Nick Fuentes says don't read your bible, just listen to "clergy"
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Let's go one by one if you wish. I already did Rome. The Protestant sects don't even have apostolic succession and are ahistorical (where was the Church before Luther came)?
Did you read my reply at all? Rome's falling away has nothing to do with what happened in 1066. The schism was 12 years before that and the reasons for it go back centuries before that.
Because the Church's foremost mission is to keep the true faith intact. The Body of Christ can't tolerate falsehoods and contradictions.
Ecumenical councils were called for a good reason, namely to resolve pressing issues dealing with Church dogma and doctrines. If such an issue presents itself such a council can be called.
Rome says they have apostolic succession, Protestants say they have it from Rome, Baptists say they have it from Irenaeus via the Waldensians, and Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, and Assyrian Church of the East all say they got it from the catholic orthodox Church too. That's why I ask why EO is different. I don't see it. If Rome apostasized by excommunicating other professing vibrant churches, Constantinople did the same later, so that can't be it.
I apologize for the wrong date, I meant 1054. It was formally supremacy and blamed on the extant filioque. But how do I know that adding the word broke Ephesus I canon 7 or not, because the Orthodox say yes and Rome says no? Then (writing so I know what I'm learning) Patriarch Paul II said the Pope was wrong for adding filioque, and Pope Theodore I excommunicated Patriarch Paul II for being monothelite, so how could the catholic orthodox Church (which kept Theodore and not Paul) know that Paul was right about filioque? Then Pope Nicholas I excommunicated Patriarch Photios I (863) and Photios excommunicated Nicholas (867) over the issue, so how could the church know that Photios was right? The back-and-forth bickering with several other unmentioned plots looks like a secretly imposed color revolution to me. See, the council system broke down (and later councils started canceling each other), and filioque was maybe the first sign of it. If everyone agrees the original Nicea-Constantinople is true, then when was it authoritatively decided that filioque was a false addition? And I ask because this is actually deeply interesting to me and I'm learning the history of my Church.
Seems like in many schisms both sides claim that mantle and tear it in pieces like Jeroboam. Same for who accepts which councils as rightly called. Reformed Protestants claim the mantle, for instance, believing that all churches should pursue the nonessential distinctives that make them part of the same essential mission. So please pardon my ignorance in not seeing what you see.
Yes, Rome and other historical Churches like the Oriental and Armenian can reasonably lay claim to apostolic succession. The argument why they're not the Church is not about this.
How do Protestants got it though? They don't have bishops. They don't have laying of hands to pass the Holy Spirit to the next bishop. They literally believe the Church defected for 10-15c. in spite of what Jesus said in Matthew 16:18. They don't have shit apart from the delusion that the Spirit operates through each individual leading them to different confessions. This inevitably means that He leads some to falsehood - this is not only blasphemous, but a devastating contradiction at the fundamental level of the system.
The only out is to claim only some Protestants have the Spirit and the true faith while others are in delusion. What's the standard for that? "Well, those who agree with my take have the Spirit because I obviously have Him". Yeah, that's a circle. This is how idiotic Protestantism is truly. It ultimately appeals to pride, individualism, subjectivism and autonomy. It's an irrational cult of the self veiled as Christianity that delusional people fall for. I can understand being a cradle prot for lack of information, but there's no excuse for one who doubles down on their mistakes after hearing the truth. At this point you are a heretic and you'll be judged accordingly. Consider yourself - you have all the knowledge you need about Church history and Scripture but you still decide to do your own thing and come up with your own way to the faith. This is willful rejection of the Church but we always pray for God to bring back the schismatics and heretics to His Body, so hope is not lost.
I already answered that. Rome apostatizing has nothing to do with them excomunicating anybody. You hold wrong assumptions and applying an arbitrary made up standard.
I like poetry too. What it seems to you has nothing to do with the actual cases. When there's a contradiction it has to be resolved and that's done in councils where the correct teaching is affirmed by the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
No one taught this prior to Luther. This has nothing to do with how the early Church operated so again it's ahistoric. Furthermore this doctrine assumes a criteria for judging which parts of the faith are essential. Judging by how the Protestant sects killed each other for centuries, I'd say they didn't agree on such a standard. They can't even agree on baptism, let alone more nuanced issues.
