All right, we're live. Greetings everyone, This is David R. Hunt
today. I have a very great guests with me today. A good friend
of mine. I don't think he needs any introduction in my channel, but
Jay Dyer is with me, the soy Master, the soy face Master.
Hello, Jay, thank you for thank you for joining me in this stream.
And I was basically just thinking, you know, we can kind of
just talk about pretty much anything. So if you have people in the live
chat, if you have any questions, anything that you want us to talk
about, make sure to write stuff, make sure to share the stream.
And before we get into the stream, is there anything you want to kind
of mention before we start. Yeah, thanks for having glad to be back.
We haven't had a We had a chat about drama, you know,
a couple months ago, so it's nice to be back and chatting about you
know, normal dude things. So things coming out. We've got the Orthodox
Italy pilgrimage. If you go to my channel, you'll see there's a a
one minute video up about that. There's links that take you to the website
for my priest. You can reach out to Father Vladimir if anybody's interested.
So it's like a couple of week ten days. I think in November you
can get all the information there if you guys want to go. I recommend
that it's going to be a lot of fun. It's not I mean,
it's gonna be high quality, you know, saying in nice places. We're
not slumming it. We're gonna be seeing a lot of really good Orthodox sites.
Love it. So why why are you doing Italy? Isn't it Roman
Catholic? Yeah? I know that, But so my priest has a connection
to the Florence Florentine Academy of Arts there and they teach the Renaissance style of
art, and he's worked with that school for a long time. Andre Tarkovsky
it teaches there as well. I think he has a connection to that school
too. So he spent a lot of time in Florence, and so he
knows a lot of people in Italy. And there's actually, you know,
several Orthodox churches and sites in Italy. People won't know that, but in
fact there's a giant Russian Orthodox cathedral there were that will be at But also,
I mean Italy has you know, a thousand years of Christianity where it
was Orthodox, you know, going back to when Paul writes the Letter to
the Romans. So there's a long history of Orthodox Italy and a lot of
those sites that we're going to will be that. Obviously, some of the
sites are now Roman Catholic, but they're still relevant to us as Orthodox because
they have, you know, relics of Orthodox saints. So it's going to
be a great time. And if anybody's interested, it's getting down now,
down to the deadline. So you need to go ahead and sign up if
you do think you want to. If you want to go, yeah,
and you know I might. I might also peer there. Who knows,
that's a that's a possibility as well. I also have something to announce this
specially fans of Phish Tank, fans of Sam Hyde might know this guest.
I have an interview at a podcast episode scheduled with John from Phish Tank.
I kind of he basically was kind of my favorite character pretty much. I
really enjoyed just like looking at the antics that he did and stuff like that.
And the show recently ended, right, so we're gonna do the well.
We initially we agreed on June eight, but he wanted to reschedule to
June fourteenth. So we're gonna do a so we're gonna have a conversation one
pm Est June fourteenth with John from Phish Tanks. I definitely don't miss out
on that as well. And that's pretty much yeah, that's pretty much what
I had in mind. And thank you too. Sis Pilgrim from the twenty
dollars were already kind of starting strong. I was thinking of kind of just
starting this with a with a question that I kind of prepare before the stream.
But we've got a ten dollars super chat, and I kind of think
actually kind of have to, like, you know, since he super chat,
I think it's it will be good to kind of like start with this
and butch paradise ten dollars, he asked. I often hear that Calvin made
the penal substitution, but Saint John that Damascus Act Exposition book three, chapter
twenty seven seems to say the same thing. So I think Jay, you
will especially kind of know I have I have a chapter twenty seven, Book
three like pulled up, so I can read that part if you want me
to. But seems like from from like a very basic perspeadive, seems like
kind of like a mistake on the words and confusion of the words and concepts.
But you want to get into that, Jay, Yeah, so sometimes
the set like you said, yeah, the same words are used, but
they don't mean or signify the same thing. So I know that section of
the exposition very well. And he does talk about there being a sense in
which the punishment, which is the debts. You could say, you can
use this language, there's no problem with that. But the idea between Calvin's
notion of the punishment and what John Damascus calls the punishment is totally different.
For example, John Damascus makes it clear that the punishment has nothing to do
with a spiritual death. It's nothing to do with damnation. The sun is
not cut off from the Father. It's the severing of the human soul from
the human body. And that's what he undergoes at the cross, and he
does that to enter into the Kingdom of Hades. In the soul that he
has, the divine person has the human soul. He enters into that kingdom.
And by the way, I just did a long two hour talk.
I was invited to Antiochian Men's event. I did a two hour talk on
the descent into Hades, and this very point in this very chapter. So
it's still freshened my mind. If anybody wants, you can go to my
rock fan and you can listen to that whole two hour talk we did.
But yeah, so that's totally different than what the notion of the penal substitution
is in John Calvin, because Calvin does have the view that the eternal debt
of damnation and spiritual death is something that the son is taking upon himself for
us as a divine person. I don't know that Calvin that really clarifies that
it doesn't really make any sense. But this goes back to Anselm's idea.
So even though Anselm didn't have the full on developed reformed in Lutheran theology of
penal substitution, Anselm is the birthplace of this idea for the West, and
it has to do with the infinite debt infinite payment model. So we offended
an infinite God with our sin. It needs there needs to be a divine
infinite payment from the son to pay the Father. First of all, that's
not trinitarian. And there's an eleventh century Byzantine Synod that deals with this error
that the offering is not from the son to the Father. The son is
offering his human nature to the whole triad. That's the only way to have
this transactional offering model in the Eucharist, or just go in the liturgy,
make any sense, So that alone refutes the reform view of it. But
just to make it really clear, as we've always pointed out, you cannot
say that the Sun undergoes any kind of damnation or rejection of the Father because
for many reasons, but one would be the Santi Trinitarian right, So the
son can't lose the indwelling of the Father or the Holy Spirit. He's a
divine person, and so it would split the Trinity, it would destroy the
whole you know, triad if you did this. So no, it is
not John. And if you if you read the rest of book three,
you will notice that when he talks about the descent into Hades, there's nothing
to do with John Calvin. John Calvin does not believe that Jesus as the
divine person to the human soul which has been suffered from the body, that
he descends into a realm of Hades, preaches the Gospel to the dead and
then harrows the hero wing of Hades. John Calvin does not believe that,
so totally different. Yeah, And I want to add a quote from Saint
John Damascus, because I remember reading this from book four, So this is
from book four, chapter eighteen, and this definitely shows you that Saint John's
views very different from the reform. He says, for neither for neither as
God nor as man, was he ever forsaken by the Father? Nor did
he become sin or a curse appropriating then or person and ranking himself with us.
He used these words. So the basic idea is that these are terms
used for Christ by appropriation. Yes, right, but he did not become
curse, He did not become damn. He Saint John explicitly says, very
clear says he was never forsaken by the Father. Whereas you know, this
idea of the father damning the son is very much in you know, Reformed
theology. So I will I will kind of add that as an answer.
It's very clearly shows that this is not a concept or a belief in the
early Church fathers. And as you said, it's quite anti trinitarian. I
mean, it will also mean that the Sun damns undammed himself as well,
which again, is this kind of weird metaphysic behind it doesn't that separates the
trinity and ends up having a triteistic view where the father acts against the son
as if the son is a foreigner to the father, as if the son
is opposed to the father. This is as as you said. The other
options would be to say, oh, well, I guess Jesus was just
a human being who was punished in this way, But that would be Aryan
or Nestorian to have a split between between the subjects in Christ. So either
way you cut it, it's it's anti trinitarian or it's Christological nonsense. Yeah,
pretty much. So I think that sufficiently answers the question regarding this.
And as I said, people in the live chat, you can kind of
if you want us to talk about a specific topic, a specific question,
you can you can drop this. But if you want your question to be
definitely answered, and yes it's super chat, will be will guarantee that for
sure. A question that I kind of want to start with in this stream,
kind of like a more basic question, is well, I kind of
was thinking about maybe we can talk a little bit about just why people should
be Orthodox and also what are the issues that just people in general are facing,
specifically men are facing today. So the first question I had in mind
that we can kind of talk about because I kind of have my own thoughts
regarding this. But aside from the fact that it is true, because a
lot of people, especially when they get into ortodox, they don't really think
this way or any religion. They kind of they don't really think, oh,
it's true. They think of it as like, oh, how useful
it is or how based it is. Right, aside from the fact that
it is true, why should one become orthodox? And what does it do
to help you with the problems and the issues that we face in the world,
Like what what is your take on this? Yeah, I think for
guys like us, we're mainly concerned with, you know, this or that
issue. Is it true? Is it false? You know? If you
if you're really interested in what's true, then these kinds of things will definitely
resonate with you. But there's all these other things that go along with it,
right, I mean, it's not just a matter of objective truth and
a propositional knowledge. It's a question of really a renovation of your whole life.
And so in my experience, is something that is constantly sort of invading
and hammering at me when I am always wanting to go off in my own
direction and be kind of you know, sinful, be self absorbed, to
be you know, concerned with what I want. Like something will happen to
kind of constantly sort of break you out of that and bring you back to
confession, bring you back to communion. And a lot of that's providence.
A lot of it is you know, spiritual warfare. All that stuff's going
on. So I think that it's what am I trying to say, it's
like the true version of a twelve step self improvement program. Like it's not
I mean, I'm not trying to reduce it to the it's not just the
moral thing that makes you a better person or whatever. But like all the
red pill dudes, and when I see you know, the manosphere and the
Tate sphere and the you know, the people that hate them, and it's
like all the things that these people are grasping for that like they'll get a
little piece of the truth and then it's like that's it, right. So
I think that really what we have is is that the totality picture of what
all of these different spheres are looking for and grasping for. We have that,
and so why is it? Why would I be orthodox? Because I
mean beyond it being true, Like I can't see any other narrative or mythos
or story that actually makes sense of the past, my life, the future,
your life, right, what's going on in the world, your politics,
Like it really has the big picture explanation for everything. Um, it's
a like I said, it's going to force you to constantly work to improve
yourself in the most literal sense of the word. Um, it forces you
to reorganize your relationships, like how you deal with people. I don't mean
in the sense of like are you mean or are you nice? That's not
what I'm talking about. But I'm talking about dealing with people in the in
like in a just way. Are you being just to people? Are you
being loving in the true sense? Are you being humble in the true sense?
