Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Transfigured Life. We have a special guest
here in the building. I'm always here rocking with Father Jonathan. And as
you guys can see, here we have the comedian, the apologist, the
gifted one here, Jay Dyer. Give it up for Jay Dyer. How
you doing, Jay, I'm doing great, man, Thanks for having here,
Glad to be here, so honored our talk to you guys. Appreciate
it. Yeah, our pleasure and our honor. Thank you very much.
Jay. We're gonna kind of get right into it, and I want to
begin by by by asking you a question. Undoubtedly, if you've been watching
YouTube for a while, and I think you have, and if you've been
watching Orthodox Apologize and I think you have, can't fail to notice that there's
been an abundance of podcasts and videos out there now by Protestants and especially Reform
Protestants, Evangelicals, Baptists that are attacking the Orthodox faith in church. You
know, I recently heard some Presbyterian church out west even deny that we the
Orthodox have Apostolic succession. And so I'm sure you've heard some of these,
But what do you make of what do you think of that? We're seeing
more and more of them now. I think one reason that we're seeing that
is just everybody's got a podcast now. My wife and I were joking about
this, like every like every people's grandmothers are gonna start having a podcasts soon.
Literally everybody has a podcast, and I think every pastor now has a
podcast, So that's part of it. But also think that there's a realization
that there's a lot of problems in the religious world, especially if you come
from a Protestant or a Roman Catholic background. I mean, that's not to
say there's no problems in the Orthodox world, but every group kind of has
its own un nique problems, and so I think that a lot of people
are sensing that questions are being asked that are very difficult. A lot of
times Protestant pastors might not have the answers to these kinds of questions, and
so they're going online, they're seeking out answers, and they're feeling the need
to have to address why people are converting. A lot of people are converting
out of Protestantism, some terrom Catholicism, but I think actually in the last
three or four years more to Orthodoxy. So I think there's a need to
try to explain this, to say, hey, don't leave. You know,
they've got problems too, and Protestantism can be defended. I don't think
ultimately that it can, but I think that's the reason, is that a
lot of people are looking for more than what they're getting at Protestant churches.
So they're seeing a lot of you know, rainbow flags going up at Protestant
churches, and that's making a lot of people, you know, to satisfy
this is not what you know historic Christianity is. So there's on the one
hand of search for authentic historic Christianity, there's a search for wanting to be
you know, consistent with what the Bible actually teaches in terms of morals and
that kind of stuff. People are craving that they don't want this, uh,
water down stuff. And even even in the conservative Protestant world, I
think there's a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to the challenges that Orthodoxy
and Catholicism are presenting, but more so Orthodoxy because I think a lot of
people are seeing you know, really systematic level problems in the in the Roman
Catholic world that perhaps Orthodoxy might have the answer to that's good, Luther.
Both you and Jay came out of that million if you and I know you
probably have have different issues that you could point to. But Jay, what
do you think are the man? What do you think are the two or
three biggest issues that are bringing people over? Yeah, you got a lot
of a lot of people coming out of the you know, the Protestant world.
So what do you think is that that reason? Probably the biggest let
me say the biggest two issues in the Protestant world would be and I don't
know if they're in any specific order, just the ones that come to mind
that I hear the most are questions like, well, you know solo scriptura,
which is really the essence of classical Protestantism. And it really doesn't matter
what form you want to give to solo scriptura. I know that there's different
versions of a different apologists that give different levels of it. Different Protestant apologists
will recognize some kind of place for tradition, perhaps maybe even all the way
up to High Church Anglicans can concede maybe the most reverence for traditions supposedly,
but I think there's still a recognition that there's big heaping questions of a historicity
or the Protestant position is not historical, especially when we come to the formation
of the Canon, when it comes to how the Bible came to be,
when it comes to the actual practis of the Church in the first six seventh
century, is the way that it operated with liturgy oral, you know,
teaching profession of the faith in the liturgy and not so much people having to
go and read the Bible on their own to figure it all out. When
people start to realize that when they see what's in the ecumenical councils and the
canons and even the earliest councils, you know, prior to Icia and Caira
Gangra, you know, you see these so called Catholic and I say that
is in the sense of orthodox Catholic elements. People are seeing that and realizing
that, you know this, this, this isn't Protestantism. So I think
that's probably the biggest And then number two might be questions that they have about
the morals changing in the in the world of Protestantism. And again that that
doesn't necessarily go for the conservative Protestant evangelical groups. But I think in the
Protestant world, like the I mean, I don't know the numbers per se,
but most you know, all the mainline Protestant nominations in the US they
pretty much liberal in the nineteen twenties and thirties. And by that I mean
not just you know, caving into higher critical textual scholarship, but also morals.
They began to cave on moral questions and issues. And so I think
that those are probably the two biggest ones, you know, the history of
the church, the Bible, social scriptura. And then I think there's other
issues too, like this debate world. You know, this pops up on
YouTube and the internet. Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of
you know, great chats and discussions and debates going on. That's that's probably
a big factor as well. Well, I agree, yeah, yeah,
there's definitely definitely a bigger debate will happen out there. I see that.
Well, yeah, real quick, I noticed. I didn't even know this
until a few days ago. Uh. And obviously I'm not I'm not a
huge fan of TikTok because it's you know, obviously it's a Chinese sort of
surveillance app. But I am on there just to put out clips and stuff,
And I didn't realize that I could go live on there until fairly recently,
because you you got to hit a certain tier of subscribers or something.
But I went live on TikTok and turns out there's this giant world over there
that's different from you know, YouTube and these other places. There's there's just
masses of Protestants over there. Calvinists are arguing and going crazy, Muslims are
going crazy on TikTok. So I've kind of stepped into that whole other mess
of getting on TikTok. And but that's a whole nother, you know field
for potential, you know, new audiences, and TikTok tends to be a
lot of twenty five are really young people over there as well. Yeah,
kids are always dancing on TikTok and stuff like now. But now there's a
whole debate world because they have live streams, so you can live stream for
you know, long long form on on TikTok. Now, so there's always
people debating over there. Oh my gosh, well fascinating. Well let's let's
dive into some Calvinism. I know that you you yourself used to be a
Calvinist I was a Calvinist as well. You know what led you specifically out
of that? Jay, What are some of the issues that you start to
see with it? What was your progression out of that. I'm curious that
Father Johathan, did you have a background Protestant? Did you convert or were
you raised ord Rocks? Well? I was theoretically I'm a cradle but when
I was a when I was in high school, around tenth grade, I
started going to a Presbyterian church and attending their Bible studies and their youth pastors.
I have to give them a lot of credit. They they taught me
Bible, you know, they really did, and that that has literally stayed
with me for fifty years. A lot of what I learned there, but
they didn't teach a lot of theology. It was here's what the Bible says,
and you know, we kind of read it and read it and read
it and kind of memorized it. So I didn't learn a lot of theology.
