Speaker 1: Hey, what's going on? Welcome to Cleave to Antiquity Today.
I'm joined by the one, the only, Jayder what's going on? Brother?
Speaker 2: Hey? Do what's up? Glad to be chatting again. We
had a good zoom call well back, and I'm glad
to reconnect. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I've been excited for this one. I think this
will be cool. So for those that are tuning in,
kind of what I've been doing lately since I made
the announcement I'm seeking an enter into the Orthodox Church
is I've been inviting guests on to do a Q
and A. So we'll be doing that this live stream.
So the way this is going to work for y'all,
if you want to ask a question, put a queue
in front of your question in the chat. I will
start it. I'll be pulling them up in the order
that they're received. Jay. If there's one you don't want
to mess with, let me know when I'll skip past
that one. And then also if you want to skip
the line, you can send in a super chat. I'll
pull those up first just as a thank you for
supporting the stream, but go ahead and start sending those in.
Put a queue in front of your question. If you
don't put a queue. I'm not going to see it.
I'm not gonna be able to start, So I'll go
ahead and I'll start diving into this first one. Super chat, Jay,
unmute dude. All right, let's see here's a question that.
Speaker 2: I could unmute myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does the church teach about regular Orthodox Christians
having a having spiritual experiences with God like the monks?
Is that just reserved for monks? No?
Speaker 2: I think if you look at Saint Simmy and the
New Theologian, the whole story of that is that he
was combating what was called a form of massallionism, which
is the idea that really only some tiny spiritual elite
have access to the kind of grace that is offered
in terms of seeing the divine light and so forth,
and he was thrown out of his monastery. Has he
had a really wild experience over all that, but he
ended up being vindicated because all the grace is present
in the sacraments are there for the potential for everybody
having that experience.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. All right, let me see this next one here.
Thanks for the superchat. Let's see, and thank you for
the super chat. I appreciate it, all right, let's look
at the inquirer questions here. Question inquirer, can you hold
to annihilationism in Eachian orthodoxy? And what exactly is the
doctrine of hell in Easian orthodoxy?
Speaker 2: Annihilationism is not possible because we believe that Christ assumed
universal human nature in a single divine hypostasis. So what
that means is that the only basis for everybody being
resurrected is the death or own resurrection of Christ. So
all men are going to be resurrected universally, the same
way that the scope of Adam's fall is universal. So
first green Is fifteen makes the scope of both universal.
But that is mean we're all saved, because our own
individual existential experience of the esk will be contingent upon
how we recapitulate it or fail to recapitulate the virtues.
So the river of fire, that is the torment of
the wicked, is the state that they put themselves in
to be actually negatively experiencing or ever ill being. As
sat Maximus says, the same divine energy is the same
divine fire that purges and deifies the righteous. So the righteous,
because of thiosis, experience ever well being, and the wicked
because of their choice of vice experiences ever ill being.
So there's no possibility in that scheme of annihilationism, because
everybody has an eternal nature that's given to them through
the work of Christ. So also I think that helps
explain the difference between the Orthodox view and the Latin
view or the typical Protestant view of the escaton.
Speaker 1: Awesome templar five dollars shears. Guys, Hey, this is this
was an Anglican gentleman that just decided to become Orthodox.
So he's entering into his Uh, he just became a catechumen. Actually,
so good to see you man. Hey, j great work
you're doing. What do you think about the New American
Orthodox film? It's available free for parishes to screen.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about it. Do you know about it?
You can tell me about it. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: If you want to. If you want to clarify, man,
send a clarification question and or just some some additional contexts.
Oh yeah, do you wanna Do you want to plug
the conference that's coming up in November?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, it was a number twenty to twenty. First
is our Orthodox conference in Home Coast. It's a two
day conference with me, Father Vladimir, my priest Kadanov, father Diagan,
doctor Narnias met Boalt and Jonah, doctor David Patrick Carey,
a couple other friends of Father Vladimir's. I think we'll
also have some smaller vignettes and things that they want
to touch on. There's a book that's coming out by
a priest that's a friend of Father Vladimir's that will
be translated into English, so he'll have a little message there.