Because I think you know you and I have a conception of what it
is to be humble, what it is to be fair to people that's very
different than a lot of other people. And I think that they don't.
They see us as mean or as very matter of fact or whatever. But
for us like, that's that's how we should treat people, right, we
should treat people in a way that's loving but firm. Right. So I
think that a lot of people have different, just way off conceptions about how
we ought to operate with people, how we should treat people. And Orthodox
he really does reirient you to treat people in a different way. But that
doesn't mean that, oh that just you're not nice, like you're going to
be super nice. Now you're gonna be super this and you're gonna talk like
this to people. That's that's not what humility is. That's not what spirituality
is. That's a false affectation that people have to give the appearance of being
pious and humble, piety signaling and all this kind of stuff. And you
know, if you look in scripture, there's one text that I always come
to mind when I think about this. I think it's in Luke. It's
where Jesus says that the Pharisees they judge people on these kind of externals,
and he says that the things that are highly esteemed amongst men, he says,
are abominable to God. So what are the things that are highly esteemed
amongst men going along, to getting along, to get along, being nice,
right, this kind of stuff, And that's what Jesus says is you
know, God doesn't care for that. So I think what I'm getting at
is that in the long run, orthodoxy is it's going to constantly force you
to reorient yourself and everything in your life, Like the way that you relate
to people, the way you relate to God, the way that you look
at the world, your world or your paradigm, how you are trying to
better yourself. All those things come into play. And my life has definitely
been better. I mean, the struggles and the problems don't go away.
You get different problems. And you know, you and I did a stream
a long time ago that a lot of people really could have benefited from if
they had paid attention to it. We were talking about traps along the way,
because when you become Orthodox, it's not like, oh, Okay,
I'm Orthodox and everything's good. Now. There's a whole new set of traps
and temptations that you have that a lot of us have seen, a lot
of us have seen people go down. You know, Oh I'm gonna be
this radical, true Orthodox person. Oh I'm gonna go into Roman edies to
the extreme. Well I'm into David Billy Harden universalism or I'm into whatever else.
Right, there's all these different like pathways that will lead you off of
the correct path, and so many people get caught up in that, even
when you warn them about it like that, they go down these roads anyway,
that's not German really to your question, Um, I feel like I'm
rambling, but you know that that's that's the thoughts I have on the spot,
like what is it? Why? Why would I do it? Well,
beyond it being true, it's it's really like the healing of your your
whole being ultimately, but it's not something that happens right away. You know,
somebody was saying to me the other day, you were mean in a
comment to somebody on you on Twitter. So orthodox you hasn't changed you at
all in four or five or six years. And I'm like, so,
so if I make one mistake in a Twitter, which by the way,
I don't even think what I said was that mean, But let's say I
was being mean on a tweet, does that invalidate all of like, you
know what I mean, all of one's spiritual journey for five or six years.
That's crazy. Yeah, you're going to be battling the passions your whole
life. I mean there's monastics who said that, you know, they were
still struggling with lust to their death. Been m Yeah. A couple of
things I'd also like to add in regards to this is that for the last
couple like veeks, maybe even months, I've kind of been reading some like
texts and articles on virtuetix, and I think it's kind of is relevant on
this topic because a lot of people think when it comes to ethics and morality
and being a good person, they think, if you do X y Z
all actions, Oh can you hear me? Oh kay? Yeah, can
you meet your mike because I can hear it from the all right, So
I was got a call from an important thing and then this microphone has a
short in it. Go ahead, Sorry, okay, okay, Yeah.
I was just saying that it's a lot of people think that doing good things
is like a checklist X y Z checklist and all of that, But it's
about the character and disposition that you're that the things that you do reflects and
harmonizes fit. Right, So they think a lot of people just assume that
one action you do kind of just defines your whole character, right, whereas
really it's your character that defines your actions in the first place. It's the
other way around. And with Orthodoxy, it is that character, that disposition.
You're trying to restore that disposition to the virtues that God himself naturally has
that are communicated to you. And that's what repentance is. And this is
why people will be making mistakes, but they will also be trying to attain
the likeness of God through asceticism to uh, you know, fighting against the
passions and so and so forth. So there's this very wrong conception that even
a lot of ortodox people have regarding this. Another thing that I'd like to
know is that when it comes to what is a true religion what is not,
A lot of people look at it by oh, how base it is.
And in that sense, you know, Orthodoxy is good on that front.
But the issue is a lot of people they try to they try to
look at what the true religion is by looking at like the evil and the
demonic stuff in this world, and then they say to themselves, Okay,
which religion combats against this stuff the best? That's not the most correct way
to look at it. You'd rather want to look at it in this way.
You want to look at it in the way. Okay, what religion
allows me to engage me to combat against it in the best possible way.
Because a lot of people, for example, they look at the evil things
in the world, and then they become convinced that there's there's a there's a
god like Entertained for example, Right, but then he becomes Muslim because in
his opinion, the most sensible religion when it comes to morality and stuff like
that is isla. Well, one might, for example, a lot of
whatever choice he makes, right, whatever choice anyone makes, they might be
deceived by these demonic beings that they're trying to get away from. Right,
I mean, demonic stuff isn't just like in the movies where like you get
possessed or you know, even just jumps into your face and scares you and
does a little cool jump scared. That's not really, that's not really how
it works. It's deception, right, And so people can be deceived if
they act on their own accord instead of protecting themselves against these influences. And
so this I think is something that a lot of people miss out on then
comes to looking at, Okay, what's the true fate? Why should I
be in this revision? And so I will say, and I will definitely
agree with you, and I will kind of add that the reason why one
should be Orthodox is because Orthodox he really gears you against the demonic forces,
demonic delusions, and aside from being the truth, it is the one religion
that allows you to do this and allows you to develop and even claims to
develop you into having the same virtues and character that God himself has, which
is very radical to to say, but this is just an affirmation of man
being made not only in the image but also in the likeness of God,
and at the end of the life of man is to be deified by the
grace of God. Right, so that Orthodox is really even the only religion
that even claims to do something like this. And this is how I think
people should kind of look at it what it can really do for them in
the in the sense that it really matters, not in the sense of,
oh, this religion is going to make me a lot of money. Well,
this religion is going to really develop your soul in the property because your
body is going to die your earthly you know, the money you have on
the earth is going to go away, but your soul is going to you
know, still going to continue living. And the kind of the treasures that
you have in your soul, that's what's going to matter for it turn too,
really and that's going to define the kind of character you have both bodily
and spiritually. Is kind of how I will how I will see this.
Yeah, I think the you know, Islam is a good example of a
situation where I was thinking about this the other day, Like, it doesn't
it doesn't heal you in any way internally. There's no notion of like the
interior man being cleansed and the interior man, you know, ridding himself of
vice and attaining virtues. But you know, one thing that Jesus is always
concerned with, like I was saying in that text and loop, is the
internal state. Like you can fool everybody with doing a bunch of externals.
Right. You can externally appear to be pious, and you can externally tweet
about your prayers and how much you pray, and you can tweet your public
prayers all day long. And even though Jesus says, don't do this.
He says, to go and pray in your inner room or in your heart,
right in your news. Then how how is that religion going to do
anything other than make me into some kind of weird hypocrite right where I'm just
doing my religious actions for worldly status because I think it'll make me cooler,
get me, you know, four wives. Whatever Islam thinks right that Allah
will bless me and I'll have a lot of money, or I don't know
what, I'm a shake with a bunch of oil platforms. I don't know.
But none of that really changes or effects or helps you in an interior
way. So it's not that those things are wrong, right, there's nothing
wrong with exterior blessings or the world or anything like that. That would be
nastic than going in a different direction. And a lot of Protestants get into
this really superpietistic mode where it's all about you know, they're just sitting around
obsessing all day along about their inner devotion and you know, their inner state.
And to me, that's also kind of a weird opposite extreme. So
I think that the classical practice of Orthodoxy gives you a notion of the body
is good but it has a place in a hierarchy. The soul is more
important than the body, and the soul should steer the body. But that
doesn't make the body bad, right, But in Islam, there's not really
any notion of this healing of the interior man and it of the vices and
attaining the virtues. So it's just odd to me that you have the whole
religion based around this this idea, and to me it would just it just
kind of it's sort of like the you know, other quote monotheistic religions.
They just create people who are externally doing things and they never internally heal.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. If you got a new super check
question by Joshua is Sonza five dollars think you, josh He asked, I
recently heard of oc A pre say the current cannon was not affirmed by Nicki
Michical Council and certain Russian Orthodox churches have a different cannon. Is this true?
I think that you are definitely the expert on church of cannons on that
front, but it was them on the canon of scripture, as you talking
about scripture. Canon of Scripture, I definitely, yeah, I mean there's
in the Orthodox view, there's a little more flexibility on this. So like
the some of the Russian Bibles have i think one of the extra books of
Esdras, so like they have like third Asras or something. So, but
it's not that big of a deal because I mean the Orthodox Church that doesn't
happen, don't have a Protestant view of the canon, where like there has
to be this one statement of a canon from a list of books from the
council, and then everything else, everything you know, hinges on that.
