November 21, 2023 with Jason Wallace on “Cyril Lucaris: Calvinist Patriarch Orthodox Saint”

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November 22, 2023

November 21, 2023 Jason Wallace, Pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church (OPC) of Magna, Utah, & Christian documentarian, who will address: “CYRIL LUCARIS: CALVINIST PATRIARCH ORTHODOX SAINT”

00:03: Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
00:11: George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
00:16: Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
00:38: Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
00:50: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
00:58: And now, here's your host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,
01:09: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:20: This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 21st day of November, 2023, and it is my honor and privilege and delight to have back on the program a returning guest, an old friend of mine,
01:38: Pastor Jason Wallace of Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah, which is a congregation in the
01:45: Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination, and Pastor Jason is also a
01:50: Christian documentarian. We're going to be speaking about his latest documentary,
01:56: Cyril Lucaris, Calvinist Patriarch, Orthodox Saint, which obviously sounds like an oxymoron, but we'll find out why that is not the case.
02:10: And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jason Wallace.
02:16: Chris, always a privilege to be with you. And first of all, tell our listeners about Christ Presbyterian Church of Magna, Utah.
02:27: Well, basically, we're in Salt Lake City. We started from scratch 25 years ago and the
02:33: Lord has blessed. It's a difficult place here. Obviously, Mormonism is the number one religion, atheism is right behind it.
02:43: And we're quickly turning into the Bay Area as far as so many people turning atheist.
02:50: And we just got voted one of the gayest cities in America as many people were leaving
02:58: Mormonism and embracing secularism. The City Council of Salt Lake City, they were very proud to announce last
03:07: January or January of last year that for the first time in their history, the majority of their council people are
03:15: LGBT. We're on the west side of Salt Lake.
03:21: The Lord's blessed. We have a congregation here. We have a sister congregation in Clearfield, which is just north of us, about 40 miles.
03:31: And then we have a mission work 250 miles south in Cedar City. Well, we can only hope and pray that this deformation of Mormonism, where it is becoming more and more left wing and more and more of a departure from their roots, not that their roots are biblical.
04:00: They are just as lost. The right wing, historically accurate
04:08: Mormons are just as lost as leftists are. But we would hope and pray that this change that is occurring would open the eyes of many a
04:20: Mormon and cause them to realize that their religion is false, that they may come to a true understanding of the scriptures, a true understanding of who
04:32: Jesus Christ truly is and who the triune
04:38: Godhead truly is. And also what the gospel truly is, the one true gospel of Jesus Christ.
04:50: And how can our listeners who are either living in or near Magna, Utah, or traveling through, perhaps on vacation, how can they find out more about Christ Presbyterian Church?
05:04: Our website is gospelwithutah .org, and that's the easy way.
05:11: We have the YouTube channel Ancient Paths TV. That's Ancient Paths P -A -T -H -S
05:18: TV, all one word. And our phone number is 801 -755 -3013.
05:26: Okay, we'll be repeating that information, God willing, towards the end of the program. And as I opened up the show today, you are a documentarian, have created a number of wonderful, fascinating, informative documentaries.
05:43: And the latest is really a sequel to your last documentary.
05:49: The latest is, as I mentioned, Cyra Loukaris, Calvinist Patriarch, Orthodox Saint.
05:57: And this would be a sequel to the most recent documentary before this,
06:04: The Failure of Eastern Orthodoxy. Why don't you start off, perhaps, by giving a very brief summary of The Failure of Eastern Orthodoxy, and then we'll use that as a platform to plunge into this latest documentary on a fascinating historic figure,
06:27: Cyra Loukaris. Well, in dealing with Mormonism for years,
06:33: Eastern Orthodoxy has sort of popped up here and there. And a number of people who have left
06:40: Mormonism have gravitated towards Eastern Orthodoxy. We've seen some Protestants go that direction as well.
06:47: And so I began looking into it and realized it was making many of the same arguments against the
06:54: Protestants as the Mormons make. And so essentially made the video.
07:01: You know, they love to rant that Protestantism is supposedly a 16th century heresy.
07:07: That's not the case. The Protestants, especially Calvin and the
07:12: Reform side, saw themselves as holding on to tradition and holding all tradition up to the light of God's word.
07:23: Calvin's Institute, many people don't realize, roughly 850 times he quotes the church fathers against what
07:31: Rome said was the historic tradition of the church. No, Protestantism is the historic faith of the church.
07:43: The early church wasn't without error. You can find errors that later were expanded and expounded by Rome and the
07:53: East. There were Gnostics who had images that Irenaeus mentions.
08:01: But the united testimony of the church was against icons. The Council of Elvira took place two decades before Nicaea, while the church was still being persecuted.
08:15: I believe about the year 305, it said that we're not to have images in the church.
08:24: And perpetual virginity of Mary is not the historic faith of the church. There were people who were teaching it, but we go through the sources and we show it's
08:33: Gnostic. It's not Orthodox. And there were people who were opposing it. Tertullian rejected the perpetual virginity of Mary about the year 205.
08:44: They like to say that things like the propitiatory substitutionary atonement is an invention of the reformers.
08:59: No, it's taught in the Epistle to Diognetus about the year 140.
09:08: We go through and we show, yes, that the church fathers spoke of tradition, but they tried to use the same categories that Rome uses today as scripture versus tradition.
09:24: No, the central part of what had been handed down the tradition was scripture. And it was the infallible part that was to be the test for everything else.
09:35: Protestant reformers value tradition. They weren't digging the Christian faith out of a hillside like a
09:40: Joseph Smith. They valued what the generations had gone before them had to say, but they didn't see it as infallible.
09:52: And so basically went through their claims and showed that things like how
10:01: Mary, first the claims for her perpetual virginity become more and more and more exalted to the point where she becomes the patron saint of the
10:12: Byzantine Empire. And her icon leads her armies into battle.
10:20: This isn't the Mary we see in scripture. And this whole idea that you have to go through Mary to get to Jesus, that's not scriptural.