And you can get the tickets at my website or
on my profile or anybody else's profiles that are involved.
Two days and yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun.
I know you're going to be there, and Christian Mario
is going to be there, Luigi is going to be there.
Basically all everybody but Bowser Yoshi, all of the Mario
world will be there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were saying that in that picture that we took together.
They were like, oh, you're Yoshi. Now, I don't want
to be Yoshi.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, you don't Bowser Yoshi Warrio,
like I don't know who you want to you could do,
like if you put a hat on you could kind
of be a Warrio character there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well I think there is already like an
Orthodox Warrio on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Really, you're right, I forgot about that. You could be
Princess Peach. It's over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd rather I'd rather delete all of my social
media than become Peach. All right, let's see here, all right? So, yeah,
attend that attend that conference if y'all, If y'all are
in the Florida in Florida, go and attend that conference.
A lot of people are gonna be there, basically, all
of all of Ortho Twitter. Basically, it will be the
place to be, all right, Cookie Destroyer says, who's the
next Protestant YouTuber to take the Orthop pill in cleeve?
Have you taken down your non to non church on
redeem Zoomer's Minecraft server and built an Orthodox one. I
was never on that thing. I will say this, though
I was on. I was on his discord server. I
got banned twice for for debating. So but I like
I like I like redem Zoomer. He's a he's a
he's a nice guy.
Speaker 2: Who's neck.
Speaker 1: Would who would be your who would you be your
bet for the next Protestant tuber.
Speaker 2: I have no idea. Who's to even like open to
other possibilities like that. There's probably quite a few Anglican
you know, YouTubers or Lutheran YouTubers that are probably unhappy
with Protestantism that I'm it's not even aware of. So
I understand honestly have no idea because I don't I
mean outside of you and maybe a couple of other people,
Like I haven't really interacted with a whole lot of
you know, Adamant Protestant YouTubers. I mean, it's you redeem
Zoomer like that's it's about the only two that come
to mind, like within the last year and a half.
Speaker 1: So yeah, maybe I've got I've got some ideas, but
I don't really want to say those live.
Speaker 2: Okay, there might be somebody you would know about him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's that's about it. I mean, I
I would say I'll say this, I think in the
you know, I'm I'm still friends with a lot of
the Protestant guys, you know, those that those that still
speak to me after this. Some of some of them
are like, oh, you're like a different You're you're basically like,
you know, an alien now or something. Yeah, but uh,
to the guys that I still I still speak to,
I think my spending my time in that camp, you
realize that the ground is a lot shakier and the
people's confidence in their own positions are a lot shakier
than they put on online. Which was kind of why
I filled that space on YouTube, was because a lot
of these guys won't won't do debates for that specific reason.
They don't they're not confident enough in their own positions.
They don't want to have their world view shaken like that.
So the the guys that are mean.
Speaker 2: Same in the room calt world too, man. I mean,
I know several Roman Catholics who have kind of confided
to me that what they're putting forward isn't the real position.
Like I'm not saying that they don't believe Catholicism, but
they're a lot less confident versus what they're kind of
putting forward. But I'm not going to say who that is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, right right, yeah, keep them keep them in
prayer for sure, hij I'm having trouble with KESSI castidy prayer.
My mind wanders constantly, any tips.
Speaker 2: So this is something that you should just take up
with your spiritual father, because that's I have the same difficulty,
and I usually I think in the Orthodox world, we
don't really try to get people to practice in that
way until they're pretty advanced. So I wouldn't worry about
that right now unless you're very advanced. And if you're
very advanced, I'm not the person that you should ask about.