Because for one, if you think about it, if the cannon is somewhat
flexible for the first six centuries, and then then obviously we're we believe that
people can be you know, saved even if they have you know, one
extraitutor canonical book, or they don't even believe the durecanonical books. It's not
you know, Saint Jerome didn't think they were canonical, but he's still a
saint. So I'm not saying that today you're free to do whatever you want
with the canon. But if the Russian Orthodox Church, if Russian Bibles have
an extra Duto canonical text, I don't see why that that's any any any
different. So but beyond that, I'm not sure exactly what he means by
that the current canon is not the current cannon is affirmed by North by the
echemenical councils. So that's not true. It's the sixth Council. I think
it's the Trollo Council lists and then it's appended to the sixth Council and then
restated in the seventh. So there is a list of canon that the Orthodox
Church accepts. But if there's some tradition, you know where the Russians,
for example, have this extra Book of Estros, it's not that big of
a deal. Yeah, And I will also well, one thing I will
kind of add is that at the end of the day, the kind of
the doctrine that is manifested and exponses it is to the Church, because the
Church is the pilled in ground of truth. So this this explains the distinction
in the understanding that we have from the various different other Protestant sex on the
cannon and h right now, just another five dollars, super Church nates tender
asks Christ has ascended, truly He has ascended? Are there dogmatic prohibitions on
icons of the Father? The Moscow Sennot of sixteen sixty six just is this
but some stay was valid invalid. The main argument I will kind of say
is that, well, sat John Damascus says, we will sin if you
made depictions of the Father in his person. The Moscow Synad does address this,
but at the same time believe that synod also was against the Old Right
like completely, and we can kind of see that's not the case because we
have canonical old Right. But how will you answer this question? I have
I have a stream on this with Snick, But yeah, I think so
it's true that the Moscow Synod is not an acumenical Council, but the theology
that it exposits in its doctrines of the icons is correct because it just reflects
what's in the Seventh Documenical Council. And the book to read on this is
the Ospensky Losky Book, Volume two. There's multiple chapters in that that are
really good. So yeah, this question gets asked a lot, and I
think I can shed some light on this to help out. So basically,
the teaching of the Seventh Council, reflecting what John Damascus says, is that
you cannot make images of the hypostasis of the Father. So that's correct,
we don't do that. We can't do that because Jesus says no man has
seen the Father at any time, so we can't do that. So,
in other words, this is very important against Roman Catholic theology because a lot
of Roman Catholic icons, especially ones that were intended to teach the philioque by
they were promoted by Jesuits and they were pushed into Orthodox lands. This is
actually part of the reason the Moscow icon sent had happened, is that Jesuits
were pushing these weird icons of like old man the Father and then Jesus and
then the Holy Spirit, like being sent by both of them. Right,
Well, first of all, the Father didn't become incarnate, and so it
doesn't make any sense to picture him as an old man because he's not incarnate,
And to picture him as an old man would be to suggest that he
was incarnate, but he wasn't. So nobody sees the Father at any time.
The only legitimate icon of the Father is the Son, and Jesus says
that anyone who seeing me as seeing the Father Hebrew says, he is the
icon of the Father. So how does this make sense. Well, the
only legitimate portrayal that we can do of the Father is not just the Son,
but the energetic manifestations that are proper either to the Father or to the
Holy Spirit. Because the Moscow Icon Sentoate says the exact same thing about the
Holy Spirit as it says about the Father. The hypostasis of the Holy Spirit
is never incarnate. But what we do see in scripture are the energetic manifestations
proper to the Spirit, namely tongues of fire and the presence as a dove.
So sometimes you'll notice that we could speak of the voice that appears at
the baptism of Christ, or that they hear the voice of the Father,
because that's an energetic manifestation proper to the Father. And so we can talk
about the voice, we can talk about the dove, we can talk about
the tongues of fire, but none of those are the representation of the person
of the Father or the Holy Spirit. The only person that can be represented
is the Son because he became incarnate. So the icons of the Son,
according to Saint Theodor the Studite and the Seventh Council, they do pick out
the hypostasis of the Son, but the Ancient of Days is a unique case
too, where it's not the it is the person of the father. The
father will notice, it's the per ass the son. So that's why we
can do the representation of the person of the Father through the son. In
the Ancient of Days, it's not it's not an old man, it's a
Christ's image that we see in Ezekiel and in Revelation one, right, Christ
appears to John and John doesn't really recognize him because it says, you know,
he was like a he has this angelic look where he has white hair
and you know, he looks like this kind of like the way Ezekiel describes
the one like a son a band that's writing the chariot. That's Christ in
his full glory and divinity being being manifested. And so it's okay to portray
Christ in that way in the Ancient of Days as the image of the Father.
So there's some people have pointed out that sometimes icons can portray the idea
of a thing and not the person itself. And so that's another way that
we can speak of, like, for example, the words of Scripture.
Fah er, right, that's not an incur that's not an image of the
person. It's just a word that depicts or picks out the idea of the
father, and that's very important to our iconographic theology. So I think the
theological reasoning of the Moscow icons Ino is absolutely correct. And when you look
at that book by Lasky Alspensky, you you'll see why they did this council
because in that chapter there's a whole bunch of heterodox icons that they give examples
of. There's like five of them, and they were getting really popular in
Orthodox and ends at the prompting of Jesuits. Jesuits knew what they were doing
when they were trying to get Orthodox lands to accept the Philioque by these ridiculous
just they're just creepy, weird icons and and you can tell they're heterodox icons
because they don't make any sense. It's like an old man holding Jesus holding
the Holy Spirit. It's like, that's that's not the Trinity. Yeah.
I think the point about ancient of these is especially important because I think one
mistake that people do is that they kind of confuse the symbolic manifestation that icons
depict and the person that is being depicted in the icons well, and the
point is very important because this relates to the sacred heart stuff as well,
right there, ven Weed, you know there The reason why, right,
the reason why Christ can be depicted is because he's circumscribed in this humanity.
But what is being depicted is not a generic human nature with a couple of
accidental properties added on top of it. It is the person Jesus Christ.
Right. In the same wave, when we depict, for example, Saint
Paul, it doesn't have to necessarily look like Saint Paul has to pick out
hypostatic properties of Saint Paul, for example, that he's the author of the
fourteen Epistles, right, and so there will be some icons that will have
like fourteen Epistles that Saint Paul is holding to point out that you know,
this is indeed Saint Paul, and in things of this nature. And so
it depends on the distinction between nature and person also energies, right, and
so the Ancient of days and the Father is speaking, the Holy Spirit descending
as a dove, the tongues of fire. All of these will be examples
of the manifestation of God in the proper mode, in accordance with the person
that is being manifested within the energies right, So with the Holy Spirit,
right, he is being manifested in the form of a dove right in baptism,
to signify that the Holy Spirit descends to deify the baptismal waters, that
we will be part of right as we die in Christ. So I think
again, as he pointed out, I think a lot of people kind of
confuse these categories. I would be very interested though, to see I don't
think it will be possible in this treae, but I it will be pretty
interesting to see the examples of the heretical icons. I'm actually like to grab
it because there's a couple that are really illustrative the books right over there.
But yeah, to make your point, right, So if you look at
Saint Theodore's book on the Holy Icons, you know when he when he argues
that theology that gets accepted at the Seventh Council, he points out what you
said, which is that the uncircumscribable right would be, for example, the
divine essence right, the mind essence is uncircumscribable. He also says the Father
is uncircumscribable. But what happened in the in the and ultimately in themselves.
The persons would be circumscribable as well, except that the Sun willed to become
circumscribable, and he willed to do that via taking on human nature. So
the divine person of the Sun assumes a circumscribable nature which is unique to him,
which has its own unique idiomata, which is, you know, Jesus
had this kind of a nose, and he had this kind of a beard,
and you know, and you look, when you look at Orthodox iconography,
he typically kind of looks the same. And I tend to think that
that's because Orthodox iconography really is depicting what Jesus look like, and that we
have maintained that tradition going back to the early days. So my view,
as I understand what the icon Council is saying, is that they really are
balancing the Seventh Council. They're really balancing out Trinitarian and Christological theology with iconography.
And as you pointed out, it rests on the essence energy distinction.
I mean, it rests on other things too, like there's things between between
nature and person. But when you read Saint Theodore's TRiDaS, it's like it's
all the stuff that you and I are always talking about. It's the stinction
between nature and person. It's the essencenergy distinction. It's God has one will
because he has one nature. And say, all of that is in that
book. It's also in John Damascus Is on the Divine Images too, except
that John Damascus is is he's more interested in type prototype relations and it's a
little more philosophical, whereas Saint Theodore's book is more like, well, here's
our tradition, here's the crystological theology, here's the trinitarian theology. Uh,
this is what it means to say that the human nature is circumscribable. But
in a sense you could say that energetic manifestations are also in a sense circumscribable,
because energetic manifestation is just what we're talking about when we talk about these
theophan needs. Right, that theophanies are the energetic manifestations of the person of
the son in the Old Testament, right, the Angel of the Lord is
present in a preincarnate, energetic way such that it can be in a sense
circumscribed. And so you know, we see we think of the cloud and
the sea, the cloud and the pillar, the pillar and the cloud of
the fire. We think of you know, the glory cloud that comes down
in the temple. I mean, these are theophanic energetic manifestations, and they're
not the essence of God. They're not the divine person, it's himself,
but they're manifestations of the vine person. Right now, I'm some of the
cloud in the case of the Angel, the Lord, that is the second
Person himself present in an energetic way. So again, remember that that's none
of that stuff is divorced from the iconographic theology. That's that's being argued at
the Seventh Council and at the Moscow icon Sentods and when we understand the essencenery
distinction and all that. Right, just think of this basic point everybody always
makes about like in Roman Catholic imagery, the halo is above the head,
right, it's not touching the head because that's the supernatural, beatific vision grace
of the next life, right, because in this life you just get a
supernatural created grace. In the Roman Catholic system, in the Orthodox view,
the icon is behind the head because they're actually participating in the uncreated energies.
That's the whole point of the halo. It's not above the heads completely ridiculous.
Right, So let me show you a couple of these heterodox icons that
the Moscow Sonata was trying to come back. Yeah. While you do that,
I'll just feat some of the other super chats as well. Rachel Wilson,
thank you for the five dollars super chat. Thank you both for these
valuable videos that help people understand propertyology, or for both your videos to people
all the time. Yeah, I see that. I appreciate it, Rachel,
thank you for the support. Frankie D ten dollars super chat. Jay,
my apologies for not being able to send super chats for a while.
