Does Eastern Orthodox Presuppositionalism Make Sense?

Revealed Apologetics

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Back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we have a very interesting topic.

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Today we're kind of focusing on presuppositional methodology, but from a very interesting perspective we're going to be taking presuppositionalism from the perspective of Eastern Orthodoxy.

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Those who are aware of you know, people like Jay Dyer, who is known for using presuppositional methodology from within the context of an

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Eastern Orthodox perspective, and others online as well, but I think Jay is probably the face of this perspective in terms of making it popular through his many debates and things like that.

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How should we understand this? Many people who are familiar with presuppositional methodology typically are exposed to this method through maybe reading

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Van Til or reading Bonson. It is typically associated with kind of the Reformed tradition.

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So this is going to be a very interesting topic. This is something that actually I've been wanting to do for a really long time because I don't understand

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Eastern Orthodoxy in any great depth. I'm not an expert. My job as the host is to bring this topic to the audience and hopefully get guests who are competent to speak about these issues and hopefully these conversations are useful and beneficial to everyone.

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So hopefully this will be interesting to everyone listening in and I am super excited.

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These two gentlemen are really, I'm excited that both these guys are on at the same time.

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So it's gonna be a lot of fun. Now, if you hear some beeping in the background, my van has been going off the alarm, so hopefully my wife will hear it and it won't be beeping for the rest of the night.

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But all right, so let me introduce my first guest and I'm going to welcome

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Jeffrey Waddington. We're calling him Jeff from now on. Jeffrey Waddington, he is a minister in the

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Cambodian Presbyterian Church and missionary professor at Westminster Theological College and Seminary Cambodia.

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He lives in East Norrton, Pennsylvania. He's married with two adult daughters and he also was formerly with the

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Reformed Forum with Lane Tipton and Camden Busey. So folks who are familiar with the Reformed Forum, those names should sound familiar to you.

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I've had Lane Tipton on the show, never had Camden on, but hopefully in the future I'll be able to get him on as well.

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He is quite knowledgeable on the topic of presuppositional apologetics, especially within the Vantillian tradition.

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And he came highly recommended by Lane Tipton himself. So I asked

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Lane, Lane, would you like to come on and talk about this topic? He goes, nah, why don't you try Jeffrey Waddington?

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He'd be the perfect person to come on. So it's been a blessing to connect with Jeffrey and we've had some great conversations over the phone.

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I have a 25 -minute drive home so we get to talk about apologetics and stuff like that.

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So I've learned a lot from him. So I'm very, very excited to have Jeffrey Waddington. For those who want to look a little bit more into some of his stuff, he co -edited,

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I believe, with Lane Tipton the book Resurrection and Eschatology. And he is an expert in the,

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I guess, the beliefs and biography, biographical information on Jonathan Edwards. And so he is also the author of the

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Unified Operations of the Human Soul, Jonathan Edwards Theological Anthropology and Apologetics.

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So welcome, Jeffrey. This is your first time here. I'm happy to have you. Oh, pleased to be with you, brother.

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This is, I'm looking forward to the conversation. It's for me, in terms of the

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Eastern Orthodox side of the equation, it'll be a learning experience for me as to how those in the

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Eastern Orthodox tradition use the presuppositional method, the differences and similarities between its

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Reformed expression and its Eastern Orthodox expression. So I'm looking forward to that.

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Well, excellent. When I promoted the fact that you would be on, someone posted, Ooh, a rare Jeffrey Waddington sighting on your channel.

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We had so many interviews with Jeffrey Waddington that I saw. I'm like, all right, well, that's cool. You know, that made me feel special.

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I've been on the other side watching you, but now I have the privilege of joining you.

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So I'm excited. Well, it is genuinely a privilege. My next guest is

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Joshua Schuping. Joshua is a former Orthodox priest and author of Irenaeus, an

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Orthodox apologetic methodology, a neopatristic presuppositionalism. I remember actually looking for books on presuppositionalism some time ago, and I saw this book on Amazon.

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I'm like, what is this? This seems interesting. And I think my first bit of knowledge about Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism was seeing your book on Amazon, Joshua.

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So I thought that was interesting. And so hopefully we can kind of get into some details and help folks understand what that's all about.

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He has also written a manual of theosis, and he wrote the book. And you can make any corrections,

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Joshua, if I get any of this wrong. You are the author of An Existential Soteriology, Penal Substitutionary Atonement in Light of the

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Mystical Theology of the Church Father. Sounds super interesting. Have I got that right? Are those two books yours?

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Yeah, yeah, I'll claim them. Though I would probably, if I ever came out with a second edition,

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I'd probably have a few retractions here and there. OK, all right. Well, welcome.

05:31

It is a pleasure. I've been watching some interviews that you've had on other people's shows. I know you've been on Dr. Tony Costa's show and some others as well, kind of outlining for folks a little bit about your journey from Eastern Orthodoxy to what flavor of Reformed Christian would you associate yourself with?

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And I say Reformed, that could mean a lot of things for people. Yeah, good, good question.

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Prior to entering into the Orthodox Church, I did spend a little bit of time at a

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Reformed Baptist Church for a few months. They went through the London 1689, did a really good, thorough job with it.

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You know, in their Sunday school groups, they're reading John Owen, you know, like they were really doing real work.

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They were studying Hebrew. They were studying Greek. It was awesome. But with my background, it was a little bit too much of a culture shock for me at the time.

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And so when I ended up into Eastern Orthodoxy, I was kind of simultaneously exposed to Reformed thought, but also kind of alienated from it.

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A lot of Eastern Orthodox converts find, you know, the West is the problem with everything.

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Like we, you know, well, we hate the West because we're Eastern Orthodox. Everything's Augustine's fault and everything is the

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Filioque's fault, you know. And so we blame that for the immortals of planet Earth, you know.

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Okay, I have a sore throat. What do you think it is? It's the Filioque. Yeah, and so my exposure,

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I guess, and kind of how I ended up landing in like the Reformed sort of side of things.

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Kind of began, if I can share a little bit of my story in relation to kind of like the presuppositional apologetics and Reformed dimension of things was during seminary.

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I believe it was my first or second semester. I think it might have been my second semester, and I hated penal substitutionary atonement.

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I mean, that's just Western legalism. I mean, that's just, it's a legal fiction. It's just kind of like a part of this whole big, you know, problem with Western Christianity.

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And I was very happy with my mystical Eastern theology at the time. And so I'm just kind of like happily, you know, reading away.

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And I come across this gentleman named Simeon the New Theologian, who incidentally, or perhaps not incidentally, lived prior to Anselm.

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And so I'm reading a homily that's in a collection that was put together by a

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Russian in the 19th century, Theo from the Recluse. It was later translated by Sarah from Rose.

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And in that homily, I just see these concepts that sound like this dreaded thing

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I heard the preacher bellowing about in the Reformed Baptist church.

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I'm like, this sounds like penal substitutionary atonement here. It sounds like Christ is in our place and suffering on our behalf and paying the penalty of our sin.

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And I'm like, that's so strange. So I go to an Orthodox priest and I share it with him.

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I say, what do you think of this? And then he does the very typical Orthodox move.

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Well, we don't just take what one father says. What we do is we take things from the hymns and the canons of the church.

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And so this doctrine isn't anywhere in the hymns of the church where we derive our doctrine from.

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And so I said, OK, well, let me, I'm just going to go check, you know, I'm this budding scholar at seminary.

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So it's like, I'm going to go check these sources, you know. And so I go and I check some of these hymns that are in all of the hymns in the

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Orthodox church are fully established for like a thousand plus years. So they're unchanging. So the doctrine is just there.

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In that, so they sing their doctrine, they sing their teaching, so to speak. So there's really no new hymns that they sing.

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There might be new melodies, but no new hymns, so to speak, at least not sung in the context of a liturgy, a formal liturgy.

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And so I find actually this penal substitutionary atonement concept there.

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And I'm like, that's so weird. Like I'm finding it in Simeon the New Theologian. Now I'm finding it in some of the hymns of the church, and I take it back to this priest.

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And then he asks me, and he's a convert from evangelicalism. And because there is a very deep distinction a lot of times between like how an evangelical converting into Orthodoxy kind of like brings this whole set of assumptions with them that a cradle person may not have.

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And so I share this with him and he's like, well, what do you think that, you know, penal substitutionary atonement even means is his question to me.

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And so I'm like, well, you know, I don't really know for sure because I'm just recalling kind of vaguely what

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I remember. Like I couldn't give it in super specific detail. So I go online and I'm looking up and I find

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J .I. Packers, the logic of substitutionary atonement. And I read it and I'm like, that's exactly what

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I'm finding. This is amazing. This is really cool. So I share with him that article and I'm saying, this is what

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I'm referring to. This is what I think I'm seeing. And then he turns around and accuses me of being like a

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J .I. Packer fanboy and that I'm just like, you know, projecting my prior evangelical sort of thing into here.

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And it's like, I'm actually going through this really deep kind of paradigm shift. And so I start going back in more fathers.

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I find, you know, like, for example, in John Chrysostom, the whole idea of like that we give the example sometimes is what if there was a king's son who took the place of a condemned criminal, you know, and he took upon himself, you know, the guilt and the shame and the punishment of it?

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I mean, that comes directly from John Chrysostom. He talks about that in his commentary on Second Corinthians five and in Galatians as well.

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And so I'm finding it there. I'm finding it in Cyril of Alexandria. Now I'm starting to like purchase reformed theology books, because when

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I'm asking about it, people are telling me things that reformed theology says.

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But when I look it up in the sources, it's not actually what it says. And so I'm starting to go through this sort of like sifting process.

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It's like, why are you telling me that penal substitutionary atonement is X? I buy the book by a reformed theologian or find an article online by someone like respectable like Jay Packer, and they're saying the opposite.

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And it's like a kind of a clear message. So I start making some little blogs or whatever. And, you know, I think that, you know, maybe

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I'll be the one to kind of rejuvenate the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement in the

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Eastern Orthodox Church. OK, so my reformed theology library is starting to grow a little bit, and it's and it's cool.

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It's kind of exciting. I remember these names from the time when I was in that reformed Baptist church briefly. You know,

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I'm remembering, oh, John Owen. I'm remembering Jonathan Edwards. I'm remembering, you know, just like some of these names and Puritans and the whole other

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Puritans, the whole thing. And so I start finding that there's this like really pervasive theme of misrepresentation of reformed theology, like just like caricatures.

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Sometimes it's like Eastern Orthodoxy is just like the Armenians dream, you know, you know, in some way and not to speak ill.

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I know that there's a very biblical, faithful, you know, Armenian Christian, so it's not to speak ill of anyone.

