Quoted article from: https://christiantheology.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/can-eastern-orthodox-prove-theyre-the-one-true-church/
Eastern Orthodox adherents are very passionate about their faith. While that is all fine and good, there are a number of problems with that faith and their practices, and I have found the answers to these problems evasive, confusing, or non-existent. Since this church also claims to be the “One True Church,” it is disappointing to find its scholarship rather weak and misguided.
While there are a number of errors and practices of Orthodoxy that need to be addressed, I believe that foundational truths, those things on which the whole of this church should stand or fall, should be challenged first.
The first and ultimate question I have for Orthodox believers is, can they prove that Eastern Orthodoxy is the “One True Church” and that all others are outside the faith and apostate? While there a number of arguments that Orthodox believers postulate, none of these arguments, under scrutiny, hold water.
First, they state that they are the one true church because they hold the line of Apostolic succession. That is, since the “True Church” will consist of an unbroken line of Apostles from Peter and Paul until today, they claim that they are the True Church because their bishops are part of that unbroken line.
The first problem with this belief is that more than a dozen churches, Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, also claim this line as proof that they are the one true church. In each of these churches they have a public listing of their unbroken line of bishops. Why then is the Orthodox right and them wrong?
The Orthodox claims the rightful line of Apostolic succession because they have not apostatized. And because the other churches have apostatized, they are not the True Church.
But how do we know that those other churches have apostatized and not the Orthodox Church? Because the Eastern Orthodox are the True Church, of course. They are the ones who have been given the Truth, and when others disagree with them, those other churches are wrong. And for the Orthodox, the Bible is not the final authority, the Church is. Therefore, what they say is the truth, is the truth. There is no higher authority or objective standard to which they appeal. Thus, when the church says that they are the True Church, it’s true, because they are the Final Authority, and they are the Final Authority because they are the True Church. This is a rather obvious tautological statement, and completely meaningless.
Can we appeal to the Bible? No. Not at all. As any non-Orthodox believer soon finds out, the Bible can only be rightly interpreted by the Eastern Orthodox believer, because they are in the Truth, and no one else is. Thus, any passage of scripture that we appeal to is rejected as a wrong interpretation. According to Orthodoxy, Scripture is not only interpreted and defined by them, they wrote it.
Can we then appeal to truth or logic? Again, no. For the Orthodox, truth can also only be interpreted by them. “Truth, to the Orthodox,” according to one official Eastern Orthodox web site, “is not a proposition or conclusion; Truth is a Person, a living experience accessible in the communion of the Church and expressed in the Scriptures, the councils, and the theology of the saints. Even the Ecumenical Councils needed to be received as normative by the body of the Church. Ultimately, there are signs that point to truth, but none of these signs is a substitute for a free and personal experience of truth, which is encountered in the sacramental community of the Church.” (emphasis mine). Again, truth is defined within the confines of the Orthodox Church.
However, we have to understand that the Orthodox know this “free and personal experience” of truth is true because “Truth is a Person,” namely the Holy Spirit. While we can agree that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (Jn. 16:13), the Orthodox believe that He works only in their lives, and gives them the truth by experience. Or as the Mormons would call it, a “burning in the bosom.” So if their experience were to tell the Church that God is dead, and the church all agreed, then God would then be dead, for the Holy Spirit has given them the truth.
To conclude, the Orthodox lay claim to the Holy Spirit, truth, the interpretation of the Scriptures, the final authority, and Apostolic succession, because they are the True Church. And they are the True Church because they lay claim to all these things. None of these are proofs, and many other churches also claim these same proofs as their own.
But the real confusion is how and why do intellectual and discerning Christians, even staunch Calvinists, leave the Protestant faith to follow Orthodoxy? While I am quite sure of my assessment of Eastern Orthodoxy, I honestly wonder if I am missing something. Why would any Christian follow Orthodoxy given their beliefs?
Thus I ask if anyone can give an answer. What makes the Eastern Orthodox Church the True Church? Where is the proof? What makes Orthodox claims true – which are the same baseless claims as many other churches – and those other church claims false?
There is one request I have for anyone who answers. Your answer cannot be that Orthodoxy is true because Protestants are false. Proving one person wrong does not prove you right. We can both be wrong, but we cannot both be right. The question is not whether or not Protestants, Catholics, Anglicans, or Mormons are false, the question is how is Orthodoxy right? And more specifically, prove that Orthodoxy is the True Church when many others make the same claim.
You have no any clue about Orthodox Church and how things really are. :)
Apostolic sccession is necessary, but not "first" or even "most important". It is much better and many things are easier when you have it, but Orthodox Christianity have a special workflow exactly for situaltions when Apostolic saccession is lost for whatever reason.
There is many Orthodox Churches, if you are not aware, even here we have two. Both True. Add to this Greek, Serbian, Romanian, American, Alexandrian, Cyprus and so on. All that Churches accounted as equal True Christian churches by each other, being different with their own hierarchy.
Russian Orthodox Church had a schism half millenia ago, when patriarch decided to adjust some service details with Greek Orthodox Church. Old Russian Orthodox Church that didn't accept this changes lost Apostolic succession few centuries later. However it was still accounted as True Church, all things like baptism, euharistia, weddings, burials of Old Orthodox was accepted by Orthodox mainstream. Later, Apostolic succession of Old Orthodox was restored by mainstream Russian Orthodoxy, and now Russian Old Orthodox Church have full Apostolic succession again.
