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Speaker 1: Well, hello everyone, this is Al Fadi and you are

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joining us in another live stream. This is a very

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special one, especially the Friday ones. This is of course

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where we reserve it for our special guests, and with

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us here today, we're so thankful, of course that he

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made the time for us, our brother Jay Dyer. And

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of course I have to admit, folks that I did

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not know a whole lot about Jay until Sam Shamond

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brought him to my attention, and then of course when

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he debated with Shabier Ali and I got excited. Of course,

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anyone who debates Shabir or gets involved in this field

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is indeed someone that worthy of our time to discuss

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the various things. Then I began to learn more and

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more about his background than it was really intriguing to me.

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So I want to thank everyone for being here with us.

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Please pay attention to our moderators. Thank you to the

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moderators for doing the great job that you typically do. Everybody,

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please stick to the topic. Anyone, and I have to

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tell you right now that wages any verbal attack, use

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bad language, I will personally remove you from here, because

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we're not here to attack and natch at each other.

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We're here to respect one another and learn from each other. Brother,

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thank you so much for taking the time to be

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here with us, and I know your time is precious,

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so we appreciate at least the next hour or so

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that you'll be given to us.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, glad to be here. I have seen your

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stuff and I'm glad to know that there's people like

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you out there that have made the interesting journey that

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you have, and so I'm honored to be here.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. And you know, Jay, I want you to,

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in your own words, take a few minutes just let

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people know who you are, you know, and what is

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it that you do right now. Of course I also

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came across your blog, if you want to call it

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the Jay's Analysis. I appreciate it really the information in there,

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although you have a variety of information actually on topics.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I cover a lot of things. I cover philosophy, geopolitics, movies, culture.

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The two books that I did focus on film analysis,

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some of the big movies that you may have heard

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ever seen, the symbolism in those films, the religious connotations

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of those films. And then I did a TV show

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a couple of years ago kind of based on the

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book called Hollywood Decoded that's worth checking out if you're

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into movies. So I try to tie in the philosophy

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of movies and pop culture with you know, the gospel,

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with theology, with those kinds of topics. But at the

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same time I kind of got gradually roped into doing

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more and more debates. It wasn't something I really set

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out to do, but I'd always done debates. I studied

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philosophy in undergrad and grad school. I did a year

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of theological seminary a long time ago, and so it's

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always been an interest. Debated for a long time on

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campus in different philosophy club meetings, this kind of stuff,

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but I never really took it into any kind of

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public sphere until people were really goading me on to

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kind of do public theological debates a few years ago,

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and we did a few debates with atheists and that

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went pretty well. So then we just kind of branched

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out and got debates with other people in the Roman

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Catholic sphere, got debates with other groups Protestant or two

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here and there, and then finally somebody said, well, when

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are you going to debate some Muslims? And I said, well,

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I don't really know a lot about Islam. So within

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the last eight months we've kind of done a pretty

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fairly intensive study into Islam. I'm still very much a Nube,

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so I wouldn't at all consider myself fluent in Islamic

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tradition or theology in the different schools and so forth.

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But I do have, you know, my different lectures and

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notes and Quran study study. I always call it a

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study Bibles. I have my Kuran's study coron now. So yeah,

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it was kind of of a surprise that Shabiro was

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willing to do it. I didn't think he would be willing,

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but he was, and so it was a good debate.

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And then we've had you know, Matt Dill Hunty, the

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well known atheist, Stefan Malinu, another kind of agnostic type

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of guy. So so yeah, so that's what I do

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is cover all those topics, cover a lot of Orthodox theology,

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which we believe is unique from Roman Catholic and Protestant theology.

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So that's what I do.

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Speaker 1: Yep, thank you. And of course, like I said, I

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thought you did a very good job with Shabir. I

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mean I didn't even know that you only spent a

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few months digging deeper into it. You've done a great job.

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And you know, I have to be fair and say,

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Shabir strikes me as still a respectful person, even though

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he has his own unique style of how he delivers

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his things.

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Speaker 2: But it's okay.

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Speaker 1: At least he is professional more so than others. And

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you know, for that, we're thankful that he's willing at

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least to dive or delve into a number of important

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issue With that in mind, brother, you know, when I

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accepted Christ, you know, about twenty years ago, obviously, I

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began to get more and more familiar with the early

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Church fathers, and you know, you know creeds and you

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know doctrines and things like that. And then at the

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seminary I studied under the likes of doctor Wayne Rudham.

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And you know, one of the classes that I've taken,

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of course, has to do with the church history or

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historicalry theology. So I'm always intrigued by that because there

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is some benefit for that. If you want to give

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at least an overview of why is it important for

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any believer really to learn about church history and especially

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early Church fathers, Well, I'll give.

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Speaker 2: You the orthodox position on that. And that's because, of course,

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as Orthodox, we believe that the Church is and has

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always been Orthodox. So that's not to detegrate people in

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other traditions. I myself came from a Protestant tradition, so

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I'm not trying to be rude to anyone, but I

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kind of studied my way into Orthodoxy, and so I

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think that if we want to understand that from our perspective,

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you know, the Church as a body, as an institution,

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is just as miraculous and just as divine in origin

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as the other doctrines of Christianity, right, just like the

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virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the deity of Christ, those doctrines

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are definitely at the core. But the Church is also

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a corollary in one of those doctrines. So how we

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view Christ his incarnation the triad is going to condition

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how we view the doctrine of the Church. And that's

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kind of what I eventually came to in studying the

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early Church Fathers for I don't know about fourteen or

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fifteen years. I got really serious into that back in

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my early twenties. And what we want to know is

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do we have the same faith that the apostles laid down.

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I mean, I think that's the key question here for

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everybody is everybody at least we all desire hopefully to

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be in unison with the Apostolic deposit as scripture says, right,

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keep the faith that was once for all delivered to

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the saints, as scripture says, So we want to be

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in continuity with that. We want to have the same

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confession of faith that has always been true. Paul says,

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one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Right, there's one vine,

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one body, one kingdom, one sheep fold, one covenant. So

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we want to be part of that covenant. And so

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the history of the church, I believe displays God's continuing

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activity via the promise of Pentecosts right within the centuries

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that follow after the church right after excuse me, after

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the Apostles. So when we look at the post Apostolic period,

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when we look at the pre Nicene church fathers, when

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we look at the post Nicene church fathers, rather than

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what a lot of evangelicals tend to think, we actually

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see a lot of continuity. So, and even Islamic apologists

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will bring this up a lot. They'll say, oh, the Trinity,

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you know, this was a later doctrine that was made up,

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you know, after an Icea, or it was made up

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by Athanasius or whatever. But we actually find all of

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these same core doctrines taught in the post Apostolic church fathers.

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When we read Clement, when we read Ignacious of Antiot,

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when we read Cyprin, when we read Irenaeus, right, we

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find the key doctrines of Christianity still consistently taught by

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these by these important church for others. And in the liturgy,

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the ancient liturgies are very crucial as well to this,

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and that ultimately is what gives us the Bible itself, right,

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the tradition of the Church coming together in councils, different

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ones over many centuries, looking at the electionaries, looking at

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the tradition of what the different Apostolic sees had done,

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and that's eventually what gives the church a consensus on

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the canon of Scripture itself. So there are many reasons

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why church history is important. I'm certainly not trying to

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elevate it above or put it in contrast to Revelation

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or Scripture itself, but it's a necessary fabric that all

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goes together. It kind of works in tandem is our review.

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So that's what I eventually came to believe from reading

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a lot of the Church Fathers and from a lot

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of years of studying Scripture as well, is that it

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all kind of hangs or falls together. That's what I'm

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trying to say.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I appreciate that. I appreciate you mentioning also

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about the Islamic view. In fact, I grew up as

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a Muslim believe in that the Trinity is to believe

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in tree gods, and later on I began to buy

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into this argument that it was the Council of Nicia

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that invented something like this, and you know, so many

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other accusations and claims, and of course when I accepted Christ,

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I began to realize, you know, none of this is true.

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Now speaking of the Council of Nicia and specifically maybe Arianism,

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you know, because I want to talk about trinity and

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the monarchy of the Father. You know, if you want

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to give people I believe it or not, not everybody

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knows about arianism and this heresy or even some coordinationism.

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You know, if you want to give a brief overview

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so you can dive into the doctrin of a trendy,

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specifically the monarchy of the Father.

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Speaker 2: Right. So arianism is of course the doctrine that the

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Son of God or Christ Jesus, is of a similar

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or like essence as the Father, but not the same

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essence as a father. Perhaps he's a little lower on

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the scale, Perhaps he's a creature, perhaps he's the first

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of God's creatures. A lot of different types of Aryan positions.