So take that up with your spiritual father. But yeah,
I think a lot of the things that kind of
attend that kind of prayer are the things that people
get all caught up on, right, like bodily posture or
something like that, And none of that stuff is essential
to Orthodox prayer, so I wouldn't get too caught up
in that stuff. But somebody had an interesting point, which
was that a lot of times people like in the
middle of the liturgy, like I saw, have a tendency
to close my eyes. And then I know, because that's
kind of a Protestant thing when you're praying, like you
close your eyes, and that's not always wrong, because you know,
you have in the liturgy value your heads and so forth,
but it sometimes helps to focus on the icons to
actually not be distracted because if I close my eyes,
I start my mind starts wondering. So if you get
in the habit maybe of not closing your eyes, but
I mean that's that's up to you and your spiritual father. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting, my uh my daughter, she's nine,
and she's always prayed with her eyes open. So we
when we started going to the orthox Or, She's unlike,
I'm like, hey, these people pray with their eyes open,
just like you. She's like, whoa, this is like my church.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm still not even used to it, even
after being orgone for a while, Like, I'm still like it.
This is the Protestant mindset, I guess. So, I mean
I was Roman Catholic, and I guess when I was Catholic,
I would still you know, well, they have imaginative prayer,
which when I'm Orthodox, I'm not doing imaginative prayer. But
your mind does still have a tendency to wander. So
I definitely feel that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see here, what is the relationship of culture
to Orthodoxy. How are cultural expressions and their incumbent industries sanctified, Oh, movies, music,
et cetera.
Speaker 2: I don't think it differs too much from the attitude
that most serious Roman Catholics or Protestants have, except that
I think Orthodoxy is done a better job of maintaining
the distinction between the sacred and the secular. So, you know,
like in the Protestant world, you have this idea of, oh,
we got to come up with like Christian rock and roll.
This sounds just like Coldplay or just like you two.
I an Orthodox, you don't really have to do that.
There's no necessity to water down and kind of push
the theology into the secular sphere because really there's not
a secular sphere. I mean, everything is kind of in
the domain of the kingdom, the basilaeis or whatever. So
maybe it's less challenging. But I think you know, the
history of the Orthodox world overlaps with the Latin Church
of verse thousand years, so you've got a lot of esthetics, artwork,
et cetera that has to be made within the confines
of virtue. I think in the Protestant world you have
this attitude that everything has to be explicitly kind of
like Jesus, Jesus, Jesus worship service, worship service, And it
doesn't have to be that way because the virtues themselves
are kind of necessarily connected to God. So if you
have a film that's not explicitly Christian, but it's still
promoting virtue, it's that's fine, that's good. You don't not
everything has to be explicitly a worship service, because the
liturgy is the worship service, So you don't have to
constantly like make everything diluted, like I think it's sort
of evangelical rock and roll. Does you know think about Dustievsky, right,
he wrote philosophical, psychological novels that are breathe. They breathe
the Orthodox wild view, but they're not all about Orthodoxy
per se. You know, you have some characters or whatever,
but you know, Crime and Punishment has redemption, it has virtue,
but it's not it's not in your face necessarily.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's part of my I
guess conversion story was reading a brother's chromosome, you know,
and seeing some of the themes there kind of woven there.
Shortly after that I did read Crime and Punishment. I
like the I actually like Crime and Punishment a lot better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like Crime Crime Pashment a lot. Yeah, it's
really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a. It's a more fluid fluid read.
I feel like I had to to try to pay
attention more in Brother's Chromozol. Maybe that's just my brain.
I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I read Crime and Punishment pretty quick, like I
had a grad class on it, and I read it
like within a few days. Yeah, but then I found
and I'm still not finished Brother's kramatso because it's very
difficult read. So yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's take a look at this one
inquirer questions can a male have a female patron saint? Also?
Can you have more than one patron saint? Thanks God bless.
Speaker 2: I don't even know that, but my first thought would
be no, I've never even heard of anybody think about that.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think it's an interesting question.
