The Bible vs Eastern Orthodoxy
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Those of us trusting in Christ as Lord are saved. It is sanctification that is the ongoing process.
Salvation is a process that spans our entire lives until our very last breath (and even after that through prayers and intercession of the living). No one is pronounced saved until the Last Judgment. Anyone who claims to be saved is in delusion. Do you really believe that people who profess faith in Christ will be saved if they don't repent and don't follow His command but persist in their sin, choosing death over life? I'm sure He says otherwise.
Matthew 7:21-23
John 14:20-22
John 14:15
Professing your love without manifesting it through your actions is fake and gay. If you truly love Christ you will follow His commandments and His Church. Imagine saying to your wife "I love you" and then treating her like a piece of trash and beating her up. It's meaningless and contradictory.
But protestants truly believe that and have some weird notion of splitting their mind from their body, where their mind professes the faith and is saved, and their body does all kinds of degeneracy as if they're not accountable for it by having free will. "Christ is my Lord and I'm saved, but my stupid gay body can't help going to gay bars on friday nights and doing cocaine until sunrise." This is truly schizophrenic. Such a dangerous spiritual delusion to believe salvation is as easy as signing a legal contract. If only it were that easy...
As mentioned in the video, your church leaders don't even claim to know they are saved, so how can you say that is THE church to follow? The church whose members aren't even sure they are saved, that's how you know you can be sure of this church?
Praise God we have the Holy Scriptures and don't need to rely on these uncertain men to be saved.
What matters is if you are saved. Fussing about whether you KNOW you are or not is a struggle session. Settle for faith.
If the Bible tells you that you can be saved as a certainty, and your church "father" tells you he can never know, then run.
The Bible is clear, it talks about "saved" people in the past tense. Not might be saved, or could be saved. Please watch the video.
No, it means you have wrong presuppositions and wrong interpretation of the text and commit a word-concept fallacy. Calling no man a father refers to the heavenly Father, not biological or father or father in the patriarchal traditional sense. Have you called your dad father? Well I guess you've broken Christ's commandment then. You see how stupid the protestant interpretation is?
This is outright lying or willful ignorance of the Scripture. You're quote mining as every protestant in existence, ignoring the passages that don't jive with your presuppositions.
You are lawyering away God's clear commandments. This is exactly what Jesus and Paul warned about regarding traditions.
Notice in the New Testament that times tradition is brought up, it is to warn against it's effects.
"You're using the scripture as its intended and it proves me wrong, Therefore I will listen to a man's weasling out of God's word because it's what makes me feel better"
The word "saved" is clear as day. You are outright gaslighting me to try to prove your point.
True protestant pastors (which I listen to) are searching the Bible diligently to be certain on the instructions. They find no instructions for a separate church based set of practices to keep you hooked on the church's power. If so they would be first in line to do them, because THEY ARE SINCERE.
I'm sorry you're so lost dude. I'll pray for you to come to your senses.
You're obviously looking for the truth. You won't find it in the interpretations of delusional heretics online who twist the word of God. You'll only find it in the living Body of Christ Himself. If you're open to being challenged come to divine liturgy and talk to a priest. Maybe you'll be even more convinced the Church is wrong but at least you'd know what you're rejecting instead of dealing with hearsay and prejudices.
By going against the Church you're condemning your soul. Even if there is the slightest suspicion you may not know it all and be wrong about it, it's worth investigating. That's all I have to say. God bless you.
You arbitrarily decided that knowledge of who's saved or not is the prerequisite. This is knowledge only God has because He's the one who judges. You're not only acting as your own popes by doing personal interpretation of Scripture, you're also acting as your own gods by making judgments of who's saved or not. Anyone could claim they are saved, therefore they are saved in reality? That's a non sequitur. What does anyone being sure if he's saved or not have to do with what the true Church is? Where do you get this from?
Refer to my other comment deboonking Sola Scriptura. You're in a contradiction, bro.
Imagine attacking God's word while following after traditions of men who admit they might not be saved. What utter madness! Repent!
Imagine blowing through what I said not answering anything and strawmanning me instead. If you were good faith and cared for the truth you wouldn't act like that. I'm sorry I got you cornered with your bs position.
Please show me where Jesus or any Apostle said you require a pope to read scripture. Also check with the prophets in the OT. Let me know what you find.
Secondly why haven't you addressed a single argument from the pastor in the video?
Jesus said "He that heareth my word and believeth on he that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation" John 5:24
We see the Apostle Paul write "saved" in the past tense. "unto use which are saved, it is the power of God" 1 Corinthians 1:18
And we are to know a "peace which surpasses all understanding" from God. That makes sense in the context of being saved already.