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There was arianism, semi arianism, and even a radical position

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known as eunomianism. And the reason that these views got

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popular was very similar to the reasons why even today

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or with Islam, those kinds of views can catch on

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and be popular is that there's an appearance of kind

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of simplicity. There's an appearance of well, that's just logical, right,

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that if there's one God, then that one God has

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identical to the essence of God, and that essence of

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God is identical to the Father. So person, nature, essence

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will all these things kind of get fused into what

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sometimes referred to as absolute divine simplicity. The Eastern Church

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Fathers especially, I'm not negating the Latin Church Fathers, but

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the Eastern Church Fathers especially had at their disposal some

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of the nuances in Greek philosophical terminology. I'm not talking

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about Greek philosophical pagan corruptions, but the nuances in the

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Greek philosophical tradition allowed for there to be rational types

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of explanations for the Trinity and for the duty of

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Christ that didn't violate the unity of God. So that's

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the chief usage of philosophy in the period of Athanasius

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and the Cappadocian Church fathers. Basil Gregory. The reason for this,

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the two Gregor's. The reason for this is that it

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helped us to see that it's not a contradiction, it's

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fully rational, fully coherent to believe in the Trinity. Also

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on the basis of revelation. I'm not saying that always

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just you know, we just come up with these philosophical speculations,

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but that is actually in tandem with what's revealed, and

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what's revealed everybody knows is that there's one God, right

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that that proposition everybody agrees with. Whether that one God

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has a son and a spirit is of course where

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it gets controversial. We believe that even in the Mosaic

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period of the Mosaic revelation the law and the prophets and

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the writings. That continuous tradition is there even in the

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Old Testament. So there's no contradiction in saying that the

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one God is God the Father, because there is one

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God who is primarily spoken of as God the Father.

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But does revelation stop there? Because our approach and the

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approach of the Church fathers in our view that are correct,

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is that revelation as a whole. It's a holistic body,

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so we don't approach it in a piecemeal fashion. Of

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This verse says this, Therefore, I'm only going to go

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with that. This verse says this. This verse seems to

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say something a little nuance that may appear to contradict

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with this, right, But we don't believe scripture contradicts right,

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Jesus says, the scripture cannot contradict. So it's a matter

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of understanding in what senses both of these things are

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true at the same time. And so that's where philosophical

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nuance can help us to understand how we all do this.

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We all do it with language. We understand that in

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linguistic predication, words have different senses. They can mean different things,

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even though it's the same word in different senses. It

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can mean different things. Right, a kid as a goat,

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a kid as a child. Right, And we could equivocate,

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We could do word concept fallacy if we only took

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one senses of a word in all cases right, univical predication. Right.

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These kinds of things can cause us to have super

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wide ranging mistakes and a lot of the heresies in

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the early Church. I'm not saying it's only grammatical or linguistic,

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but a lot of the heretics messed up precisely because

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they weren't able to understand nuance or allow there to

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be multiple senses of terms. So they would say, oh, eloheme.

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Since that's sometimes used of multiple types of angelic beings,

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then God must be one of the many angelic beings.

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The word angel since at times that means a created

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angelic messenger, it must always mean a created angelic messenger. Therefore,

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the logos of the Old Testament that Theophanes as they created.

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You see what I'm saying. It's this sort of all

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or nothing view where everything is smushed into one definition.

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The very same thing happens with simplicity. The doctrine of

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divine simplicity in the history of the Church, and where

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you get these assumptions in philosophy that if God is one,

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he can only be one in all senses. But to

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boil this down back to the original question, just simply put,

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arianism is an assumption about what divine simplicity is and

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must be, and who God is and must be in

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a pretty strict philosophic sense. A lot of people don't

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know that arianism wasn't a strictly biblically based argumentation. Arianism

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was actually based on a lot of philosophical assumptions about

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the identity, the isomorphic identity of the term God, the

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term Father, and the term divine essence. And when all

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this those are combined, any real distinctions that are made

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must therefore be separate lesser ontological status or a creature.

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So if there's a son, the son can't be identical

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because everything a god predicated of God is identical. Right,

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So you'll notice the Islamic doctrine of Tahed, the Islamic

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doctrine of Tanzi, these corollaries that go together are all

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premised on kind of the same idea as what the

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Arians argue. The Arians argued very similar things. Nestorius famous

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early Church Hereta. He argued very similar things as well.

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And the assumption again is that distinction must entail composition, separation,

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or division, and that's just simply not true, all right.

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Even Thomas Aquinas hinges a lot of his argumentation later

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on in the Medieval tradition on this assumption that real

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distinctions have to entail division or composition. But when we

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read the Eastern Church fathers, who we would argue really

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do correctly develop in the sense of explicating, not develop

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in the sense of changing, but develop the doctrine of

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the triad and the monarchy of the Father. As you said,

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they have no problem speaking of real distinctions that do

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not entail division or composition. So we can have different

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realities that are truly distinct and yet at the same

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time also one and even number themselves. The Church Fathers

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are very frequent, especially the Cappadocians and later on Saint Maximus,

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for using analogies for the Trinity even within the created order.

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I mean say, Maximus even thinks in questions and doubts

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that the entire world is structured in a triadic way

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because it was created from the Father through the Son,

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and in the Spirit. So that triadic mode of existence

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that we see in this world, Maximus argues, is a

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reflection of the ultimate reality, which is the triad itself, Father,

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son and Spirit. So ultimately, when you look at the

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niceing Creed, it retains this doctrine of the monarchia of

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the Father by pointing out that the Father alone is

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the sole cause archae autotheos right principle in the godhead.

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This becomes the normative Cappadocian doctrine.

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Speaker 1: Cause or is it safe to say, a source.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, a lot of those terms are kind of

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synonymous for what the Cavedoceans and Athenasians are getting at,

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which is that Jesus Athanasius argues, is the direct offspring

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of the Father's nature. He's not a work of will. Right,

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so Arians and well primarily the Eunomians. Eventually the Arians

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argue this too, but the Eunomians really hammer this home

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where they say that the divine simplicity is so strong

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and such that any action, any distinction, has to be

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a work of will. So the Son has to be

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a work, something that God created, maybe God's first work

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even but he's still a work and therefore of some

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lesser said, he doesn't share all of the predicates of

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divine nature as the Father does. But we believe, and

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the Cappadocians are very explicit in many many places throughout

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their theology that, strictly speaking, yes, the term God in

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the nice in Creed. In Paul's epistles, for us, there's

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one God, the Father, I think, James says, the Father

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of lights. Paul says, there's one God for us, the

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Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Strictly speaking, yes, the

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nice in Creed. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty.

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So the beginning of the godhead is the Father. But

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we don't strict that are stopped there because we also

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believe that the Father has the ability and has revealed

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that he eternally generates a son that is the direct

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offspring of his own nature, and so therefore he possesses

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even though he is second in ordal order. So Basil

332
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calls this the ordinal numbering of the Trinity, which does

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not entail any kind of lesser ontological or metaphysical status.

334
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So just because the Son is second in the triad

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and he's from the Father and has his eternal existence,

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eternally from the Father. It doesn't follow. It's a non

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sequitur to argue that, well, then he must also therefore

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be some sort of secondary, lesser God, right, And that's

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the only reason that the Arians and the semi arians

340
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and the Unuimians argued that was because of philosophical assumptions.

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They argue that, well, the first principle has to be

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primary in a metaphysical sense, and if there's a second

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personage or whatever, he's got to be lesser. And that

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is a big part of Basil's argumentation.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: He says, Look, when I say the Father is cause,

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I'm not saying cause in a strict identical se sense

348
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in the way that creatures are caused. Right. He says,

349
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that's it would be Afthenatian says this to He says,

350
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it would be a mistake to read a one to

351
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one correspondence between creaturely relations and the divine personal relations. Right,

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So we don't do that. But he says, there is

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an analogy, right, So we can't speak of analogies. The

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Father is the cause and the way in the way

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that a father in this time space created world creates

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a son in the sense of his offspring. That's an

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analogy to the way that the Father has an eternal offspring,

358
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that is the Son. And the reason we say that

359
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is because there are many texts that speak of Christ

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having the same properties as the Father in terms of divinities,

361
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not his hypostatic property. That's why we reserve the role

362
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of cause to the Father alone, and that makes sure

363
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that protects the Trinity from any kind of impersonalism or essentialism.

364
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Any kind of Hellenism is ruled out by the monarchy

365
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of the Father. That's what's so unique about this doctrine.

