Patriarch Tarasios, Second Nicea, And The Vital Importance Of Sola Scriptura

Well, greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a warm day. I was going to mention to Rich as I walked in today, I was like, you know what? It's hot today. I'm not feeling the heat as much this year because there's less of me to feel it.

But yeah, it's supposed to be like 110 in the shade and the sun's bright. There's no haze. It's toasty. But it's the middle of August. It's supposed to be ugly. Just a reminder to those of you thinking about maybe moving to Phoenix, on October 31st, so on Halloween or All Saints Day, we have had 103 degrees.

I think that's the current record. That was just a few years ago. So you all may be going, hey, don't worry, September's coming. It doesn't mean anything. Not here in Phoenix. No, September's just another summer month.

And October can be the same thing too. So yeah, no, we're basically at the halfway point right now here in Phoenix. So that's our way of saying stay where you are. We don't have any more water anyways.

Yeah. So hey, I just saw this. I would love to show it to you. But X has decided to lock me out of it today. I can't get into it. I put my stuff in, put the proper password in. It sends me a code on my phone.

I put it in. Cycles right back to the beginning. Do that two or three times. Says you've tried too many times. It never says you're wrong. It never says that's not the right code. It just won't let me in.

So I'd show it to you on our nice pretty screen, but I can't get into it. So there's nothing I can do about it. And I've heard horror stories from people trying to get customer support from X. So we'll see.

I mean, I have lots and lots followers in X. That is my primary means of communication. But my life would be less complicated and stressful if I didn't bother with that stuff. But it may be just a necessary aspect of things.

Speaking of which, my phone's still working, thankfully. And even though it just asked me for some type of a passcode or something. So that may end here in a second. So who knows? I'm just so sick of that stuff.

I got to admit. Well, we're going to send this to your phone. And then you hold your phone upside down to your computer. And then you look out your door and you look west. And a cat will run by and yell a password to you.

All this two-factor, three-factor, 12-factor stuff is just like, I put the right password and they don't care. Anyway, Stephen Boyce, who swam the Tiber last year, this evening is doing something with Alex Orthodoxy.

So it's a Catholic Orthodox thing. It's funny. There was a little bit of conversation a couple months ago about me debating Stephen. And I said, sure, let's debate the Marian dogmas. Because, I mean, it's just so obvious.

He's the church historian. He can't defend it. Nobody can. The few people that try are so wacky that it just leaves you going, you said what? You see Marian what? He knows he can't defend it. And in fact, I'll be honest with you.

The way he was responding, I don't know that he's even an Orthodox Roman Catholic. I mean, on bodily assumption, immaculate conception, those decrees are not difficult to understand. The language is very clear.

And I realize a large portion, honestly, a large portion of the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church is probably not Orthodox in the sense of believing the immaculate conception as it was defined in 1854 as the natural language.

And here's the problem. We know what Rome meant in 1854 when they defined the immaculate conception. The language is clear. Everybody at the time knew what it was. People on both sides understood exactly what Rome was claiming.

That is not even a debate. But here's the problem. Once you adopt the hyper skepticism of Roman Catholic epistemology outside of the infallible statements of the magisterium, well, you know, we're not sure what the Bible says at Romans 5 .1.

You know, I mean, sure, it's central to Paul's argument. But, you know, I mean, language is tough. And, you know, we've never defined it infallibly and blah, blah, blah. Once you embrace that kind of hyper skepticism, you can't know anything anymore.

You can't know what anybody meant. And you can't know, you can look at what the church said with clarity only 160 years ago, 170 years, 172 years ago. Everybody knew what it meant then, but now we don't know what it means now.

How does that work? Well, that's the problem. And so I had said, let's debate the last two dogmas. They are dogmas, right? You've got to believe this, right? De fide, right? Definitional. Real simple, early church didn't believe this.

You want to claim the early church? Didn't believe it. So then you've got to go the Newman route. And once you go the Newman route, stop talking about history. Read George Salmon. He nailed it to the floor a long time ago.