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But so as I'm getting to the point where I'm going to be doing my THM, I think, well, you know what, in Eastern Orthodoxy, no one does apologetics.

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Like no one's really contending for the faith. There's no books on apologetics. I could find one that was in the

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English language that I don't even think was in print anymore. I had to have a friend at the seminary give me a copy of it.

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And it was kind of just like a natural theology type thing that you might find in a Catholic manual or something like that.

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Well, Joshua, would you say no one you knew of did? I mean, I would imagine some people do apologetics, but it's not like a big deal, like maybe an evangelicalism and reformed circles or.

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Yeah, I should say methodology. OK, it was like really engaging with like what is apologetics and how do we do it kind of self with a self -conscious approach and epistemology and methodology.

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And so you'd have people like arguing and making some debates here and there. But it wasn't like I mean, there's like a cottage industry of like apologetics, you know, in the even the

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Protestant world, even somewhat in the in the Catholic world as well. But in the Orthodox, if you were going to have like a shelf like of books that had the word apologetics in it anywhere, like maybe there's

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I mean, there's less than 50 probably if there's even that. There's no Eastern Orthodox Frank Turek somewhere.

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And there might be in Russian, there might be in Greek or Romanian or something like that. OK, so I thought, you know what

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I really want to look at? How did the church fathers? I want to take, you know, you can't do all the church fathers in a thesis.

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So I thought, well, let me go to Irenaeus, you know, one of the early, you know, great theologians of the church.

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And I'm going to study his apologetic methodology, at least as he seems to present it right now.

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I took his on apostolic preaching. I took the introductions and the conclusions of each of the five books of Against the

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Heresies so that I could see what he said he was trying to do, like what he was trying to accomplish.

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And then I'd go to the end of each book and see what he thought he accomplished.

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So I didn't look at his arguments in the heart of the book to see if he was successful in executing that argument.

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But I just wanted to see how he framed the approach to doing theological apologetics against the

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Gnostics, of course. And so I wanted to place that into the broader framework of the apologetics world in Christendom, at least in the

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English language. So I'm going to take, you know, evidentialism. I'm going to take the classical approach, and I'm going to take the presuppositional approach.

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And so I pick Van Til and I pick Bonson as like my two main representatives.

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I had an earlier copy. I don't have the updated copy of Frame's book on apologetics. But, you know, he definitely seems to have his own view like than Bonson.

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They aren't like twins, you know, by any sense of the word. They're like stepbrothers. Yeah. Frame's the redheaded stepchild, right?

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I'm just kidding. And so I'm really starting to engage, you know, as much as I can with, you know,

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Van Tilian thought, especially as representative in Bonson. And I'm finding it just like kind of glorious.

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You know, it's like really kind of making sense because it looks exactly like what Irenaeus is doing.

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Sure. And even though Irenaeus would have been like an earlier form, not as fully developed.

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And there's some very interesting quotes where he talks about like kind of like the epistemic limits that people have, even of like mundane things, you know, that like we require

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God's revelation in order to reveal to us the truth about even everyday things. There's some like really cool.

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It's like, yeah, that kind of sounds like it's moving in that presuppositional direction, you know, rather than making like a

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Catholic sort of natural theology realism kind of, you know, argument. And he didn't really ever seem to quite do that to me.

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So you're saying that when you read Irenaeus, you saw seeds of a presuppositional sort of approach going on when you were reading like a

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Bonson and maybe what were you reading Van Til at all? Right. So you kind of saw this connection, right?

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Resonance, I guess you could say. Yeah. Well, well, let's well, let's jump into this specific question because I'm sure there's more to unpack there.

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And you read a whole book on it, which if folks are interested, it's going to read the title real quick. Again, Joshua's book is

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Irenaeus and Orthodox Apologetic Methodology and Neopatristic Presuppositionalism.

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So they can check that out and go into the details of that. But here's my question here. So as an

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Eastern Orthodox believer, you held to a presupposition, a type of presuppositionalism. So what is presuppositionalism from an

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Eastern Orthodox perspective? What are they trying to do? If you can lay that out for us. And the reason why

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I have Jeffrey silently waiting his turn is I want you to set the context of an

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Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism. And then Jeffrey's going to come in in a little bit and tell us the reformed context.

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We're going to put them side by side and see what's going on. Does it really work? Which system does it make sense to understand apologetic methodology?

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So so if you can lay that out, what is an Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism? Yeah, and can

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I preface that with with one last comment to kind of like connect in maybe this last little bit of piece from the story is and it was one of the things that kind of moved me to even, you know, come onto the show because how

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I had mentioned that no one was really doing apologetic methodology in the

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Eastern Orthodox world. And this was still at the time when like this, like even Eastern Orthodox, you know,

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Internet apologetics wasn't like a full fledged, what they call the ortho bro movement.

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So, you know, someone, a gentleman like Jay Dyer was still very new in the kinds of things that he was doing.

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So in some of his early episodes, someone told me I've never watched him much.

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And that's why I wouldn't really I couldn't really engage in a lot of detail with his particular perspective on some of these things.

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And he's probably taking it in directions I'm not aware of. But he like held up apparently, you know, one of my book, that book on apologetic methodology as something that he sort of saw as something consistent, somewhat,

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I guess, with his approach. And so I felt like I kind of contributed and even gave like voice and I would and I would feel bad, like, and I don't want to maybe it's thinking too much of myself and forgive me if it is, but that I kind of like gave voice to like an apologetic, you know, method in Eastern Orthodoxy that they didn't really have.

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Like I kind of I don't I'm not saying I invented it totally, but I never knew of anyone doing it beforehand or since.

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But then it seemed like all of a sudden, Jay Dyer, who I believe does have a Reformed background, picks this up and now he's moving with it in his direction.

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And so I kind of wanted to, I guess, come on the show and say, you know, like, you know, I repent, you know, mea culpa, you know,

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I thought I was doing my due diligence, even though that due diligence gave me a full circle back around to actually recognize what

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I see as the problems. So to bring that to the to the question that you asked, I don't know if there really is a substantive identifiable book that says this is what

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Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism is other than what I wrote. OK. And so it's kind of like a loose

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Internet phenomenon. Yeah. That just kind of exists maybe in one or two apologists worlds.

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Sure. And so it becomes influential and it becomes kind of like an entryway maybe for Reformed people to kind of it's becomes like a bridge for them into the

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Orthodox Church. That's an interesting way that describes it. Jeffrey, do you see, because I know you're familiar with Van Til's scholarship and kind of the the higher tier sort of presuppositionalism, so to speak.

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But do you see this kind of similar thing where presuppositionalism is really taking root at a popular level amongst like laypersons?

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Just as as Joshua expressed, like this pre this Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism is almost like an

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Internet phenomenon. And that's not to diminish it. I mean, there's some I mean, take Jay, for example. I mean, I've listened to a bunch of his debates.

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He's an excellent debater. There's really some good stuff there as well as well as areas that we would disagree. Is that your experience in understanding kind of how presuppositionalism exists right now?

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You have kind of the scholarly approach and then there's kind of like a swelling kind of layperson popularity with the method.

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That appears to be that appears to be the case, Eli, but I find it interesting that this might be a phenomenon that is that has arisen in the context of Eastern, of the

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Internet. You know, the greater greater access to resources.

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I come, you know, I I come I don't I wasn't raised reformed.

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I was 30 years old when I before I came to the reformed faith, I was a pastor in the

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Salvation Army and that's the denomination I grew up in. And I was reading reformed theology then, which is probably how

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I got infected. Then it sounds like Joshua's experience was very similar in that regard.

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Sure. I've been a student of the church fathers since about 1987.

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Reading them, certainly no expert, but but I got got a hold of the anti -Nicene fathers in the

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Erdman's TNT Clark, and then I added the Nicene and post -Nicene fathers and now

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I read the I have in my Logos software, I've got the mean,

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I'm just waiting for the Latin fathers in mean to show up then because that's what

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I'm looking for. That's like one hundred fifty volumes or more. Wow. It's the original text with the

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Greek fathers. So I'm not surprised. If presuppositionalism, as Cornelius Ventile developed it, which arises out of the the the confluence of the

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Dutch reform in English and Scottish reform traditions in the context of the

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OPC and the CRC back in the day, Christian Reformed Churches, if if he has tapped into truth, biblical truth,

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I'm not going to be surprised if I see elements of that showing up in earlier eras.

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Irenaeus is, of course, an Eastern father who served in the

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Western Church. What made me wonder, Joshua, how he would be classified. So he's classified as an

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Eastern father. I think Catholics and Eastern Orthodox would probably equally seek to link to him because he came from Syria.

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I think so. Also, an Orthodox would also probably lay claim to him.

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I mean, he's a he's a basic, you know, early one hundred fifty A .D. You notice

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I said A .D. and not C .E. Yeah, so so it makes sense that there would be historical just as we see, you know,

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I'm sure our Eastern friends would not be Eastern Orthodox friends would not be overly enamored with Augustine.

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But to say that Augustine is a precursor to Ventile's method. That I think the city of God is is a is a fairly presuppositional book.

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So I'm not surprised that the Joshua would find resonances between, say, someone like Irenaeus in the apostolic preaching.

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So you didn't look at the against heresies, I take it?

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I did. I was preaching, and then I looked at the intros and conclusions to each of the five books of heresies.

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But I also took Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa and just did a very brief survey, which ends up being an appendix in that book.

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And I see kind of a similar instinct at work. You know, I mean, maybe someone would want to debate my my findings or something, but at least that was what

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I found. So I think it's interesting because you have this question comes up a lot at the popular level, right?

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People who criticize presuppositionalism. Well, you know, presuppositional methodology is Ventile developed.

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It is an apologetic novum. It doesn't exist until he comes along and tries to link it together with reformed theology.

27:17

But what you're suggesting is that there are seeds of this kind of thought, maybe not as fully developed as it comes in Ventile.

27:25

But you see seeds of this throughout church history, inconsistent seeds. I mean, people aren't doing it self -consciously necessarily, but there is definitely some historical precedence for it.

27:35

I think that's an important thing to point out. But if I can shift the discussion real quick, just to make sure we get back on track in terms of comparing the two forms of presuppositionalism.

27:45

Joshua, you wrote an article on your blog, The Reformed Ninja, which, by the way, is an amazing name.

27:52

OK, that is literally the coolest. I literally picture in my mind a ninja holding a sword in one hand and a copy of Calvin's Institutes in the other.

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Like that's just a weird picture, but it's awesome. But you wrote you wrote an article.

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It wasn't crazy, like in depth and long, but it touched on a really interesting point.

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And it's called Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiological Presuppositionalism, A Mistaken Foundation.