So I have to say I don't really come from that kind of a
background that experience. My experiences well, that that background and not all Calvinists,
right, We're not saying this all calvin but it's it's definitely like a
debate world for real. When it came to that realm, it's like you
weren't Calvinists enough at times, you know, yeah, right, yeah,
yeah yeah. Like, uh so I got into that when I was about
nineteen. I got into reading the scriptures from an evangelical Bible study I was
invited to when I was eighteen, and then uh kind of eventually wandered my
way into reform Baptist stuff, like you said, because I went to a
Reform Baptist Bible College for a while and there everybody, you know, all
the young guys. We all we did was just kind of you know,
talk about church history and biblical theology all the time, and so we would
get into these debates about well, you know what about you know, the
church fathers, they taught this and that. And I remember there was a
really formative situation where I ended up stuck at Bible College throughout the whole winter
break. And so now everybody else left and I was stuck there for the
whole you know, three or four weeks or whatever it was, and I
didn't have anything else to do. So I decided I was going to read
the City of God. So I read from the beginning all the way up
until about page nine hundred, and I wrote down these I wrote down all
these questions because there's nothing else to do. It's just me and in Louisville,
sitting there by myself, and I didn't know anybody. So I just
read that the whole time, and I wrote down all these questions. And
I took him to a couple of the professors. The a couple of him
are still pretty still teaching Baptist Bible college stuff, and I said, he,
here's all these questions. I said, I don't understand how we could
believe that. You know, we like Augustine, if you know, he's
got all these things that we think are just you know, Catholic crazy accretions.
And I didn't get very good answers, so I'll just leave it at
that. But eventually they said, well, you might need to leave this
this Bible college. This might not be for you. So I didn't.
I wasn't ready for any changes at that time, but at that time I
was more so thinking, I'm I think i'll believe in an infant baptism.
I think I believe in patal baptism. And I was reading a bunch of
reform stuff from Bonson and Rush Juney and Van Till and all those people.
And so I found a PCA church at that time that I liked, which
is a Conservative Presbyterians, and met one of the elders there, got to
be kind of friendly with him, and he introduced me to a lot of
stuff that ironically would later point me in the direction out of Protestantism. And
so in some of the circles of Presbyterians, there was a movement back then
that's now kind of attached to Doug Wilson's stuff, which is kind of people
looking into high church, you know, liturgy and that kind of stuff in
the in the Protestant Reformed world. So I was kind of introduced to these
questions at that time, but I still wasn't ready. I remember, I'll
try to make this short. I don't want to ramble a whole time.
But I met with some Catholic priests just out of curiosity, because I wanted
to know, like, well, what do you guys teach about, you
know, Augustine and Grace and all this stuff. And I remember having you
know, one on ones with several Catholic priests and they said, well,
here's the Catholic Catechism, and I remember getting that and I remember reading through
about half of it. I was like, no, I don't believe a
lot of this stuff. This stuff's crazy. So I wasn't ready for,
you know, marrying stuff, and I thought all that was out there and
wild. So but I did have a gradual movement towards reading more and more
Church Fathers, and so for me at that time, it was really just
I didn't know about Orthodoxy yet. This was like, this is about two
thousand and one, and so I bought the Church Fathers the Chaft Set,
and I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna have to start reading
this. So I started reading Jerome, and I started reading Ambrose, and
I started reading Cyprian, Saint Cyprian, and I started noticing, well,
these are they don't teach anything like what we teach. So I was out
of crossroads and all I knew about at that time. And in two thousand
and three ish, the only things on the Internet that you could ever find
were Roman Callic stuff and like Calvinist Protestants everything that that was the debate at
that time, right, all the blogs, all the stuff. All the
forums, you know, you would just see people debating on blogs and websites
and forums back and forth. So I just thought that's that was the extent
of the debate. I didn't even know about Orthodoxy except for I'd heard there
was a book by you know, Callistos where about Orthodox Church, but I
didn't have it, so I just didn't think anything about it. Plus I
didn't live anywhere near an Orthodox church. So that was probably the hardest decision
for me actually in my life at that time, because I was really I
mean I was a huge student of Bronson vanil Rush Juney. I did a
semester at Bronson's there should we think of Bronson Seminary, So I was learning
apologetics from doctor Bonnson. Like Paula Johnathan said, you know, we were
just like I mean, it was just Bible NonStop. I mean we were
like tell Muitic Jews with the Bible. I mean like we were just studying
a NonStop. I mean we would have morning Bible before church. Church was
like two hours of lectures from Bible. We would have Sunday night Bible study,
and then we would have Winday and Friday meetings to read you know,
reform theologians, because if you don't, I don't know if you guys know,
But like in the Bonds and Rush Janny stuff like, they were theonomists.
So they have this very high view of Biblical law and so there's a
lot of you know, emphasis on what relevance you know, the Torah has
for today. Now they're not messianic news or anything like that, but they
just have this view that a lot of those laws are applicable to today.
So, you know, there was it was really difficult to move away from
that because I was so wedded to it. But one of the things that
really stuck with me was when I read Russiani's book called Foundations of Social Order
and there was a chapter on the Ecumenical councils, and so russianny ironically had
this high view of the ecumenical councils. And I was starting to read The
Church Fathers at that time, and I had read Cyril and I'd read Ephesus,
so I knew kind of what it was all about. And then russianis
take and found of Social Order was actually that he thought, I'm not joking,
He's he thinks that Cyril's position isn't a story as this position, it's
a Russian You got it completely backwards. And that really shook me at the
time, and I just I didn't know what to do. I took that
to my reform pastor and said, hey, this is this is totally backwards.
I mean, how could he mess up that? You know that big
and well we're all fallible, Yeah, we're all fallible, but I mean
that's a pretty big mistake if we're going to be saying why we're not why
we're reformed. So then I decided it was going to be an issue of
not so much this church father versus that church father. What's the root of
Protestantism. Well, it's it's ultimately, if you're a classical Protestant, it's
Bible alone, it's soul scripture. That's the ultimate primary authority. So I
figured out I'm gonna have to answer this question of how did the cannon come
to be? And I listened to tons and tons of Roman Catholic and reform
debates. I went back in the fourth and at that time it was all
you know, James White debating athletics, and it was Jerry Madoti's debating bonds
and all, you know, reform a Catholic debates was about the extent of
all you could find. And I went through all those, and then I
said, the best way to do this would be to read a bunch of
the Protestant evangelical scholars on the history of the formation of the Canon. And
so I read F. F. Bruce's book, and I read Lee McDonald's
book their Evangelical Scholars, and here they are admitting, oh, yeah,
of course tradition plays a key role in the Bible. Coming to me,
and I'm like, what so again? And you and you know, you
take these questions to your Protestant pastors and well, you know, I don't
know. I never read that. Yeah, I haven't looked at that,
but I'm sure we can find somebody that knows. And then they'll refer you
to, you know, some professor at Reformed Theological Seminary or Westminster or whatever.