Speaker 2: And more than one saint. I think in the Serbian
tradition you have patron saints for families. Uh, but that
might be unique to the Serbs. But that's the only
case I've heard of having more than one patron saint. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, and I was gonna say about that, like making
the mew, you were talking about making the music kind
of Jesus or whatever. Well, if I if I don't
make my gospel rock band, how am I going to
get the CIA dollars? Man?
Speaker 2: How's it gonna happen? Yeah? Right? Well the other thing too,
is I forget who said this. Somebody said this, maybe
at a conference a few years ago. But it's like,
if you think about it, the if you're in the
Protestant world, the music, the worship is all Jesus, Jesus Jesus.
If you're in the Charismatic world, it's holy Spirit, Holy Spirit,
Holy Spirit. Right, But it's like, why why not just
be trinitarian? Right? Like, and the Orthodox Liturgy is super
super trinitarian. So I think those shortcomings kind of come
through in those points.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody says y'all got to do a tag team
on Mormonism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm open to that. I didn't know. Have you
spent a good bit of time interacting with the Mormons.
Speaker 1: I probably wouldn't be the guy man. That might be
more Jim Bob's specialty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jim Bob and I've done a few you know,
Mormons dreams and whatnot. So, but yeah, anybody who wants to,
we can do a tag team on Islam or Mormon
or anything like that. I'm always down for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Mormond.
Speaker 2: It seems to be really popping off lately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Mormonism debates have been coming back into the
It seems like apologetics takes a like a cycle. There's
like a schedule of what gets popular. Every now and
then Vatican two will pop up, or like it'll be uh,
you know, oh, now it's papal supremacy. Now we're gonna
talk about this, or oh we're gonna talk about you
know whatever.
Speaker 2: But even aside from the topics, it seems like the
Mormons have done a big push, like in terms of
like ads and propaganda in the last few years to
kind of really make Mormonism this, you know, topic of discussion,
I think on purpose.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I can see that. I've seen a lot
of Again, all the ads always has like a hot chick.
Speaker 2: On front exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Become Mormon. You know, you're gonna get You're gonna get
a girlfriend finally, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we had that recent pretty good in
Hollywood movie with the Hugh Grant Heretic. Did you see Heretic? No?
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 2: You should watch It's pretty good movie, and that the
two lead carearacters are you know, Mormon missionaries.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty wild interesting. Yeah, that's weird. I'll have
to check that out, all right, cap uh cab Bob
the Great, Can you guys explain the origin of the
doctrine of Mary's ever virginity and sinless life? Why isn't
it present in Protestantism?
Speaker 2: It was present in early luther and Calvin Uh, I mean,
early Protestantism did have it. So I think the further
you get away from you know, the Magisterial Reformation or
the Classical Reformation, the more you get into radical Reformation,
which seems like today's Protestant world and Evangelical world is
pretty much Radical Reformation dominant, whether it's charismaticism or whether
it's kind of these you know, anti state tendencies or
anti Old Testament tendencies of the Campbell Lights.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: It seems like Classical Reformation theology is pretty restricted to
some Presbyterians and Lutherans here and there, and that's about it.
So the origin of it, I think is more of
a typological approach. If you read, for example, Ezekiel forty four,
that temple, that mysterious temple that when I was a Protestant,
I can never really forget what that's about. But in
the Orthodox view, we think that's also a type not
just of the church, but a merit. And so there's
a specific text that says that the prince exits through
a door and the door remains shut. It's never opened,
it's always sealed. So that is the entrance of Messiah,
the Prince of Daniel nine, into this world, and yet
the door by which he came remains ever virgin. So
that's one basis. But also I think being the New
Eve all the typology of Psalm forty five. I have
a whole video, by the way, Protestants are interested on
where I go through all the biblical typology of Mary,
and although it's not explicitly about of a virginity, I
think the conclusion logically is that, well, she would have
been also preserved to be the new Eve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've done a video that's something along the lines
of every Reformer held to the perpetual virginity. If you
want to check that out. I go into detail on that.
That was when I was a Protestant. People got mad
at that they were saying. They were saying I was
a Jesuit spy because I held the perpetual virginities.