Far from a license to sin, Paul who said we are saved "by grace... through faith" showed complete devotion. If someone else uses a superficial faith in Jesus to justify a worldly life of sin they were never transformed and saved. Simple as that.
All your arguments/questions are answered here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2O58rX0K5o (on salvation)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXQQSA9U3xs (on faith alone justification being based on nominalism)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_XS9xp7kiI (sola fide critique)
https://youtu.be/w_AjgIrk9-o?t=73 (sola scriptura)
Your arguments were all taken apart in my previous comments, using clear passages from scripture.
We understand salvation using scripture. We don't require a Pope as you imply (and as Catholics explicitly teach). Shame on you for twisting the gospel.
No you didn't and you don't understand what I'm arguing at all. Scripture didn't magically materialize in your hands - it was compiled and kept by the historic Church that you deny. You can't appeal to Scripture while ignoring how the Bible you use came to be in the first place. Watch the last video about Sola scriptura if you care about what the actual argument is. It has nothing to do with the Pope. Such a ridiculous strawman...
If you think this means salvation happens at the death bed after keeping all commandments daily, then you must think the Book of Acts is full of zombies. Because people are referred to as "saved", past tense. Not "maybe saved on their deathbed, we hope, maybe some day".
In Acts Chapter 16 we see the passage called "The Philippian Jailer Saved". Did they make a mistake, and it should be called "Philippian Jailer could be maybe saved many years later on his death bed?" "Philippian Jailer was moved in the right direction, no idea if he got saved, who cares?"
Acts 15 also deals with salvation. Peter states to the council:
Where is wake up everyday unsure and maybe when you die you are saved?
Your only out is attacking scripture. "Well who compiled these texts..." argument.
Yes of the Protestants that do this. And, continuing the memetic treatment, it sounds like Catholicism with fewer steps. Because there is evidence that some Catholics do exactly the same and then regularly count on the confession booth and the Hail Mary to compensate for the failure of responsibility instead of, as Protestants, counting once for all on the altar call and the Sinner's Prayer.
It's not analogous because my criticism is not directed at people failing to act as they are expected but at the system level. I'm not Catholic, but their system doesn't suffer from the problem I described because they have very different soteriology. They don't have Sola Fide but also have works as a requirement for salvation so the scenario I described - professing Christ as your Lord and savior, then going to the gay bar and still believing you are saved (because of "once saved - always saved") is not applicable. If anything Catholics go the opposite end and get overly legalistic to absurdity.
Fair enough, Winston, I have never remembered exactly what position you take. Ultimately though, Protestants and Catholics in considered theology come to the same place with different definitions; the subgroups that don't are just being standoffish about distinctives. For instance, Protestants who believe OSAS generally believe if you don't stay present-saved you were never past-saved; those who don't ("frozen chosen") are regarded as legalist and hyper-Calvinist. Those who believe sola fide lately add "but not by a faith that is alone": that is, works always accompany faith. Meanwhile, Catholics agree with those Protestants that works are a "requirement" but, in the fine print, admit our works do not contribute to the grace by which we were infused with righteousness as shown in baptism (a real OSAS if there ever was one); merit always follows grace. Catholics recognize the three tenses of salvation (2 Cor. 1:10) and that they are still "saved" from sin nature (baptized) even when they need again to be "saved" from a recurrent sin (confessed). So I did some work reconciling the two and found these things out.
Protestant churches "expect" Christians to act grateful for their justification by faith; only the frozen chosen do not, which is clearly against Romans 3. And we could argue about which expectation, P or C, is better at stopping the stupid weekend sins you describe. But I don't think it's a result of the system, and if you want to say hyper-Calvinism is more endemic than I think it is then there's pretty good evidence that mortifying legalism is more endemic in Catholicism than appreciated as well.
I'm Eastern Orthodox.
This is contradictory and renders Sola fide meaningless. Protestants should either double down on Sola fide and that their faith alone is salvific, regardless of anything else, or that it's not just faith alone, because true faith is always proven in deed (which has always been the teaching of the Church). It's an either-or.
The Orthodox teaching is that grace is uncreated and given through participation in the divine energies (Church life and sacraments) with the ultimate purpose of theosis (deification), which is being united with God. God became man so that man can become god (St. Athanasius).
Protestants inherit the mistakes of the Catholics because they share the same basic presuppositions about grace while disagreeing on how it is given/achieved. This is because Western Christianity lacks the essence-energies distinction as taught by Gregory Palamas which makes participation in God impossible. Protestants reject synergism (cooperation of man with God required for salvation) and believe salvation is only in the hands of God.