And I just never really got good answers, and so I decided I
would have to be Roman Catholic. So that led me to the Roman Catholic
world. Still didn't know about Orthodoxy when when I bought the church, fathers
said, I just assumed that the Western Church fathers had it all right,
right, So I just started reading Jerome, and I started reading you know,
Ambrose and Cyprian and in Augustine, and I just thought, well,
Chris system and you know, he might be all right, and the Capadocians
maybe they're cool, but there's no pressing need for me to read them.
We all believe in the Trinity, right, I mean they were defending the
Trinity. Why do we need to We don't need to rehash that debate.
Yeah, So long story short, Yeah, I went. I went in
that direction. I left the Reformed Church. I started attending a local Catholic
church in two thousand and three, went through what they call Catechumen r CIA,
and UH spent about ten ten years in the Roman Catholic world, got
really serious about attending the traditional Latin Mass. Did that for many, many
years, drove for two hours for probably five or six years to do that
in Memphis or Nashville because the only place it would have the Latin Mass that
I could go to. UH. And then and then I got to this
point where it was like I was so immersed in church history. I got
really into Tomism and all that, and it was like, well, what
am I going to do with pre post Vatican two. Long story short,
that got me looking at the Orthodox question. I encountered Orthodox blogs in two
thousand and six for the first time. I wasn't ready to convert, but
I would hash it out, I'd argue with all these different people that were
online in the Orthodox world at that time. Yeah, and so that that
kind of led me just to start reading Eastern Fathers. And that took me
another ten years. I wasn't ready to, you know, because I mean
I obviously think, well, maybe you're just unstable and you're just converting to
one thing in the next. I would actually take long periods of time,
right, I was runing CALLICU for about ten years, and it took me
another ten years before I decided that I would go into Orthodoxy. I mean
I held off for a really long time. I say, I had the
longest catechumen. It like I intentionally I was a ten year catekid because I
held off a long time. So anyway, I'm sorry, I don't wanna
keep talking about myself. It's just kind of rambling and weird. But long
story short, yeah, I just I felt like, ultimately for me,
at the end of the day. The main issue of what led me out
of Protestantism was looking into the cannon. It's historical formation, that reliance on
church tradition for not just cannons city, but even things like absolutely authorship.
That's those are things that we don't I'm the gospels, they don't name them
their author in a case of like Matthew, right, I mean, and
even if it says Matthew, well, there's other gospels that are false gospels
you know that we don't accept. Why don't we accept them? So you
can't take it just because of the name. Oh, this was the Gospel
of Thomas, Right, Well that's the not we don't want that one.
Well how do we what are we a judge between? Right? So yeah,
more I got into the church history, more, I got into the
church fathers. More I realized that, well, it just can't be Protestantism.
And I was also, you know, still really into Bible the whole
time, so I would always be encountering passages that didn't fit with the system
that I had. So if you've got this soul of fitte a justiccation by
faith alone, you know, Calvinist, you know Tulip system, you've got
all these problem texts that you're gonna have to deal with, and over time,
more and more of those problem texts just really started mounting up, and
I didn't find the answers really sufficient. But the biggest things actually for in
terms of specifically Calvinism and what I would say, it's just really ultimately the
errors of a lot of Latin theology period, would be the questions of absolute
divine simplicity and the energies and the issues of Christology. Because once I realized
that Calvinist Christology, even though they don't intend it to be a lot of
times, it actually is a Nestorian Christology. So you can you can take
it in two directions. You can go in Nestorian and you can say that
the subject who was punished on the cross by the Father is a human subject,
Jesus of Nazareth, which would be an Astorian option. Or you could
say that the son was damned by the Father, which it would be an
area In option, because that would mean the Trinity is no longer you know
one. So so all those are the only two options. If you believe
the classical Protestant doctrine of the Sun being punished as the you know, the
payment for the sins of penal substitutionary atonement, right exactly. You mentioned what
must be a beautiful a doctrine. You mentioned what must be a beautiful teaching
and it must be a beautiful thing because it's named after a flower, tulip.
I think you mentioned that a moment ago, and Luther and I were
kind of anxious to talk to you about that, but you said something and
I really want to follow up with you on that, and and and that
is we were talking about the the the the incredible explosion and growth of videos
against Orthodoxy. But at the same time, they're a lot of Protestants,
and certainly a lot of Calvinists, they're encountering the Fathers, in some cases
for the first time, and they're having to grapple and deal with things.
And they're there, and I've spoken with some of them privately, and it's
they don't want me to quote them, but I mean, what they're saying
privately about what they're what they're wrestling over is profound. Do you see a
change in Protestantism in general because of this? And I think the encounter maybe
goes back only maybe twenty years when when when when this started to get very
serious. Do you see that? I see it, But I mean I'm
wondering what you see in your encounters and talking with people. I'm starting to
hear them talk about real presence. I'm talking they're starting to see to pity
baptism and things like that, and it's like, oh my god, this
is what you guys abhorred thirty years ago, and now you're you're actually saying
there must be something too a Jayder, What do you think? What do
you say? Absolutely? Yeah? I mean, like I said, so,
you know, twenty years ago, maybe twenty two or three, the
Presbyterians, the PCA, and some of the OPC people had what they called
the Auburn Avenue Conference, and that was a lot of these guys at that
time dealing with grappling with the things that you're talking about. And so a
lot of them were reading Schmaman, Fello Schmaman's books. They were reading books
that dealt with liturgical theology. Peter Lightheart, James Jordan, That's the people
I'm talking about, and they're realizing that, hey, there's actually a lot
of liturgy in the Bible. There's actually a lot of symbolism that could point
us in the direction of typology that maybe it's relevant for the New Testament Church.
Maybe vestiments aren't a bad idea, Maybe it's not wrong to have incense,
right, So you know, and this is ironic because, like you're
saying, thirty forty years ago, the Reform, the Calvinists, you know,
they had this strong position which they call the regulat principle of worship,
which is the idea that laid down in like the Westminster Confession, that you
can only worship God in the way that he has explicitly mentioned. But of
course the difficulty there, and I've been making this point quite a lot with
the Protestants in the last few years, is that, well, isn't it
odd that the New Testament then doesn't give us a pattern of worship? Now
we have Paul of Saint Paul complaining about abuses, but how do we know
the layout of what we're supposed to do? If you're going to make the
argument, as many Calvinists do, that Nadab and Abihu were put to death
because they offered strange fire, they did what they weren't supposed to do in
Lett, because because they didn't go according to the explicit commands. Where are
the explicit commands of how you do the worship service? And it's intentionally,
i think, providentially not there because there's a reliance on the fact that the
Apostles and that here's the weird part. Every Protestant scholar and even Anglican liturgists
that I've read, they admit that the Apostles had some sort of liturgy that
they established in the sea, the seas, the apostlote seas and churches they
set up that was some kind of blending of the temple in the synagogue service.
