a
really long time. I say, I have the longest catecub in it, like I intentionally I was a ten year category.
So I held off for a long times.
Anyway, I'm sorry, I'm going to keep talking about myself. It's just kind of rambling and weird. But long story short, Yeah, I just I felt like ultimately, for me at the end of the day, the main issue of what led me out of Protestantism was looking into the cannon. It's historical formation, the reliance on church tradition for not just canonicity, but even things like absolutely authorship.
That's those are things that we.
Don't I'm the gospels, they don't name them their author in a case of like Matthew, right, I mean, and even if it says Matthew, well, there's other gospels that are false gospels you know that we don't accept. Why don't we accept them? So you can't take it just because the name, Oh this was the Gospel of Thomas, Right, Well, that's anot we don't want that one.
Well how do we what do we adjudge between? Right?
So yeah, more I got into the church history, more, I got into the Church fathers. More I realized that, well, it just can't be Protestantism. And I was also, you know, still really into the Bible the whole time, so I would always be encountering passages that didn't fit with the
system that I had. So if you've got this solo feed a justication by faith alone, you know, Calvinist, you know, tulip system, You've got all these problem texts that you're kind of have to deal with, and over time, more and more of those problem texts just really started mounting up,
and I didn't find the answers really sufficient. But the biggest things actually in terms of specifically Calvinism, and what I would say is just really ultimately the errors of a lot of Latin theology period, would be the questions of absolute divine simplicity and the energies and the issues of Christology. Because once I realized that Calvinist Christology, even though they don't intend it to be a lot of times, it actually is a Nestorian Christology. So you can take
it in two directions. You can go to an historian and you can say that the subject who was punished on the cross by the Father is a human subject, Jesus of Nazareth, which would be an historian option, or you could say that the son was damned by the Father, which it would be an Arian option because that would mean the Trinity is no longer you know one.
So all those are the only two options if you believe the.
Classical Protestant doctrine of the son being punished.
As you know, the payment for the sins of penal substitutionary atonement, right exactly.
You mentioned what what must be a beautiful a doctrine. You mentioned what must be a beautiful teaching and it must be a beautiful thing because it's named after a flower, tulip. I think you mentioned that a moment ago, and and Luther and I were kind of anxious to talk to you about that, but you said something and I really want to follow up with you on that, and uh and and that is we were talking about the the the the incredible explosion and growth of videos against Orthodoxy.
But at the same time, they're a lot of Protestants and certainly a lot of Calvinists, they're encountering the Fathers, in some cases for the first time, and they're having to to grapple and deal with things. And they're there, and I've spoken with some of them privately and it's they don't want me to quote them, but I mean, what they're saying privately about what they're what they're wrestling over is is profound. Do you see a change in
Protestantism in general because of this? And I think the encounter maybe goes back only maybe twenty years when when when this started to get very serious?
Do you see that? I see it?
But I mean I'm wondering what you see in your encounters and talking with people. I'm starting to hear them talk about real presence. I'm talking they're starting to see to Pio baptism and things like that, and it's like, oh my god, this is what you guys abhored thirty years ago. And now you're you're actually saying there must be something to a Jay Dyer.
What do you think? What do you say?
Absolutely? Yeah?
I mean, like I said, so, you know, twenty years ago, maybe two thousand and two or three, the Presbyterians, the PCA, and some of the OPC people had what they call the Auburn Avenue Conference, and that was a lot of these guys at that time dealing with grappling with the things that you're talking about. And so a lot of them were reading Schmaman Feathers, Schiemann's books. They were reading
books that dealt with liturgical theology. Peterliheart, James Jordan, That's the people I'm talking about, and they're realizing that, hey, there's actually a lot of liturgy in the Bible. There's actually a lot of symbolism that could point us in the direction of typology that maybe is relevant for the
New Testament Church. Maybe vestiments aren't a bad idea. Maybe it's not wrong to have incense, right, So, you know, and this is ironic because, like you're saying, thirty forty years ago, the Reform, the Calvinists, you know, they had this strong position which they called the regulative principle of worship, which is the idea that laid down in like the Westminster Confession, that you can only worship.
God in the way that he is explicitly mentioned.
But of course the difficulty there, and I've been making this point quite a lot with the Protestants in the last few years, is that, well, isn't it odd that the New Testament then doesn't give us a pattern of worship? Now we have of Saint Paul complaining about abuses, but how do we know the layout of what we're supposed
to do? If you're going to make the argument, as many Calvinists do, that Nadab and Abaihu were put to death because they offered strange fire, they did what they weren't supposed to do in Leviticus, because they didn't go according to the explicit commands.
Where are the explicit commands of how you do the worship service?
