Nick Fuentes says don't read your bible, just listen to "clergy"
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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!)
Don't have time rn so I'll answer this only.
Interpretation of the Church is not just written word - it's the teaching of the Church and the living tradition as a whole. For example icons are no less important than the texts. Dogma is very concise for the purpose of conveying the correct teaching. But even the Nicaean creed could be misinterpreted so it is always to be understood within the Church tradition. The crux of the matter is this - Orthodox claim that the Spirit was sent to the Church at Pentecost and provides it with His guidance, making sure the faith is kept
Such judgments are done by the Church, not by individuals. The decision to condemn a teaching as heretical is debated and justified and argumented by the council. We can go over all condemned heresies and look at how the Church came to its judgment in each case and the reasons given. No one argues based on the Spirit because it's question begging - where the Spirit resides becomes apparent by exposing the heresy and the Church successfully keeping the true apostolic faith intact. The verification method is not adding or making up stuff that was not there before - it's that simple.
We'll know that when they abandon their false teachings and come to the Orthodox faith. In fact, the dying away of those movements is a testament to their falsity because the Church will exist to the end of time.
Protestants also rely on living tradition and relationship to help interpret pictures, dogma, and creed; they also claim the Spirit guiding them to ensure the faith is kept as members of the Body. The Church makes and publishes its judgments through individual agents and Protestants have it no differently (granted many of them are promiscuous with assigning agency). So it looks the same to me, no differences seen.
You appeal to our ability to review the Church's judgments and reason, which is exactly what Protestants affirm, the right to review. Perhaps the written decisions of the Seven Councils are as infallible as Scripture? But either way they're individually interpreted in what they say. It'd be interesting if I did find that Orthodoxy as a whole took some late interpretation that could be charged as "making up stuff that was not there before" because it adapted old text to new circumstances. Well, that's interpretation, not quite as bad as Mary's Assumption in Rome, but it'd be interesting to see if it exists.
I agree the dying or living of movements is a testament to Jesus's work among the candlesticks. I don't want to keep saying none of this makes the Orthodox distinctive, just uniquely well-reserved, so I'll close there, thanks.
They may say that, but they can't justify the claim. What is the Body of their Church - a collection of all believers in Christ as God in the most generic and inclusive sense? It's an abstraction and there are no real boundaries. They apply an arbitrary standard and pick and choose things within the tradition (like the Bible, elements of worship, particular Church fathers and councils). Again, there are elements of the true faith, but it's not the wholeness of the faith. It's a binary - you either have the true faith or you don't. There's no 90% faith or having 90% overlap of consensus between all sects that leads to communality. Truth can't be mixed with lies. Even the smallest lie will poison the whole system. This is why it's crucial to defend the faith as deposited in the Church.
The individual agents act in accordance with the mystical body of the Church, not on their own accord. You insist on presenting it the other way around to prop up your false equivalence with the Protestant system which puts the Spirit moving individuals first.
That's another false equivalence. In Orthodoxy you're not in a position to judge the decisions of the Church. You may study them and see their reasoning but if you disagree with anything and prefer your reasoning, that automatically leads you to sectarianism, i.e. you and not the Church being the authority and having primacy in judging on theological matters. You see - by the mere act of approaching the matter this way you assume the Protestant framework.
Orthodoxy is having unanimity on all matters of faith. If some contradiction occurs, it has to be resolved - the false teaching condemned and the true teaching affirmed. The arbitration between the true and the false is the Spirit working through the Church, because this task is impossible for the fallible human faculties alone.
You could try. One of the latest teachings in Orthodoxy is Palama's essence/energies distinction which was prompted by Barlaam's western-influenced teaching which contradicted the teachings of the Church. So even this "new" teaching is not new at all but an elaboration of what the previous Fathers taught, brought about by the need to refute this novel contention.
The other contenders would be the apostolic traditions that are alive today - RC, Nestorian, Oriental, Coptic. As already mentioned, (Reformed) Protestantism is not a tradition dating back to the Early Church but a radical innovation of the RC tradition (same for Anglicans). It's not even a single tradition, because it's solely defined as opposition to prior tradition and lacks unity of confession (the closest unified Protestant doctrine are the Solas I guess, but one can still be a Protestant even if they reject it). But even if I grant you that Protestants inherit their tradition from Rome, then if RC is proven false, Protestantism is false too by association. But the whole point of the Reformers is that RC is false. Therefore such appeal to tradition is self-refuting.
In the end true Protestantism is radical individualism and nominalism which were later philosophical developments historically. At the time of Christ and the early Church Fathers those ideas didn't even exist (that's another defeater for Protestantism).
So is the OrthodoxWiki conception of the Invisible Church in heaven. I merely point out that some of the church is invisible on earth due to its incomplete acceptance of the hierarchical churches. This seems to accord with agnosticism about where the Spirit is not.