This is pretty pretty unanimous in you know, history of liturgy books that
you'll read, even from Protestants. So to me, that was kind of
another big, you know thing when I read that many years ago that I
didn't realize when I was Protestant, that liturgy has a key role in the
formation of the Biblical canon. And when I learned that, that was pretty
much I think and see McDonald or Bruster says that you can't divorce the daily
electionaries, the daily readings from the cannon and how the cannon of scripture was
was decided upon in terms of the many centuries actually plus even the fact that
it's centuries and there, you know, the Orthodox view, if we accept
the you know Trolo and I see it too, that's really where they affirm
the cannons of Carthage, that lists are loose cannon. You could say that
to me is if you're a Protestants, I will wouldn't If we're Protestants in
the in the first century, the first thing we would do is decide the
cannon. The possibles would have said, hey, we got to have Jerusalem
Council too, right acts fifteen, let's have Jerusalem too right away here?
And I don't know one hundred eighty or ninety eight. I guess they'd all
be dead. But I don't know, right Apple, why didn't Why wouldn't
happen in the you know, John's day? Why wouldn't John. Let's get
together. We got to decide this Bible first. I mean, we're Bible
alone right anyway? So I'm rambling, But again, yeah, I think
you're right father, that so many Protestants are beginning to see that there's not
just an issue of throwing this or that Bible verse. There's a bigger issue
at work here, which is, how does this Bible come to be,
and the very people that make these decisions about putting these books into the Bible,
none of them believe Protestant stuff. And then the option usually for Protestants
at that point. I tried this too. When I first encountered this was
well, I'm gonna try to find Protestant issue quotes in the Church Fathers.
Well, you know, one of the other things that people say about the
IM not gonna go into this, but just regarding the Cannon is that the
Cannon was formed very early. Excuse me, the lectionary was formed very early.
And one of the reasons why Revelation was debated for the longest time because
one of the arguments was people at point and say, it's not electionary,
right, you know, it's not already one of the books that we're reading.
So anyway, but we got we got so much more we want to
go into. Here. One point on that which a lot of people don't
know about. I think it's in the in the Lee McDonald book. If
you read the Lee McDonald book, he said, there's a whole chapter and
they're on how Saint Athanasius went to Rome and Rome was doubting. Uh,
the Catholic Epistles and Revelation, and Athanasius said, it's our tradition that this
is this is a valid book, you should include it. So it's actually
the Pope of Rome was convinced to keep the Catholic Epistles in the Roman Canon
by Saint Athanasius. And if when you start to realize that, you know,
in the Protestant mindset is kind of like social scripture, the Bible just
sort of like falls out of heaven as this like complete thing, and then
you realize, no, actually, the history is God using people through divine
providence, like Athanasius to say, and I'm not saying that, I'm not
saying it's true because Rome said. I'm just saying that it is important that
Rome included the Apocalypse in the Cannon. But it wasn't just the pope saying
I had decree the apocalypse is like, no, it's autonaceous had to go
convince them. It's interesting that earlier you mentioned like as you were thinking through
that calvinistic system of yours, like you're really you're seeing scriptures like that weren't
really, you know, compatible with your your calvinistic beliefs. And I actually
had a similar kind of experience at my previous church when I, you know,
I was asked to preach. We're preaching through the Sermon on the Mount,
and I was just like, man like, justification seems like a process,
and you know, like as you walk through the Sermon on the Mount,
like texts I was struggling with was like judge not unless you be judging
the measure that you judge, you'll be judging. Or also the you know,
texts about forgiveness like forgive so that your heavenly Father would forgive you.
And I'm just like, man like, how do I preach this text?
And I was like struggling because I was on stage. I was like,
yeah, this is what scholars you know say like RC spoil this that in
the third and and here you know, so like I had this, I
was I was almost like arrested to the text in a way where I was
like I had to give two views because I didn't know what to do because
I was like, clearly the text is saying something different than what Calvinism teach.
What would you say for you were kind of those things that you looked
at and you were just saying this, this does not work there were so
many. I mean, I remember thinking, you know, like the parable
of the of the sower. You know, in Calvinism, if you're regenerated,
you're regenerated, right, that doesn't go away because only the elect are
regenerated. But in the parable of the sower, it's very clearly the analogies
is that one of the seeds sprouts up two new life and withers the ways
and dies. And I could never make sense of that, and of course
you have to say things like, well it didn't really spring up today is
the analogy doesn't work anymore if it didn't really spring up to new life.
And you know, there's there's so many other passages like that, where you
know in Hebrews, you know, you have the passage about tasting of the
heavenly gift, and you know they've been washed, they've tasted of the life
to come. How do you taste of the life to come? If?
I mean, that could only be a regeneration and you can't be unregenerated if
you're regenerated. So you know, so many of those passages were difficult passages
too that related to baptism. I noticed that, you know, every time
we would talk about the right of baptism. It was distinct from all those
things in the New Testament about baptism. And it's like, well, you
know, how come Paul isn't distinguishing visible invisible church, visible baptism from invisible
baptism. Right, It's always spoken of as this unitive act, even to
the point of you know, TIEDUS three five, the washing of the labor
of regeneration. And it's like, this seems to be an the grace and
the sacrament, the physical elements are united here. And so the more I
noticed this union, and the more I noticed that, well, now wait
a minute. So we're doing the same thing with ecclesiology, where we're saying
that the church is invisible, it's a spiritual thing, and then there's this
visible church. It's kind of a big mess, right, and the true
elector amongst the you know, all these different groups. And it's like what
Paul is always saying, one Lord, one faith, one body, one
baptism. It's always joined. Great and those were you know, when I
would think about those pastors another here's an overlooked one too that really stuck with
me. When I was a Calvinist, I remember, you know, I
was really into Covenant theology. If you're reformed, you know you love Covenant
theology, you really want to you want to stress Covenant theology when you're discussing
with a dispensationalist or a Baptists. You want to say, hey, you
know, we've got these Covenant blessings just like or even better than the Old
Testament that people had. You know, we can we have people included in
the Covenant more so, right because if you in the Old Testament, you
know it was the males that were circumcised to be included in the Covenant.
Now it's anybody, men, women, gentiles, everybody can be included in
the Covenant. But then I realized, well, I'm making an argument against
a Baptist or against a dispensationalist. That's historical. And then I started thinking,
you know, the history of the Covenant and the Old Testament is one
people, right, And yeah, you in the Old Testament. Certainly other
people outside the nation of Israel could be joined to the Nation of Israel as
possible. But the point is that there's one group or church called the people
of Israel, the Ecclesia. And then in the New Testament, if I'm
going to make that historical argument. I can't just restrict it to the New
Testament. There seems to be one historical group as well in the New Testament,
and so the church has to also be just as one, and even
more so one because it's post Pentecost than the Old Testament Church. And so
I realized that I couldn't argue that the Church which existed amongst thirty thousand different
groups, right, it has to be a single visible and all the analogies
that not just Paul, but Jesus uses right, the tree, one tree,
the sheep fold, right, it's all these united things that are also
united in history. Doesn't mean that the Church doesn't have periods of schisms and
stuff like that, But I'm just saying that there's also a historical continuity to
the historicity of God's people being a single people. J Jay. When we
talk in orthodoxy about what's central to our to our faith, what's central to
our church, we talk about across the death the resurrection. Is it fair
to say that when you were a Calvinist that rather than that? Is it
fair to say that Tulip was the foundational center of Calvinist theology rather than across
the death the resurrection is is that it's another angle. That's a great critique,
you know, because you would if you read the pistoles, you know,
Paul. Paul's always stressing those things. The gospel is death row resurrection.