I might have to set up stream labs on desktop to get it to work,
because on mobile mobile it has really been a pain. God bless well
that, um is you want to see one? Yeah, sure, I
appreciate that. Frankie D. Yeah, I don't know. I never tried
stream labs on mobile. It seems to work pretty good for me though,
um on the computer. See. So here's this one as famous. It's
called the paternity and and uh, this is an icon that was being pushed
in Orthodox lands and you can I mean, I think if you're Orthodox you'll
immediately see the problem with this icon and you can look these up. I
mean they're pretty famous. This was called the Paternity. Yeah, and this
is the problem because number one, uh, the that's a baby Jesus.
Okay, Now the Father shouldn't be holding a baby Jesus, right, I
mean it's number one. It's like didd was was baby Jesus? Uh?
Did he incarnate from the Father? No, he's from the Virgin Mary,
right, So that's weird first of all. Secondly, again, the person
of the Father is not an old man. He's not incarnate, right.
And in the Ancient of Day's icon, you'll you'll recall that it's not the
the It is depicting the idea of the Father, but it's not an old
man. It's Christ. The Ancient of Days is Christ. Because Christ is
the image of the Father. That's very important. Okay. So then the
other thing that this icon has, which is problematic obviously is the philioque.
Right. The Father is sending the Holy Spirit together with the Son, and
so it's intended to convey the double hyposthetic procession. So that's one icon that
you can see is obviously a problem. And remember an orthodox theology, it's
these are not just pretty pictures. They're not just paintings, they're theology texts.
They're teaching us theology. Right, So let's see there's another. They've
got several in here. Let me sit, let me find another good one.
Yeah, well, well yeah, all right. So this one,
as you can see, is a problem too, because this one is called
the New Testament trinity. And this is a lot of these are either uniate
or just Jesuit right, creation icons. So here the Father and the Son
together are like equals, and then who's in the middle, the Holy Spirit.
Yeah. So again it's just basically double hypostidic procession trying to be taught
there. Um, so you get the idea, Yeah, and I can
I mention one more thing? Sure, sure, go ahead. Here's one
called Coronation of the Virgin, which is also you'll notice Roman Catholic theology,
where the Father and the Son together again, the Holy Spirit is coming as
a result of the Father and the Son together upon Mary. Just really weird,
bizarre looking theology. But you got to have the old Man and you
gotta have Jesus. Right. We don't do that. We don't have old
Man and then Jesus. Right, the Father and the Son It's not like
that the ancient of Day's icon is the son with an older look, because
that's what John sees in John one, and in John is referring back to
what's in Ezekiel one, Ezekiel nine, and ten. Does that make sense
what I'm saying? Like John is seeing the sun in his glorified state,
and he has an appearance of the ancient of days? Right, he looks
like the Father, but it's the son bearing the image of the father.
Does that make sense? Yeah? Definitely, And I guess I kind of
said might be. I think you pretty much covered the entirety of the stuffy.
I mean, you might as well just clip this section and just posted
on YouTube. Was that perfect? Well? You know what we should because
this every like every time there's a discussion that comes up, right, like,
what's the ancient of days? Can we depict the Father? I mean
yeah, this comes up all the time. I'm trying to find an ancient
of Day's icon that is Orthodox, and you can see how. I think
there is one on Mount at Us that people will usually refer to. Are
you thinking about that one? There is a there is one. I mean,
there is an Orthodox Ancient of Day's icon um saying I want to say
somebody like, uh, there's also the talks about it being fine and he
says it is the Father. And there's also the Chris cru icon that people
refer to because it's a miracle working right, same principle there. And there's
another fine one that's not Roman Catholic on here. Yeah, and there are
also other this one would be Orthodox right like so here, I don't know
who this is or where it's from, but it it's basically making the point
that, uh, you'll notice that that's Christ. Right, it's a reference
to the Father, but it's Christ as the person of the Father, right,
mean, Christ himself is the icon of the person of the Father.
It is not the hypostasis of the Father that's depicted in the icon Jesus the
way that Ezekiel and John C. Jesus warrified one. It's it's the idea
of the Father conveyed by the person of the Son. Thank you well,
perfect, I think that's the that's available. Good and tug Nazi. I
will definitely get to your question. I just your super chat. It is
just that I want to kind of get to the super chat for other people
PBF five gods subject, thank you, thanks for the great trap brothers appreciate
it. And before all right, So I'll first get to Tuck Nasty's question.
He asked current thoughts on farther Stephen Freeman, So who those who don't
know. I guess there's a history between you two because father to Stephen Freeman
used to well, I don't know if he still promotes, but he used
to promote this idea that the Old Testament isn't really talking about real events that
actually happened. Rather a lot of it was just merely allegory and not real
history, whereas the Fathers treat the Old Testament as a history text even though
it has allegory symbolical events. We don't deny this, but it also this
scraps real events that happened in history. So I guess you know what are
your current taughts? And fought to Stephen Freeman. Well, I've never had
a dispute with him, but Jay is the one that had so years ago.
This was resulted from actually a priest was telling me that I should respond
to as so people think I just go around trying to pick fights or something.
Actually there was another priest who was messaging me saying, hey, would
you reply to him on his blog on ancient faith because he was I mean
it got pretty extreme at one point. I mean this is like six years
ago, so I don't remember all the details of what his post was,
but it was something like a lot of these Old Testament story It was basically
a kind of a loose originism. I don't mean that he affirms origins universalism,
but that many of the events accounted recounting in the Old Testament are not
historical. And so the discussion got into things like, well, do you
think Adam and Eve were historical? Do you think this or that? The
problem with this is that you know, the New Testament in many many places
speaks and presupposes that these people were actual historical people. The iconography teaches that
they were actual historical people. I am in need, right, David Solomon,
Right. So, like the problem is that you open the floodgates when
you start saying that, oh, well, we don't have to believe that
these are historical events, right, we do. In fact, there's a
great quote always read from Saint Cyril of Alexandria. It's actually it's in the
Genesis Creation Early man text by feather stuff from Rose. Here it is.
Here's what Saint Cyril says on this. He says, questions in Joshua or
now excuse me, that's a previous comment. Saint Cyril wrote that you cannot
apprehend the scriptures correctly if one attempts to contemplate the spiritual meaning without respecting the
actual historical meaning. Quote those who reject the historical meaning of the God inspired
scriptures as something obsolete or avoiding the avoiding the ability to comprehend it rightly according
to the proper manner the things written in them. For indeed, spiritual contemplation
is good and is profitable, and it enlightens the eyes of reasoning, especially
well it reveals the wisest of things. But whenever some historical events are presented
us by holy scripture, in that instance, a useful search into the historical
meaning is appropriate in order that the God inspire scriptures might be revealed to be
selvific and beneficial to us in every way. That's commentary on Isaiah. So
he's specifically talking about the events in Isaiah right Old Testament texts, and he's
saying that you can't deny the historical reality upon which the allegory or upon which
the spiritual meaning is predicated. And by the way, he's not the only
one that says that. So, this idea that you could sacrifice the historical
meaning to save a deeper allegorical spiritual meaning right at the cost of getting rid
of the historical, is actually what's denied. And by the way, Saint
Maximust Confessor says the exact same thing too. You have the Atholassium volume.
There's an introductory essay written by Father Cosmos, and at the end of that
introductory essay he says that same Maximus, never sacrifice the historical reality for the
allegorical or the spiritual. And that's a mistake to do so. In fact,
if you look in Galatians, for Paul makes his allegory on the basis
of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah having been actual people. The allegory would
make no sense if they weren't historical people. And so this is the quadriga.
This is the four senses of scripture. The four senses of scripture are
never intended to deny the first sense. In fact, the other three senses
are built on the first sense of scripture, the grammatical historical. That's the
basis for the allegorical, the tropological, the anagogical. So it's really odd
to me that anybody who you know, thinking about the historical, because these
people always say, well, you don't know the church fathers. The church
Fathers use symbolism and allegory. Well, they don't even realize that the four
senses of scripture that they are using presuppose the first sense being the literal historical.
And that's just standard scholarship on anybody that would talk about the four senses
of scripture that comes out of the Early and Middle Ages, and it's it's
codified in the Middle Ages, in the East end the West, by the
way I mean, it's it's pretty universally used by the by the Middle Ages,
by the East end the West, to speak of the four senses of
scripture. Another point too, is that you know, he was for the
Freeman in that those actually had written many articles. It wasn't just one.
He had written many articles about well, the Old Testament isn't historical, and
it was even verging on sort of quasi Marcianite statements about how you, well,
this God, the Old Testament he's kind of mean, and you know,
this doesn't make sense that he would operate this way and telling, you
know, the Angel of the Lord going before the armies of Israel to destroy
and cleanse the Promised Land. Jesus would never do that, you see.
So you see the re well, that's Marcian. And so when I read
Urinais against heresies, the funny thing is that when I responded, I did
two videos responding to him back six years ago. Urinais uses the very examples
that he was giving and says that these are historical events and if you deny
these, you would be following Marcion. So I'm not people gotten mad at
me, like, oh, you're so mean, who were you to do?
I'm only disagreeing with what he's saying in these essays that I don't see
any church fathers teaching this. The only church father I see teaching this is
Origin, and Origin's view of sacrifice in the historical reality for the allegory is
condemned in the confession of Saint Sophronius at the sixth Council explicitly. M Yeah.
And one thing I'd like to add about seeing clearly is that it's not
just comment here on Isaiah. He says this in the introduction to the Glyphia
and the Pentitic that the historical sense is what gives foundation to the spiritual sense.
So with without the historical sense, you don't have a spiritual sense.
That that's as strong as an endorsement to an in vindication of the Old Testament
being a history book, a history book that actually writes about real events that
did happen. Um. Now one can argue abill some of the events that
happened, you know, the whole. If you you know, some people
are interesting the whole, like Nephilim discourse and Old Diver. They might say,
oh, well, it's not just real people that you know are being
bored against. These are actually like you know, demi human. You know,
there's there's that interpretation, right, So like you can make that kind
of an argument, But what you can't make as an argument is that,
oh, well, this doesn't happened. This was just kind of like it.