And it's intentionally, i think, providentially not there because there's a reliance on the fact that the Apostles and that here's the weird part. Every Protestant scholar and even Anglican liturgists that I've read, they admit that the Apostles had some sort of liturgy that they established in the seas, the Apostolic seas and churches they set up that was some kind of blending of the Temple and the Synagogue service. This is pretty pretty unanimous in history of liturgy books
they will read, even from Protestants. So to me, that was kind of another big, you know thing when I read that many years ago that I didn't realize when I was Protestant, that liturgy has a key role in
the formation of the Biblical canon. And when I learned that, that was pretty much I think the McDonald or Brusa says that you can't divorce the daily lectionaries, the daily readings from the canon and how the canon of Scripture was was decided upon in terms of the many centuries actually, plus even the fact that it's centuries and you know, the Orthodox view, if we accept the you know trollo and I see it too, that's really where they affirm the canons of Carthage that list our loose canon.
You could say.
That to me, and if you're a Protestants, I will wouldn't. If we're Protestants in the in the first century, the first thing we would do is decide the canon.
The Posts.
Would have said, hey, uh, we got to have Jerusalem Council to right acts fifteen.
Let's have Jerusalem to right away here. And I don't know one hundred eighty or ninety eighty, well, I guess it.
I'll be dead, But I don't know right after Why didn't Why wouldn't happen in the you know, John's day?
Why wouldn't John say, let's get together. We got to decide this Bible first. I mean, we're Bible alone right.
Anyway, So I'm rambling, But again, yeah, I think you're right father, that so many Protestants are beginning to see that there's not just an issue of throwing this or that Bible verse. There's a bigger issue at work here, which is how does this Bible come to be? And the very people that make these decisions about putting these books into the Bible, none of them believe Protestant stuff. And then the option usually for Protestants at that point.
I tried this too.
When I first encountered this was well, I'm going to try to find protestant Ish quotes in the church followers.
Well, you know, one of the other things that people say about the IM not going to go into this, but just regarding the canon, is that the canon was formed very early. Excuse me, the Lectionary was formed very early. And one of the reasons why Revelation was debated for the longest time, because one of the arguments was people at point and say, it's not the Electionary, right, you know, it's not already one of the books that we're reading. So anyway, but we got we got so much more.
We want to.
One point on that, which a lot of people don't know about. I think it's in the in the le McDonald book. If you read the Lee McDonald book.
He said, there's a whole chapter in there on how St.
Athenasius went to Rome and Rome was doubting, Uh, the Catholic Epistles and Revelation and Athanasius said, it's our tradition.
This is this is a valid book, you should include it. So it's actually the.
Pope of Rome was convinced to keep the Catholic Epistles in the Roman Canon by Saint Anthenasius. And if once you start to realize that, you know, in the Protestant mindset, it's kind of like sold scripture to the Bible just sort of like falls out of heaven as this like complete thing, and then you realize, no, actually, the history is God using people through divine providence like Athenasius to say, uh, and I'm not saying that, I'm not saying it's true
because Rome said. I'm just saying that it is important that Rome included the Apocalypse in the Cannon. But it wasn't just the pope saying I had to create the apocalypse and no, it's out and Nasious had to go convince it.
It's interesting that earlier you mentioned like as you were thinking through that calvinistic system of yours, like you're you're seeing scriptures like that weren't really, you know, compatible with your your calvinistic beliefs. And I actually had a similar kind of experience at my previous church when I, you know, I was asked to preach.
We're preaching through the Sermon on the.
Mount, and I was just like, man like, justification seems like a process, and you know, like as you walk through this Sermon on the Mount, like text I was struggling with was like judging not unless.
You be judging the measure that you judge, you'll be judge.
Or also the you know, text about forgiveness like forgive so that your heavenly Father would forgive you. And I'm just like, man like, how do I preach this text? And I was like struggling because I was on stage.
I was like, yeah, this is what scholars you know say like rc sproll this that and the third and and here you know, so like I had this I was I was almost like arrested to the text in a way where I was like I had to give two views because I didn't know what to do because I was like, clearly the text is saying something different than what Calvinism teach. What would you say for you were kind of those things that you looked at and you're just like this this does not work.
Oh.
There were so many I mean I remember thinking you know, like the parable of the sower. You know, in Calvinism, if you're regenerated, you're regenerated, right, that doesn't go way because only the elect are regenerated. But in the parable of the Sower, it's very clearly the analogy is used that one of the seeds sprouts up to new life and withers, aways and dies. And I could never make sense of that. And of course you have to say things like, well it didn't really spring up to now.
The analogy doesn't work anymore if it didn't really spring up to new life.
And you know, there's there's so many other passages like that, where you know, in Hebrews, you know, you have the passage about tasting of the heavenly gift, and you know they've been washed, they've tasted of the life to come.
How do you taste of the life to come? If?
I mean, that could only be a regeneration and you can't be unregenerated if you're regenerated. So, you know, so many of those passages were difficult passages too that related to baptism. I noticed that, you know, every time we would talk about the right of baptism, it was distinct from all those.
Things in the New Testament about baptism, and it's.