Newman's development hypothesis is an abandonment of the argument of history. That's not what Rome used to say, but it's what Rome says now. And so once you adopt that perspective, you can Pope-splain anything.

You know, I mean, the last Pope was a wild-eyed leftist, socialist, environmentalist nutburger. And the current one ain't much better. And the head of the congregation of the faith, the old inquisition, is farther left than either one of them.

But you can explain anything they say away. Doesn't matter. It's cool. So anyway, Stephen Boyce posted on X. I should read this while I still have access to X. They're going to be doing a live stream.

I think it's today. I don't know. I'm not going to advertise for it. Make sure to tune in as we engage the church fathers in their proper historical, theological, and ecclesiastical context, allowing their writings to speak within the life and structure of the early church rather than through the lens of later theological systems that Protestants impose upon them.

The church fathers weren't Protestant. A Catholic Orthodox response to something. I click on it, but then again, I might lose it. But it's got this nice little graphic, and for some reason, Tony's on it.

I think they're probably responding to him, I would assume. I don't know. This is just such massive hypocrisy, because this is a great description of their own position. They're the ones that, by dogmatic decree, force the early fathers to say what they say they need to say.

When sadis cognitum says that what the Vatican council declared about the papacy has been the constant faith of the church from the beginning, that's just a lie. Newman knew it was a lie. That's just a lie.

It's indefensible. And so, who can allow the early fathers to be the early fathers? It's not Roman Catholics, and it's not Eastern Orthodox. They have dogmatically already defined what you must find in the early fathers.

What must be there. And so this will be, I can predict right now exactly what if this already happened, or I don't think it has. I think it's probably coming up. But here's what's going to happen. You start with later developments, you dogmatize them, you say this has always been believed, and then you interpret the early fathers in light of your dogmatic framework.

Rome does it with ecclesiology, Rome does it with Mary, the Eastern Orthodox do it with icons. Yeah, and they seemingly can't even see it. They certainly can't get around it. It is the abuse of the early fathers.

And this was something I was going to be talking about, actually, so it ended up working that at least I could see. Let me, since I read that to you, let me see what this pulls up. Loading error, okay.

Yeah, it's going to be today. A Catholic Orthodox response to Tony Costa. Well, I wish I had seen this. Oh, okay, so Tony made a presentation on Eastern Orthodox use of church fathers. Was that the one with Eli?

Because I saw that. So maybe it was. Catholics and Orthodox certainly have important disagreements, you think. Used to anathematize each other rather regularly. I guess we don't have to worry about past anathemas, right?

That silly little filial clause. I mean, who cares, right? But Tony's criticisms of the East also strike the historic beliefs and practices of the West. Sort of like looking at the Second Nicene Council in 787.

The Historical Claims of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy

Strikes at both systems. Maybe that's why we're doing that. Together, Stephen and Alex examined whether Protestant interpretations truly reflect the theology, worship, and ecclesiology of the early church.

Were the early church, were the church fathers really Protestant, or are they being read through a modern Protestant framework? Here, let me help you guys out, okay, because you're not listening. We know Stephen Boyce ain't listening.

They weren't Protestant. They were what they were. They weren't Roman Catholic. They weren't Eastern Orthodox. Eastern Orthodoxy is 9th century Byzantine state religion, year 800. Boom, there it is. That's Eastern Orthodoxy.

That's not apostolic. That's 800 years down the road. And Roman Catholic? Nope. That's why you have to have Newman. That's why you just made him a doctor of your church. You've got to have the development hypothesis.

You can't do it any other way. So they were what they were. They had differences. They had different emphases. They had different perspectives. They were in a different context. And they weren't Protestants.

There was no First Baptist Church of Jerusalem, okay? I mean, if we can't get past that basic starting point, what are we doing? Some of us have tried, but a lot of folks aren't listening at all. So this was one of the things that I wanted to mention today.

And again, difficulties pulling stuff up. I mean, I have some things, but so those of you who have watched the program for a long time, have sort of tracked when I'm preparing for a major debate, you'll remember stuff back 2008-ish, you know, when a lot of the, well, actually no.

