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.
So would you agree that Orthodox Christianity is based on circular reasoning then? How do you know it's closer to the source, or that there even is a source, if you haven't proven the source to begin with?
There is no any circular reasoning. Everything is based on Symbol of Faith.
There is ancient texts. Translations used by Orthodox Churches are closer to the originals than those used by other churches.
Yes.
Yes.
There are no any churches closer to the origins of Christianity than Orthodox Church.
Functioning of society in Russia does not depend on the religion of citizens. We have at least 3 major religions here - Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. So no any pressure or whatever from society. My parents and even grandparents wasn't religious (as in routine visiting church prayers at home and all that stuff). I was baptised at the age of 10 when my mother proposed, mostly from curiosity and just in case (yes, it was in that "scary godless communist USSR" you know nothing about). It was interesting, inspirational and I had a great talk with priest (about Trinity, Universe, free will and even aliens). Then, studing science lead me to the conclusion than not everything in Universe could be explained by science, and using my childhood expirience and some research, I just found Orthodox Christianity a best possible thing to follow, because it give a clue to everything unexplainable in a most straight and consistent way. Also, studying Bible (in ancient Russian), Lives of Saints, I found that this all is real and believable, not some fake sweetened stories (or on the opposite, fear porn) as in other confessions. And no any marketing like all that churches that flood Russia after the fall of USSR. Good things don't need marketing, if you are not aware. Nobody knock into my door or pester me on the streets to lure me into Orthodox Cristianity, unlike all other confessions and sects.
So, if you found it all to be real and believable, then what proof, evidence, or anything to substantiate it do you have? What proof do you have that God incarnated on earth and human sacrificed itself to itself to fix the problem that was its plan to begin with? What's believable about a virgin birth? What proof or evidence do you have that God actually said any of the stuff attributed to it within the Biblical texts? What proof do you have that those books teach God's truth?
If what you stated is true, that good things don't need marketing. Then the mere existence of Christian missionaries would prove Christianity is not a good thing. That Christians force converted the Roman empire in 380 CE shows that it's not a good thing.
What do you think of the conclusions of Bible scholars surrounding the Disputed Letters of Paul? It's obvious that the same person did not write/dictate all of them. Are you familiar with the textual criticism of the Bible?
In John 2:13-22, the story of Jesus cleansing the temple is put at the beginning of an alleged ministry. In the Synoptic Gospels, the event is put at the end of the ministry. That's a contradiction. There weren't two temple cleansings. It's considered a theological Gospel, not historical one. The Jesus it portrays is greatly different than the ones the other Gospels do.
When it comes to Matthew's genealogy in Matthew 1, there are 3 sets of 14 generations. If this was to be taken historically, it'd be a lie. If accounts in the Chronicles were accurate, it'd be obviously wrong. In counting the generations, there are only 41 of them. Now, in the older readings of Luke 3:22, like in the Codex Bezae, it said "Your are my son, today have I begotten you.". This was the fulfillment of that 42nd generation, and when Jesus became at-one with God. The number 14 means Wholeness, and is equivalent to the gematria value for David in Hebrew. Jesus was of the House of David, because he achieved Wholeness across the three-fold self: Mind, Body, Soul. This is why there were 3 sets of 14 generations, but the final Soul birth didn't happen until the baptism. Such things are allegorical symbolism and not meant to be taken as literal history.
The Gospel of Luke's address to a Theophilus is symbolic for the reader, as they would be a lover of God. It's a litmus test showing the eyes are to be taken off of a historical interpretation to be viewed symbolically. In with that is the numbers at the beginning in the first chapter, when multiplied being equivalent to 4320. That was in part a kind of way of communicating the text was to be viewed allegorically. When done to a book like Joshua, in the first two chapters, when multiplied, those equal 432. The way that the texts are written, they're designed to go beyond the comprehension of those who would view them literally. It allowed things to be communicated and preserved, while protecting those that would meet the end of your potential sword.
There was no historical fall of man as recorded in Genesis. That's symbolic. The world isn't corrupted by something called sin, and we aren't in need of a Jesus-God to serve as a sacrifice to save us.
Have you looked into what the scientists involved with Quantum physics have been saying? They're just now arriving at what the mystics of the past taught. The Jesus portrayed in the Gospels is a symbolic portrayal of what we are to become ourselves. In Luke 11:52, it's stated that Jesus rebuked the lawyers for throwing away the key of knowledge. That word for knowledge meant gnosis. The texts of the OT are to be interpreted symbolically as a portrayal of our own Mind. Israelites came from the Canaanites. There wasn't a mass exodus from Egypt.
Howdy, Light, what you have just done is called by some here "Gish gallop", named after someone I respect Duane Gish, who was often accused of bringing up several unrelated points all at once. Fact is, if you're in a debate and there's enough time for all questions to be answered, it makes sense to let loose, but you should get the other person's permission and it should fit the debate format.
It's reasonable to start with proof that God exists and what he is like, and then to search for his revelation in the world and to find the Bible and Jesus Christ to have high reviews for that status, and then to investigate and find this to have higher reliability and consistency than any other approach; that's not circular (although it's correct to say some formulations by Catholics, Orthodox, or Protestants are circular). The historical fact that the death of Jesus is associated with immediate reports of resurrection that became an ongoing movement among billions indicates that there may be something supernatural going on, and even if there isn't there's something that sustains and encourages more truth seekers than any other comparable narrative. When the veracity of the core is recognized, the possibility of other supernatural elements in the narrative can be reviewed too. But you don't have to start with the virgin birth if you're skeptical of that, start with the generally accepted fact that the gospel Jesus is unlike any human that ever lived, and look into why.