It's just it's just supposed to tell us a story, right, and
to his credit, right, And obviously you're not like fans of like super
big fans of Ancient Fate radio and all of that, But to his credit,
um far as Stephen de Young does actually defend the history of the Old
Testament, right, So, uh, to some people that might be interested
in that, they might kind of like be encouraged at the very least to
see that there's still some people that have a sensible view of scriptures. Yeah.
I mean. It's the other thing too, is that you know,
I've read enough of the Church Fathers over the years to know very well that
there are countless quotes I'm not just quote mining, but I mean with with
the proper context where the Church Fathers do talk about the inspiration and inerrancy of
the scriptures. Uh, you know, even even Saint Jerome, but he's
frequently speaks this way. And so you know, again, I want to
remind people that if you have the the the Fathers of the Church at the
Lastum, if you go to pages forty five, forty six, forty seven
in Father Cosmos, the famous Maximus Scholar, he will sit here and give
you an explanation of the four senses of scripture, and he will talk about
how the purpose of this is to get you, too, area to contemplation
of the scriptures and their true meaning. According to Saint Maximus, which is
ultimately to contemplate the logi of Scripture, which is to point you to Christ.
But in this four or five page section he explains very clearly that Maximus's
notion of moving up, you could say in the contemplation from the literal historical
right. It's grounded on the literal historical right. And so there's there's other
mistakes going on too in this where they will call fundamentalism believing in the grammatical
historical sense of the text, that's not what fundamentalism is. Fundamentalism is a
movement of Protestant evangelicals in the twenty early twentieth century who hammered out five basics
or fundamentals that they believed in that they wouldn't compromise on. So that's the
actual origin of the term fundamentalism. And by the way, the five fundamentals
are pretty much things that we would agree like the Trinity, the virgin birth,
the deed of Christ. Those are the fundamentals that Protestant fundamentalists stated they
believed in when the Protestant churches and Evangelical churches were being heavily liberalized in the
nineteen twenties, thirties, and forties. So that's what fundamentalism is. That
is a question of lack of faith in the Bible and in revelation. That
is different from Hermanutics, which recognizes the four senses of Scripture in terms of
exegesis. Two totally different questions. But the people who want to make you
know the religion more palatable to atheists and two evolutionary proponents like they're always interested
in conflating these things and acting like fundamentalism has something to do with hermonutics.
Now it could, because you could have fundamentalists who do stupid exegesis. But
those are two different questions. I mean, it's it's just a fundamental level
confusion. And as I understand it, the reason that father Freeman kind of
had a lot of these assumptions. I don't know him, so I've only
interacted with him seven years ago on that blog, and I'm not trying to
be mean to him or rude to him. I'm not saying anything bad about
him personally. I don't know him. But the my understanding was that he
had come I think from an Anglican background, and a lot of people who
come out of Anglicanism or Episcopelianism into Orthodoxy. They're trained in you know,
liberal institutions, and then they just come into Orthodoxy thinking, oh orthodox,
He's like this more mystical version of an older mystical version of Episcopelianism, and
I can keep all of my textual liberalism. And it's just it's not that's
not honest with what the church fathers teach about the texts. You can you
will not find church fathers saying that the texts are not historical. I mean
that's severely in the minority. Okay, you might find Nissa, Saint Gregonissa
agreeing in a few places with origin, but other than Saint Gregonissa, no,
In fact, a lot of these people lie too. They'll take Saint
Gregor Palamas, where he talks about places in Genesis, in Genesis one,
they'll say when he's talking about the creation of the angelic aon, they'll take
that and lie and say that he's saying that Genesis isn't historical. Total nonsense.
He's talking about the creation of the angelic realm not being in history because
they're created in the spiritual realm angels, right, they're not created in time.
And so you see how people are are crafty and they lie and they
say, Aha, see Saint Gregor Palamas is denying sixth day creation and then
he turns around it teaches sixth day creation. It's just total dishonesty about these
people. Yeah, definitely on I think I think the main problem with this
kind of like allegorization because a lot of people think but like they kind of
have this dialectical view of like, Okay, if you're not a fun you
know, if you're not having the symbolic logical view that you're supposed to have,
then the opposite is you just take everything at face value and you'd end
up defending indefensible things and that this is kind of just you know, it's
you don't believe in bory or the spiritual sense and you think that everything is
literal. There's a thousand year premillennial kingdom and you're a dispensationalist. This is
totally silly, right, It's just unnecessary, right it you know, both
approaches can be wrong, and it doesn't mean that just one extreme being rejected,
it doesn't mean that the other extreme must be endorsed. Right. It's
not like I have to choose between documentary hypothesis higher critical liberalism, Jesus quest
on the one hand, and then over here I have to be John Hagey
dispensationalist. You know, thousand year kingdom, dragons flying around in space,
seven day avenues. Literally, they act like that's the two choices you have,
no, Yeah, and it's it's similar to kind of like the temptation
that people had in the fifty sixth centuries. But like on the one hand,
they saw the an off site extreme and then they thought, Okay,
if you're not gonna be an officide, you're gonna be nestorian then. But
orthodoxy just tells you, actually, both of these extremes are wrong. There
is a proper royal path in this and that's what got bad news for the
allegorizers to the extreme. And by the way, allegory is a valid fourth
sense of scripture, right or second sense. However you list them, it
doesn't really matter. If you read the Aspensky Lasky book on icons, the
chapter on Hassikia and icon and particularly the chapter dealing with the energy's doctrine and
icons. Okay, this whole chapter where Saint Gregory Palamas is discussed in how
iconography is tied into the US and synergy distinction. I got bad news for
those people because Palamos argues that icons are not symbols. Icons are conveying realities,
and he argues that everything that you see in an icon is a historical
reality. That's his theological argumentation. So unless you want to deny icons,
which is ultimately what the originist view does. People don't even remember if you
read the Mayador text on business he theology, the chapter on monks and humanists,
he says that the motivation behind iconoclasm is platonism and originism. Why would
platonism and originism be the motivation behind the attack on icons? Very simple,
because origins presuppositions are the denigration of history and of time. That's why he
has a problem with the body. Okay, how could the body be resurrected
as the body? It's not good. It's bad. History is bad.
We got a flight flee from history and from time. Those are prisons platos.
So the body is a tomb, Time is a prison. Because that's
gnostick, that's Platonic doctrine. That's not our doctrine. Because Jesus stepped into
time and he assumed and deified actual human nature, the same body that we
have, the same nature that we have. So iconography is an affirmation of
the grammatical historical events. Palamas says, they are real historical events in icons
and if you say that they're not, you're a neo platonist and you're actually
condemned by the Seven Council. Yep, and let me let's see, all
right, another super chat. Think you jacked, meister shul I mean,
it's going to be kind of difficult to go through all of this kind of
stuff, but really appreciate you. All of you guys were supporting the stream.
He sends five dollars. And I guess I suppose this is a question
for me, because he says Christ is ascended, truly, he has ascended
out of curiosity. Do you think he will ever do an updated refutation of
the fake Orthodox? Right? So the first thing I will say is,
I think what I already did is already sufficient, and it's only kind of
gets into the key things. And I don't think if I updated it,
I will kind of just say the same thing in a refined language, so
to speak. But I also I could kind of just get into the basics
of it right now and kind of just explain why it is a nonsense cool
position. And so for those who don't know, we're referring to the old
calendar. Is they called themselves genuine Orthodox, they called themselves true Orthodox,
right, So they have these various different names. They tend to not be
in community each other. So these are just different splinter groups. And the
basis for their separation is initially the adoption of the new calendar. They claimed
this was uncanonical. The evidence that they use was the Cigilion of sixteen eighty
three. It turns out that was not actually the Canada they're talking about.
What doesn't actually exist. What is condemned is using the new calendar, Pascal
calendar. But the new calendar that we use in the Orthodox Church uses the
old calendar, Pascal calendar, right, which is why we have not only
a different Easter to the Roman Catholics, you know, unless you have times
in twenty twenty five or they happen to coincide. This is also why we
have different days on Ascension and Pentecost, right, This is because we use
a different Pascal calendar. So you're not condemned by the council. We don't
do that. We don't do that right at the very least, not now
or anything like that. I don't think it's going to happen in the future.
So that's the first thing I will will note is that there's no canonical
basis for the initial separation. But then the reason became all because you're ecumenist
and your bishops preach heresy bear headed, right, And they use the first
second Council that Saint photis presided Canon fifteen about how it is valid to separate
from communion from bishops that teach heresy bear headed, and they make it seem
as if you're obligated to do that, and there's this kind of mechanic behind
it they have in their mind where if you have a bishop that is preaching
heresy bear headed, then he basically poisons the communion that of the other bishops
that he's a part of. Right, So it's not just Patriarch Bartolomy that
they will say is a problem. Well, the other bishops are in community
with Bartolomy, is what they will argue, So you shouldn't be in communit
with any of these churches. So there's two extreme positions. One of them
say, well, the ortolac Shi still has grace, so they will recognize
that we have grace, they will just say we shouldn't. We are not
the true churcher, we should not be you know they you know, they
should basically fix. So that's kind of just in more of a mogic position.
Then there's the extreme position that just says, Okay, the Ortolast Church
doesn't even have grace, they don't have any any kind of grace. They
don't have any baptism and a Eucharius anything of that sort. So the problem
with this communal view is that it is ahistorical. Right, There's many instances
of bishops preaching heresy bearheaded where the other bishops who are completely a verefit and
they still remain in community with them. The source is an example of this.
Another example i'd like to use, and this is an example I didn't
use in this video, but I can. I can use it in this
stream is actually ten fifty four because until the thirteenth or fourteenth century, Alexandria
was in community with the Roman Catholic Church. Now we will say the Roman
Catholic Church were heretics even you know after that time, would you say that
the patriarch of Alexandra was Roman Catholic or would you say they were Orthodox?
Right? I mean, that's that's a question mark. We will as Orthodist
Christians say that they were Orthodox Christians that were still in you know, still
trying to hold onto the unity of the Church, and until you know,
read the Council of Forlorence, that kind of just went to vent. Right.