10:32: Yes, you can find people in the early church who recognize that without Mary, we wouldn't have Christ. She played an integral role, but what you see is an evolving tradition like with the
10:44: Pharisees. And we documented all of that in the first video. The second video expands on what we touched on.
10:53: There was a 17th century patriarch of Constantinople named Cyril Lucaris. The Greeks would call him
11:00: Kourilas Lucaris. And I'm sure my pronunciation stinks.
11:06: But even when I think I'm repeating the same sounds, they just don't come out the same.
11:12: But Cyril Lucaris was patriarch in the 1620s and 30s in Constantinople.
11:19: And he became a Protestant and tried to reform the church. This is not widely known.
11:29: Lots of people are vaguely aware of it. But the East has said for a very long time that he was no
11:38: Calvinist at all. This was all a Calvinist conspiracy. And so technology has made access to the archives in Rome and France and Austria a whole lot more readily available.
11:57: And so what we did with the video was essentially looked at the evidence.
12:03: And what it shows is that here's this council of Jerusalem in 1672 saying that the
12:11: Eastern Church never considered him to be as our enemies of Ur. That's the quote.
12:18: But they say that he was Orthodox and considered Calvin a heretic. Well, what do they base that on?
12:27: They base it on oral tradition like they base so many of their other claims. And what we show is that we have documentation.
12:36: We have a copy of the confession that he wrote in 1529 where he states his belief in Protestant terms that the scriptures have a greater authority than the church.
12:53: And that we're justified by faith alone. Things like this rejection of the veneration of images.
13:04: We have a copy of this statement of faith that the East says was he was not the author of.
13:11: We have a signed copy with his attestation and his signature and his signature matches.
13:17: And he was alive when this this confession of his was spreading and being printed and so on.
13:29: Yes, there was a there were several other versions that had made their way to Constantinople when it was first made in 1529.
13:39: And it was it was printed in Geneva and they say, well, you know, this, you know, he would have done it locally.
13:47: Well, no, the Jesuits had his printing press destroyed by the Turks. And he had his
13:52: New Testament printed in Geneva as well. He it was clearly from him. But not only do we have these other versions, but there's a
14:01: Greek version that was printed put out in 1533, five years before his death, and it circulated all through Constantinople.
14:11: And essentially, the Eastern Orthodox say, well, he never denied his authorship in writing, but we have oral testimony that he denied it multiple times with an oath.
14:26: You mean they they they admit that he never denied the authorship in writing?
14:33: Right. They say, you know, we don't know why he didn't do it in writing, but he clearly did.
14:40: He died numerous times. And they say that they never considered him a
14:46: Calvinist. Well, what we do in the video is we show them that, yes, he did write it.
14:52: We have signed copies. We have numerous letters written over the course of years admitting authorship of it.
15:00: And they say, well, if he did it, he was telling the Protestants one thing that he was telling the Orthodox another.
15:06: No, we have the Orthodox clearly recognizing him as the author of the confession, denouncing him as a
15:14: Calvinist and plotting his death with Rome. They were returning to Rome to get financial help to bribe the
15:22: Turks to ultimately killing. Now, tell us about how he became aware of Calvin's teaching.
15:36: And because I understand he initially rejected the teaching of Calvin and the reformers.
15:42: But obviously, our sovereign Lord began enlightening his mind and opening his eyes to the truth and what
15:52: Calvin was teaching. Tell us how this came about. And also, if you could, tell us the primary things that Lucaris came to embrace that are in contradiction to Eastern Orthodox teaching.
16:11: Okay, well, as far as his exposure, he had exposure fairly early to a number of different sources.
16:22: There's some histories out there that claim that he actually studied in Geneva and Wittenberg and things like this.
16:30: That doesn't appear to actually be historically correct. But he was probably exposed to some
16:37: Protestant ideas when he was studying at Venice as a young man.
16:47: Venice was seen as somewhat rebellious for the area against Rome, and so they had
16:55: Protestants that were there. There was printing of Protestant materials.
17:02: Eventually, it was all crushed, but he probably had some exposure there. We have a letter that he wrote,
17:09: I want to say, I think about 1613 or 1618, to a
17:19: Dutchman who ended up on the Arminian side of that controversy at a later date.
17:29: Oten Bogart was the guy's name, his last name. And it's fairly clear that he really didn't like what he was hearing out of Protestants.
17:42: But there was another man, Cornelius Hega, who apparently gave him
17:49: Reformed books. And as he started reading them, what seems to have happened is he realized that much of what he had been taught was established, unquestioned tradition, really wasn't.
18:05: He saw the Reformers appealing not just to the scriptures, but also to the early church.
18:13: The early church wasn't infallible, but it was faithful. And everything that he thought was a novelty found people advocating it, like Athanasius and Jerome rejecting the
18:31: Apocrypha as scripture. He found that these weren't new ideas.
18:38: And so he ends up breaking on all the major issues, the authority of scripture, that he joins with the
18:52: Calvinist in terms of predestination, that it's not based on any works of ours, it's all of grace.
19:00: Justification is by faith alone. It's not a faith that is alone, but rather, he didn't develop the works as the fruit of the
19:13: Spirit, but he was clear that they would accompany true faith.
19:22: And rejected the veneration of icons. So he ends up saying that he dies an
19:37: Orthodox Catholic. And then he goes on to say what he means by that is that he is holding to the historic biblical faith as spelled out in the
19:49: Belgic Confession, which is a reformed confession of faith, his own confession. The other evangelical confessions, he says he rejects the heresies of Rome and the superstitions of the
20:01: Greeks. And he's standing on Christ alone. So, you know, it wasn't an overnight kind of thing.
20:13: I think sometimes because there was confusion on some of the history.
20:22: There was there were people who thought that he had studied at these Protestant places before, and then the
20:30: Orthodox were able to come along and say, well, you know, you say he was Protestant this early and clearly we have this contradicting.
20:36: Well, it was basically it was a straw man. It was he people were overstating the case.