If Orthodoxy declines to pick something someone else got, they just say it's not in the tradition. Maybe Orthodoxy claims to be the only that preserves all traditions that once reached a standard of universal acceptance. But then so does Rome claim by its standard, particularly claiming the filioque should be regarded as having reached that standard.
What's binary is knowing Jesus by regeneration or not, which is switching faith from off to on. The content of one's faith is always growing with knowledge. Now if you want to say catechized members have mastered a traditional deposit and yours is the only whole deposit, you're still saying filioque is not of that deposit and thus the question is debatable again.
Not really, Orthodoxy has had mistakes and internal arguments without losing its promise the Church (in it) won't be poisoned. Rev. 2-3 says every church has infiltrators but the righteous will prevail in the Church.
So do Protestants, to the degree it's possible to put down individual judgments entirely and represent others entirely. But if everyone does that there's nobody left to represent. So actions must always have an element of individuality, even if it's the individuality of the ones represented; agency doesn't go back infinitely.
I don't know what your point was in saying we get to look at them and feel good about them then. If there is no individual judgment, there's no reason for the hierarchy to be transparent at all because dogmatic obedience is forced (I'm thinking of recent Rome). Either they publish them because it's good for us to practice approval and to air out disapproval in case it results in further understanding; or there's nothing for us to approve and no reason for leaders not to be absolute despots in the name of Tradition that is inscrutable to us. So I don't believe Orthodoxy actually operates that way, I believe, as you tipped your hand, that they actually do accept a bit of individual judgment right, especially in that one unavoidable case of the person using his judgment to submit his judgment to the Church in the first place.
When my judgment "prefers" my reading over my authority's, I humbly present it to my authority and seek resolution. I learned about 7th-day Sabbath 25 years ago and sought an authority with whom I could reconcile all that time, and God only made it happen last year such that I can totally affirm the Lord's Day and relegate my Sabbath observations to qualifiers, footnotes, and context instead of sect. I believe it's God's grace that he gave me the patience as I realize that's atypical. The issue isn't disagreement, all church councils and canons arose from disagreement. It's the church finding answers through judgment of individuals that respected and spoke from tradition. The councils set new traditions, but the Orthodox act like the age of novelty ended with the councils, which is not an epochal crisis that I recognize.
Then it didn't exist until the first creed. But OT saints were unanimous on the Shema, and on God's existence before that, but God unfolded more of himself, more matters of faith, over a calculated temporal agenda. He kept unfolding through the councils. When a new creed or canon is delivered, its dissenters are disciplined and it takes time to propagate through the laity. So unanimity is alive, not static. Resolution of contradictions can take millennia!
That suggests that it'd be easier to point out that everything was "made up" freshly at some point, that's why Paul is treated as such a hostile innovator when he wasn't. I appreciate your reference to Palamas, but I think that route (though I suggested it) would then lead to circular defense, because the latest is always said to have come from before. But the earliest teaching of any proposition is "new" in its time. And that's how the Scriptural canon works: books kept getting added to the Word that had already been approved and each book took its centuries to have unanimous approval, Revelation being the fastest approved perhaps. Well, each book is "change" and "novelty", but over time it becomes Tradition. But maybe Orthodoxy has closed its canon of Tradition like we agree the canon of Scripture is closed. I don't recognize that epoch, I see reasons why Tradition must remain open. I appeal to Stephen's reference to "living oracles" being understood in Messianism as oral tradition remaining flexible, not static.
Thanks for admitting. Protestantism by its name means not that Rome is false (that was an extreme) but that Rome erred in handling Luther. That's nominal united agreement even when Protestants forget their name. Since Rome takes about 911 years to apologize (1054-1965), we're still waiting. Protestants believe the Church continues otherwise but that radical times called for flexibility about physically demonstrated succession (just as they do for flexibility about water baptism and even Eucharist). The conservatives recognize Rome (and Luther tried to partner with Constantinople but the work was physically undoable at that distance).
So again the similarity is that we have sufficient assurance our church is right enough, we constantly test our assurance, and we decline to judge other professing churches except in extreme cases. And that seems compatible with the Orthodox view. For an Orthodox to say that Orthodoxy has perfect assurance of continuing in its own name, no need to keep tested daily, or perfect ability to judge outside its jurisdiction, seems incompatible with it.
Jesus spoke to individuals individually. Communal thought was much more necessary for social survival until recently, yes, but nobody has ever been a total chameleon free of individuality, that would be Buddhist. Chameleons blend in, if they totally disappeared in every way they wouldn't exist. And Paul was a great individualist while demanding that everything he wrote built on tradition. Here, Col. 1:26: "Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints". How could God manifest was was formerly mysterious without there being novelty through an individual revealer for the sake of community appropriation?
Again you are commended for your dogged maintenance of this discussion and it's helpful to me; perhaps your sharing your ideas of how Orthodoxy will someday under Messiah heal the breach and welcome Protestants back en masse under some agreements and negotiations (while definitively ruling out the heretics among us) will be a useful tack to take.