The what up? What a guess We're going to go over the difference is
between Calvinism and Orthodoxy. So we have Redeemed Zoomer and Jay Dyer. For
those who don't know, Redeem Zoomer one of the fastest growing channels on YouTube
and some of his videos have gone over millions of views. Lots of my
audience love his videos because it's, you know, Zoomer content, straight to
the point. Like me, he's kind of very secular, but he became
a Calvinist and we're going to kind of get into that. And then of
course we have Jay Dyer, one of the most popular Orthodox apologists. He's
a philosopher, comedian, singer, geopolitics, he does it all. But
Jay's his like signature issue is reformed theology. He went to Bonston Seminary.
So I thought connecting Redeem Zummer and j Dyer would be very good. So
I think it's gonna be a great stream. Thanks both for joining us.
But just for those who don't know, Redeem Zummer, can you explain,
you know, from secularism, what led you specifically to Calvinism in the Presbyterian
Church at USA. Yeah, Well, thank you Kyle for having me on
again. It's going to be great. Thanks for this opportunity. So yes,
as Kyle already said, I was raised in a very secular part of
the country, where it was basically ridiculous to take religion seriously in my generation
generation Z. All of that changed when I went to the Midwest. I
was going to like a music summer camp, but it was also a Christian
themed camp, and it was partly sponsored by the Presbyterian Church because it was
run by an Oberlin professor who was a devout Presbyterian, and he basically shaped
the camp according to his vision of what the Kingdom of God should look like.
And I saw the beauty of the Kingdom of God there. I saw
the goodness, truth, and beauty of Christianity there, and that completely changed
my perspective. I learned that the stereotypes I had heard about Christians all my
life were completely wrong. It wasn't true that Christians were all a bunch of
dumb, anti intellectual illbilities like I was raised to believe in my public school.
So once I saw that I became Christian, I didn't immediately abandon Leftism,
but I gradually saw that Leftism and Christianity were incompatible. But because I
was still living in my very atheist community for the rest of you know,
my high school career, I was my faith was assaulted on all sides and
I didn't really know how to defend it. And I had a crisis of
faith about a year after becoming a Christian, and I kept scourging the internet
for like resources to help me with my faith. And at that time I
didn't really know what to where to go for resources, so I went to
some not very good places. I went to like Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro
for defenses of the existence of God. I was tacts logic, so you
went you went to paxol Logicogy. Yeah, a bunch of beer. It
was like, they're Jewish, they believe in got it, It's the same,
right, So what they ended up saying was very different than Christianity.
But I didn't really realize that at the time, because you know, I
had recently become Grishman. I didn't know much and they talked a lot about
free will. So I was getting my sort of resources from them. But
then I then I tried to think, Okay, what does my church actually
teach? Because I've been going to this Presbyterian church. But I haven't really
been reading the Bible much or studying theology much. So that year I was
getting confirmed in my church and I thought, okay, maybe I'll actually find
out what my church teaches. And I was assigned this really smart mentor,
this mentor who was like a Columbia professor, but who's also an elder in
the church. And I learned that Presbyterians teach something called Calvinism, and I
was like, Okay, that sounds interesting. I wonder what that is.
So I look up Calvinism. I'm like, are you serious? We don't
have free will. So when I heard about that, I was horrified by
that. I was horrified by the idea that we don't have free will,
especially because these you know, Jewish influencers Dennis Brager and Ben Shapiro had ingrained
inside me that free will was such an important concept in religion. So I
really didn't like Calvinism, and I was going to I was going to go
up to my mentor. I was scheduled to meet my mentor. I was
going to go up to him and say, look, I can't accept this
Calvinism stuff. So I thought I would just read my Bible in preparation for
when I was going to meet him. So I flipped randomly to a page
I had never really read the Bible before. The page I randomly flipped to
was Roman's ninth and I did not like Calvinism. I was not reading it
with a bias. I mean I was reading with an anti Calvinist bias,
and I was like, uh, oh, this really does look like what
the Calvinists are saying, where it says, you know, God is faithful
to those who he's going to be faithful. He judges those who he's going
to judge. We have no right to say it's unfair. The pot has
no right to say to the potter, why did you make me like this?
God made some people as vessels of mercy, some people as vessels of
wrath, prepared for destruction. That sounded horrifying to me, but I had
to admit, yeah, it seems to be what the Bible is saying.
So I shared these concerns with my mentor. I was like, does Calvinism
mean that we are robots? Does this go against free will? And he
explained that it did not, but I didn't understand that at the time.
It still sounded really bad to me. But then I kept investigating, you
know, the resources of the Presbyterian Church, and I realized that Calvinism and
Presbyterianism had so many ways to defend the faith that I didn't know existed,
way better than like these Jewish people I was trying to go to earlier.
But the difference is they backed up everything with scripture, with the Bible.
These Jewish influencers I was listening to, they were just arguing based on,
you know, the best philosophy they could think of. But for the Presbyterians,
everything was based on scripture and everything was very well thought out. I
discovered Tim Keller, who's one of who was sadly he died last year.
He was one of the greatest apologists of our time. So I'm sure both
of you guys can can agree that Presbyterianism is better than Judaism. So yeah,
so that's sort of how I came to the Presbyterian Church, and that's
just where I've been ever since. When I was when I was figuring out
what Calvinism was, I did briefly consider Orthodoxy among a few other things,
but I found that, you know, the more I started the Bible the
more I found that the Presbyterian Church has the best resources to explain what the
Bible actually says. So yeah, that's how I became Christian and how I
became Calvinist. All that awesome. Thanks for sharing. So, Jay,
you kind of had the opposite experience where you were Baptists and you became reformed
kind of reading the Bible and getting into the Church Fathers and actually going to
Bonson's seminary, getting into Orthodox Presbyterianism. So now if you want to explain
your experience of like kind of reading out of Calvinism eventually took Catholicism and then
to Orthodoxy as you go deeper and deeper. Yeah, I was first got
into the reading the Bible when I was eighteen or nineteen, and my exposure
to Christianity point was just being raised Baptist, but I never really took it
seriously. And then I went to some evangelical Bible studies that I was invited
to, and eventually, like you said, kind of got interested in more
historical Christianity. So I started reading actually not the Church Fathers, but I
went to Lutheran calvin Actually I started with a lot of the Baptist Calvinists first,
so I got really into Spurgeon, and then I read a lot of
the Puritans. At that time. I got into John Owen and all those
kind of guys, and then that kind of led me to start questioning my
Baptist assumptions about believers, Baptism and the issues of dispensational theology. Because I
was raised and kind of in just an evangelical, dissed dispensational attitude. We
didn't go deep into eschatology, but I never really questioned it. So I
started wondering about, you know, covenant theology, and then I got deep
into that. So I started reading John Murray and Charles Hodge and Hermann,
Visius and Burkhoff and all the reform systematic theologian people, and that eventually led
me to questioning Baptist theology as a whole, because I was starting to see
a lot more continuity between the Old and New Testament than I had previously been
aware of. And even when I was a Baptist reform Baptist in my mindset,
I was really into apologetics, so I was really deep into Bonson's transcendental
argumentation. I read basically everything I could get my hands On from Bonson and
Van Tiel, and at that time I was like, well, I want
to go to Bible College, but I don't know if I want to go
to anything Baptist anymore. I ended up getting asked to leave my Baptist Bible
College because I was attending a PCA church, so they were mad that I
was going to a church that believed in infant Baptism. So I ended up
leaving Baptist Bible College. And I was like, well, I don't want
to go to secular universe, so I'll just try to see if I can
get into Bonson Seminary, which at that time was kind of a adjunct to
what they called the Southern California Center for Christian Studies, which was a lot
of PCA and o PC people at that time, like Ken Gentry was involved
in that, Monson and some other people. And I got really into Reconstructionist
theology. So I was reading a lot of Rush June, a lot of
Gary North, a lot of James Jordan and all those guys. And then
I started thinking, well, when I was at Bonson Seminary, I had
a class with I think a guy who's still a reformed Presbyterian elder Chris Dreevel.
He taught a church history class and we had a stack of about ten
patristic and medieval texts that we had to read. So I dove into it.
I was really into it. I bought the Philip schaff, a church
father said at that time, and I realized I was gonna have to really
read the church fathers and see what they taught, because I was kind of
like you, like you said, like working my way back historically through the
progression of the church. I mean, I was very obviously interested in biblical
theology as well. It's not like I only made this decision or whatever based
on could you bring me a water? As well, and I had to
make the decision just based on history. Right for me, It wasn't like
just some kind of history question. It was a combination of all these things
like biblical theology, church fathers, church history, all of that together,
as well as studying philosophy. So I was studying philosophy as well at the
same time in the secular university. I decided not to do bonce a seminary
because right around the time, after a year of Bonsen, I decided that
I was starting to question Protestantism and reform theology as a whole. So I
took I read All the City of God, and I read all of like
the works of I don't know if I read all of them. I read
a lot of Saint Cyprian at the time, and I read a lot of
Saint Jerome, and I knew that as reform, you know, we had
a lot of reliance on older ideas like Augustine right, Augustine sort of the
proto Calvinist of the you know, the Patristic era. So I thought,
well, why don't I read this guy himself and see what he taught.
And of course he doesn't teach anything close to reform theology. So I was
kind of put in an existential crisis. So after I read All the City
of God, I listed a bunch of questions and took it to all my
professors, and I found all their questions to be really or their answers to
be inadequate. So then I started attending Catholic RCIA classes. Not because I
was ready to convert, but just because I was ready. I wanted to
see what the Roman Catholic view was on all of these different contentious issues and
I knew the Reformation critiques of those things, because I've been reading Reform theology
for many years, but I didn't know, like, well, what's their
answer, right? So I started realizing a lot of the things that I
thought were the case I didn't really have a good picture of, and I
didn't really give the benefit of the doubt or steal man the other position.
So I thought, why don't I try at least to understand their arguments from
their side, because a lot of what I assumed Augustine taught wasn't the case,
right. I assumed that he was kind of this proto Calvinist, and
then I find no, actually, he believes in episcopacy, he believes in
absolute succession, he believes in the real presence, he believes in all these
things that I thought were very you know. Then he believes in the necessity
of good works as a manifestation of you know, the whether you have the
gift to perseverance or not. I know that Calvinists believe in that, but
I'm saying that his conception of faith and works is not solo fide. It's
not the it's not the Reform view. And then I read a book by
Alistair McGrath around that time that came out where he was arguing and pointing out
that nobody taught Luther's doctrine of solo fide prior to Luther, right. So
if that's the case, then you know, I started realizing the lynch pins
of what would be the church right. So you know, Luther thinks that
the solos and these diff lynch pins are kind of what the church hinges on.
If those started falling, then then Protestantism wouldn't be a viable option anymore.
But I decided that really the issue wasn't even going to be those things.
It was going to be something more fundamental, which was the formation of
the Biblical Canon. So I basically just started reading tons of evangelical works on
the formation of the Canon, and across the span of all the works that
I read, whether it was Evangelicals like F. F. Bruce, or
Baptist like Lee McDonald, or even Anglican or other traditions talking about how the
Canon came to be, I realized I didn't know much about this, and
I just had all these assumptions. But when you get into actual history of
the formation of it, it's very obvious that the Church as an existing,
visible historical body played an inseparable role in the preservation, the transmission, and
the decision about what would be canonical. And so eventually I just found answers
from people like you know, when RC Sprawl would say stuff like it's a
fallible collection of infallible books. I think that ends up being self refuting.
It leads to the logical conclusion that the academic realm could then determine through study
and research and overturned everything that the church had believed prior to that. And
that's exactly what happened after Luther. You get in the German higher critical tradition
coming out of Luther, the ability to deconstruct the whole text, because now
it's no longer in the ecclesiastical sphere to make these decisions that are normative.
It's a normative authority here. Now it's passed over into the academic realm.
So all of those questions were really bugging me for many years, and then
in two thousand and two three I came into the Roman Catholic Church. They
have to remember at that time that was like prior to the omni presence of
the Internet. So there weren't a whole lot of resources. There wasn't a
whole lot of stuff in two thousand and three that you could go to for
a lot of this, you had to just get the actual books and do
the reading. You know, there weren't really podcasts yet. There there was
new advent existed, but that was about it when it came to like finding
you know, resources, resources that you if you didn't have the Church Fathers
set right, you have to go to a new advent. And there were
some Catholic websites and at that time, again the only debate that existed online
was reformed uh in Protestant debates with Roman Catholics. That was it like if
you go into chat rooms or whatever, you would see people, you know,
like spam spamming in AOL chat back and forth between Roman Catholic and it
would be like quote minds, like the Protestants that be putting there are processes
to be spamming, like Romans three and Romans nine, and the Catholics would
be spamming like quotes from Saint Jerome and and you know, we're trying to
refute argue that Protestantism was was a historical anyway, so for me, it
was just going to be pretty much a consistent approach of like studying the text,
going back into the text. So I was Roman Catholic for about maybe
I always say, I don't remember exactly how many years, basically eight or
nine years, basically a decade anyway. So then as the Internet got more
and more popular, people were exposed a lot more ideas like orthodoxy started getting
more and more popular online. Even in two thousand and seven or eight,
when I first encountered orthodox stuff, there was only like two or three kind
of popular blogs. There wasn't a whole lot of resources and material and you
know apologetics. So uh, that was the first time I really encountered orthodoxy.
I didn't have it near me, so I didn't really take it very
seriously. But within the Rumman Catholic world, if you're in that world for
you know, a span of time, for almost a decade, you're going
to be presented with a lot of the the contradictions and difficulties. And one
thing I've noticed with you, with younger guys like you guys, is that
what the Internet's done is that it is allowed a lot of these debates that
in like the early two thousands or mid two thousands, it took a lot
longer to work through the Internet has basically sped all that up, so you
can you can work through these issues a lot quicker because there's there's so many
more resources and so much more information available than there was in two thousand and
three, four, five, six. That what took me, like,
you know, three, four or five years to work through I think online,
you know, intelligent young people can work through them a lot faster,
right, Like redeem Zoomer, you were talking about kind of working through issues
of like well I don't really buy this leftist stuff. You know, maybe
Ben Shapiro has a good argument, and then you kind of, you know,
you were able to quickly move through that to where you are now.
And I think it's just it's a lot different people have to understand that,
Like you know, it's kind of like people will look back and they'll be
like, well, why didn't you understand? How come you didn't see orthodoxy
was true in two thousand and five? And it's like I had one book
on Orthodoxy in two thousand and five from Timothy waere uh, and I didn't
even know if there was an Orthodox church anywhere near me in Tennessee. So
it's like, how was I supposed to know that, you know, this
thing that I was only recently exposed to was the case. It takes a
lot. It took a lot of time, as when I'm trying to say
to work through issues back then, So long story short, Yeah, so
I'll work through a lot of the contradictions in the Roman Catholic world by kind
of going through the Bell curve or what a lot of people do where you
go from tradcat and for me, it was a really easy transition from Calvinism
to Tomism. In fact, Arvin Voss wrote a book about this at the
time that was really popular in the mid two thousands about similarities between Calvin's predestinarian
theology and Thomas Aquinas's view. So I got really endSo Tomism throughout my twenties
and the two thousands. But then I started noticing that a lot of the
kind of idealized picture that I had a lot of a lot of these systematic
theologies, there's problems, like serious problems, and I couldn't keep ignoring them
or try to cope and make them fit together and work. So not just
problems in tumism, but problems in Western doctrines of divine simplicity, problems in
terms of what Vatican two teaches and everything post Vatican two versus what Vatican one
taught, and what the pre Vatican two teaching was of the popes. I
had just grappled with that for many years, and so finally I just kind
of started attending an Orthodox church to check it out. When I found one
in Nashville. That was two thousand and seven. But I wasn't ready to
become Orthodox. I still had all these kind of Latin and Tonistic presuppositions in
my head, and it takes a long time to kind of work through a
lot of the stuff to work it out. So I had a phase where
I just kind of didn't go to church for a few years. I got
burned out on all the theology. And then about twenty fourteen I started warming
back up to Orthodox ideas. I wasn't like an atheist or anything. I
just kind of had a like I'm going to take a break from church period.
And I never adopted atheism or even agnosticism. I was just kind of
like in a pause period. So I started going to Orthodox church again in
about twenty fifteen, and then finally made the decision around twenty seventeen to be
I'm a catechumen. I'd already been through the whole catechumen in two thousand and
seven, though, but I ended up not converting at that time because it
wasn't just the theological reasons. I was about to be engaged to somebody We're
going to be married in the church at that time, and we ended up
not getting not getting married, so I didn't want to go to church where
my ex was. So basically, yeah, anyway, So that's that's the
long story of it. I didn't mean to ramble that long, but that's
when I ended up being Orthodox in about twenty seventeen officially, but I'd been
reading Orthodox stuff since two thousand and seven or eight. Thank yeah, thank
you. That was really helpful, kind of touching on a lot of issues.
Now, Redeemsimer, did you have any questions about any of the specific
issues he was talking about, Like he said kind of the formation of the
canon was a kind of a big thing for Like, was there anything you
wanted to ask him about those? Sure? Well, generally I want to
say that I think a lot of the reason why people leave Protestantism these days
is right now, Protestantism is Protestantism is in crisis because, as many times
it would have been, egg Protestants have been alienated from their own traditional institutions,
like all the historic Protestant churches and seminaries mostly have been hijacked by liberals.
And there have been times on the Catholic Church was hijacked, different times
on the Orthodox Church was hijacked. Right now, it's the Protestant Church that
are hijacked. That's why we're seeing like waves and waves of Protestants convert to
Catholicism. But back in like the sixteen hundreds, when the Protestants institutions were
strong and the Catholic Church was hijacked by like corruption, that's when waves and
waves of Catholics were becoming Protestant. And that's why I say that a lot
of Calvinism out there, and I'm sure you've seen this with like Spurgeon and
those Reformed Baptists. A lot of Calvinism on the Internet has nothing to do
with traditional Reformation theology at all. And I know that since you've been to
seminary you would probably know this. But there's a lot of mischaracterizations of Calvinism,
such as that Calvinists don't believe in the real presence, or that Calvinists
don't think the early Church had the authority to determined the canon or whatever,
because that's not true at all. Calvinists do believe in the real presence.