The gospel is that, And then if you're a Calvinist, you're thinking,
well, that's not really the gospel. The gospel is Romans nine and
the Divine decree, right, I mean, the gospel is this sort of
process of you knowing the divine minds decree of who the elect are, and
then understanding that there's total pravity, that you don't have the ability to move
yourself towards God, that you have to have irresistible grace and monarchism, which
is the divine energy has to act in you to cause you effectually to believe.
So there's a loss of synergism and all that in the process of salvation,
and there's no notion of losing that faith falling away because the elect are
that's who Christ died for limited atonement, right, irresistible grace, and then
perseverance, meaning that only the elect ultimately persevere. So yeah, that's that's
an interesting angle as well, that you know, it's kind of like when
you're when you're if you're an evangelical Baptist not Reformed. You know, you
think when somebody says, what's the gospel, and you think, oh,
it's Romans Road. You know, you go to Romans three and you didn't
understand that you're a sinner, and then you go over here you can't do
good, and then you go here to Romans five that you know, just
five by it. So it's like this, that's the pathway that supposedly lowest
common when I'm in their scales the gospel down, but that's not what Paul
says. How come Paul's always saying resurrection, resurrection, ascension, ascension,
and I just, yeah, you're absolutely right. Like at a certain point
you realize, you know, those weren't really significant and reform theology or Pentecost,
I mean, even the action of Pentecost. It's like I realized eventually
that well, Pentecost is the empowering of the church, and Jesus says,
I'm not going to leave you and forsake you, and I'll guide you into
all truth. And yet here we are, as Protestants and reform we're saying
we'll ride away that. You know, the church pretty much failed historically,
right, But where was this promise of pentecost and guidance and so forth.
Oh, well, that's only for the elect. But wait a minute.
When Paul writes to the Ephesians when he's talking about predestination, he's not writing
to the elect, to the invisible church. He's writing to the invisible community
at Ephesis. And that was always a problem for me in terms of exegesis
of Ephesians, because I have a you know, million reform commentaries and I'm
over here reading Charles Hodge and you know how to see exegy, you know
Ephesians. Oh, this is Paul writing to the regenerated officis, to the
elect. No, it's written to the invisible church. And that's a problem.
That means that the Protestant, the Calvinist auction predestination is not what's in
Paul's mind there. So, long story short, the essence of what you're
asking is that the the Tulip approach is the wrong order of theology, the
wrong order of theology. It's reading theology from trying to do it from the
vanished point of the divine mind to divine decree but that's not how we do
it. Theology is read first and foremost trying to and christology wise. Then
that leads you to how you would understand steriology and ecclesiology basic. So if
you try to start with the divine decree, start with steriology right, justification
by faith alone, that's the gospel, he gets all messed up, and
then you get people. Then down the road your trinitarian christological stuff's all messed
up because you have to squeeze Jesus being damned into the priest oppositions that you
have of justification by faith alone, and both of you coming from a Calvinist
background, it would seem to me there's another big thing missing out of this
is that you can take the center and you can forgive the sinner all you
want, forgive, forget, forgive, forget, forgive. That center is
still going to die. You haven't in the Calvinist it seems to me,
and I could be wrong. In the Calvinist way of looking at things,
you still haven't dealt with death, and Christ destroyed death, so that the
sin they're still forgiven. Who's still having to deal with the sin in him,
the sinful nature and so forth, could live. And it seems like
that that's missing, that the idea that Christ destroyed death. Yeah, the
ultimate that's missing from Calvinist theology. It's a crucial point because in Calvinist theology,
death is kind of like a necessary it's it's a necessary element under the
divine decree. Right, So it's not the enemy of God. It's sort
of just the tool of God. And certainly, certainly God's providence covers evil
and death, but it doesn't mean that he positively wills or decrees it.
In fact, Scripture says God does not will death. And you know in
Californid's got these different wills. So he's got one will where it's like he
doesn't really want it, but then he's got a secret will where he's like
doing it. It's crazy. Yeah, So this is this is a huge
gap. You're absolutely right, and it ties into the notion that you can
be saved and justified and righteous and have no no actual holiness. Right,
that's the that's a weird thing that actually encountered that in a lot of the
Roman Catholic critiques of Protestantism when I was looking at Roman Catholicism, because they
made a great point. I think it was. It was I think it
was on Eck. There's a there's an old book that is ex debate with
Luther. It's actually a really good book. I'm not I'm not advocating Roman
Catholicism. I'm just saying that Eck has some really good arguments in that debate
with Luther, and he's and and some of the topics brought up are things
like, well, how can God call somebody righteous if in fact they're completely
wicked? As you say, Luther, right, your your filthy rags.
Luther was even more radical and depravity than Calvin was because Luther wrote Bondage of
the Will, which is basically arguing that you can you can't do anything good
at all. He's more radical just on that point than Calvin is. Well,
He's says that you're a you're a you're an ass that's either written by
God or the devil, but the devil. Yeah, And that's in that
Bondage of the Will book. And I had a payse where I read I
read the private six Luther books. I was really enamored with Luther for maybe
a year or two. I wasn't Lutheran, but I just thought he was
an interesting, you know, bombastic figure. But uh, you know,
acc was making these points that, well, doesn't that make God a liar?
How can God call you righteous when in fact you're evil and God can't
lie, So how's that possible? Oh well, he's just seeing the righteousness
of Christ's covering you. But it's not actually the reckness of Christ. It's
actually just a legal status. Great. And then there's a great point that
I think it's brought up in the Alistair McGrath Eustecia day Book, which is
that nobody before nominalism in the Middle Ages and the Reformed, the rise of
the Reformed tradition, they didn't think of a division between what you called something
and it's actual a mentaphysical status. That's an actual post Enlightenment, postal Reformation
division. In other words, it's impossible to have that view, that nominalist
view prior to medieval nominalism debates. So, in other words, nobody in
the ancient medieval world, including Paul, thought that you could have a purely
legal status of righteousness divorced from the actual ontological status if you're being righteous.
And that's a little bit of a philosophical angle on it. But if that
is the case, and I think that it is, that's also really devastating
to the idea that you can be just before God in a purely nominal legal
sense and not in an actual sense. There wasn't a division in the world.
And ladies and gentlemen watching this debate sometime in the future of this recording,
go back and listen to what Jay just said. Listen to that again.