366
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That's why ultimate we don't believe in a double procession

367
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hypostatic origin of the spirit, and since of the Philioquay,

368
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we believe the Father alone is the origin of the

369
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hypostasis of the Spirit. Now that's a different topic. I

370
00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:12,759
know we're not going to get into Philly oquay, but

371
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I'm just saying that it relates to pretty much. It

372
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relates to all of our theology and also to Islami

373
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theology because what I noticed in going really deep into

374
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Arianism and Eunomianism, if you read, for example, Saint Gregor

375
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and Nissa's gigantic work against Eunomius. You'll find that Eunomius

376
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is really saying a lot of the same things that

377
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I would hear Islamic debaters and apologists say that unity

378
00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:39,200
must be mean this, simplicity must mean this, all of

379
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:41,599
the predicates must be reducible to the divine essence in

380
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this very strict reduction of sense, and therefore any you know,

381
00:21:45,839 --> 00:21:48,839
it's just very similar kind of argumentation. And so all

382
00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:51,359
I did was just kind of apply that argument against

383
00:21:51,359 --> 00:21:54,279
divine simplicity to the debate with Shabir or any other

384
00:21:54,319 --> 00:21:56,799
debates I've had with Muslims, as well as the incarnational

385
00:21:56,880 --> 00:21:59,559
kind of argument regarding the eternal Qur'an and this kind

386
00:21:59,559 --> 00:22:02,599
of stuff. Even though it might seem on the surface

387
00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:05,359
that you're avoiding the problems, you're actually you've got all

388
00:22:05,400 --> 00:22:08,880
the same quote problems in the Islamic system as we do.

389
00:22:09,440 --> 00:22:12,039
As the Arians said, the Arians had all these same problems.

390
00:22:12,039 --> 00:22:14,839
So that was long wind that I apologize, But that's

391
00:22:14,920 --> 00:22:18,039
kind of the that's why the philosophy. No, no, that's why.

392
00:22:19,039 --> 00:22:21,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want you to take your time. This is important,

393
00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:23,079
by the way. In fact, you know, Jay, I have

394
00:22:23,160 --> 00:22:26,720
to tell you what you just described I think makes

395
00:22:26,759 --> 00:22:29,559
people easy. It makes it easier for people to explain

396
00:22:29,599 --> 00:22:31,839
when Jesus say the Father is greater than.

397
00:22:31,759 --> 00:22:35,319
Speaker 2: I exactly, you have a way to explain it, you know. Yeah,

398
00:22:35,359 --> 00:22:38,920
And that's why for us, for example, this we would

399
00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:42,640
believe that there's an equal ultimacy. People like Saint Maximus

400
00:22:42,720 --> 00:22:46,359
say between one and many in God. So there's not

401
00:22:46,839 --> 00:22:49,079
God's not more one than he is three. He's not

402
00:22:49,119 --> 00:22:51,000
more three than he is one. So there's this kind

403
00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:54,559
of flexibility in terms of God being both and and

404
00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:57,319
not either or. And what that does is that frees

405
00:22:57,440 --> 00:23:00,680
up the theology to be able to better explain. Then

406
00:23:00,799 --> 00:23:05,000
something like Roman Catholicism or typically Protestantism can things like

407
00:23:05,559 --> 00:23:09,279
how does one hypostasis of the Trinity enter into a

408
00:23:09,359 --> 00:23:11,759
mode of being in time and space that the other

409
00:23:11,880 --> 00:23:14,519
two don't. How does the Son undergo death on the

410
00:23:14,559 --> 00:23:18,359
cross but the Father and the Spirit don't. You see,

411
00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:21,720
So there's a means and a mode in orthodox theology

412
00:23:21,799 --> 00:23:25,759
by which one hypostasis can enter into a mode of existence,

413
00:23:25,920 --> 00:23:28,799
a mode of being while still being fully united to

414
00:23:28,799 --> 00:23:31,559
the other two that the other two don't enter into, right,

415
00:23:31,599 --> 00:23:34,400
so that we retain that unity, not just in the

416
00:23:34,440 --> 00:23:36,559
sense of one and many, but also in the ability

417
00:23:36,599 --> 00:23:39,519
for one hypostasis to enter into that mode of being

418
00:23:39,519 --> 00:23:41,000
in time and space that the other two to not.

419
00:23:41,079 --> 00:23:44,240
And by extension, that's how Jesus can be incarnate walking

420
00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:47,160
around and saying that I honor the Father. I honor him.

421
00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:50,000
I'm here to direct you to him. You see, right,

422
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:53,039
because he and when he says the Father is greater,

423
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:55,160
we believe that it's in this sense that we're talking about.

424
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:59,400
It doesn't mean that the Father is greater metaphysically right.

425
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:02,119
He doesn't have more being, he doesn't have more unity,

426
00:24:02,319 --> 00:24:04,839
more power. He's greater in the sense that he is

427
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:10,640
the origin, source, arka fount, cause, principle, auto, theos of

428
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:14,200
the Godhead. That's the predicate of the person of the Father.

429
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,440
For us, the Trinity God is always known first and

430
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:22,559
foremost as personal God. When God reveals himself to Moses,

431
00:24:22,599 --> 00:24:24,759
he doesn't say I'm an essence. He doesn't say I'm

432
00:24:24,799 --> 00:24:29,599
the supreme it I'm supreme principal monad. He says I

433
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:35,400
am he presupposing personal covenantal relationship with God. I'm not

434
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:38,480
saying philosophy itself is bad, but we don't believe in

435
00:24:38,519 --> 00:24:42,319
the Hellenic conceptions that the Greeks were so obsessed with

436
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:46,440
and so known for is the impersonal forces idea. Right,

437
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,519
God is like this great number in the sky, like

438
00:24:49,599 --> 00:24:52,880
Platonism or Pathegrenas. He's like the great number seven. He's

439
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:58,079
just this force, this impersonal abstract essence. Right. We avoid

440
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:03,119
that by stressing the direct interaction and knowledge of God

441
00:25:03,200 --> 00:25:06,079
through the person of the Father. Now, the Father has

442
00:25:06,079 --> 00:25:09,880
the divine essence fully, and he communicates by his eternal

443
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:13,759
generation that same full divine essence to the Son that

444
00:25:13,839 --> 00:25:18,480
he eternally generates. But the son's existence, the son's hypostasis,

445
00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:21,599
is not of its own, it's of another. He is

446
00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:24,319
of another, and so that's the sense in which he

447
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:29,039
is caused, in which he is speaking of the Father

448
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:32,079
as greater, because the Father is the source, right, And

449
00:25:32,119 --> 00:25:35,039
so for us, once once we grasp this, this is

450
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:42,200
why for us reality the trinity itself is Father generating

451
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:46,240
the Son and then manifesting the Spirit. So there's this movement,

452
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,240
Basil says, from the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

453
00:25:49,519 --> 00:25:51,720
That's the same for how the world is created, right

454
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:54,000
from all eternity. There's the movement of the energies. In

455
00:25:54,039 --> 00:25:57,440
that way, creation happens from the Father through the Son

456
00:25:57,559 --> 00:26:01,200
in the spirit. Paul says, redemption happens from the Father

457
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:04,640
through the Son in the spirit. So that same triadic

458
00:26:04,759 --> 00:26:09,319
model is consistent. It explains both creation and redemption. And

459
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:13,440
for us, creation itself presupposes and is the archetypal pattern

460
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:15,680
for redemption. We believe that Jesus was always going to

461
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:18,240
become incarnate. You see, it's not a plan B, like

462
00:26:18,279 --> 00:26:22,279
Thomas Quinna says. Anyway, long story short, that's the sense

463
00:26:22,319 --> 00:26:27,200
in which Christ is second right, and in the ordinal sense.

464
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:30,599
Besil says, not in a metaphysical or ontological sense of

465
00:26:30,759 --> 00:26:34,720
premissy and lesser status. The Holy Spirit is third right.

466
00:26:34,759 --> 00:26:37,799
That doesn't mean that he's like one God, lesser God

467
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,640
and then small God right. They're fully equal. But for us,

468
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:44,559
the principle of unity in the Godhead first and foremost

469
00:26:44,759 --> 00:26:48,160
is not the essence. First and foremost is not the essence.

470
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:51,359
It's the person of the Father. The principle of unity

471
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:55,000
first and foremost is personal the person of the Father.

472
00:26:56,039 --> 00:26:58,119
And yes, you can say in a secondary sense for

473
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:01,680
us in the theology, it's true that each hypostasis possess

474
00:27:01,799 --> 00:27:04,920
possesses the same nature, and therefore there is a unity there.

475
00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:07,720
But primarily when we speak of the unity of God,

476
00:27:07,799 --> 00:27:10,319
it's the person of the Father that Saint greg and

477
00:27:10,319 --> 00:27:14,160
Los Angeles has recapitulates the unity of the triad and

478
00:27:14,240 --> 00:27:17,480
so also Saint John Damascus says that we can also

479
00:27:17,519 --> 00:27:20,200
speak of unity in terms of perrychoresis, which is the

480
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:24,680
divine end dwelling. Each hypostasis fully dwells the other hypostasis,

481
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:27,039
and yet at the same time there's a real distinction.

482
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,960
So there's different models and ways to speak of unity

483
00:27:31,000 --> 00:27:36,079
in God while retaining the triadic reality. But that's the

484
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,359
way that we believe it is properly spoken of.