Calvinists do believe in the the necessity of good works, maybe not in the
exact same sense as the Orthodox do, but we're not Antiinomians, and Calvinists
do generally have a high view of the Church, a very high view of
the Church. We're the ones that are always saying it's like, you know,
Christianity is a collective reality. It's not an individualist reality. It's not
just me, my Bible and my own personal interpretation. So I think even
in a lot of these Presbyterian seminaries today, the ones that have been disconnected
from the main line, there's a lot of Baptist assumptions that get sort of
read into reformed theology, into Presbyterianism, and it gives people sort of not
the best idea of what performed theology actually is. Yeah, I mean,
to be fair, I understand that, and I wasn't trying to give the
impression that Calvinism is equated to Baptist theology. I mean, I went through
the same dilemma when I was you know, like twenty two. So I'm
not trying to be a douchebag. I'm just saying that I'm really I'm aware
that it's not the Baptist's low view of the sacraments. But also, Calvin's
spiritual presence is not the real presence in the sense of the way that the
Orthodox or the Roman Catholic Church believes in a transformation of the elements through the
invocation of the Holy Spirit via the prisbuterate right, so it's not the real
presence in the same sense. So it's kind of this spirit like it's a
spiritual sense, but it's not a transformation that occurs. And between the Orthodox
Church and the Roman Catholics, you know, we pretty much agree that there
is a transformation that occurs in the theology that is of what happens at the
Eucharist, and also when it comes to the formation of the canon. I
would disagree there just in the fact that while some Calvinists or reform theologians might
confess that there is this quote authority of the Church to decide a canon.
First point is that the Calvinist canon, unless you're an Anglican, is not
the Orthodox or the Roman Catholic. And too typically when you look at Reform
theologians, they tend to agree with what somebody like Arc Sproul says, which
is that it's a fallible collection of infallible books. So the question there is
normative authority. Does the historic Church have authority to bind anybody to any decision
about the canon of scripture? Or is it rather that the Church might have
the ability to have historical attestation two things or something like that, but it
doesn't have any way to bind your conscience to a decision. I mean,
in other words, if you looked at something like the Council of Nicia,
many Calvinists would affirm. Most Calvinists woul affirm the theology of Nicia, but
it doesn't have the ability to bind your conscience. In terms of at least
classical Reformation theology, it always teaches that you have the liberty of conscience,
the liberty of you. You have free will when it comes to the decisions
of theology. And thus, for example, Westminster Confession says that no creed
or council could bind you necessarily in terms of your conscience. Right, So
it might be true in terms of agreeing with the theology, but there's no
binding or what we call normative authority. Now, I would just say that
simply as something that is inconsistent in the Classical Reformation tradition. Right. So
it is a question that stumps a lot of Protestants and makes them give them
and go Catholic. It's like, who had the authority to make the canon
we have? You know, the Bible doesn't have a table of contents.
The answer is it was the Holy Spirit that gave us the Bible that we
have today, and we believe it's the Holy Spirit working through the means of
the Church. We believe providentially that God arranged the Church to be the means
that produced the canon. I mean, who else would produce the canon?
Just because the Church produced the canon, and just because it was God's infallible
authority working through the Church to produce the canon, that doesn't mean the descent
the organizational descendants of that church today have some sort of infallible authority. An
example is, but wait a minute, hold on just one second, because
you said it was God's infallible authority working through the church to decide the canon.
Yes, because Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would would guide the church.
Okay, but but there are but there That is not a classical Reformation
teaching. So you would be departing from that because that the church itself is
not infallible. But God can use his infallible authority working through the church.
That's a classical information teaching. So at one point in church history, in
what fourth, fifth, sixth century, there was an infallible decision that the
church made. No, it's not like that. Well, you just said
it was through the church, though it was, the church itself wasn't infallible.
Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would guide the church and truth because of
that, But it's a historic decision post apostolic that made this decision. Yeah,
it was like, for example, Jesus the Bible that Jesus used.
He also the Old Testament doesn't have a table of contents either. He was
relying on the traditions. You know, the leaders of the Temple of the
Sadducees. Did that make the Saducees infallible for Jesus? No, not at
all. He said they were like broot of vipers and stuff. So God,
no, he was using the Pharisees tradition, not the Sadduces. The
Sadducees are rejected the prophets. Okay, so well, whoever was that assembled
the canon? These Jewish leaders, Jesus didn't give them any infallible authority,
whereas like a lot of Protestants today, a lot of presence today, Well
they'll think, okay, the Church had no authority. The Bible just dropped
out of the sky in the King James version. I'm sure you know that's
not the classic referre me right, but you actually said that post Apostolic there
was an infallible decision made about the canon, and you said that the Church
didn't possess it. But they made that decision, but it was God working
through them. So you don't see the contradiction there. Well, I don't
think it was a single infallible decision that determined the cannon. I think,
well, it's all on so which canon do you accept? Like where what
canon? Well, for now, it's like, how do you know that
the books we have our trust worth Let's say like the New Testament canon all
Christians can agree on that. The fact that there's different Old Testament canons,
you know, the hold on, there's not just one New Testament canon though
as porn like Protestants and Catholics, the Orthodox have the same wells. But
I mean there were many different canons in the first six centuries, is what
I'm saying. And so just because Orthodox and Protestants and Catholics agree on what
later became the New Testament list, that doesn't mean that it's therefore true because
there's some majority agreement. I mean, that's just resting on assumption that we
should take the majority opinion. Why should we do that? I mean,
the majority opinion in the fourth century was that arianism was true. We wouldn't
assume that arianism is true just because it's the majority, right, Well,
yeah, the majority. Like I said, the Church has always been hijacked
at various points and times, but the truth went out in the end.
So hold on, well, why wasn't it hijacked when it made this decision
about the canon. Well, because the Holy Spirit is going to guide the
church, so in the end the truth went out. Right, But aren't
you relying on the text of John fourteen fifteen sixteen to know that the Holy
Spirit will guide the church. Well, we know the Holy Spirit's going to
guide the church. We can trust Jesus told us that. But wait,
where did he tell us that? He told us that in the scriptures?
Right, But this is a question about which are the scriptures? So that's
prior to what you're arguing. Well, that you have that problem no matter
what church you're part of, like the problem not if I believe in historical
normative authority, which you're saying in one case is allowed when the church made
the decision for the canon. But also the church doesn't possess that power.
So you're saying the church is really what has the authority and the Bible only
has no You just said it. You just admitted that the Church has that
authority when you admitted that they made a decision within history post Apostolic there was
an infallible decision of a canon. But then you're saying that they don't actually
possess that power though, Well, like I said, I didn't say that
there was one council or one meeting that decided the canon. It's an organic
development of the canon. So but it's an organic development, then it requires
a historical body of people post apostolic to make the decision. Right. Yeah,
development through the church community, not through some sort of authoritative one council
through the church community is an organic des So what were some of those important
councils do you think? I mean, do you think that, like,
what do you think some of those were? The councils were all very important?
But like which ones for the canon? It's like RC. Sprul said,
It's like, I'm not sure exactly what RC. Sprul meant when he
said it's like an infallible collection of infallible documents. Well, he's being consistent
with the Reformation teaching that nobody after the Apostles possessed any ability to infallibly bind
anybody to a decision. Yeah, so the Apostles, they were the ones
that had the infallible authority. Correct, But you already admitted the Apostles didn't
give you a canon. They wrote, they wrote things they didn't you already
said they didn't list the books. They didn't list the books. But we
still we can rely on tradition to know which books are apostolic, but whose
tradition, whose tradition, all the all the traditions of the the Church of
the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church agree on which of the New Testament, but they
don't. They don't agree. Jerome's canon is not the same thing as athanasius
As canon, not the same thing as John Damascus's canon. So you're saying
all the traditions agree, and I mean there's different codices, Coteks Alexandrinas,
coteics about akanais the Pashida, they all have different canons for both all that
New Testament. Well, I didn't say every individual in the church agrees,
but these aren't just individuals, these are canonical traditions. I didn't say that.
Like I said, there have been like the Church is fallible. The
Church is fallible. But you admitted a minute ago that in the decision for
the canon, they possessed infallibility. You said it was an infallible decision that
God did through the Church. But the Church doesn't possess infallibility. That's just
another way to say what I didn't say. It was a single decision.
I said it was an organic development guided by the Holy Spirit. Doesn't.
So that's even worse for your situation because now it's multiple decisions throughout centuries.
That's an infallible decision. Well, like I said, it's not an infallible
decision on the part of the people. Like I said, it's Wait,
so God does this and abstracted from the actual people making the decision and passing.
You just said it's a tradition, So his tradition abstracted from the people
in the community. No, it's it's a providential development. Like you know,
we just saying it's providential, doesn't Yeah, but that's still people within
history making the decision. Just saying it's providential and God does it is not
answering the question of does it how through who I said, it's it's through
the church. God does it through the church. You don't see the contradiction
here because I don't think there's a I don't think there's a contradiction between saying
God works through the church the Holy Spirit because you immediately five minutes ago you
you said that it possessed an infallible power to do this. The Holy Spirit
is infallible. God works through the church. How do you know that?
How do you know that? Though from John sixteen fourteen fifteen sixteen, right,
yes, we so you're it's a circular argument, right, the faith
of the entire Christian community in a sense, we do how do I know
that that? But how do you know John's supposed to be in there?
But the tradition itself is not infallible. We rely it is possible to rely
on, so hold on. So the so the Bible relies on that.
What goes into the books relies on a thing that is itself fallible, this
tradition that you're talking about. So the infallible thing relies on a fallible thing.
Okay, here's an analogy. Uh, your your priest is fallible,
correct, Yes, you can still trust your priest to deliver the faith to
you. Correct. Yeah, but this is not This is two different questions.
Normative authority versus existential authority. Okay, your your reasoning is fallible,
correct, but God still brought you to the church through your reasoning in some
sense. Correct. Yeah, But that's a category mistake. So you're confusing
two categories. You're confusing the existential with the normative. So my point is
that God can use fallible means to deliver infallible authority. The church is fallible.
How do you know that that? How do you know the number one?
There's description, there's multiple canons, there's a development, as you admitted,
over multiple centuries. How do you know that the fourth, fifth,
and sixth century decision, which by the way, is not the Protestant canon,
it includes the Deudro canon. When Trollo and the Seventh Council affirm the
Orthodox canon, how do you know that that's the wrong canon because you don't
have that canon, you have a different canon. Are you talking about like
the differences between the Protestant and Orthodox cans today? Yes, So the problem
of different canons is not solved just because you're Orthodox, because the Orthodox and
the Catholics and the Ethiopians have different cans from each other. So how do
you know the Catholics aren't right? Well, I have an argument because I
believe in the normative authority of the church. And if you don't believe in
the Norman authority of the church, it's not it's a problem for you,
not for me. I believe the church has the authority. What church?
What church? Which church? The church community? There are schisms when people
can't agree on certain things, but I would say, so who was the
church in the fourth century? I would say that the church, which includes
the Protestant Church today, has the authority to make just make their best decision
on the canon, and maybe it won't be maybe it won't be an infallible
authority. It's like they can't all be right. So wait a minute,
So hold on. Now you're saying that the Protestants today can participate in deciding
the canon, but you've already admitted that it was a decision based in the
past. Now, if we're talking about like the New Testament canon or the
Old Testament canion, either one the New Testament canon that delivers the teachings of
the Apostles, and all the churches agree on that today the Old Testament.
But that's a fallacy. Why because all of today? Why because all today's
groups agree on something, does that make it true for the fourth sixth seventh
century. So let's assume that maybe let's suppose that the Gnostic Gospels are actually
the true canon, and then all of the things we have now are are
radical. Well, that means that God has not been guiding his his church,
and by faith, we know that that's wrong. That's gnosticism, that's
yeah. But you and I both believe that God uses the Holy Spirit to
guide the Church in history. So how do we delineate between you and I
which is the right canon when we both believe in the Holy Spirit's guidance.
There has to be a normative historical attestation which decides this question. And for
me, the decision is made because the Apostolic succession of the fourth, fifth,
sixth, seventh century church fathers, who have normative authority. That's different
from individual existential questions of you, how do you know it as an individual?
Normative authority means that there's a body of people who has the ability to
interpret and bind people to that decision, and your Reformation theology denies anyone after
the Apostles the ability to bind anybody to that decision. So you're basically just
in the same boat that you were in when you were in the liberal position.
And you're grappling with the Jewish arguments. You're saying, well, is
their free will? I don't know, Well, it's not any different now
because you don't have a way to know with historical attestation which is the correct
canon. You're just assuming that the Protestant canon is what the Apostles taught,
And I'm calling that into a question. And so if I call into a
question that that's what the Protestant that the Protestant doctrine is, what the Apostles
taught, then I need for you to tell me in what way you can
know what the right list of the books is without just appealing to John fourteen
fifteen sixteen, which is assuming that John is part of the list of books.
So how do you know if you think that the infallible authority rests in
a body of people, how do you know it's your body of people,
not the Catholic body? Because my position is consistent and it has a historical
witness versus what Roman Catholics claim. And by the way, that doesn't disprove
my position because there's disagreements within history. There's always been disagreements, as we
already admitted, right. So the disagreements, though, mean that some groups
will leave the one true Church. So apoultes is one Lord, one faith,
one baptism. There's one body. There's not a thousand different bodies.
There's on an invisible body of Christ. Christ's body was visible. So both
the Catholic and the Orthodox churches both claim we are the ones your church with
the It doesn't matter. That's a fallacy. It doesn't matter they both claim
that. Do you understand that's a fallacy. It doesn't matter how many people
claim something, because that has nothing to do with whether it's true or false.
That'd be like saying that'd be like saying, but a lot of Catholics
and Orthodox have been debating who's the one church for a thousand years, right,
and fundamentally you used your reason to determine who is correct in that debate.
That doesn't mean that reasoning is the final authority. So that's another category
error. Using something doesn't mean that it's the final court of appeal. So
using it's not the final authority. But you used your fallible reason to determine
you know, yeah, I understand, correct, I understand, But you're
not understanding what a category error is. So this is a difference between existential
questions and normative authority. So you keep going back to the question of how
how does the individual know at an existential level what's true or what's false?
In these cases, we all agree that at the last court of appeal,
the final analysis, it's the Holy Spirit that's guiding the individual. Everybody romancalol,
Orthodox and Protestants all believe that at the end of the day, it's
ultimately the Holy Spirit that's giving you that certitude and that assurance. But how
do we know that in history, whether there's any decision that's binding on anybody.
That's what we call normative authority. That's a different question than the question
of the individual certitude. Two different questions. They relate to one another,
but they're different questions. And so, for example, think about the Constitution,
right, the Constitution is a document. It's a piece of paper,
and is our system in America set up where everybody just goes and reads it
and then tries to figure out who has the right interpretation. No, there's
a body of people, the Supreme Court, it has normative authority to interpret
the document and give legislative rulings. So the difference between us is that I'm
saying that because Jesus promised to the people that he blew the Holy Spirit on
that they would have the Holy Spirit to guide them and lead them into truth.
That means that in each of the successive generations after Christ and after the
Apostles, they would possess that same power and authority. You're saying that they
possessed that same power and authority for just the decision of the canon over many
centuries, and in no other way than in nothing else say that they possessed
that authority in any ways. They wrote the Creed, the nice in Creed,
it is the same. You don't believe that the nice in Creed is
binding. The nice in Creed is not binding by its own authority. It
is binding because it contains what the Bible says. Yeah, but that's just
begging the question, because the question is not existential certitude. You believe that
it's a correct interpretation of scripture, but you just admitted that it's not morally
binding on people as an authoritative document because it's not the Bible. What the
protest and reformers say, what our confessions say is by its own authority.
These councils, they don't have the authority. They don't have that. But
then the same confessions will go on to say what you must believe to be
saved is the contents of the Creeds. Yeah, but that's not resolving the
question that I'm saying about normative authority. So in the wrap in the Reformation
tradition, we have no authority. No, you don't. We don't believe
it's infallible authority. But what makes the authority it's irrelevant authority, because no,
it's you don't. It's not a question of infallibility. It's a question
of whether people can be bound in conscience to a doctrine. So even if
you believe that it's fallible, you don't believe that any creed or council can
bind your conscience. Right, Let's think about excommunication. So in the Orthodox
Church, if you read, you know in the councils, when somebody teaches
against the teaching of nicea or four or five sixty seven council, they are
excommunicated and banned from the churches. The Reformed Church doesn't have the ability to
do that. They might excommunicated person here or there. But you can just
go and start your own church down the road and stee you can be just
as much a Protestant as anyone else because there's no normative authority. Well Protestants,
I don't see what the real difference is. You could leave the Orthodox
Church and start your own new church because it's a totally different conception of eccles.
Because you already admitted that all the Protestants together participate in this decision because
there's not one church. So you might leave the Orthodox Church, but you're
not the Orthodox Church anymore. In the Protestant Church. You can be excommunicated
from the Protestant Church and you're still just as much legitimately the Protestant Church as
anybody else down the road, the Strip mall, or whoever else. Well,
that's because Protestant is a category, it's not a denomination. It's like
if you're excommunicated from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, you can't start a new Orthodox
Presbyterian because you have a false right. So, because the ecclesiology is wrong,
there's no way to delineate within history what is the true church. So
Protestants we have the we do have normative authority. We do excommunicate people who
don't agree with doctrines that are binding. We have doctors that are binding.
Generally speaking, the Protestant doctrines are a lot less are a lot more inclusive
than the Orthodox ones. Generally, it's basically, you just have to affirm
the Creeds to be saved. I know there's some Protestants that will say you
have to affirm soulo feede most Protestants don't believe you have to affirm soulo feeda
to be saved. But we do have Norman authority. It's not just like
we can have people believe whatever they want as long as they Yeah, but
you already said that. But you already said that when you said that the
decision of the Canon was infallible in the beginning of this discussion. You then
retracted that by saying that, but the Church doesn't possess infallibility. That's a
contradiction. I never said that decision. You said God used the Church.
