Nick Fuentes says don't read your bible, just listen to "clergy"
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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.
That's circular, Patrick! What if First Century Bible Church, the parent ministry of Swamp Rangers, is the singular Church which holds the correct interpretation? I've got our apostolic succession around here somewhere. More particularly, Catholics argue exactly the same way.
And you test your experience against your interpretation of the words of Scripture And Tradition. Everyone has the same epistemological lack, which cannot be made up by humans alone but only by God reaching in and delivering regeneration and faith. I do not count on myself to be right but only on God to be right in giving faith to fallible me.
Seems to me nobody can have the whole wholeness, or else all Christians partake of sufficient wholeness. It's very interesting and the debate about circularity has gone on a long time.
What if God is the Flying Spaghetti Monster and we're all wrong?
The answer is simply that it was not the case because we know what the early Church looked like and what they taught based on the Church fathers and Scripture (Acts and Epistles).
No, I appeal to the interpretation of the Church. I don't hold my own interpretation because I'm not the appropriate authority to do that. You can't apply the same critique to systems that have different epistemology and metaphysics. The Orthodox hold that the Church is infallible because it has Christ as its Head and is guided by the Spirit. Individuals within the Church are fallible.
But so do all Protestants, and they hold contrary beliefs to yours. There's no way to arbiter between all those position when you all hold the same epistemological presupposition. How do you justify the belief that one Protestant (or a whole denomination) is true and not the other ones over there?
Can you justify that claim? Historically Jesus established one universal apostolic Church that encompassed all of the Christians so even if you believe the Church was split later on, it logically follows that it was united in it's beginning at Pentecost. Sufficiency is problematic too, because it assumes a criterion for what's sufficient. But that has to be justified too.
Then God would confirm it through the people he appointed using tools like facts, holy writings, logic, and reason, same as if he were anyone else. And spotting those appointed people, well, I can't take the people's word for it because I am still the one making the judgment, so I can only trust God to guide me to the right people using those tools he gave. Logically, Pastafari doesn't claim continuity from Adam, which would be exclusivist and less loving than Yahweh, so Yahweh gets the preponderance and the inference to best explanation.
Orthodox and Catholics often fail to appreciate that the interpretation of the Church must be interpreted by you. Interpretations come in words just like Scripture. If by interpretation you mean some other aspect of relationship, well of course Scripture requires traditional relationships, but I must interpret whether the Spirit's energies are at work in the relationship or not. (My spirit senses the Spirit's energies in you, so I continue; but if I didn't sense them, I would say like Joan of Arc whether I'm right or wrong I trust the Lord to have me right, and not myself.) How else could the Orthodox judge each other and remove heretics except by personal, individual judgment that the Spirit's not in the heretic, since there is no tradition to guide when a new heresy arises, and both sides claim authority from prior tradition? How did we kick out Simon, Hymenaeus, Alexander, Valentinus, Marcion, or Montanus, except by individual Spirit-led judgment of other covenant people without having a word from tradition (plus, their groups died)? And how do we know if the neo-Nestorians or Miaphysites have come around to our way of thinking, except by new Spirit-led judgment that heals the traditional breaches (plus, their groups live)?
And what if I have that epistemology and metaphysics, and hold that the Church is infallible but any candlestick is at risk of being removed if that congregation fails? Rome was pretty big in 1056, and the Orthodox have no problem (like many Protestants) with the idea that all its candlesticks were uprooted completely, but they don't recognize that risk for themselves as opposed to other branches? Why wouldn't it be Rome was right to excommunicate and Byzantium was the one who had its candlesticks pulled because it wasn't the true Church? No offense, but from outside there's no difference I see.