20:48: But very, very clearly, he was he was a Protestant who was working to reform the church.
20:54: He had the Greek New Testament translated into more modern
21:00: Greek because Koine Greek by the 17th century was very, very hard to understand for a lot of Greeks.
21:09: And so he had a more modern translation made after the after parts of the
21:19: Orthodox Church conspired with the Catholics and accused him to the Turks and he was executed.
21:25: His successor burned all the copies he could find. And he called.
21:32: The later Council of Jerusalem. Asked the question. Are they answered the question that Lucaris had asked in his confession, you know, should the scriptures be read by all
21:47: Christians in the common language, the vulgar tongue, as it's often rendered. His answer was yes.
21:54: And the answer of the Council of Jerusalem was no. Now, in Rome, the language had to be
22:02: Latin. What was the language according to the Council of Jerusalem?
22:12: You had the original Koine Greek and you weren't supposed to change it. So that's where they differed from Rome as far as well.
22:19: And part of it, I think. What you see in terms of the rationale is basically the same as twins, which is that it's not just that it wasn't that the language was so much.
22:35: An issue as if you make it readily available, people are going to read for themselves and they're not going to listen to the church and the church knows best.
22:43: So the things that were primary that transformed
22:50: Lucaris's understanding that he previously held are that the scriptures alone are the final and inerrant authority over the church.
23:09: That salvation was by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, and that the veneration of icons was to be forbidden.
23:23: That was idolatry, although from what I understand, Lucaris permitted the use of icons, just forbidden the veneration of them.
23:34: Have I got this right? Lucaris, you have to understand by this point,
23:41: Eastern Orthodoxy is drenched in images in the 1st video. We show that that's not the historic faith that you really don't see this coming about until late 4th century and really even much later.
23:58: And you had what called itself the 7th Ecumenical Council rejecting images entirely.
24:09: That's followed by the 2nd Council of Nicaea, which says that it's the actual 7th
24:16: Ecumenical Council. And they say, if you refuse to venerate icons, then you're anathematized.
24:22: And we show in the latest video what that actually means. It means that you will never be forgiven in this life or the next, and you will suffer eternally in hell.
24:32: They're calling them God's curse on us. The new video on Lucaris, we actually open up with a clip from a
24:43: Romanian church where they are. The priest is saying to Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Henry VIII, the ungodly king, and all branches of Protestantism, anathema.
25:01: And everybody joins in, anathema, anathema, anathema. Yeah, that was quite a chilling scene to watch that and hear that.
25:12: I love the philosophy of making movies that Cecil B. DeMille had. He said, you start with an earthquake and you build to a climax.
25:26: So, yeah, right out of the gate, we open with the anathemas. You get
25:34: Eastern Orthodoxy that is marketed the way
25:40: Mormonism is marketed. You have your truth, we have our truth. You bring all your truth and let's all just get together.
25:50: They're not warm and fuzzy. Mormonism is falling apart. Mormonism can't figure out whether it wants to marry homosexuals or not.
26:00: It seems that might be a bit of an overstatement, but honestly, there's parts of it that seem to be lining up to do that.
26:10: And the leadership's not really taking a strong stand against it. Eastern Orthodoxy is actually doing the same thing.
26:18: The head of the Greek church recently did a baptism for two homosexual men of their child.
26:32: But anyway, I was going somewhere with this.
26:38: Well, why don't you collect your thoughts and we will go to our first commercial break. Okay. Thank you. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
26:49: chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
26:55: If you are asking a personal and private question, for instance, if you are in the
27:02: Eastern Orthodox Church and you're starting to doubt whether you are in a true church, or if you are contemplating converting to Eastern Orthodoxy and you just don't want to make your identity public at this point, we would understand those as valid reasons to remain anonymous, and I'm sure there's many others.
27:24: But please, if you're just asking a general question about the Bible, about the history of Eastern Orthodoxy, and the teachings of Eastern Orthodoxy, and specifically about Cyril Lucaris, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.
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36:51: Chris Armisen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We are now back with today's guest, Pastor Jason Wallace, who is a
36:58: Christian documentarian at the Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, an
37:04: Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation. And we are discussing his latest documentary, which is
37:12: Cyril Lucaris, Calvinist Patriarch, Orthodox Saint. If you have a question, our email address is chrisarmisen at gmail .com
37:21: chrisarmisen at gmail .com And as always, give us your first name at least, city and state, it doesn't matter.
37:33: And before we went to the break, Pastor Wallace, you were trying to formulate your thoughts there.
37:41: So I'm hoping that you have done that. It's getting harder every year, it seems.
37:48: Oh, believe me, I know. Basically, a lot of people get sucked into Eastern Orthodoxy because it's presented in a very warm, fuzzy way.
38:02: And, you know, it's like, you know, we have all these wonderful things without all the without all the strife and division.
38:09: And, you know, we have all these things that appeal to your senses. And the reality is they like Mormonism used to be and still is to a great extent.
38:24: Mormonism denounces all other churches as wrong. They claim that God said that all their professors were corrupt, all their creeds were an abomination in his sight.
38:37: They make the claim they are the one true church. Well, Eastern Orthodoxy does the same thing. And they anathematize the
38:45: Protestant faith very specifically. And it's not hidden away in a footnote somewhere.
38:54: It's in their statements of faith. The they're supposed to read anathemas every once every year on Orthodoxy Sunday against those who who will not it's not just a matter of allowing that you must venerate the icon or you are under the curse of God.
39:16: Wow. They're even more militant about anathematizing every other professing
39:24: Christian. They're more militant about it than Rome is, aren't they? It seems that Rome, even the most conservative apologists of Rome, with some exception, the most conservative apologists of Rome seem embarrassed by the anathemas pronounced at Trent and don't really want to bring it up.
39:41: It's usually Protestants when they're involved in debate when these things come up because Rome has even tried to redefine what that even means.