That's really something. Yeah, there's no division. And the same thing
goes for sacraments, right the ancient and medieval world. Now, certainly there
were heretics that deny the real presence, but they didn't typically think of this
radical division between uh sign and signifier. Right. The same goes for iconography,
the image of the icon, the image of the saint. They didn't
think of it as this radical division of oh, that's just a purely token
symbol. They thought of it as having in some sense a real, real
metaphysical connection with the person that being the thing. Right, So there might
have been debates about the real presence, but nobody thought about it. As
you know, symbols in the ancient world were not sure dead matter. Does
that make sense? Yeah, well, that's what they think of it today,
that's not what they thought of it back then. The word symbol is
is radically altered now from what it meant two thousand years ago. There you
go, yeah, yeah, because you're clashing two things together is out?
Yeah you So so this question here, I got to ask you this so
that Daniel, Daniel MacArthur, if you're listening, he wanted me to ask
Jay Die this when when the opportunity presented sself. So you're welcome. So
basically you touched up on this idea of the Christology, this reformed Christology.
Now it's been kind of you know, you know, mutulated in a way.
Can you can you speak more into that. I know you referenced you
know where that kind of gets messed up, But it's a it's an important
point. Daniel said that was something that was very convincing for him as well.
Back in the day. You've you've had videos where you've talked about this,
But could you kind of walk through why that Christology issue is such a
huge point and why it's a radical Sure, So I would say I'm not
saying that Protestants are intentionally wanting to be an a Storian. Sure, a
lot of times when I make this point, though, say I'm not in
the Storian. I don't believe that. I'm not saying that you're intending to
be. What I'm saying is that the logic of the penal substitution position will
take you there if you're consistent with it, and it's pretty clear cut.
I think that now some Protestants and Evangelicals today, I mean maybe maybe Calvinists
are up in the air today. I'm not sure I did hear that one.
Somebody told me that one of the modern Calvinist systematic theologians, I don't
remember who it was, maybe Robert Raymond or somebody. Somebody supposedly doesn't have
the classical Reformation view that that Jesus was damned in our place. But for
the classical reformers even up in two people like Ji Packer, uh, Paul
Washer teaches it right. Here's the other, the Calvinist Baptist guy that everybody
that's super famous I always good blank on his name, John John Piper,
John Piper Teacher hyper teaches that Christ was damned. I'm trying to think of
who the classical guys all that's really cool damns himself. I like that one
boy. Yeah, well, I mean they're trying to be consistent because so
you have you know, you have in the Apostles Creed. I know that's
not really an Orthodox church. But in the West, when Luther or Calvin
and these guys, when they were commenting on Christ's descent into Hades and the
Apostles Creed, they had to give it a new understanding because unfortunately, even
though the Latin Church in the West at that time they I believe that they
had kind of lost the significance of Christ has sent into Hades, it was
still it was still there in confession, and even today in the Catholic Catechism
it's still there that they professed that Christ has sent it into the Hades.
But the Reformers, this is a fascinating They gave it a new spin.
They said, well, it's not him actually going to someplace called Hades.
What that means is that on the cross he experienced the reality of the damn
nation and of all the people that he died for. The logic of that
is that if it's going to be a full transaction in a legal sense,
if he's going to pay the debt that I out he paid up old.
You know, I can't remember that Baptist him we used to sing when I
was a kid. But so right, I mean, if the debt is,
if it's a one to war, you've got to pay the damnation,
which was to me that I then get the bank account righteousness put into my
bank account. Right, That's how it works in the classical Protestant idea.
So it's not just them saying, oh, well, God just forgives you
and transfers the righteous of Christ to your bank account. It's on the basis
of and most of the classical reformers the wrath of the Father being poured out
on the sun. So then we have this question in terms of Christology,
which is that, well, we're going to be orthodox in our christology,
how does that actually work? Because is it the Father damning the sun?
And if you believe ephesis and the Christology that you know comes out of well
not just emphasis but calconon, then we know that the subject is a divine
person, the logos is the divine person who's undergoing supposedly this event, and
that would mean then that the divine person of the Father is damning the divine
person of the Logos who's incarnated. So you kind of only have two options
there. You can say, well, it's not the father damning the divine
son, it's the damnation of the human nature. Well, but it's there's
has to be one person. Yeah, there's got to be some subject that
is the recipient of that. It can't just be the human nature that's damn.
It has to be a subject. And so is that Jesus of Nazareth
the historical person. Well, that would be an a story in view that
the story is sought a dual subject Christology, that there was a human hypostasis
Jesus Nazareth, and then there's the divine hypostasis of the Logos, who was
kind of sometimes present, and then sometimes it's the human person sometimes. So
it's this weird dual subject Cristology. And the whole point of that tokos the
word the phrase is, Cyril said, this completely cuts out the whole idea
of there being a dual subject Cristology. The only subject for all the incarnate
action, Cyril says, is the divine person of the Logos. That's it.
He is a full human nature, but he's not a human hypostasis or
person. And so if we accept Ephesus and that teaching. Then what happened,
and by the way, Calcedon as well, because a lot of people
don't know. People think Leo is the measure of Calcedon. That's not actually
true. They measured the tone of Leo against Cyril, So Calceldon is actually
Kirillion, not primarily Pope sa Leo. Now point being, then the other
option is I could say, well, in this transactional event, I could
say that the divine person of the Sun is the one that's damned. But
this presents so many trinitarian difficulties that it's almost just unimaginable. I mean,
first of all, the persons of the triads share the same will. There's
one willing God. Great, how could you have one will the person the
Father of setting his will against the son to damn the son, right,
how could you? You would? We would lose paracorisis the divine involved right,
the Father and the spirit would no longer dwell the son if you's damned,
because he's a curu. So it's just absurd, it would be it
would be anti trinitarian. But that they wouldn't have those teachings to begin with,
because from Protestants from the Reformation on think of how much they were simply
inventing because everything was anti Catholic at that point. So if the Catholics believe
it, we don't, then what do we believe? And then they have
to come up with this kind of stuff as something, because what are the
people waiting for? You know, well, if you read Lutheran Calvin,
there's always this sort of verbal credence given to things like Chalcedon and so forth.