Actually there is, Matt. 18:15-17, and a little pontificating (bridgebuilding). If you're saying your episteme is Trust Church and nobody else's is, I say Rome and all the strong apostolic successions have that so it's not unique. If you're saying my episteme is Trust God and that tempts disunity, I say anything can be occasion to temptation, but I add the apostolic successionists also ultimately must Trust God and do so unconsciously or they will get in the circle of Trust Self too (trusting the self to pick the right church to trust when several say they're the right church). The Protestant says lots of churches are right churches but we recommend our uniquenesses for consideration. The fact that there's not an earthly org doesn't deny the heavenly organism of Christ's body. If two people need arbitration, either they work it out in Christ (such as by Matt. 18) or one or both are revealed not to be in Christ. Man, who made you an arbiter between me and my brother Protestant? (Jesus's words.) If God did, he can make others arbiters too, even the totally unesteemed Protestants. (Paul's words.)
Unity on essentials, liberty on nonessentials, charity on all. If we ever have a true binary disagreement we agree to disagree like Paul and Barnabas, and await God's revelation (e.g. Paul later backpedaled about Mark but it all worked out for good). Sometimes, denominations merge together if all concerns are addressed, just as the Orthodox reach out to groups that are willing to merge if all concerns are addressed. You and I could merge if we worked the essentials out.
Well, of course. No individual or organization can have all of the faith content (knowledge) because that would be omniscience. What the mature have in Christ is sufficient faith ("great faith", not the "all faith" hypothetical of 1 Cor. 13:2). Adam only knew the seed of the woman, Dismas only knew the man on the cross, but those were sufficient faiths.
Yes, and what were the covenant people before that? They were as much the Messianic body as they were afterward, they were the family of faith, they just didn't have an incorporation and constitution as Jesus provided to the Twelve. (And in particular God gave the lesson that these would be divided into Israel and Judah didactically.) So I like to be more covenantal than the Orthodox, and see the body throughout all history. The unity has always been spiritual, and occasionally physically manifest too.
But isn't it the Orthodox position that they know about their unity and don't make pronouncements about anyone else's? Obviously if Orthodox "merged in" another denomination (say Armenian), the Armenians become Orthodox, but the Armenians could equally proclaim all the Orthodox became Armenian by accepting all the Armenian traditions too. That's what unity is, just like marriage. So it seems to me it's the Orthodox and a bunch of professing Christians that the Orthodox aren't ready to count as Christian yet. But that problem goes all the way back to Simon Magus, whom Peter wasn't ready to count as Christian (for good reason). There were many strands of Simonians afterward, and some of them repented and rejoined the church (Tertullian?), because the larger church was ready to count them as Christians, and they were ready to count the larger church as Christians, no matter what anyone called them. So Orthodoxy is not, and never was, the heavenly unity of the invisible church (because there are surely a couple wolves among the Orthodox and a couple sheep that haven't found that fold), it's the visible organizational unity on earth; and the visible political system of any subgroup of the invisible church doesn't matter because we trust God to maintain the unity of his Body. The only difference is that Protestants give promiscuous credit.
Not really, it's the same answer. Only God can give sufficient saving faith, and only God can give sufficient knowledge of what sufficient saving faith is. If I'm trusting some earthly system as the whole of my authority or episteme or faith deposit, pfft! Instead I trust God to work through my spirit, the Church, the Word, the sacraments, life, miracles, everything. Any instance of trusting the Church finally because it says it's the Church ... weakens the Church.
I appreciate the time you're taking. I hope it's not belligerent-sounding. I have no problem with the Orthodox commending their Church on its distinctives, but it's a free market and others can claim other commendations. Sometimes there is division to show which are approved (and which not), but sometimes division is just from the Lord for his purposes. So I guess the issue for me is when the standing aside (Biblical meaning of "apostacy"), and the criticism of Protestants, is so strong that it implies no hope, which is hardly evangelistic toward Protestants if they are unsaved. Evangelism is about culture.
So here's an idea. How about you point to the Orthodox writings that teach your theology or episteme and I wrestle with them? I'm usually pretty good at agreeing with patristics. I'm just not convinced they say everything you do. (Change? Is heresy!)