28:23

And I thought that was very fascinating. Can you explain for us Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiological Presuppositionalism?

28:30

And maybe by doing so, you can give us the context as to how an EO presupper kind of comes at this whole issue.

28:37

And then I'll ask Jeffrey to pop back in and kind of give us the reformed context. Yeah, so my understanding of Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism has to do a lot with that, like the necessary preconditions for knowledge.

28:52

And so rather than simply presupposing the authority and truth of the scriptures as their ground for epistemology, they actually also widen that to include the church and specifically the

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Eastern Orthodox Church. So I don't mean like the church is like the mystical body of Christ, but very specifically that narrow sectarian administrative continuity that exists within the larger church that is the

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Eastern Orthodox Church. So the Eastern Orthodox Church is like a kind of like a narrow stream, make this claim that you can't actually have true knowledge, like what we would say, like the actual conclusions of presuppositionalism is that we presuppose the truth of the

29:38

Bible to have certain knowledge. They include the church in that to say you have to have the Eastern Orthodox Church in order to have true knowledge.

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So ultimately, that's, I think, in a nutshell, maybe what it is. So the authority of the church is part of what we would call the our ultimate presuppositions.

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They put the church in there and they will use the church as the necessary interpretive grid to identify what the

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Word of God is so that they can use that as the foundation for the rest of their worldview. So they have

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God, they have scripture, plus the extra added element of what Protestants don't have, right?

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The church as an authority to identify scriptures. And so when they argue against Protestants, they'll do often what presuppers do to the atheists.

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They'll put a wedge in their view to show that your view would entail some form of skepticism or inability to provide the necessary preconditions for knowledge.

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Because say, for example, if I was an EO presupper arguing against a Protestant, you don't have the church to tell you what is the

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Word of God. And so you can't appeal to the Word of God as your ultimate authority because you need us. So we have God, scripture, and the church.

30:49

Is that, have I got it right? That sounds like what it is to me. Yeah, it sounds like you hit the nail on the head. Interesting.

30:55

All right. Well, thank you for that. And I would highly recommend folks check it out. I read the article in just a couple of minutes.

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It's not terribly long. It is called Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiological Presuppositionalism, A Mistaken Foundation.

31:07

Okay, that's at reformedninja .blogspot .com. Now, Jeffrey, you come from a

31:16

Reformed Vantilian perspective. What is, if you can tell us, what is

31:22

Vantilian Presuppositionalism? And define it in such a way as though you've never, you didn't hear anything

31:29

Joshua just said. Right, well, and I would define it even because this is a new phenomenon to me.

31:38

Sure. The Eastern Orthodox Presuppositionalism. Okay. So Vantilian sees his work as bringing to bear the

31:52

Bible and Reformed theology into apologetics.

31:58

So that apologetics is Reformed theologically driven.

32:05

And unlike, say, a beloved Reformed theologian like B .B.

32:11

Warfield at Old Princeton who saw apologetics, and this is probably not his language, but my language, this pre -theological, right, as being a more philosophically driven discipline.

32:27

Dr. Vantill is seeking to bring to bear both the

32:33

Dutch Reformed tradition, thinking in terms of Kuiper and Bavink, and the

32:40

Old Princeton tradition of Charles Hodge, B .B. Warfield, etc. And as you may know,

32:47

Dr. Bonson, in his volume, Vantill's Apologetic, around 493, page 493 or so, he has a discussion of Vantill building on both

33:02

Warfield and Kuiper. And I would throw in, I think that Bavink is more of an influence even than Kuiper.

33:13

So that when I began to read Bavink in its English translation, I'm thinking, wow,

33:19

Bavink is Vantillian. No, that's anachronistic. Vantill is

33:25

Bavinkian, right? So that's his goal.

33:33

He's fashioning, and it's not really a fashioning, it's more of an application to apologetics of Reformed theology as brought together in Old Amsterdam and Old Princeton.

33:49

And of course, we would add to that, you know, Francis Turretin, because Turretin, for the first 60, 50 some years of Old Princeton seminary's existence,

34:05

Turretin was the main textbook until Charles Hodge wrote his systematics, and it replaced

34:10

Turretin. And that was in the Latin, by the way, that was the Latin version of Turretin.

34:17

So Vantill sees his, what he's doing is to bring apologetics,

34:25

Reformed theology to bear on apologetics. So it's not, apologetics isn't done outside the fortress, and then you gain entry into, you get to use an analogy, the drawbridge.

34:40

Apologetics isn't pulling the drawbridge down to gain entrance into the castle. It's apologetics is on the inside, lowering the drawbridge, right?

34:52

I just occurred to me, so if it's a bad analogy, I apologize. But it's, so I'm more curious than anything to see how, but Joshua's article, as you mentioned, in terms of how to compare and contrast an

35:15

Eastern Orthodox version of presuppositionalism that at the very least expands the sola scriptura to the sola ecclesia, which is intriguing.

35:30

I'm curious to see how that works itself out in an actual form of argument.

35:36

I mean, I did, I have seen it. I've watched a few of the J. Dyer videos.

35:42

J. Dyer is an Eastern Orthodox, is he a layman? Who trained under Greg Bonson in the days of his

35:52

Reformed pilgrimage. So he still uses a modified form of what he learned at the feet of Dr.

36:03

Bonson. There were changes that are related to Greek Eastern Orthodox theology.

36:14

He cited, he had a debate with Trent Horn that I watched recording.

36:20

Fascinating, by the way, an example of a courteous debate throughout, although disagreeing rather forcefully in terms of ideas, but not in terms of personalities.

36:35

Which is right. Yeah, I really didn't know that. And you could see throughout the discussion, throughout the debate that J.

36:52

is drawing upon various Eastern Orthodox theologians, both past and present.

37:01

And part of me thought, well, this, a knowledge of this, awareness of this would probably benefit us

37:11

Reformed guys in the same way that when we read a John Owen or a

37:17

John Calvin, our forebears had a greater familiarity with patristics than we do.

37:24

I think that can be attributed to simply, we're now 500 years since the

37:29

Reformation. They were at the fount, at the place of origin of the

37:38

Reformation. And so they were closer to a medieval, they were trained as medieval academics.

37:44

And so they had familiarity. The loss of that is not, the loss of that knowledge is not an improvement,

37:52

I don't think. So being, so watching him and seeing how he debated

38:01

Trent Horne was fascinating. So I could, so I saw,

38:07

I've seen this idea of the sola ecclesia version of presuppositionalism at work.

38:16

I mean, if I could go down a list of doctrinal points where I think the

38:23

Eastern Orthodox tradition differs from Reformed theology, and that's generally how I would do things, simply because I think we err if we treat the transcendental method as if it were a deductive argument.

38:42

In other words, the method is arguing for the impossibility of the contrary. There are benefits to reducing that to a syllogistic, a form of a syllogistic argument.

38:56

However, there are limits to that as well. Okay. So that I would say it could be reduced to a series of syllogistic arguments.

39:07

Eli, you and I have had that conversation. Sure. So I would think, given what

39:14

I'm aware of with regard to what Van Til was trying to do, which was to create a, to formulate a

39:21

Reformed apologetic based upon a Reformed epistemology and a

39:26

Reformed ontology and a Reformed ethic, to draw in the three elements generally in philosophy, right, that Dr.

39:37

Van Til intended to produce an apologetic that would not be applicable in other traditional contexts.

39:49

However, being historically minded as I am,

39:56

I would say that it doesn't surprise me that we would find foreshadowings of this in earlier theologians who are seeking to be biblical and orthodox, in the broad sense of orthodox.

40:13

Now, Jeffrey, if you could help me with this question, because I get this question all the time, where would you pinpoint the necessary link between Reformed theology and presuppositional apologetic methodology?

40:30

Because a lot of people will say, well, it fits within a Reformed context, and I've actually had some people say, well,

40:37

I find presuppositionalism interesting, but I have one friend, he says the problem with presuppositionalists is that they're greedy.

40:44

They think it only, they just want the argument for themselves. But I think as a non -Reformed person, we can use it just fine.

40:50

What is the necessary link that makes presuppositionalism Reformed? And then we'll invite

40:55

Joshua back in for my next point that I want to ask. Poor brother Joshua now has his turn of watching and listening.

41:08

I'm not sure that I'm able, and this is a project that we may, maybe all the three of us can work on for the future, would be to pinpoint, in other words, the presuppositional method of apologetics is not merely a just, it's not merely a bare -bones methodology.

41:36

It's a methodology that arises out of a theology. Yes. Right? And so the one place where I would obviously start would be the triune nature of God.

41:49

Now, you see, that does connect us back to an Eastern Orthodox approach, because if there's anything that Eastern Orthodoxy is strong on, it's going to be

42:03

Trinitarian theology. So that would provide, that may provide an avenue for a bridge, but also we would want to, for instance,

42:15

Jay Dyer built some of his arguments or comments in the various videos that I've watched on the essence energies distinction, which is not something that we in the

42:31

Reform community sign on to. Although Michael Horton, in his

42:37

Christian theology textbook, does, I believe, speak positively about it.

42:48

But historically, that's not, the essence energies distinction has not been, at least with that language, has not been at the center.

43:01

Oh, so that would be an area, I think that would be an area of difference. I know when, when the idea, when you and I were first talking about the seed lie,

43:11

I had wondered about sin and an understanding of what salvation is.

43:21

And Josh was already touched upon it because of his discussion of penal substitutionary atonement and his reading of J .I.

43:30

Packer on that topic and other Reform theologians, no doubt.

43:39

So there are vast differences between the

43:44

East and the West, and his Protestants were primarily from the West, although I would say there are some groups that call themselves

43:52

Protestants because they don't have an, I, well, my last congregation in the

43:57

Salvation Army was in New York City and we rented out our sanctuaries on Sunday afternoons to a little, not a little group, it was a fairly good sized congregation of folk that came out of the

44:10

Greek Orthodox Church who were now evangelical. So that, so that there are some who call themselves evangelical or Protestant, but that's because they're, what they mean is they're not, they're no longer

44:29

Eastern Orthodox or Greek Orthodox there, but, and, but they're not, technically speaking,

44:36

Protestant. So, I mean, I was going somewhere with that,

44:44

I apologize, it went right out of my head. Well, but so, and I, again,

44:52

I would be looking at particular points of doctrinal headings, loci, as they refer to them, or, or if you like to mispronounce your

45:04

Latin, you can say loci, if that makes you happy.

45:11

But, but, but so there's almost an antithetical thrust to what

45:17

I would be doing. Okay. If, if I were to, in the sense, in the sense that I, you know, because, because if Van Till's method, presuppositionalism arises from his theology, you can't help but be different.