When we were doing a lot of the Islam stuff, we would, you'd be able to to tell. You could tell when you watched the program by the topics that would come up. And even when a different topic would come up, I'd always default back to what where my mind is, okay?

I'm a simple guy. I'm thinking about icons, and I'm thinking about church authority, and I'm thinking about ecumenical patriarch, Tarasius. We, you know, we do need to, I need to do, well, maybe we'll do it today.

Well, I'd rather have a presentation. The man who led the Second Nicene Council, I wonder what percentage of humanity would be able to name that name. You tuned in today so that you might someday win Jeopardy because, Rich is laughing, because you know this name, Tarasius.

Patriarch Tarasios and the Political Origins of Nicaea II

What a name. I mean, I can't have a dog because I have too many cats, and my backyard is rock, and I wouldn't put a dog through that. But, you know, Tarasius would be a great name for a dog, don't you think?

Or even a cat. You know, here, Tarasius, here, that'd be pretty cool. No disrespect to the great ecumenical patriarch, but he ran that council, and most people have never even heard the name before. And yet, I can guarantee you that on that webcast tonight, what is said will be influenced by what he did and how he ran that council.

And he ran that council under the direction of Empress Irene. No question about it. It was pure politics. Pure politics. See, he was an imperial secretary. He was a politician. That's what his training was.

And within one week, one week, he went from being a high-level politician to being the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople. Ordination of the priesthood, all the steps. Boom, boom, boom. One week.

Now, it is funny. It is almost humorous. I have, of course, read his first statement upon being made the patriarch of Constantinople. I am unworthy. I refuse. I will not do this. Unless you call an ecumenical council to solve our disunity over icons.

Really? I am unworthy to be the ecumenical patriarch. Unless you do what Empress Irene actually wants, and this is why we're doing this. And it was just a huge political lie. I mean, but to hear his false humility, just, oh, I'm unworthy, and oh, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows. It was pure politics. It was a play. Everybody then knew what it was. But to have to read through the Constantine, oh, it's unbelievable. And so, this guy, the early church, you want to talk about the early church?

Maybe somebody will throw this out at the guys tonight. The early church would never, ever, ever, ever have accepted Tarasius's ordination before the Council of Nicaea, the first one, 325. The government coming along and saying, that guy, yes, my secretary, my political operative in one week will be the head of the church in Constantinople.

Boom! Ordination all the way through. Can you see the early church before Nicaea even giving the guy a second glance? But by 787, that's a long time. I mean, 460 years have passed, nearly half a millennium.

And now, God works in mysterious ways. You see, there's something. I can't help the ortho bros who don't listen to the other side. I can't help the romo bros, or whoever, or the LDS bros, or whatever.

I can't help people to stop and listen. The reason we're here is for the people who do stop and listen. And they tend to be more quiet. I saw somebody online, and Rich tells me he's been contacted by a few people.

I keep talking about how geeky all this stuff is and how boring it is. And people will send little notes. Don't you dare call it boring. You're the only one talking about it. This is exactly what we've been looking for.

I'm dealing with a son that's gone Eastern Orthodox, or it's happening in my family, or it's something in the church. And just like on Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholicism, Islam, we've turned to you.

And now you're doing this. And don't you dare call it boring. Well, I'm not going to call it exciting. But we're trying to do our best. And so you look at, you know, I'm reading this stuff. I have to read this stuff.

And it's for the people who want to seriously go, all right, ecumenical councils are infallible. That's not biblical, so we need to have something outside of divine revelation that tells us this. I mean, you don't have anything in scripture about councils at all.

Even the Jerusalem council is apostolic. There are apostles there. So is it not relevant that the last of the ecumenical councils to be considered ecumenical by both Rome and Constantinople, by Roman Catholicism Day and Eastern Orthodoxy, that the last one is fundamentally called by Empress Irene, that's not a big deal for them.

The Council of Hieria, the Failed Council of 754, and the Rubber Stamp of 787

Sacralism is the very essence of Eastern Orthodoxy. The very essence. Government involvement? You bet. That's good. And you look at Greek Orthodoxy, you look at Russian Orthodoxy, Ukrainian Orthodoxy today, all those subgroups, ethnic groups all over the place.