485
00:27:41,559 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 1: Thank you. I want to thank everyone, of course for

486
00:27:44,039 --> 00:27:46,119
joining us. I'm looking at some of the comments that

487
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:49,759
I'm just laughing. Some people come in with presuppositions all

488
00:27:49,759 --> 00:27:56,680
the time. We are here discussing course the Eastern Orthodox

489
00:27:56,759 --> 00:28:00,799
position and explaining the Trinity, explaining some called the monarchy

490
00:28:00,799 --> 00:28:03,759
of the Father. And of course Jay Dyer is a

491
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:07,160
brother that I felt is more than capable of handling

492
00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:11,279
topic like this. We're here to learn what the Bible

493
00:28:11,319 --> 00:28:14,400
teaches didn't hear anything. Jay says that the Bible did

494
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:19,200
not talk about that's the original if you wish position

495
00:28:19,559 --> 00:28:21,920
that I asked him about the church, the early Church,

496
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:24,440
how did they understand things? Now, I get it to

497
00:28:24,480 --> 00:28:27,400
understand that there are different views today which I will

498
00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:29,960
be discussing right now, and that we have our own

499
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:33,200
presuppositions sometimes, Jay, and we come with our own ideas

500
00:28:33,519 --> 00:28:36,680
that are based on, in my view, things that developed

501
00:28:36,759 --> 00:28:39,720
versus what is original, you know, And that's what is

502
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:43,200
so important for me for my faith. So what are

503
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:46,519
some of the pushbacks a view like you just described

504
00:28:46,599 --> 00:28:47,079
right now?

505
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 2: Could be Oh, you mean anticipated or commonly voiced objections

506
00:28:55,440 --> 00:29:00,480
you're saying exactly, Yeah, that's a great question. Let's see. Well,

507
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:05,440
most common would be the idea that this is a

508
00:29:05,599 --> 00:29:09,480
philosophical position that's not in the Bible. Well, again, I

509
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:11,920
would say that the way that we're going to determine

510
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:16,039
the Biblical presentation is not going to be in a

511
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:19,519
piecemeal this text versus this text thing. We're going to

512
00:29:19,559 --> 00:29:23,240
have to look at the holistic context. And I mean

513
00:29:23,279 --> 00:29:25,480
we can't obviously do that right now, but I mean,

514
00:29:25,559 --> 00:29:27,440
just in the Book of Genesis, for example, if we

515
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:31,119
were to start our view of understanding the Trinity, We're

516
00:29:31,119 --> 00:29:35,559
going to look at all the different theophanic manifestations. Now

517
00:29:35,599 --> 00:29:40,160
there's multiple without throughout Genesis where we see what appears

518
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:43,440
to be a second personage. I mean, it's not in

519
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:46,519
Genesis said to be second quote person that's just a

520
00:29:46,599 --> 00:29:49,799
term that's used to describe what's going on there for

521
00:29:50,599 --> 00:29:53,160
our view. Right, So when we see, for example, the

522
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,960
Lord walking in the garden with Adam and even Adam

523
00:29:55,960 --> 00:29:57,640
and Eve, you could say that that's a kind of

524
00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:01,440
a theophany. When we I see the Angel of the

525
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,240
Lord appearing to Abraham, when we see the Angel of

526
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:07,319
the Lord appearing to Hagar, and the Angel the Lord

527
00:30:07,359 --> 00:30:09,839
is said to be God, she says, I saw God.

528
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:12,640
He is the God who sees right, when we see

529
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:16,279
the wrestling with the Angel, right, this is not just

530
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,960
a mental construct or some sort of mental thing. There's

531
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:25,200
an actual manifestation of a theophany. Now it is mysterious.

532
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:27,359
I'm not trying to downplay the mystery, but there is

533
00:30:27,599 --> 00:30:32,039
a reality that's even in Genesis made clear that there's

534
00:30:32,119 --> 00:30:37,440
some kind of distinction going on between the Father origin

535
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:41,279
of the god Head. You could say and the second

536
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,880
personage that's present here, and perhaps even in Genesis a

537
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:49,039
third with the presence of the Spirit being mentioned. But

538
00:30:49,119 --> 00:30:51,799
what's really clear, just in Genesis is the many instances

539
00:30:51,839 --> 00:30:55,359
of this Angel of the Lord, who is spoken of

540
00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:58,880
in chapter forty eight, for example, as a redeemer. And

541
00:30:59,000 --> 00:31:01,680
we know that we can't tip we speak of angels

542
00:31:01,759 --> 00:31:05,599
or creatures as redeemers typically speaking, it doesn't make sense, right,

543
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:09,240
A that's a divine power. It's something that we speak

544
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:12,000
of God alone as our redeemer, right, And yet we

545
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:14,319
see in Genesis forty eight this Angel of the Lord

546
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:18,559
as the one who redeemed them from their sins. Now,

547
00:31:18,559 --> 00:31:21,240
there's many, many more. But as we pass over into

548
00:31:21,839 --> 00:31:25,799
Exodus we see that same pattern. We see the I

549
00:31:25,839 --> 00:31:28,680
Am that manifests in Exodus three in the in the

550
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:31,799
bush is later said to be the same angel the

551
00:31:31,839 --> 00:31:36,200
Lord that guides them into the Promised Land, who has

552
00:31:36,319 --> 00:31:38,839
the name of God. Right, the name of God is

553
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:40,480
in the Angel, so to speak.

554
00:31:42,279 --> 00:31:43,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's twenty three.

555
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 2: And then you know, there's there's many more. Theophanic manifestation

556
00:31:46,759 --> 00:31:51,640
Moses goes up and eats with God. Now you can say, well,

557
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:55,519
that's all just symbolic language. It's all just imagery and symbolism,

558
00:31:55,559 --> 00:31:57,480
which I mean, that's a whole other route that I

559
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:00,279
don't necessarily want to go down. But I don't think

560
00:32:00,319 --> 00:32:02,680
that really holds up given the fact that many of

561
00:32:02,680 --> 00:32:08,519
these passages are not strictly totally symbolic, right, I mean Isaiah, Right,

562
00:32:08,519 --> 00:32:11,000
I've been going through a study on Isaiah right now.

563
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:13,240
There's multiple places where we see this kind of stuff.

564
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:15,400
In Isaiah. To Isaiah six, he says, I saw with

565
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:19,119
my own eyes the Lord on the throne, right, and

566
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:21,759
we know from John twelve that he's talking about Jesus. Right.

567
00:32:22,119 --> 00:32:24,519
We have other passes in Isaiah where it says that

568
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:28,319
the Son who is born unto us that everybody, most people,

569
00:32:28,359 --> 00:32:30,440
unless you're Jewish, I guess most people believe as a

570
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:35,680
Messianic prophecy. Right, identifying that son that's born unto us

571
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:39,240
with the Angel of Wonderful Council from Judges thirteen, right,

572
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:44,279
who appeared to Samson's parents to Manoah, and they identify

573
00:32:44,319 --> 00:32:48,000
that Angel as God. We find worship right, prostration in

574
00:32:48,039 --> 00:32:51,000
a worshipful sense, not just reverence, but worship being given

575
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:53,640
to the Angel of the Lord. And we know from

576
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:56,880
the Apocalypse that when John worships angels, he's forbidden to

577
00:32:56,880 --> 00:33:00,400
do that. You can't worship creatures in that way, worship.

578
00:33:00,799 --> 00:33:04,599
The worship and the name given to this angel clearly

579
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:08,440
signified that it's not the Father, and also that it

580
00:33:08,519 --> 00:33:12,799
is a manifestation of a full divine person. And we

581
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:16,200
also have to keep in mind that as Jesus is

582
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,519
pretty clear, and even the Old Testament is pretty clear,

583
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:22,799
you can't see God face to face and live. But

584
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:25,920
we're told Moses all God face to face. Jesus says,

585
00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:30,000
no man has seen the Father at any time. Well,

586
00:33:30,039 --> 00:33:32,920
who did they see in the Old Testament, Jesus. It's

587
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,559
really a no brainer here, right, But what I'm getting

588
00:33:35,559 --> 00:33:40,039
at is that that consistent biblical approach, and there's many,

589
00:33:40,039 --> 00:33:43,000
many more theophanies, but that consistent biblical approach is what

590
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:49,640
led to the reasoning behind the Trinity ultimately coming from scripture. Right,

591
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:53,319
All the Eastern Fathers are really consistent on explaining who

592
00:33:53,359 --> 00:33:56,720
the Angel of the Lord is. It's Jesus. Later, Latin

593
00:33:56,799 --> 00:33:58,839
Church fathers after a gust and they do begin to

594
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:00,759
doubt this and they say, well, maybe it's actually just

595
00:34:00,799 --> 00:34:03,759
an angel, right, Augustina has a problem with this on

596
00:34:03,799 --> 00:34:06,839
the Trinity. He kind of he speculates, he's unsure for

597
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:09,199
us in the Orthodox tradition, it's it's very clear, there's

598
00:34:09,199 --> 00:34:13,280
no doubt, no dispute. All the liturgy constantly identifies this

599
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:19,519
personage as Jesus, and that's really the consistent idea here. Again.