Like, well, you know, how come Paul isn't distinguishing visible invisible church, visible baptism from invisible baptism. Right, It's always spoken of as this unit of act, even to the point of, you know, Titus three five, the washing of the labor of regeneration, like this seems to be the grace and the sacrament. The physical elements are united here. And so the more I noticed this union, and the
more I noticed that, well, now wait a minute. So we're doing the same thing with ecclesiology, where we're saying that the church is invisible, it's a spiritual thing, and then there's this visible church that's kind of a big mess, right, and the true Elector amongst the you know, all these different groups. And it's like, but Paul is always saying one Lord, one faith, one body, one baptism.
It's always joined.
And those were you know, when I would think about those pastors another here's an overlooked one too.
That really stuck with me.
When I was a Calvinist. I remember, you know, I was really into covenant theology. If you're Reformed, you know, you love Covenant theology.
You really want to you.
Want to stress Covenant theology when you're discussing with a dispensationalist or a Baptist. You want to say, hey, you know, we've got these Covenant blessings just like or even better than the.
Old Testament that people had.
You know, we can have people included in the Covenant more so, right, because if you in the Old Testament, you know, it was the males that.
Were circumcised to be included in the Covenant.
Now it's anybody, men, women, gentiles, everybody can be included in the Covenant. But then I realized, well, I'm making an argument against a Baptist or against a dispensationalists. That's historical. And then I started thinking, you know, the history of the Covenant in the Old Testament is one people, right, And yeah, in the Old Testament, certainly other people outside the nation of Israel could be joined to the Nation of Israel as possible.
But the point is that there's one group or church called the people of Israel, the Ecclesia.
And then in the New Testament, if I'm going to make that historical argument, I can't just restrict it to the New Testament. There seems to be one historical group as well in the New Testament, and so the church has to also be just as one, and even more so one because it's post penthecost than the Old Testament Church. And so I realized that I couldn't argue that the
Church arch existed amongst thirty thousand different groups. Right, it has to be a single visible and all the analogies that not just Paul, but Jesus uses right, the tree, one tree, the sheep fold, right, it's all these unit of things that are also united in history. Doesn't mean that the Church doesn't have periods of you know, schisms and stuff like that. But I'm just saying that there's also a historical continuity to the historicity of God's people being a single people.
Jay.
When we talk in orthodoxy about what's central to our to our faith, what's central to our church, we talk about across the Death the Resurrection. Is it fair to say that when you were a Calvinist that rather than that? Is it fair to say that Tulip was the foundational center of Calvinist theology rather than the Cross, the Death the Resurrection?
Is that favorable?
That's another angle that's a great critique, you know, because you would if you read the epistoles.
You know, Paul.
Paul's always stressing those things. The gospel is death, grow resurrection.
The gospel is that, And then if you're a Calvinist, you're thinking, well, that's not really the gospel. The gospel is.
Roman's nine and the divine decree, right, I mean, the gospel is this sort of process of you knowing the divine mind's decree of who the elect are, and then understanding that there's toll to pravity, that you don't have the ability to move yourself towards God, that you have to have irresistible grace and monargism, which is the divine energy has to act in you to cause you effectually
to believe. So there's a loss of synergism and all that in the process of salvation, and there's no notion of losing that faith falling away because the elect or that's who Christ died for limited atonement, right, irresistible grace, and then perseverance, meaning that only the elect ultimately perseveres. So yeah, that's an interesting angle as well that you know, it's kind of like when you're if you're an Evangelical, Baptist, not Reformed. You know, you think when somebody says, what's
the gospel, and you think, oh, it's Romans Road. You know, you go to Romans three and you don't understand that you're a sinner, and then you go over here that you can't do good, and then you go here it at Romans five that you know justified by it.
So it's like this, that's the.
Pathway that supposedly lowest common denominor scales the Gospel down.
But that's not what Paul says. How come Paul's always saying resurrection, resurrection, ascension, ascension, and I just, yeah, you're absolutely right.
Like at a certain point you realize, you know, those weren't really significant and reform theology or Pentecost, I mean, even the action of Pentecost.
It's like I realized eventually that.
Well, Pentecost is the empowering of the church, and Jesus says, I'm not going to leave you, forsake you, and I'll guide you into all truth. And yet here we are, as Protestants and reform we're saying, well right away that you know, the church pretty much failed historically, right, But where was this promise of Pentecost, guidance and so forth. Oh, well,
that's all for the elect. But wait a minute. When Paul writes to the Ephesians when he's talking about predestination, he's not writing to the elect, to the invisible church.
He's writing to a visible community at Ephesus.
And that was always a problem for me in terms of exegesis of Ephesians, because I have a you know, a million reform commentaries and I'm over here reading Charles Hodge and you know how to see exegy, you know Ephesians. Oh, this is Paul writing to the regenerate at ephicis to the elect. No, it's written to the visible church. And that's a problem. That means that the Protestant, the Calvinist of auction predestination is not what's in Paul's mind.