Government involvement? No problem. It became a problem under the Soviet Union. That was tough. That was rough. But yeah, no. If the Empress calls the council, and if, as history makes it so very plain, the most obvious conclusion that you have to come to, when you look at 2 Nicaea, 787, 7th Ecumenical Council, it was a rubber stamp party.

There was no serious discussion of anything. What had happened, real quickly, I'll get back to Tarasius. Well, Tarasius is a part of this. Tarasius becomes a Patriarch, and we're going to call this Ecumenical Council.

Why did they have to do this? Because in 754, the Council of Hieria came to the exact opposite conclusions of the Council of 2 Nicaea in 787. So you have a council that called itself the 7th Ecumenical Council.

Remember, no one can ever know, no one has a clue when these things happen, or for years afterward, as to whether these things are actually ecumenical infallible or not. Nobody ever knows whether what a Pope has said during their lifetime is infallibly defined.

You have no way of knowing. It's impossible. And so you had a council, and you've had the council had the support of the Emperor. It was the imperial perspective to do away with Iconoclasm. And it had been that way for, what, 23 years.

A quarter of a century had passed, and Irene wants it changed. And so she elevates Tarasius. He does his, oh, I'm so unworthy thing. And they call a council, and it meets in 786 in Constantinople. But there is political slash military opposition to anything that would denigrate the memory of the emperors, who only a quarter century earlier, there's still people alive after a quarter century, had banished the icons.

And so they've got soldiers at the door, and it all breaks down, and they call it off for one year. And then they move it out of Constantinople, where you still have a lot of those people there. Actually, they disbanded them within a few days.

But anyway, a year later, 787 is when it meets again, and that's when you have the council. Now, it is painfully obvious that during that year, they decided everything. Irene, Tarasius, people around them, they said, this is what we're going to do.

These are the arguments we're going to present. We're not going to let the other side present any arguments at all. And that's why the council came to conclusions it came to, because it had to. It wasn't a council.

It was a rubber stamp party. It had already been decided. That was it. So the illustration of this is, and again, hey, this stuff's available. Dr. Price's work on Nicaea II is 782 pages long. Full documentation, all the acts of the council.

I was driving through, where was I? I think I was driving, yeah, I was driving through part of New Mexico, that exciting, exciting part of I -25. Before you get into, the foothills around Glorieta, New Mexico are pretty.

But before then, it's a little bit on the flat side. It's right in that area. When I was listening using Speechify to all the documents of the council, and they start the names, and I'm like, oh, please.

I was trying to scroll through it. No, can we skip this, please? I don't need this. But it's that exhaustive as far as the detail goes. Look it up yourself, folks. Look it up yourself. Yeah, the book's not cheap, but look it up yourself.

That council began in its first session, the first session, with the anathematizing of everybody from the previous council. The perspectives of the previous council, hieria, anathematized. Anybody who was there, anathematized.

And bishops are brought before the council, and this continues on the second and third sessions, depending on what their relationship was. If they were ordained by one of the bishops at that council, they have to abjure the errors of iconoclasm.

They have to beg forgiveness. It's embarrassing. They have to grovel before the council and anathematize the iconoclast. The accusers of Christians, that's the terminology that Nicaea II chose to use, of the people who rejected icons, who had had a big council a quarter century earlier with just as many bishops.

And the Pope-splaining thing now is, yeah, but the Bishop of Rome wasn't represented, and the Eastern Patriarchs weren't represented, and therefore it wasn't ecumenical, and blah, blah, blah, blah. Just keep something in mind, folks.

754, hieria, iconoclastic, no icons. 787, Nicaea II, icons, kiss the icon or your anathema. And then, at the beginning of the next century, in Frankfurt, the date is skipping my mind at the moment, but I'll make sure to get that for you.

Under Charlemagne, there is a mediating council that rejects the excesses of the first two, but it doesn't become ecumenical. So, the excesses of the second one become the dogmatic teaching of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, though interpreted a little bit differently.