But that's that's a historical fact, and and it's it's a historical fact
that challenges the ecclesiology of the so called true Orthodox position. So the true
and the problem with again with Cam fifteen of the first Second Council is that
all it tells you is that if if a bishop is preaching heresy bareheaded,
you can separate community with that bishop from that bishop and you don't get condemned
as a result of it. But it doesn't say you have to do this
right. So the monks that Constantinople separated from community the stories, they didn't
recognize him as a bishop, but there were many bishops in other parts of
Christian or they were fully are of what the stories were saying. Antioch strad
Up defended these stories for until for thirty three. Patriarch of Antioch Stride up
defending their stories. Everyone was in community Antioch two, and even they defended
him even after the Atturnycommendical Council, right even after the eclesial condemnation, they
still defended him. And the churches were still in community with Antioch. So
what does that mean. It just means that they were still part of the
Orthodox show there, the sacraments were still being recognized, they were still in
community the rest of Orthodox churches. They were still part of the Orthodox Church.
There was not a full blown schism. And so the importance of maintained
communion in spite of these wrong things that happened, and a lot of people
talk about this is to preserve the unity of the church, right, This
is what's important. So if you talk about like Moscow Constantinople, one thing
that we can talk about, although there's an egoistic separation, there's a recognition
of sacraments from both sides, right, and this kind of preserves the unity
of the church in that regard as well. So a lot of people had
this Roman Catholic understanding of schism or like you're thrown out of the church and
that's so it's over. You know, you're gone you're out, like completely,
you're completely gone out veryas in your talk Church. It's it's in degrees,
right, and it's it moves over time, right, it progresses over
time. So that's a vast difference between the two positions, and from my
observation, the so called Shortsdox position is trying to maintain Orthodox ecclesiology with Roman
Catholic pizzub positions. I'm not saying they're Roman, obviously they're not trying to
be Roman Catholic, but I do think they that they want to or not
have Roman Catholic presuppositions in their ecclesialogy. Ing you want to add to Jay
before we move on to the next but no, I mean I think you
nailed it there. I mean it's this attitude of like, uh, everything
is sort of like a light switch, like it just flips, or like
as soon as somebody says something heretical, the light swift slitch switches flip and
then everything is just the grace is shut off like some kind of machinery,
you know, like the electricity is no longer there, and it's just kind
of it's completely a historical and unrealistic when it comes to how the church operates
in history, there's a nautical procedure that occur, like phases that occur for
things like the excommunication of patriarchs and bishopers and so forth. It's not this
overnight thing. It's it's true that people have in I mean, it's a
case by case basis what I'm trying to say. You can't like apply this
one size fits all to where the light switch goes out and then everybody's lost
grace. It just doesn't make sense. It's in it. What it does
is that it's realizing real problems but then having a bad solution to real problems.
And we don't see in church history saints setting up parallel ecclesiological uh you
know structures. Parallel ecclesiological structures is what schism is. So yeah, precisely,
so I can be, you know, I'm sympathetic at the very least
to the teo positions that still actually say, you know, you guys are
still part of the true Church. It's just that this needs to be.
But there's very few of them that actually genuinely holds that view, and the
ones that do end up becoming orthodox anyway. That's kind of my observation both
from the history of the church. Right, we have a lot of saints
that used to be Old calendaris and they became Orthodox because they saw pretty much
very similar things about the same things about the ecclesiological problems of this kind of
position, how it's really a dead end position at the end of the day.
Another question from Ilius is he asked, is architecture as important as iconography
in the Orthodox Church? I'm aware of the vision for Agia Sophia and the
Easter pate pointing altars any more points. So the first the main survival kind
of give is that, well, there's a lot of precedents from the Old
Testament liturgical structure itself, right, whether the user of iconography themselves, the
nave, the altar, the kind of purpose of the structure, the architecture,
all of that has precedents in the Old Testament and liturgical structure. But
this is something that is also up your speeches. So what would you also
add, like to the importance of the architecture. Why do Orthodox churches look
the specific way they do? Right? I did a talk on a book
called uh Mystagogy of the Church, and that's a little work by Saint Maximus,
and he talks about the structure and symbolism of the church. Um,
so it does have an important role. And there are you know, strictures
and limitations on how the church can be built. So it is important.
Um, I don't think it's as important as iconographic theology because it's you know,
the iconography is more is more of a direct presentation of the theology.
And sometimes the church, you know, sometimes people have to rent another person's
building, you know, to do to do services. So but it does
matter, and eventually it does the theology seeps into the architecture. Sure,
yeah, I think I definitely agree on I think, like, h the
architecture, like it's more like a well, the way to describe is,
especially in the early Christian persecutions, is that the basis for what we do
or worship is fundamentally internal, right, That's like the most crucial thing.
And so when we talk about externals like architecture, even iconography, even though
that's part of the internal right worship service. Due to the theology of iconography,
with the sun being the icon of the Father and all of that,
all of that kind of becomes more manifested over time. And the possibilities emerge
as well. Right, So this is why you will see, well,
this is why obviously there's a vast difference in architecture within the early Church pre
Saint Constantine and Postine Constans, because well, there wasn't really even a possibility
to kind of showcase the manifestation of Christian worship and architecture. And even still
some places today, right, Like there's apartment churches, there's places that people
rent, like they are used as Roman Catholic churches or Anglican churches, and
they used they are used, you know, by renting as Orthodox churches to
conduct service. Right, So it's not, as you said, it's not
as a it's not like it's a thing that you necessarily have to have in
order to have correct service, but it is something that is an outworking of
the liturgy itself, and the possibility does does emerge. Right, So that's
I will definitely agree with that point. Training Melissa with the five dollars great
stuff, thinks David and Jay appreciate the five dollars super chat think hum Melissa,
Ryan asks five dollars thank you for the super chat. Keep up the
awesome work, guys, y'all are bringing tons of people to arthodoxy. My
question is is there any hope for the for the Greek Orthodox archdiocracy and the
Acoumenical Patriarchate God bless Well. I am part of the Acumenical patriarch it directly.
I do think there's hope, but obviously there's a lot of difficulties regarding
the geopolitical situation and some of the policies of the EP itself. As someone
on the ground himself, I will my main thing is, you know the
bit. One of the reasons why the EP does a lot of things that
kind of bogs people's mind is because of the geopolitical situation of the Chomedical Patriarch
and being in the constats Noble Patriarch. Bartone definitely definitely thinks whether that is
actually true or not, that's a different question, but he definitely does believe
that any wrong move he might make is going to make the Turkish government angry,
and that's one of the reasons why he is very much aligning himself to
the US government. For the same reason why the Chemical Patriarch allied with the
British government right during the during the conflicts during the First World War and m
the aftermath off it, which which is why, right the initial Turkish policy
of skepticism towards their chemical patriarch it ended up being in the case is because
while you guys sided with the British and now we've got the country back,
so what are you guys going to do about it? Right? And this
is why there's the whole Turkish patriarch a story and all of that. I
guess that's a different story. But I mean, I have I have hope.
I think there's certain things they do properly that you can look at at
the jurisdictions that they don't properly do. There's also a lot of problems that
needs to be sold. But I think I think the source of a lot
of the issues that people have, probably with regards to Ukraine, which I
can say very clearly that I definitely think the Comical Patriarch is wrong on the
Ukraine situation. A lot of it is because of geopolitical situation and EPs alliance,
whether they want to or not, EPs alliance with the United States government
and the aftermath of it. I don't think they should be allied with the
United States, but you know, you can't really say they should be allied
with Russiated because Russia has a history of kind of just using different nations and
groups and kind of just say okay, I used you and I'll get away,
right, So Russia does have a history of doing that, which is
why it's it's not as simple as it looks like. That's kind of my
take on the ecumenical patriarch it as as someone who lives in is stumbled right,
So what would you say, jay As, Like, what was your
take on the Greek church in mostly you know abroad, I understand what you're
saying. You know, it gets complex in other countries. I mean in
the United States, it's it's pretty cut and dry typically when it comes to
what you can and should and shouldn't support. And so you know, a
lot of the the GOA is pretty bad news in the US, and so
I would just say, like Father McHale did a video last night that was
really good where he was talking about how you know, you know, don't
you don't need to be giving these people your money. So it's time to
move on to in my view, churches that are are more faithful. So
try to find one that's more faithful, because if in the United States.
Unfortunately, a lot of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese is basically just an adjunct of
the Democratic Party openly. So, I mean, the Democratic Party is crazy,
So why are you supporting these people? It's just nuts, I mean,
and they make it very easy for you to figure out, like you
have to go get some PhD to figure out, you know, what these
people are supporting. It's all public, so I would, yeah, I
don't support these people. Vote with your dollars. Mm, yeah, I
think that's uh yeah, I And like in in here there's kind of like,
I guess I actually, never mind, I'm not going to talk about
them because they don't they don't deserve publicity, so I'll maybe I'll save it
for another day. But um, so it seems like there's someone mad in
the light chat. Well what about yeah, uh, they're they're a Monophysite
who calls us, Oh yeah, he says you that story. Heretics believe
a christis two nature's tubls, two energies, two minds, which is yes,
we do believe that. Um, because he's human and divine being human
means you have a human vill So he has a human vill in divine ville.
Being human means he has human activities, which means he has two energies.
Being human means he has a human mind. So there's no shame in
admitting that. What is shameful is actually thinking that or position is shameful.
In his position, it leads to try teasm because by that logic mind energy
will all of these will be proper to the person, proper to hyper stasis.
There are three hype statis in the trinity, therefore there will be three
vols. Well, rich church father believes that none of them, not a
single one of them. They condemned this as heresy. So yeah, that's
all I will say to that, to that nonsense. So I appreciate a
two dollars super chat or to Eric, But I guess that's that's basically how
I will will kind of do, and I will already have a massive playlist
on this issue. A lot of these people, just a lot of these
people just cope, and a lot of these people don't even listen, they
don't even read. They just make these propaganda lines and they try to agitate.