Speaker 2: We'll get used to it because you're it's only going
to increase. Like I've been hearing that crazy stuff for
a long time, so.
Speaker 1: It's it's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: I kind of I kind of like that. I don't know,
I think that's funny.
Speaker 2: Like you'll be Masade, you'll be KGB, you'll be a
you'll be Jesuit. Like you're working for all of them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there you go all at once. Last, I'm
a KGB sorcerer.
Speaker 2: You got me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there he goes KGB sorcerer. What's funny is the
guy that said that he did a video after my
like announcement video where he he took my thumbnail with
like the big redhead and like stretched out my neck
and put it on like a cassock. It's actually hilarious.
I was like, Okay, that's actually pretty funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember, uh I did. I interviewed Dugan like
ten years ago and it was just like an hour
long podcast and I talked about a couple of his books.
And then ever since then, like they've like all these people,
a lot of Roman Catholics have insisted that I'm a
KGB operative. It's still stupid because it's like, it doesn't
matter how many times I explain that I disagree with
Dugan's gnosticism. It's like, no, but you interviewed him. So
the only way you could have interviewed him is if
you're working with him. Like it's just kind of crazy,
Like even if I say where I disagree, doesn't mean
I'm working with him.
Speaker 1: That was like guys were saying, how much did how
much did.
Speaker 2: Jay pay you to convert?
Speaker 1: I said, I got paid in dugan coin.
Speaker 2: You got you got one full dougan coin, which translations
to the twenty five bitcoin, So there.
Speaker 1: You go, very nice, all right. How should I speak
to those who think it's a cult? I think they
were talking about orthodoxy.
Speaker 2: I mean, one thing I've learned about this kind of
stuff is how you speak to the person depends upon
that person. So you know, it really depends on who
that person is in your life. If you're talking about
your parents, don't approach them in the same way that
you would your brother, or you know, your comrades at
work or whatever. Because people that are your equals, you
can speak to them in a more forthright, sardonic way.
If it's your parents, be more respectful, don't debate with them,
let them see a change in your life. You will
never convince your parents through argumentation. They're only going to
be convinced when they see you, first of all, having
like you know, a solid life, wife, kids, et cetera.
Then they might listen to you. They're not going to
listen to you when you're still living at home and
you don't have a job and you're over here debating theology.
I know because I did that. I made the mistake
when I was young, so you know, I would say
it could be you know, if it's if it's somebody
who's your equal, you could kind of question them about, well,
what do you think a cult is? Because if it's
a broad definition, then any religion could be a cult.
You could say the papacy's a cult if you have
to follow the papacy, right, is that a cult? Is
every religion a cult? Or is it specifically like you
only have to follow a single leader, which Orthodoxy is
very decentralized, so it's kind of anti cult.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, absolutely. And this is something that
comes up quite a bit, like how do I ask
my family, or how do I talk to my family
or convince them of orthodox or my spouse. That sucks
when that comes up, because I've gotten a lot of
I've got a lot of emails, a lot of d
ms and stuff from Protestants that are talking about, oh,
I want to become Orthodox or you know, et cetera.
I'm like, well, first off, you know, go ask a priest.
I'm just a guy on the internet, or like, you know,
ask somebody who has been in it for a while.
But so the stuff that I get a lot will
be something along the lines of I'm convinced my wife's
not convinced, or I'm convinced my parents aren't convinced, or like,
maybe my parents are going to disown me if I
become Orthodox because they're like jimbab evangelical types. The answer
and I just posted a video with an author earlier
today talking about this exact topic. So if you want
to go look at that, it's kind of like some
quick run through tips of what you can do if
you're in any of those situations there, So that might
be helpful. There, he says, do you hear Ibara telling
me leaving? I guess Rome would be easy. No, I
didn't see that.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that's what our means. No, Lura told you
that leaving Rome would be easy. I don't know what
that means, but I mean, it's not hard to leave Rome.