But you, at the time, how would you have known? You wouldn't have. Those guys do that thing that I, they're the only way, the only way, they can answer this question, is to spin in circles. How would you have known the day after the Frankish council meets, in response to Nicaea II, which one of the three is the voice of God's church?

Answer, you don't have a clue. The only answer they can give is, because we say so today. That's it. How would the person back then? No way of knowing. No way of knowing. Couldn't know. Has to be literally centuries.

I mean, I forget what the date is. I need to write this down. But even Rome didn't acknowledge Nicaea II immediately. Part of that was politics. There's a letter written by the Pope in Rome during the council, and it's funny to listen to.

I should bring it up, because this is the stuff that I'm, I'm on my back porch in this summer heat. I almost killed myself yesterday, putting together a leg press hack squat machine. And man, if I had not made one mistake early on, it would have gotten done an hour earlier.

But it's so much fun. You find out you put two pieces on backwards, right as you're getting to the last step, but you can't do the last step because now you have to disassemble half what you did before.

Yeah, my sanctification slipped pretty bad in that one. But I'm in my backyard. I've got that now, which I love. And I've got a leg extension machine, which I've had since last year sometime. And so I'm back there, sweating my eyeballs out with my evaporative coolers, this time of the year.

No, it's not pointless. It is amazing. Even now, I would say my back porch is minimally 11 degrees cooler than outside of the rest of my house. So it's still worth it, but it's still hot. This is what I'm listening to.

I'm not listening to workout music. I'm not listening to Rocky, okay? That would help, okay? You do not go for a PR listening to Terracios, all right? That is not pumping you up. Rocky will, Skillet will, Terracios, no, no, you're going to fail badly.

But that's what I'm doing. That's what I'm listening to this stuff. And I'm listening to these poor bishops groveling, asking for forgiveness for having dared to question the allegedly apostolic teaching of icon veneration and stuff like that.

This is the stuff that, it's right there in the documents. And so anyway, trying to cover too much stuff here at once. But one of the key things that hopefully people are going to get from the debate, remember it's nine o 'clock on a Saturday morning.

Yes, we will live stream it, but no one's going to be listening at nine o 'clock on a Saturday morning. I understand that. The issue will be the recording. That's the most important thing that's going to be happening, will be the recording.

Why Sola Scriptura Is Necessary for Testing Church Councils

That's where the value is. But what I hope people will start to understand is that this is yet another example of how vitally important solo scriptura is. Because, you know, these guys tonight, they're going to be telling us all about how the church says this and the church says that.

But the reality is, if they had lived back then, they wouldn't be able to tell you how to know which council was right. From 754 to 787, if you had followed their advice, here's the council, here's their arguments, their florilegium, as it's called, their argument, their collection of statements from the early fathers and their biblical arguments and stuff like that.

And there it is. How dare you question that? And then after 787, if you believe that, you're now anathema. And then Charlemagne and the Frankish clerics chime in. And they take a moderating position. And they don't go to the excesses.

In fact, they recognized that there are a couple of citations that were used. I forgot to grab it. I was going to. I was on the leg press, so I couldn't grab it. There's a specific term, and I think I know where it is so I can track it down, that the folks at Frankfurt used for one of the stories that Nicaea II used to substantiate icon veneration.

And it was pretty brutal, absurd and ridiculous, something like that. It was this strange story that they repeated that, again, has no historical value to it, doesn't go anywhere near the muscles. But some miracle took place.

And hey, if a miracle takes place, you can't question that. Just ask everybody at TBN. So you literally have a council that tries to be moderate and wise at the end. It gets rejected. It's the radical one in the middle controlled by the empress that ends up being the dogma for the guys doing the webcast tonight.

And that's why solo scriptura is so important. That's why it's absolutely vital. Because all of this, we've talked about this. I spent half of the program on this a while back. All this goes back to John of Damascus.

Basil of Caesarea, John of Damascus, and the Misuse of Patristic Authority

It goes back to Basil and a statement that he made. And see, this is what you got to get. Listen to me here now. If you remember, the honor paid to the symbol passes through to the archetype. That was Basil's statement about the Trinity.