Good things don't need marketing; forced conversions are a blot but they don't disprove a whole system but only a particular attempted application of it. The fact that missionaries believe they have such a good thing, that they don't market it for pay but live for years on subsistence to empathize with other cultures just to be able to share the good thing, suggests there may be something there. But obviously the 501(c)(3) that churns out self-help books in the name of Christ is not necessarily selling a good thing.
The "higher school" of Biblical textual criticism is biased against the text, as the biographies of its 19th-century innovators show. However that's not relevant to the truth of the matter because I can go to any textual critic no matter how biased and, by God's grace, find the pathway to truth that works from what sources that person does accept as truth. The Bible is holistic in the sense that if you lose much of it you still have all you need. So if you're willing to state what your core revelation of truth is (whether it's a list of books, or a personal revelation that you can distinguish from other experience, or an outside source, or your own conscience), then you can still build to all truth from there. I find that lots of people who do that eventually realize the church's list of 66 books is Pretty Good Prophecy.
I don't know how you know there were not two temple cleansings three years apart, as there is no contradiction or contraindication. There are several ways to harmonize texts if a person wants to treat them like any other historical documents; but if a person wants to disqualify them from the start he quibbles over minor issues instead of reads the main point. So that goes to what you want to do with the fact that there are two accounts of temple cleansing; have you got something better, or are you just complaining without a solution? Sincere question.
(a) Matthew is giving an accurate, but incomplete, genealogy, where it is known that about 4 kings (regarded as of less account) are omitted, and other later names may be omitted. This is not regarded as deception, but as selection; the purpose of the selection is to emphasize that the genealogy is Davidic and the important parts of it can be remembered with 3 lists of 14 names (41 generations), which is easy to remember because of the gematria. Also culturally nobody quibbled about inclusive rather than exclusive counting. (b) I love Codex Bezae, but it doesn't indicate your narrative about Jesus becoming at one with God at baptism via soul birth. If you approach the text believing that it was intended to use false statements to teach mystical concepts secretly, that contradicts historical inquiry and invalidates ability to derive anything from the text, because the secret could be proposed to be anything. But people didn't do that in those days, they circulated historical accounts for the purpose of testifying historically what actually happened. If you investigate the sources of your claim, you'll find that they arise from a proposed oral tradition in competition with the oral tradition used by mainstream Christianity. When you look at the histories of the two traditions, the mainstream (despite its quirks) has a clear demonstration of being the actual tradition intended by the apostles, when compared to any esoteric tradition. So if you agree on what standards of proof you wish to use, the judgment of what is really true about the account can be made objectively, and I'd be happy to work with you on seeking that judgment jointly under any agreeable standards.
It's actually irrelevant to argue whether Theophilus was a real person or an allegorical title, because those are both possible plaintext readings. What you're doing though is to find esoteric (secret-order) readings and then substituting them for the plaintext. It's an established canon of construction that Judean texts were to be judged on four levels, the first being the plaintext and the last being the esoteric, and all four levels were cooperative with the plaintext always being more determinative than the rest. (A secret might be intended, but the plain meaning is always intended.) The problem is that people who uphold convenient numbers like 432 also don't go very far in teaching that anything comes of it. Wow, I found 432 twice, that means what? Well, it means the text is holy, what else? Well, the person might say, I don't know because I don't believe the text actually means what it says. Such a person only has a feelgood experience from finding the number, and might get a (diminishing-return) experience again from finding another number, but is not using the text the way the person wrote it, which is to be a conduit for God's teaching on every level starting with the plain meaning.
You are free to reject the plain teaching about sin, but you are not free to ignore that thousands of years of history support that the same plain teaching, as it developed, was upheld by a covenant preservative community. This community upheld the plain meaning and was not sustained by some secret symbolic reading. Some propose that there existed a secret community all this time that knew the secret, but you see that anyone could make such a claim and deny all evidence. Maybe I am the current exponent of a secret community that was founded 6,017 years ago and has preserved secrets that I speak to the willing in secret, which have never been written down but have always been transmitted orally and even nonverbally; how then could your claims of secrets compete with mine, except by our agreeing on objective judgment standards for truth?
(a) I have a lot of experience with quantum physics, but you don't go to any specific so I can only guess your application; and much of quantum physics permits any religion to claim they have had a corner on what the physicists are arguing about but don't have consensus on. Sure we are to become like Jesus and pursue gnosis and reject pseudognosis. Have you protected yourself against including pseudognosis (false knowledge masquerading as real) in your experience? Gnostics have that problem of not being able to distinguish the two unless they know what standards distinguish truth from error. Look into it. (b) Historians have hidden the fact that the Hyksos expulsion of c. 1539 BC was attested to involve the departure of myriads of Semites from Egypt, and yet they don't think that's the Exodus, partly because they use excuses to late-date Moses and then ignore the Hyksos. Yes, Abraham came from the Canaanites and lived among them, and Israelites were influenced by Canaanite culture for centuries, but you don't have evidence that you can know for certain these things never happened.
TLDR: If you're interested in gaining more gnosis on these points, I suggest you share your standards for judgment and your commitment to pursue truth at all costs. If you're one of those who doesn't pursue truth because you think contradictions are fine, you won't have any way to protect yourself from actual lies or destructive narratives. But if you do pursue truth, you will be able to state how you distinguish truth from pseudognosis. The rest is detail on that theme.