But what I see is that I see a lot of people Ethiopians,
Syriacs, cops that actually look at the material you present, look at the
arguments we present, and actually do become orthodox. I've heard I've seen a
lot of people, particularly Ethiopians, some of them marine even in the chat
here, that actually became orthodox because they saw the same thing that I am
talking about right now, right that the monoposie position on Christ is heretical because
it leads to various different heresies of triteism to even the Storianism. As a
matter of fact, it is just a different side of the coin. But
it still used the same piece of theological piece of positions that the story has
had. So I think people are interesting. Chick can check that playlist.
But one okay, Frankie d another ten dollars super chat. I appreciate it,
He asked, Jay. Are there icons that explained the theological reality but
not the historical reality, such as the icon of Ascension and Pentecost which shows
Paul present with the apostles, but he wasn't there. Yeah, but if
you look at the argumentation as to that that actually comes up in the iconography
chapter in this and the dispute is over. Even though Paul wasn't there in
terms of time and space, he is there in terms of the theology.
So the point is not that every icon is only depicting historical events. The
icons are depicting historical and eternal realities at once. Both. It's a both
end. So you misunderstood my comment, my clarification as if I was saying
that icons are only depicting historical realities. They're depicting historical realities and eternal realities
at the same time. And sometimes those theological realities surpass and transcend historical realities.
But that's not a denial of the historical reality. Because there's a debate.
There's a discussion over whether Paul is present there because he's one of the
apostles, even though he wasn't literally standing there at at Pentecost. Yeah,
and another question that someone had is from Lewis. I think that's tense Fis
Franks think you appreciate the super chat. He asked, if the Bible forbids
drinking blood, why do we drink Jesus blood and the eu Chris The short
answer I will give is that the blood is the life, and so the
life of animals are sacrificed to God. Basically, that's very basically putting it.
And we partake of the life of Christ himself. That's why we take
to Eu Chris and because that life that Christ himself has is shared to us
for our salvation. So that's the basic take that I will have. So,
Jay, I mean the Old Testament, the forbidding of blood is has
to do with death and coming in contact with death. And so you're not
supposed to eat if you're going to eat an animal in the Old Testament,
it has to have you know, Nope, you have to have the blood
drained. Right. This is the whole basis behind how Jews you know,
do kosher meats and all that stuff. So, but the point is that
it's not blood itself that is bad. It's that you can't be in contact
with death in the Old Testament because it makes you unclean. That's symbolic for
moral death and spiritual death. And so Christ in the Eucharist is giving us
his blood. That is not the blood of a dead man. It's not
a human sacrifice. It is the deifying energies of the god Man. And
that's why the liturgy calls it the bloodless noetic sacrifice. Yeah, let's see,
all right. Next question is from Axios five pounds appreciate the support he
has. How will we best explain the Orthodox position on statues? You CBS
and Ecclesiastical History book A chapter eighteen makes reference to an ancient statue of Christ.
The basic answer I will say is that, well, that statue is
out in public, right, so it's a it's a statue that's for decorative
purposes, So it's not a statue that is in the church. If we
don't have statues in churches ninety nine point nine percent of the time, because
statues are part of secular artistry. Iconography is the religious art of the church,
and that's that's why it's in churches. However, statues in public,
and as Eusebious is describing, my personal take on it is that I don't
see it as a problem. I think it's just a showcasing of Christian artistry
in public, but it is not like it's an icon That's basically what I
will say, though I will still I guess I will venerate, but there's
I think we still need to distinguish between religious art that is iconography that the
church possesses and kind of the secular modes of art that people use in order
to make images and pictures of Christ within that context. Anything you'd like to
add on, No, I mean I think that's you stated it really well.
Yeah, I mean icons are liturgical, so they teach theology and have
a place within the liturgy and the Seventh Council, and you know, the
icon councils distinguished that from like David said, you know, secular art.
So you know, if you think about like Renaissance art styles and all that.
Now, I don't really have a problem with all that stuff. It's
just that that's different than what's in the liturgy, and that's the big that's
the big issue here. So people want to make statues. I don't think
there's anything wrong with that. Constant four. Thank you for the five pound
super chat, he says, Jay must of the friend watched your Rashid debate,
found you compelling and a fallacious, amazing work. He's more receptive towards
the docent trinity, now, right, that's that was definitely one of the
that's great. Thank you. Yeah, I never know how people are receiving
those debates, because that one got really kind of high level, you know,
metaphysics, So I don't I don't know, I never know how how
well that is translating to the audience. But I'm glad to hear that.
Yeah, and I and I will definitely say right. Like those kinds of
debates, I think they definitely. One of the things that I notice in
the aftermath of that debate is that a lot of people are starting the question
specifics in Islamic Theolgravitch. No one did it before, right. So one
of the things that recently occurred, not recently, but a year ago,
was about, well, what is the relationship between Allah and his properties?
Right? Because the whole argument against the trinity that a lot of Muslims use
is predicated on on the idea that there's just God and you can't have anything
coeternal ven Him. And you know, if you do that, then you
just do simple counting, simple mathematics. And that's the argument that they use.
But the you know, the the names of Allah that refer to properties,
are they distinct or they not distinct? Now, most Sunni Muslim sects,
and that is Akida's creeds. Rather they will say actually, yes,
they're distinct. But then that completely undermines their whole argument against the trinity,
because they themselves admit that there are distinct things from God that are divine,
that are coeternal with him, that exists with him, and are distinct with
him, so usually count those two. So there's basically a hundred all loss
by that logic. Right. So a lot of their arguments are based on
like very simplistic understandings of theology, and once you think about it a little
bit, it starts to it all starts to crumble, and it all ends
up degenerating into a low IQ discourse. Like like one of the arguments that
people still point out, it's like, how was how did Christ? How
was Christ born of the Virgin Mary? Event? And how did Christ do
natural defecation? And stuff that doesn't make any sense to me kind of arguments.
Then just one look at the whole theology of original sin Orthodox It can't
have answers as a questions. Already Christ did not have original sins, so
all of these things you're talking about that he didn't have those things, right,
you know. So that's basically how I will look at it. Max
the Confessor of five Dollars super chat appreciate it. He says, why there's
so many triteist in the Storian and monozzolat tendencies in Protestantism. They try to
explain everything from Villa. I kind of don't answer yet that last point,
but pology answered this question good. Yeah. I think that the Protestant tendencies
are what they are because they don't really have a coherent theology of the Trinity
or Christology, so they just kind of go with, you know, cliches
or things that they think sound good, or things that they think the Bible's
teaching, and a lot of times they don't know, you know, what
mistakes they're making. But it's just basically that, you know, Protestantism comes
out of a you know, it's it's basically Augustinian Roman Catholicism that's kind of
purified of Roman Catholic trappings. So it's going to fall into the dialectical tendencies
that a strict Augustinian theology contained. Yeah, I think it is as you
said. I think one thing I noticed when I first became Orthodox was that
there was a very heavy emphasis on correct Trinitarian and Christological theology. Right,
there's a very very heavy emphasis on that. And I don't have experience in
protestantstems, so I don't know how it is there. But in Nortstocks,
even I listened to the liturgy, when I listened to certain specific terms,
like you know, the hymn of Saint Justinian, only begone son in the
world of God, I kind of just thought of it as well, why
are they, like, what's the point of saying this? This is kind
of just I guess, I guess it's cool or whatever, But you realize
that actually there's there are very good reasons why these concepts in terms of using
the liturgy over and over again so that people can know about um these basic
fundamental things. Right. So, one thing I noticed, especially in Calvinism,
is that their monergism, which is the which is basically the idea that
salvation is affected is effective only by the divine will. Right, it doesn't.
It's not a synergy, but it's just only the divine wills. Only
God saves. And it's it's this choice and the choice of man doesn't matter
that really affects the christology because then well, the whole incarnation and the work
of the incarnation that Christ did, that is a part of the solveific work.
Now you can't say then that there are two bills in Christ one divine,
one human, because if you said such a thing, then you will
be attributing attributing humanity a part of the work of salvation that is exclusive to
God alone in the Calvinist system, right, So there's I think there's in
orthodoxy, you start with the trinitarian theology, right, you start with God
and that that's what where you get the outworking of the rest of the things,
right with sacraments toology in Protestants submits the other day around. So it's
it's just like specific Bible verses and it picts of theology off of that,
and then they do try to Tranto and theeology that kind of makes sense with
that in Christology and so and so forth. And this is I think the
source of a lot of the Nestorian when not to lie triteistic and other interpretations
and understandings in that exist in various forms of Protestantism. Aside from that,
it also I think it stems from just kind of a lack of knowledge about
church disputes, because that really helps you to come to understand what's the correct
way to look at it, and kind of just like a d emphasis on
the theological look on the Bible aside from oh, you know, how can
we prove that Jesus is God in the Bible? Right? Like there's that
focus, but aside from that is not that much of a much of a
focus on that point. It Would you agree with that or do you have
anything else to add in regards to that? Yeah? I think that you
know, Calvinism starts as theology with predestination and the divine decree, so that's
gonna condition the rest of the theology to be determined by will. So that's
probably what you're talking about here, and it doesn't give a place to secondary
causes, to creatures having their own will and energy. Um. Yeah,
that's that's that's it. Um a question someone had in the light chat.
I think, yeah, it's pretty much We've pretty much been true whole at
the superchat questions as they as they came. But one thing I did prom
because I did promise him, is that have you seen the um what was
that that the icon Zelenski gave to Pope Francis that had like instead of having
Christ, it had just like a blank screen like it's an unlockable character or
something like that. Yeah, Like, well, what was that whole whole
thing about well, you know, supposedly it was to symbolize the lives of
children that were lost. Uh, I don't know, but yeah, I
think that it also seemed to be maybe even on a deeper level, true
symbolic of the fact that you know, that regime and that that whole expression
has essentially lost and doesn't believe in Christ. I mean, if you watch
Father McHale's video last night, he talks about how they're already using the Phillyoaquay
right, the the so called fake Orthodox Church there's residing in Philly Oakua.