There.
So, long story short, the essence of what you're asking is that the the Tulip approach is the wrong order theology, the wrong order of theology. It's reading theology from trying to do.
It from the vantage point of the divine mind, the divine decree. But that's not how we do it.
Theology is read first and foremost trying to and Christology wise, then that leads you to how you would understand saeteriology and ecclesiology. So if you try to start with the divine decree, start with uh sateriology, right justification by faith alone, that's the gospel, it gets all messed.
Up, and then you get people.
Then then down the road your your trinitarian christological stuff's all messed up because you have to squeeze Jesus being damned into the presuppositions.
That you have of justification by faith alone.
And both of you coming from a Calvinist background, it would seem to me there's another big thing missing out of out of this is that you can take the sinner, and you can forgive the sinner all you want, forgive, forgive, forget, forget, forgive. That sinner is still going to die. You haven't in the Calvinist it seems to me, and I could be wrong. In the Calvinist way of looking at things, you still
haven't dealt with death. And Christ destroyed death so that the inner still forgiven, who is still having to deal with the sin in him, the sinful nature and so forth, could live. And it seems like that that's missing, that that the the idea that Christ destroyed death. Yeah, that's missing from Calvinist theology.
It's a crucial point because in Calvinist theology, death is kind of like a necessary it's it's a necessary element under the divine decree. Right, So it's not the enemy of God. It's sort of just the tool of God. And certainly, certainly God's providence covers evil and death, but it doesn't mean that he positively wills.
Or decrees it.
In fact, Scripture says God does not will death. And you know very well, I's got these different wills. So he's got one will where it's like he doesn't really want it, but he's got a secret will where he's like doing it now.
It's crazy.
Yeah, so this is this is a.
Huge gap.
You're absolutely right, and it ties into the notion that you can be saved and justified and righteous and have no no actual holiness. Right, that's the That's a weird thing that I actually encountered that in a lot of the Roman Catholic critiques of Protestantism when I was looking at Roman Catholicism, because they made a great point. I think it was it was I think it was on k there's a there's an old book that his X debate with Luther. It's actually a really good book. I'm no,
I'm not advocating Roman calicism. I'm just saying that k has some really good arguments in that debate with Luther, and he's and and and some of the topics brought up are things like, well, how can God call somebody righteous if in fact they're completely wicked?
As you say, Luther, right, you're filthy rags.
Luther was even more radical and depravity than Calvin was because Luther wrote Bondage of the Will, which is basically arguing that you can you can't do anything good at all. He's more radical just on that point than Calvin is. Well, He's says that you you're a you're a you're an ass that's either ridden by.
God or the devil, but the devil.
Yeah, And that's in that BONDI as the Will book, and I had a page where I read I read Luther books.
I was really enamored with Luther for maybe a year or two.
I wasn't Lutheran, but I just thought he was an interesting, you know, bombastic figure. But uh, you know, AQ was making these points that well, doesn't that make God a liar? How can God call you righteous when in fact you're evil and God can't lie, So how is that possible? Oh well, he's just seeing the righteousness of Christ's covering you. But it's not actually the righteous of Christ. It's actually
just a legal status. And that there's a great point that I think it's brought up in the Alistair McGrath Ustisia Day Book, which is that nobody before nominalism in the Middle Ages and the Reformed, the rise of the Reformed tradition, they didn't think of a division between what you called something and it's actual metaphysical status. That's an actual post Enlightenment Reformation division.
In other words, it's.
Impossible to have that view, that nominalist view prior to medieval nominalism debates.
So, in other words, nobody in the ancient Midial world.
Including Paul, thought that you could have a purely legal status of righteousness divorced from the actual ontological status of you being righteous.
And that's a little bit of a philosophical angle on it.
But if that is the case, and I think that it is, that's also really devastating to the idea that you can be just before God in a.
Purely nominal legal sense and not in an actual sense. There wasn't a vision in the world.
And ladies and gentlemen watching this debate sometime in the future of this recording, go back and listen to what Jay just said.
Listen to that again. That's really something.
Yeah, there's no diventon.
And the same thing goes for sacraments, right the ancient and medieval world. Now, certainly there were heretics that deny the real presence, but they didn't typically think of this radical division between.
Sign and signifier. Right.
The same goes for iconography, the image of the icon, the image of the saint. They didn't think of it as this radical division of Oh, that's just a purely token symbol. They thought of it as having in some sense a real, a real metaphysical connection with the person, that being the thing. Right, So there might have been debates about the real presence, but nobody thought about it. As you know, symbols in the ancient world were not sure.
Dead matter. Does that make sense?
Yeah, well that's what they think of it today, That's not what they thought of it back then. The word symbol is radically altered now from what it meant two thousand years ago.
There you go.
Yeah, because you were clashing two things together.
Is that absolute? Yeah?
