Nick Fuentes says don't read your bible, just listen to "clergy"
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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.
Come on, you're being bad faith again. Did you miss the part where the Orthodox also believe in the visible historic Church here on Earth? Don't cherry pick but look at the whole picture.
Exactly, all you have is negative theology. The Orthodox have both the negative and the positive claim as to where the Spirit is and isn't. Protestants don't have an objective standard for that - it's whatever individuals claim to have the Spirit and profess a generic faith in Christ and even that standard is subjective to each person (because each person reading the Bible is the ultimate authority).
It's not circular - it's regressive and ultimately goes back to the beginning of the apostolic Church. What the Early Church taught is the standard against which later teachings are verified. This is why appealing to the Scripture doesn't work, because it was compiled by the Church at a later stage and wasn't there initially. This is the defeater argument against Sola Scriptura.
The tradition is not closed because it's living. There are contemporary Saints of the Church. What you propose is evolution of doctrine which is a RC idea. But the dogmas and doctrines of the early Church reflect truth and changing truth leads to falsehood. What would necessitate such a change today?
You're playing word games. It doesn't matter how the name of the movement came to be, but what the movement was and it was a radical theological movement in opposition to the Western Church and not just a reaction to a political incident. Of course the Reformers believed Rome was false and denied the authority of the Pope and the See's indefectibility. Again, they may recognize certain aspects of the tradition but to determine that they'd need to have a standard which is other than tradition itself. Hence, they had to claim Sola Scriptura as their standard to judge tradition, but I've already explained why that doesn't work (because tradition is prior to and more fundamental than Scripture; it produced Scripture and encompasses it).
No you don't and you don't have a standard to judge that. What does "right enough" entail? You're appealing to sufficiency which also requires a standard. Where is the cutoff point where one's not "right enough" anymore?
The true Church has assurance given by Christ. If I can demonstrate the Orthodox Church is the true Church (and going back to Church history proves that) then whatever it judges, it is right because it has the guidence of the Spirit.
Our eschatology differs. You mean after Christ second advent? Everyone who renounces their false beliefs and wishes to come to the true Church is welcomed at any time of course. No negotiations or compromises with the faith are possible, even if it means that only one Orthodox person is left in the world. Anything else would amount to surrendering the true faith and abandoning the Church. If any Orthodox Church does that then it's no longer the Church (here's looking at you, Bartholomew seeking to unite with Rome). Those outside the Church are like the prodigal son or the lost sheep but in the end we're told there will be few people, even among the nominally Orthodox, who would have kept the faith and the commandments as Christ has ordered. So I don't think we'll be seeing more people coming to their senses and coming to the Church but the opposite. Jesus prophesized that false teachings and deceptions will multiply in the end times.