Well, at least you answered my first sincere question by explaining what's not different. But the Orthodox have a slogan of majoring in what is .... and yet search doesn't turn up an Orthodox distinctive or uniqueness relating to being the "trunk" and everyone else being either branches or nothing. So it seems to me any theory today in which "trunk" and "branches" are to be distinguished is subject to arbitrary trunk reassignment.
For instance, it might disappoint you, but Michael I and Luther seemed to be in exactly the same status: Rome excommunicated them and they picked up the pieces with people who stuck with them and God blessed it as a professing church. A difference is that Michael had ready-made churches already aligned with him that were hard for Rome to reach, and Luther had to find churches the hard way under Rome's thumb, but that being considered I think what God did is amazing in both cases.
It seems the early church is a trunk because it had no schisms; it started with easily adjudicated dismissal of heretics, but by Novatian in 251 it got to schisms that did persist alongside the church for a long time before they withered. The first event I can find where we might attribute continuing schism is when the Roman bishop created a separate hierarchy structure for himself because he had been gifted the Lateran Palace in 312 and inherited the Roman staff. I selected that because before then the church had avoided property ownership but trusted individuals to do it. Joint ownership means new structure and that structure was the root of the uppitiness. We might argue that the other pentarchs were already excluded at that point, and it took more form during the Easter controversy when supremacy was first tested, and it led to the Great Schism. But I find no way to judge between Rome and Byzantium other than their actions being different, which you seem to exclude.
Ultimately the Protestants are the same except they're exploring the "minimum" of what they can do to still be a church, which is much riskier but still demonstrates that "what is a church" is a fluid judgment. That's why ultimately my question of what's the difference doesn't seem answered.
Yeah, they do, bishop and elder are synonyms. They mostly don't have "archbishops" because they're not in the Bible but bishops are. Many do lay on hands. The individual responsibility leads to some abuse but this is believed offset by its advantages, just as central authority leads to some abuse but is believed offset by advantages.
No, you're thinking of Mormons. That sentiment doesn't last long among Protestants; the whole "protest" is that excommunicating Luther was wrong and Rome "stood off" (apostasized) from the Lutherans like Melanchthon who protested as a group. There are probably people in the 16th who said Rome lost it in the 4th, but that wasn't the loss of the church to them but became called the "captivity" of the church (the righteous in the past Roman system). And Jesus says all seven types of churches have infiltrators among the righteous; and the wicked sometimes seize power.
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No, it means that some who believe they have the Spirit are wrong, so belief must be continuously tested. Heretics from Orthodoxy also believed they had the Spirit and thought themselves continuing to be Orthodox after they were excommunicated. So failure is not a theological corollary, it's an endemic risk that attacks the Protestants more easily (just as the risk of tyranny attacks central hierarchies more easily).
Correct if held; but ultimately then the answer is I constantly test my experience against Word and Spirit, and have substantial (possibly fluctuant) assurance of salvation, not perfect assurance. And Spirit includes tradition speaking through the Church, albeit Protestants often lose sight of some of the tests.
A logical issue is that you're making charges against "Protestant theology" when it's a myriad, and I too am defending "theology" when it's still a myriad. We have many official practices that are "best", and "worst". It seems that we must both retreat a bit to "what Protestant theology should be" and when we do that we find it very harmonious with Orthodoxy. In that case I'd agree on most all your charges that Protestantism shouldn't be that, and I'd disown sects that do teach that (and you might agree with some of my statements what Protestants should be and occasionally are). We might then only disagree on why the two don't rejoin, which is good because then we could give steps for both sides to advance union in Christ that would address current concerns (as the Orthodox have lately done with other groups), without being "ecumenicalists".
The actual cases as they seem to whom? God, or someone else? Epistemology.