You so this question here, I got to ask you this.
So Daniel, Daniel MacArthur, if you're listening, he wanted me to ask Jay Dire this when when the opportunity presented itself, So you're welcome. So basically you touched up on this idea of the Christology, this reformed Christology. Now it's been kind of you know, you know, mutilated in a way. Can you can you speak more in to that. I know you referenced you know where that kind of gets messed up, But it's an it's an important point.
Daniel said. That was something I was very convincing for him as well.
Back in the day.
You've you've had videos where you've talked about this. But can you kind of walk through why that Christology issue is such a huge point and and and why it's heretical?
Sure, so I would say I'm not saying that Protestants are intentionally wanting to be an historian.
Sure.
A lot of times when I make this point, though, say I'm not a Nestorian. I don't believe that I'm not saying that you're intending to be. What I'm saying is that the logic of the penal substitution position will take you there if if you're consistent with it, and.
It's pretty clear cut. I think that now some Protestants and.
Evangelicals today, I mean maybe maybe Calvinists are up in the air today. I'm not sure I did hear that one. Somebody told me that one of the modern calvin Is systematic theologians. I don't remember who it was, maybe Robert Raymond or somebody. Somebody supposedly doesn't have the classical Reformation view that that Jesus was damned in our place.
But for the classical.
Reformers, even up in two people like j. I. Packer, uh, Paul Washer teaches it got to do who's the other the Calvinist Baptist guy that everybody that's super famous always good blank on his name, John John Piper John Piper teaches hyper teaches that Christ was damned. I'm trying to think of who the classical guys.
All that's really cool.
You've got the damns himself. I like that one. Boy.
Yeah, Well, I mean they're trying to be consistent because so you have, you know you have in the Apostles Creed.
I know that's not really an Orthodox church. But in the West, when Luther or Calvin and these guys, when they were commenting on Christ's descent into Hades and the Apostles Creed, they had to give it a new understanding because unfortunately, even though the Latin Church in the West at that time they I believe that they had kind of lost the significance of christ discent into Hades, it was still it was still there in confession, and even today in the calch Catechism.
It's still there that they professed that Christ has sent it into the Hades.
But the Reformers, this is a fascinating They gave it a new spin. They said, well, it's not him actually going to some place called Hades. What that means is that on the cross he experienced the reality of the damn nation enough of all.
The people that he died for.
The logic of that is that if it's going to be a full transaction in a legal sense, if he's going to pay the debt that I owed he paid.
Hey, you know, I remember that Baptist hmi we used to sing when I was a kid.
Uh so, right, I mean, if the debt is, if it's a one to warry, you've got to pay the damnation, which was to me that I then get.
The bank account righteousness put into my bank account.
Right.
That's how it works in the classical Protestant idea. So it's not just them saying, oh, well, God just forgives you and transfers the righteous acust to your bank account. It's on the basis of in most of the classical reformers, the wrath of the Father being poured out on the son. So then we have this question in terms of Christology, which is that, well, if we're going to be orthodox in our christology, how does that actually work?
Because is it the Father damning the son? And if you believe Ephesus and the Christology that you know comes.
Out of well not just Ephysis but calcil On, then we know that the subject is a divine person, the logos is the divine person who's undergoing supposedly this event, and that would mean then that the divine person of the Father is damning the divine person of the Logos who's incarnate.
So you kind of only have two options there.
You can say, well, it's not the father damning the divine son, it's the damnation of the human nature.
Well, but it's there has to be.
Some one person.
Yeah, you've got to be some subject that is the recipient of that. It can't just be the human nature that's damned. It has to be a subject. And so is that Jesus of Nazareth the historical person.
Well, that would be the story in view that.
The story is sought a dual subject christology, that there was a human hypostasis Jesus Nazareth, and then there's the divine hypostasis of the Logos, who was kind of sometimes present and then sometimes it's the human person sometimes. So it's this weird dual subject risology and the whole point of the tokos the word the phrase is, Cyril said, this completely cuts out the whole idea of there being
a dual subject risology. The only subject for all the incarnate action, Cyril says, is the divine person of the Logos.
That's it. He is a full human nature, but he's not a human hypostasis or person.
And so if we accept ephicis and that teaching, then what happened And by the way, Calcton as well, because a lot of people don't know.
People think Leo is the measure of Calciton. That's not actually true. They measured the tone of.
Leo against Cyril, So Calcedon is actually Kairellion, not primarily Pope sing Leo. Now, point being, then the other option is I could say, well, in this transactional event, I could say that the divine person of the Sun is the one that's damned. But this presents so many trinitarian difficulties that it's almost just unimaginable. I mean, first of all, the persons of the triads share the same will.
There's one will in God.
How could you have one will the person of the Father setting his will against the son to damn the son, right, how could you you would We would lose parichoresis, the divine involve right, the Father and the spirit would no longer dwell the son if he's damned, because he's a curut.