Uh, they are, um, you know, they're already engaged into Cumanist
activities. So I mean, I think that's a fitting symbol. Yeah,
we don't, we don't want Christ anymore. Yeah, I think that that's
that like my general take on this situation as well as that because I want
to make it clear, like it's not because I I'm afraid that I might
be interpreted that I generally like, I'm not like pro Russian in this whole
situation that's going on, because I think there's some issues that Russian needs to
solve, and in both in regards to this issue and both in regards to
the Church what it is doing, particularly in Africa, even though you know
there's there's no OCE debates in regards to that, but you know, I
still think they're wrong in that regard what Russia is doing in certain geopolitical senses.
It's not all of it is something that I will completely back, but
one thing I can definitely say without feeling any shame, is that I think
Ukraine as a country as it is led right now right is definitely wrong in
multiple levels, in geopolitical levels and religious levels, and I think there definitely
needs to be a change in regards to that. How that change of cures
I don't know, but there definitely needs to be something that needs to happen
that that fixes that basically the problem that they have, because I mean,
it's, as I said, like it's it's it looks like an iconon it's
literally a corruption, right, it's like a demand of corruption. It looks
like an iconography. It's opposed to be an icon but it inserts earthly teams
into it, which I guess you can kind of it can be cute about
it, but it does so at the expense of Christ. It takes the
focus away from Christ and it puts it into something else, and that whole,
that whole thing, that whole idea itself is I will say, fundamentally
fundamentally demonic. And I think you know that there are certain activities, spiritual
activities that are certainly helping or guiding the leadership of Ukraine. I will definitely
say, especially with what happened with the whole Key of Love or situation,
it's absolutely absolutely disgusting, especially in light of the fact that the Ukraine or
the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, led by Metropolunifrid, everything they can to distance
themselves from Russia, from the Russian Church, and it still happens. So
it goes to show that what their real intention is, and it is to
destroy godleness and order. Basically, Joshua asked to tell a super chat appreciate.
He asked, why don't you like ancient Fate radio. It's because they
had They promote certain completely heterodox things, and they don't do anything about anything
to fix They are too lukewarm. That's the basics that I will say,
is that they're basically way to lukewarm. There's some good content there and then
there's some absolutely horrendous content that no one should look at. And I think
they really try to appeal to They really try to make orthodoxy like appeal to
normalis, which in a sense, okay, that's cool if you can do
it in terms of packaging. But they when they mix certain doctrines into that
normal packaging, I think that's the big problem. And then they have a
huge tendency to do something like that. So those are my basic reasons,
right. Yeah, they've been pushing for a long time all kinds of water
down heterodox ideas, you know, promoting authors that are pushing for women pre
I mean promoting authors that you know, attend a Roshan events, Skittles events.
I mean that just should be obvious too if you're familiar with what they
what they push. I mean they've been doing it for like twenty years.
So yeah, we already have videos and streams talking about this, specifically Marked
with the twenty big twenty dollars super chat. Appreciate it, Mark, He
says, love both of your works. Will love to see you both in
tract more of these Protestant pop apologists, But Sally, I don't think they're
very interested, will be and you will be in over their heads. I
mean, I have people so Transhorn made the tweet saying that they should do
a round table between an Orthodox and Roman Catholic and a Protestant icon veneration,
and I'm the icon veneration guy. He suggests to create truly, which I
guess you can do that too, But to my knowledge, that didn't happen.
And the suggestion of having me appear since at that time it recently made
the video and icon veneration, right, it was all it was fresh,
and you know, the whole thing on this, the whole debate start because
of Ortland's video and icon veneration and so and so forth. A lot of
people actually suggested, I think it's even ratio the Transforms post. A lot
of people suggested that I shall appear and this shall happen and I shall be
on that, you know, And I didn't get any return from Trent.
I didn't get any return from Ortland, and I didn't think that round table
will happen even with Craig. I think not even with Craig. They're trying
to do this, So I think I think that goes to show. I
mean, I'm well, it's well for according to a lot of people.
I am a very bad person too, even though I don't think I've done
anything to justify it. And it works because with like normy people, that
kind of pushes them away from like looking at the material that I present.
Basically, So I think that is definitely cut part of smear campaign that is
an actual to YouTube people do it all the time, like the whole smearing
stuff to avoid people from engaging specific groups of people. I understand that.
So I don't think that's really going to happen anytime soon, not just with
icon veneration, but with basically anything, because frankly speaking, I think a
lot of Protestants are afraid of actual proper dialogue and they want dialogue in their
dialogue in their own terms. But once you enforce your own terms to other
people, that's not a dialogue. That's a monologue with h with just a
monologue or allowing the other person to speak at times they want him to speak
in certain ways that they want him to speak. So that's that's my generale
take on a lot of these Protestants, even Roman Catholic people, even some
Orthodox people. To be honest, right, it's I think the preferred method,
especially with people like us with you and I j is smear and then
push them away. These people are crazy, they don't they won't let you
speak. They're they're horrible people. Let them, you know, stay in
their echo chamber, which is ironic because we're the ones that want to talk,
right, we don't want to stay in. But yeah, it's just
an excuse. It's obvious that it's an ex use. I mean, there
was going to be a roundtable that Trent suggested a year ago on apologetic methodology,
and nobody wanted to do that. So I mean I did, and
like David saying he did, and uh, yeah, nobody. Nobody wants
to do that because they you know, it's just you know, I think
if if you're confident in your position, like you're not worried about having these
kinds of discussions, you're not worried about new information, you know, shaking
your paradigm or something like that. But I think that people that are not
confident in their positions or they're they're wavering, they're they're scared, they're afraid
that they'll end up looking bad or something like that, and so you know,
they consistently use the excuse of well they're mean. Well, the only
times that we've been quote mean is when you know, we have to deal
with actual, uh you know, subversive and ridiculous people who are malicious.
And so the fact that we deal with those people in a firm and also
satirical way is I think the proper way to handle these people. Now,
there have been past instances where on blood sports which were not formal debates,
it's just you know, people acting ridiculous on the internet. Yeah, so
what if I, you know, made fun of somebody in a in a
non formal debate, and then they take those examples and say, look,
all he does is yell at people, and that's not true. There's like
twenty debates where nobody's yelling at anybody. Everything's perfectly civil. But it should
be transparent that these are just excuses because they don't want to deal with the
people that would probably present the best case and so you know they're gonna they
want to stay in a little bubble of people like Cameron from cuting Christianity or
whatever. Yeah. One thing I want to adv it like this is this
is a general principle that I just generally apply to things like interactions online and
things and it's kind of like a it's based on my experience, and it's
a self it's a respecting self. Respect and respect about this kind of thing.
I typically, even if they want to debate me, I don't engage
with people who unjustifiably smear me and attack me, because why would I want
to give these people platform? Why would I want to legitimize If you're going
to do something like that and you want to have me all, you better
make it work for me. So maybe if you have a decent audience and
allow me to speak to a lot of people, maybe okay, I'll let
that slide. But that's kind of the way I look at things because I
think it's just a smart way to look at it, because at the end
of the day, I don't want to legitimize people attacking my personal life or
attacking me as a person, or making up lies about me. It's just
I don't want to legitimize such a thing. And I think that's just a
natural thing to do. But and I understand why, Like you know,
people like Ubara, they might not they might want to stay away from me
for the same reason. That's fair enough, right, But you know,
that's that's just kind of like a principal thing, at least for me.
So I want to note that before I move on to the five Dollars to
chat from Max and By Jay has a different style, He has different you
know, he views these things differently because we're different people in regards to kind
of like have you look at debate challenges and stuff like that as well?
So, um, that's something that I will, I guess we'll like to
note as well. Max the Confessor five dollars super chat um, he has
been reading Bootius beautiful poems. Any good Orthodox commentaries on him? I don't
think there are any, Um, I mean I have one of his books.
I don't know about commentaries. Yeah, I think I think with boti
Is it's like I mean, isn't he's the one. It will be kind
of like a commentary of a commentary. But I guess if you're asking kind
of like the Orthodox take on Bois, I always confuse Boots Saints Bede,
I always confuse them. But he wrote consolations of philosophy, and so he's
you know, basically an attempting and sent this between Augustinian theology and other you
know, Aristotle, other theological or philosophical traditions, and so I mean he
is I think a saying in the Orthodox Church. But yeah, I think,
I mean he's I don't know about commentaries. Yeah, uh yeah he
is. He's he is a saint in the Orthodox Church, right, that
is true? So yeah, I'm I'm afraid of You're not going to be
able to help you on that front, uh, Max, But appreciate the
five dollars super chat um. Let's see what other people are saying. Well,
I guess I could kind of. I mean, this was I didn't
I did not expect a lot of people to kind of support So I'm kind
of like, I'm kind of shocked. But at the end of the day,
I mean, it's it's it's very cool to see this. One thing
I kind of wants to ask you, Jay, and and I could answer
this question before you answer, It's like, what was it saying that made
you like not a not something in Orthodoxy that made you say, oh,
I think this is wrong because of a rational reason. But what made you
like ikey? Because from me, and this might sound really strange because I'm
like, I'm the icon veneration guy at these these days from the Orthodox camp.
But icon veneration was kind of strange to me when I first became ortodox.
I kind of looked at it and it's like, how is this not
like this kind of this kind of looks suspicious, but I guess I'll do
it kind of a thing. But like stuff like that, right, like
not something that's like rational like ration, like you're opposed because of some rational
reason. But right is something that you that it took some time for you
to get used to, because I think a lot of people have that,
and it's very normal because a lot of people are not used to ortodox Christianity.
Um, you know, my path to Orthodoxy was different, so it
wasn't It wasn't really like that where I had to adjust to things that were
really odd. I think because I came from the world of Roman Catholicism,
it was different. So most things in Orthodoxy weren't that odd to me.
I'll say two things. So my when I was Protestant, the first time
I saw a relic, it was weird because in the Protestant world, you're
not used to that, and you kind of it kind of seems odd to
you. And the first Roman Calory church that I went to had a relic
of Saint Jerome, and I remember, you know, I was curious,
but I was also weirded out the first time I saw it. So that
was the thing that it will always stick in my mind. And then when
I became Orthodox, one thing that was unique that stuck out was getting used
to standing up in the services, and you know Russian Orthodox services, you're
going to be standing for two or three hours. So that was odd,
I mean, just because the last time that I'd gone to I mean, I