Great Schism started a massive process of creation of apostatic Churches. Rome decided that it have a right to change Christianity on its will, as they needed. Up to inventing Pope and declaring his speech as God's one.
Orthodox Church is just mathematically least square estimate to the original Christ teachings. That's all. We use original Old and New Testament texts word-to-word translated into ancient Russian millenia ago, which is still used even for all services, and all pre Great schism things agreed on at World Councils are unchanged. This is much more important than even Apostolic succession.
You have no idea of what Orthodox Christianity is about and what we believe in.
Well, in short Christianity is a user manual for your soul given to you by Christ. Just like with user manual for your vacuum cleaner given to you by manufacturer, if you began to change existing parts of it or invent new ones, then your vacuum cleaner will work in ineffective way, could break completely or even cause a disaster in your house. If you invent your own user manual for your vacuum cleaner, then manufacturer can't guarantee your vacuum cleaner efficiency and ability to work as promised. No warranty repairs, no spare parts and so on. Further your version of user manual (Christianity) from original manufacturer (God) edition, less efficiency your soul have, up to complete malfunctioning or even destruction.
You could easily observe exactly that by yourself all over the world. Countries with prevalent Orthodox Christianity are much less poisoned with all that satanic perversions like LGBTXYZ idiocy, money (Mammona) worshipping, arrogance, ignorance, greed and so on. And even more important thing is a Christian population attitude to all that shit. If an average Christian accept 100500 genders in his country, think he have a right to judge and preach other nations or doesn't account stock gambling as something dirty - then his Church is definitely far from True one.
Original user manual objectively works much better than any other "customized" version.
You have no reading comprehension because I did not write that article. Hence, why I put I quoted the article from that link.
If you claim some kind of apostolic succession for your cult, then prove it. You say apostolic succession is necessary in one breath, and in the next say that it wasn't necessary because some group that didn't have it still counted as a part of your cult. You blatantly contradicted yourself.
Do you believe that whatever you call the Bible contains any contradictions?
Can you prove the Bible is some kind of divinely inspired word of God given by something called Christ? Can you prove some guy named Jesus was God incarnate that died for sins and was resurrected? Was it the people of your Church that wrote the Bible? Was it the people of your Church that wrote stories in which they gave themselves power and authority and then declared God did it?
Christianity is called a faith for a reason, the reason being that it's not based on reason, but unproved beliefs. Hence, why Christianity is a faith.
Your morals and ethics aren't a monopoly on what's moral and ethical. Orthodox Christianity is poison itself. A man-made religion promoted as actually coming from God. Lies promoted as truth.
I didn't replied to you personally, just explained some obvious things that people don't know about.
It is just one of many components. You could have apostolic succession, but have absolutely nothing with Christianity. And on the opposite, even without apostolic succession you could still have True Church. Without apostolic succession you can't receive grace in full, which make much harder to keep your soul healthy.
Faith have to be logical and provable inside itself. Otherwise it is not a faith it is a cult.
You stated: "Apostolic sccession is necessary..." and then flipped to saying: "even without apostolic succession you could still have True Church". If, as you say, a group "Without apostolic succession you can't receive grace in full", then that's not some kind of True Church. Apparently this thing of apostolic succession isn't actually necessary and you saying it is necessary is either a lie or you suck at explaining it. Who determined this thing that without some kind of apostolic succession what you consider part of the True Church can't receive grace in full, and on what basis? The workings of their own imaginations and whatever they pull out of their asses?
The thing about making some kind of religious faith logical and provable inside itself....it's the same thing as creating a fictional universe like various cartoons do and putting out whatever's necessary to make them internally consistent. A faith being logical and provable inside itself doesn't make it logical and provable for the whole of Creation. Just because the imaginary world of Spongebob is logical and provable inside itself doesn't mean that's how our world operates. Just because your faith has created an imaginary world for itself that it views as internally logical and provable, doesn't mean that it's logical and provable with this world as it is.
Yes, it is necessary.
IDK, what example you could understand. In a car, alternator is a necessary part. But you still could drive a car without alternator for some time using battery. Same here.
Church could lose apostolic succession for multiple reasons, but if it will not be restored, this church will eventually degrade to what we see in Rome now. That does not mean that apostolic asuccession prevent degradation.
Car could have perfectly working alternator, but completely broken engine.
Church also have to had "alternator and a place for it" in the first place. You can't create a Church without apostolic succession. Since there is no any apostoles currently around, creation of a new Church is not possible.
Church is a car that could drive you to salvation, if you will use it according to original user manual. It is a long road, you have to fill tank, replace brake pads, fix broken parts and change tires, oil, brake fluid and so on. Only if you do all of that things, not ones you want, but all of them, you will be able to reach your destination far away. You will not be able to reach destination if you don't have alternator, or tires, or transmission, or engine. You will not able to reach destination if you don't dare to fix broken parts.
Hope this analogy is simple enough to get what is Church, and why old Orthodox car, being older than all other, newer shiny and comfortable ones, still running fine and with highest probability will reach its destination with as many passengers as would choose to join.