So it's just absurd, it would be it would be anti trinitarian.
But that they wouldn't have those teachings to begin with, because from Protestants from the Reformation on, think of how much they were simply inventing because everything was anti Catholic at that point. So if the Catholics believe it, we don't, then what do we believe? And then they have to come up with this kind of stuff as something, because what are the people waiting for?
You know, well, if you read Lutheran Calvin, there's always this sort of verbal credence given to things like Calcedon
and so forth. Uh are oddly enough, the Westminster Confession, if I recall, which is post Calvin, it actually does give it gives verbal credence to Christ having uh two wills and two natures, which is the you know fifth and six councils explicate that, but you know, the six Council goes really deep into two energies, so you know, you have to have the essence energy sinction doctrine to
have two wills and two energy. And to my knowledge, there's no Protestant that that have an essence energy sinction doctrin, unless it's just people modern people just kind of saying, oh, I like that idea.
Cool, But but Calvin, I think, you know, and then I've read the entire institute how to read that?
For bonds and seminary they measure that the whole thing, all fifteen hundred pages of it. And I remember there are sections where Calvin's you know, he's like, well, you know, we believe in two natures and two wills, and that's consistent with Calcedon, and we definitely believe. We don't believe Colson is a fallible, but we definitely believe what it teaches. But they don't really understand the implications of it. You know, it's more than just verbal verbal credence, right right.
Well, Jay, what do we do with a person comes along and says something like, you know, I'm not okay, I'm not reformed or Calvinist anymore. I'm a Bible believing Christian. You know, you have a lot of I'm a Bible believing Christian. Read If that's all they are, how do you show them that they're no better off from the ancient Apostolic Christianity.
And you've probably encountered a lot of this, right, Oh yeah, yeah, I mean there's a lot of a lot of.
Yeah, right, well, I find it typically the most beneficial to go into just saying, well, who do you think put the Bible together?
You know, I mean, did it just happen fall out of the sky.
I mean there's a real historical process to that that you can't you can't divorce the divine from the human in this regard. So just as just as in Christology, for example, I know evangelicals might not know about Christology, but for you guys, for orthodox people, like, we know there's a synergy in Christ, right, there's a synergism between the human nature and the divine nature in Christ. And we know there's a synergy in terms of our participation
in grace. Right, we are always cooperating. Paul says, I'm a co operator, co worker with Christ coworker. Yeah, yeah, So there's always synergy. It's never gone, it's never lost. And you know, one of the problems in Calvinism is that conversion requires God.
Stepping in and basically taking over.
So it's a monargistic view, and if they were consistent, I think they would also have to be monargists in terms of Christology as well. So it seems to me that they would prefer severus and peer us, you know, the people that Maximis in the Church Fathers argued with they would be more like a Coptic my Ephicite type of position.
If they wanted to really be monogists.
But for the typically evangelical, I would say, one thing I've found really effective is to point out, you know, they'll always say, well, we're not saved by our works, bro, you can't be saved by works, you know, We're justified by faith, not works.
And I said, well, how does what is Jesus describe faith as? And they're like, it's a gift. Yeah, but what does he say? He says, this is the work of God that you believe on him. So wait a minute, So.
Faith is actually a work according to Christ of the Gospel of John. So it can't be the case that no works are necessary, because every evangelical is going to at least say, well, you do have to believe.
Wait a minute, doesn't believe something I do. Even if you think that it's just a mental notional thing, it's still something I gotta do.
You well, but it's a gift, yeah, but it's still it's something I gotta do, right, So they can't totally divorce the human element from it at all. And then you then I would point out, well, one thing that happens in the history of this debate of justification by faith alone is that the people who defend it oftentimes.
Totally disagree amongst themselves as to what it actually means. So, for example, does my faith faith in the Atoning.
Death, row resurrection work of Christ is that if I put all my faith in trust in that alone?
Is that just the case by faith on? Or as many of the classical Reformed actually said and Lutherans do.
I also have to know and believe in justification by faith alone. To be just by by faith alone, you see, So you can sort of pile on the difficulties there to illustrate that what sounds perhaps as a very clear, you know, the persecutive structure that sounds as a very clear doctrine, actually isn't that clear?
What does it actually mean?
And I would point out one other strong point which I learned when I was a Catholic, was, you know, if you look at Romans, for when Paul cites Genesis, and it doesn't matter whether you're a Protestant, Evangelical or a Calvinist.
Abraham's what they call transition from wrath to grace. This is the the idea that before you regenerate your God's enemy, you're a child of wrath, got hate, right, when you're regenerated.
That's what they call a transition from wrath to grace. Now God loves you, you're the friend of God, your regenerator.
The transition from wrath to grace in Abraham's life should be, if you're a good Protestant, Genesis twelve.
But I remember noticing it one day when I was looking at the Catholic stuff back in twenty or four.