39:54: It does not mean that you are cursed to hell, according to them. It means that you just can't be a
40:00: Roman Catholic in good standing. It doesn't mean you can't go to heaven. It doesn't mean you're not a true
40:06: Christian, et cetera, et cetera. It just means you're a separated brother and on and on. But it seems that the
40:12: Eastern Orthodox are even more militant and even if I'm not mistaken, no matter what kind of baptism you have received, even if it's in the name of the
40:24: Trinity, you cannot become a member of the
40:29: Eastern Orthodox religion unless you are re -baptized by them. Is that not the case? It varies.
40:37: There's a lot of dissension within Eastern Orthodoxy over this.
40:43: There are some that are more liberal that will accept it. There are others that say that unless it's done by them, it's not valid.
40:53: But, you know, one of the things that we include, you know,
41:01: Rome will try to downplay the anathemas typically of Trent and things like this.
41:07: And then, you know, they'll say, well, like you said, it means we're separated. You're not part of the true church.
41:12: Well, that's not what the East, it's really not what Rome meant either.
41:18: But the East has been very specific. One of the prayers in regard to the confession of Cyril Lucaris was against the
41:29: Protestants in general. And the council said, and let them be subject to an eternal anathema, an excommunicated by the
41:38: Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the only God, one in nature, both in the present life and in that which is to come and cursed and unforgiven and unabsolved after death and partakers of eternal death.
41:53: Eternal punishment. So they, they draw lines.
41:59: Yeah, they were making it clear that the anathema meant eternal punishment. Yes, they're calling on God to curse us now and forever and ever and ever.
42:10: And so, you know, what's funny is like the Mormons, you start trying to answer these things and they play the victim.
42:19: Why are you attacking us? And it's like, you just anathematized me. You've anathematized the
42:25: Protestant faith. Can we actually deal with the arguments for and against now?
42:33: And either they play the victim or they sneer at you. You know, it's like you wouldn't even have a
42:39: Bible if it wasn't for the church. The church has authority over the Bible. That's not what you read in Paul's epistles.
42:48: The apostles defined the church not the church is defining the apostles teaching.
42:56: If you refused to listen to the apostles, you weren't a church. You could claim to be, but you couldn't. It didn't make it true.
43:05: So go ahead. I was just going to go to a listener question if you are finished your thought there.
43:12: Are you ready to? OK, we have Drake in Flanders, Long Island, New York.
43:22: Drake asks what exactly does it mean that Cyril Lucaris was an ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople?
43:32: And my other question is did he have any personal contact with John Calvin since there were a number of decades where their lives overlapped or any other of the reformed reformers in that day?
43:51: OK, they actually did not overlap. Calvin dies in 1664 and Lucaris remember here.
44:08: Yeah, well, Clarice died in 1638. I knew the death date.
44:13: I was trying to remember his birthday. 1572. So he died. He died decades after Calvin was
44:22: I'm sorry. He was I'm sorry. He was born almost a decade after Calvin died.
44:31: So there was no overlap there. Clearly, there was overlap between people who had been taught by Calvin or known
44:40: Calvin and him. But so they never met.
44:48: And then what was the other part of the question? What exactly does it mean that he was an ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople?
44:56: One of the things you have to understand that when the church became legal, there had already been a tendency towards centralization that you see manifested in various ways while the church is being persecuted.
45:14: It's just it's somewhat of a natural phenomenon that you may have a number of different elders in a church, but it's typical that there's going to be somewhat of a first among equals.
45:32: You know, there's a distinction even in Scripture between a teaching elder and a ruling elder. But you have elders and deacons and there is a tendency for the larger churches to have a larger voice.
45:47: And so you end up with the rise of a sort of a bishop within the local churches distinguished from the elders.
46:00: You see them synonymous in places like Acts 20 and elsewhere in Scripture and in the earliest church.
46:09: But you see sort of a bishop of bishops in the local church and then you see a rise of preeminence among the bishops of larger towns.
46:20: Well, what happens is ultimately you get mirroring the structure of the state to some extent where you have these capital cities of a region where the bishop there sort of oversees that region in terms of the churches and you end up with this higher bishop.
46:47: Well, that gravitates into Alexandria, Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, Ephesus being central bishops, you know, having a stronger voice.
47:06: Well, when Constantine's converted, one of the things he does is he moves to Constantinople.
47:13: He moves the capital to Constantinople. Byzantium becomes Constantinople. And it's the seat of government.
47:23: And so one of the discussions in the early churches, you know, what standing are we going to give to the bishop of Constantinople ultimately becomes one of the five patriarchs that are recognized within the church.
47:42: But on what basis? It doesn't really have a clear apostolic history.
47:47: Well, they invent one where Andrew becomes the founder there and becomes the seat of St.
47:54: Andrew. And Constantinople becomes one of the five major churches.
48:03: You've got four patriarchs in the east.
48:08: You have one patriarch in the Latin -speaking west. When the Roman Empire finally collapses in the west in 476, the eastern church keeps going.
48:20: You don't really have a collapse of the eastern Roman Empire until the 16th century when the
48:27: Ottomans capture Constantinople. They developed this deference to Rome to some extent.
48:41: But with the loss of the western part of the empire, they regained it, lost it again, regained it, lost it again.
48:50: Eventually there's a larger break for a whole host of reasons. Both the
48:59: Germanic invasions and things like this, but there had always been division between the
49:04: Latin -speaking west and the Greek -speaking east. But Rome becomes more and more bold, and it's claiming to be the bishop of bishops.
49:20: Gregory had said anyone who claimed to be the universal bishop was the Antichrist, but by 1054 you end up with the
49:32: Antichrist. In the east, Constantinople being the seat of government, being the cultural and political commercial center of the empire, becomes like the new, they literally called it the new
49:48: Rome. One of the expressions you'll hear from Russian Orthodox is, and I'm butchering the paraphrase of this, but basically there have been three
50:00: Romes, two have fallen, and there will never be a fourth.