600
00:34:19,599 --> 00:34:21,400
I mean, I think this is this argument is actually

601
00:34:21,480 --> 00:34:24,840
kind of downplayed. That you don't see the Father. There's

602
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:28,079
no even though it's you're not typically supposed to make

603
00:34:28,559 --> 00:34:32,639
images of God the Father, we don't really believe you

604
00:34:32,639 --> 00:34:35,480
should do that technically speaking, even though people still kind

605
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:39,760
of do that. Really, the only lawful image of the

606
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:43,440
Father is the son. Jesus is the direct icon of

607
00:34:43,480 --> 00:34:47,960
the Father, as scripture says. So we see again our

608
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:51,360
Trinitarian theology not being just a bunch of philosophical speculation,

609
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:53,920
but very much grounded in that's just the Old Testament.

610
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:55,840
I mean, you could go to Zechariah one, two, and three.

611
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:58,679
All the persons of the Trinity are clearly present there.

612
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:01,880
You can find the Trinity all through Isaiah. Isaiah literally

613
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:05,000
is like a fifth Gospel, right, actually absolutely, I mean

614
00:35:05,159 --> 00:35:08,039
I mean there's there's I mean it's not explicitly stated

615
00:35:08,119 --> 00:35:11,599
as all the you know, New Testament doctrines, but the

616
00:35:11,639 --> 00:35:14,960
New Testament doctrines are present in Isaiah, and that shows,

617
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:17,880
of course, that continuity between the Old Testament and the

618
00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:20,000
New Testament period. So when we come into the New Testament,

619
00:35:20,079 --> 00:35:23,000
when we look through the Synoptic Gospels, when we look

620
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:25,840
through the especially the Gospel of John, we see a

621
00:35:26,079 --> 00:35:34,360
very very clear, very consistent, well flourishing doctrine of the trinity,

622
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:36,719
even though it's not explicitly stated. What will become the

623
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,039
doctrine of the trinity is if you get really deep

624
00:35:39,079 --> 00:35:42,679
into it, very clearly and very obviously reasoned from the scripture.

625
00:35:42,719 --> 00:35:44,920
I mean, when the church fathers are debating this, it's

626
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:49,320
not a munch of Plato and Plotinus, it's scripture. They're

627
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:53,559
constantly arguing the biblical texts, all right, And so I

628
00:35:53,559 --> 00:35:56,480
mean you could you could really find most I'm not

629
00:35:56,599 --> 00:35:59,000
I wouldn't do this, but I'm just saying, I mean,

630
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:02,960
the full fledged Trinitarian doctrine that we hold is pretty

631
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:04,840
much in the Gospel of John. I mean, you can

632
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:07,760
look at John one. You have the only Begotten God,

633
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:10,239
right right, who is in the Bosom of the Father.

634
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:12,599
Even when he's incarnate, it said, he's still in the

635
00:36:12,599 --> 00:36:14,719
bosom of the Father. Right, So there's par of careesis,

636
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:19,320
there's eternal generation, there's a second personage. Right. Jesus very

637
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:22,000
quickly quickly begins to in his ministry speak of the

638
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:24,280
Holy Spirit. He speaks of this to the woman at

639
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:27,360
the well. He's already talking about the personally, and he says,

640
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:29,639
She says, we know when the Messiah comes, he will

641
00:36:29,639 --> 00:36:32,840
tell us all things. Jesus says, I who speak to you,

642
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:35,719
am he I am? They say, yeah, identify, people say

643
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:37,719
Jesus never says he was in the Messiah, all these

644
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:39,840
dumb arguments. Right now, he says it right away to

645
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:41,239
the one in the well, what are you talking about?

646
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:45,239
And so we progressing, just through the book of John,

647
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:49,880
we begin to see this very mind blowing, you know,

648
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,559
deep relationship between the relations of the persons. Right, we

649
00:36:54,599 --> 00:36:56,519
do believe in relations of persons. By the way, great

650
00:36:56,559 --> 00:36:59,800
saying greater Na Sianzos speaks of this, Maximus speaks of this.

651
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:04,519
We see this relationship constantly. Mention of the son direct

652
00:37:04,639 --> 00:37:06,840
coming to direct us to the Father. The son is

653
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:08,840
sent by the Father to direct us to the Father,

654
00:37:09,119 --> 00:37:11,400
and this directing will be done by the person of

655
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:13,559
the Holy Spirit. He's spoken of as he right, he

656
00:37:13,599 --> 00:37:18,280
will come at pentecrit Jesus anticipates pentecons right, So consistently

657
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:21,519
from John you know, sixteen seventeen, the High priestly Prayer,

658
00:37:21,639 --> 00:37:25,719
you get this just amazing. From John one to John four,

659
00:37:27,119 --> 00:37:33,800
John eight, John nine, sixteen seventeen. Right, you're getting a

660
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:38,039
lot of Trinitarian theology just packed in there. And so

661
00:37:40,079 --> 00:37:43,960
the second most typical bad argument that I hear is

662
00:37:44,679 --> 00:37:48,320
the Bible never really covers this, if you mean, and

663
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:50,159
then a lot of people do, kind of in ignorance

664
00:37:50,199 --> 00:37:53,400
mean this. They mean, well, there's no specific text that

665
00:37:53,559 --> 00:37:58,800
lays out there's three hypostases, one shared nature usia. Right. No,

666
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:01,480
it's not like that because because you know, scripture is

667
00:38:01,559 --> 00:38:08,519
like a mining a mining operation. Right, It's like a

668
00:38:08,559 --> 00:38:10,199
cave and the jewels are.

669
00:38:10,079 --> 00:38:10,880
Speaker 1: In the walls.

670
00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:13,639
Speaker 2: Right, you have to you mine it out, and you

671
00:38:13,679 --> 00:38:16,599
find the jewel right in the cave, and you see here,

672
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:20,119
you see, so the jewel kind of is like the

673
00:38:20,199 --> 00:38:22,840
explanation of what's in the cave, the doctrine. Right, I'm

674
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:26,679
not saying cave because it's like unexplainable or unknown. It's not.

675
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:28,960
That's not what I mean. I just mean that it's

676
00:38:29,039 --> 00:38:32,920
kind of raw or that that is there to give

677
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:35,480
you the explanation that you kind of display. That's what

678
00:38:35,519 --> 00:38:38,199
I'm trying. So the Church sort of displays the doctrines

679
00:38:38,199 --> 00:38:41,119
that are fully present in scripture. That's how we see it.

680
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 1: Yes, so you mentioned something about Jews. You know, obviously

681
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:50,800
some of the pushback, especially Muslims use is that, well,

682
00:38:50,800 --> 00:38:53,440
wait a minute, looks like the Jews don't believe in

683
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:55,920
a trinity and they have the Old Testament. What would

684
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:59,280
be a response to that, Jay, there's multiple responses.

685
00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:02,599
Speaker 2: I mean, on the one, just on the logical level,

686
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:06,239
that's really irrelevant, right, I Mean, that doesn't really matter

687
00:39:06,400 --> 00:39:11,559
because that just assumes that because the Jews were in

688
00:39:11,599 --> 00:39:16,480
the Covenant during that older time period that therefore whatever

689
00:39:16,519 --> 00:39:18,840
they do is the determining factor. But of course that

690
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:22,280
just assumes that the way that the Old Testament prophecies

691
00:39:22,320 --> 00:39:25,079
speak of the divorce of Israel and the Covenant curses

692
00:39:25,199 --> 00:39:29,079
for disobedience, as if that doesn't apply, right, as if

693
00:39:29,119 --> 00:39:31,639
the prophecies and predictions in Isaiah, like I will call

694
00:39:31,679 --> 00:39:33,800
those who you know, were not my people. My people,

695
00:39:33,880 --> 00:39:36,360
I will take priests from amongst the gentiles. How can

696
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:39,639
you have priests that are gentiles? It doesn't make any sense, right,

697
00:39:39,679 --> 00:39:42,639
So there's a lot of problems with just this sort

698
00:39:42,679 --> 00:39:46,440
of simplistic appeal to well the Jews. But I mean,

699
00:39:46,519 --> 00:39:49,719
the Jews don't believe the Quran. So that's like, that's

700
00:39:49,760 --> 00:39:52,599
a terrible argument if you're a Muslim, right, so what like,

701
00:39:53,199 --> 00:39:55,239
the Jews don't believe all kinds of things. That doesn't

702
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:59,159
really tell us anything right about whether the present positions

703
00:39:59,159 --> 00:40:03,440
are true or false. Secondly, it's not actually that clear

704
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:09,639
what pre first century Judaism believed. I mean, there's multiple

705
00:40:09,920 --> 00:40:13,639
scholars and writers, doctor Michael Heiser Siegel who've written on

706
00:40:13,679 --> 00:40:18,360
the fact that there were Intertestamental period Jews who did

707
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:21,960
believe in more than one heavenly power, right, the two

708
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:25,079
heavenly powers, this kind of stuff, or perhaps three. You

709
00:40:25,119 --> 00:40:28,119
can look at the markov Aw tradition where you have

710
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:31,039
this notion of what is this angel of the Lord? Right,

711
00:40:31,079 --> 00:40:34,320
they had rabbinical debates themselves as to whether this was

712
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,559
the essence of God, whether it was a creaturely appearance,

713
00:40:39,039 --> 00:40:41,960
whether it was Metatron, right, some sort of super angel

714
00:40:42,039 --> 00:40:45,760
or something like volt runners of it, or like Transformers.