I did it. Yeah, you just leave like you don't
have to like send in a letter to the Pope
and like you know, I want Leo Leo. You need
to sign off on me like no longer being a
member anymore. I'm not gonna tie like you just I
don't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Plank some pieces is a recent convert to Orthodoxy.
You posted a video about this little while ago. Could
you give me some insight on the contra around depicting
the Father or ancient of days and what positions should
we hold on this? Have seen people argue both since
coming to Orthodoxy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's the best book on this is Volume two
of the Theology the icon by Loski and Alspensky, And
there's about three chapters in the In the later part
of that book, I mean, the first few chapter is
really good about palam aus and icons and how you
really can't divorce the energy's doctrine from iconography. Uh, those
are really strong chapters and there there's actually quite a
bit of probably apologetic meat that we could get from
that we haven't even really dived into yet. But after
that comes several chapters talking about the God the Father issue.
And although the Moscow icon synodes aren't dogmatic per se,
they still have a lot of influence and they still
have a lot of good points, and they do make
the allowance for you know, the Ancient of Day's icon.
But even in the Ancient of Day's icon, really it's
Christ as the only image of God the Father. So
if you notice that image, Christ has kind of the
appearance of an older Christ, but that matches with what
you read in Ezekiel and Revelation one and two, where
when He appears, he appears as a whiteheaded, you know,
kind of glistening, shining person. His appearances like you know,
bronze and gold and all this, So that I think
is the only via the Moscow Icons in a sort
of approved image. Now, people have not always followed this,
or they've not always necessarily even known this. So you
do have a lot of architects and artists who have
built churches and they kind of put you know, the
Roman Catholicish influenced God the Father up there in a
triangle or something like that. So even though it's technically
not canonical, I don't think it's the end of the world.
We don't have to be spergs about it. But ultimately
it's not really canonical, and ultimately it should probably just
be the allowance for the ancient of day is maybe
a couple other examples. And the other reason for this
is not just to be persnickety and annoying about it.
It's because if you read that Lawsky Ospenskey book, they
talk about how the Jesuits it actually designed certain icons
to use philly oquay, and so they would push those
icons in Russian areas, especially in places like Kiev, and
it was actually duping a lot of the peasants to
adopt not even philly okuad but like really weird theology, right,
because sometimes it's almost like you have God the Father
as an old man sitting next to Jesus and then
they're sending the Holy Spirit. So some of these heterdox
icons have names, like it was one called the New
Testament icon or something like that, but they're known sort
of Jesuit syops that I mean, I'm being serious. If
you read the book I talk about it to really
kind of sway them towards Romanism. And Rome never really
adopted the theology of the Seventh Council. They they believe
it in name, but all the theology behind it, the
canon and then the eight forty three triumph of Orthodoxy.
They don't care anything about that unless they're uniate. But
who cares what units it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So Rome doesn't see icons as bound up with the theology,
because if they did, they would believe in the energies,
because the energies are really essential to iconography. But uh, yeah,
so that's that's uh. I think that because I struggle
with that issue at one point too, because there are
some places where you can have, for example, this it's
the same principle with the Holy Spirit. You can't portray
the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit because he's never incarnate,
and we only portray really what's incarnate in the sense
of the Son. But there are a few instances where
you have what's called energetic manifestations of the Spirit, and
that's dove and tongues of fire. Right, that's it. You
could say there's an ergect manifestation perhaps of the voice
of the Father, so it's like, you know, this my
beloved son. So that's obviously an inerject manifestation proper to
the Father. Even though every action is triadics, still there
are unique roles in that way. So I think that's
the solution to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you see you're talking about the Roman Catholics
not really holding to Nicia too. Yeah, I've noticed that
quite a bit. I mean, if you were to look
at there's a guy out there, Kevin since thirty three AD.
He posted on x not that long ago saying that
icon veneration was not Apostolic, it was like an innovation
later on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't believe they concede this to Protestants because
you know, this is what Ibarro has been arguing for years.