50:07: And what they claim is Moscow is the new Rome. And to a large extent, that's, you need to recognize the majority of eastern
50:20: Orthodox are Russians and Ukrainians. I mean, there are other
50:26: Orthodox churches out there, but the majority are under the patriarch of Moscow, which has been autocephalous since,
50:37: I want to say, 1453 roughly. But Constantinople, though, even with Russia declaring its independence,
50:51: Constantinople still holds the title of ecumenical patriarch.
50:58: He's essentially the Pope of the East, first among equals, so to speak. The irony, of course, is that with what happened with World War I and the genocide of the
51:18: Armenians, whereas Greeks, at the beginning of the 20th century,
51:28: I think, made up 20 % of Turkey, the patriarch of Constantinople today only represents about 3 ,000 people in Turkey.
51:41: But it's still given ceremonial jurisdiction over all the East. But in the 16th century, the defeat of the defeat of the
51:54: Byzantine Empire was a much fresher thing. So there were a whole lot more Greeks at the time in that area.
52:04: So he's the head of the church in the East to a great extent. They would qualify that in a lot of different ways, but he's as close as you're going to get to an
52:17: Eastern Orthodox Pope, and he becomes a Protestant and tries to reform the church.
52:24: It did not go over well. There were people who ultimately succeeded in murdering him from within the
52:30: Orthodox Church with the help of Rome. Well, we are going to get more into that fascinating story after our midway break.
52:40: Please be patient with us. The midway break is always longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1
52:46: FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida.
52:57: They do so with their own public service announcements, and while they air those, we air our globally heard commercials.
53:04: Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information provided by our advertisers as far as how you can contact our advertisers so that you can more frequently and successfully contact them, keeping in mind that we depend upon our advertisers to exist, folks, and if you can't buy anything or purchase services or anything like that, please at least thank our advertisers for sponsoring this show.
53:34: And also, please send in your questions to Jason Wallace, to chrisorenson at gmail .com, chrisorenson at gmail .com,
53:42: give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. We'll be right back, do not go away. It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.
54:02: Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,
54:11: Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Canterbury, Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is
54:24: Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.
54:37: Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlantic metropolitan area.
54:43: Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards and Dr.
54:48: Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight -volume commentary on the larger catechism. Heritage is a member of the
54:54: Hanover Presbytery, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great
55:04: Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone,
55:15: Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.
55:21: For more details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com
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01:09:07: Before I return to our guest Jason Wallace, pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah and Christian documentarian, as we continue our topic on Cyril Lucaris, who was a
01:09:23: Calvinist patriarch in the Eastern Orthodox Church and is now even considered a saint among them.
01:09:30: Before we return to that fascinating conversation, I want to remind you of a couple of things, very important things.
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01:12:17: That's chrisorenson at gmail .com. chrisorenson at gmail .com. We are talking about Calvinist Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Cyril Lucaris.
01:12:29: And as you were saying before the break, Jason, you were talking about how
01:12:36: Cyril Lucaris' attempts at reformation of the Eastern Orthodox Church stirred up a lot of anger and hostility and opposition within the ranks of the
01:12:50: Eastern Orthodox hierarchy, so much so that there was a plot to kill him.
01:12:57: And I was saying that this all adds to the validity of the teaching from history that he was indeed a
01:13:08: Calvinist, unlike what others are claiming today that his confession was merely a forgery.
01:13:16: Obviously there wouldn't be such hostility amongst the hierarchy in the
01:13:21: Eastern Orthodox Church if he was a truly... Yes.
01:13:27: Go ahead. I think that it became an embarrassment to the
01:13:34: Eastern Church that much of their claim to authority is based on apostolic succession.
01:13:43: They claim that their patriarchs have a charisma of office that keep them from misleading the church.
01:13:51: Now that doesn't hold up to regular history as we tried to show in the first video, but also it was being used against them.
01:14:03: That, you know, here's a fellow that was recognized, Callistus Ware, Metropolitan of London, said that Lucaris was possibly the most brilliant Are you there?
01:14:21: I'll call you on the... No, stay there. It doesn't matter if we're breaking up once in a while.
01:14:30: Okay, can you hear me now? Yes. I don't know why you're calling me, but continue. Okay, so essentially he was an embarrassment, and so a generation after his death,
01:14:45: Decythius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, called a council that claimed that it was all a
01:14:52: Calvinist conspiracy, that he was never known by any of the Orthodox, that even if he wrote the
01:15:00: Confession, it was basically he was a secret heretic, because they never knew anything about it.
01:15:09: Well, the reality is that the first two times that they were able to depose him, the man who replaced him, we have a deposition in the archives of the
01:15:23: Vatican where he states in 1635, three years before his murder, that he's a
01:15:32: Calvinist, and after they deposed him a fourth time, the last three times they replaced him with Cyril Cantarus, similar sounding name, but Cantarus was a graduate of the
01:15:48: Jesuit seminary that they had set up in Constantinople. The Greek Church was reduced to great poverty because of the the
01:15:59: Ottoman takeover, and the Ottomans put all kinds of restrictions on education and things like this.
01:16:05: And so Rome, because of trading with the Ottomans, was actually able to do things like set up a college in Constantinople to train
01:16:15: Eastern Orthodox clergy in Roman belief. And so Cantarus, we have him and the
01:16:30: Austrian ambassador trying to get funds to bribe the
01:16:35: Turks to get rid of Lucaris' patriarch, calling him a forerunner of the
01:16:43: Antichrist, the Calvinist Cyril. And we have another petition, we have a petition that he sent to Rome asking for funds to help get rid of Lucaris from Calvinism, and it's signed by a clergy.
01:17:08: And so this is all 1630s. A generation later, the
01:17:14: Council of Jerusalem says, hey, we never knew him to be a Calvinist. They've rewritten the history to try to explain him away.
01:17:26: The Council of Jerusalem said he was no
01:17:34: Calvinist, but then they also say that he really wasn't a strong defender of the church either, and they considered him not to be a
01:17:45: Christian at all. But he definitely wasn't a Calvinist. Well, he's murdered by the
01:17:53: Turks. He's a hero to the Greeks. And eventually, I think it was like in 2007, the
01:18:01: Patriarch of Alexandria declared him, and then
01:18:07: I believe it was last year or a year before, the Patriarch of Constantinople declared him a saint as well.