Had nothing to do with icons. Nothing whatsoever. To use it in that way is to abuse it thoroughly, as Nicaea does. And as every Eastern Orthodox guy I've ever heard talking about this does today. I listened to an Eastern Orthodox guy defending icons last month.

And guess what he was quoting? They can't help it. And I think most of them actually realize. I think they've looked it up. I think they realize that's not what Basil was talking about. But since St. John Christendom, St. John Damascene did that.

He interpreted it that way. We have an infallible council that interpreted it that way. What he originally meant doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter anymore. The Holy Spirit has spoken through the church, you see.

So, the reality is that what Basil said has to be examined. What a Gregory would say. What John of Damascus would say. What anybody would say has to be examined on a higher level. And that is its consistency with Scripture.

And that's what they can't do. To them, that's the end. Because all of the massively complex systems of theology that they have concocted over the years would just collapse. There wouldn't be anything left.

Because once you start building extra-biblical, non-apostolic beliefs, a little bit of variation, a little bit of variation, you build a little bit more on that, a little bit more on that, you end up out here someplace.

Way out here someplace. And the Sola Scriptura exposes that. It exposes the fact that you've been building upon error, building upon error, building upon error. And the first error may not have been that big.

The first error may have been innocent. You could argue that John of Damascus was innocent in his misunderstanding of Basil, or a quote from Gregory, or Athanasius, or whatever. That they really did understand them to be saying that.

And again, there is a false statement attributed to Athanasius. I think it's an entire letter, if I recall correctly, in the Second Nicene Council. Well, if you can have that as your context, if you can go, well, Athanasius said over there, and therefore I'll have his authority for that.

But the problem is he never said that. And you don't know that. Maybe the people around you don't know that. But once you place authority in that false statement, it becomes a lens through which you interpret Scripture.

And so when you read the New Testament, and then you listen, as I've been listening, to Eastern Orthodox folks trying to read icon veneration into, especially the Book of Revelation. Everybody can read anything they want in the Book of Revelation, it seems.

But when you see this, at first you sit back. And what was it? I think it was rich. When I read Pseudo-Dionysius, I read Mystical Theology. What was your comment? Do you remember?

I don't remember the exact comment. All I know is I'd never heard anything like that before,.

Ever. It didn't make a lick of sense to you. Had no context for it at all. And that's how most people, listening to the Orthodox, for us, we just sit back and go, I don't know what you're doing because I've never heard the Bible handled that way.

And I don't believe for a second that that's what the original authors were thinking. You seem to think that, but that doesn't make any sense to me. There's no grammatical, historical, hermeneutical system that would lead me to understand what you're saying.

So why are you saying this? They're saying it because they have to. Their theology has been provided to them by their traditions, which are called apostolic. That becomes the lens that exists between them and the pages of scripture.

Now for them, that's an enlightening and an opening and it opens your heart and your mind and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But the reality is, it is a fundamental twisting of the apostolic message.

And that's what happens once you deny Sola Scriptura and you elevate what one man said in one context and then it's interpreted by another great man, or at least great in your tradition. And eventually that concept, that interpretation becomes definitional of what you believe.

And so that's what you see with icon veneration. You go to an East Orthodox church, it is central to the worship. It's central to what the priests are wearing and the bishops are wearing. It's central to the processions.

It's central, you look at their on the churches and it's their icons everywhere. And it's a part of the worship and how to get there. And why? There's a fellow, I've mentioned his name before, but not ready to provide examples quite yet.

This fellow put a book out about two years ago arguing for icons prior to the Council of Nicaea, 325, not 787. And Gavin Ortland has commented on this book as well. And his primary assertion was this is an exercise in equivocation.

This is looking at the apostolic period up to the period of persecution, okay? Seem to be pretty much concurrent. This is looking at that time period with a very thick lens on so that any mention of any image at all that isn't immediately preceded by condemnation is read in such a way that it's the same thing as veneration.