Protestants agree with Orthodox Councils entirely! Yet our contradictions have never been resolved in Council, have they? Let's get one going, you and me and whomever comes along, I can wear a bishop hat. :) Isn't that how Orthodox Councils are called? I mean, I'd love to have as much hierarchical support for one as possible, but if the hierarchy doesn't act then the contradiction waits patiently, doesn't it? (In a Protestant theory, the two of us have already begun convening a Council just by our collegial discussion, and it remains to be seen whether our august words will "take" in the larger church, just as Tradition decided which were Orthodox Councils and which were just friendly synods.)
Not many, but because there were several schisms and many extinct heresies by that point the theory was already established. Namely, Orthodox claimed the mantle, so did Catholics, so did OO and Nestorians and Armenians. (The early church had unity but each congregation was still recognized as distinctive, such as when Paul and Peter split their strategies, or when Paul and Barnabas (more roughly) did the same.) So the distinctiveness of individual congregations is still held even when there's also schism among them. The issue with distinctives isn't the distinctives, but whether they are false as shown by them withering and dying (Jesus removing the candle). That's the only final test of the heretic or cult (dying in sin); the excommunication is just a preparatory formal declaration that may or may not be healed.
When I first realized as a youth that all churches proclaim the same essential but all have a different way of framing that essential (starting with three creeds, e.g.), it showed that the essential is ineffable and all our statements of it are just instantiations. So it's still possible to hold to the ideal and then to make mistakes in implementing it. Killing another sect is usually a mistake. I've found ways to resolve most all Protestant distinctives, which is why I'm working on Orthodox and Catholic distinctives too. But I'm not finding many Orthodox distinctives that I don't already appreciate as a Protestant.
Now we could select a form of "infallibility" as a distinctive, the Orthodox Church Will Never Fail. Hmm, I dunno. I'm confident what God calls his Church will never fail; now how can I be certain of what God calls his Church? Because of the circular argument risk, I can only be sufficiently certain. That means it's theoretically possible that any Church organization could fail (stand lest ye fall), but while a Church stands strong it's sufficiently likely that it won't fail anytime soon. We extend the hand of fellowship (a token of our sufficient understanding). So I can't say that even infallibility pertains necessarily to the Orthodox and nobody else, because any definition of it applies to all, or none.
TLDR: (1) I'm so grateful you've given occasion for me to work through this, and hopeful it's helpful for you too. (2) I still see any schism as producing branches of equal character unless one dies. (3) Therefore the trunk is only the primitive church for the first ~300 years, which only has the character of being a branch like the others but without other extant branches at the same time. (4) Query: I'm still looking for something that makes Orthodoxy "truer" than anyone else. (5) If I could, I'd join the Catholics and the Orthodox Church at the same time and also retain my Protest until it is resolved, to get permission from all three to continue being identified among them. (6) That is, I believe any dispute can be resolved by cautious definition: I like to say Luther and Leo just talked past each other and missed their chance. (7) So comparing what Protestants and Orthodox should think we will ultimately find the same thing on any point, unity of knowledge of the Son, Eph. 4:13.
Exactly. That's why the standard has to be the objective authority of the Church which holds the correct interpretation (singular). Pluralism leads to the aforementioned contradiction.
Again, it doesn't matter what individuals believe about the faith. They are not the standard. It's not only that Protestants run a risk of being wrong - their problem is that they lack an epistemological standard that can tell them if they are following the true faith or not. It's all personal subjective belief informed by personal interpretation of Scripture. Protestants lack epistemological grounding. It's all floating in circular space within their head.
You mean against YOUR interpretation of Scripture. That's a circle.
I'm arguing against the basic presuppositions of Protestantism. In this case their epistemology which is informed by the Sola Scriptura doctrine. I'm doing an internal critique of the Protestant system which is shared by pretty much all denominations and I exposed it's internal contradictions and fallacious logic.
Protestants still can come to correct teachings but that doesn't make their paradigm correct. Even atheists can come to true beliefs about the world. But only the correct paradigm, and I'd argue that's the Orthodox Church, has the wholeness of the faith. This is why branch theory doesn't work.