01:18:14: And so one of the ironies in all this is that they have rewritten the history to where they have made a saint out of a self -described
01:18:24: Calvinist. And we try to show in the video, this isn't the first time they've rewritten history.
01:18:32: Eastern Orthodoxy declares Constantine a saint and equal to the
01:18:38: Apostles, along with his mother, Helena, or Elena.
01:18:46: And according to Jerome and a host of others in the early church, Constantine died an
01:18:53: Arian. You know, later histories contradicted the contemporary histories and said, oh, no, no, no, he wasn't.
01:19:03: He was never an Arian, and he wasn't baptized a dozen years earlier by Pope Sylvester of Rome.
01:19:17: And they create these fanciful histories to explain away all the problems of their supposedly infallible church.
01:19:24: Well, their church isn't infallible. They're looking for excuses not to listen to Scripture.
01:19:33: Now, is the declaration of sainthood of someone like Cyril Lucaris irreversible in the minds of Eastern Orthodox hierarchy?
01:19:47: In other words, since they claim to be an infallible church, when they make such a declaration, is that considered to be just in the same par as when
01:19:57: Rome declares something dogmatically that can never change? Sort of, kind of.
01:20:08: It's like Rome. You know, we have an infallible
01:20:18: Pope, and it's like, well, what infallible statements has he made? Whatever supports what we're doing at the moment.
01:20:26: But, you know, if we decide to change it, then it really wasn't, it wasn't made ex cathedra.
01:20:34: You know, it's, they have an infallible Pope, they just don't have to listen to anything that Francis tells them.
01:20:45: It's, it's kind of, I mean, it's a game. Well, can an Eastern Orthodox in good standing, one that is not really an apostate since you, an apostate in their or from their tradition, because as you have said, there are even ultra left -wing
01:21:09: Eastern Orthodox priests and congregations, parishes.
01:21:15: Can you be a Eastern Orthodox in good standing and say,
01:21:21: I reject the sainthood of Cyril Lucaris? It depends on which group you're in.
01:21:28: There's great schism between the Eastern Orthodox for all their pretense of unity.
01:21:35: There's schism right now. Yeah, Ukraine and Russia. Yeah, exactly. You've got the
01:21:44: Russians accusing the Patriot, the current Patriarch of Constantinople of being a CIA agent or asset rather.
01:21:54: And, you know, he's recognizing Ukraine as independent of the
01:22:03: Patriarch of Moscow to some extent. You've got the Patriarch of Alexandria doing something similar.
01:22:12: And you have to understand the Patriarch of Alexandria is not the head of the Coptic Church. That's separate.
01:22:18: You have a Greek Patriarch in Alexandria. You also have the Coptic Patriarch because there's been the split there.
01:22:27: And you get it's when when
01:22:34: I've done some of the feedback I got from from the first video was there was a wonderful clip by the guy's name was our and I'm blanking on his last name, but he's.
01:22:57: He's a member in good standing, he he's I think a priest or a monk and.
01:23:05: But there are a lot of people who say that he's a heretic, one of the Eastern Orthodox who
01:23:13: I showed the current video to.
01:23:23: He corrected me that I originally thought that Papa Giorgio.
01:23:30: Who is featured in the video that he was Archbishop, he's like, no, he's an archpriest, he's he's married, he's not a bishop.
01:23:40: And but he added the note, he said, and he's a heretic. They declare each other heretics right and left.
01:23:51: So. They. I don't know that you could be a member of good standing and simply denounce it, depending on the communion that you're in.
01:24:05: I mean, if you're in the Russia, if you're in the Russian Orthodox Church, you can say almost anything about. Lukaris, because they're they're in schism with Tom Stanton, Paul and Alexandria, which have declared.
01:24:26: And did Lukaris have any significant number of Alexander Petelius, the man who first Athanasius Petelius, the man who succeeded him the first two times they managed to depose him, they declared him a saint.
01:24:48: And he denounced Lukaris as a Calvinist heretic. So you could get away with it in the
01:24:56: Russian church. You probably couldn't get away with it in the Antiochian church. You could what they typically do is like Roman Catholics, they will know.
01:25:12: They'll qualify their statements, they'll say things like, well, this is an action done by the patriarch
01:25:18: Constantinople and patriarch Alexandria, but it's not binding because it's not been done by all the patriarchs.
01:25:29: But I don't think I don't think in Rome you could reverse the canonization of a saint.
01:25:37: Like, for instance, I can remember years ago, Mark Michael Zima was a guest of mine who is a traditionalist
01:25:46: Roman Catholic and might shock people that I have had on a few occasions
01:25:52: Roman Catholics as guests. But it was always to point out some kind of inconsistency in the
01:25:59: Church of Rome. And I made it clear that I was not doing the program as an exercise of ecumenism.
01:26:04: I made it clear that I did not recognize my guest as a brother in Christ and that we viewed each other as having a false gospel.
01:26:14: So I made that all clear. But Mark Michael Zima wrote a book before the canonization of Mother Teresa, and he was opposed to it.
01:26:23: And he wrote he wrote a book documenting her heresies, even from the standpoint of Rome and her, you know, statements such as I do not want to make
01:26:37: Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims Christian. I want to make them better Hindus and better Buddhists and better Muslims and that kind of thing.
01:26:45: And we could go on and on and on with the things that she said to the point of having at least two exorcisms on her at her request.
01:26:55: So she believed she was demon -possessed. But he, as soon as she was canonized, said he had to shut his mouth over the issue.
01:27:05: He could no longer publicly protest that because it was a an official canonization and declaration of Rome.
01:27:15: So I'm assuming that you're saying it's something different in Eastern Orthodoxy? Well, Eastern Orthodoxy is not nearly as united as Rome is.
01:27:26: And there is definitely schism in Rome. I mean, they span the whole spectrum, too.