The Holy Spirit made this decision within history. Do you so the Holy Spirit
did this without the people making the decision? Is that what you're saying,
The Holy Spirit guided the natural process of the formation of the canon. And
at what point was it a binding decision? There's no way. That's like
the fallacy of the beard. The beard fallacy, it's not a fallacy when
it's your argument. You argue that this was a process, and at what
point was the process complete? Is it still ongoing? Can we still we
don't know the canon? Still? The Beard fallacy is what you're saying,
like, just because just because you can't know when something because becomes something that
means. So you don't know the canon. We don't have infallible certainty about
the canon. Okay. Was when was the infallible historical decision? Well,
like I said, there was not an infallible historical decision. It was a
infallible natural process guided by an infallible god. Okay, so it's still ongoing,
it's not done. We don't know the canon yet. Well to this
day there's still work being done in like translating, so exactly. That.
So in Protestantism, there's not normative authority. Nobody can bind anybody to this
decision. There's not You don't have a canon. This is why Luther doubted
the canon, and after him the Protestant tradition in Germany destroyed the canon with
higher criticism. You understand, you're in the same position. So the I
don't know, of course, hy there is the higher criticism thing that has
nothing to do with with Luther or anything Luthor. Of course it does.
What do you mean, that's it's a historical fact that many scholars today in
the trade in in many traditions, will date the beginning of higher criticism to
Luther. What do you mean it has no has no basis in history.
So you disagree with today's consensus amongst most scholars, scholars and evangelicalism that that
the destruction of the Bible begins with the questioning of I mean, you know
Luther doubted a lot of the text, right, Yeah, but again,
our Protestants are not bound by Luther. Here, you're not bound by anybody,
are you. We're bound by our confessions. Are Wait, you're not
bound by your No, you're not. You're not bound by confessions. Yeah
we are, No, you're not. Your confessions say that no post Apostolic
creed council or confession can bind your conscience. Well, depends on what you
mean by buying. It's like, what do your confessions mean with the Bible
is but it's still authority. If it's like a pastor, a pastor is
not infallible. A pastor is still in authority you have to submit to.
Again, you're confusing existential certitude with normative authority. Because I can just go
down the street to the next strip mall if I don't like my pastor there,
if he excommunicates me, I can start my own Protestant church canton.
If I get excommunicated from the Orthodox Church. I can go to the Catholic
Church. What's the difference. You're not understanding. That's two different that's two
different categories, because I'm talking about a single body within history that has authority
to bind people. When the Council of Nicea meets, do you think that
they saw themselves as having the authority to bind people to the Niceeing Creed and
to excommunicate people like areas the Council of Nicea was convened for the specific decision
of the church needs to all gather to agree on what the faith is.
Did you not hear my question? I don't. I don't know exactly what
the council. Wait a minute, so then, how do you know about
the historic historical formation of the canon If you don't know what Nicea taught.
I know what Nicea taught. You asked what the mindset of the people was,
I don't know exactly what the mind is. Well, I mean,
Athanasius says that the Holy Spirit guided in Nicea, and did they excommunicate areas?
They did? Okay, so they thought they had the ability and authority
to do that, right in an ecumenical synod, Right, just like Protestants
do. Yes, Protestants do not do that. Where where was the last
Protestant synod that excommunicated in anybody like areas? We haven't, right, it
doesn't exist. You have an ecumenical council to spell it. You don't have
any You don't have all you have Presbyterians, I will give you credit.
You do have synods, you have local synods, which is Presbyterian church government.
But actually the decision of those people at Nicia. You understand they were
bishops, right. Have you read Nicia? Yes, I know that Nicea
had bishops. Okay, have you read the Canons? Yes? I know
the Canons have a very bishop oriented structure episcopal right, well, you know
you can find the episcopacy prior to not see it. Right? Have you
read those Church Fathers? Yes? I know that there's like bishop lists very
early on. But the scholarship is still debated. It's like the best scholarship,
best neutral scholarship says that in some regions there was episcopacy, in some
regions there was Presbyterian government. Eventually the episcopacy won out. Oh, like
scholars like who I can't list specifically? Right? Have you read iran As.
I know that that's what Urnaus said, that there was the bishop lists.
But then you also have Saint Jerome who said that elder used to be
identical with bishop until basically the first among equals, like the highest elder,
ended up getting more and more authority until he became a bishop. Well,
where does he say that? I mean the episcopacy. The structure in the
New Testament. Episcopacy is mirrored on the Old Testament, right, so bishop
presbyter at deacon that mirrors high priests, priest LEVI. So I'm not sure
where you're getting that. I mean Jerome wrote about, you know, Relex,
he wrote about he wrote to Pope Damasis, Right, So it's like,
I'm not an Episcopalian, but how would you respond to Protestants who are
Piscapelians, who do have that structure and who do have councils that excommunicate people.
Protestants do not typically have councils that excommunicate people. I mean, tell
me of that. When was the last time Protestants did this. I mean,
maybe there's some synods somewhere that did this, but I'm not aware of
it. Well, we haven't needed to have an accuaty. So are there
heretics. There are heretics, and heretics do get excommunicated from Protestant churches.
But what I'm saying is that in the Orthodox conception, you're either in or
you're out right. And that's the attitude of the church in the councils.
When Nicia meets, they excommunicate areas Aris can go start his own group,
but he's no longer part of the body of people that met it at Nice.
Yeah. When cost Centinople one happens, you get the same attitude of
excommunicating the Macedonians and the Apollinarians. When ethicist meets, you get the rejection
of Nestorianism. Yeah, historians and then the Monophysites and all that. Yeah,
And by the way, do you understand that you're the Calvinism actually holds
a bunch of those same positions that are condemned in the first seven Councils,
like monothelitism, mono energism, and Nestorianism. Since since whin are Calvinists monopheltis?
Where are getting that from? The debate about monothelicism turns into a debate
about mono energism. So mono energism is what the result of the Monothelite debate
is. How do Calvinists agree with that? Because you believe in mono energism
and conversion. Monogism is not the same as mono energism, Yes, it
is, it's the end result of that. The debate that Maximus has with
Piis is identical to the debates that the Protestants have about conversion. How So,
how is monoery because the divine energy has to overcome the human energy.
That's the debate that Maximus has with Peis. And so the Calvinist position of
mono energism in anthropology is already condemned at the sixth Council when it rejects Peris's
anthropology. So that's you're saying that the logical conclusion of mono energism is Calviny.
That's just because now that the six Council also affirms the essence energy distinction
in human anthropology, which means that man has free will. So is there
like some reformed confession that says, you know, the fifth and sixth councils
were wrong. We actually believe in mono energism and monothelticism. Where does it
say that it doesn't. That's not even required. I don't have to have
that if if you guys affirm mono energism and conversion, because the same argument
is refuted at the Six Council. So I don't need you to say I
affirm mono energism in Christology and I reject the Six Council. If you have
the equivalent belief, it doesn't really matter. So I still, this is
the first time I've ever heard of this. I've always rejected mono energism,
monothelitism, well, holding to a Calvinist view of conversion. I've never seen
anything. Okay, but that's mono energism. That's an anthropological view, that's
mono energism. Right. Don't you believe that the divine grace has to overcome
the human will? The providentially God changes the human heart. No, it's
not just providentially, it's also the Holy Spirit overcoming the human will. That's
the classical Reformation teaching. Does always Spirit not have the power to do that.
It's not a question of power, it's a question of whether there's synergy
and whether man always retains his natural faculties and his human nature. So for
your position, basically man loses his natural faculties and you have a you have
it, not just a christological but anthropological heresy. So you're saying that mankind
needs to have free will in matters of salvation all the time or it's mono
energism correct, So that if that's true, then post you know, resurrection,
Uh, how do we know we're not just gonna How do we know
humanity is not just going to fall again? If there's going to be free
will post resurrection? Oh you mean the escaton? Yeah, yeah, Because
this is the problem that's posed with all Augustinian systems, which is called dialectical
willing. So in the Augustinian possession your choice, you're forced to and either
a choice between good or evil as the determiner of what free will is.
And in the Orthodox of you, we explicitly reject that free will is a
choice between multiple goods, not a choice between good and evil. So there's
multiple there's multiple goods to will in the ascton. If free will is not
a choice between good and evil, then why do we why do people need
a free will decision in this life to choose between having faith and not having
faith? Well, it's a question of how humans are made such that free
will, in the Patristic definition pretty consistently is the ability to choose different outcomes
or different options. So, for example, Adam and Eve had free will
when there was no evil to choose, and so that necessitates it in the
escaton there will always be free will even when evil doesn't exist. And so
the argument then is that there's no beativic vision, for example, because the
beats of vivision just means there's one thing to will, the divine essence.
But if there's multiple goods, multiple things to will, that's how you preserve
free will without a dialectical definition. But if you go back to Libido Dominondi
and what Augustine talks about in the City of God, he defines free will
as the choice between good and evil, and whether the will is directed towards
God at all times or whether it's directed towards creatures. And because for him,
sinning is always in some way willing towards creatures, he could never admit
the possibility of willing multiple goods. There's a really good book on this called
Free Choice in Saint Maxim that goes through this whole critique of the Augustinian collapse
of willing. And this is because Augustine collapses person into nature in the triad
just as well as in anthropology, and so this is what happens in Calvinism
when in Calvinism you get the collapsing of a person into nature in humans,
which means this is why all humans are damned in Adam in the Calvinistic view.
So humans are damned in now Adam because Adam is seen as an as
a as a figure containing all of the archetypes of the humans that would come
to be right. So he's the archetype of man. And so when he
sennd, he basically brought damnation upon all his descendants. But this is actually
a collapsing of person into nature heresy, which is based on the collapsing of
purchase person into nature in the triad, which basically Calvinists all default. They
default to adopting the Augustinian collapsing of person into nature in the Trinity as well,
due to define Cer, Augustine collapsed person to nature in the trinity iplicitly
argues that person is nature on the Trinity. I've not heard of that,
I've I'm not sure if Calvinists would agree with him on that if he said
that, which I'm not sure of. So what do you mean by collapsing
person into nature? Does that mean Augustin did not believe it was one nature
of three persons. No, it means that he was inconsistent because he was
trying to use a lot of neoplatonic ideas to figure out how to philosophically argue
for divine simplicity and the unity of God, the being of God, and
then later on to try to figure out how there's distinctions in that primal unity.
So he came up with things like relations of opposition. He came up
with things like speculating about the human psychological analogy to mind and will and spirit
and breath, all of which are not accurate in terms of the ontological trinity.
So that's why the Second Ecumenical Council it didn't accept the Augustinian doctrine of
the trinity. The Second Ecumenical Council accepts almost wholesale the Cappadocian doctrine of the
trinity. So, by the way, if you want to be orthodox in
terms of Trinitarian theology, you got to accept constantinople one you can't accept the
Calvinist Augustinian model of the trinity. So you'll agree that the Calvinist model of
the trinity is consistent with Augustine. Yeah, on most points mostly. Yeah,
yeah, absolutely, So you're you're in the camp that agrees that Augustine
taught some sort of philioku right, of course. I mean he's explicit on
the Trinity many passes. In fact, Lyons and Florence both quote that section
in on the Trinity when they're arguing for what the Phillioquay is. So the
double eternal hypastetic procession quote in Lyons in Florence is from on the Trinity of
Augustine. Yeah. So I know that we definitely need to talk about the
phillyokuay because that's like the biggest thing here. Well, hold on before we
go to that though, before we go to phillyoquay. Well, I'll let
you make your point there. There's one I want to ask you about.
To go ahead, I was going to go back to the mono energism.
I'm still not understanding. So can you briefly define mono energism and then define
then explain how Calvism is that. Well, so mono Energism in Christology is
the idea that in Christ, the human will had to be overcome or supplanted,
and so the divine will and energy functions to do that. So while
somebody might be a Monofycite, they might think, okay, I can admit
maybe there's a duality in Christ. Maybe it's even some kind of duality of
human and divine, but his will and his operation are somehow a blended thing
because or the divine takes over the human will. And the idea was that
the human will was so fallen and so damaged that in Christ, if he
assumes our nature, and if he's going to assume the nature that he wants
to heal, he's going to have to overcome the natural antipathy that the human
willing has against the divine will. So Maximus and Peris have this long debate
in Maximus's book Disputation with Pearis, where they start arguing about the text and
the Garden, where Jesus is saying, let this cut pass from me,
and Peeris says that that's proof that Christ, that the divine will in Christ
supplants and takes over the human will because the human will doesn't want to die,
and so it's naturally antip there's an natural antithesis between the human will and
divine will, and Maximus goes to great lengths to point out that in human
nature, even after the fall, there's not a natural antipathy because everything that
God creates is good. So there's no such thing as evil nature. That
would be Manichean. There would be a gnostic kind of heresy to say that
nature takes on the potentiality or the power of being evil. There's no such
thing as an evil nature, because that would be to make God a creator
of evil. And God says that he's not a great He says what he
creates a whole nature. So man, even though man's fallen in in Maximus's
argumentation that text, it's the same natural will pre and post fall, and
so the fallen will is not in itself evil, but it does have the
desire to free from flee from pain, it does have proclivity to sin,
but it's still not in itself inherently sinful. And he argues that for Christ
to assume the nature that's consubstantial with us, the nature that we possess then
must also be identical to the nature that Christ assumed so we have in our
in our nature's body, mind, soul, will, that's the nat that's
the natural faculties. And then the person is the being, that the individual
of the subject, of the agent that has that nature. So Christ assumed
universal human nature. That means he assumed everybody's nature, and that's why everybody's
resurrected. In Calvinism, by the way, there's not an explanation as to
why all men are resurrected because Calvinists do not believe that Christ assumed universal human
nature. Calvinists believe that he died basically only for the elect, and so
while there might be common grace that extends to the non elect, Christ is
not assuming universal human nature, and therefore he does not raise all human beings.
So then the question becomes that's that's not entirely. The question then becomes
for the Calvinists or for the Augustinian, then why does God raise all human
beings? And their answer is he just wills to the question. But the
question is, but if resurrection is only on the basis of union with Christ's
resurrected human nature, and if reprobates are not united to Christ, then why
is their nature resurrected. So Calvinism does not necessarily teach that Christ did not
assume universal human nature. There's many Calvinists who have taught that, and Carl
Bart really taught. I'm not saying Carl Bart is like an authority for Calvinists.
He's not at all. But Carl Bart was drawing on a lot of
other element of the well, Carl Bart's a universalist. I don't know why
you'd want to sit site a modernist universalist. He's not a universalist. I
don't even know what he is. But the point is he's more of like
he more than actually being in a theologian for anything. He basically brings to
mind a lot of recovered, reformed doctrines that have been forgotten, like his
doctrine that election is fundamentally in Christ is really Christ. That's the elect like
that exists in Calvin, that exists in Knocks, that exists in the Westminster
Confession. But wait, wait, wait, it's wait, it's wait,
it's what Christ. That's what do you mean? Election is not some abstract
decision of the Father. Election is in Christ. And of course you would
agree with that, because that's just in Ephesians A lot of Calvinis had forgotten
about that, and we're talking about election like it was just some abstract decision
the father made separate from Okay, well, but Bart does teach universalism,
and this is a big contention between him and Van Til. They had an
argument over this, and so I mean, maybe there's a later Bart retraction
of something like that. I don't know. I'm not a I mean it's
pretty clear or explicitly said I do. I am not a universalist. I
do not teach universalism. I'm not using it. Okay, Well, so
so even if he's not, if Christ resurrects all human beings and they're united
to him on the basis of universal human nature, then you're going to have
to have the nature person distinction to explain why the wicked are in are in
hades or in Hell in the Escaton and not and not in Theosis or in
grace. Because this, this is the orthodox argument at this point, is
precisely that the distinction between the mode of willing according to individual hypostases is precisely
what decides your experience of the Escaton. So that requires you having free will
to have that argument. That's Maximus's argument against universalism is that because you have
to recapitulate the virtues via your own mode of willing. So Christ doesn't assume
everybody's hypostasis. He assumes everybody's nature. We agree with that, Yes,
no, you don't. That's not That is not a Calvinist teaching, not
at all, because you don't teach that. You don't tell because that requires
free will, that requires synergy. So what you're doing is you're saying that
Calvinists don't teach X because X is inconsistent with Why. No, I'm saying
that. I mean that is not a classical Reformation teaching. Maybe some Calvinist
somewhere teaches that, but that's not the classical Reformation teaching. Usually what happens
is there's some sort of Calvinists will like nuance a certain doctrine, and then
everyone's be like, oh, they denied it. For example, like the
eternal generation of the Sun. Calvinists have a different nuance of what that means
than like a traditional Roman Catholic or Lutheran position. But then that leads a
lot of Catholics and Lutherans to say Calvinists are denying this doctrine. Well,
for example, it's also true, Calvinism does teach that Jesus died for all
people in some sense. But because of we have this limited comment thing,
some people think, but this is different, okay, but this is different
from what Maximus's argument is about the distinction between nature and person in individual human
beings and how that determines your experience of the ascaton. Maximus is not saying
that your place in the Esketon is determined on the basis of unconditional election.
Maximus is saying that what your experience, because we're all going to the same
Esketon, because Christ assumed everybody's nature, what determines your experience of the Esketon
will be the mode of willing that that you engage in in this life,
whether to recapitulate the virtues or to choose evil advice. And that is not
the Calvinistic doction, which is basically it argues that your determination in the Escton
is number one, based on God's decision in the Divine Decree, and number
two, it's based on the fact that you didn't have saving solo fide faith
in Christ. Right, that's not the orthodox Maximus doctrine at all. Sure,
but how does that mean that Calvis don't distinguish between person and nature,
because the argument that everybody is in atom as in an archetype is based on
the removal of the distinction between nature and person and humans. It's an Augustinian
argument that collapses nature in person in anthropology. So all of us are consubstantial
with Adam. We're not the same person as Adam, though, right,
And I'm not guilty of Adam's actions. So you've collapsed nature into person to
make that move. Okay, I can see what you're saying. So you're
saying that if we have a nature person distinction, the fact that Adam personally
sinned shouldn't corrupt the entire human nature for no time. No, it means
that I'm not liable for his I'm not guilty for his actions. The corruption
can be passed on, not the guilt. I think what some Protestants have
said about this is that it's not just nature that's inherited from Adam, that
it's also like personhood, like in some sense all of us did personally sin.