715
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:49,599
I mean, so it's not exactly clear in what sense.

716
00:40:50,039 --> 00:40:56,440
Even older Judaic theology was quote monotheistic. And by the way,

717
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:00,320
just because you're quote Judaic, doesn't mean you escape any

718
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:04,599
of the questions and problems of absolute simplicity either, right,

719
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:09,400
So I think that's a pretty bad argument just to say, well,

720
00:41:09,639 --> 00:41:10,719
but the Jews didn't believe in the.

721
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:16,239
Speaker 1: Trinity, So I just brought it up because it's commonly

722
00:41:16,280 --> 00:41:17,280
fascinated by that.

723
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:18,880
Speaker 2: And another thing.

724
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:20,880
Speaker 1: Let me let me just play for a second the

725
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:25,199
Devil's advocate. You know, some of the Protestants or Evangelicals

726
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:27,760
will say, well, wait a minute, the Eastern Orthodox doctrine

727
00:41:27,800 --> 00:41:31,880
of the monarchy of the Father was discovered because of

728
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:36,119
the so called Patristic Renaissance, and they went back and

729
00:41:36,159 --> 00:41:38,960
they began to look at teachings of the Father. But

730
00:41:39,679 --> 00:41:42,559
you know that's not the case. I mean, it seemed

731
00:41:42,599 --> 00:41:46,519
like this is from early on. These are the positions

732
00:41:46,559 --> 00:41:49,639
that were taken by the early Church fathers. Am I correct?

733
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:53,320
Is there anything wrong with a state in it this way?

734
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:56,840
And why are they trying to push back by making

735
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:57,440
claims like this.

736
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,360
Speaker 2: Well, I think that comes from the tendency within the

737
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:05,360
Protestant world to default to academia. I mean, that's kind

738
00:42:05,360 --> 00:42:08,239
of one of the big problems in Protestantism.

739
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 1: That's where I want you to go.

740
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:12,559
Speaker 2: Well, one of the big problems in Protestantism is too

741
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:17,440
that that who's going to determine and solve a lot

742
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:20,039
of questions and issues. Well, the only people to look

743
00:42:20,079 --> 00:42:23,599
to are the academics. But this has been a big

744
00:42:23,639 --> 00:42:26,360
problem in the world of Protestanism for many centuries, especially

745
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,760
since Julius Bellhausen and higher criticism. I mean that the

746
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:32,639
academics are not typically the friends of Christians. I'm not

747
00:42:32,679 --> 00:42:36,880
saying there aren't good evangelical scholars. There are. You know

748
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,639
that there's Protestant scholars who I refer to and read

749
00:42:40,679 --> 00:42:42,679
all the time. I'm not I'm not denying that, but

750
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:45,679
I'm just saying, in general, I know Christ didn't leave

751
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:50,920
us a lineage of PhDs in academics. He left us

752
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:55,840
a lineage. We believe of church authority, so we literally

753
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:58,199
believe in a succession. I'm not saying that the church

754
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:00,920
is just based on the succession into bishops. I'm saying

755
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:04,320
this one component of the existence and history of the Church.

756
00:43:04,559 --> 00:43:06,000
That's who we're going to look to. So if we

757
00:43:06,039 --> 00:43:09,719
have a question about uh, do we have we always

758
00:43:09,719 --> 00:43:13,719
confessed the monarchy of the Father absolutely has nothing to

759
00:43:13,760 --> 00:43:17,880
do with what some guy in some German university thinks

760
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:22,400
somewhere who cares, like, we believe what is confessed by

761
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:26,079
our bishops that we're in communion with in the in

762
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:29,400
the liturgy. We have a big focus on looking to

763
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:33,400
the liturgy. We have always confessed the premissy of the

764
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:36,079
Father in terms of his role as cause an arcade.

765
00:43:36,119 --> 00:43:40,360
It's never been in question in orthodoxiology.

766
00:43:41,199 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 1: And Jay, you know, we're approaching almost the end of

767
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:47,639
the hour, but I want you to give us an

768
00:43:47,679 --> 00:43:49,960
idea about where do you see the state of the church.

769
00:43:50,159 --> 00:43:54,119
The Church in general hit it these days with you know,

770
00:43:54,480 --> 00:44:01,480
so many humanistic you know, basically teachings, postmodernism, all kind

771
00:44:01,639 --> 00:44:07,400
of liberal theologies that are infiltrating into our academic arenas.

772
00:44:08,559 --> 00:44:11,559
Do you think if this trajectory continues in a way

773
00:44:11,679 --> 00:44:15,519
it's going that the church will stand a chance and

774
00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:19,920
conditions and you know, standing against persecution and so on

775
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:20,519
and so forth.

776
00:44:21,519 --> 00:44:23,639
Speaker 2: Well, we know the promise that the Church will never

777
00:44:23,679 --> 00:44:27,199
completely fail for us. You know, we trust in Matthew sixteen.

778
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:29,920
We know that Christ says that that the Spirit will

779
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:31,400
guide us, he would never leave us, and that he

780
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:33,760
would always be present in the life of the church.

781
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:37,079
But the present state is mass apostasy. I don't think there's

782
00:44:37,079 --> 00:44:39,400
any question about that. There be many centuries now of

783
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:44,559
mass apostasy in Christianity, generally speaking Christianity, and that's true

784
00:44:44,639 --> 00:44:49,159
of any of the different gatherings. Right whether you're Roman Catholic,

785
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:53,039
whether you're Protestant or even Evangelical, or whether you're Orthodox,

786
00:44:53,159 --> 00:44:57,639
there has been the same types of infiltration. It's the

787
00:44:57,639 --> 00:45:01,760
same types of academic assumptions and presb positions of liberalism, modernism,

788
00:45:02,039 --> 00:45:05,480
higher criticism. And this has really affected all of the

789
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:10,000
groups and even outside the bounds of Christianity. So that

790
00:45:10,199 --> 00:45:15,280
is definitely probably the biggest factor. I mean, I'm not

791
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:19,079
necessarily saying we live in the Great Apostasy. I don't know.

792
00:45:19,159 --> 00:45:21,599
I think maybe in the next twenty or thirty years

793
00:45:21,679 --> 00:45:24,960
we'll be able to tell. But if we are in

794
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,280
the Great Apostasy, I think it'll be evident whether it's

795
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:32,039
the Great Apostasy or just a large apostasy. That's definitely

796
00:45:32,039 --> 00:45:32,599
what's happening.

797
00:45:34,639 --> 00:45:38,960
Speaker 1: Well, that's great, brother, your debate with the Shabbi Ali.

798
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:40,360
Would you like to reflect a little bit on that,

799
00:45:40,639 --> 00:45:43,599
What prompted you to think about it and the topic

800
00:45:43,639 --> 00:45:46,639
that was chosen, and what is your assessment of what

801
00:45:46,679 --> 00:45:49,360
took place? In fact, one time during the Queu and

802
00:45:49,400 --> 00:45:51,960
A I enjoyed when Shabir was asking you about the

803
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:54,599
seven spirits from Isaiah and your answer was, those are

804
00:45:54,679 --> 00:45:56,800
the energies of God. I thought that was brilliant. So

805
00:45:57,000 --> 00:45:58,960
you might want to touch on that as well before

806
00:45:58,960 --> 00:45:59,880
we close.

807
00:46:00,920 --> 00:46:04,159
Speaker 2: Right, Well, I I had been working through all the

808
00:46:04,199 --> 00:46:08,000
works of Saint Maximus the last year. That's in English.