In this case the world "saved" points to different concepts. Being in the Church is the path to salvation. But if you're not dressed appropriately (living a virtuous life) you will be kicked out of the wedding. So it's not single things leading to salvation but the whole package. Protestants who claim to be saved lack humility and make judgments that only God can make.
Justification by faith is legalistic. By definition, it's a legal declaration of righteousness through faith alone, with transformation and good works following as proof. The problem of Sola fide is it treats faith as a formal abstraction and not as a personal relationship with the living God (which is ironic, considering protestant worship looks much more personal and informal on the outside).
It's easy to see how the Reformation has demystificated the faith and tried to make it of this world - abstracted, transactional and legalistic. Faith is not lived but professed. Salvation is not participation in divine energies but legally declared by God. Christ didn't become incarnate to lift up and restore our pre-fall nature, His resurrection being cosmological in scope, opening our path to eternal life, but He was a necessary victim to pay our debt incurred by Adam in order to satisfy God as the plaintiff. It's only logical that this theology leads to secularism, materialism and cold-heartedness in society and this is exactly what has transpired in all Protestant states. It's funny because this is not unlike how the Talmud views God...
Great! So is a fellow mod account at c/Christianity. As a covenant Christian, I sympathize; previously I had trouble being sure of your foundation. Will factor in. You might like a long excursus attempting to have the Five Points interact with Orthodoxy.
Background: No sola is wholly "alone". The Orthodox use the big picture, and it ought to encompass two aspects, the realm where faith operates "alone" (as Catholic Bibles said before Luther), and the realm where faith and works operate together. All five solas have this duality.
... over the operation of a whole life. (Granted, Dismas's works were scanty, Catholics credit him "desire of the laver".)
... in the past-salvation event of regeneration. Two different applications. Better than doubling down is taking both sides of an apparent paradox.
Because Orthodox see the big picture of three tenses of salvation, it's easy to neglect that Protestants often use the word salvation to refer only to regeneration, a past event. You acknowledge the big picture in very good language; then you add "Protestants who claim to be saved lack humility", but more accurate would be that they lack consideration for the C & O use of the word "saved", as many don't intend to offend sanctification or glorification. They do claim to have assurance given directly by God, and I'm not aware of a Church teaching that assurance is impossible, only that it's so rare that Protestant broad proclamation of assurance is irresponsible. But when the Lord says "Thy faith hath saved thee" (Luke 7:50, 18:42) I don't think he was limiting that to the past, but speaking of the big picture.
Yup, present-tense grace manifested in sanctification aka present-tense salvation. Protestants pretty much limit their energy intake to a crumb and a thimble (Swift called them Aeolians for airiness), but I think God still counts enough of them.
[I try to be careful with quotes, and, since Athanasius didn't contend with Shirley MacLaine but we do, I note that he said, "Autos gar enenthropesen, hina hemeis theopoiethomen" (Incarnation 54.3). Nowadays I might translate that "be defied" rather than "become god", in the sense the Bible calls "partake of divine nature". Otherwise Americans get bad ideas about theosis.]
I don't think people who haven't found need for Palamas are necessarily prevented from "participation in God". If it means filling up in our flesh the afflictions (and greater works) of Christ, we've got it. We're members of his body, like hands and feet. We don't reject synergism except in the act of regeneration, which is logically only God's because the dead do nothing. However, I realized the Reformed teach simultaneous monergy and synergy: in one sense only God revives, but in another sense God gives and we receive (passively). Reformed are busy fighting neo-Pelagians so they play down that synergy, but it's there.
"Legalism" is defined as justification by works, not faith. You're saying justification by faith is "legalistic" because it's a "declaration" (imputation) of righteousness. Transformation (infusion) does indeed follow. We say, we are deemed, and truly are, righteous. Under "soteriology", OrthodoxWiki says theosis "rejects that salvation is a positive result to a legalistic dilemma", preferring healing metaphor; that sounds unnecessarily casuistic and semantic. But at "theosis" it admits past tense "we have become ... partakers of divine nature." So is there something wrong with declaring this past event more rigorously?
That's not sola fide, it's false assurance; yes it's a real risk. Modern Protestant evangelism presses hard to emphasize faith is not just knowledge and the pressure of assent, but also personal trust; and trust is a transforming (and, by grace, permanent) relationship. None can snatch from the Lord's hand; he may remove his candlesticks (lights of organization in community), but I don't believe he removes those people he has once laid hold of. If someone doesn't show grace in the present, he doesn't show he really had trust in the past. I absolutely agree that some tent-raisers became obsessed with collecting signed cards and doing little to build relationships among the signers; that did some good and some harm and their view of the balance probably differs from mine. I absolutely agree that some 501(c)(3) orgs are selling good feels in exchange for showing up for an hour once a month and doing nothing (or, for paying cash). But this is an error that Protestants are tempted to, just as C & O are tempted to their own errors; it's not the Protestant theology that's at fault.