Are Oddly enough, the Westminster Confession, if I recall, which is
post Calvin, it actually does. It gives verbal credence to Christ having two
wills and two natures, which is the you know, fifth and six Councils
explicate that. But you know, the six Council goes really deep into two
energies, so you know, you have to have the essence energy sanction doctrine
and to have two wills and to energy. And to my knowledge, there's
no Protestant that that I have an essence innergy sanction doctrine, unless it's just
people modern people just kind of saying, oh, I like that idea,
it's cool. But but Calvin, I think, you know, and then
I've read the entire institute's how to read that for bonds and seminary. They
manage with the whole thing, all fifteen hundred pages of it. And I
remember there are sections where Calvin's you know, he's like, well, you
know, we believe in two natures and two wills, and that's consistent with
Calcedon, and we definitely believe. We don't believe Calson's infallible, but we
definitely believe what it teaches. But they don't really understand the implications of it,
you know, it's more than just verbal verbal credence, right, right,
Well, Jay, what do we do with a person comes along and
says something like, you know, I'm not okay, I'm not reformed or
Calvinist anymore. I'm a Bible believing Christian. You know, you have a
lot of I'm a Bible believing Christian. If that's all they are, how
do you show them that they're no better off from ancient Apostolic Christianity. And
you've probably encountered a lot of this, right, Yeah, yeah, I
mean there's a lot of a lot of difference. Yeah, right, Well,
I find it typically the most beneficial to go into just saying, well,
who do you think put the Bible together? You know, I mean,
did it just happen on it fall out of the sky. I mean
there's a real historical process to that that you can't you can't divorce the divine
from the human in this regard. So just as just as in Christology,
for example, I know evangelicals might not know about Christology, but for you
guys, for Orthodox people, like, we know there's a synergy in Christ,
right, there's a synergism between the human nature and the divine nature in
Christ. And we know there's a synergy in terms of our participation in grace.
Right, we are always cooperating. Paul says, I'm a cooperator,
co worker with Christ work. Yeah, yeah, So there's always synergy.
It's never gone, it's never lost. And you know, one of the
problems in Calvinism is that conversion requires God stepping in and basically taking over.
So it's a monarchistic view, and if they were consistent, I think they
would also have to be monarchists in terms of Christology as well. So it
seems to me that they would prefer severus and purists, you know, the
people that Maximus in the Church fathers argued with they would be more like a
Coptic my ephysite type of position if they wanted to really be monargist. But
but for the typically evangelical, I would say, one thing I found really
effective is to point out, you know, they'll always say, well,
we're not saved by works, bro, you can't be saved by works.
You know, we're justified by faith and not works. And I said,
well, how does what is es to describe faith? As they're like,
it's a gift? Yeah, but what does he say? He says,
this is the work of God that you believe on him. So wait a
minute, So faith is actually a work according to Christ, to the Gospel
John. So it can't be the case that no works are necessary, because
every evangelical is gonna at least say, well, you do have to believe
when not wait a minute, it doesn't believe something I do. Even if
you think that it's just a mental notional thing, it's still something I gotta
do with your will. Well, but it's a gift. Yeah, but
it's still something I gotta do, right, so's they can't totally divorce the
human element from it at all. And then then I would point out,
well, one thing that happens in the history of this debate of justification by
faith alone is that the people who defend it oftentimes totally disagree amongst themselves as
to what it actually means. So, for example, does my faith in
the atoning, death, row resurrection work of Christ is that if I put
all my faith and trust in that alone? Is that just a case by
faith alone? Or as many of the classical Reformed actually said and Lutherans do,
I also have to know and believe in justification by faith alone. To
be justified by faith alone, you see. So you can sort of pile
on the difficulties there to illustrate that what sounds perhaps as a very clear you
know, the perspecutive scripture that sounds is a very clear doctrine, Actually isn't
that clear? What does it actually mean? And I would point out one
one other strong point, which I learned when I was Catholic, was you
know, if you look at Romans four when Paul cites Genesis, and it
doesn't matter whether you're a Protestant, Evangelical or a calumnist, Abraham's what they
call transition from wrath to grace. This is the idea that before you regenerate
your God's enemy. You're a child of wrath. Got h Right, When
you're regenerated, that's what they call the transition from wrath to grace. Now
God loves you. You're a friend of God. You're regenerated. The transition
from wrath to grace in Abraham's life should be, if you're a good Protestant,
Genesis twelve. But I remember noticing it one day when I was looking
at the Catholic stuff back in twenty four. Actually, Paul cites Genesis fifteen,
or the passage supposed to be supposedly the ultimate passage Romans for you know,
defending justification by faith alone. Why is Paul citing the wrong chapter?
Abraham has already done three chapters of righteous works from twelve to fifteen. Paul's
using the text in fifteen that he was justified by faith. He was righteous
by faith, not Genesis twelve. And that always bugged me because he should
have cited Genesis twelfth. Right, if we're Protestants, but if righteousness from
God is something that is an actual power that we participate with and synergize with.
Right, and Paul's point, of course, I think we all know
Paul's point is not that there's no works that we do. Paul's point is
that the works of the ceremonial law and circumcision didn't make Abraham righteous. That's
the point of that passage. The mosaic law didn't make because if mosaic law
was necessary, then how are people before mosaic law ross. Paul's point not
that we don't do any works at all. Right, So, but if
the Protestant reading, whether your Calvinists or evangelical, of Romans four, is
what Romans four is, Paul should have sided Genesis twelve. Yeah, thanks,
yeah, no, good point, good point. Wow, Well other
things too. I would say to one other point. You know, when
when God speaks, it occurs, it's efficacious. Right, God speaks,
the world comes to be. And so if God speaks, you're righteous.
God speaks a word into our hearts. New Testament says, right, it's
efficacious. I don't mean this in the sense of like irresistible grace, but
I'm saying it's not possible for God to say you are righteous, you'd be
Luther and you not be that right because His word is efficacious. M Yeah,
good stuff, good stuff. Father, As as we come to close,
bather. Now you're about to say something. Well, I think we
have kind of one last thing we'd like to ask Jay, And this kind
of wraps back to the to the first question. So many Protestant videos coming
out why you should leave Orthodoxy, Why you should become a Protestant. Let's
turn that around. Why is Eastern Orthodoxy a better alternative for Protestants? Maybe
two or three reasons, Jay, What do you think right? Well,
I would say that, you know, but between product I was raised Evangelical
Baptists and Calvinists for many years and then it's been about a decade and run
with allticism. I would say that a lot of what both Roman Catholics and
Protestants and Evangelicals are looking for are it's kind of in that midway of the
Orthodox Church. So a lot of people are looking for while I want Bible,
but I'm but this seems to be like just Bible alone doesn't work right,
because it's like, ultimately, at the end of the day, if
you're a Protestant, you might like your pastor you might like your community,
but they don't really have authority. And at the end of the day,
it's kind of like you and your Bible right, and that's that. I
mean, I know that Protestants recognize that there's an authority that elders have,
but I'm saying that in terms of the church, I think that whole thing
is disastrous because there's not a body that can actually govern. And one thing
I noticed too, was that you in the in Paul's epistles, for example,
of the Corinthians, he says that you should excommunicate the people that are
really causing these troubles in the church. And then if you read the Councils,
you know, all the way up until the triumph of Orthodoxy in the
Seventh Council and in the Sonouticon, you have the continuation of the idea that
the church has the authority to excommunicate. And if you're a Protestant, I
mean, the only time I've ever encountered a Protestant ever even thinking of excommunicating
it was in a very small Presbyterian Reform group. They were the only Protestants
I've ever heard. Maybe there's Protestant churches other and I saw I'm not saying
that you should become Orthodox because people can actuallymunicate. It's an indicator of the
fact that the ecclesiology of Protestanism is kind of a disaster and it's kind of
a mess, and it doesn't really have what we call normative authority and ethics,
which is the idea that there's somebody that can inter and make a decision
and buying people right, it doesn't necessarily make them infallible. We're not,
you know, Papists or Roman Catholics, but there is a body that has
some nodal authority and their decisions can be made, and ultimately the Church as
a totality is infallible. I think that's the Orthodox position as I understand it,
but not necessarily an individuals. So so the loss of that I think
pentecost guidance of the church. I think you'll find in the elements that are
missing in Protestantism, and that are missing even in Catholicism, I think genuinely
are maintained in the Orthodox Church. So that's one great reason is that probably
a lot of what people are looking for is there. You know, you
don't want to give you a false impression that there's no problems in the Orthodox
Church and it's all, you know, green pastures. I think my experience
that different bodies have different sets of problems, and there's some overlap. There's
going to be we have similar problems to other groups, but there are problems
unique to Orthodoxy. There's problems unique to Rome, there's problems unique to Protestantism.
But I think that if it's not a systemic problem. For example,
I would argue that in Catholicism, the papacy and what has tried to bind
people to infallibly and with dogmatic authority, that becomes a systemic level problem such
that that system kind of can't be rescued or it can't function. I it
doesn't work right. And I would say in Protestantism, because of the nature
of the kind of chaotic ecclesiology, it also is a systemic level problem.
I don't think Orthodoxy has those systemic level problems. It certainly has its problems,
but systemic level problems, in my argument, would be enough to cancel
that out is not a good option basically. So so I think that beyond
those kind of intellectual arguments, you know, Orthodoxy is very different. It's
gonna push you to change, it's going to push you to actually, you
know, deal with your sins. You know you're not you're not just in
your prayer corner mentally, you know, recounting your sins with you in the
Bible. You're going to be going through a kind of a healing. I
like Father Deacon Ductryonis's analogy Orthox like rehab. Yeah, it's like I'm all
go into rehab and we got to keep going back and working on you know,
because throughout the week we relapse, right like people who have addictions relapse.
Well, you gotta go back, you gotta keep working at it.
So that's very different than anything I experienced in Protestantism and even Romantholicism and my
experience that the you know, when you go to confessions, it's just very
mechanical. It's very oh, here's my sins, Okay, here's your five
helm Mary's. And then it's like I might go to another priest and it's
that he doesn't even know, right. But in Orthodox it's different because my
case, maybe the other cases, I don't know if everybody's case, but
you're typically confessing to a spiritual father who is tracking and knowing your progress,
and so he knows the medicine that you need. And that's why that mechanical
system doesn't really work. I don't think if it's just a well I'm here
to pay my helm Mary debt and let me go back to do it.
No, it's like no, you okay, So you you got this problem,
Maybe you need to you know, maybe you have a problem with greed.
Maybe you need to be more magnanimous this next week. You need to
give some more money if you're greedy. Oh, you got a problem with
eating too much? Maybe you need to fasten. You See what I'm saying
that there's a medicine is applied to the difficulty, and that that's not anything
I ever experienced in other groups. So I actually think that deep down we
all kind of want to be healed. I'll know it. And Orthodox gothing
has that healing medicine facts facts. Amen. Amen, No, that's that's
facts, like it is like, uh but I mean it's hard. It's
hard. I mean it's tough. I mean I'm trying to scare people,
but like, you know, it's it's gonna be. It's not, it's
not. The Christian and Protestanism is really intellectual. You can read a lot
of books and argue a lot, and you're not challenged to work on your
vices. You know what I mean. That's it's just different. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, I say I say all the time like it you know,
orthodox, he is almost like the Christian Marines in a way. You
know. There you go exactly great. But before we close, I do
want to ask you a lighthearted question, really a real quick one here.
So I know before, like off air, we were talking about like how
you know I connected. You know, we talked on Discord a little bit.
Now I know you you've had things on Discord, You've had open dialogue
and things like that. There was a time where Deacon and and I as
father Deacon was debating Matt Slick and you called that Slick a goblet, which
is like hilarious of my calling. Go ahead, Oh no, you good,
You're good. You could you called you called Masslick a goblin? Did
you know that that was going to become a music video? No. I
think that he's a really nasty person that I've had a lot of nasty interactions
within the past, and so I think people clip that and they think that,
oh, you just like randomly wanted to call him names. Now,
there's a long history of of he would come on the Discord and we would
he would just be really, really nasty, and we ended up having to
just cut off all the communications with that guy. And there was supposed to
be that day, there was supposed to be a debate between doctor father doctor
and I as a guy named Darth Dawkins and somebody else, and then they
brought Masslick on and so it kind of surprised everybody that it didn't end up
being the debate that everybody thought it would be. And so, uh,
no, I just I just I think he's a pretty nasty person. And
I don't have the view that we should always never call people for what they
are. I mean, maybe maybe I'm wrong about that. I can be
corrected. But no, I didn't. I didn't have no idea. What
was I don't even know who makes a lot of those heard you ever heard
this the god? No I'm saying I don't I've heard it. I'm saying
I don't know who, Like I don't know who these who who made that?
No idea? Man? Right, So people just you know, kind
of clip stuff and look crazy with it. Good stuff? Man, Well,
well thanks for addressing Calvinism, Protestant pro Protestantism and and just really great
questions. Thank you, Jay. We've got a message that we want to
get out and we want it. We got a message about the faith in
the church and and it We're not hard people to get to know. This
is not a hard faith to get to know. We are opening, open
and welcoming and uh we want people to to engage with us, admit in
many different areas at many different levels. So thank you for coming on.
We really appreciate that absolutely, Thank you. And yeah, I agree with
that. Not everybody needs to hear, you know, a detailed reputation of
tulip, but some people do, all right, some people do need that.
Now we had we had a good interaction here. I'm very grateful Luther.
Thank you Jay, Thank you ladies and gentlemen who are watching this,
Thank you, and subscribe so that you can be notified of future videos coming
out. And we're aiming to provide quality content and really good engagement on issues
about our faith, about our culture, and and so much more. So
subscribe to The Transfigured Life, and thank you again for watching. Take care
all y'all, have a great day. Thank you so much. Thanks you.
You are not getting a church. You advinted your own church excuse me,
You're you're just making an assumption at all that the saints agree they do
you go read them. You have no faith. You're a collar all of
a demon of Boomer card card, a demon a boomer making a summer of
bollar em a Boomer card. Excuse because being a demon of Boomer card,
or you're a collar demon of Boomer card a booming a demon of Boomer card.
Excuse me, dement of Boomer card card, a demon a Boomers making
an Assumptionism? Are all the councils inspired and inherrant the acumenical ideas? So
there are ecumenical centens are inspired and inherrant correct