809
00:46:08,079 --> 00:46:12,000
I can't read Greek, but you know, Maximus actually comments

810
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:14,960
pretty extensively, or well a few times on that passage,

811
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:16,679
I think in at the Lassium at the end of

812
00:46:16,719 --> 00:46:20,119
at the Lasseum. And then Saint Gregory Palamos comments on

813
00:46:20,159 --> 00:46:24,000
Maximus's comment on that passage. And when Saint Gregor Palomos

814
00:46:24,039 --> 00:46:26,360
is debating with Barleum the kind of the Roman Catholic

815
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:30,239
theologian of his day, they have a lengthy dispute in

816
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:33,280
the debate over the barleym I can diagnose they have

817
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,760
a lengthy dispute over that that that passage and what

818
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:40,519
it means. And really I think that that the Orthodox

819
00:46:40,519 --> 00:46:43,079
position has makes the most sense of it, because we

820
00:46:43,119 --> 00:46:46,280
know that God's knowledge, God's wisdom, the spirit of God's

821
00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:50,480
God's you know, these spirits of God. They're not persons,

822
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:56,119
and God's knowledge isn't created, so really they have to

823
00:46:56,159 --> 00:47:00,000
be uncreated energies, right, And really, only Orthodox theology I believe,

824
00:47:00,079 --> 00:47:03,559
has a consistent teaching on the essence energy distinction, which

825
00:47:03,599 --> 00:47:07,199
is not from Palomas. It's actually it's in Athenacious, it's

826
00:47:07,199 --> 00:47:09,880
in Cyril of Alexandria, it's in the Cappadocians. It's a

827
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:12,440
big part of the Cappadocian argument for the full deity

828
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:15,679
of the Spirit Basil Gregory. They argue that if the

829
00:47:15,719 --> 00:47:19,079
Holy Spirit has all the same powers and energies as

830
00:47:19,079 --> 00:47:21,760
a father and the Son, then he's just as divine

831
00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:24,280
as the Father and the Son. Even if he's third

832
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,480
in order, he's the third in the ordinal numbering, doesn't

833
00:47:27,480 --> 00:47:30,760
mean that he's at third lesser status, Basil argues, and

834
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:36,039
against eunomias, so Basils against Eunomius would be a really

835
00:47:36,079 --> 00:47:38,039
good thing to read on that if you want. Catholic

836
00:47:38,079 --> 00:47:43,760
University of America actually has published that. So I would

837
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:46,960
say that in the debate with Shabir, I didn't expect

838
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:49,639
that that was kind of an odd question. And later

839
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:51,840
on when we had a debate review with some of

840
00:47:51,840 --> 00:47:56,400
the former Muslims in my discord, they kind of enlightened

841
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:58,440
me on kind of where he was going with that

842
00:47:58,639 --> 00:48:02,079
in terms of is on my theology having different notions

843
00:48:02,119 --> 00:48:05,519
of spirit. So I didn't understand at the time of

844
00:48:05,519 --> 00:48:07,400
the debate where he was going or what he was saying.

845
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:09,400
I'm not trying to be rude, I just didn't understand

846
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:11,719
what he was getting at. Now I kind of get

847
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:14,719
where he was going with the way that they understand

848
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:18,800
spirit and ghost kind of you know, the spirit of

849
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:23,320
a man or whatever. But overall, the debate I think

850
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:29,119
went very well. It was it was a lot, I

851
00:48:29,119 --> 00:48:31,000
don't want to be rude. It was a lot easier

852
00:48:31,039 --> 00:48:35,599
than I expected because I expected doctor Shabir to focus

853
00:48:35,679 --> 00:48:43,519
mainly on textual critic problems, uh, and he stayed within

854
00:48:43,639 --> 00:48:46,679
kind of the domain of philosophical theology, which which I

855
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:51,719
didn't expect so pretty quickly. I think when we got

856
00:48:51,760 --> 00:48:56,360
into the philosophical areas of the trinity, I think that

857
00:48:56,519 --> 00:49:00,079
was pretty That was a defining moment because you know,

858
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:05,639
he agreed beforehand to a interrogation. So some of the

859
00:49:05,679 --> 00:49:07,920
people who were mad about the debate said, why are

860
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:11,000
you being so aggressive and why are you interrupting? Well,

861
00:49:11,039 --> 00:49:15,079
he actually had it stated beforehand that the interrogator has

862
00:49:15,119 --> 00:49:17,159
the right to interrupt, and he does have the right

863
00:49:17,159 --> 00:49:20,159
to change the subject, and he can ask whatever questions

864
00:49:20,159 --> 00:49:22,280
that he wants. So that was agreed to at the beginning.

865
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:24,760
So I don't at all feel bad for that. I

866
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:26,760
don't think I was unfair to him in any way.

867
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:30,000
He didn't say that I can't talk about philosophy or

868
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:33,440
something like that, or I can't ask him about, you know,

869
00:49:33,599 --> 00:49:37,480
Islamic doctrine of the attributes. So I think that was

870
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:40,039
a defining moment. You know, a lot of the people

871
00:49:40,039 --> 00:49:43,159
in the discord set that debate up. I didn't really.

872
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:45,199
I had heard of Shabir and I'd seen some of

873
00:49:45,199 --> 00:49:48,719
the debates. I'd seen his Sam Shimun debate, I saw

874
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:52,159
him debate some of the other evangelicals. I think really

875
00:49:52,199 --> 00:49:56,079
the defining issue was that he had not interacted with

876
00:49:57,400 --> 00:50:01,440
a person who knew orthoxy Al. He was used to

877
00:50:01,519 --> 00:50:06,559
kind of the Protestant arguments and the emphasis on divine simplicity,

878
00:50:06,599 --> 00:50:10,880
which Protestants kind of inadvertently adopted from Roman Catholicism since

879
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:13,960
they come out of you know, Catholicism historically, so they

880
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:17,199
didn't have we have a different triadology than Roman Catholics do.

881
00:50:17,679 --> 00:50:19,840
So I don't think he was prepared to really deal

882
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:23,159
with a really nuanced view of the Trinity. He was

883
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:26,639
kind of relying on just these pat questions that a

884
00:50:26,639 --> 00:50:29,920
lot of times Protestants aren't philosophically equipped to answer.

885
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:38,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought, really the debate definitely was a win,

886
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:41,079
you know, for everybody. But I thought you took a

887
00:50:41,119 --> 00:50:42,679
really good step. That's why I was surprised when you

888
00:50:42,679 --> 00:50:44,440
told me you just only spent a few months trying

889
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:46,559
to learn about Islam, so you did a great job.

890
00:50:47,119 --> 00:50:49,519
Is there any other debates in the works for you

891
00:50:49,880 --> 00:50:52,000
in general or with Muslims in particular.

892
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:58,639
Speaker 2: We've reached out to multiple different Islamic debater's philosophers, We've

893
00:50:58,639 --> 00:51:01,199
not had any. We can't really find anybody who's ready

894
00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:06,760
to come back and do it. No, we've had a

895
00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:09,679
hard time for funny people to come back into Bay.

896
00:51:09,679 --> 00:51:11,840
I'm not trying to be arrogant. I've just said we haven't. Really.

897
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:17,440
We've reached out to some Roman Catholics. Peter Williams, he

898
00:51:18,519 --> 00:51:22,679
expressed some interest and then kind of backed off. We

899
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:27,360
reached out to Trent Horn Catholic answers. I think we

900
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:35,239
we reached out to Uh, is it Mohammed hy Job?

901
00:51:35,400 --> 00:51:36,599
Is he one of the big debaters.

902
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:40,039
Speaker 1: Oh, that would be great if you can take on

903
00:51:40,159 --> 00:51:41,119
Mohammed Job.

904
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:43,840
Speaker 2: You think it's been discussed. I don't know if he

905
00:51:44,119 --> 00:51:46,679
has any interest in it, but we've we've discussed reaching

906
00:51:46,679 --> 00:51:50,920
out to him. We may try that, but no, I

907
00:51:50,920 --> 00:51:53,280
mean beyond that, we don't. We had some other atheist

908
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:55,639
academics that we reached out to and then they kind

909
00:51:55,679 --> 00:51:59,400
of backed off. So so no, it's not really, it's not.

910
00:51:59,519 --> 00:52:01,960
It's it's harder and harder to find the people who

911
00:52:02,119 --> 00:52:03,039
even want the debate.

912
00:52:03,679 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear you. Shamone is here and he's asking

913
00:52:07,679 --> 00:52:09,719
a great question. Maybe you touched on it already, but

914
00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:13,719
let's revisit a gain with energies. He's saying, would energies

915
00:52:13,840 --> 00:52:15,480
refer to God's activities.

916
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:21,599
Speaker 2: Right. Typically the term in the New test I mean

917
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:24,880
we would say it kind of goes. It's present in

918
00:52:24,920 --> 00:52:28,000
the Old Testament. It isn't the septuogen If you read

919
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:31,199
doctor Bradshaw's book if you want, like a really philosophic

920
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:36,840
analysis of the step two usage. But it's used in Polls,

921
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:39,639
Epistles and first First Corinthians when he's talking about the

922
00:52:39,639 --> 00:52:42,320
gifts of the Spirit. The spirit tell us about the

923
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:45,400
innergaya of the Spirit. The term is used also for

924
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:49,400
operations of other beings as well. Humans can operate, and yes,

925
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:55,760
it refers to actions activities, and it corresponds loosely to

926
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,639
what would later become the Western theological term of attributes.