01:27:33: All right. I mean, was it was the guy's name Strickland in Texas or I forget his last name, but the bishop that was just recently removed.
01:27:43: You've got the German church and schism. But. To some extent, you have a spectrum within Roman Catholicism that unless somebody from higher up tells you you have to stop, you can you can get away with a lot of stuff.
01:27:57: Right, right. But one of the things with Rome is Rome has actually dropped embarrassing saints.
01:28:05: Really? Oh, yeah, that's right. Christopher, my own saint. Well, yeah, Christopher is a big one.
01:28:13: In the first Eastern Orthodox video, we we deal with Barlam and Josaphat, you know, which was hugely popular in the
01:28:24: Middle Ages. And, you know, it's it's about how this
01:28:30: Indian prince comes to faith and decides to become a monk and.
01:28:38: Eventually, his father repents as well, they all become monks and, you know, their their relics are supposed to have all these miracles and they bring back, you know, pieces of various relics to set up shrines in the
01:28:55: West. It got kind of embarrassing, though, when they began when further contact with the
01:29:02: East made them recognize that this story was just a baptized version of the story of Buddha. And so Rome has dropped
01:29:12: Barlam and Josaphat from its official list of saints. Thekla is another one that was wildly popular in the
01:29:23: Middle East in the early Middle Ages in particular. Thekla is a fiction.
01:29:33: You read the Acts of Paul and Thekla and it's heretical. It contradicts the scriptures at every turn.
01:29:43: And, you know, it's this wild story where, you know. It like like a lot of other stories at the time, they find
01:29:54: I think it's three different instances to get Thekla naked. She's supposed to be this beautiful, gorgeous woman.
01:30:02: And she keep men keep wanting to marry her. But she she believes that asceticism is the only life for the true
01:30:15: Christian. Right. I remember that in your documentary. Right. And so, you know, they try to feed her to lions.
01:30:23: The lions come and lick her feet. They try to I think they try to burn her in a thunderstorm, breaks out and drenches the flames.
01:30:32: They try to kill her with mad cow or with cow or bulls.
01:30:40: In one of the instances, they tried to feed her to I'm not making this up, man eating seals.
01:30:49: And when Paul refuses to baptize her, she jumps in with the seals and baptizes her death herself.
01:30:59: I think I think I think lightning was said to have struck the seals and killed them.
01:31:05: And so she jumps in with the seals and baptizes herself. And it's like people don't understand.
01:31:14: The same craziness and the same heresy that we see in the church today, it was in the early church.
01:31:24: There were counterfeits. You know, Paul warned about letters supposedly from him.
01:31:32: This, you know, this is a serious matter. And most of these things are on their face,
01:31:40: Gnostic counterfeits. I mean, some of them we know through Irenaeus and others.
01:31:48: In the first video, we deal with the Proto -Evangelium of James. And Eastern Orthodox and Rome believe the story is historically faithful.
01:32:03: Now, the only source we have of it is the Proto -Evangelium. But you read the whole
01:32:11: Proto -Evangelium and what you get is. It's clearly written by someone who didn't know
01:32:18: Judaism, didn't know their geography. When when
01:32:25: Luke has Joseph living in Nazareth, it has him living in Judea.
01:32:33: The birth of Jesus is not only outside of Bethlehem, it's outside Judea. The wise men supposedly go to Jerusalem, they travel five miles south to Bethlehem.
01:32:48: And all that's in the heart of Judea. But in the Proto -Evangelium, they're told, you know, take heed that you do not enter
01:32:56: Judea. And it's just blatant contradiction after contradiction after contradiction.
01:33:05: But it tells a story that seems to clearly be
01:33:12: Gnostic. That Mary is, her mother sets her down at six months old.
01:33:25: She has this miraculous birth. The early versions of the story, the earliest manuscripts basically have her being conceived when her father is away to a barren mother.
01:33:36: She's born at six months old. Her mother puts her down. She takes three steps and her mother determined she's too holy to touch the ground again until she dedicates her at the temple at the age of three.
01:33:50: And they take her to the temple at three. She runs up the steps, runs into the
01:33:57: Holy of Holies and lives in the Holy of Holies until she reaches puberty.
01:34:05: Yeah, I remember children recounting that story in one of your documentaries on Eastern Orthodoxy.
01:34:12: Yeah, and this is supposed to be real history. Right. It contradicts everything in Scripture.
01:34:18: It contradicts everything in church history. But in the late, I mean, it was
01:34:24: Gnostic in that, you know, it builds up Mary big time, but also
01:34:31: Jesus, when he's born, he doesn't have a natural birth. Mary all of a sudden sees a light across the room.
01:34:42: And and you're broken up here.
01:34:51: The in the in the protoevangelium, Jesus doesn't have a natural birth.
01:34:59: He is. Mary sees a light across the room.
01:35:06: And Jesus materializes and she looks to her womb and she's and she's not pregnant anymore. Yeah, I'm assuming that's
01:35:14: I'm assuming that's why they claim and even in Rome that she suffered no pain at all during the birth of Jesus, because that would have been evidence that she received a curse from Eve of having pain in childbirth where she was supposed to be free from the sin of Adam and obviously therefore
01:35:36: Eve as well. Right. And, you know, you see that you see that tradition even in Irenaeus around the year 180 that, you know, he he has heard this.
01:35:52: He also heard that in the millennium that one grain would produce a plant that would produce a billion pounds of wheat.
01:36:02: Right. So, you know, not all of the things he heard were real and good.
01:36:11: Irenaeus just sort of passed along everything he heard. Let's pick up where you left off there, because we have to go to our final commercial break.
01:36:18: And earlier on, I was trying to ask a question because I thought that you had finished the thought, but you hadn't.
01:36:27: But make sure that you remind me if I forget to ask you if Cyril Lucaris had any significant number of people who joined him in his day, in his
01:36:43: Calvinistic beliefs that he adopted. And are there any today in any position of authority or prominence in the
01:36:50: Eastern Orthodox Church who recognize that Cyril Lucaris was indeed a
01:36:56: Calvinist and they agree with him? I'm just wondering if that exists today. But we will go back to that after we return from the break and after you finish your thoughts on Irenaeus.