Now, kissing the icon is not the same thing as going, that's a nice picture. That's not the same thing. But for some of these guys, it is the same thing. It has to be the same thing because the Eastern Orthodox don't have John Henry Cardinal Newman.

They can't have development. Nicaea too said this is apostolic. The apostles did this. Luke allegedly made an icon of Mary, or at least Thomas Aquinas thought he did. And so they're stuck in a massive loop of anachronism, having to read into any positive statement about an image, veneration, kissing the icon, which not only completely corrupts what could have possibly been understood in the original context, but I would argue in a way it diminishes their own perspective now.

I mean, the Orthodox view of icons is very high. I would argue it has developed even since Nicaea too. I mean, it's been a long time, you know, you got 1 ,200 plus years. So new things have developed during that time period.

I would say that this fruitless attempt to turn the apostolic period prior to the Council of Nicaea into a time period where it was actually normative for there to be icons, and that is the Eastern Orthodox perspective.

Not just people I've been listening to, but people I'll be debating next year saying the same things. They just default to it. Well, you're using an argument from silence. We're just going to assume that it was there, and if you say, yeah, but nobody said to do it, that's an argument from silence, and arguments from silence are not valid, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, you can use that to prove anything. You can use that to prove that the early church believed anything you want. But anyway, there's the issue. Anachronism becomes the lens through which you view history, and then that becomes the lens, the dogma that flows from that becomes the lens through which you read scripture.

And so you listen to the Orthodox doing their thing, and you're totally lost. And that's why I hope, honestly, that these next two debates will maybe start something to where there will be some kind of meaningful interaction.

Orthodox Diversity, Gospel Truths, and the Need for Serious Dialogue

You're not going to get it from Jay Dyer. You're not going to get it from the OrthoBros. When they're sitting around doing four-hour webcams, do they even work? Do they have kids? Do they have families?

Do they have dogs? I don't know. They live in front of a webcam. It's a little bit scary. I feel sorry for them, especially most of them are converts of like two years or less. And it's like, that's why I played that thing I played.

Some of you wonder, why did you play that thing where the Orthodox were saying, yeah, we don't need to be doing this, you know, maybe you ought to get involved with your parish, you know, feed some poor people, something like that, rather than spending your life in front of a webcam.

Yeah, that's why I played it, is that there are Orthodox going, oh, this does not look good. But I think, you know, especially Orthodoxy is so encrusted in tradition, it doesn't react very fast. The modern period is a challenge to Orthodoxy, it really is.

And so I just think they're getting to it. And then I've told you, you know, I know a guy, don't know him, I've had contact with a guy, Orthodox guy, knows his history really, really well. And he constantly is defending the imputed righteousness of Christ and pure substitutionary atonement as the grounds of one's forgiveness and peace with God.

Now, most Orthodox hate that, but there is a tradition within Orthodoxy that defends what we would call fundamental gospel truths. And so Orthodoxy is not as monolithic as they like to claim to be. And because they've had fewer ecumenical councils, that's why looking at the Confession of Dositheus is so important.

It's relatively modern, 1672, and it names Calvinists by name, so it provides you with a good contrast. But they don't have the kind of codes of canon law and stuff like that as complicated and as clear as Eastern Orthodoxy.

Eastern Orthodoxy has more of a mystical way of interpretation, even of their own documents, which leads to a wider expression of beliefs. So it's not as easy to just go, this is the Eastern Orthodox position.

Can you identify majoritarian positions? Yep, sure, you can. But does the fact that it's the majority view now mean that it's always been the majority view, or that the majority view necessarily represents the best of the past tradition?

These are all, look, they are important questions that don't work real well with the Orthobros and the people opposing the Orthobros. That's not going to give you the kind of clicks and the splash and the memes and things like that.

It requires you to think more slowly, a little more carefully. So I'd like to see these debates maybe kick off some serious discussion. You know, I thought it was fascinating that Gavin Ortland had that conversation with a Greek Orthodox priest a couple years ago in Greece.

But Gavin will be the first one to tell you his views are not the majority perspective amongst the Orthodox. But he's a Greek Orthodox priest. So what does that mean? Well, I don't know. He may not know either.