927
00:52:58,679 --> 00:53:01,360
When they talk about the quote bits of God, they

928
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:04,960
really mean the energies of God. Even if early Latin

929
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:08,239
fathers use the term attribute, they're mainly talking about the energies.

930
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:11,599
So Basil uses it for operations. Saint John Damascus use

931
00:53:11,639 --> 00:53:14,239
it for operations of God. So the love of God,

932
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,199
the mercy of God, right, the wisdom of God, knowledge

933
00:53:17,199 --> 00:53:20,000
of God, justice of God. Those are for us energies

934
00:53:20,039 --> 00:53:23,000
or operations which are not identical to the essence of God.

935
00:53:23,039 --> 00:53:25,679
They proceed from the essence and the sense that the

936
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:29,719
essence is what we call in hypostatize, it exists in

937
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:33,239
the mode of person. That's kind of a loaded deep

938
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:37,440
philosophical term, but originally, ultimately the Church Fathers will apply

939
00:53:37,519 --> 00:53:40,760
this to Christology. They will speak of nature never existing

940
00:53:40,800 --> 00:53:45,840
in some raw abstract state, but always in some particular person.

941
00:53:46,639 --> 00:53:50,199
In this case, so in the triad, the divine nature

942
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:53,920
exists in hypostatize, in the Father, in the Son, and

943
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:58,199
in each person fully in each person. In humanity, human

944
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:00,840
nature exists in high postitis, is in the mode of

945
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:04,800
created hypostass or created persons. So that's always the mode

946
00:54:04,840 --> 00:54:09,000
in which nature exists. It's typical an ancient medial philosophy

947
00:54:09,039 --> 00:54:12,639
to distinguish between the thing itself, thing qua thing, and

948
00:54:12,679 --> 00:54:15,360
the mode of thing, the essence of the thing, versus

949
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:17,679
the mode in which the essence exists. This is common

950
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:22,920
philosophic terminology. So that's applied ultimately to resolve some of

951
00:54:22,960 --> 00:54:27,599
the crystological disputes between monophysites and historians and so forth.

952
00:54:28,039 --> 00:54:31,079
So for us, the Fifth Council, Sixth Council, the theology

953
00:54:31,119 --> 00:54:36,039
Saint Justinian is very important for that. But Sam is

954
00:54:36,079 --> 00:54:40,599
correct to basically just point out that energy signifies the

955
00:54:41,159 --> 00:54:44,119
action or operation of the agent. Right. So if you

956
00:54:44,159 --> 00:54:47,000
read John Damascus, he has a great book defense the

957
00:54:47,079 --> 00:54:50,400
Orthodox Faith, and in book three he looks at Christology.

958
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:54,960
In chapter fifteen he says, there's the agent, there's the

959
00:54:55,119 --> 00:54:57,679
nature that the agent possesses, the agent being the person,

960
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:01,599
the action of the that agent, and he's saying these

961
00:55:01,599 --> 00:55:05,880
are all distinct, and that action is the operation of

962
00:55:05,920 --> 00:55:08,559
that agent. In the case of God, it's a real

963
00:55:08,679 --> 00:55:10,920
power that goes forth from him. Remember when the woman

964
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:15,480
touches Jesus and she's healed, but I noticed power went

965
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:19,000
from him. Energy went out from him to heal the

966
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:22,480
divine power. Now, that power is never impersonal. It's not

967
00:55:22,559 --> 00:55:26,840
a new age force, it's not magical forces. It's always

968
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:30,840
in hypostatic as well. The energies are in hyposthetic, meaning

969
00:55:30,840 --> 00:55:34,199
they're personal. So the love of God is the personal

970
00:55:34,239 --> 00:55:36,480
love of God from the Father through the Son and

971
00:55:36,559 --> 00:55:39,800
the Spirit. The knowledge of God is personal from the

972
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:41,880
Father through the Son in the Spirit. It's always that

973
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:45,239
same triadic mode we believe. So that's what the energies

974
00:55:45,280 --> 00:55:48,440
are wonderful. Do you have a time for a couple

975
00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:49,039
of more questions?

976
00:55:50,559 --> 00:55:52,360
Speaker 1: Here? I'm going to put it right here in front

977
00:55:52,400 --> 00:55:55,039
of you, brother, so you can look at it and

978
00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:57,840
asking about what do you think about the Ethiopian and

979
00:55:58,159 --> 00:56:03,599
rit Orthodox th It's called Tuadu, which holds slightly a

980
00:56:03,679 --> 00:56:07,639
different view in worship, theology, ceremonial traditions from the Eastern

981
00:56:07,679 --> 00:56:08,920
Coptic Church for instance.

982
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:12,639
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have one of the guys in our apologetic

983
00:56:12,760 --> 00:56:15,880
circle who just did a two hour talk on that topic.

984
00:56:16,000 --> 00:56:19,199
So I mean, in brief, I would say that, you know,

985
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:22,920
we have some problems with the theology that develops in

986
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:28,440
what's called the Oriental churches due to it's not just linguistic,

987
00:56:28,559 --> 00:56:33,199
because even though they have a different notion of what nature,

988
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:38,000
usia and hypostasis come to mean, what energy comes to mean,

989
00:56:38,960 --> 00:56:42,119
ultimately we do have some some theological differences with them.

990
00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:45,280
And so if you go and watch David the Real medwhy,

991
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,039
he just did a two hour stream just on that question.

992
00:56:48,599 --> 00:56:52,199
So really the issue, I mean, there are liturgical differences.

993
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:54,400
It's not so much like oh, well to tell why

994
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:56,880
he don't sway in the liturgy, so we disagree with him.

995
00:56:56,920 --> 00:56:59,679
It's not like that they do some weird kind of

996
00:57:00,039 --> 00:57:03,920
quasi judaized practices like a circumcision and these kinds of

997
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:07,840
things that we don't accept. They do have influences that

998
00:57:07,880 --> 00:57:12,000
are kind of judaized, but the main problem is the

999
00:57:12,079 --> 00:57:17,920
christological issues where they're kind of confusing nature in person.

1000
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:23,559
They're not basing nature and person in Christology on nature

1001
00:57:23,559 --> 00:57:30,039
and person in the triad. That's our main critique with them.

1002
00:57:30,159 --> 00:57:32,400
Speaker 1: Very good, brother, Well, I've been looking to see if

1003
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:36,480
there's any questions. Looks like everyone was really sulking it in.

1004
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:38,679
Some says they're gonna have to watch it again to

1005
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:41,400
listen to some of terminologies you're using. I thought you

1006
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:44,039
did a great job and expand that. I just want

1007
00:57:44,039 --> 00:57:46,880
people to know the hope is that you have heard

1008
00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:50,039
our brother and what he says. Everything he says makes

1009
00:57:50,079 --> 00:57:53,639
it much easier for you right now to explain phrases

1010
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:56,840
and sentences and warding that came out of the mouth

1011
00:57:56,840 --> 00:57:59,159
of our Lord. For instance, the Father is greater than I.

1012
00:57:59,159 --> 00:58:01,000
I came to do the well of him who sent me.

1013
00:58:01,039 --> 00:58:03,480
Many of these things that are raised against us, usually

1014
00:58:03,559 --> 00:58:06,360
in arguments to try to point you out. Do you

1015
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:08,599
see Jesus is lower than the Father, and so on

1016
00:58:08,639 --> 00:58:11,360
and so forth. And also the fact that in old

1017
00:58:11,360 --> 00:58:13,519
testaments sometimes people make that well I don't see the

1018
00:58:13,559 --> 00:58:15,719
sun in there, I don't see the Holy spit. Well,

1019
00:58:16,159 --> 00:58:17,960
you know what, if you put it all together like this,

1020
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:20,760
it's a full package. It's a one complete package. You'll

1021
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:22,840
be able to explain it in ways that are much

1022
00:58:23,119 --> 00:58:26,079
simpler if you wish. That's why we like to have

1023
00:58:26,159 --> 00:58:30,000
great guests like our brother here and Jay. I hope

1024
00:58:30,039 --> 00:58:32,280
you would accept our invitation to come back again. And

1025
00:58:32,360 --> 00:58:34,400
there's so many things, of course, we can talk about

1026
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:36,480
and it will be great any time.

1027
00:58:36,599 --> 00:58:37,360
Speaker 2: I'd be glad to.

1028
00:58:38,239 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. I appreciate you,

1029
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:43,679
and thank you for those who gave through the super chat.

1030
00:58:44,239 --> 00:58:46,920
We appreciate your sacrifice as well, and thank you for

1031
00:58:47,000 --> 00:58:50,119
our moderators. And tomorrow we're going to have Matt Slick

1032
00:58:50,159 --> 00:58:52,599
and on Sunday we're going to have a special guest.

1033
00:58:52,800 --> 00:58:56,000
She will be sharing her testimony on leaving Islam and

1034
00:58:56,079 --> 00:58:59,119
becoming a follower of Christ. Hopefully you would tune in

1035
00:58:59,159 --> 00:58:59,599
to both