Your last paragraph is thus a criticism of those who take one side and fail the other, but not of mainstream Protestants. I'll leave you with Hannah Smith's observation that people get very confused over this theology until they realize there are really two sides, one in which God does everything, and one in which we and God do everything. When you really get to participation and the loss of your own life, you see why these two both operate without any contradiction, and since I trust you on that I won't elaborate.
In the scriptural examples it is God in person who informs people that they are saved. Of course God has foreknowledge and He can make that pronunciation. It is completely unjustified for Protestants to believe they have assurance given directly by God. Did they talk to Him personally? What they have is Scripture which they quote-mine and misinterpret disregarding the living tradition (the Church) which produced and kept it.
Yes, many people fall for word-concept fallacies and could think the word "god" always refers to God the Father/Trinity. Theosis is deification by participation in the divine energies. We can't participate in the divine essence which is unknowable. We don't become God or one with God's essence (like hindus believe), we become godlike (by becoming saints and restoring our likeness that was lost after the fall).
You make good points and I can't address them all rn. Jay Dyer explains the Orthodox position really well. Look up his videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2O58rX0K5o (on salvation)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXQQSA9U3xs (on faith alone justification being based on nominalism)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_XS9xp7kiI (sola fide critique)
0:03: "Eastern Orthodoxy is a pagan false religion." Well, thanks for a clear mission statement. Reasons given:
Rejecting Assurance: John 5:24, 6:47, 1 John, who believes has eternal life; John, you may know that you have eternal life; 1 Cor. 1:18, Paul knows he is saved.
Outside Orthodoxy No Salvation: Regarded as illogical because of lack of assurance of salvation inside Orthodoxy.
That's the whole argument. Now, I must grant that he seems to have a surface case that (1) We can have eternal life; (2) If we doubt (1) then we can still know that we have eternal life. I add, (3) If we doubt (2) then we can still know that we know, 1 John 2:3, which also seems enough to prove recursion. Therefore OP is not enough to declare Orthodoxy pagan.
The Orthodox answer nobody can know until the last this-life salvation event happens, namely dying and entering Jesus's presence, and (if they equal the Catholic practice on this) that is only known by our receiving proofs after the fact of their entrance such as canonization miracles. I think that all of that is merely the C & O being extra cautious about not proclaiming anyone saved without the whole church agreeing that they've heard from God on the subject. Protestants throw such caution to the winds and are not ashamed to call people saved promiscuously even though that too has its risks (i.e. being wrong, and misleading others). Clearly the Orthodox position has the risks of encouraging doubt, supporting hierarchy, and leaving others underfed.
It seems to me perfectly permissible (and I thought I had examples but they don't come to light immediately today) that early saints were perfectly assured of their future salvation in even more unambiguous words than the Bible authors were. And this is perfectly consonant because the early saints are totally fine with people having absolute revelations of the certainty of future events, so why would this not include a special revelation about the certainty of one's future salvation? (Mathematically it's been proven that any prophecy can be made with true future knowledge, which then comes true, and yet still successfully account for the fact that people are free to doubt the same prophecy: the Unexpected Egg paradox. Therefore the one who prophesies his own future salvation, declaring it certain by God's grace, cannot be proven or disproven except by equal access to the source of the revelation, namely others hearing about that certainty from God as well. To their credit, Orthodox profess ignorance over whether others outside Orthodoxy are saved; their doctrine, like EENS in Catholicism, is merely that there is no salvation outside the orthodox system as it's been revealed since Adam. Mathematically, doubt is both their right and their indulgence.)
So I appreciate the thought but it's not enough for a Baptist to separate from an Orthodox on his own account (nor vice versa). Both of them have the right of conscience to reject each other, and I have the right of conscience to accept them both.
u/SmithW1984
Lol.
Riddle me this - where did you get the Bible from?
Who compiled the infallible Bible cannon and kept it until the brave Reformation came some 15c later and you got your own copy to read and interpret in your closet? Was it perhaps the pagan worshippers and fallible tradition of men that did it? Oh, shiii...
Now God can't preserve his word in the Bible but the traditions of men from your church and their word are true gospel. Even though they don't assure salvation. Make it make sense.
You should actually watch the video and study the arguments presented.