45:32

Right. Uh, in the, in the end, uh, there will be, you know, again, there may, there may be elements of overlap, and, and, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

45:44

Uh, if presuppositionalism is, is the, the, the proper and the, and the only worthwhile apologetic, then, then, then, uh,

45:57

I would imagine others would see that and would try to, to, uh, to use, to use the method within their own context.

46:07

But I, I would just wonder how well it would work, considering it was built, it was built for a reformed context.

46:15

So what, what is kept and what is tossed out when

46:21

Eastern Orthodox, uh, uh, theologian or apologist uses, uses the method?

46:31

Uh, I would make one observation, if I may. Then I just want to cut in real quick, because I want to bring

46:37

Joshua into the discussion. But go ahead. Joshua had mentioned that, uh, that he didn't find any or many, uh,

46:48

Eastern Orthodox apologetics books. And I was wondering how much of that might be a reflection of what we in the

46:57

West refer to as, as Christendom. So, so that, uh, there, there's a, once the, the part of the world that you're in has been largely

47:10

Christianized, the, the sense, the existential need for apologetics might, you know, uh, be mitigated.

47:20

And I wonder if that, if that's what you're looking at is, is that, uh, the, the need for apologetics, uh, or the, the felt need for apologetics usually will arise within a context of, uh, of other world religions or other philosophies, right?

47:39

So if, if, uh, you find yourself in, in, uh, you know, in, in the, in the

47:48

Eastern Orthodox tradition in the middle ages, how likely will, will, will you, uh, run up against a self -declared atheist?

47:58

Sure. Or that kind of thing. I'd said that more of a historical observation, but, but, uh, anyway, so.

48:05

Well, let's, let's try to make this practically as I want to try something and I hope you guys are okay with this.

48:11

Could we try to have a hypothetical conversation between an

48:17

Eastern Orthodox pre -supper and a Reformed pre -supper? So if you could say, suppose you guys are at a coffee shop.

48:25

Okay. And Joshua, you weren't reading Herman Bavick. I think that's what you were reading last time I spoke. Was it

48:30

Herman Bavick? Okay. Okay. So, uh, suppose you weren't reading

48:36

Herman Bavick. You just finished writing your book. You're still Eastern Orthodox and you meet Jeffrey at a coffee shop and you guys get into a conversation.

48:43

How would you engage Jeffrey from your perspective? Just a casual conversation.

48:49

And Jeffrey, how would you interact with some of the things? So we can kind of like a mock discussion, nothing crazy, just so people can kind of see what does it look like for two presuppositionalists that have differing presuppositions?

49:01

What does that look like? Would that be asking too much? Do we think we could try that? No, I'm all game.

49:07

As long as I can argue against myself. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's it.

49:14

I'll be the third wheel. I'll be the third wheel. I'll be like, hey, Jeffrey, I know you're Reformed. I have my friend

49:20

Joshua here and he's into apologetics and he wanted to have a conversation with you.

49:26

Like, why don't you guys talk it out? I mean, why do you believe Eastern Orthodoxy is true?

49:32

How do you argue for it? How would you interact with a Reformed person? Joshua, why don't you start us off in this mock hypothetical conversation?

49:39

How might you go about sharing your faith and defending your faith from an Eastern Orthodox perspective? Wow, that's challenging.

49:48

Eastern Orthodoxy bills itself as the non -apologetic mystical tradition.

49:53

You know, we don't do apologetics. We don't do systematic theology. But of course, to answer briefly to your question earlier,

50:00

Jeffrey, apparently there is a lot of apologetics in like the Russian language from like the 19th century and earlier that never quite made it.

50:09

And then in Greek, you would also have apologists as well, like Apostolos Makrakis, who would make all kinds of debates and arguments and stuff like that to defend the church.

50:20

And so there'd be like anti -Catholic polemics. There'd be anti -Protestant polemics as well.

50:25

So there definitely was a lot of, you know, polemics happening and arguments, you know, because if you affirm the filioque, you're a heretic and it's abomination and, you know, that sort of thing.

50:36

But, you know, I guess the typical kind of approach would be, you know, well, we gave you the scriptures, so you don't really even know what the scriptures are because you have to presuppose the church as the vehicle to gift them to you.

50:59

Well, actually, God gave us the scriptures and the scriptures were authoritative the moment they were written.

51:08

They did come by way of the church. There's no denying that. But the church is not the one who gave them.

51:15

They may have been the ones who safeguarded them in God's providence. That was his way of doing that.

51:23

But it's the same kind of response I would give to a Roman Catholic or even a

51:29

Presbyterian like John Gerstner who made that kind of an argument.

51:35

And, you know, I would chide Gerstner because he should know better. I might be a little more patient with the

51:43

Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends. So I would say that the church is the way, the path along which the scriptures have come to us, but they are not the source of the authority of the scripture.

52:02

How would you respond to that, Joshua, from an Eastern Orthodox perspective? Yeah, but who gave them to you?

52:12

The church. So, for example, how do you know that third John belongs in the scripture?

52:20

Somebody had to hand it over to you. And so why did you trust them? I mean, we're not debating the

52:28

Mormon canon, but we could or we could debate the Catholic canon or we could debate any number of things.

52:35

So it's like if I say that it's self -attesting, I also have to have some kind of authoritative affirmation as well.

52:43

Right? I don't have to. I don't think we have to have them, that we do have them.

52:53

There's no doubt. And I'm thankful. I mean, you know, if there was no one between the giving, you know, the

53:01

St. Paul writes this letter to the church at Rome and there's no one from that point till now,

53:10

I would be a bit worried that there was no one, no other Christians. Again, an argument that I often have made from the pulpit is that the

53:18

Holy Spirit didn't start working with his church with me. Okay, so the

53:25

Holy Spirit is at work in the church, in every part of the church from the beginning.

53:32

So, so that where there are believers, true believers in Eastern Orthodoxy, there the

53:39

Holy Spirit is at work. The church is a part of God's plan, but it is not, it does not, it has a derivative authority.

53:49

Its authority is derived from God by way of the scriptures, but its authority is not self -sustained.

53:58

It is not self -attesting. That's why I would have trouble with the sola ecclesia form of presuppositionalism, because and I, being historically minded, love and give a lot of weight to church history, but I don't put it in the same category as the word of God.

54:26

The history is important. And if there's, you know, if there's one thing evangelicals are guilty of, it's, it's short term memory.

54:35

You know, at best, they might remember that there's 500 years of church history, when in fact, we know there's 2000 years of church history.

54:45

And that, and that enriches, enriches even our reformed apologetic.

54:51

Insofar as someone, you've read Bovink. Bovink isn't writing off the top of his head. He's citing various theologians from the history of the church, east and west.

55:05

He's, he's interacting with unbelieving thought as well in his, his work. So that the, but I would say that while the church is the guardian of the truth.

55:22

And that sounds like something Paul might have said to Timothy. And, and, but it is not the origin of authority.

55:35

It's, it's whatever authority the church has, it has from God by way of the scriptures.

55:41

Let me interject there as a third wheel. And then Joshua, you could jump in if you had some thoughts from an

55:47

Eastern Orthodox perspective. So Jeffrey, would you say that the church just, just a yes or no.

55:52

If I was cross -examining you, is the church the infallible identifier of the canon?

55:59

Yes or no? No. Okay. So it seems to me kind of in favor of the

56:04

Eastern Orthodox perspective that you have a fallible church identifying the infallible scriptures.

56:14

Identifying or recognizing. Is there a, is there a significant, uh, we can say, okay, so they're recognizing the, a fallible church is recognizing the infallible scriptures.

56:27

So you have that argument. It seems to me that you have an unreliable mechanism by which you are saying you're recognizing that, which is the

56:37

Anastas, that which is the inspired word of God. So I've often heard this. No, because the scriptures are divinely inspired.

56:47

They have their own authority. Okay. They possess their own authority because they come from God.

56:56

God's authority doesn't rest on something higher than him. God's authority rests upon him.

57:03

It derives from him. And so these, the scriptures, uh, share a benefit from that.

57:10

And so far as God speaks, uh, in, in the scriptures, then the scriptures have, have, uh, an immediate source of a, uh, basis for a ground of authority.

57:25

Yeah. Okay. That's what they, what we mean by self -attesting or self -authenticating.

57:32

Uh, in other words, it's not relying upon the church. Now we want the church to, to confirm.

57:41

Notice they use the word confirm. They are adding their witness to what the scriptures say of themselves.

57:50

Um, problem with our discussion so far, and this was in the back of my mind is, is that when we use the term church, we're abstracting.

58:03

Uh, there, there are a multitude of early church fathers or church fathers.

58:09

If you want to go up for, you know, the set, the, all of the councils, uh, as well, you know, it's in terms of a period of time.

58:19

And if you're wanting to include all of the, uh, revered theologians of your tradition, uh, and they don't all agree with each other.

58:30

So if they're in disagreement, uh, which is the right, the right view.

58:40

Sure. Sure. That's just, that's a, that's a, a question of fact, uh, that they, uh, often differ with the, with each other, just as commentators,

58:51

Bible commentators differ from one another on particular points. Uh, so we, we need to, to treat, uh, the church as conversation partners.

59:07

Uh, and they do have enough. There is an authority to an ancient practice being conservative as I am politically, as well as philosophically and theologically.

59:19

Burkean in that sense. Okay. I, I, I, I do recognize the importance of, of prevalent or, or a practice that has been in place for a long time.

59:33

That doesn't mean ultimately the scriptures are the authority. And if they call into question the longstanding practice, you know, that so much for the practice, but all other things being equal, uh, something that is, has been practiced for a long time.

59:50

Of course, we kind of have old mistakes and old errors, but, but, but so that's, those are some of the ways that I would, you know, deal with the.

01:00:03

You would acknowledge a fruitful relationship and conversant relationship between the church and the, uh, and the scriptures.

01:00:12

Yes. So I'm not a nudist script Torah or a solo script Torah person.

01:00:18

All right. So Joshua, why don't you chime in, uh, just one more kind of a pushback, and then I want you to take off your

01:00:24

Eastern Orthodox hat. And then I'd like you to share with us, what are some ways that you have, um, approached the

01:00:31

Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism in terms of some of your criticisms of that method, perhaps even sharing some points from your, from your article?

01:00:39

Yeah. Um, I guess if I was going to try one more pushback, uh, against, uh,

01:00:44

Jeffrey, I would say, yeah, that's all cute and all, but, uh, you know, we gave you the scriptures and you're just laying claim to them from some 16th century innovation.

01:00:58

Uh, you know, that's a total radical break with the church, uh, and therefore, you know, you just are using our borrowed capital in order to make your claim.

01:01:11

There, there's an L of course, a very, uh, a very, uh, strong element of truth to what you say,

01:01:19

Joshua, that, that we're using borrowed capital. You're not supposed to admit that, Jeffrey, come on.

01:01:25

No, no, no, no, no. I lean into, I lean into my weaknesses, so that, so that, uh, um, but the reformers,

01:01:35

John Calvin in particular, but, but also Ecclemparius and Zwingli, uh, were translating, um,

01:01:45

John Chrysostom, right? John Chrysostom, uh, sermons. That was apparently a big, that was one of the big projects that had been underway and completed at some point during, uh,

01:01:59

Calvin's time, uh, as, as, uh, either in Geneva or Strasbourg, but, or both, uh, and, and so they didn't, the, the reformers didn't see themselves as innovative.

01:02:14

They said they, they saw themselves as a return to what had been the practice of the early church.

01:02:21

And so that's the, that's the setup where the, the Protestant, you know, Reformation is not a revolution.

01:02:28

It's not, it's not a break. It's not a radical thing. It's a conservative movement. Right. So we identify, right.

01:02:37

As, as a practice by say, uh, Calvin and Luther, uh, in many ways it is a conservative, conservative, uh, revolution.

01:02:49

If you want to bring those two words together, uh, in it's a, but yeah, they saw it as, as a return, uh, to, to, uh, you know, we would say a period of time.

01:03:03

Before, uh, unbiblical, um, ideas, uh, became commonplace or accepted in the church.

01:03:14

Uh, but ultimately, ultimately, you know, we can have long discussions about church history, but, but the question is, uh, the, the unique aspects say of Eastern Orthodox, uh, presuppositionalism, are they biblical?

01:03:31

Uh, and of course I'm speaking from the context of a

01:03:37

Protestant Bible. I don't, uh, off the top of my head, I don't know if there's a difference between the

01:03:42

Eastern Orthodox Bible and the, uh, Protestant Bible. It's roughly equivalent to the

01:03:48

Catholic canon. Okay. So there, they have the Apocrypha basically. Um, and then even though in, in the patristics, you do find testimony that the

01:03:57

Apocrypha is identified as, uh, you know, not, not of quite the same level as the

01:04:04

Old Testament or the New. Um, and I would, you kind of, yeah.

01:04:10

So I would say that, you know, the, the Protestant Reformation is a, is a renewal movement.

01:04:16

You know, it's not an overthrow, which is kind of what I see a revolution as, uh, it's an overthrow and a restart.

01:04:23

Um, and so in that sense, at least from that, that angle of that term, like I would say, it's a reformation and a renewal, you know, and that the

01:04:33

Orthodox is actually not patristic. Like I think they depart from Irenaeus's view of scripture here.

01:04:40

Um, and they're not biblical. Um, tell me if you can still see me. Yeah, you're perfectly fine.

01:04:46

We can see you. Okay, there's no lag or anything. You're fine. Oh, good. I had a, uh, a printer error earlier.

01:04:53

It stopped. It just stopped printing today for some providential reason. So, um, one of the things that the

01:04:59

Orthodox church, for example, says at the canonical level, um, the witness also, and this is from decree two and the

01:05:08

Jerusalem council of 1672, which is authoritative and accepted by all Eastern Orthodox patriarchates.

01:05:15

Um, that the witness of the Catholic church, which is in their case, the Eastern Orthodox church is we believe not of inferior authority to that of the divine scriptures.

01:05:28

So they, in principle at the, at the polity level, at the ecclesiological level, they elevate the church's voice to equal status with the authority of scripture.

01:05:40

And that's completely non -patristic in my opinion. Um, Irenaeus, uh, we find throughout is, would not agree with that.

01:05:49

He said, they say it is quite the same to be taught by the scriptures and by the

01:05:54

Catholic church. Again, the Eastern Orthodox church is what they mean by that. They don't recognize the

01:05:59

Roman Catholic church as a church. So when they say the Catholic church, they mean the Eastern Orthodox church. So the

01:06:05

Eastern Orthodox church, um, uh, it is impossible for her to in any wise error or to at all deceive or be deceived, but like the divine scriptures is infallible.

01:06:19

And has perpetual authority. Um, so to me right there, they're elevating their voice to having the same status as scripture, which immediately, in my opinion, places them in an epistemological bind, which for example, because they, they make, uh, well,

01:06:40

I'll just quote Francis Turreton, for example, where he identifies the same kind of position because the council of 1672 is around the same time when our, uh, when, uh,

01:06:51

Turreton was writing was alive. Yeah. He was 1623 to 1687 where he identifies this same sort of argument in the

01:07:01

Roman Catholic church, this sort of vicious circularity where he says, um, therefore the church cannot recommend the authority of the scripture either as to itself or as to us, unless we wish to make the cause depend on the effect, the principle upon that which, uh, derived from it and the foundation upon the edifice.

01:07:26

So he refers again. So those who make the authority of the church depend upon the scripture, oops, excuse me, a manifest circle would be made since the authority of the church is proved from scripture and in turn, the authority of the scripture, uh, from the church.

01:07:42

So basically my response to the Eastern Orthodox person is you call it scripture just because you say it is, that's the only reason that you have, and you can't have any sort of falsified opinion, but because of the asymmetrical nature of,

01:07:57

I think my move, I would say is to have a revelational epistemology. Um, and so God's word actually is an inbreaking of, of, of God's mind in to an inscripturated form, but the church is a creature it's created by the word.

01:08:17

And so to elevate the, the creaturely voice to the level of the uncreated mind being revealed through scripture to me is just manifestly false.

01:08:29

I think it's, it defeat, it destroys and undoes the, what I would call maybe the bridal principle of the church.

01:08:37

The bride doesn't have equal authority to the bridegroom. She responds to his voice.

01:08:43

She doesn't determine his voice. So she's placed into the position of determining God's voice.

01:08:49

She's saying she's equal to God. And that's exactly what their council said. Her voice is equal to God's voice because they say it's the same spirit.

01:08:58

So they have an open canon. They've essentially destroyed the canon itself because whenever they speak, that's now canon.

01:09:06

And so they can constantly shift and move the goalposts of truth just based on their own authority because there's nothing checking them.

01:09:17

There is no authority to which they submit according to that ecclesiological principle that they have.

01:09:23

And so I think they get defeated by that, by their own. And I think that would be an internal critique of their position because it's basically just fideistic because in the sense that they received the scripture, the

01:09:36

Orthodox guy sitting across the coffee table, you know, from us, he received the scriptures the same way we did from our forefathers.

01:09:45

We are the inheritors of Nicaea. We are the inheritors of Constantinople.

01:09:51

We are the inheritors of Chalcedon and we exist in an ecclesiological continuity from the apostles to today.

01:10:00

The reformation is no restart. It's a renewal. It's a sloughing off of all of the nonsense and noise that the church had developed in the

01:10:11

West over the course of centuries. So it was an actually an immune response, I would say, of the church.

01:10:19

And so in that way, we receive the Bible the same way that they do.

01:10:25

And it becomes as William Shedd, I really like Shedd's dogmatic theology, where he says the canonicity of a

01:10:36

New Testament book is not settled by the authority of the primitive church, but by its testimony.

01:10:43

And I think you were hinting at that or pointing to that earlier, Jeffrey, and he makes this additional observation that the authority of the first Christians is no higher than that of any other

01:10:56

Christians in terms of authority. Clement, Ignatius, Athanasius, they're not of any intrinsically greater authority than us.

01:11:06

But those people earliest to the events do have a weightier testimony, but that doesn't grant what they say more authority in terms of assigning canonicity.

01:11:20

Because if we were in the first century and Paul, I think you were pointing at this also,

01:11:26

Jeff, earlier, is if Paul hands me Romans, right, or whoever the letter carrier is, and this is determined to, yes, this is

01:11:35

Paul's letter to the Romans, Paul handed it to me. I have it now in my hand. It has intrinsic authority.

01:11:43

So if I hand that letter to my son, or my spiritual son will say, and I say, hey, this is

01:11:49

Paul's letter. I submitted to this, you should submit to the apostle's word too. He hands that to his spiritual son, his spiritual son hands that to his spiritual son.

01:12:00

And it's always the authority of Paul that is conveyed, which is the authority of God speaking through Paul.

01:12:08

So the authority of God's word is always conveyed as an intrinsic self -attesting, intrinsically self -attesting authority because it's an in breaking of God.

01:12:20

And so my testimony to it doesn't lend it any authority. It's just a recognition.

01:12:27

It's just a testimony. And I think that is ultimately where the

01:12:32

Eastern Orthodox sort of position kind of fails is because they're just making the same claim that any other kind of church in their same sort of position would make.

01:12:41

And so the question isn't a question of canon. The question is, is who gets to say they're the church? And so they shift the argument to, well, you don't even know what the

01:12:50

Bible is. Well, we say, well, you don't even know who the church is. You can't know because you only know because you say you are.

01:12:57

And then you point at history. But now history, we've gone outside of the scope of the canon of Scripture to say that, well,

01:13:06

I'm going to side with Ephesus too and I'm going to become a Coptic. But who gets to umpire that?

01:13:14

The only reason the Eastern Orthodox guy says the Coptic is wrong is why? Because he was born in Russia and the

01:13:20

Coptic was born in Egypt. You know, if we're having an argument in the 1800s. And so it just becomes a kind of tribalism, a sectarianism, a fideism really.

01:13:31

Where it says, well, it's only because my dad gave it to me that I can know that it's... But we received it from our fathers in the same way that they did.

01:13:39

And we asserted a system of confirmation. But again, that wasn't lending any authority.

01:13:46

But because of the way they established their authority, they actually lend authority to the canon.

01:13:52

But it's like, no, no, no, no, no. We don't find that in Irenaeus at all. So that'd be my counter argument to even my own book.

01:13:59

You know, when I talk about that is like, I think Irenaeus himself, if I'm going to find presuppositional apologetics in Irenaeus, I'm going to also look at his doctrine of Scripture.

01:14:11

Because his notion of tradition is something very clearly identifiable.

01:14:16

It's the rule of faith that could basically be summed up in the Apostle's Creed. His book on apostolic preaching is the rule of faith in that form.

01:14:27

So to say that there's some other tradition, some other rule of faith that mystically, gnostically kind of assigns authority to Scripture is not true.

01:14:37

He's saying that the Scriptures are authoritative. This canon helps us to understand it. But really, it's the

01:14:42

Scripture that's always had this authority. PASTOR MIKE NOVOTNY I have a question. You said something that the Eastern Orthodox claim that they are the church is fideistic.

01:14:52

If I'm thinking like a presuppositionalist who's using a transcendental way of thinking, couldn't they say it's not fideistic because we have a justification for it, and the justification for it is its transcendental necessity as providing the necessary preconditions for knowledge.

01:15:10

So how would we engage the person who says, wait, there's a transcendental justification for this because the church gives us that necessary epistemology, that mechanism that gets us to knowledge because we can identify

01:15:23

Scriptures, which in turn give us all this other information about what God says about the nature of the world, and how we know what we know, and how we should live our lives.

01:15:32

PASTOR MIKE NOVOTNY I think the Reformed argument, and you tell me, Jeff, what you think, is that the reason why the transcendental argument works is because it's an inbreaking of the divine mind.

01:15:42

PASTOR BARRY and PASTOR MIKE NOVOTNY Right, that's correct. It's not a creature's mind that becomes an epistemic precondition.

01:15:48

It's not Jerry's mind, or Jill's mind, or Jack's mind, or all three of them put together and saying their mind.

01:15:56

I mean, that might work in a business setting, and it's like, well, the boss tells me to do this, so I have to do it because the boss says it.

01:16:03

But that's not, I don't think, epistemic certainty. I don't think that actually functions as an apologetic.

01:16:09

PASTOR MIKE NOVOTNY So if they claim that the church is that necessary piece it gets right back to that issue that you're talking about, that there is the creation that is taking this role that it doesn't have.

01:16:21

It's putting itself above the divine mind because the created mind, the created corporate mind of the church that identifies the divine words of God.

01:16:32

PASTOR BARRY Yeah, they're not actually submitting to revelation. They're the revelation. So whatever they say is revelation.

01:16:38

So you have to obey whatever they say. Well, how do you know it's true? Well, because I said it. So why should

01:16:43

I listen to you? Well, because I told you to. PASTOR MIKE NOVOTNY And the internal critique would be when someone says, and I'm just thinking out loud here, maybe hopefully this will help for the listeners.

01:16:53

So the internal critique would be, well, if you say the church is, you know, the

01:16:59

Eastern Orthodox perspective of the church provides that necessary epistemic link, right? We can just say it doesn't because of the reasons you expressed with the created being placed over the creation.

01:17:11

Or it's arbitrarily being identified with the divine voice of God. PASTOR MIKE NOVOTNY Yeah.

01:17:16

I think that and also the fact that there's really nothing substantively that distinguishes the

01:17:22

Orthodox claim from the Roman Catholic claim from the Oriental. One of the biggest things that I would, if I could, you know, just caution anyone who wants to do apologetics with an

01:17:33

Eastern Orthodox person or with a Roman Catholic is don't go toe to toe with them. They have their own battles.

01:17:40

For example, the Eastern Orthodox is in a protracted 1 ,000 year debate over whether they're the church or whether the

01:17:46

Roman Catholic church is the real church. They both somehow existed for 1 ,000 years and they can both share the same presupposition that the

01:17:54

Orthodox guy is now telling us. But what happened in 1054 AD that legitimized his argument over and against the

01:18:03

Roman Catholic? Hmm. And so I think that's another falsifier for them is that they've so narrowed the scope of the movement of the church through history to themselves that they actually leave themselves wide gaping holes of, well, why can't the

01:18:19

Roman Catholic say the same thing then? He has the exact same criteria as you do.

01:18:25

Well, no, he doesn't because they have the filioque. Well, why is the filioque wrong? Well, because we say it's wrong.

01:18:30

Well, how do you know it's wrong? Because we said it. And so it becomes viciously circular because the only revelation for them is the fact that they say it.

01:18:40

But then the Roman Catholic is going to turn around and say the same thing. Well, we have the papacy. And then the Oriental Orthodox is going to say the same thing.

01:18:47

And then the Assyrian Orthodox is going to say the same thing. And then the Anglicans are going to say, well, hey, we've got an unbroken line of bishops over here too.

01:18:54

Can't we be a part of the conversation? And so the very conditions which the Eastern Orthodox try to assert and prop up their claim to authority, five other churches make an equal historical claim to those same criteria.

01:19:10

And so that's where the debate is, not whether we can say what the canon is, but why do they get to say anything at all?

01:19:18

They have to defeat their Roman Catholic and Oriental Orthodox interlocutors before why should we have to?

01:19:24

Like, it's like a Royal Rumble. Like, why am I going to fight this guy? Let him fight Andre the Giant if he wants all day.

01:19:31

And then he can fight the ultimate warrior. And now I'll get the tired version. That's a good example.

01:19:42

So World Wrestling Federation. So I had a question and it left me.

01:19:51

So you have the authority of the Roman Catholic. Okay, so here's my question. So let's suppose you have a

01:19:59

Roman Catholic presuppositionalist, which actually exists. There are Roman Catholic presuppositionalism.

01:20:05

Bonson even addressed this question even back in the 90s. Someone asked him a question regarding a

01:20:10

Roman Catholic using presuppositional argumentation. But anyway, when it comes to defending the church from either a

01:20:19

Roman Catholic position and an Eastern Orthodox position, do you think that there is kind of cherry picking amongst the church fathers to validate the authority of the church?

01:20:27

You know, appealing to who's got the consensus of the fathers on their side? Oh, certainly.

01:20:33

That's like a sport. Yeah, the fathers say almost anything.

01:20:45

Okay. You know, I mean, if people can do that with scripture, right? You know, people do that with the father.

01:20:53

Yeah, I always think that was interesting. I do often hear people say, like, you need the church to interpret scripture. But then, of course, you need to interpret the church.

01:21:02

You need to interpret the fathers. And so if interpretation requires the infallible church, like, well, how do we interpret properly the infallible church?

01:21:14

If we could interpret the infallible church's words, then it would seem that language is already a sufficient mechanism to understand.

01:21:20

And so why don't we just go straight to the scripture for that case? Does that make sense? Yeah, I probably can't find it right here, but it's similar to an argument

01:21:29

Turretin made. You know, so the very thing that would cause us to submit to the voice of the church,

01:21:36

I mean, that would cause the church to submit to the scriptures would be the same argument that would cause us to submit to the scriptures.

01:21:42

So why don't we just go straight to the scriptures? If there's an argument that would cause us to go to the church,

01:21:48

I mean, that would cause the church itself to go to the scriptures. That sufficient argument would cause me to go on you to go to the scriptures.

01:21:55

So what's with the notion of a hierarchical middleman? Right, right.

01:22:01

It becomes redundant and then just it becomes authoritarian. Even if they're friendly about it, it's,

01:22:07

I mean, it like authoritarian in principle, you know, not necessarily psychologically. 1672 council or whatever year that was, that where they described the church as infallible, that's the same basic argument that the

01:22:22

Roman Catholic church uses for papal infallibility, right? And they were apparently being taught out of Jesuit textbooks at the time, those that the theologians who were crafting those.

01:22:35

Right, right. That doesn't surprise me. Well, we are at one hour and 22 minutes.

01:22:41

I'd like to kind of go through some of the comments here and see if we can interact with some of them.

01:22:47

And there's one that I liked here. I'm going to go from the bottom up because it takes forever to, let me see.

01:22:54

Okay, let's see here. All right, so someone, okay.

01:23:02

So Enslaved by Truth says, this is a Sola Scriptura debate. Can we address the title of the video?

01:23:08

Now I picked this comment because the answer to this, I think completely misses the point because it misses the importance of the

01:23:15

Sola Scriptura in the debate. It's a central feature of the debate. So talking about Sola Scriptura is very relevant to understanding the nature of the debate itself.

01:23:25

So how would you address this in a little bit more detail? Either of you can take a stab at it. Someone says, well, wait a minute, you guys are just talking about Sola Scriptura.

01:23:33

You know, how does this answer the question of whether presuppositionalism fits within Eastern Orthodoxy? Anyone want to take a stab at that?

01:23:40

I mean, my initial reaction is to say things are complex. In other words, ultimately the answer to the question, does

01:23:48

Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism make sense? The answer is no, given its reformed origins.

01:23:56

However, as a matter of fact, there are both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic presuppositionalists.

01:24:06

And, you know, we're not denying the existence of these folks, nor are we necessarily denying that they have had some value, that they've had some success or whatever in their apologetic endeavor.

01:24:22

It's simply to say that from a biblical, ultimately when

01:24:30

I say something, when I say Vantillian or I say reformed,

01:24:35

I'm ultimately saying biblical, okay? So that from a biblical perspective,

01:24:43

EO presuppositionalism or EOP if we want to, for short, doesn't work.

01:24:52

And that you would have to unpack that in detail with each of the doctrines, starting with the doctrine of God.

01:24:59

And we've just happened to have fallen into a discussion of the scripture issue because of Joshua's making reference to that council in the 1670s, which claims ecclesiastical infallibility.

01:25:17

Okay. Do you have any thoughts there, Joshua? Yeah. You know, I think, you know, you're making a really good point, you know,

01:25:25

Jeff, the kind of interconnectedness of these doctrines, because as presuppositionalists, we're going to utilize scripture as our standard by which to assess,

01:25:36

I think. And so I think, you know, taking it that next full step to see, well, why does the

01:25:42

Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism not work becomes a kind of like a natural consequence of just asserting what is the ground of our knowledge, the revelation or epistemology.

01:25:53

And so I think once we recognize that scripture does exist in a category of its own, in terms of its metaphysical status as an inbreaking of the divine mind into the finite realm, it becomes the umpire.

01:26:10

So if the Orthodox church tries to elevate its voice to be of equal status with the umpire, they actually destroy the distinction mechanism by which we can even make these kinds of claims or arguments at all about really anything because they're so unfalsifiable.

01:26:27

So whether they're contradictory or self -contradictory becomes irrelevant according to their first principles because it's just true whether they say it.

01:26:35

So I think, you know, that's why Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism doesn't make sense because they actually confuse the creaturely voice, the bridal voice with the bridegroom's voice.

01:26:47

So would I be correct in saying the Sola Scriptura debate is addressing the topic of the video because the issue is the nature of our authorities?

01:26:58

I think also ecclesiology too becomes a big part of it because part of the difficulty, and we were touching on it a little bit here towards the end in our last little segment,

01:27:10

I think, is the Eastern Orthodox church, essentially, they're gonna say they existed all the way back from the apostles.

01:27:18

But they have the equal kind of claim with everyone else. We go back to the apostles.

01:27:25

Martin Luther was a presbyter, right? The Protestant Reformation, the

01:27:31

Calvinists and the Reformers had many, many presbyters among them. They weren't being

01:27:36

Anabaptists and just saying, well, you have a move of the spirit, so why don't you go start a church? They had schools, they would ordain people.

01:27:45

Like there was always like a thoughtful, conservative, biblically oriented process, even if someone was like in the

01:27:52

Episcopal side of things or the Presbyterian side of things or the more congregational side of things.

01:27:57

It's like, there's this continuity. The question is, why does the Orthodox church get to say it and the

01:28:03

Roman Catholic church not get to say it and the Oriental Orthodox church not get to say it and the

01:28:09

Syrian church? That, I think, is another kind of area of dispute.

01:28:15

I think for us, our answer is scripture is the umpire. So all that to say,

01:28:21

Psalm Scriptura is very relevant to addressing this issue. Just to answer that question.

01:28:26

Thank you so much for your, well, I guess it was, yeah, it was a question. Andy S303 says, the gates of hell will not prevail until the reformers help us out.

01:28:36

You can kind of get the gist of what this person is getting at, right? So the gates of hell will not prevail. Obviously God is going to be guiding his church into truth, but apparently, you know, they were out of the truth.

01:28:47

I'm sorry? He doesn't use means or people in his church to accomplish his purposes. You know,

01:28:53

I guess the gates of hell won't prevail against the church unless Athanasius helps out. The gates of hell won't prevail against the church unless Maximus the confessor helps out.

01:29:04

I guess the gates of hell won't prevail against the church unless Mark of Ephesus helps out or Photius helps out.

01:29:12

There's so many times in history where we see God has raised up men or groups of men together to champion and push forward the truth and to proclaim it.

01:29:22

And like there's sea changes and there's direction changes. That maintain the steady line of truth to eternity.

01:29:28

That's a great point because I'm thinking, you know, the gates of hell will not prevail until the reformers help us out.

01:29:35

So when the reformers help us out, they're illegitimate because look, the church needs the reformers as though God can't use the reformers.

01:29:42

But when you appeal to the Greek fathers that serve your purpose, that's an example of God preserving his church and the gates of hell will not prevail.

01:29:51

So that would seem like a double standard to me if that's what the person is getting at. But yeah, great, great response.

01:29:57

Yeah, I was gonna say with regard to church history, past theologians and leaders in the church are only helpful insofar as they are biblical.

01:30:13

Okay, so, you know, for us reform guys, it's a long winded way of getting back to what we believe is biblical.

01:30:24

In other words, we wouldn't have the heroes that we have if we didn't think they were biblical.

01:30:31

The reformers didn't think they were the first ones to see the truth they embraced and taught.

01:30:38

They believed that they were recapturing, returning. That's what reforming means, to form around, to a form again, according to the standard of God's word.

01:30:56

All right, great point. I can say it reminds me, you know, like that sort of comment reminds me of that famous saying that, you know, if you learn history, if you're a

01:31:06

Protestant and you learn history, you'll become Orthodox. Or if you're a Protestant and you learn history, you'll become Catholic.

01:31:11

It reminds me of that other saying though, to make a counter saying, if you study a little bit of science as a

01:31:19

Christian, you'll become an atheist. But if you study a lot of science, you'll become a theist again. And it's similar,

01:31:27

I think, with history. If you study a little bit of history superficially, you might want to become Orthodox. You might want to become

01:31:33

Catholic. But I think if you study history more deeply, you become Protestant because you realize that the reformers had real arguments for good reasons.

01:31:43

They weren't trying to think of something to do to whittle away the time and to while away the hours.

01:31:50

They were deeply immersed in the patristics and they were deeply immersed in the scriptures. And they went to the church fathers as a way to get out of the sort of scholastic kind of mechanism that became like too great of a filtration mechanism that obscured the scriptures and the church fathers.

01:32:08

So they were a patristic movement, even, and I'm gonna ramble just for one moment, if that's okay.

01:32:15

Like there's a really popular thing amongst the Eastern Orthodox is this doctrine of theosis and union with God.

01:32:23

But I've been speaking with a reformed friend of mine and I've been doing a little bit of like research, see if I can find some other resources.

01:32:31

And I'm going back and I'm finding in Charles Hodge, I'm finding in John Murray, I'm finding in people who were publishing prior to Vladimir Lasky, the famous Eastern Orthodox writer, who were talking about union with Christ, even

01:32:47

Thomas Boston, the great Puritan divine was writing about union with Christ as a part of the ordo salutis, the order of salvation.

01:32:56

So that even imputation of Christ's righteousness presupposes union. The idea that like Eastern Orthodox or like somehow novelly bringing up this issue of this great doctrine of union with Christ, it's actually a very standard reformed doctrine.

01:33:15

Maybe it got a little dusty, but that's just a matter of dusting off that doctrine.

01:33:20

But it's been - Jonathan Edwards was very big into union with Christ. John Calvin building off of Bernard de

01:33:28

Clairvaux. So it's biblical, it's called the

01:33:34

Apostle Paul. Song of Solomon. Okay, it goes that far back.

01:33:41

All right, very good. Enslaved by Truth says, if God is the precondition for all knowledge and God is real, then aren't even non -believers justified in their reason and knowledge.

01:33:52

Who'd wanna tackle that one? If God is the precondition for all knowledge and God is real, he is, then aren't even non -believers justified in their reason and knowledge.

01:34:06

No, they are not. Paul in Romans chapter one, verses 18 to 32, 18 to 21 in particular is very explicit.

01:34:21

And in Romans chapter two, that we know God by virtue of the law, the work of the law written upon the heart.

01:34:32

In other words, every human being since the creation of Adam and Eve and their placement in the garden of Eden has been created in the image of God.

01:34:44

And that involves what Calvin referred to as the census divinitatis.

01:34:53

Sometimes called among the philosophers the consensus gentium, that is the sense of the community or the sense of the nations.

01:35:07

And you'll even see that in Calvin when he discusses the sense of the divine, that it's a theme that is pervasive throughout all the world.

01:35:19

That unbelievers are not justified in their reason and knowledge.

01:35:24

In fact, they're condemned according to the apostle Paul. All people know

01:35:31

God by virtue of being made in his image, being surrounded by his revelation, living in his world and living before the face of God at all times.

01:35:44

So that the unbeliever who is suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, they remember that you can't suppress what you don't know.

01:35:54

So all men know God, not only do they know

01:35:59

God in a bare conceptual form, and they know the God of scripture.

01:36:06

They know the triune God of scripture. They know what he expects of them.

01:36:13

That's what Paul says in Romans one. He said, not only do we know God, but we know what he expects of us in terms of our behavior.

01:36:21

And that the unbeliever rejects that. Because the unbeliever does not want to acknowledge

01:36:27

God as God. So no, unless of course, the questioner is asking whether unbelievers have true knowledge of God.

01:36:41

If that's the question, yes, they do have true knowledge of God, but they suppress it in unrighteousness.

01:36:49

All right, thank you for that. There's a question. Let me see here.

01:36:56

1984 Sheepdog says, if the reformers were from God, why didn't they show submission toward the hierarchy like David did towards Saul?

01:37:09

I think they did until it came to truth. Yes. I mean,

01:37:14

Martin Luther, you know, constantly would write about, he'd be willing to agree, you know, as long as he's not being asked to go against scripture, because the first submission is to God.

01:37:25

And we have God's word, you know, directly in front of us as our direct authority. So a hierarchy could never ask us to disobey

01:37:32

God and still maintain any like, like Saul didn't ask

01:37:37

David to sin. Saul didn't ask David to confess something false.

01:37:47

But the papacy was asking Martin Luther to confess something false.

01:37:54

To recant on the truth. Right. So yeah, that in that sense, even according to Roman Catholic theology, if the

01:38:04

Pope were teaching heresy, he would falsify himself in some way. Some absolutists in terms of papal infallibility say a

01:38:12

Pope could never do that. But if a bishop hierarchy is teaching untruth, they actually invalidate their authority is my understanding.

01:38:21

Which is what the reformers would have argued with regarding the church hierarchy. This is a question that presupposes what it needs to argue, what it needs to prove.

01:38:32

That is the hierarchy is equal to Saul. You see, that's one of the things that I would do is

01:38:39

I would say, why do you assume that the church hierarchy is equivalent to the position of Saul?

01:38:47

Yeah, I would not assume that. Okay. All right. Good. In other words, I wouldn't presuppose that.

01:38:53

Right. All right. Very good. Andy S303 says, St. Maximus, St.

01:38:59

John Chrysostom, and the like are successors to the apostles, not Calvin, who didn't get the laying on of hands.

01:39:06

So I would respond to that one. We quote Calvin to make some point. And someone says, well, you know, he's not one of the successors.

01:39:13

So we shouldn't listen to John Calvin. Go ahead,

01:39:21

Joshua. Yeah, I think there's some kind of, I don't know, almost silly assumptions in there.

01:39:29

Why would someone have to have a laying on of hands to say something true as a regenerate

01:39:36

Christian in the church? I mean, there are Orthodox Christians. Some of them were monks and they weren't even priests.

01:39:43

Like if we're just going to take an Eastern Orthodox perspective, there were monastics who weren't ordained, so to speak, to the priesthood, who would say true things and people collect their sayings.

01:39:53

There's whole books with desert fathers quotations in them. And some of them are just totally anonymous.

01:40:00

But I don't think that Orthodox person would say those non -ordained, non -laying on of hands person or person who didn't have the laying on of hands wasn't legitimized to speak about anything that was worth writing down because that's what the collection of desert fathers writings is.

01:40:18

And I'm trying to think if Maximus the confessor was even a priest, that's the one thing that I'm... And I apologize if I'm just not remembering correctly, even though of course he died condemned and had his hand cut off, tongue cut out because of how infallible the

01:40:33

Orthodox is. The laying on of hands, of course, is a biblical expectation for a minister as Paul says to Timothy about the laying on of hands of the presbyters, right?

01:40:51

But the biblical understanding of apostolic succession is not organizational, but doctrinal or theological.

01:41:00

It's not sufficient to show that your bishop is dependent upon the previous bishop, is dependent upon organizationally, dependent upon the previous bishop all the way back.

01:41:13

It must be demonstrated that the man of God who is called to ministry, who has been ordained through the laying on of hands, although there's no magic in that, that's just following a biblical command, that Calvin is a true successor to say

01:41:37

John Chrysostom insofar as both are biblical, right?

01:41:44

Insofar as both are biblical or Saint Maximus, insofar as he is biblical.

01:41:52

That is the true apostolic succession, doctrinal or theological or biblical.

01:41:59

It is not merely organizational. JEFFREY ROBERTSON Jeffrey, and I would agree, and I think you're making the major point.

01:42:08

And I think the minor point, because I think the Orthodox or the Catholics in this way have exchanged the majors for the minors here.

01:42:17

I think we could even say that we also have the minor point, because I think when

01:42:23

Calvin was given the pulpit to preach from in Geneva, like there was a formal approval process that he went through.

01:42:33

I don't think there really is a broken laying on of hands.

01:42:39

I think there were, I mean, it's the minor point. It's not the substance of apostolic succession, but we're not like a new breed where we didn't like kind of sprout out of a crack in the sidewalk, so to speak.

01:42:54

So there has been apostolic succession. I think even in that minor sense, and even though it's not needed, there still was a continuity of actual real people transmitting authority and transferring authority from person to person in the churches.

01:43:10

PASTOR BARRY and anyone who knows Calvin and us Calvinists knows that procedure is something we'd like to do decently and in order, right?

01:43:21

So you're right. That's not something lacking from the

01:43:28

Reformed wing of the Reformation. PASTOR MIKE Yeah. Andy comes on and says,

01:43:33

Luther wanted to remove James in Hebrews. Let that sink in. Does this even remotely touch a

01:43:38

Protestant view of who we quote and who we quote to make some true point?

01:43:45

Why does this not even concern us as Protestants who hold to Sola Scriptura because we would, I mean, we would just hold

01:43:52

Luther to the standard of Scripture and we could, there's nothing. There's nothing inconsistent about a

01:43:57

Protestant disagreeing with a quote unquote leader of the Reformation. The lead, the

01:44:02

Reformation was wrong. Yeah, it was wrong. Yeah, there's nothing to let sink in. We would easily just say he's wrong and he's not a

01:44:10

Pope. He's not infallible. And that doesn't, that doesn't bother Protestant one bit.

01:44:15

I mean, it bothers us in the sense that we think he's wrong, right? But it doesn't. PASTOR STEVE He should have been better than that, right?

01:44:23

PASTOR STEVE But he's a, you know, he's a fallible sinner saved by grace. PASTOR MIKE Right. And I think we did ultimately know better too.

01:44:30

I mean, it's like, I feel like. PASTOR STEVE You're right, you're right. PASTOR MIKE Like one of the people who gets most taken out of context of all people is

01:44:36

Luther. You know, it's like from floor to ceiling, we could stack all of his writings, you know, and quotations.

01:44:43

And he would speak like intensely and exaggeratedly sometimes. And, you know, with a kind of like an over the top style of rhetoric.

01:44:53

And so sometimes he got really frustrated with James. And he thought that it confused the gospel.

01:44:58

And so he said, oh, it's an epistle of straw. But then he, it's like he, it's not like he was walking around.

01:45:04

And I think like maybe this could sink in. He didn't create an anti -James, anti -Hebrews,

01:45:11

Protestant movement. He wasn't walking around advocating. Let's, let's, let's remove these books from the canon because they're not canonical.

01:45:21

He just, he never did that. So it's like even trying to tar and feather Luther on that level to me seems like,

01:45:29

I don't know, it's, it's, it's, it's exaggerated, you know, kind of like Catholic polemics.

01:45:34

Sure. Pavel, the first, I guess that's how you say it. The rejection of tradition by reformers resulted in cycles of rebellion between generations.

01:45:45

This issue is still with us as church continued, continued divisions based on young and old. Do reformers reject tradition?

01:45:54

Nope. There you go. Okay. A lot of misunderstanding. What I would say with regards, well, you know, you have rebellions and you have church splits.

01:46:06

Those as, as we know, predate the Reformation. As we know, there was a split between the

01:46:13

East and the West, mirroring the divisions in the Roman Empire, right, in 1054.

01:46:22

And there are all sorts of disagreements within Roman Catholicism, to use a

01:46:29

Western example, right? You know, they, there's a tendency to, to forget about that when we think of the

01:46:39

Roman Catholic Church. And I'm sure the Eastern tradition has a similar situation, as does

01:46:46

Protestantism. When, when there is a failure to abide by God's word, then, then we're more likely to have rebellions between generations.

01:47:02

This is not, yes, it is true that Reformations are often brought about in God's providence by younger men.

01:47:14

It is not, cannot be reduced to a young and old division, I don't think.

01:47:20

I would also add that I think that I don't, I don't necessarily see in churches on a local level, you know, like wars and rebellions between generations.

01:47:32

I mean, some of this is actually a cultural question related to modernism, post -modernism, industrialization, you know, like how modern media works.

01:47:44

I think those are kind of big, huge influences. And I don't think we can say, well, it's the, it's scripture's fault or it's, it's

01:47:51

Calvin's fault. It's like blaming everything on the Filioque or blaming everything on Augustine.

01:47:56

You know, it's like, you know, it's like, I just banged my hand, my thumb with a hammer.

01:48:02

It's Augustine's fault. How could he do that? You know, it's, you know, oh, there's, there's a cultural discord today.

01:48:09

It's the, it's Martin Luther's fault. How dare John Calvin, you know, like it's not, it's not a real argument.

01:48:18

Right. I agree there. Haley says self -authentic, self -authentication.

01:48:23

The Bible authenticates the Bible. Then why don't Protestants have Maccabees, Jesus talked about it.

01:48:31

We do have Maccabees. We just don't say it's canon. Correct. Why not? Well, I think with,

01:48:38

I think testimony of the church is one. Okay. Throughout history, it wasn't always accepted.

01:48:44

I mean, you find patristic testimony that, that some of these books aren't a part of the normal old Testament canon and they're not a part of the new

01:48:51

Testament canon. And they kind of exist in this quasi, you know, like this is just helpful, great old literature.

01:48:57

We should read it. It's, it's good. It's just not for use in the church, even though Christians can read it.

01:49:04

It's kind of like this, this like banned book kind of selling point that like people have.

01:49:10

It's like, we didn't ban the church, like the post -apostolic fathers. We didn't ban the Deuterocanon.

01:49:16

Right. Just said it's not quite of the authority of scripture. Like not, I don't know what you lose if you don't have

01:49:22

Maccabees. And we don't say Maccabees is just full of falsehood and it's of the devil or something. No, it's, it's, it's, but it's not we, what we argue is not divinely inspired.

01:49:32

And when we talk about self -authentication, we say that the Deuterocanonical books, the

01:49:38

Apocrypha is, I would argue quite evident to those who read them, not on the same level with scripture.

01:49:48

The church father, Jerome, I know he's probably, well, he's shared by the

01:49:57

East and the West because he ended up in Bethlehem. He recognized that the

01:50:04

Apocrypha was not, he argued it was not part of the Bible.

01:50:10

But the idea of self -authentication, the Bible authenticates the Bible. Well, yeah, there's a sense in which that's true because it's

01:50:18

God's word. And I would ask the Hallelujah, does

01:50:25

God answer to some higher authority? He's self -authenticating.

01:50:33

And the Bible is self -authenticating because it comes from God. If you say that God must answer to the law of logic or that kind of thing, then you're saying the law of logic is more basic than God himself.

01:50:53

That is more substantive than God himself, more authoritative than God himself.

01:51:00

So the Bible is self -authenticating because God is self -authenticated. When God spoke in the

01:51:08

Garden of Eden, he didn't have to identify himself. No, it's God.

01:51:14

Adam didn't have to say, show me the papers, prove it. Right, exactly. All right, gentlemen.

01:51:21

Well, we are on one hour and 51 minutes.

01:51:27

I'd like to give a shout out real quick to Corinth Chandler for his $5 super chat. I appreciate that. Thank you so much.

01:51:33

Gentlemen, there's so much we can talk about. I mean, we just scratched the surface and it's a lot to take in.

01:51:42

So I think we're gonna try to wrap things up here because I want people to go back and watch this. If it's four hours long,

01:51:48

I'm not sure they will. Right. But I wanna thank you guys.

01:51:54

You guys did an excellent job covering such a wide range of issues. I think the benefit, if I can kind of just close this off here,

01:52:02

I think the value of a self -consciously reformed presuppositionalism and a self -conscious

01:52:10

Eastern Orthodox presuppositionalism is that it allows reformed

01:52:15

Christians and Eastern Orthodox Christians to interact at the level where we're supposed to interact, namely at the foundations.

01:52:25

And so I think there's great value in having conversations with Eastern Orthodox folks who come from this position and it makes the job a little bit easier because you're not playing on the surface like we normally do with the atheists who don't wanna get to some of those foundational issues.

01:52:39

The Eastern Orthodox presupper is aware of the importance of the foundations and it allows us to really speak at these core issues.

01:52:47

So I'm grateful for people who in the Eastern Orthodox tradition kind of emphasize those foundational issues even if we disagree.

01:52:58

I mean, I still have a lot to learn from Eastern fathers, Western fathers, the reformers, and even in the midst of disagreements.

01:53:05

I mean, I don't agree with Jay Dyer, but I've watched a lot of his stuff and I've benefited from some of the applications that he made and definitely from a debates perspective,

01:53:14

I think he's a good debater as well. Lots to learn. I think communication is important, but as long as we do it governed by the biblical principle of gentleness and respect, let us respect our

01:53:25

Eastern Orthodox friends, Roman Catholic friends, but have good solid argument and relationship so that the conversation can go.

01:53:33

Not all of these discussions are necessarily like formalized debates. We wanna have prolonged relationship with people so that we could have ongoing conversation as we kind of iron out our disagreements and hopefully by the grace of God, the truth will prevail.

01:53:48

So those are my last kind of bits to say. Are there any last things any of you would like to say before we close off this episode?

01:53:58

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I enjoyed the conversation thoroughly. I think there's, if you would have us back on, there are a lot of other things.

01:54:10

If you wanna, you could drill down deep and go doctrine by doctrine if you wanna.

01:54:17

Yeah, absolutely. Well, if you guys are up for it, I'd love to have you guys, maybe we'll do a part two and dig even deeper if you guys are up for it.

01:54:24

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, I just wanna give you guys a heads up as we wrap things up here.

01:54:32

If anyone has been following for quite some time, you knew that I did an online, an epic online

01:54:38

Calvinism conference with myself. Dr. James White, Dr. Guillaume Bignon, Scott Christensen and Saiten Bruggenke.

01:54:48

Those recordings are available at a reduced price on the website. So if you guys wanna order that at revealedapologetics .com,

01:54:56

click on the precept you drop down menu and you could actually access those recordings of that conference.

01:55:02

So helps out the ministry when you purchase it and it was really good. So you'll benefit from it if you're interested in Calvinism and things like that.

01:55:09

Oh, well, this concludes this episode guys. Once again, thank you so much. And everyone in the comments, I know there was some back and forth there, but I appreciate that everyone was respectful and that's all good.

01:55:22

As long as you guys are interacting in a respectful way, these conversations are important. I encourage that you guys have them.