Right, That's what I'm saying is a collapsing of nature and the person,
which you just admitted right there. Correct, that's the Calvinist view,
and I'm saying that's what we reject, that is based on collapsing person in
the nature and anthropology. Well, just because you're saying that there's some personal
union of all people with Adam, that does not necessarily mean you're completely collapsing
nature and to person's not black or white. I'm not. Again, it
is though, because for me to be represented by Adam does not mean that
I'm personally in Adam before I exist. This is why Scripture says and Ezekiel
that I'm not guilty for the sins of my father's the corruption and the effects
of the sin can pass on, just like, for example, you know,
if a mom does crack and she has a crack baby, the baby
is not guilty for the mom's sin of crack because sin, in James,
is a specific action of the will right. James says that desire or passion
or concupiscnce, when it has conceived, it gives birth to sin. So
the desires themselves are not the sin. And by the way, Calvinism classically
and Lutheranism has classically said that the desires themselves are actually sin as well.
And they say that because if sin is deflying as a specific act of the
will against the divine law or against you know, the moral law. Then
infants aren't guilty because they're not rationally making the decision to sin. So Calvinists
and Lutherans at least classically agreed that concupis sense is sin. They specifically huh,
okay, well, then that's making my point right there. So now
sin is a state of being. It's not actually an act of the will
in some sense. You could say that, yeah, I wouldn't necessarily dispeak
that. Okay. So if sin is a state of being, then now
you've admitted that God creates because being refers to existence. Now you're meaning that
God creates sin. No, God creates on God creates. The nature is
God creates stuff and sin is not. So how is that? But so
if so, it can't be both. It can't be a state of being
and an action of the will. It's got to be either one. So
if it's a state of being, then how do you avoid Manichianism? It's
a corruption of being creation, the Bible says. But so hold on,
So now you're equivocating because we're talking about guilt. Whether infants are guilty for
concupiscence or for having sinful you know, passions or whatever you said. It's
a state of being. Are they guilty for that state of being? Well,
yes, because we believe in original sin. Well, we believe in
original sin, but not original guilt. So that's the point I'm making here,
is that I'm not guilty for somebody else's actions. And that's why Scripture
says and Ezekiel that the son shall not be held liable for the sins of
the father. So, I mean, do you think Romans five is contradicting
Ezekiel? How are both of those passages reconciled? My position reconciles the two
because what's passed on is the consequences of the sin, not the guilt of
the sin. And so that's why it becomes a debate about the passions and
concupiscence whether those themselves are sin. And so you're admitting the reform, the
classical reformation position that yes, infants are guilty because they possess sinful passions or
desires. But the point is that that makes sin now a state of being
and not a specific action of the will, because infants are not using their
will to to rationally make the choice against God's commandments. Well, there's a
difference between sin and sins, as I'm sure you know. So no,
well that's hold on, that's your position. But that's we would say that
there's no such thing as sin as a state of being, because that's Manichean.
Evil is not a state of being if there's no such thing as inherited
sin, if like you're no, yeah, right, not inherited guilty,
that's what you believe. So if that's the case, then could a baby
theoretically be born and not sin at all? Sure? Because sin is a
specific act of the will. And if that's why, Isaiah, let's could
a baby be born? Could someone be born and grow up and just never
sin? Well, now you said grow up right? Isaiah talks about before
the child comes to the age to know to choose the good versus the evil.
So there is a point in each child's life where they get to the
age where they do know the difference between good and evil, and that might
be that might differ from child to child in terms of, you know,
their level of maturation and how fast they mature. But they're not guilty of
any actions until they guilt is hypostatic is what I'm trying to say. Personal
guilt is not a feature of nature, and calvinism is predicated on guilt in
nature. Sure, let's so if that's the case, so every when the
child grows up, and when they do know the difference between good and evil,
they still have a free will choice whether to choose good or evil or
right? Right? So could someone grow up and be faced with choices between
good and evil and choose the good every time? No, Because of our
fallen state and because of the presence of concupiscence or the passions we are,
we tend to choose sinful actions. You tend to choose sinful actions. But
is it possible, Like, let's say that a child grows up the first
time they have a choice between good and evil. Could they make a good
choice the first time? Yes? What about the second time? Yeah?
What about the third time? Well, it's not going to happen that they
ever do this consistently throughout their life because there is a proclivity. So the
proclivity so even though I can't tell you specifically at what point they will choose
that. But that doesn't mean that it's necessary. It's a different type of
necessity. If you look at like Leibnitz, he distinguishes different types of necessity.
So, but it doesn't mean that that they will never do this.
And I'll give you an example of this. I mean, do you think
that Christ assumed the same nature that we have? Yes? Do you?
You don't believe in the immaculate though, right like Roman Catholics. Right,
So if Christ assumed the nature that we have, and he's consubstantial with us,
do you think that he had a sinful fallen nature? Well, no,
because sin is not part of our nature. It's a corruption of our
nature, but it's not part of our nature. It's like you're confusing things.
The sin is not the same thing as the corruption. That's two different
things. Well, I agree, Jesus did not assume sin, and he
did not assume a sinful nature. But he has the same nature as us.
So how is it not a sinful nature? Well, because, like
I said, it's not. It's not the essence of the essence of the
human nature. There's no sin in that. So to be truly human,
Jesus doesn't have to be. Okay, So there's no such thing as a
state of sin. Well, it depends what by state it's like it seems
like wordplate to me. Well, no, because I just argue that from
the reference tradition, infants are in a state of sin because they have concupiscence.
So wearing a white shirt right now, I could theoretically splatter spaghetti on
it. But my friend could get the same white shirt as me. It
doesn't require having the spaghetti splashed all over it. That's like Jesus nature and
our nature. Our nature has been corrupted since now. But again it's a
failed analogy because sin is not a substantial thing. Sin is not it doesn't
have being. So to use analogies like the stain or the taint of original
sin, those are fine as analogies, but they don't work at the level
that we're talking about, which is in terms of metaphysics, because sin has
no being. It's a deprivation in the sense of moving the will away from
the good. So to sin is to act. It's an act against God's
will. Right, but hold on, but infants, But here's the difference
here. Infants do not act consciously against God's will. And that's why the
reformers, they knew this. They had to then say to restore, to
save that Augustinian doctrine of original guilt. They had to then say that concupiscence
in the passions are also sin, and that's what I'm taking issue with,
And I'm saying that that doesn't make any sense because if the passions are themselves
sin, then we all possess sin, and Jesus does as well, because
Jesus has certain desires and passions, because he's consubstantial with us. In Orthodox
Church, we don't believe that he has the blameful passions, but he does
hunger, he does thirst, he does desire things just like every other human
being desires then, although without sin, and so if you equate the desires
proper to our human state with sin, then Jesus is also a sinner.
Well, Jesus didn't have sinful desires, he had normal That's why I'm arguing
that you have to make the distinctions that I'm making so that you don't say
that sin is a state of being. Then you can't have the Calvinist view.
Okay, so I'll answer that I want to go back to the So
is it true that in Orthodoxy you don't believe in that there's original guilt and
you also believe that every choice between good and evil is a truly free will
choice. If that's the case, it's theoretically possible for someone to grow up
and become an adult and never sin and not need Jesus to die for them.
That's what orthodoxy keaches. No, it's not possible, because we inherit
a status that is that does have a proclivity towards sin. So then either
we really either we don't have free will, or it's theoretically possible for us
to never sin and not need Jesus to die for us. Now that's a
false dichotomy because even though I possess that power, it doesn't mean that in
the fallen state, I'm going to always exercise that power correctly. So that's
that's the false equivalence there. Well, like I said, it's like the
first choice someone makes. Can they make the right choice the first time?
Yes, second time yes, third time yes. So if you say at
a certain number of times they can no longer make the right choice, then
that means they don't have a free will decision. No, it's a false
it's it's a it's a false expectation for me to be able to tell you
at what point a person's going to sin. I mean, Paul actually argues
this way in Romans, where he talks about before he before he knew about
sin, he had no sin, and then when he learned about sin,
he then had and took on the desire to want to sin because of the
fallen state. So you basically you're arguing as if there's not a fallen state.
I'm saying there is a fallen state. But because I can't tell you
at what point a person will choose sin, doesn't mean that they can never
or will never choose sin. It's it's a it's a non sequitur because again
we're in the fallen state. It's just simply preserving the fact that sin is,
as James says, not concupiscence. Do you understand in the text that
James says he doesn't equate desire with sin. He says, sin is when
you consent to the desire against God's will, not the desire itself. We
have a free will choice whether or not to consent to the desire every time,
right, Yeah, if that's the case, it's possible. No,
it's not. So it's again it's two different types. As a mathematical contradiction
right there, No, it's not. It's two different types of so mathematical
contradictions aren't going to apply to the metaphysical domain. Is like, that's why
I've said you could look at Leibniz for different types of necessity. There's not
just one type of necessity, right, And this is the typical sort of
Calvinist dialectical thinking. You can have a necessity X hypothesi, which is what
it's an example that he gives of this type of a thing where just because
something will happen, it doesn't necessitate that you know at what point it is
going to happen, right, And that type of necessity doesn't remove the fact
that you're making that choice or that decision. Right. So it's kind of
like, let's bring it back to the question of Christ right, like in
Christ, because for the Orthodox the paradigm is always Christ. Right. If
Christ has the same desires that we have except for sin, do you admit
that he did have desires? Right? Like he desired water, food?
You know? Yeah, he was he was divinity. Wait what now according
to his humanity, I desired yeah, right, So if desires themselves are
sin though, then or a state of sin, As is the case with
the Reformation argument about infants. Then when Jesus was desiring when he was a
child, wasn't he's sinning in those actions? Well? Was he desiring sinful
things? Well, it doesn't matter because you've already admitted that. As for
James one and the Reformation tradition, the doctrine is that sin is the desire
because that's what makes infants guilty, because we're the sons of Adam, you
see. So how do we In other words, the question is how do
we have original guilt for infants? The response to the Reformation tradition is that
infants have sinful passions and sinful desires, so the desires themselves are now sin
you see. And I'm saying, if Jesus is consubstantial with us, right
because he took on our nature to heal it, to save it, right,
then Jesus has the same desires in your view, correct or not?
Or do you have to make a distinction between the passions or the desires and
the act of sin. That's how you our view gets out of the dilemma.
And I'm saying your view doesn't go ahead. Con cubisins is a corruption
of natural human desires and it makes But you're now you're shying away from saying
it's a sin because you know that that's the argument that reformers used to say
that infants are guilty. Said, I've said many times, desire to sin
is sin? No, No, no desires, desires passions and infants are
they sin or or or do they produce guilt? What the desire is?
Desiring food is not sin? Infant do infants desire to sin? Well,
the reason that infants are guilty is not necessarily because of what they desire.
It's because of inherited guilt. Which that's well, that's not true because the
question is amongst the reformers, is concupiscence sin and they say, yes,
desire to sin no, No. Concupiscence is desire passions. Desire is plural,
right, so it can be desires for all kinds of things. So
you're saying that the reformers taught that being hungry is the sin. They taught
that the desire. They don't make the distinction. Is my point. If
concupiscence or the passions are sin and make you liable to guilty to guilt,
then if Christ possesses the exact same status as other infants via homo ussios.
Then how is Christ not a sinner? How is he not liable to what
you're calling he has the same state of being as the other infants. Well,
so Jesus himself said that, you know, wanting to you, if
you desire to, like hurt your brother and kill your brother, that's still
sin, just as if you actually we're talking about infants. So I'm ascerning
about Jesus. If you look at a woman lustfully, even if you don't
actually, do you think you think infants? Okay, infants infance? Do
you think infants lust after women? They don't do that particular thing though,
So we're talking about infants. We're not talking about adults that consent to sin
with their with their This is just this is just defending the point that desire
to sin is sin. It desires and infant No. In the reformers,
infants are liable because they have the desires that Adam passed on to is the
sentence concupiscence. The passions are also sin. You already admitted that's a Reformation
teaching. It's a Reformation teaching that desired to sin is sin. It's not
that desire. No, it's the Their argument is that concupiscence. What is
concupiscence in your view, concupiscence is desired to sin, and infants possessed concupiscence,
and that's why they're guilty. I didn't say that the fact that infants
possessed concupiscence. The reformers teach at why they're guilty. That's the Reformation teaching.
That's guilty because they inherited adam sin. What does it mean to inherit
Adam sin? If not to inherit the concupis sense, which makes them guilty.
That's the that Calvin makes this argument in the Institutes when he rejects the
Roman Catholic distinction between original sin and original guilt. Yes, and I'm sure
you've seen me rejecting the distinction between original sin and original guilt many times here.
That's just making my point. Yeah, so original sin all in Adam
all sinned. So that means even before the even if a baby doesn't desire
any sin, even if the baby does, even when it's like a single
cell of embryo in the womb, that cell is not desiring anything, but
it's still guilty of sin. How is it guilty of sin? If sin
is not a state of being, it's guilty of Adam sin because in so,
now this was everything I argued twenty minutes ago, that you collapse person
into nature. So now I'm guilty for other people's actions because my nature is
condemned. Correctly, you're guilty for other people's actions Adams, other people's actions.
It's not like Adam is some guy who is like all of us are
united to Adam. All of us may in some sense did make the decision
to sin in Adam. Again, so now guilt and sinning is not personal,
it's natural. It's a state of nature. Right, Well, there's
you could go into the question of like, are do people have a personal
union with with Adam or is it just a union of nature that Well,
you just argued that it was natural, So right, I mean for me
to be guilty of a sin, it's my nature that is condemned and that
collapses person in the nature. So so you're saying that, are you?
Are you saying that because like August and the reformers collapsed person into nature.
That's why that's why they So you're saying that the reformers believe all of us
are personally united to Adam because they collapse person in nature. Yes, and
that's when Augustine does the extra Jesus in Romans five, which he mistranslates what
it actually says in the Greek. It does not say all sin and atom.
It says all are in Atom. And that's what led to the effects
of Adam sin. And you can readmind Orf has a really good exegesis of
that, and he rebuts the Augustinian mistransit because Augustine was looking at the Latin
the Paul's letters written into the Greeks. It's written to the Romans in Greek,
and so mayandor if you look up his exte Jesus of Romans five,
he points out how this led to this misunderstanding in the West. That and
that's where Augustine brings in the neoplatonic archetypal imagery to say that everybody is in
atom as in an archetype. He uses this argumentation in City of God.
And then that's what leads to the state of nature being itself a condemned and
damnable state. And that's what we're saying, is that this is confusing sin
as a state of being with sin as an action. Sin and guilt are
not states of being. Evil is not a state of being. Sin is
specifically an action of the will, and that's it. That's what James defines
it as. And so you can never be guilty for something that you didn't
do. And so all of Calvinism is actually predicated on one of these big
mistakes here. But I'd like to move on if we can, to Christology,
because I'm saying, based on what you're saying, I think Augustin was
right. I think that all of us did personally sin in Adam and single
seldom ryos are guilty of sin. That's what I think. That's what Calvinism
teaches. I think you know that's what Calvinism teaches, right right, And
so again that's making my point the point that I've been making, so that
that was what I was trying to make the point that thank you for it.
I guess to summarize my points, like, I'll agree with a lot
of your premises, I just don't necessarily agree that the logical conclusion of that
is the heresies that you attach that That's all I was saying. But the
mono energism is the teaching in the Classical Reformation tradition that the fine will has
to overcome the human will because there's a natural antipathy to the human will to
the divine will. So Catholics hold I mean, I would say Calvinist's hold
the councils in pfallible. You wouldn't believe that Catholics hold the councils as infallible.
They believe that we believe that. So if there's some like, how
do Catholics affirm both if they're contradictory, because the Augustinian position is a dialectical
mode of willing, where in Augustin's view. That's why I mentioned lebido domenon
the earlier, because that's the Augustinian position that the will is either directed towards
God in all of its thoughts and actions, or its directed towards creatures.
So Augustin thought that if it's ever directed towards creatures, that in some way
involves some degree of venial sin, at least if not mortal sin. This
is why Augustine says that even in married life, he doesn't understand how married
sex isn't still in some way sinful. He admits that it's a sacrament of
the church. But he says, I can't understand how it's not sinful,
because if I'm enraptured with my wife, I'm willing towards and so therefore I'm
still in some way involved in some degree of sin. So this is a
dialectical mode of willing. You're either willing towards God or towards creatures, and
creatures in some way involves sin. The Reformers don't. The Reformers don't go
with They don't go with a lot of this nuances that Augustina has because Augustine
believes in operative grace and cooperative grace. He thinks that in conversion there's this
operative grace that basically effectually moves the will, and then after that you have
cooperative grace. But he teaches baptismal regeneration, so he's not I just don't
think he's consistent with these different positions that he's trying to work through. The
Eastern Church, the Orthodox Church never accepted this idea that man's will has so
fallen and sold so damaged that he has to have grace replacing his human will
and energy. And this becomes a discussion at the Sixth Council when they're debating
Christology, because you understand that, in our view in Orthodox theology, christology
and the anthropology that's formulated in terms of Christology is one to one parallel with
anthropopyology in humans in seteriology. So the theological positions that we have in Christology
are going to determine our sateriology. In reform theology, it's backwards. You
start with ceteriology and then down the road you do Christology or you do your
turnititarian theology. For us, everything begins with the person of the Father,
in the monarchia of the Father. That's why we don't have things like Philly
Oakuay. But I'd like to ask a question about Christology because the other big
problem that I see with reform theology, and maybe you don't teach this,
I don't know, but the classical Reformation teaching, whether it's Calvin Luther,
Charles Hodge, John Murray, J. I Packard, Arci Sproll, they
all teach that Christ on the cross was damned, and that damnation that he
underwent in the hours of his crucifixion and death, that that's the equivalence of
the experience of hell and damnation in terms of what the human race was due.
And so the penal substitution argument in them is that the penalty that was
due to us Christ paid, and then Christ's payment then is the thing that's
put into our bank account, you know, to give us the perfect rightchness
of Christ. Do you agree with that idea that Jesus was damned on the
cross? So this is are you just talking about double imputation, that our
sins were imputed to him and he suffered all the penalty for our sins.
Well, not everybody who believes in double imputation necessarily believes that Christ was damned
on the cross. There are some modern reform theologians and Protestants who reject that
idea, but the classical reformers teach it. So I'm just curious what your
take is on that. I haven't really thought through that. Remember, I
am just a Minecraft YouTuber. I've never gone to seminary or anything like that,
so I'll have to look more into that. I don't know. It's
like I have heard the pastor's, the reform pastors. I've heard they've spoken
about Jesus suffering God's condemnation on the cross. I'm not sure what they mean
by that, is Jesus was damned on the cross, or if they mean
that he just suffered the penalty for our sins, took the weight of our
sins on a show there's which all Christians universal. Well, if that's it,
I mean, even if you took that route, like, what is
the penalty for our sins in your view, the wages of sin is death,
we deserve damnation for ours sends. Yeah, so if it's a double
imputation, I mean, was he damned, well, I guess, well,
generally when Calvin interpreted he descended into hell from the apostles creed as the
damnation Christ received on the on the cross. You can say, so I
would say, I'm not gonna like die on this hill, but I'll say,
sure, let's go with that, and I'll be open to hearing your
criticisms of that view. Right. Well, you know, all orthodox Trinitarian
theology from you know, Council's you know, three four, five, six,
agree that you know, Christ is a divine person. He's the second
person the Godhead, assuming human nature. And so if he's the second person
in the Godhead, it's absolutely impossible that the Trinity could be split by one
person damning another person, or that the you know, the think of all
the things that this would result in. Right to be damned is to be
excluded from the presence of God, to have the active wrath of God against
you, and so forth. In the Calvinist view, that would mean then
that as a divine hypostasis, now the Trinity is split because Christ is no
longer the second person. He doesn't share the same will as the Father and
the Spirit. Now the Spirit and the Father have their will against him.
And now also the doctrine paracorisis of the divine in dwelling would no longer be
the case. So now the Father and the Spirit no longer in dwell the
Son because he's damned. So all the things that would result from this idea
are so insane to me that this alone, I think is one of the
strongest arguments against all the Reformation tradition because it results in being anti trinitarian or
arian. The other option is that you could say, well, I'll just
say that there's a human subject that is the receiver of the damnation, Jesus
of Nazareth, this sort of historical person that's damned in our place. It's
a human being being damned in our place, and that then preserves the You
know, I'm not falling to the anti trinitarian dilemma. But the problem with
this is that that's a Nestorian. So now you've adopted a human subject that
is the receiver of this damnation. And also, by the way, God
doesn't need anything from us. So how does the damning of a human being
or a human person pay off an infinite debt, especially if God doesn't need
creatures? Right? So these reformed theologians you've heard that say Jesus was damned
on the cross, what position would they take? Would they argue that there
was a rupture in the trinity or would they what would they say? No?
I think they just simply didn't see this. I think that maybe more
recent Protestant scholars and people have seen this and then they want to move away
from that. But this really begins to undo the whole of imputational theology,
because imputational theology is built on that equivalence. Right, So you're saying that
it doesn't cause trinitarian problems for God the Son to suffer on the cross,
but it does cause trinitarian problems for there to be some sort of damnation of
God the Son on the cross right. And it shows that the punishment or
the penalty which the Orthodox Church has said for the I mean, the first
seventh century of the Church are summarized in John Damascus Rebook three on the Orthodox
Faith. He talks about we already knew, the Church already universally understood what
the descent into Hades was. Nobody in the early Church believed that it was
Christ being damned. It was Christ literally descending into Hades. And that's why
Peter says that he preached to the spirits in prison. So Peter teaches the
descent into Hades. The Church always taught the descent into Hades, and that's
why it's not a damn nation. It's Christ going and preaching the Gospel to
the spirits in Hades. This is called the Heroin of Hades and Orthodox theology,
it's basically a doctrine that's completely lost in the West, whether it's the
Reform tradition or even the Roman Catholic tradition, which still confesses it but has
basically no significance in its theology. For us, it's central to redemption that
Christ descended into Hades and preached the Gospel to the dead. Point being then
that the solution then for the Orthodox is that Christ is a divine person,
He's a second person of the Godhead. All of his incarnate actions are the
actions of the second person, the Godhead. So there's never a human subject
in Christ. That's Nestorianism. And so what happened at the Cross is Johnamscus
says in book three, is that the human soul is severed from the human
body death. So the divine person of the Logos experiences the severance of the
human soul from the human body. That's death, and that's it. That's
and then he descends as the divine person to that soul to Haites to preach
the Gospel to the dead. Totally different than the Reformation idea of this transactional
event. Yeah, so the transaction, like you agree that it's not it
doesn't cause trinitarian problems for God. The Son to suffer just can't be like
the condemnation of God and Father, right, Well, it can't be him
being condemned by any member of the Trinity. So it just simply depends on
what we mean by condemnation. And punishment, right. I mean, when
John Damascus exodues the passages for example of him becoming a curse, he says,
that's by appropriation. In other words, it's as if he were one
cursed. But Christ could not be cursed because his Holy body never suffered decay
or corruption. So he wasn't actually cursed, he wasn't actually damned. He
willingly underwent death. And that's why it's the later Council specified that you have
to say that he willingly underwent death, not that it was taken of him
of necessity. He willed it. Because he's got he's the second person in
the audio. You would definitely agree that this is not cosmic child ab use
like in some Baptist systematic theologies. We agree that Jesus willingly went to the
cross and all that. That's one hundred percent. I guess what some Calvinists
might say in defense. Again, I have not this is the first time
I've heard specifically that they teach Gees was damned on the cross. I guess
what they would say is he suffered the penalty equivalent to damnation without actually being
condemned by the Father of the Holy Spirit. Well, even if you say
as an equivalent, it's still right. I mean, they will to execute
the passages that my God, my God, why be forsaken me? As
if the Father is forsaking the son. Well, that's just quoting a psalm.
That's not necessary. I said, they actualitute the passage to mean that
he is in some sense rejected by the Father. Well, it's it's sort
of like like you said with johnathanamask is, like in some sense, it's
as if he were rejected without him actually being rejected. The Bible uses a
language for things about God that we know actually the way it happens, just
like it says God regretted making humanity. Okay, but right, and I
grant you that. But it's as if Jesus was forsaken by the Father,
even if there wasn't actually some story. Okay, Well, then it's not
an equivalent. Right. So then if that's the case, there is only
one will in the trinity, all right. If that's the case, then
it's it's not the equivalence of the imputation. Then that would undo the imputation
view. So Jesus can suffer for the sins of his people without actually being
condemned by the Father because he suffered. Now the whole model, the thing
as a result of being condemned, the whole model is different because Christ isn't
doing this to placate the Father's wrath. Christ says the second person in Godhead
is assuming human nature to heal it and to deify it. So it's not
that one person the Trinity is paying off another person the Trinity, because that's
also an anti trinitarian right, So the traditional Reformation doctrine isn't just erroneous when
it comes to the damnation of the person or the hypostasis, it's also anti
trinitarian because the payment between the Father and the Son subordinates the Holy Spirit.
You can't have an action in the Trinity that excludes one of the persons.
I know the Protestant systematic theology fully agrees with that. There is the doctrine
of in several inseverable operations, which is explicitly taught in like the Lutheran and
reforms. Okay, So if there's a payment being made to God the Father,
then where's the Holy Spirit in this transaction that the Son is paying the
Father of the infinite debt? So where are you getting this specific idea that
the sun paid. Again, we're in the confessions, because you'll find some
reformers like speculating on things, just the way you'll find church mother'spect relating on
things. Is there a place in the confessions where it says the son paid
the Father and the Holy Spirit was not doing anything. My tradition was Westminster
Confession. I don't know if the Westminster Confession explicitly argues that the sun was
damned. I haven't read that. Like a lot of times, you'll you
can find examples of people in the Protestant tradition saying certain things. You'll be
like, oh, this is okay, but well, hold on, this
is not this is not just this is like the classical reformers extrady the passages
this way, so and by the way. I mean, it's fine,
okay. So even if it's not in the you know, Westminster Confession,
I mean, the Westminster Confession is not binding. So I mean I could,
if I'm a Protestant, I could just simply say the Westminster Confession's wrong.
Right, yeah, I guess. But I'm saying, like, I'm
not sure exactly where you're where You're getting this, Well, I do do
you wanna do you wanna flora jelling of quotes? I mean, I have
my friend when I was Roaman Calvin many years ago, we wrote a pass.
He took all these quotes from me. But if you want the I
can give you the list of all the statements about Jesus being damned in classical
Reformation teaching. I believe you that there's a lot of people who say that
the confessions say like, this is what we're certain about. It's sort of
like the refined version of the doctrine because you'll have people exituting things of other
people writing things right and left. But that doesn't mean that becomes actual dogma.
It becomes dogall. But hold on, well wait a minute, but
how do you actually have dogma anyway? I mean dogma that's going to take
us back to the whole. Like earlier, debates can be another three hours.
So I would just I would just recommend you know, there's a really
good book on this by John mcguckan. I don't affirm everything that John McGuckin
teaches, but if you get his book saying Cyril of Alexander and the Christological
Controversy, I think that's one of the strongest reputations of Calvinistic theology in terms
of crystalogy. And I think if if Christology fails, you know, then
basically the rest of it fails. So of course, now you said offhand
earlier that reform theology starts with soteriology and then goes to Christology. So this
is something I have encountered a lot with a lot of Calvinists, mainly Reformed
Baptist by the way, And there's another example of reform Baptist theology affecting even
mainstream reform theology. For a lot of them, they say fundamental you need
to be exactly right about you need to be exactly right about how salvation works.
You need to be exactly right about Twolip and the five souls and all
that stuff. But if you're a Nestorian, heretic the way John MacArthur is,
I'm sure we can agree. John MacArthur is an historian, right.
I don't keep up with John MacArthur, but I have absolutely no surprise if
he is. I think most I think most I think most I think most
most Calvinists are an historian. So I don't have any problem with that.
I mean, well, we we can we condemn what he said as an
astorianism. He said it's heretical to call the blood of Jesus Christ the blood
of God. And he also said Mary did not give birth to God.
That's a historian, right, Those are historian statements. But I think that
you can find historianism in many like Herman Ritter Boss. You can find historianism
in a lot of reform theologians. I'll admit that even like Charles Hodge and
R. C. Sproul can be a little little Nestorian here and there,
maybe not full blown, but because they would affirm calcidon but it's it's not
ideal. But okay, But can I can I make Can I make one
point here is that there's a lot of problems in some reform circles of putting
sociology before you know christology. But I've spent basically my entire presence as a
Calvinist, you know YouTuber, basically trying to argue against that, trying to
say that, you know, sola fide is not the most important doctrine.
I've tried to say that the five points of Calvinism are really tertiary, maybe
maybe tertiary doctrines. I tried to say Christology is cent. So I agree
one hundred trinitarian theology. Christology, that's what's absolutely essential, and sociology is
secondary. We can agree on that, right, right. And Trinitarian theology
then will mean that you're accepting Constantinople one in three eighty one. That is
the orthodox view of the Kappadocians, which is premised on the monarchia of the
Father. No filioquay as a syenter distinction. Okay, so you said,
you said you have a problem with Calvinist Christology. So what's specifically what's specifically
wrong with Calvinist Christology. There are Calvinist Trinitarian theology things that are distinct from
eat both Catholicism and n Orthodoxy. There's the Autotheos, which I believe in.
But okay, so that's what about so distinct about Calvinist Christology that you
think is well, I mean, that's that's heretical right there. I mean
the nice in Creed, the original Nicene Creed explicitly affirms that the Father is
identified as being autotheos of himself. So to give to the son autotheos is
to confuse the persons of their hyposthetic properties and to create a diet just as
much as the philioquid does. Thank you. So I'll get to that in
a second, because that is actually something I've spent a lot of time thinking
about. Unlike the whole Jesus being done with the cross. I'd never heard
of that. But what about the look the two natures or the just general
Christology. It's like Calvinists subscribe to Calcedonian Christology. Yeah, but this is
a huge miss under right. There is a huge mess misunderstanding that I had,
even as a Roman Catholic that the end of the discussion is not Calceldon.
The Fifth and sixth Councils are just as important to Christological disputes because after
Calclodon there was a remaining question left which the Monopsides continued to explicate, which
is what does it mean to be in a hypostatic union? And the fifth
the fifth Council meets to reaffirm what they call the neo Karellian view. The
neo Karellian view excludes the Antiochian view or any kind of tertium quid type of
view because of the tendencies of those views towards both monopetism or towards a kind
of Nestorianism. So you have to affirm that the second person that God had
assumed impersonal human nature, and then by virtue of that assumption, he deifies
it. So if you don't believe in the dedification of the human nature,
which I mean maybe there's Calvinists that believe this, I've never heard of Calvinists
believing in dedification. The other problem that I would say with this is that
in Calvinism the grace that you're getting is still a created grace because you don't
have the essen centrity distinction. And the only way to have uncreated grace,
which the only way to have the Gospel, is to have the essenceentrit distinction.
So Calvinists juffer of the fifth and sixth Councils. We reject monopil Again,
No, you don't. I know you thought we don't believe in So
I'm not trying to be mean. I'm not trying to be mean. Hold
on, so I'm not trying to be mean to you. I know that
you give verbal credence to it, but you don't understand it. And I'm
not trying to be a douchebag or mean, but I'm saying that Calvinists do
not, actually, because the Fifth Council teaches the deification and the Sixth Council
the deification of the human nature that he assumed, and that means that there
is a Calvinist teaching on theaosis. We don't call it that, We call
it union with Christ because we do have a stronger creation interstinction than the Orthodoxy.
But that does that does exist. Michael Horton, for example, it
is done a great job recovering it. Michael Horton does argue for an essence
entergy distinction in his systematic theology. It's not the same as the Orthodox version.
We still believe in divine simplicity. But there is a sense in which
Calvinists do believe that we reject. We reject monotheltism as heresy. I'm sure
you've heard of Wayne Groom, right, Yeah, yeah, I was.
I was reading that's the monotheltis heresy. We reject that. Say that again,
you know about like some you know, Reformed Baptists are subordinationists. They
believe that the son eternally is subordinate to the Father. Well, that's the
Cappa Docian view. Things can be things can be subordinate in different ways.
Yeah, actually, now that you mentioned it, yes, Orthodoxy does subordinationism
in many ways. But yeah, but but you understand Chatianism on the grounds.
I'm sure you would reject this type of subordinationism though, because they say
that the son's will, the son's will is eternally subordinate to the father's will.
There's no such thing as a son's will. That's a heresy exactly exactly
what these people like, even Doug Wilson, Doug Wilson wing Grudom. They
think will comes with person and not with nature. That's correct, right,
that's that's say, that's the heresy. We believe that Jesus has two wills
because will comes with nature and not with Okay, but that's not all there
is to this discussion. And the fact that Michael Horton talks about that he
wants an essence inenter distinction, he's just taking that from Orthodox theology. Well,
no, he does. He does not just invented a finary quotes the
perform to the scholastics on it. The reform scholastics do not. How do
they teach that you are participating in uncreated grace? So they don't use this
same language as Orthodoxy, but there is union with Union with Christ is sort
of like the Calvinist version of theosis. It's not exactly the same, but
he has a lot of the same idea as just sort of nuanced and corrected
by having a greater creator creature distinction. And again, like the if the
essence interdistinction, by the way, is argued from Paul right. Paul uses
this distinction quite often in his epistles where he talks about the divine power or
dounamus at work in him in Philippians, for example, in First Corinthians,
when he talks about the gifts of the Spirit, he says that they are
the inner gaya, the operations of the Holy Spirit, that are the gifts
that we partake of when we participate in. So I'm curious though, because,
like in John seventeen, you know, Jesus says that he came to
give the disciples of participation in the glory that he had with the Father before
the foundation of the world. And that glory, by the way, can't
be the divine essence because we all agree that the divine essence is non participable,
right, you can't participate in the divine essence. So in your view,
what is it in John seventeen that what is that glory that we're participating
in? We are through our union with Christ. It's without Christ, without
the hypostatic union. Now this is not necessarily reformed. This is more neo
orthodox on my part. Ordinarily, it's impossible for the human, for the
human and divine to be reconciled. It's impossible for the finite and the infinite
to be reconciled. Why Why because of the creator of creature's station. Because
hold on so right there that that just is the essence of Calvinism, right
there is dialectics of opposition. You have the not capable of the infinite yet
exactly no, But that's that's heretical. Now, it's not because God created
the world and there's no opposition between God and world. He pronounced it good.
You said that it's impossible without the incarnation for the infinite and the find
it to be reconciled. There's no tension or need for it to be reconciled
because God created it. Why does it need to be reconcile So I just
want to disclaim here I am sort of going astray from what might be classical
reform theology. I'm not saying I'm contradicting any of the confessions or anything,
but this is more of a neo orthodox take. So I'm not speaking on
behalf full Calvinist. Right. Well, I don't even know what what do
you mean get Bart? What's neo orthodox? Bart is a figure associated with
neo Orthodoxy. But neo Orthodoxy is just sort of like modern modern but non.
It's a modern but non. It's like the anti liberal. Why wouldn't
you want to go to the Cappadocians and the people that define the doctrin of
the Trinity? Why would you want to go to Bart and all these these
characters. I just don't understand the motivation of Bart to define the doctrine of
the Trinity. No, I'm saying, why wouldn't you get your trinitarian doctrine
from the Cappadocians. We get our trinitarian doctrine in many ways, we inherit
it from the Church fathers, maybe more so Augustine than some of those capititions.
But what so you don't believe in synods, then so you pick and
choose which guy you want to follow, because cossid of on one didn't accept
the Augustinian view of the trinity. So anyway, what I was saying is
that the you agree that the fundamental idea of Calvinism is the extra Calvinists to
come right? Is what the ex Calvinist you're cutting out. I can't hear
you, sorry, the extra Calvinistic comb Do you know what that is?
The extra Calvinist to comb is the Calvinist doctrine that the finite is not capable
of the infinite. And that's what different makes us different from Lutherans. That's
why Luther, what does that mean? Not? I don't even know what
that means? Not capable? What does that mean? That means the finite?
Well, what it meant in its original context is that the human nature
cannot take on divine attributes. Okay, the human nature cannot take on divine
attributes. And that was originally in a debate between Luther and Calvin on the
really Lutheranswingley, but Zwingley was not. I'm aware that this is how Luther
argus. This is how Luther argues for this is how Luther argus Luther in
Calvinism on the Lord's Supper. Yeah, I know this. This is how
Luther argues for his real presence, is that the body of Christ takes on
things like on the presence, Yeah, the body. He thinks that Christ's
human nature can take on omnipresence. Calvinism rejects that. Calvinism does not believe
the human nature of Christ can be omnipresent. We still believe by the operations
of the Holy Spirit we can receive the true human and divine natures of Christ
in the Lord's suffer, but we just don't believe the human nature itself and
the omnipresent. But the accusation the Lutherans made against the Calvinists for saying that
was you're denying the incarnation if you're saying the finite is not capable of the
infinite. And the Calvinists responded by saying, no, actually, we're saying
that the incarnate. The reason the incarnation is necessary is because the finite is
not capable of the infinite, because there's this gap between the finite and the
infinite that can only be bridged by the incarnation. Yeah, I don't have
a problem. I mean, that's kind of similar to Maximus's argumentation that the
logos performs the function of making the infinite accessible to the finite. You know,
he argues that, right, but I mean, this doesn't None of
this equates though, with the idea that the Reform tradition has a doctrine of
participation in uncreated energies. Because, for example, if you look at the
way that the Fourth Ecumenical Council, or even Athenacious like so, if you
read Fulorofsky's essay on creation and Athanacious, he'll point out that the creator creature
distinction is necessitated by also the Essen synergy distinction. So you have to distinguish
between the action of the Father generating the son and the action of God creating
the world. So there's different types of acts in God or that God does,
so that requires the Essen sentery distinction. I know that you're saying that
maybe you know, you are okay with some of these elements, but the
essenceentrity distinction is not a theoretical thing that just sort of like exists on its
own. If you look at the debate between Barley and Syngraria Palomas, the
essence centergy distinction ultimately becomes a question of participation and what we're participating in so
I appreciate, and I was also a Calvinist, very interested in the union
with Christ, unaware that that's in Reform theology, it's in Westminster Confession all
that, but it's not actually addressing the specific question of what is it or
in what way were united? Because if you don't have the uncreated energies,
then you don't really have salvation because we can't meld with the person of the
Holy Spirit. So what exactly is the grace that we're partaking of In the
reform tradition. Classically, you have Christ meriting a created state right, so
when he fulfills the divine law the Covenant works, he's merited this created status
that's then imputed to our bank accounts. But that's not what Jesus said in
John seventeen and about participating in uncreated glory. So if we agree that we
don't participate in the essence of God, and we agree that the uncreated glory
is then therefore an energy that's distinct from the essence of God, then you
can't have the model that you said earlier, that you affirmed the classical Western
doctrine of divine simplicity in the Philioquey and Autotheos I mean Autotheus is in Calvin
would be a result of this absolute divine simplicity doctrine. And so if your
model of the trinity isn't beginning with the person of the Father and the monarchy
of the Father, which then requires the type of subordination that I talked about,
not subordination in essence, but subordination between divine hypostases. Jesus says that
he always does what the Father wants. He always does the Father's will.
That doesn't mean he has a separate will. It means that there's an ordering
in the triad that begins with the person of the Father. Right when God
said I am I am he right, that's a reference to the person of
Yahweh, the Father, And so Jesus is identified, but he's identified as
the second person who's derivative of the Father. So the original Nicene Creed says
that the Father is the source, fount cause an arcae of the existence of
the son, who is begotten of him. And so the son eternally is
derivative of the Father. He is not spirated by the common essence. He's
excuse me, he's not generated by the common essence because he would then generate
himself or the spirit would generate him. So he has to be specific to
the father's as a specific relation to the Father in terms of deriving his essence
and his existence and his hypostasis from the Father. And so if you don't
believe that, then you're actually rejecting Nicene theology and the constantin of a one.
So because and that's that's odd because earlier on we agreed in the chat
that you said that you agreed with Nicene theology, that it was correct.
But nice theology does not teach that the son is autotheois. In fact,
it rejects that. So Kelvin's teaching on autotheos not all reformers, all reform
people agree with this, you know, so you can. So you don't
agree with so you rejected the actual Nicene and constantin Polan definition of the trinity.
When you're you have you've rejected it. Well, when you're talking about
the son in isolation, the Son is God in and of himself. The
Son is not a derivative like God by derivation. When you're talking about that,
so you don't exist. There's no such thing as the son in himself.
There's I mean, what do you mean, the son in himself exists
from the father, and you understand that this is in the original Nicene Creed.
That Athanasius is theology which accepted there actually discusses the very question that you're
talking about. Yeah, son, when you're talking about the son in relation
to the father, of the son is indeed of the Father, and the
Holy Spirit is of the Father and the son. But the son doesn't exist
of himself. He derives his hypostasis and his existence from the Father's nature.
That's the original Nicene teaching. So I just want you to be I want
you to say that you reject the Nicene and Constantine Politan teaching. So you're
talking about the Nicene Creed or some other like Canons of Nicea. The nice
theology about genotos and Agintos from Affinacious that's accepted at the original Nicene Creed is
that there's an eternal generation and that you mark off the persons by hypostatic properties.
The father is identified as autotheos or of himself, so the son cannot
be identified as autotheos. He would be having the father's hypostatic marker, So
is self existence one of the divine attributes is a city one of the divine
attributes. No, so you're saying a city is not a divine attribute.
This is the logical problem the trinity. We've already done multiple streams on this.
So it's you have to distinguish nature in person and so you can't you
can't collapse properties that are specific to hypostases into properties that are common to the
persons. So as say that's a hypostatic property, do you understand that the
Kappadocians, Basil, all of those fathers that are that their theology is accepted
sonotally at Constantinople one they explicitly teach hypostatic properties is how you pick out the
persons. And the father's hypostatic property is to be cause and to be of
himself, to be assay. So the son cannot receive the father's hyposthetic property
because anything you say or predicate of two persons must also be predicated of the
third. There's no there's no properties that two persons share that three don't have.
What about the fact that the son and the spirit are both of the
father, and that's not a hyposthetic property, that's a negative relation. So
you should read the Cappadocians. That's my my. Uh yeah, as you
can see, as you can probably tell, I have not read the Cappadocian
fathers. I read. I read Augustin, not the Capito father. I
did the same thing. And again I want to stress Augustine's trinitary theology is
not accepted as the second Ecumical Council. It's the Cappadocian doctrine of monarchia,
which is consistent with Athanasius's doctrine of the son being eternally begun. Okay,
so Calvinism and Calvin himself does teach that you distinguished the three persons of the
trinity by their personal properties, but they're only distinguished in relation to one another.
Yeah, that's that's that's an error. You think it's an error to
say they're only distinguished in relation to one another, right, because that's not
hypostatic properties. Well, they have more distinctions than in relation to one other,
than they have different essences than you have. Free. No, no,
they don't. So again, hyposthetic properties is not the same thing as
relations. There are relations, but relations are predicated on hyposthetic properties. That's
why you have to read Athanasius and the Cappadocians themselves, because you're going to
realize that. And I just did the live streams with doctor bo Branson.
His dissertation is on Nissa and the Cappadocians on the monarchy of the Father.
This is this is or this is the trinitarian theology of the Church, okay,
and it's not the August any of view. So again, I just
want to point out that you've departed from what the First and Second Councils actually
teach. I'm not trying to be mean to you. I'm just saying that
this is not the August. Relations are predicates, they're not subjects. Persons
are subjects. So this is why, for example, Aquinas says persona at
Rilatia, persons are relations. That's not what distinguishes the person's. Persons are
subjects, and they have hyposthetic properties that make them or idiomata that mark them
out as that. And so if we wanted to use negative a scripture descriptions
as idiomata, this doesn't work because there's infinite negative descriptors. You could say
the father is not China, the father is not Florida, the father's not
so all those negative descriptors don't actually function as idiomata or markers, So what
does function as markers? In Augustine's theology, he struggles with this because he's
trying to do a bunch of different models. He's got egalitarian, trinitarian theology,
he's got neoploatina Plutonian philosophy when he quotes the Eneods to try to prove
the Philioakuay, he's got a bunch of everything's going on. But he does
have some elements of the hyposthetic Probert because he thinks the Father, for example,
is the principal cause, but he's introduced a secondary cause by making the
son also a co cause with the Father of the Holy Spirit. So the
point of there is I'm just trying to say that campodoc theology is very explicit
about this point. And if you read gregham Nissa, if you read Basil's
Contra Eunomius, if you read Gregory Nazian Agis's orations, I read all with
theological rations, they make this point over and over and over that they're specific
hypostatic identifiers or idiomata. The fathers is cause of himself, ungenerate in generate
Assey. These are all stating basically the same idea about what picksald Or identifies
the hypostasis of the father, and it's to be soul cause. Over and
over and over. The campudiations say soul cause, soul cause, soul cause.
That means that any of those descriptors that we used cannot be transferred over
to the hypostasis of the son. So as say, if you don't have
philoquy are what's the distinct I'm sure there is one. What is the distinction
and personal property between the son and the spirit? Basil says that what that
distinction is we don't know that there is the distinction. We do know,
so the son that is a big problem, because that's not a problem.
Make a lot more sense because then you do have a very clear distinction between
the son and the spirit. No, it's not, it's the the Again,
relation is not person. You understand that a person is a subject,
and to talk about a relation, there are relations, right, So Gregor
Nessa talks a lot about relations, and the father and the son do relate
to one another, and it is it is proper to speak of distinguishing them
via relations. But the distinction by relation is already resting on a more fundamental
assumption of persons as agents. Okay, and so what are the properties that
mark out the different persons? So the thing that marks out the person of
the father is that he eternally begets the son, and that is a relation,
but it's presupposing the relation a subjects right. So the son is a
distinct subject who relates to the father, that's true. But he's distinguished by
being begotten, and he's also distinguished by all the economia and the roles that
he takes on. So it's not true that if I don't have philioque,
I don't have a way to distinguish between father and son. The distinction is
by spirit. If you don't feel, ok, you can't really distinguish son,
I'm sorry, I mean I'm in son and spirit. Right, So
what again? The starting point of what distinguishes him is what's called hyposthetic properties.
Okay, that's that's Cappadocian, that's affinacious, that's what's in the Second
Ecumenical Council. And the father's hypostasis is to be cause, is to be
of himself. The son's hypostasis is to be generated, to be son of
the Father. Those are all correct, but the relation is still not identical
to the subject. Think about me and my father, right, I'm the
son of my father. Right, that's a relation that I shared to him.
Is the relation identical to the hypostasis or the person Jay? Right?
Because I'm a distinct, individuated subject or person. So that there is a
distinct individuation refers back to their common origin of being from the Father. And
so the fact that we don't know the nature of aspiration versus generation does not
mean there's not a distinction. It just simply means the nature of the distinction.
We don't know that there is a distinction. We do know because that's
what's revealed. And that's why the thing that distinguishes is father, Father as
sole cause is precisely what makes this distinction. And in fact, to have
Philly Oakuey is again like auto Theeo's to give to the son the hypostatic marker
of the Father. And by the way, you don't avoid any of the
problems because in this action you subordinate the Holy Spirit. Because if the Father
and the son possess a power that the Holy Spirit lacks, then how is
the Holy spirit not onto logically subordinated, but you think it's okay to subordinate
the son. He's ontologically subordinated. So the list then you can say the
father you're can you keep confusing hypostetic properties with common powers or energies. That's
the confusion here. Hyposthetic property of being caused or being assay marks out the
father. The hyposthetic property of being the son marks out the son because he's
generated from the Father. Right, those are hypostatic properties. You can't have
things that two persons in the triads share that one of them lacks, because
that would be common powers, energies, or attributes. And so if being
cause is what is a marker of divine power, then the father and the
son now have a power that the spirit lacks and he's ontologically subordinated. That's
not the same thing as I see the I see the problem. I see
the problem. Why can't you say the like as the philioquy people would,
the Father causes and does not it is not caused the son. It both
causes and is caused, and the Spirit is caused but does not cause that
It's a very simple way to distinguish all three persons attorney with hyposthetic properties.
Why can't you do that because it still is subordinating the spirit because you still
have two persons that have a power that the third lacks. So that's called
ontological subordination. So okay, so then you're not a trinity. Then you're
a Macedonian. You're not a trinitarian. I mean you understand that the Macedonians
were condemned in the second a Givemnical Council for that very position. Yeah,
so you're basically saying that you can have like if you have negative attributes shared
by two persons, that's fine, but you have positive attributes shared by two
negative negative attributes aren't idiomna. They don't really work to do that because because
again, do you understand, relations are not subjects. You could have infinite
relations, right, and some relations are more relevant than other relations, right,
Like I relate to my father by being his son via generation, and
that's a more that's a better idiot than saying that I'm not China, I'm
not Brazil, I'm not a candy bar, right, Like, we can
list infinite negative categories or relations that don't really do anything for us. So
and this comes up, Actually on the Trinity. Augustine says, one way
that we might distinguish the person's is by saying that, well, the Father
is not the son of the spirit. The son is not the father or
the Spirit. Right. Well, the problem is that this is a negative
marker that all three share, and it doesn't actually do much work to actually
identify which one is what that subject is. Just like saying that Jay's not
China, Jay's not Brazil, Jay's not Candy Bar. None of that is
actually telling you the specific hypostatic idio mota or a marker of who Jay is.
You see, Yeah, I see what you're saying. I noticed that
Kyle hasn't said anything since the last Yeah, right, yeah, just been
listening. This has been really interest interesting going through all these issues. I
wanted to mention when I made my second why I'm Not Orthodox video, I
mentioned that the Western the philiopa makes it more sense because it makes the Trinity
more like a triangle, and then you just roasted me for that thing.
It's like, the Trinity is a triangle. It's like two thousand years of
theology is out, but you don't now Yeah, it's like or whatever I
think you guys have done a really good job of explaining that there really is
differences between Reformed and Orthodox theology. And it's kind of the question that I
have is redeem zoomer. You kind of have the view that we're part of
the same church, like even Baptist Catholics, Orthodox, we're all part of
this bigger church. But Jay and I we believe that the Orthodox Church,
you know, it is the arch Salvation and that's why we want to convert
everyone to Orthodoxy. And you know you've said that, you know, the
Orthodox Church it's spiritual nourishment as Jay has described, like we have our theology
is very in depth and we have the right theology. So what exactly is
like the Orthodox Church missing? Because we have explained that you know, the
errors in these in these other views. So and also it seems contradictory because
we know the Holy Spirit guides at church, but it's not leading it in
different directions. So there has to be like back to that that visible body,
that normative authority. So yeah, like what like why not be Orthodox?
And then Ja, if you want to talk about humanism and how that's
problematic in ecclesiology, Well, I'm gonna have to go pretty soon, but
after this question, maybe we could try to wrap it up. And I'm
not trying to be rude or whatever, but probably yeah, I have to
go after this question, but go ahead. Yeah, So briefly, what
what is the Orthodox Church lacking? And it's like, yeah, it has
spiritual nourishment. It is the true Church. It's not. It's not exclusively
the true Church, the Orthodox Church. It is the true Church. If
it has rudedness in church history, that's because it does. That's that's not
a it's not a sarde or anything. I would say the Catholic Church is
also the true Church, and the Protestant Church is also the true Church.
So I'm not saying their true church is. There's one holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church, and it's not united by a human organization. It's united in Christ.
We're all united in Christ. The Bible says no one can confess Jesus
is Lord sincerely except by the power of the Holy Spirit. And Lord in
this case means God. So that means you can't be a Mormon where you
say Jesus is like a God, but by God you mean something completely one
thousand miles off the planet to what you know, Christians mean by God,
but we are united by our faith in Christ. The Bible says, if
you confess with your mouth Jesus Lord, you believe in your heart that God
raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And remember in Mark
nine, there were people who are not with the Disciples, not part of
the Disciples organization, casting out demons in Jesus's name. The Disciples asked Jesus,
tell them to stop, and Jesus says, no, don't hinder them
forever who anyone who is not against us is for us. So the New
Testament clearly says that our faith in Christ is what unites us as the Church.
We're not united organizationally. I think providentially, God did arrangement so that
the church was united originally organizationally, so they could work out what the true
faith is and what it's not. Doesn't mean the early Church as an institution
itself was infallible. Like I said, but we're I don't want to go
back into the whole debate that we said. I would be very interested to
hear Jay Dyer's problems with acumenism. First of all, I'll say, like,
what is the Orthodox Church lacking well, like I said, we have
some even though we see it as the true Church, we have some serious
problems with its theology. We think it's theology of sin is one of the
biggest things. We don't think that's biblical. That we believe the Filio Way
is biblical. So that's kind of why it's like, yes, it can
be a group, it can have great spiritual urishment. That doesn't mean it's
correct about everything. I mean, if it is the one true Church,
then yet we have to accept wherever it says, well, we don't start
with that assumption. So we see these theological areas, and that's why we're
not telling everyone to become with us. I would add, by the way,
I did look up, Thank you to Jieb. I forgot about the
Westminster Larger Catechism. It does state in question forty eight forty nine point fifty
that Christ was in some way damned to the Father. It says specifically that
he did experience the full weight of God's wrath on the cross, So I
knew that. I didn't know. I wasn't sure if that equated to being
damned. Well, but then you already admit that Christ that the wrath that
we deserve is damnation. So does does he give does get does he give
Jesus like fifty percent wrath or like thirty percent wrath? Or the wrath we
deserve is damnation. But that doesn't necessarily mean suffering the penalty of damnation is
the same as actually being condemned by the Father. It's like, let's say
you you, you go to jail because of a crime that you committed.
That's not the same. That doesn't mean that going to jail is the same
as actually being accused of the crime. Well, what is what is the
wrath there? So the wrath is simply the punishment of damnation. That doesn't
necessarily mean in order for the Jesus to experience the wrath of God, he
necessarily has to actively be condemned by the person of the Father. Anyway,
Okay, again, I've got it on screen there and people can look and
see what the Westminster Confession is. So my comment on the statement about the
church is that, you know, Nestorianism doesn't just come in in a chrystological
form. It also comes in an ecclesiological form. And the idea that all
of the multitudes of sex that exist out there that on the basis of a
lewis common denominator citation of the fact that nobody can say Jesus Lord. I
mean, Mormons actually confess Jesus's Lord. So to say that Jesus' Lord somehow
excludes Mormons as a common identify of Christianity also doesn't work. There's a lot
of different churches in the people actually believe He's Lord because Lord and the nudesman
means God. Believe he's God. Yeah, they do. They believe that
He. They believe in three gods. They are tritheis. So I'm just
making well if I if I said that, like Jesus is a tomato and
I the word I use for tomato is God, that doesn't mean I actually
think Jesus God. So no, they are tri theists. Is completely different.
No, it's not any Abrahamic religion, Okay, but they're tri theists
and so they do believe that Jesus is God. And so that's why you're
going to have to go into the actual Trinitarian theology of the church. That's
historical. There is no other Trinitarian theology. We don't need today's Michael Horton's
and whoever working to try to make something that was already laid down and solidified
make it work with Protestantism. Because I'm not trying to be rude here,
but just simply saying that all of the discussion, I think throughout the sort
of trying to find Protestant theologians that have some elements of Orthodox It's fine to
do that in dialogue, but when it comes to the actual practice in life
of the church, it doesn't actually work to have a church based around lowest
common denominator ideas of confessing just that Jesus Lord, because that you didn't have
to hew yourself there, just had to qualify. Well, when Mormons say
it, they mean this is this is this exactly, And that's precisely why
we already have these qualifiers in the ecumenical councils, particularly first and second,
which already cut out philioque and cut out the denial of the Father as auto
theeos alone. So I'm just trying to say that if we're going to be
faithful to you know, these councils and whatever, then we're gonna be faithful
to the church that produced those councils and the church that produce those councils is
identical to the theology of the Orthodox Church today. We don't differ in any
significant way when I read not just the dogma, but the canons of those
councils. When I read the Canons of Nicea, it talks about the Eucharist,
it talks about fiaticum for the dead, It talks about bishops, it
talks about virgins, it talks about monastics. All these kinds of things are
mentioned in the first, second, third ecumenical councils. And so you know
that's that Apostolic succession is the thing that is one of the key indicators of
true in a false church. Protestants whole sale do not possess apostolic succession.
And so I'm not saying that Roman Catholics are there for the church because they
have that. I'm just saying it's one of the necessary criteria. Protestants don't
even have that necessary criteria. So to have that, Jesus says, for
example, he who hears you hears me, and so he breathes on them.
And when they go out. If you read the Pauline Epistles Paul to
Timothy, he says, I laid hands on you, Timothy, you don't
lay hands on anybody too quickly in efficence. Make sure that you find good
people who you can lay hands on them. He says. The Holy Spirit
is imparted in the laying on of hands. That's also something unique to the
Orthodox Church, or even specifically Apostolic succession. I should say, because Protestants
they believe in the laying on of hands of elders, they do not believe
that there's a specific succession that's passed on. This is really just a biblical
idea, because the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament has passed on through Moses
laying on his hands upon Joshua and others. There's a lineage of the successors
of the ironic priesthood. That's a succession that is melded in the New Testament
into the successors of the apostles who have the blessing, who have the true
Melchizedecian priesthood. So these things are continued in the New Testament. They're not
just made up wholesale. And even in what our friend redeem Zoomer said there
about the church and initially being constituted as a body to decide these things,
he talked to as if it almost kind of failed, like soon after that
it fell off into all of these accretions and false doctrines or whatever that no
longer allow it to function that way. But Paul says, there's one Lord,
one faith, one body, one baptism and ecclesiological Nestorianism is then to
divorce the notion of the body from the physical historical physical body, the physical
body of the people at Ephesis, the people at Corinth, the people who
succeeded those churches. But there are still church. There is still a church
in Ephesis. That extends back to what Paul is telling Timothy to do an
ethicis that lay hands on to create successors. Those churches still exists to this
day, and so any church that lacks that succession and that transmission is not
even a church. Typically in the Church Fathers, they're called parachurches. So
we would agree that we can have dialogue and discussion about areas that we agree
and disagree. But I think that the normative authority of the church in history,
the idea of them putting together and deciding the canon, which is the
Orthodox Bible, which includes the Deutero Canon. It's not the Protestant canon that
Martin Luther decided that he would choose to your own one Catholic one. Well,
but we don't have a doctrine of the notion of canonicity and infallibility as
the sort of like the only authority, right. So, in other words,
if you believe in tradition, you might have a looser notion of what
constitutes canon to allow for extra canonical things in different traditions to be there to
not be there. So, for example, if the Roman Catholic canon lacks
one or two the dudocononical texts, that's not really a problem for a church
that accept extra canonical tradition, because that's how the but but there but but
the but the Protestant but but your but but your doctrine is authority. Then
it almost doesn't matter. You don't even need a Bible. No, that's
not true at all. It's just simply to say that the church is not
governed by the written text alone. It's governed by multiple different authorities. There's
a living authority of the bishopric, there are written texts, there's the teachings
of the councils. All of these things go together holistically. It's not an
either or so I'm not anyway, we can continue this discussion. We have
another discussion down the road if we want. But yeah, I would just
say that I think that ultimately Calvinism is a kind of Nestorian ecclesiology whereby uh,
it leads logically to an a kind of acumenism where all the churches uh.
And by the way, I know you would say that, well,
you have to confess tod to Christ. Oh so wait a minute. If
I confess the de to Christ, I can be part of your accumunist project
who constitute But I don't have to believe the deed the Holy Spirit. So
when we say Jesus is Lord, we're saying Jesus is God. And that
means basically, you need to believe in the one true God, who is
the one true God. It's not just God in some abstract sense, it's
the Christian godfathers on Holy Spirit. So well, but now you're attacking on
additional criteria. So it's not actually just believing in Jesus Lord, right,
it's all these other things. And Paul talks about all kinds of things constituting
heresies and schisms, and that's why the church in Corinth, for example,
has the ability and authority to excommunicate and throw people out. And I don't
think that you find modern day Protestant churches continuing to have that authority and that
ability and so on the whole. There is no Protestant church with normative authority.
And I think that's the point I was trying to make. Yeah,
that was what we talked about in the beginning. I've said that there are
examples of Protestant churches, you know, doing church discipline, kicking people out
for Yeah, but that doesn't equate to normative authority, which I was talking
about in terms of binding people's consciences. There's no Protestant church. Let's listen.
Do you believe that there's a Protestant church that has elders or living authorities
that can bind people's conscience to a decision. So it's not an infallible authority,
like I said, But that's not what I asked. Is there any
notion of buying people's consciences to a decision. It's ministerial authority, not magisterial
authority. Can they bind people's consciences to a decision? It depends on what
you mean by that. Well, I mean the Reformation confessions say that you
can't bind people's consciences to decisions like that. I would say generally no,
but they can still kick people at It's like if someone will, okay,
so I don't have to listen to it, so you can. So if
I'm in a Calvinist church and they excommunicate, say somebody who follows Doug Wilson,
I don't have to listen to it because it doesn't buy me, right,
I guess not exactly. So there's not no order authority. That's my
point. But also, if you were excommunicated, according to you redeem Zoom,
you would still be part of the church, because you think if you
leave like a Reformed church and you join an Anglican church, you're still part
of the church. So it just it's it's confusing ecclesiology. Yeah, one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one body. And that's the attitude
of the church fathers, of the ecumenical councils. They have the authority to
say, the Arians, the Macedonians, these people over here, they aren't
the church. They do not possess it's not just absolute succession, but they
also don't possess the doctrines that are true. They don't possess the sacraments and
the presence of Christ and the sacraments, and they don't possess the same faith
as us. Yeah, well I would agree you said, it's like an
ecclesiastical historianism. We do see a distinction between the visible and the invisible church.
The invisible church as anyone who believes in Christ. And sometimes it's the
reason. The problem with the invisible church is that it's invisible. You can't
exactly know whether someone is a genuine believer. You can only see what they
the fruit they produced. Like James says that, so if someone is either
living in an unrepentent sin or confesses heretical doctrine, you do expel them from
the assembly of believers. Again, but the decision isn't binding. I don't
have to listen to that, and so it really doesn't mean anything that one
Protestant group expels somebody who can just create their own group the next day.
So there's not normative authority, because the Protestant doctrine itself says in its classical
Reformation traditions that there is the freedom of conscience, that you can't bind people
to interpretations of scripture. But you need to be able to bind people to
interpretations of scripture to excommunicate them. And this is precise to the point is
that there is one Church in history. There's not a thousand different churches in
history. And so the invisible Church doctrine divides the presence of Christ from his
actual visible historical body and his presence amongst a thousand different sects. So I
can agree that there's grace in different groups, but there's not the grace of
the one true Church in a thousand different groups. And that's why there's one
Lord, one faith, one body, one And that's the attitude of everybody
at these ectomenical councils. You understand that they're not arguing what you argue.
They don't argue that we are one church with all all of the different schisms
and all the different groups out there. If you just confessed Jesus's Lord,
because then you said it's not just that it also is the Trinity. Okay,
but wait a minute. All of the Eunomias said he believed in Father,
Son, Holy Spirit, but he was an anti Trinitarian, right,
So every group that's why it has to get explicit and there has to be
You can't just say that everybody that's a Protestant and a Catholic an Orthodox person
is part of a general visible church because there has to be normative authority.
Otherwise it's just chaos. And I'm not trying to be rude to you,
but that's that's my argument. It's legitimate criticism. Protestantism today is indeed chaos.
I will I will admit that Protestantism and it's an ideal form like you
say, you say that these classical reformers, they said they didn't have authority
to buying people's consciouss, but they still were excommunicating people. It's like servetus,
but you just admitted. You just admitted that. As a Protestant,
don't have to fall I don't have to follow that. I admit what.
You just admitted that as a Protestant, you don't have to follow that.
But it's like they don't have the they can't bind people's consciences because they don't
have the filable authority. They were still excommunicating people. Those same reformers you're
talking about the people of the classical information, they did tons of excommunications.
There were a lot of Anabaptist heretics, and these errotics were worse than like
modern Baptists were. They were Trinity deniers. Servetus is the biggest example.
But you're a trinity, but in my view, you're a Trinity denier.
So I mean, yeah, the Orthodox are very picky about distinction between like
this sort of essence and this sort of like No, it's the first two
ecumenical councils which you rejected. But I don't know Calvinists, no respectable Calvinists
would reject the nice and Creed. You just we already established earlier that when
you said that you believe in auto Theos, that's a rejection of the first
and second Ecumoical councils. Is it a rejection of the nicing Creed? Yes,
no it's not. Yes it is because calvin Is still affirm of the
Nice and Creed. Yeah, it's you're playing word games. I'm not saying
you're mean but or being bad. I'm saying that you're playing word games by
saying I accept the Creed as it is, but I interpret it my own
way. Just like when the contant and apology and Creed says I believe in
one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Every Calvinist reinterprets that to allow for Calvinism
to be in there somehow. No, No one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church
meant in the mind of those people, that were the Creed, Apostolic succession
and a single visible institution, which you reject. And also they taught the
monarchy of the Father hypostatic properties, the Father is the sole cause, and
they do not teach that the Son is Autotheos. That's specifically rejected in Athanasius's
argumentation at the original Nicene Creed. So you do not believe that the first
and second Alchemical as they as the theology is presented, you could take the
phrases of the Creed itself and reinterpret them the mean Calvinism and AtheOS, but
that's dishonest with the theologians who produced that council. And that's what every Calvinist
does is reinterpret the Church Fathers to make it Calvinists. And I'm saying that's
a that's a bogus move. So the way a creed or a confession works
is different people who often have different ideas. It's that's been the case in
many different instances of churches three, whether they're con you specifically are rejecting the
doctrine of the subordination of the son, deriving his existence from the Father.
So every every Creed that's ever written is a bunch of people with differing positions
coming together to produce something that they can No, it's to produce a definitive
decision. It's not to produce a document that everybody can interpret their own way.
Was not to make a document everyone can interpret their own way. You
cannot interpret the Nicing Creed to say Jesus is not You cannot interpret the original
Nicing Creed to say that the Son is autotheos. You can't. No,
you can't. That's dishonest. You cannot. You just admitted that you weren't
familiar with the Cappadocians. So how are you going to know that the second
Econmenical Council's Creed, which builds on the original Nicene Creed, How are you
going to know that they teach and allow for autotheos if you haven't read them.
So you're saying that there is that every single person who was involved in
the creation of the Nicing Creed, they all rejected auto that the Council accepts
Cappadocian theology specifically, which is building on Athanationian theology. Nicia explicitly says,
you have to believe it the way that Athanasius taught it. Capital the constant
Noble one, there's a decree sent out by Theodosius saying you better agree with
Gregory of Nissa as a representative of the Cappadocian theology because that's what the Second
Ecumenical Council teaches and means. So yes, they specifically are saying you have
to understand it in the cappudition sense. Okay, I see what you're saying.
And what do you think the binding and losing powers in the Bible are?
Like what authority do the apostles have that like lives on? Like what
does it mean to binding? By the way, if this, if this,
if my phone dies, it's because the battery. It's not I'm not
like leaving in rage quit or something like that. So it's just my battery
is about to die on my phone. Oh okay, yeah, So what
Protestants would all agree on is that the authority the apostles had is not necessarily
the same exact authority as the authority of the church generally the more apostology did
appso succession traditions would say the power of the apostles lives on in the structures
of the church day and bishops and stuff, and more Protestants like Reformed Protestants
would say the authority of apostles lives on in the Holy Scriptures. I think
we would agree that binding and loosing, that the powers that the apostles had,
for the most part are passed on to the successors. And so you
do see in the early Church eventually the confession of sins in an auricular sense.
I think maybe in the first few centuries there might have been more of
a general confession, But we do see in the New Testament people coming to
John the Baptists to confess their sins to him. In orld can't why can't
you know, your average modern Orthodox bishop like faith heal people and raise people
from the dead like the apostles were doing. Well, I was hold on,
I wasn't finished with what I was going to say. So what I
was going to say is that not every single action that the apostles did,
we don't believe that's passed on to every bishop. So, for example,
the apostles had the ability to orally and in a written way teach the and
reveal the word of God. Right, so they were kind of like the
same office of a prophet in the Old Testament, that what they taught or
what they wrote is essentially divine revelation. And so Paul, for example,
equates his oral teaching at ephesis because he taught in Ephesis three for three years.
And if you read the Book of Acts, and then when he writes
to Timothy, he says, all the things that you heard from me in
the presence of many witnesses, pass on that whole deposit, right, which
is the deposit of faith oral and written Allah second Thessalonians. So in our
view, deposit of the faith is sealed and complete. When the apostles are
gone, there's no new revelations. There's no new public divine revelation or something
like that. And not every characteristic of the Apostolic era is passed on to
every single success or the apostle. So I don't believe that we need,
for example, in every situation, the miraculous use of tongues. Could it
be wanted to grant the miraculous experience of tongues at some place in church history,
but it's not as needed as it was and acts to to demonstrate the
power and authority of the Apostles as a successor. So one of the reasons
that Pentecost happens is as the demonstration of the fulfillment of the feasts of Pentecost
and of the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel. Right, So Jews are
supposed to recognize that when the miracle Pentecost happens and everybody speaking miraculously in these
tongues and everybody hearing the same language, that's a manifestation the fulfillment of specific
divine prophecies and redemptive history. So it's not something that has to characterize every
age of the Church. So I'm just basically agreeing. I think we would
agree that we're both cessationists in the sense that when the apostles were gone,
there's no new public divine revelations. We agree with that. It's just simply
that we don't think that scripture alone has the ability to preach the Word of
God. There's also orld tradition that's passed on all right, anything else you
want to say anything is when I want us to cover. Yeah. The
last thing was, do you think the lack of belief in like the binding
and losing has caused like endless schism in the Protestant world because everyone's kind of
their own authority, And so I think if you're looking at the Protestant Reformation,
you can kind of see the trajectory back in the fifteen hundred. It's
like, if you're not really bound by anything, that's why we end up
seeing just this explosion of different denominations, and it continues to this day.
So do you think that that doctrine of not having that view of the church
can contribute to all this confusion and just radically different theologies throughout the Protestant Protestantism?
Sure? Yeah. So a lot of misconceptions that Catholics and Orthodox have
about Protestant splits is that they call those splits schisms. Because Protestantism does not
have this one true Church model or Apostolic succession. A split of a Protestant
nominations are not nearly as much of a big deal, and they will still
affirm each other as part of the one True Church. So it's not as
factly that much of a schism. For example, that's why we can take
communion at each other's churches. I know there's some very very conservative Lutheran sects
that will only let you take communion if you're one of them. But just
because we there's organizational separations, it does not mean that there is schism.
Like there's really a handful of different Protestant traditions. It's not like there's forty
thousand denominations there. It's like that number comes from the fact that every single
independent, non denominational churches is considered its own denomination. I'd say in many
ways, Protestants are more united than the Orthodox have been, given that the
Orthodox often split down ethnic lines, like a lot of Orthodox church in America,
it's like they do the opposite of evangelism. If you try to go
there and you're not part of their ethnicity, they're like, yeah, we
don't want you here. Well, I mean that's have you looked at the
history of Protestantism in America and hasn't exactly like been the most inclusive and like,
I don't think that's a good example to say that that is to Orthodoxy,
Like there's so many I mean, I've experienced both. Yeah, I
agree, it's like that's not a unique thing to Orthodoxy because every church is
made up of people, And yeah, I think that's a very superficial thing
to say that, oh it's just ethnic, Like if someone a Russian verson
maybe going to a very American like Evangelical church is going to feel like an
outsider. So yeah, I mean, the Orthodox Church specifically rejects ethnophiltism as
a theology, and this would be to replace the nation state or the ethnos
with the universality of the church. So while it is true that some ethnic
parishes might be somewhat insular, I think the experience of most of the people
in the Orthodox world is that when you visit a lot of different American Orthodox
churches, you find a tremendous amount of diverse people in different groups. My
church has black people, it has Russian people, it has Hispanic people,
and a lot of people you know, have experienced that in a lot of
different groups, in a lot of different Orthodox circles. So you know,
the history of the Protestant Church is that it immediately was sort of subservient to
the German princes. For example, when Luther did his Reformation, there was
an immediate sort of stepping in of the German princes who actually saw a lot
of use in the Lutheran movement as a bulwark against the papacy and the sort
of geopolitical pretensions of the pope at that time in Europe. So there was
an immediate sort of cesero Papism that occurred in the Protestant churches. I will
give Calvinists credit for at least they wanted in the time of the Westminster Confession
to eradicate what they called Erastianism, which is the idea that the king or
whoever has a control of the church or can say what's going on in the
church. And they often critique the Anglicans precisely for being Erastians. And we
would agree as Orthodox that Erascianism is incorrect. And in fact, if you
look at a lot of the promotions of heresies, a lot of times were
emperors. There was a lot of heterodox emperors that were trying to change the
church to teach arianism. There were emperors that were trying to get the church
to become iconical life. And the church actually survived those and rejected the imperial
uh you know, attempts to change the doctrine. So I would say that,
you know, in reality, every church is susceptible to the temptation of
ethnophiolitism or something like that. But I don't think that you could deduce from
that that the Orthodox Church is more divided and more split than the Protestant Church,
because they that came off from I wasn't trying to say the Orthodox Church
is more divided and it is supervisial. I know it doesn't really represent Orthodoxy.
I'm just saying that it's the fact that there are these different Protestant denominations
does not mean that there are schisms in the sense that skism me like for
Orthodox schism means you're excommunicating each other. For Protestants, most of the time,
when there's a denomination split or new denomination forms, it's usually more of
a reorganization than a schism. It's usually not a schism at all. Well,
actually, for us, skism doesn't even necessarily imply an immediate excommunication.
I mean there might be a schism, that's schism is a severance in brotherly
love, right, So you might have the same theology, but the group
says we don't want to be in communion with with with you. So for
us, schism is actually necessarily tied to communion, and communion is defined in
terms of canon, canon law, canonicity, and who's in communion canonically.
So the canonical structure of the Orthodox Church is another indicator too, by the
way, that we're the successor to the Church of the first thousand years.
Every one of the ecumenical councils produces canons, which are basically church law.
Church law has continued to govern the Orthodox Church ecclesiolastic, ecclesiastically, and if
you look at the history of the Protestant Church, there isn't church law,
there aren't canons. They don't operate that way. And so I would just
say that this is another indicator that we're the same church or the first seven
eight councils. All right, yeah, I see what you're saying. I
guess we're Protestants because it's tied to communion. We Protestants, we have open
communion. Except for Lutherans, we have open communion. I can go to
any Presbyteria in church, even if it's not my denomination. I've taken community
at PCA churches, OPC churches. I can take community at any Presbyterian church.
I could take communion at any Anglican Episcopalian church. I can can take
community at any Baptist church. So we're different organizations, but we are still
we still recognize each other as the one churchurch. Theoretically, we would let
an orthodox person take communion at our church, just your Your church wouldn't let
you do that, obviously, but you're welcome to say community if your church
changes its mind, which it won't. But well, I mean, we
believe in the real presence in the sense of it really is body, blood,
soul, and uncreated energy of Christ. And so you know that's a
angle Catholics, this would probably definitely let you take communion there. But we
also have canonical limitations on who we communion. We don't want to community that
we don't want to commune with people that have heterodox theology because it's a I
know, I'm saying your church wouldn't allow you to commune with us, but
we would allow We would allow you if you want to. Well, that
doesn't mean that does It's doesn't prove or disprove anything. It just means that
you have a different policy. So it doesn't mean that you're mean that all
sayings that Protestants, the fact that there's a lot of Protestant denominations does not
mean Protestants have like endless schism because we are still in communion with each other.
Well, but that communion is not a communion other like. So,
so I can have completely different theology about you know. I mean a Baptist
thinks that it's just a sign and a symbol. Uh, And I can
find High Church Anglicans and Lutherans that think that it really is the body of
Christ in some way. So just because there's open, because we're not Donagius,
we believe it's God working through the sacraments. So I believe Baptists really
receive the body and blood of Christ, even if they think they're just receiving
like, okay, so I don't even have to believe in the real presence
and I still receive it if you're receiving communion. Okay, I'm sorry,
I'm not trying to I just think that makes no sense. I'm not trying
to be rude. I just I don't see how that makes any sense.
Wait, so so you think, let's say, like an Orthodox person is
personally unconvinced of the real presence. Does that make the real presence void in
that case, Yeah, it becomes a curse. Paul says that you eat
unworthily, even unto death. What about So I'm assuming for you that's different
than someone who just doesn't understand it. What if someone's mistaken What if someone
mistakenly thinks it's as simple. Because I've heard of a lot of individual Catholic
and Orthodox people thinking their church chieches is just as simple. What about those
people? Yeah, I think that heresy for us, as goes along with
the rest of our moral theology that we were talking about earlier, is a
specific sin of will and obstinacy and action. So, in other words,
it's not just being wrong. Heresy requires that you willfully and in an obstinate
way defy what is the case? So in the case of more, once
again, we believe in soligrassia, so we believe that God's grace basically overrides
or our belief. So then that applies to the sacrament. So that means
when a Baptist takes communion, the Baptist is still receiving the body of blood
of Christ, even if they don't believe that's what's happening. Okay, But
you can't have the body and blood of Christ without the minister there to confect
the eucharst So we have a completely different view. I mean, I mean,
can I have gram crackers and uh and grape juice? And does it
become the body blood of Christ? If I really believe that and I want
it to be. Well, the what Martin Luther saw as the really what
makes the Christ Christ is like the words of institution. And yes, it
doesn't need to be bread and wine the words of institution. This is my
body given for you laid out what what does it matter? What kind of
bread or can I? Can I use any? Can I use cookies?
So I mean, so if I use cookies in my basement, if I
could use gluten free bread, could use rhyme. No, let's say it's
I want to use cookies and I don't know grape juice. And because you
said that it has to do you say it had to be wine. Baptists
don't use wine. They use they use they use ocean spray. So you
think Jesus is there in the ocean spray with the Baptists even though they don't
believe it. Well, then, like I said, I don't believe Jesus
present in with an under the elements. I believe it's a spiritual reception.
Well that's not the traditional view of the church fathers. So again, let's
just point out that it is a departure from the first thousand years of view
because they believe you, yeah, sure whatever. And it's like I respect,
yeah, yeah, sure whatever. Okay, but you said yes,
sure whatever. At the end of the day, I don't really the church
fathers, like I said, they're not binding on me. Oh, but
you did appeal to them for the cannon. Like I said, we're going
to go God word. So again, if I have the ocean spray and
I have the cookies, and I'm in my basement and I say the words
of institution, is it the Lord's Supper? No, because that's not the
true church is where the Word of God is rightly preaching the sacrament. Well
what if I'm preaching from the Protestant KJV down there in my basement. The
for a true church, it needs to be like an assembly. Like so,
now you're just tacking on all these things. Okay, So what if
I get, uh, you know, what if I wheel people out of
the mental institute down to my basement, I gotta say, I don't know.
In that case, it really does not seem like it would be a
true church, right, just because I can't tell exactly in what case this
is a true church, in what case it's not. It's like the bear
we're the invisible church. What we're the invisible church? Yeah, but like
I said, it's invisible, So that means I can't know if it's a
part of it or not. Right, So it's like, yeah, theore
so it's the one true mental institute asylum church with Ocean spring cookies. Well,
if you're talking about like this place is a church, then you're talking
about the visible church. You're not talking about the invisible church. You tell
me whether that's a church and whether it's the Lord Supper or not. That's
what I'm asking you. I'd say, I'd say probably not. I would
say okay. But now you're adding all the criteria to Now it gets more
complicated and it gets more qualified. So what was originally sort of a general
idea of open communion and that now it's getting really specific and qualified, and
you're you're tacking on a bunch of other things. So it's not actually as
generic as it appealed to be. It appeared to be. Well, it's
it's the same way we say that fundamentally, you need to believe Jesus Lord,
believe that you'll be saved. But then there's a lot of logical extensions
of that. So right the word needs to be rightly preiing the sacraments need
to be rightly administered. There's a lot of logical extensions. Well what's rightly
ministered? I mean again, why is my basement, mental institute patient church
not the true church? I wasn't rage quitting my My phone just died,
so you can see that it just died out. So I told I said
it was going to die anyway. That was a fun conversation. Hope hopefully
he's not mad or doesn't think I was being mean or whatever. But uh,
you know, it's Calvinism. It's Calvinists are in you know, hip
two heated discussions, and I notice he's had a lot of debates on his
channel, so I don't think he would be too offended at that. It's
like, you know, when it's me, it's like, no matter what
I do, people are like, oh, we got him. He's being
mean again. Anyway, I enjoyed that conversation with the redeemed Zoomer. I
think he seems like a cool guy. So I don't have any qualms or
any personal complaints. We're going to super Chats now because my battery died.
Vulture five dollars, Jay. I enjoy your lectures, specifically the geopolitical stuff.
What was the process of making money off of your work? Have you
ever done merch? So, you know, I have a subscription service where
people subscribe to get my full talks and lectures, so that's you know.
We have rock fin We sell books. I don't really have merch. We've
talked about maybe getting T shirts or something. I don't know. I just
haven't got around to it. It seems like a lot of hassle. I've
checked into it a couple of times. It just seems like a lot of
hassle for not a lot of turnover. So I'm not sure if I want
to, you know, continue to try to sell mugs and T shirts,
but I don't know, maybe one day. How long did it take for
me to make what I do into a business? I blogged for about ten
years, and then I started doing this full time about twenty fifteen. Then
three dollars jay. The Orthodox seems to have a right view of the canon.
But how could Jesus hold Pharisees accountable for scripture without the Old Testament having
an infallible list. So again, the argument is not whether you can know
true from false without a public canon or a church to make that decision.
But let's ferret out a few points here. First of all, there was
an existing, visible, living authority in the Old Testament. It wasn't every
Jew interpreting the scrolls as he saw fit. There were rabbinical courts that were
set up, and as Jesus says in Matthew twenty three, the scribes and
the Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses. Also, there were living infallible
authorities in the Old Testament, in the sense that when any prophet was preaching
or teaching, they had the authority of God. So if you lived,
if you were blessed enough to live in the time of Isaiah, then you
could have talked to Isaiah. It would have been a great source for what's
true in false theology and what's the right exposition of the Torah. So there
is a canonical you could say, structure within Judaism at that time, and
that rabbinical synodal structure is actually what the church adopted when in Acts fifteen you
see the apostles gathering together to do a council in Acts fifteen, they're not
creating out of nowhere this idea. They're actually modeling it on the way Israel
already operated. So the point is that it's two different questions between the individual's
knowledge and certitude of what's true in false versus the public historic attestation to what
the true and the right canon of scripture is. So it's two different questions.
So yes, for example, let's get I mean, the same thing
applies in the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth centuries
when there's not yet a full canon. So in other words, the Old
Testament person and the people let's say, and you know, second third,
fourth century Roman Empire, they're basically in the same situation because there's not a
closed, official quote canon. And yet how are people in the third,
fourth, fifth century knowing what the church is? Where is the orthodox true
church? If you went to one Apostolic see or another Apostolic c you might
find conflicting lists of books. So it's never a question of the books themselves
are the final arbiter. It's a question of who has the correct doctrine.
And that's why Arnas, in book two of Against Heresies, he utilizes the
argumentation of apostolic succession is one of the indicators. Right. He talks about
the tradition. This is a Aernas book three, and he uses Rome as
the example. And so when this question arose, for example, how are
we going to know what the true church is? This is not organized by
books. It's kind of organized by Here we go book two. This is
book three, chapter two, and you see that Ernaus argues that this is
one eighty. By the way, he's the Bishop of Leon. The heretics
follow neither scripture nor tradition, and so he cites a bunch of gnostics and
he talks about how they don't follow the succession of the apostles in the various
seas in book three, let's go to the next section. The heretics don't
follow tradition, and they also don't follow the succession of the bishops. So
you'll notice that apostolic succession and according to eRNAs was common in and this is
one of the indicators by which you would know it true false church. Right,
So the very things that he was listing are the very that he disagrees
with are the very things used in the second century to indicate the true and
the false Church. So, in other words, it's not ultimately going to
be decided between a definitive decision on the canon, because even though we have
a definitive decision on the canon, many people don't accept the Orthodox Church's decision
on the canon. So they don't accept Trolo, they don't accept the sub
naka Medical Council. And it's true that you could come to know true and
false, but my point is different. My point is that there's nothing that
stops me as a Protestant from creating my own canon because it's a fallible collection
of infallible books. So that's a question of normativity. It's distinct from the
question of epistemic certitude. The two relate to one another. But if we
all agree at the end of the day, between Protestant or and Roman Catholic,
that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate enlightener and decider, just appealing to
the Holy Spirit isn't really going to solve any of the historical disputes and questions
because everybody believes that they're guided by the Holy Spirit. So we've got to
have another way to adjudicate between which group in history has the correct body and
tradition and transmission. And that cannot be resolved without going and looking at what
these different church fathers and councils taught, and they don't teach Calvinism or Protestantism
in any stretch of the imagination. Spawn spend three dollars, Hey, me
and Jay, I'm looking at Orthodoxy, and it seems if you have the
correct canon. He just sent the same question twice. Real could have brown
five dollars fifty cents. Thank you so much, Kristen. Ten dollars.
Is another excellent debate. Yeah, well, I think we're just intending to
have a conversation and it kind of and ended up being more debated. But
you know, sometimes as how that's how it goes kind of a lot of
parallels to the debate that we had with or the discussion made with Dale.
Dale ended up getting really mad, so but that's relevant for this discussion if
you guys never saw it. By the way, here is the link to
Jesus being damned in the Reform tradition. So I'll put the link right there
that that is the traditional Reformation teaching that Jesus was damned, and you can
qualify it however you want. Still seems to be a problem to me.
I do recommend, if you haven't seen it, going and watching the discussion
with Dale, because doctor bo Branson brought a lot of really important insights because
he's done a lot of scholarly research into this topic in this domain. Let's
see. And so if you want more of this type of a discussion that
we just had this debate right here with Dale. So and a lot of
doctor Branson's insights on the Old Testament and how it was structured in the Old
Testament will apply to your questions their spin. I gotta have some water,
my throat is getting draw a lot of talking. Bumble be, Blumblebee,
ten dollars, Thank you for doing the debates with Protestants. Is extremely helpful.
It was instrumental in my decision to leave Protestantism and become Orthodox. Thank
you, Blumblebee. Glad to hear that Rodham three dollars and says nothing.
Remember guys, Look, it's that time of the year when you need to
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It's in the show description. I will also be putting this in the
chat for you guys. People are like, hey, do you even work
out, bro? Yes. In fact, we've been going consistently to the
gym and it's, uh, it's been pretty wild. I mean we've been
we've been upping how often about the past the past month or so, Right,
We've been pretty consistent in our workouts, and uh, I'm really enjoying
it. And it's good to be because where I used to live there wasn't
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is this real? Is this like a meme? Well, it's utilizing
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me. We're gonna check it out when it arrives very soon. So utilize
the me the chad mode meme power right there into your pre workout. Let's
see we get another super chat bizigan to's five dollars. I'm thinking of starting
a political party. It will be called the Retake Concept and Nople Party.
I think you're joking, right, yeah, I don't. I don't hold
out much hope for like mainline in politics, you know, and in our
view, you know, we don't try to capture the political sphere first.
We you know, focus on the paradigm first and then eventually that will lead
to the political sphere changing down the road. You notice, like the you
know, in the Roman Empire, it took three centuries where it was converted
and then it became Byzantium. So we're not primarily focused on trying to retake
Byzantium or whatever. I mean. Bartholemew is not going to be your friend.
So Bartholomey is not gonna have any interest in helping the Canadian retake Constantinople
party. But thank you for that super chat. And you know, if
people want to work in the domain of politics, that's that's your calling.
That's you know, hey, go for it. Man. I support you
guys that want to focus on that if that's what you want to do.
I think there's certain dangers to that. So I would just be leery of
kind of making politics into an idol if that's your approach. But we do
need people in all spheres, you know, applying these principles. Let's see
who else what else? I want to remind you guys to heading over to
our show sponsor also, which is Grand Theft World, amazing weekly seven hour
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he's over here on rock Fan right there. You can subscribe to Richard
right there. I'm in a streaming mode. I might do another stream today.
I don't know. I'm kind of in just in this mode. I
mean, I'm hyped up. I've been drinking tons of coffee. My phone
died. I would have kept doing that conversation, but my phone died.
I got to go do something here in a little bit. But we might
do another stream later. I don't know what up to see what I feel
like, So I'm gonna have to head out here in a second to do
something. But maybe I'll come back later and do another type of stream.
I don't know what we'll do, but head on over to Rock Finn.
I'm just get it to Rock Finn and subscribe to Richard right there, Grand
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really heavy. Richard and I are plenty a new podcasts were coming probably do
pretty soon, going deep into history with Burmas, So that'll be coming up
maybe in the near future. Also, you can get the courses that we
do, me and Richard. In the show description, you'll see the link
there for the Autonomy marketplace where you can purchase my philosophy course, which is
twelve courses on the history of Western philosophy. Right there, you'll see that.
Right there, Kyle and rezuem Zoomer. You're saying, where are they?
They're linked in the title, So guys, come on, go to
the title of the show. They're tagged in the frickin' title. You can
follow them over there on their channels Byzantios. Oh, we already did do
that one beat. Yeah, maybe y'all do a funny goofy stream. I
don't know, we'll have to see what the mood is. Uh, y'all
want to y'all want to do a clown around stream tonight with cryptids and witches
and all that nonsense. That we have a lot of fun riffing on I'm
not really I'm not really up yet to do the movie stream. Those are
fun to riff on the movies, but a lot of people tune out for
whatever reason, so I don't know. We're still going to do the movie
stream in the near future. Maybe tomorrow night we'll see cyber Tracker, which
I thought would be fun. Don the Dragon, Wilson. It looks like
a lot of fun. I love riffing on the movies right because it's you
know, mystery science, the ador riff tracks type stuff. But it seems
like people really enjoy riffing on the TikTok cringe a lot more. Uh,
So we'll be doing both. We'll do both for sure. Uh. Anyway,
thank you to Kyle and thank you to redeem Zoomer. I hope everybody
had a good discussion. We'll come back later on and see if we could
do another stream tonight. Everybody gond