You don't get what I'm asking you and it's a question that's prior to anything said in that video. You ultimately appeal to the Bible but the Bible didn't materialize out of the blue - it was compiled and preserved by the Church. But protestants don't believe in apostolic succession and the incorruptibility of the historic Church. This is a well-known contradiction in the protestant system, namely Sola Scriptura. Here's the defeater for it:
How did fallible men come up with an infallible Bible cannon and why do you believe the Bible was accurately preserved by those same people?
The answer is whatever the Catholics say about this, since they say the gift of infallibility was not used in the compilation of the canon (but only once or twice, in recent history). Check.
That's a tu quoque. How does the Catholicism position being wrong help the Protestant position with that problem?
Also, your claim is false. The Catholic Vatican I teaching is that the magisterium (ordinary and extraordinary) can't teach error in any shape or form. The canon itself was declared infallible by the council of Trent.
Inerrancy is not infallibility, which was described by Vatican I as ex cathedra statements. Catholics argue that there are exactly one, two, seven, or some other small number of ex cathedra statements (I'm sure some include Trent too); I join in with them on this and propose zero (they have never fully demonstrated delivery of an ex cathedra statement). I'll give you Trent for inerrancy, but that didn't add anything to the Protestant doctrine either, because both relied on work done by the catholic orthodox church a thousand years prior.
Separately I stated that the Protestant position of OSAS is not hyper-Calvinism (something which no Reformer ever taught). Check.
I am aware of the distinction but both the Bible canon and magisterium teaching is declared infallible.
Ex cathedra papal statements are not the only type of infallible teachings. Those are indeed very rare. Councils represent another type of infallible extraordinary definitions. The third type is ordinary and universal magisterium or bishops worldwide definitive doctrinal teachings.
Exactly. This was why I went after OP. This is where Sola Scriptura fumbles and crashes if one is consistent with the position. RC and Orthodoxy are in the clear because both affirm apostolic succession, the infallibility of ecumenical councils and Church historicity (the Church being a both divine and human institution, the Body of Christ, here on Earth guided by the Spirit).
No reformer taught OSAS to begin with. It is a later development and I understand not all Protestants believe it. Reformers taught that one can loose their salvation if they apostatize and fall away (or that they never had true faith if that happens). OP believes it though and I was arguing against his flavor of protestantism.
See, that's the thing, "ordinary infallibility" is unenforceable, Catholics let each other disagree with ordinary infallibility all the time, which is why the right view is that inconsistency is everywhere. "Papal infallibility" is a retreat from the great 19th-century Protestant inroads on ordinary infallibility.
I think you're taking "consistent" sola Scriptura as if it teaches divorce from tradition, but it doesn't. If there were no traditional language one could make the glyphs mean anything one wanted. That is why Psalm 119 contains the individual Hebrew letters as part of the text, to show that language is important and nobody can understand any Scripture unless one has a cultural tradition informing the meaning of the words. From there C & P should agree that doctrine must be inferable from Scripture; John recognized that all that was needed to found sacred tradition had been written down. Catholics never say that any generation made up new doctrine not founded in Scripture, they always "discover" it as something the generations inferred from Scripture. The Reformers were about removing encrusted traditions that were not based in Scripture, starting with the idea that the Pope rather than Jesus absolves "all penalties" (postmortem "penalties" should be understood as limited to burning of stubble).
Apostolic succession, councils, and church history as you describe should be accepted by Protestants; all their chains of authority come ultimately from Roman Catholics (except those few pre-Protestant divisions coming from orthodox catholics). The councils are "infallible" except when they disagree or when one council throws out another as an anticouncil.
I suppose we might argue that OSAS was only enunciated later at Dort due to the hyper-Arminians (i.e. those who went beyond Arminius's teaching after he died but who are now called the standard "Arminians"). It's pretty much implied by Calvin's definition of predestination, but Dort dealt more heavily with the individual reflection experience on Augustinian perseverance (cf. Turretin). I'm pretty sure Catholics believe that there are special saints who had perfect assurance of eternal security. Yes, Lutherans taught fall from grace, and thus "evanescent grace", but I think that too is a result of the incompletions of assurance. To me OSAS is simply the unity of Paul's three tenses of deliverance; if you don't have assurance of deliverance in one tense you need to question it in the others, and if you have infallibility of deliverance in one tense (regenerational baptism) then you need to have it in the others. (The Reformation was a pushback for the abusive advantaging of doubt in the present tense.)
So I'd be happy to continue defending solas and OSAS as I define them, but we need to be very sure of the text of the doctrines we're debating because you recognize the subtle differences. I think we'd come out on the same side when the smoke clears.
guy sounds butthurt. I bet his own son converted to orthodoxy to escape his father’s petty and nonsensical schismatic theology.