01:37:06: And give us a email if you have any intention to ask a question. ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.
01:37:14: Give us a first name, at least city and state and country of residence. We'll be right back. Hello, I'm Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You with John MacArthur.
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01:50:08: We're now back with Jason Wallace, and you were speaking about Irenaeus, I believe, and a warning that we cannot rely upon everything he said because he did adopt some very bizarre teachings as a number of the church fathers did.
01:50:29: Yeah. Irenaeus gives us some wonderful testimonies.
01:50:35: He names the four Gospels. He quotes from them. He clearly had a lot of truth.
01:50:43: He also believed that Jesus died when he was 50 years old. He believed that one grain in the millennium would produce a plant that would produce 10 ,000 heads, and every head would produce 10 ,000 grains, and every grain would produce 10 pounds of fine flour.
01:51:06: One grain was going to produce a billion pounds of flour. I forget all the particulars of it.
01:51:16: He said this came from the apostles. Well, no, it actually comes from Jewish mystical writings of the intertestamental period.
01:51:25: And tradition is something that is good, but it's fallible.
01:51:32: One of the points we've tried to drive home in all this is church councils contradict one another.
01:51:37: Church fathers contradict one another. Everything Protestants believe can be found in the early church.
01:51:46: Do we agree with Tertullian on everything? No. Do we agree with him that Mary had a natural birth and that she was a virgin before, but she did not remain one after?
01:51:57: Yes. Do we believe that she was a model of monogamy?
01:52:03: That sure seems to be the case. Not this protectorship by a much older man and that she is the model for asceticism.
01:52:16: That's something we see among the Gnostics, because they didn't want
01:52:22: Jesus to have a physical body. Marcion, like the
01:52:28: Docetists condemned in 1 and 2 John, denied that Jesus had a physical body. And so this idea of him dematerializing out of Mary's womb and rematerializing across the room, that fit really well, because they were trying to deny his humanity.
01:52:49: The ascetics latched onto it because it helped exalt
01:52:55: Mary. Mary becomes the real focus. If you watch her
01:53:02: Eastern Orthodox video, you look forward in an Eastern Orthodox church, you see a giant
01:53:07: Mary and a little Jesus. She becomes the real focus of our devotion, just like in Roman Catholicism.
01:53:17: The scriptures say next to nothing about Mary other than that she was a godly
01:53:23: Jewish young woman and she was blessed. But they take that and they they blow it all out of proportion.
01:53:34: Our position shouldn't be to trash Mary by any stretch, but rather to recognize her in proper proportion to the story.
01:53:44: And I think we should move on. I think we should move on to because we're running out of time here to a listener question.
01:53:52: Ramon in Taguig, Philippines, and I hope I'm pronouncing that city correctly,
01:53:58: Ramon. He asks, is there any documentation at all cited by anyone as proof that Lucaris was a
01:54:09: Baptist and remained a Baptist until death? Wow, I never heard that. And I assume he really means a credo
01:54:17: Baptist, believing in the exclusivity of baptism for repentant believers alone rather than infants.
01:54:30: Yeah, he was with the Reformers. He was definitely not part of all that.
01:54:41: He recognized Calvin as a very godly and sound biblical teacher and agreed with Calvin fully on the baptism of children.
01:54:57: Have you ever even heard that story that Ramon is recounting?
01:55:05: No. And considering the time period, that would have been huge for his enemies.
01:55:16: That was never brought up. You honestly don't even see it outside of the
01:55:23: Anabaptist until you get to a handful of congregations in what is the first Anabaptist Confession of 1644.
01:55:38: Lucaris had been dead for six years, so that never entered into—I never saw anything that he was even aware of anybody taking a different position.
01:55:50: Well, but I can say that the Eastern Orthodox do immerse the infants and anybody else that they baptize.
01:55:57: In fact, when they baptize an adult, even today, sometimes they use a kiddie swimming pool to immerse the adult convert.
01:56:09: Once again, it depends on the group because what you typically see is they will immerse the bottom but then maybe dunk the head or something like that.
01:56:22: It's not a full submersion except where there's a video around where they have this guy literally taking a baby and dunking them fully under the water three times.
01:56:36: And a number of Eastern Orthodox said that's not the way we do it.
01:56:41: Well, before we go run out of time, I would like to ask you that question that I alluded to before the end of the show, before the last break.
01:56:50: Did Lucaris have any kind of significant following who agreed with him on his
01:56:56: Calvinism, and do any such folks exist today in the Eastern Orthodox Church?
01:57:03: Yeah, there definitely were some. Nathaniel Canopius was one of his secretaries and he was going to translate the
01:57:18: Belgic Confession into Greek. I think he may have actually done so. And he was going to translate some of Calvin's works into Greek as well.
01:57:27: When Lucaris was executed, he and others recognizing that the other side had won and that their lives were in peril.
01:57:39: Some of them fled to Protestant countries. Some of them basically worked to fit in with the new regime, so to speak.
01:57:55: But no, there were some who followed it. Lucaris is a hero to the
01:58:00: Greek evangelicals to this day. They recognize him. He was a martyr for their church.
01:58:08: And so there are some who do recognize him. There's a wonderful biography, Protestant Patriarch, that tells his story.
01:58:18: I tried not to cover too much of the same ground. The video is not so much a biography as an attempt to show that the
01:58:26: Eastern Orthodox Church has just been lying about him. Here is demonstrable evidence.
01:58:33: They don't have an infallible church. They have a church that's lying through its teeth. And the scriptures are infallible, but councils and tradition, they all contradict.
01:58:45: And we are out of time, and I want to make sure our listeners have your website. It is GospelUtah .org,
01:58:51: GospelUtah .org. Thank you so much, Pastor Jason, for doing such an excellent job.
01:58:57: I look forward to your return to the show. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater