Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Transfigured Life. We have a
special guest here in the building. I'm always here rocking
with Father Jonathan. And as you guys can see, here
we have the comedian, the apologist, the gifted one here,
Jay Dyer.
Speaker 2: Give it up for Jay Dyer.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Jay, I'm doing great, man. Thanks for
having me here. I'm glad to be here. It's honored
to talk to you guys. Appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our pleasure and our honor. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Jay.
Speaker 4: We're going to kind of get right into it, and
I want to begin by by by asking you a question. Undoubtedly,
if you've been watching YouTube for a while, and I
think you have, and if you've been watching Orthodox apology
I think you have, can't fail to notice that there's
been an abundance of podcasts and videos out there now
by Protestants and especially Reform Protestants, Evangelicals, Baptists that are
attacking the Orthodox faith and church. You know, I recently
heard some Presbyterian church out west even deny that we
the Orthodox, have Apostolic succession. And so I'm sure you've
heard some of these, But what do you make of
what do you think of that, we're seeing more and
more of them now.
Speaker 3: I think one reason that we're seeing that is just
everybody's got a podcast now. My wife and I were
joking about this, like every like every people's grandmothers are
going to start having podcasts soon ago. Literally everybody has
a podcast, and I think every pastor now has a podcast.
Speaker 5: So that's part of it.
Speaker 3: But I also think that there's a realization that there's
a lot of problems in the religious world, especially if
you come from a Protestant or Roman Catholic background.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's not to say there's no.
Speaker 3: Problems in the Orthodox world, but every group kind of
has its own youth unique problems, and so I think
that a lot of people are sensing that questions are
being asked that are very difficult. A lot of times
Protestant pastors might not have the answers to these kinds
of questions, and so they're going online, they're seeking out answers,
and they're feeling the need to have to address why
people are converting. A lot of people are converting out
of Protestantism, some to run Catholicism. But I think actually
in the last three or four years, more to Orthodoxy.
So I think there's a need to try to explain this,
to say, hey, don't leave. You know, they've got problems too,
and Protestanism can be defended. I don't think ultimately that
it can, but I think that's the reason is that
a lot of people are looking for more than what
they're getting at Protestant churches. So they're seeing a lot
of you know, rainbow flags going up at Protestant churches,
and that's making a lot of people, you know, dissatisfy.
Speaker 5: This is not what you know historic Christianity is. So
this is on the one.
Speaker 3: Hand of search for authentic historic Christianity, there's a search
for wanting to be you know, consistent with what the
Bible actually teaches in terms of morals and that kind
of stuff. People are craving that they don't want this, uh,
water down stuff. And even even in the conservative Protestant world,
I think there's a lot of unanswered questions when it
comes to the challenges that Orthodoxy and Catholicism are presenting,
but more so Orthodoxy, because I think a lot of
people are seeing, you know, really systematic level problems in
the Roman Catholic world that perhaps Orthodoxy might have the answer.
Speaker 4: To that's good, Luthor. Both you and Jay came out
of that Milio. If you and I know you probably
have different issues that you could point to. But Jay,
what do you think are the man? What do you
think are the two or three biggest issues that are
bringing people over?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got a lot of a lot of people
coming out of the you know, the Protestant world.
Speaker 2: So what do you think is that that reason?
Speaker 3: Probably the biggest let me see, the biggest two issues
in the Protestant world would be and I don't know
if there are in any specific order, just the ones
that come to mind that I hear the most are
questions like, well, you know, solar scriptura, which is really
the essence of classical Protestantism. And it really doesn't matter
what form you want to give to solar scriptura.
Speaker 5: I know that there's different.
Speaker 3: Versions of a different apologists that give different levels of
a different.
Speaker 5: Protestant apologists will recognize.
Speaker 3: Some kind of place for tradition, perhaps maybe even all
the way up to High Church Anglicans can concede maybe
the most reverence for traditions supposedly, but I think there's
still a recognition that there's big heaping questions of ahistoricity. Right,
the Protestant position is not historical, especially when we come
to the formation of the Canon, when it comes to
how the Bible came to be, when it comes to
the actual practice of the church in first six seventh century,
is the way that it operated with liturgy or you know,
teaching profession of the faith in the liturgy and not
so much people having to go and read the Bible
on their own.
Speaker 5: To figure it all out.
Speaker 3: When when people start to realize that, when they see
what's in the ecumenical councils and the canons and even
the earliest councils you know, prior to Iicea and Caira, Gangra,
you know, you see these so called Catholic and I
say that is in the sense of orthodox Catholic elements.
People are seeing that and realizing that, you know, this
is this, this isn't Protestantism. So I think that's probably
the biggest And then number two might be.
Speaker 5: Questions that they have about.
Speaker 3: The morals changing in the in the world of Protestanism,
and again that that doesn't necessarily go for the conservative
Protestant evangelical groups. But I think in the Protestant world,
like the I mean, I don't know the numbers per se,
but most, you know, all the mainline Protestant nominations in
the US they pretty much liberal in the.
Speaker 5: Nineteen twenties and thirties. Uh.
Speaker 3: And by that I mean not just you know, caving
into higher critical textual scholarship, but also morals. They began
to cave on moral questions and issues. And so I
think that those are probably the two biggest ones, you know,
the history of the church, the Bible, soul, scriptura.
Speaker 5: And then I think there's other issues too.
Speaker 3: Like this debate world you know that pops up on
in the internet. You know, Yeah, there's a lot there's
a lot of you know, great chats and discussions and
debates going on that. H that's probably a big factor
as well.
Speaker 1: Wow, I agree, Yeah, yeah, there's definitely definitely a bigger
debate will happen out there.
Speaker 2: I see that.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, real quick, I noticed. I don't even know
this until a few days ago.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: And obviously I'm not I'm not a.
Speaker 3: Huge fan of TikTok because it's you know, obviously it's
a Chinese sort of surveillance app. But I am on
there just to put out clips and stuff. And I
didn't realize that I could go live on there until
fairly recently, because you've got to.
Speaker 5: Hit a certain tier of subscribers or something.
Speaker 3: But I went live on TikTok and turns out there's
this giant world over there that's different from you know,
YouTube and these other places. There's there's just masses of
Protestants over there. Calviunists are arguing and going crazy. Muslims
are going crazy on TikTok. So I've kind of stepped
into that whole other.
Speaker 5: Mess of getting on TikTok.
Speaker 3: And but that's a whole nother, you know field for potential,
you know, new audiences, and TikTok tends to be a
lot of twenty five are really young people over there
as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kids are always dancing on TikTok and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Now, but now there's a whole debate world because they
have live streams, so you can live stream for you know,
long long form on TikTok.
Speaker 5: Now, so there's always people debating over there.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, well fascinating.
Speaker 1: Well let's let's dive into some calvinism. I know that
you you yourself used to be a Calvinist. I was
a Calvinist as well. You know what what led you
specifically out of that? Jay, What are some of the
issues that you started to see with it? What was
your progression out of that.
Speaker 5: I'm curious that Father Johnathan, did you have a background Protestant?
Did you convert or were you raise Orthodox?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 4: I was theoretically I'm a cradle but when I was
a when I was in high school around tenth grade,
I started going to a Presbyterian church and attending their
Bible studies and their youth pastors. I have to give
them a lot of credit. They they taught me Bible,
you know, they really did, and that that has literally
stayed with me for fifty years.
Speaker 6: A lot of what I learned there.
Speaker 4: But they didn't teach a lot of theology. It was
here's what the Bible says, and you know we we
kind of read it and read it and read it
and kind of memorized it. So I didn't learn a
lot of theology. So I have to say, I don't
really come from that kind of a background.
Speaker 6: That experience.
Speaker 1: My experience Joy goes well that that background and not
all Calvinists, right, We're not saying this all calvin but
it's definitely like a debate world for real. When it
came to that realm, it's like you weren't Calvinists enough
at times, you.
Speaker 5: Know, yeah right, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: Like so I got into that when I was about nineteen.
I got into reading scriptures from an evangelical Bible study
I was invited to when I was eighteen, and then
kind of eventually wandered my way into reform Baptist stuff,
like you said, because I went to a Reform Baptist
Bible College for a.
Speaker 5: While and there everybody, you know, all the young guys.
Speaker 3: All we did was just kind of, you know, talk
about church history and biblical theology all the time, and
so we would get into these debates about well, you know,
what about you know, the church fathers, they taught this
and that. And I remember there was a really formative
situation where I ended up stuck at Bible College throughout
the whole winter break. And so now everybody else left
and I was stuck there for the whole you know,
three or four weeks or whatever it was, and I
didn't have anything else to do. So I decided I
was going to read The City of God. So I
read from the beginning all the way up until about
page nine hundred, and I wrote down all these I
wrote down all these questions because there was nothing else
to do.
Speaker 5: It's just me and in Louisville, sitting there by my well,
and I didn't know anybody. So I just read that
the whole time, and I wrote all these questions.
Speaker 3: And I took him to a couple of the of
the professors, a couple of them are still pretty still
teaching Baptist Bible College stuff. And I said, here's all
these questions. I said, I don't understand how we could believe that.
You know, we like Augustine, if you know, he's got
all these things that we think are just you know.
Speaker 5: Catholic crazy accretions.
Speaker 3: And I didn't get very good answers, so I'll just
leave it at that. But eventually they said, well, you
might need to leave this this Bible college.
Speaker 5: This might not be for you. So I didn't.
Speaker 3: I wasn't ready for any changes at that time. But
at that time I was more so thinking, I'm I
think I believe in an infant bat Baptism. I think
I believe in pedo Baptism, and I was reading a
bunch of reform stuff from Bonson and rush Juni and
Van Till and all those people. And so I found
a PCA church at that time that I liked, which
is the Conservative Presbyterians, and met one of the elders there,
got to be kind of friendly with him, and we
He introduced me to a lot of stuff that ironically
would later point me in the direction out of out
of Protestantism. And so in some of the circles of Presbyterians,
there was a movement back then that's now kind of
attached to Doug Wilson's stuff, which is kind of people
looking into high church, you know, liturgy and that kind
of stuff in the in the Protestant reform world. So
I was kind of introduced to these questions at that time,
but I still wasn't ready.
Speaker 5: I remember, I'll try to make this short and don't
want to ramble a whole time, but.
Speaker 3: I met with some Catholic priests just out of curiosity,
because I wanted to know, well, what do you guys
teach about, you know, Augustine and Grace and all this stuff.
And I remember having you know, one on ones with
several Catholic priests, and they said, well, here's the Catholic
Catechist them and I remember getting that, and I remember
reading through about half of it, and I was like, now,
I don't believe a lot.
Speaker 5: Of this stuff. This stuff's crazy. So I wasn't ready for.
Speaker 3: You know, Mary and stuff, and I thought all that
was out there and wild. So but I did have
a gradual movement towards reading more and more Church Fathers,
and so for me at that time, it was really
just I.
Speaker 5: Didn't know about Orthodoxy yet.
Speaker 3: This was like, this is about two thousand and one,
and so I bought the Church Fathers, the Schaft set,
and I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna have
to start reading this. So I started reading Jerome, and
I started reading Ambrose, and I started reading Cyprian, Saint Cyprian,
and I started noticing, well, they don't.
Speaker 5: Teach anything like what we teach. So I was at
a crossroads.
Speaker 3: And all I knew about at that time in two
thousand and three ish, the only things on the Internet
that you could ever find were Romechalic stuff and like
Calvinist Protestants everything that that was the debate at that time, right,
all the blogs, all the stuff, all the forums. You know,
you would just see people debating on blogs and websites
and forums back and forth. So I just thought that
that was the extent of the debate. I didn't even
know about Orthodoxy except for I'd heard there was a
book by you know callistos Ware about Orthodox Church, but
I didn't have it, so I just didn't think anything
about it. Plus I didn't live with anywhere near an
Orthodox church. So that was probably the hardest decision for
me actually in my life at that time, because I
was really I mean I was a huge student of
Bonson van til rush JUNI I did a semester at Bonson's.
There used to be think of Bonson seminary, So I
was learning apologetics from doctor Bonnson.
Speaker 5: Like father father Johnathan.
Speaker 3: Said, you know, we were just like I mean, it
was just Bible NonStop. I mean, we we were like
temultic Jews with the Bible. I mean like we were
just studying it NonStop. I mean we would have h
we'd have morning Bible before church church was like two
hours of lectures from Bible. We would have Sunday night
Bible study and then we would have Winnesday and Friday
meetings to read, you know, reform theologians. It was crazy
because if you don't, I don't know if you guys know,
but like in the Bons and Russian stuff, like, they
were theonomists, So they have this very high view of
Biblical law, and so there's a lot of you know,
emphasis on what relevance you know, the Torah has for today.
Now they're not messianic news or anything like that, but
they just have this view that a lot of those
laws are applicable to to today.
Speaker 5: So, you know, it was it was.
Speaker 3: Really difficult to move away from that because I was
still wedded to it.
Speaker 5: But one of the things that really stuck with me.
Speaker 3: Was when I read Russiani's book called Foundations of Social
Order and there was a chapter on the Ecumenical Councils,
and so rush Janey ironically had this high view of
the ecumenical councils. And I was starting to read The
Church Fathers at that time, and I had read Cyril
and I'd read Ethesis, so I knew kind of what
it was all about. And then rush Janis take and
Foundtions of Social Order was actually that.
Speaker 5: He thought, I'm not joking, he's he thinks that Cyril's.
Speaker 3: Position is in the storis disposition, and so rushing you
got it completely backwards. And that really shook me at
the time, and I just I didn't know what to do.
I took that to my reform pastor and said, hey,
this is this is totally backwards.
Speaker 5: I mean, how could he mess up that? You know
that big?
Speaker 3: And well we're all fallible, Yeah, we're all fallible, but
I mean that's a pretty big mistake if we're going
to be saying why we're not why we're reformed. So
then I decided it was going to be an issue
of not so much this church father versus that church father.
Speaker 5: What's the root of Protestantism.
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's ultimately, if you're a classical Protestant, it's
Bible alone.
Speaker 5: It's sole scripture, that's the ultimate primary authority.
Speaker 3: So I figured out I'm going to have to answer
this question of how did the canon come to be?
And I listened to tons and tons of Roman Catholic
and reform debates. I went back and be forth, and
at that time it was all you know, James White
debating athletics, and it was Jerrymagticks debating Bonnson, and you know,
reform to Catholic debates was about the extent of all
you could find.
Speaker 5: And I went through all those and then I just
said the best way to do this would be to read.
Speaker 3: A bunch of the Protestant evangelical scholars on the history
of the formation of the Cannon.
Speaker 5: And so I read F. F.
Speaker 3: Bruce's book, and I read Lee McDonald's book their Evangelical scholars,
and here they are admitting, oh, yeah, of course tradition
plays a key role.
Speaker 5: In the Bible. Coming to me and I'm like, what
so again?
Speaker 3: And you and you know, you take these questions to
your Protestant pastors and well, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I've never read that. Yeah, I haven't looked at that, but.
Speaker 3: I'm sure we can find somebody that knows. And then
they'll refer you to, you know, some professor at Reformed
Theological Seminary or Westminster or whatever. And you know, I
just never really got good answers, and so I decided
I would have to be Roman Catholic. So that led
me to the Roman Catholic world still didn't know about Orthodoxy.
Speaker 5: When when I bought the church.
Speaker 3: Father said, I just assumed that the Western church fathers
had it all right, right, So I just started reading Jerome,
and I started reading you know, Ambrose and Cyprian and Augustine,
and I just thought, oh, well, Chris System and you know,
he might be all right. And Cappadocians maybe they're cool,
but there's no pressing need for me to read them.
We all believe in the Trinity, right, I mean, they
were defending the Trinity. Why do we need to We
don't need to rehash that debate. Yeah, So long story short, Yeah,
went I went in that direction. I left the Reformed Church.
I started attending a local Catholic church in two thousand
and three, went through what they call Catechumen r CIA,
and UH spent.
Speaker 5: About ten ten years in the Roman Catholic world.
Speaker 3: UH got really serious about attending the traditional Latin Mass.
Speaker 5: Did that for many, many.
Speaker 3: Years, drove for two hours for probably five or six
years to do that in Memphis or nashvillecause the only
place that would have the Latin masks that I could
go to.
Speaker 1: UH.
Speaker 3: And then I and then I got to this point
where it was like I was so immersed in church
history I got really into Tonism and all that, and
it was like, well, what am I going to do
with pre post Vatican two. Long story short, that got
me looking at the Orthodox question. I encountered Orthodox blogs
in two thousand and six for the first time. I
wasn't ready to convert, but I would hash it out.
I'd argue with all these different people that were online
the Orthodox world at that time. Yeah, and so that
kind of led me just to start reading Eastern Fathers,
and that took me another ten years. I wasn't ready to,
you know, because I mean I obviously think, well, maybe
you're just unstable and you're just converting to one thing
of the next. I would actually take long periods of time, right,
I was Ronancallay for about ten years, and it took
me another ten years before I decided that I would
go into Orthodoxy. I mean I held off for a
really long time. I say, I have the longest catecub
in it, like I intentionally I was a ten year category.
Speaker 5: So I held off for a long times.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I'm sorry, I'm going to keep talking about myself.
It's just kind of rambling and weird. But long story short, Yeah,
I just I felt like ultimately, for me at the
end of the day, the main issue of what led
me out of Protestantism was looking into the cannon. It's
historical formation, the reliance on church tradition for not just canonicity,
but even things like absolutely authorship.
Speaker 5: That's those are things that we.
Speaker 3: Don't I'm the gospels, they don't name them their author
in a case of like Matthew, right, I mean, and
even if it says Matthew, well, there's other gospels that
are false gospels you know that we don't accept. Why
don't we accept them? So you can't take it just
because the name, Oh this was the Gospel of Thomas, Right, Well,
that's anot we don't want that one.
Speaker 5: Well how do we what do we adjudge between? Right?
Speaker 3: So yeah, more I got into the church history, more,
I got into the Church fathers. More I realized that, well,
it just can't be Protestantism. And I was also, you know,
still really into the Bible the whole time, so I
would always be encountering passages that didn't fit with the
system that I had. So if you've got this solo
feed a justication by faith alone, you know, Calvinist, you know,
tulip system, You've got all these problem texts that you're
kind of have to deal with, and over time, more
and more of those problem texts just really started mounting up,
and I didn't find the answers really sufficient. But the
biggest things actually in terms of specifically Calvinism, and what
I would say is just really ultimately the errors of
a lot of Latin theology period, would be the questions
of absolute divine simplicity and the energies and the issues
of Christology. Because once I realized that Calvinist Christology, even
though they don't intend it to be a lot of times,
it actually is a Nestorian Christology. So you can take
it in two directions. You can go to an historian and
you can say that the subject who was punished on
the cross by the Father is a human subject, Jesus
of Nazareth, which would be an historian option, or you
could say that the son was damned by the Father,
which it would be an Arian option because that would
mean the Trinity is no longer you know one.
Speaker 5: So all those are the only two options if you
believe the.
Speaker 3: Classical Protestant doctrine of the son being punished.
Speaker 5: As you know, the payment for the sins of penal
substitutionary atonement, right exactly.
Speaker 4: You mentioned what what must be a beautiful a doctrine.
You mentioned what must be a beautiful teaching and it
must be a beautiful thing because it's named after a flower, tulip.
I think you mentioned that a moment ago, and and
Luther and I were kind of anxious to talk to
you about that, but you said something and I really
want to follow up with you on that, and uh
and and that is we were talking about the the
the the incredible explosion and growth of videos against Orthodoxy.
But at the same time, they're a lot of Protestants
and certainly a lot of Calvinists, they're encountering the Fathers,
in some cases for the first time, and they're having
to to grapple and deal with things. And they're there,
and I've spoken with some of them privately and it's
they don't want me to quote them, but I mean,
what they're saying privately about what they're what they're wrestling
over is is profound. Do you see a change in
Protestantism in general because of this? And I think the
encounter maybe goes back only maybe twenty years when when
when this started to get very serious?
Speaker 6: Do you see that? I see it?
Speaker 4: But I mean I'm wondering what you see in your
encounters and talking with people. I'm starting to hear them
talk about real presence. I'm talking they're starting to see
to Pio baptism and things like that, and it's like,
oh my god, this is what you guys abhored thirty
years ago. And now you're you're actually saying there must
be something to a Jay Dyer.
Speaker 6: What do you think? What do you say?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, like I said, so, you know, twenty years ago,
maybe two thousand and two or three, the Presbyterians, the PCA,
and some of the OPC people had what they call
the Auburn Avenue Conference, and that was a lot of
these guys at that time dealing with grappling with the
things that you're talking about. And so a lot of
them were reading Schmaman Feathers, Schiemann's books. They were reading
books that dealt with liturgical theology. Peterliheart, James Jordan, That's
the people I'm talking about, and they're realizing that, hey,
there's actually a lot of liturgy in the Bible. There's
actually a lot of symbolism that could point us in
the direction of typology that maybe is relevant for the
New Testament Church. Maybe vestiments aren't a bad idea. Maybe
it's not wrong to have incense, right, So, you know,
and this is ironic because, like you're saying, thirty forty
years ago, the Reform, the Calvinists, you know, they had
this strong position which they called the regulative principle of worship,
which is the idea that laid down in like the
Westminster Confession, that you can only worship.
Speaker 5: God in the way that he is explicitly mentioned.
Speaker 3: But of course the difficulty there, and I've been making
this point quite a lot with the Protestants in the
last few years, is that, well, isn't it odd that
the New Testament then doesn't give us a pattern of worship?
Now we have of Saint Paul complaining about abuses, but
how do we know the layout of what we're supposed
to do? If you're going to make the argument, as
many Calvinists do, that Nadab and Abaihu were put to
death because they offered strange fire, they did what they
weren't supposed to do in Leviticus, because they didn't go
according to the explicit commands.
Speaker 5: Where are the explicit commands of how you do the
worship service?
Speaker 3: And it's intentionally, i think, providentially not there because there's
a reliance on the fact that the Apostles and that
here's the weird part. Every Protestant scholar and even Anglican
liturgists that I've read, they admit that the Apostles had
some sort of liturgy that they established in the seas,
the Apostolic seas and churches they set up that was
some kind of blending of the Temple and the Synagogue service.
This is pretty pretty unanimous in history of liturgy books
they will read, even from Protestants. So to me, that
was kind of another big, you know thing when I
read that many years ago that I didn't realize when
I was Protestant, that liturgy has a key role in
the formation of the Biblical canon. And when I learned that,
that was pretty much I think the McDonald or Brusa
says that you can't divorce the daily lectionaries, the daily
readings from the canon and how the canon of Scripture
was was decided upon in terms of the many centuries actually,
plus even the fact that it's centuries and you know,
the Orthodox view, if we accept the you know trollo
and I see it too, that's really where they affirm
the canons of Carthage that list our loose canon.
Speaker 5: You could say.
Speaker 3: That to me, and if you're a Protestants, I will wouldn't.
If we're Protestants in the in the first century, the
first thing we would do is decide the canon.
Speaker 5: The Posts.
Speaker 3: Would have said, hey, uh, we got to have Jerusalem
Council to right acts fifteen.
Speaker 5: Let's have Jerusalem to right away here. And I don't
know one hundred eighty or ninety eighty, well, I guess it.
Speaker 3: I'll be dead, But I don't know right after Why
didn't Why wouldn't happen in the you know, John's day?
Speaker 5: Why wouldn't John say, let's get together. We got to
decide this Bible first. I mean, we're Bible alone right.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So I'm rambling, But again, yeah, I think you're
right father, that so many Protestants are beginning to see
that there's not just an issue of throwing this or
that Bible verse. There's a bigger issue at work here,
which is how does this Bible come to be? And
the very people that make these decisions about putting these
books into the Bible, none of them believe Protestant stuff.
And then the option usually for Protestants at that point.
Speaker 5: I tried this too.
Speaker 3: When I first encountered this was well, I'm going to
try to find protestant Ish quotes in the church followers.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, one of the other things that people
say about the IM not going to go into this,
but just regarding the canon, is that the canon was
formed very early. Excuse me, the Lectionary was formed very early.
And one of the reasons why Revelation was debated for
the longest time, because one of the arguments was people
at point and say, it's not the Electionary, right, you know,
it's not already one of the books that we're reading.
So anyway, but we got we got so much more.
Speaker 6: We want to.
Speaker 3: One point on that, which a lot of people don't
know about. I think it's in the in the le
McDonald book. If you read the Lee McDonald book.
Speaker 5: He said, there's a whole chapter in there on how St.
Speaker 3: Athenasius went to Rome and Rome was doubting, Uh, the
Catholic Epistles and Revelation and Athanasius said, it's our tradition.
Speaker 5: This is this is a valid book, you should include it.
So it's actually the.
Speaker 3: Pope of Rome was convinced to keep the Catholic Epistles
in the Roman Canon by Saint Anthenasius. And if once
you start to realize that, you know, in the Protestant mindset,
it's kind of like sold scripture to the Bible just
sort of like falls out of heaven as this like
complete thing, and then you realize, no, actually, the history
is God using people through divine providence like Athenasius to say, uh,
and I'm not saying that, I'm not saying it's true
because Rome said. I'm just saying that it is important
that Rome included the Apocalypse in the Cannon. But it
wasn't just the pope saying I had to create the
apocalypse and no, it's out and Nasious had to go
convince it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that earlier you mentioned like as you were
thinking through that calvinistic system of yours, like you're you're
seeing scriptures like that weren't really, you know, compatible with
your your calvinistic beliefs. And I actually had a similar
kind of experience at my previous church when I, you know,
I was asked to preach.
Speaker 2: We're preaching through the Sermon on the.
Speaker 1: Mount, and I was just like, man like, justification seems
like a process, and you know, like as you walk
through this Sermon on the Mount, like text I was
struggling with was like judging not unless.
Speaker 2: You be judging the measure that you judge, you'll be judge.
Speaker 1: Or also the you know, text about forgiveness like forgive
so that your heavenly Father would forgive you. And I'm
just like, man like, how do I preach this text?
And I was like struggling because I was on stage.
I was like, yeah, this is what scholars you know
say like rc sproll this that and the third and
and here you know, so like I had this I
was I was almost like arrested to the text in
a way where I was like I had to give
two views because I didn't know what to do because
I was like, clearly the text is saying something different
than what Calvinism teach. What would you say for you
were kind of those things that you looked at and
you're just like this this does not work.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 3: There were so many I mean I remember thinking you know,
like the parable of the sower. You know, in Calvinism,
if you're regenerated, you're regenerated, right, that doesn't go way
because only the elect are regenerated. But in the parable
of the Sower, it's very clearly the analogy is used
that one of the seeds sprouts up to new life
and withers, aways and dies. And I could never make
sense of that. And of course you have to say
things like, well it didn't really spring up to now.
Speaker 5: The analogy doesn't work anymore if it didn't really spring
up to new life.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's there's so many other passages like that,
where you know, in Hebrews, you know, you have the
passage about tasting of the heavenly gift, and you know
they've been washed, they've tasted of the life to come.
Speaker 5: How do you taste of the life to come? If?
Speaker 3: I mean, that could only be a regeneration and you
can't be unregenerated if you're regenerated. So, you know, so
many of those passages were difficult passages too that related
to baptism. I noticed that, you know, every time we
would talk about the right of baptism, it was distinct
from all those.
Speaker 5: Things in the New Testament about baptism, and it's.
Speaker 3: Like, well, you know, how come Paul isn't distinguishing visible
invisible church, visible baptism from invisible baptism. Right, It's always
spoken of as this unit of act, even to the
point of, you know, Titus three five, the washing of
the labor of regeneration, like this seems to be the
grace and the sacrament. The physical elements are united here.
And so the more I noticed this union, and the
more I noticed that, well, now wait a minute. So
we're doing the same thing with ecclesiology, where we're saying
that the church is invisible, it's a spiritual thing, and
then there's this visible church that's kind of a big mess, right,
and the true Elector amongst the you know, all these
different groups. And it's like, but Paul is always saying
one Lord, one faith, one body, one baptism.
Speaker 5: It's always joined.
Speaker 3: And those were you know, when I would think about
those pastors another here's an overlooked one too.
Speaker 5: That really stuck with me.
Speaker 3: When I was a Calvinist. I remember, you know, I
was really into covenant theology. If you're Reformed, you know,
you love Covenant theology.
Speaker 5: You really want to you.
Speaker 3: Want to stress Covenant theology when you're discussing with a
dispensationalist or a Baptist. You want to say, hey, you know,
we've got these Covenant blessings just like or even better
than the.
Speaker 5: Old Testament that people had.
Speaker 3: You know, we can have people included in the Covenant
more so, right, because if you in the Old Testament,
you know, it was the males that.
Speaker 5: Were circumcised to be included in the Covenant.
Speaker 3: Now it's anybody, men, women, gentiles, everybody can be included
in the Covenant. But then I realized, well, I'm making
an argument against a Baptist or against a dispensationalists. That's historical.
And then I started thinking, you know, the history of
the Covenant in the Old Testament is one people, right,
And yeah, in the Old Testament, certainly other people outside
the nation of Israel could be joined to the Nation
of Israel as possible.
Speaker 5: But the point is that there's one group or church
called the people of Israel, the Ecclesia.
Speaker 3: And then in the New Testament, if I'm going to
make that historical argument, I can't just restrict it to
the New Testament. There seems to be one historical group
as well in the New Testament, and so the church
has to also be just as one, and even more
so one because it's post penthecost than the Old Testament Church.
And so I realized that I couldn't argue that the
Church arch existed amongst thirty thousand different groups. Right, it
has to be a single visible and all the analogies
that not just Paul, but Jesus uses right, the tree,
one tree, the sheep fold, right, it's all these unit
of things that are also united in history. Doesn't mean
that the Church doesn't have periods of you know, schisms
and stuff like that. But I'm just saying that there's
also a historical continuity to the historicity of God's people
being a single people.
Speaker 5: Jay.
Speaker 4: When we talk in orthodoxy about what's central to our
to our faith, what's central to our church, we talk
about across the Death the Resurrection. Is it fair to
say that when you were a Calvinist that rather than that?
Is it fair to say that Tulip was the foundational
center of Calvinist theology rather than the Cross, the Death
the Resurrection?
Speaker 6: Is that favorable?
Speaker 3: That's another angle that's a great critique, you know, because
you would if you read the epistoles.
Speaker 5: You know, Paul.
Speaker 3: Paul's always stressing those things. The gospel is death, grow resurrection.
Speaker 5: The gospel is that, And then if you're a Calvinist,
you're thinking, well, that's not really the gospel. The gospel is.
Speaker 3: Roman's nine and the divine decree, right, I mean, the
gospel is this sort of process of you knowing the
divine mind's decree of who the elect are, and then
understanding that there's toll to pravity, that you don't have
the ability to move yourself towards God, that you have
to have irresistible grace and monargism, which is the divine
energy has to act in you to cause you effectually
to believe. So there's a loss of synergism and all
that in the process of salvation, and there's no notion
of losing that faith falling away because the elect or
that's who Christ died for limited atonement, right, irresistible grace,
and then perseverance, meaning that only the elect ultimately perseveres.
So yeah, that's an interesting angle as well that you know,
it's kind of like when you're if you're an Evangelical, Baptist,
not Reformed. You know, you think when somebody says, what's
the gospel, and you think, oh, it's Romans Road. You know,
you go to Romans three and you don't understand that
you're a sinner, and then you go over here that
you can't do good, and then you go here it
at Romans five that you know justified by it.
Speaker 5: So it's like this, that's the.
Speaker 3: Pathway that supposedly lowest common denominor scales the Gospel down.
Speaker 5: But that's not what Paul says. How come Paul's always
saying resurrection, resurrection, ascension, ascension, and I just, yeah, you're
absolutely right.
Speaker 3: Like at a certain point you realize, you know, those
weren't really significant and reform theology or Pentecost, I mean,
even the action of Pentecost.
Speaker 5: It's like I realized eventually that.
Speaker 3: Well, Pentecost is the empowering of the church, and Jesus says,
I'm not going to leave you, forsake you, and I'll
guide you into all truth. And yet here we are,
as Protestants and reform we're saying, well right away that
you know, the church pretty much failed historically, right, But
where was this promise of Pentecost, guidance and so forth. Oh, well,
that's all for the elect. But wait a minute. When
Paul writes to the Ephesians when he's talking about predestination,
he's not writing to the elect, to the invisible church.
Speaker 5: He's writing to a visible community at Ephesus.
Speaker 3: And that was always a problem for me in terms
of exegesis of Ephesians, because I have a you know,
a million reform commentaries and I'm over here reading Charles
Hodge and you know how to see exegy, you know Ephesians. Oh,
this is Paul writing to the regenerate at ephicis to
the elect. No, it's written to the visible church. And
that's a problem. That means that the Protestant, the Calvinist
of auction predestination is not what's in Paul's mind.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 3: So, long story short, the essence of what you're asking
is that the the Tulip approach is the wrong order theology,
the wrong order of theology. It's reading theology from trying
to do.
Speaker 5: It from the vantage point of the divine mind, the
divine decree. But that's not how we do it.
Speaker 3: Theology is read first and foremost trying to and Christology wise,
then that leads you to how you would understand saeteriology
and ecclesiology. So if you try to start with the
divine decree, start with uh sateriology, right justification by faith alone,
that's the gospel, it gets all messed.
Speaker 5: Up, and then you get people.
Speaker 3: Then then down the road your your trinitarian christological stuff's
all messed up because you have to squeeze Jesus being
damned into the presuppositions.
Speaker 5: That you have of justification by faith alone.
Speaker 4: And both of you coming from a Calvinist background, it
would seem to me there's another big thing missing out
of out of this is that you can take the sinner,
and you can forgive the sinner all you want, forgive, forgive, forget, forget, forgive.
That sinner is still going to die. You haven't in
the Calvinist it seems to me, and I could be wrong.
In the Calvinist way of looking at things, you still
haven't dealt with death. And Christ destroyed death so that
the inner still forgiven, who is still having to deal
with the sin in him, the sinful nature and so forth,
could live. And it seems like that that's missing, that
that the the idea that Christ destroyed death. Yeah, that's
missing from Calvinist theology.
Speaker 3: It's a crucial point because in Calvinist theology, death is
kind of like a necessary it's it's a necessary element
under the divine decree. Right, So it's not the enemy
of God. It's sort of just the tool of God.
And certainly, certainly God's providence covers evil and death, but
it doesn't mean that he positively wills.
Speaker 5: Or decrees it.
Speaker 3: In fact, Scripture says God does not will death. And
you know very well, I's got these different wills. So
he's got one will where it's like he doesn't really
want it, but he's got a secret will where he's
like doing it now.
Speaker 6: It's crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so this is this is a.
Speaker 5: Huge gap.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right, and it ties into the notion that
you can be saved and justified and righteous and have
no no actual holiness. Right, that's the That's a weird
thing that I actually encountered that in a lot of
the Roman Catholic critiques of Protestantism when I was looking
at Roman Catholicism, because they made a great point. I
think it was it was I think it was on
k there's a there's an old book that his X
debate with Luther. It's actually a really good book. I'm no,
I'm not advocating Roman calicism. I'm just saying that k
has some really good arguments in that debate with Luther,
and he's and and and some of the topics brought
up are things like, well, how can God call somebody
righteous if in fact they're completely wicked?
Speaker 5: As you say, Luther, right, you're filthy rags.
Speaker 3: Luther was even more radical and depravity than Calvin was
because Luther wrote Bondage of the Will, which is basically
arguing that you can you can't do anything good at all.
He's more radical just on that point than Calvin is. Well,
He's says that you you're a you're a you're an
ass that's either ridden by.
Speaker 5: God or the devil, but the devil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's in that BONDI as the Will book,
and I had a page where I read I read
Luther books.
Speaker 5: I was really enamored with Luther for maybe a year
or two.
Speaker 3: I wasn't Lutheran, but I just thought he was an interesting,
you know, bombastic figure. But uh, you know, AQ was
making these points that well, doesn't that make God a liar?
How can God call you righteous when in fact you're
evil and God can't lie, So how is that possible?
Oh well, he's just seeing the righteousness of Christ's covering you.
But it's not actually the righteous of Christ. It's actually
just a legal status. And that there's a great point
that I think it's brought up in the Alistair McGrath
Ustisia Day Book, which is that nobody before nominalism in
the Middle Ages and the Reformed, the rise of the
Reformed tradition, they didn't think of a division between what
you called something and it's actual metaphysical status. That's an
actual post Enlightenment Reformation division.
Speaker 5: In other words, it's.
Speaker 3: Impossible to have that view, that nominalist view prior to
medieval nominalism debates.
Speaker 5: So, in other words, nobody in the ancient Midial world.
Speaker 3: Including Paul, thought that you could have a purely legal
status of righteousness divorced from the actual ontological status of
you being righteous.
Speaker 5: And that's a little bit of a philosophical angle on it.
Speaker 3: But if that is the case, and I think that
it is, that's also really devastating to the idea that
you can be just before God in a.
Speaker 5: Purely nominal legal sense and not in an actual sense.
There wasn't a vision in the world.
Speaker 4: And ladies and gentlemen watching this debate sometime in the
future of this recording, go back and listen to what
Jay just said.
Speaker 6: Listen to that again. That's really something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's no diventon.
Speaker 3: And the same thing goes for sacraments, right the ancient
and medieval world. Now, certainly there were heretics that deny
the real presence, but they didn't typically think of this
radical division between.
Speaker 5: Sign and signifier. Right.
Speaker 3: The same goes for iconography, the image of the icon,
the image of the saint. They didn't think of it
as this radical division of Oh, that's just a purely
token symbol. They thought of it as having in some
sense a real, a real metaphysical connection with the person,
that being the thing. Right, So there might have been
debates about the real presence, but nobody thought about it.
As you know, symbols in the ancient world were not sure.
Speaker 5: Dead matter. Does that make sense?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's what they think of it today, That's
not what they thought of it back then. The word
symbol is radically altered now from what it meant two
thousand years ago.
Speaker 5: There you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you were clashing two things together.
Speaker 6: Is that absolute? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You so this question here, I got to ask you this.
Speaker 1: So Daniel, Daniel MacArthur, if you're listening, he wanted me
to ask Jay Dire this when when the opportunity presented itself,
So you're welcome. So basically you touched up on this
idea of the Christology, this reformed Christology. Now it's been
kind of you know, you know, mutilated in a way.
Can you can you speak more in to that. I
know you referenced you know where that kind of gets
messed up, But it's an it's an important point.
Speaker 2: Daniel said. That was something I was very convincing for
him as well.
Speaker 5: Back in the day.
Speaker 2: You've you've had videos where you've talked about this. But
can you kind of walk through why that Christology issue
is such a huge point and and and why it's heretical?
Speaker 3: Sure, so I would say I'm not saying that Protestants
are intentionally wanting to be an historian.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 3: A lot of times when I make this point, though,
say I'm not a Nestorian. I don't believe that I'm
not saying that you're intending to be. What I'm saying
is that the logic of the penal substitution position will
take you there if if you're consistent with it, and.
Speaker 5: It's pretty clear cut. I think that now some Protestants and.
Speaker 3: Evangelicals today, I mean maybe maybe Calvinists are up in
the air today. I'm not sure I did hear that one.
Somebody told me that one of the modern calvin Is
systematic theologians. I don't remember who it was, maybe Robert
Raymond or somebody. Somebody supposedly doesn't have the classical Reformation
view that that Jesus was damned in our place.
Speaker 5: But for the classical.
Speaker 3: Reformers, even up in two people like j. I. Packer, uh,
Paul Washer teaches it got to do who's the other
the Calvinist Baptist guy that everybody that's super famous always
good blank on his name, John John Piper John Piper
teaches hyper teaches that Christ was damned. I'm trying to
think of who the classical guys.
Speaker 5: All that's really cool.
Speaker 6: You've got the damns himself. I like that one. Boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I mean they're trying to be consistent because
so you have, you know you have in the Apostles Creed.
I know that's not really an Orthodox church. But in
the West, when Luther or Calvin and these guys, when
they were commenting on Christ's descent into Hades and the
Apostles Creed, they had to give it a new understanding
because unfortunately, even though the Latin Church in the West
at that time they I believe that they had kind
of lost the significance of christ discent into Hades, it
was still it was still there in confession, and even
today in the calch Catechism.
Speaker 5: It's still there that they professed that Christ has sent
it into the Hades.
Speaker 3: But the Reformers, this is a fascinating They gave it
a new spin. They said, well, it's not him actually
going to some place called Hades. What that means is
that on the cross he experienced the reality of the
damn nation enough of all.
Speaker 5: The people that he died for.
Speaker 3: The logic of that is that if it's going to
be a full transaction in a legal sense, if he's
going to pay the debt that I owed he paid.
Speaker 5: Hey, you know, I remember that Baptist hmi we used
to sing when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: Uh so, right, I mean, if the debt is, if
it's a one to warry, you've got to pay the damnation,
which was to me that I then get.
Speaker 5: The bank account righteousness put into my bank account.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: That's how it works in the classical Protestant idea. So
it's not just them saying, oh, well, God just forgives
you and transfers the righteous acust to your bank account.
It's on the basis of in most of the classical reformers,
the wrath of the Father being poured out on the son.
So then we have this question in terms of Christology,
which is that, well, if we're going to be orthodox
in our christology, how does that actually work?
Speaker 5: Because is it the Father damning the son? And if
you believe Ephesus and the Christology that you know comes.
Speaker 3: Out of well not just Ephysis but calcil On, then
we know that the subject is a divine person, the
logos is the divine person who's undergoing supposedly this event,
and that would mean then that the divine person of
the Father is damning the divine person of the Logos
who's incarnate.
Speaker 5: So you kind of only have two options there.
Speaker 3: You can say, well, it's not the father damning the
divine son, it's the damnation of the human nature.
Speaker 5: Well, but it's there has to be.
Speaker 6: Some one person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've got to be some subject that is the
recipient of that. It can't just be the human nature
that's damned. It has to be a subject. And so
is that Jesus of Nazareth the historical person.
Speaker 5: Well, that would be the story in view that.
Speaker 3: The story is sought a dual subject christology, that there
was a human hypostasis Jesus Nazareth, and then there's the
divine hypostasis of the Logos, who was kind of sometimes
present and then sometimes it's the human person sometimes. So
it's this weird dual subject risology and the whole point
of the tokos the word the phrase is, Cyril said,
this completely cuts out the whole idea of there being
a dual subject risology. The only subject for all the
incarnate action, Cyril says, is the divine person of the Logos.
Speaker 5: That's it. He is a full human nature, but he's
not a human hypostasis or person.
Speaker 3: And so if we accept ephicis and that teaching, then
what happened And by the way, Calcton as well, because
a lot of people don't know.
Speaker 5: People think Leo is the measure of Calciton. That's not
actually true. They measured the tone of.
Speaker 3: Leo against Cyril, So Calcedon is actually Kairellion, not primarily
Pope sing Leo. Now, point being, then the other option
is I could say, well, in this transactional event, I
could say that the divine person of the Sun is
the one that's damned. But this presents so many trinitarian
difficulties that it's almost just unimaginable. I mean, first of all,
the persons of the triads share the same will.
Speaker 5: There's one will in God.
Speaker 3: How could you have one will the person of the
Father setting his will against the son to damn the son, right,
how could you you would We would lose parichoresis, the
divine involve right, the Father and the spirit would no
longer dwell the son if he's damned, because he's a curut.
Speaker 5: So it's just absurd, it would be it would be
anti trinitarian.
Speaker 4: But that they wouldn't have those teachings to begin with,
because from Protestants from the Reformation on, think of how
much they were simply inventing because everything was anti Catholic
at that point. So if the Catholics believe it, we don't,
then what do we believe? And then they have to
come up with this kind of stuff as something, because
what are the people waiting for?
Speaker 3: You know, well, if you read Lutheran Calvin, there's always
this sort of verbal credence given to things like Calcedon
and so forth. Uh are oddly enough, the Westminster Confession,
if I recall, which is post Calvin, it actually does
give it gives verbal credence to Christ having uh two
wills and two natures, which is the you know fifth
and six councils explicate that, but you know, the six
Council goes really deep into two energies, so you know,
you have to have the essence energy sinction doctrine to
have two wills and two energy. And to my knowledge,
there's no Protestant that that have an essence energy sinction doctrin,
unless it's just people modern people just kind of saying, oh,
I like that idea.
Speaker 5: Cool, But but Calvin, I think, you know, and then
I've read the entire institute how to read that?
Speaker 3: For bonds and seminary they measure that the whole thing,
all fifteen hundred pages of it. And I remember there
are sections where Calvin's you know, he's like, well, you know,
we believe in two natures and two wills, and that's
consistent with Calcedon, and we definitely believe. We don't believe
Colson is a fallible, but we definitely believe what it teaches.
But they don't really understand the implications of it. You know,
it's more than just verbal verbal credence, right right.
Speaker 4: Well, Jay, what do we do with a person comes
along and says something like, you know, I'm not okay,
I'm not reformed or Calvinist anymore. I'm a Bible believing Christian.
You know, you have a lot of I'm a Bible
believing Christian. Read If that's all they are, how do
you show them that they're no better off from the
ancient Apostolic Christianity.
Speaker 5: And you've probably encountered a lot of this, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
I mean there's a lot of a lot of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, well, I find it typically the most beneficial
to go into just saying, well, who do you think
put the Bible together?
Speaker 5: You know, I mean, did it just happen fall out
of the sky.
Speaker 3: I mean there's a real historical process to that that
you can't you can't divorce the divine from the human
in this regard. So just as just as in Christology,
for example, I know evangelicals might not know about Christology,
but for you guys, for orthodox people, like, we know
there's a synergy in Christ, right, there's a synergism between
the human nature and the divine nature in Christ. And
we know there's a synergy in terms of our participation
in grace. Right, we are always cooperating. Paul says, I'm
a co operator, co worker with Christ coworker. Yeah, yeah,
So there's always synergy. It's never gone, it's never lost.
And you know, one of the problems in Calvinism is
that conversion requires God.
Speaker 5: Stepping in and basically taking over.
Speaker 3: So it's a monargistic view, and if they were consistent,
I think they would also have to be monargists in
terms of Christology as well. So it seems to me
that they would prefer severus and peer us, you know,
the people that Maximis in the Church Fathers argued with
they would be more like a Coptic my Ephicite type
of position.
Speaker 5: If they wanted to really be monogists.
Speaker 3: But for the typically evangelical, I would say, one thing
I've found really effective is to point out, you know,
they'll always say, well, we're not saved by our works, bro,
you can't be saved by works, you know, We're justified
by faith, not works.
Speaker 5: And I said, well, how does what is Jesus describe
faith as? And they're like, it's a gift. Yeah, but
what does he say? He says, this is the work
of God that you believe on him. So wait a minute, So.
Speaker 3: Faith is actually a work according to Christ of the
Gospel of John. So it can't be the case that
no works are necessary, because every evangelical is going to
at least say, well, you do have to believe.
Speaker 5: Wait a minute, doesn't believe something I do. Even if
you think that it's just a mental notional thing, it's
still something I gotta do.
Speaker 3: You well, but it's a gift, yeah, but it's still
it's something I gotta do, right, So they can't totally
divorce the human element from it at all. And then
you then I would point out, well, one thing that
happens in the history of this debate of justification by
faith alone is that the people who defend it oftentimes.
Speaker 5: Totally disagree amongst themselves as to what it actually means. So,
for example, does my faith faith in the Atoning.
Speaker 3: Death, row resurrection work of Christ is that if I
put all my faith in trust in that alone?
Speaker 5: Is that just the case by faith on? Or as
many of the classical Reformed actually said and Lutherans do.
Speaker 3: I also have to know and believe in justification by
faith alone. To be just by by faith alone, you see,
So you can sort of pile on the difficulties there
to illustrate that what sounds perhaps as a very clear,
you know, the persecutive structure that sounds as a very
clear doctrine, actually isn't that clear?
Speaker 5: What does it actually mean?
Speaker 8: And I would point out one other strong point which
I learned when I was a Catholic, was, you know,
if you look at Romans, for when Paul cites Genesis,
and it doesn't matter whether you're a Protestant, Evangelical or
a Calvinist.
Speaker 3: Abraham's what they call transition from wrath to grace. This
is the the idea that before you regenerate your God's enemy,
you're a child of wrath, got hate, right, when you're regenerated.
Speaker 5: That's what they call a transition from wrath to grace.
Now God loves you, you're the friend of God, your regenerator.
Speaker 3: The transition from wrath to grace in Abraham's life should be,
if you're a good Protestant, Genesis twelve.
Speaker 5: But I remember noticing it one day when I was
looking at the Catholic stuff back in twenty or four.
Speaker 3: Actually, Paul cites Genesis fifteen, or the passage supposed to
be supposedly the ultimate passage, Romans four, you know, defending
justification by faith alone. Why is Paul citing the wrong chapter?
Abraham has already done three chapters of righteous works from
twelve to fifteen. Paul's using the text in fifteen that
he was justified by faith, he was righteous by faith,
not Genesis twelve. And that always bugged me because he
should have cited Genesis twelve. Right, if we're Protestants, but
if righteousness from God is something that is an actual
power that we participate with and synergize with.
Speaker 5: Right, and Paul's point, of course, I think we all
know Paul's point is not that there's no works that
we do. Paul's point is that the works of.
Speaker 3: The ceremonial law and circumcision didn't make Abraham righteous.
Speaker 5: That's the point of that passage. The mosaic law didn't
make because if mosaic law was necessary, then how are
people before mosaic law?
Speaker 6: Rochester.
Speaker 5: That's Paul's point, not that we don't do any works
at all. Right.
Speaker 3: So, but if the Protestant reading, whether you're Calvinists or evangelical,
a Romans four is what Romans four is, Paul should
have sided Genesis twelfth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, facts, yeah, no, good point, good point.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: Well other thing two.
Speaker 5: I would say to one other point.
Speaker 3: You know, when when God speaks, it occurs, it's efficacious. Right,
God speaks, the world comes to be. And so if
God speaks, you're righteous. God speaks a word into our hearts.
The New Testament says, right, it's efficacious. I don't mean
this in the sense of like irresistible grace, but I'm saying.
Speaker 5: It's not possible for God to say you are righteous
and you'd be Luther and you not be that right
because His word is efficacious.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Good's stuff. Good stuff. Father. As as we come
to close, Barther, you how you're about to say something.
Speaker 6: Well, I think we have.
Speaker 4: Kind of one last thing we'd like to ask Jay,
And this kind of wraps back to the to the
first question. So many Protestant videos coming out why you
should leave Orthodoxy, Why you should become a Protestant. Let's
turn that around. Why is Eastern Orthodoxy a better alternative
for Protestants?
Speaker 6: Maybe two or three reasons, Jay, What do you think, right?
Speaker 5: Well, I would say that, you know, between product I
was raised Evangelical, Baptist.
Speaker 3: And then Calvinists for many years, and then it spent
about a decade in room with autism. I would say
that a lot of what both Roman Catholics and Protestants
and Evangelicals are looking for are's kind of in that
midway of the Orthodox Church. So a lot of people
are looking for while I want Bible, but it seems
to be like just Bible alone doesn't work, right, because
it's like, ultimately, at the end of the day, if
you're a Protestant, you might like your pastor you might
like your community, but they don't really have authority. And
at the end of the day, it's kind of like
you and your Bible, right, And that's I mean, I
know that Protestants recognize that there's an authority that elders have,
but I'm saying that in terms of the church, I
think that whole thing is disastrous because there's not a
body that can actually govern. And one thing I noticed too,
was that you in the in Poul's epistles, for example,
of the Corinthians, he says that you should excommunicate the
people that are really causing these troubles in the church.
And then if you read the Councils, you know, all
the way up until the triumph of Orthodoxy in the
Southern Council and in the Sonoticon, you have the continuation
of the idea that the church has the authority to excommunicate.
And if you're a Protestant, I mean, the only time
I ever encountered a Protestant ever even thinking of ex
communicating it was in a very small Presbyterian reform group.
Speaker 5: They were the only.
Speaker 3: Protestants I've ever heard. Maybe there's Protestant churches of it,
and I saw I'm not saying that you should become
Orthodox because people get ex communicated. It's an indicator of
the fact that the ecclesiology of Protestism is kind of
a disaster, and it's kind of a mess, and it
doesn't really have what we call normative authority and ethics,
which is the idea that there's somebody that can entern
and make a decision and buying people right. It doesn't
necessarily make them infallible or not, you know, Papists or
Roman Catholics, but there is a body that has sonodal
authority and their decisions can be made, and ultimately the
Church as a totality is infallible. I think that's the
Orthodox position as I understand it, but not necessarily need
an individual. So so the loss of that, I think
pentecostal guidance of the church. I think you'll find in
the elements that are missing in Protestantism and that are
missing even in Catholicism, I think genuinely are are maintained
in the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 5: So that's one great reason is that probably a lot
of what people are looking for is there.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't want to give you a false
impression that there's no problems in the Orthodox Church and
it's all, you know, green pastures. I think my experience
that different bodies have different sets of problems, and there's
some overlap there's going to be we have similar problems
to other groups, but there are problems unique to Orthodoxy.
There's problems unique to Rome, there's problems unique to Protestantism.
But I think that if it's not a systemic problem.
For example, I would argue that in Roman Catholicism, the
papacy and what has tried to bind people to infallibly
and with dogmatic authority, that becomes a systemic level problem
such that that system kind of can't be rescued or
it can't function.
Speaker 5: It it doesn't work right. And I would say in Protestantism.
Speaker 3: Because of the nature of the kind of chaotic ecclesiology,
it also.
Speaker 5: Is a systemic level problem. I don't think Orthodoxy has
those systemic level problems. It certainly has its problems.
Speaker 7: But.
Speaker 3: Systemic level problems, in my argument, would be enough to
cancel that out is not a good option basically. So
I think that beyond those kind of intellectual arguments, you know,
Orthodoxy is very different. It's going to push you to change,
it's going to push you to actually, you know, deal
with your sins. You know you're not you're not just
in your prayer corner mentally, you know, recounting your sins
with you in the Bible. You're going to be going
through a kind of a healing I like Father Deacon,
doctoronisis analogy or it's act like rehab. It's all go
into rehab and we've got to keep going back and
working on uh, you know because throughout the week we relapse,
right like people who have addictions relapse, So well, you
got to go back, you gotta keep working at it.
So that's very different than anything I experienced in Protestantism
and even roby Tholicism. In my experience is the you know,
when you go to confession, it's it's just very mechanical.
It's very oh, here's my sins, Okay, here's your five
helm mares. And then it's like I might go to
another priest and it's that he doesn't even know, right.
But in Orthodox it's different because my case maybe any
other cases, I don't know everybody's case, but you're typically
confessing to a spiritual father who is tracking and knowing
your progress, and so he knows the medicine that you need.
And that's why that mechanical system doesn't really work. I
don't think if it's just a I'm here to pay
my hail Mary debt and let me go back to
do it.
Speaker 5: No, it's like no, you okay, so.
Speaker 3: You're you got this problem. Maybe you need to you know,
maybe you have a problem with greed. Maybe you need
to be more magnanimous this next week. You need to
give some more money if you're greeding. Oh you got
a problem with eating too much? Maybe you need to fact.
You see what I'm saying that there's a the medicine
is applied to the difficulty, and that that's.
Speaker 5: Not anything I ever experienced in other groups. So I
actually think that deep down we all kind of want
to be healed.
Speaker 3: Right, I don't know it an Orthodox building has that
healing medicine facts facts.
Speaker 2: Amen, No, that's that's facts, like it is like, uh
but I.
Speaker 3: Mean it's it's hard. I mean it's tough. I mean
I'm trying to scare people, but like, you know, it's
it's going to be.
Speaker 5: It's not the Christian Marines in Protestism. It's really intellectual.
Speaker 3: You can read a lot of books and argue a
lot and you're not challenged to work on your vices,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: That's it's just different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I say, I say all the time
like it. You know, Orthodoxy is almost like the Christian Marines.
Speaker 2: In a way.
Speaker 5: You know, there you go exactly.
Speaker 1: But before we close, I do want to ask you
a lighthearted question, really a real quick one here. So
I know before, like off air, we were talking about
like how you know I connected with you know, we
talked on discord a little bit. Now I know you
you've had things on Discord, You've had open dialogue and
things like that. There was a time where Deacon and
and I is father Deacon was debating Matt Slick and
you called that Slick a goblet, which is like hilarious.
Speaker 5: Of our pret going sorry, go ahead, are good?
Speaker 1: You could you called? Uh, you called Maslick a goblin?
Did you know that that was going to become a
music video? No.
Speaker 3: I think that he's a really nasty person that I've
had a lot of nasty interactions with in the past,
and so I think people clip that and they think that, oh,
you just like randomly wanted to call him names. Now,
there's a long history of of he would come on
the discord and we would he would just be really
really nasty, and we ended up having to just cut
off all the communications with that guy.
Speaker 5: And there was supposed to be that day, there.
Speaker 3: Was supposed to be a debate between doctor father diggon
Doctor and Ias, a guy named Darth Dawkins and somebody else,
and then they brought Maslick on and so it kind
of surprised everybody that it didn't end up being the
debate that everybody.
Speaker 5: Thought it would be. And so, uh, no, I just
I just I think he's a pretty nasty person. And
I don't have the view that we should always never
call people for what they are.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe maybe I'm wrong about that. I can
be corrected, But no, I didn't. I didn't have no idea.
What was I don't even know who makes a lot
of those You ever heard the God I'm saying, I
don't I've heard it. I'm saying I don't know who,
Like I don't know who these who who made that?
Speaker 5: No idea? So people just you know, kind of clip stuff.
Speaker 2: Good stuff.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: Well, well thanks for addressing Calvinism, Protestant Protestantism.
Speaker 5: And and just really great questions.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Ja.
Speaker 4: We've got a message that we want to get out,
and we wanted we got a message about the faith
and the church, and and uh, we're not hard people
to get to know. This is not a hard faith
to get to know. We are opening, open and welcoming,
and uh we want people to to engage with us,
and that in many different areas, at many different levels.
Speaker 6: So thank you for coming on. We really appreciate that.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, thank you. And yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 3: Not everybody needs to hear, you know, a detailed reputation
of Tula, but some people do, all right, some people
do need that.
Speaker 6: No, we had a good interaction here.
Speaker 4: I'm very grateful Luther, Thank you, Jay, Thank you ladies
and gentlemen who are watching this, Thank you, and subscribe
so that you can be notified of future videos coming out.
And we're aiming to provide quality content and really good
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thank you again for watching.
Speaker 5: Take care, y'all, have a great day. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 7: You are not in a turk in your own excuse me,
you're just making an assumption that all the saints agree
they do.
Speaker 5: Go read them no thing. You're a scholarly, a demon,
a boomer, part part a demon.
Speaker 7: A boomer making an assumption, and even a boomer part
an excuse, excuse me?
Speaker 5: A demon, a boomer part part You're acholarly, even a
boomer part.
Speaker 7: Of an even a boomer part an excuse me, even
a boomer part part even a boomer.
Speaker 3: Making an assumptuous?
Speaker 2: Are all the councils inspired at an errant?
Speaker 7: The ecumenicals th idea so there ecumenical sentence are inspired
in an errant?
Speaker 5: Correct