Actually, Paul cites Genesis fifteen, or the passage supposed to be supposedly the ultimate passage, Romans four, you know, defending justification by faith alone. Why is Paul citing the wrong chapter? Abraham has already done three chapters of righteous works from twelve to fifteen. Paul's using the text in fifteen that he was justified by faith, he was righteous by faith, not Genesis twelve. And that always bugged me because he
should have cited Genesis twelve. Right, if we're Protestants, but if righteousness from God is something that is an actual power that we participate with and synergize with.
Right, and Paul's point, of course, I think we all know Paul's point is not that there's no works that we do. Paul's point is that the works of.
The ceremonial law and circumcision didn't make Abraham righteous.
That's the point of that passage. The mosaic law didn't make because if mosaic law was necessary, then how are people before mosaic law?
Rochester.
That's Paul's point, not that we don't do any works at all. Right.
So, but if the Protestant reading, whether you're Calvinists or evangelical, a Romans four is what Romans four is, Paul should have sided Genesis twelfth.
Yeah, facts, yeah, no, good point, good point.
Wow.
Well other thing two.
I would say to one other point.
You know, when when God speaks, it occurs, it's efficacious. Right, God speaks, the world comes to be. And so if God speaks, you're righteous. God speaks a word into our hearts. The New Testament says, right, it's efficacious. I don't mean this in the sense of like irresistible grace, but I'm saying.
It's not possible for God to say you are righteous and you'd be Luther and you not be that right because His word is efficacious.
Yeah. Good's stuff. Good stuff. Father. As as we come to close, Barther, you how you're about to say something.
Well, I think we have.
Kind of one last thing we'd like to ask Jay, And this kind of wraps back to the to the first question. So many Protestant videos coming out why you should leave Orthodoxy, Why you should become a Protestant. Let's turn that around. Why is Eastern Orthodoxy a better alternative for Protestants?
Maybe two or three reasons, Jay, What do you think, right?
Well, I would say that, you know, between product I was raised Evangelical, Baptist.
And then Calvinists for many years, and then it spent about a decade in room with autism. I would say that a lot of what both Roman Catholics and Protestants and Evangelicals are looking for are's kind of in that midway of the Orthodox Church. So a lot of people are looking for while I want Bible, but it seems to be like just Bible alone doesn't work, right, because it's like, ultimately, at the end of the day, if you're a Protestant, you might like your pastor you might
like your community, but they don't really have authority. And at the end of the day, it's kind of like you and your Bible, right, And that's I mean, I know that Protestants recognize that there's an authority that elders have, but I'm saying that in terms of the church, I think that whole thing is disastrous because there's not a
body that can actually govern. And one thing I noticed too, was that you in the in Poul's epistles, for example, of the Corinthians, he says that you should excommunicate the people that are really causing these troubles in the church. And then if you read the Councils, you know, all the way up until the triumph of Orthodoxy in the Southern Council and in the Sonoticon, you have the continuation of the idea that the church has the authority to excommunicate.
And if you're a Protestant, I mean, the only time I ever encountered a Protestant ever even thinking of ex communicating it was in a very small Presbyterian reform group.
They were the only.
Protestants I've ever heard. Maybe there's Protestant churches of it, and I saw I'm not saying that you should become Orthodox because people get ex communicated. It's an indicator of the fact that the ecclesiology of Protestism is kind of a disaster, and it's kind of a mess, and it doesn't really have what we call normative authority and ethics, which is the idea that there's somebody that can entern
and make a decision and buying people right. It doesn't necessarily make them infallible or not, you know, Papists or Roman Catholics, but there is a body that has sonodal authority and their decisions can be made, and ultimately the Church as a totality is infallible. I think that's the Orthodox position as I understand it, but not necessarily need an individual. So so the loss of that, I think
pentecostal guidance of the church. I think you'll find in the elements that are missing in Protestantism and that are missing even in Catholicism, I think genuinely are are maintained in the Orthodox Church.
So that's one great reason is that probably a lot of what people are looking for is there.
You know, you don't want to give you a false impression that there's no problems in the Orthodox Church and it's all, you know, green pastures. I think my experience that different bodies have different sets of problems, and there's some overlap there's going to be we have similar problems to other groups, but there are problems unique to Orthodoxy. There's problems unique to Rome, there's problems unique to Protestantism. But I think that if it's not a systemic problem.
For example, I would argue that in Roman Catholicism, the papacy and what has tried to bind people to infallibly and with dogmatic authority, that becomes a systemic level problem such that that system kind of can't be rescued or it can't function.
It it doesn't work right. And I would say in Protestantism.
Because of the nature of the kind of chaotic ecclesiology, it also.
Is a systemic level problem. I don't think Orthodoxy has those systemic level problems. It certainly has its problems.
But.
Systemic level problems, in my argument, would be enough to cancel that out is not a good option basically. So I think that beyond those kind of intellectual arguments, you know, Orthodoxy is very different. It's going to push you to change, it's going to push you to actually, you know, deal with your sins. You know you're not you're not just in your prayer corner mentally, you know, recounting your sins
with you in the Bible. You're going to be going through a kind of a healing I like Father Deacon, doctoronisis analogy or it's act like rehab. It's all go into rehab and we've got to keep going back and working on uh, you know because throughout the week we relapse, right like people who have addictions relapse, So well, you got to go back, you gotta keep working at it. So that's very different than anything I experienced in Protestantism
and even roby Tholicism. In my experience is the you know, when you go to confession, it's it's just very mechanical. It's very oh, here's my sins, Okay, here's your five helm mares. And then it's like I might go to another priest and it's that he doesn't even know, right.
But in Orthodox it's different because my case maybe any other cases, I don't know everybody's case, but you're typically confessing to a spiritual father who is tracking and knowing your progress, and so he knows the medicine that you need. And that's why that mechanical system doesn't really work. I don't think if it's just a I'm here to pay my hail Mary debt and let me go back to do it.
No, it's like no, you okay, so.
You're you got this problem. Maybe you need to you know, maybe you have a problem with greed. Maybe you need to be more magnanimous this next week. You need to give some more money if you're greeding. Oh you got a problem with eating too much? Maybe you need to fact. You see what I'm saying that there's a the medicine is applied to the difficulty, and that that's.
Not anything I ever experienced in other groups. So I actually think that deep down we all kind of want to be healed.
Right, I don't know it an Orthodox building has that healing medicine facts facts.
Amen, No, that's that's facts, like it is like, uh but I.
Mean it's it's hard. I mean it's tough. I mean I'm trying to scare people, but like, you know, it's it's going to be.
It's not the Christian Marines in Protestism. It's really intellectual.
You can read a lot of books and argue a lot and you're not challenged to work on your vices, you know what I mean.
That's it's just different.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I say, I say all the time like it. You know, Orthodoxy is almost like the Christian Marines.
In a way.
You know, there you go exactly.
But before we close, I do want to ask you a lighthearted question, really a real quick one here. So I know before, like off air, we were talking about like how you know I connected with you know, we talked on discord a little bit. Now I know you you've had things on Discord, You've had open dialogue and things like that. There was a time where Deacon and and I is father Deacon was debating Matt Slick and you called that Slick a goblet, which is like hilarious.
Of our pret going sorry, go ahead, are good?
You could you called? Uh, you called Maslick a goblin? Did you know that that was going to become a music video? No.
I think that he's a really nasty person that I've had a lot of nasty interactions with in the past, and so I think people clip that and they think that, oh, you just like randomly wanted to call him names. Now, there's a long history of of he would come on the discord and we would he would just be really really nasty, and we ended up having to just cut off all the communications with that guy.
And there was supposed to be that day, there.
Was supposed to be a debate between doctor father diggon Doctor and Ias, a guy named Darth Dawkins and somebody else, and then they brought Maslick on and so it kind of surprised everybody that it didn't end up being the debate that everybody.
Thought it would be. And so, uh, no, I just I just I think he's a pretty nasty person. And I don't have the view that we should always never call people for what they are.
I mean, maybe maybe I'm wrong about that. I can be corrected, But no, I didn't. I didn't have no idea. What was I don't even know who makes a lot of those You ever heard the God I'm saying, I don't I've heard it. I'm saying I don't know who, Like I don't know who these who who made that?
No idea? So people just you know, kind of clip stuff.
Good stuff.
Man.
Well, well thanks for addressing Calvinism, Protestant Protestantism.
And and just really great questions.
Thank you, Ja.
We've got a message that we want to get out, and we wanted we got a message about the faith and the church, and and uh, we're not hard people to get to know. This is not a hard faith to get to know. We are opening, open and welcoming, and uh we want people to to engage with us, and that in many different areas, at many different levels.
So thank you for coming on. We really appreciate that.
Absolutely, thank you. And yeah, I agree with that.
Not everybody needs to hear, you know, a detailed reputation of Tula, but some people do, all right, some people do need that.
No, we had a good interaction here.
I'm very grateful Luther, Thank you, Jay, Thank you ladies and gentlemen who are watching this, Thank you, and subscribe so that you can be notified of future videos coming out. And we're aiming to provide quality content and really good engagement on issues about our faith, about our culture, and so much more. So subscribe to The Transfigured Life, and thank you again for watching.
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Thanks.
You are not in a turk in your own excuse me, you're just making an assumption that all the saints agree they do.
Go read them no thing. You're a scholarly, a demon, a boomer, part part a demon.
A boomer making an assumption, and even a boomer part an excuse, excuse me?
A demon, a boomer part part You're acholarly, even a boomer part.
Of an even a boomer part an excuse me, even a boomer part part even a boomer.
Making an assumptuous?
Are all the councils inspired at an errant?
The ecumenicals th idea so there ecumenical sentence are inspired in an errant?
Correct