He would say, my argument against Orthodoxy is that the
Seventh Council is a development. But apparently Eric didn't read
the actual Council because it says this is not a development.
This goes back to the Apostolic period again, sort of
based on the principle of the notion that matter can
be you know, sanctified relics or there you've got real presence.
So that kind of necessarily leads to the iconography that
comes out of the temple iconography.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, absolutely, I think I think it's a silly
it's a silly argument. But you said this in one
of your previous streams. It is kind of like a
coal to the magisterium, right, like sacrifice the other doctrines
just to prop up the one. And in this case
it would be uh doctrinal development, which is a big
deal for them now, especially since Newman's a doctor now.
Speaker 2: So exactly, and that's exactly what Ruslan and Michael Knowles
were just chatting about. Right, So this tubby came up
and Rouselan said, I figured how you phrased it with
something like I appreciate the romancalolic doctrinal development. I'm like,
but what's what's to appreciate it? But that's a double
edged sword. And I can say this as a who
was a former trad because a lot of the trads
think and I thought this at one time too, It's like, well,
the papacy will protect us from the developments because you
can have this nailed down, solidified statement that's unchanging. Right.
Doesn't that seem like it would solve a lot of
these problems of when a new issue arises. But the
problem is that if the papacy is not true, then
what happens is you've got this Saint Justin Papovitch said
a kind of a European humanist institution of man in
his primary position. And then if the papers he can evolve.
There's no necessity to it evolving in a traditional way.
It can evolve in a progressive liberal way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we see that today exactly. All right, what
are your guys, This is a weird question. What do
you guys favorite fragrance? Fragrances? So what's your what's your
cologne choice? They want to they want to cocken nineties.
Speaker 2: I used to love coloonna I wore Ralph Lauren, Polo
Sport I wore. I remember one time when I was
like in eighth grade, I went to about my first
bottle of cologne. It was Dr card Noir, and I
was at a football game and I was about to
mac on these chicks and I spilled the whole bottle
on my pants. So I like the whole stadium like
cleared out because it was all was it?
Speaker 1: Is it like musky? That?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's like the most musky? Yeah, Card Noir I
was like the classic like eighties and nineties, like I
don't know, like like a like a swarthy European pimp
would wear anyway. But I liked raf Lauren Polo sport
back in the day. I like the cool water back
in the nineties. Those are those are popular, but a
lot of those are toxic. Yeah, I don't really I
don't really wear those anymore, and I have allergies. So
I just smell like a dude.
Speaker 1: I use I use a Calvin Klein Shock. That's my
that's my go to cologne right there, or guess blue
whatever my wife buys me. That's all. Yeah, I just say,
look for cologne that's blue. It all just about smells
the same. It seems like, Yeah, I like the blue smell. Yeah, exactly,
very the blue flavored colone. How does uh, how does
Eastern Orthodox view the all I don't even know what
this is? All of it discourse.
Speaker 2: Oh that's Matthew twenty four and Luke twenty one. Right,
So I'm glad. You'm glad you asked that because I
just posted on Twitter one of my old talks about uh,
pred ad the beasts and all that. So, yeah, most
of the Eastern Church fathers, whether it's Saint Cyril, Halthanasius,
Saint John Christism in his commentary on Matthew twenty four.
We believe in a partial preadorist view is very important
to making sense of the New Testament, that there was
a coming in judgment in seventy eight D. That particularly
Luke twenty one is really clear about this, and it's
written for a gentle audience, so you can kind of
see clearly that it's talking about a first century judgment
upon Israel. And although we don't have like an official
patristic you know, dogmatic statement on like what the Book
of Revelation is about, I've never I've never not been
convinced still of the gentry bonds and you know David
Chilton Days of Vengeance position that the Book of Revelation
is in its historical context about seventy Nero is the Beast,
but there is a future fulfillment that kind of mirrors
those things too. So you can find a lot of
those videos on my channel. I don't want to ramble
too much about into the world, but just well, probably
the most clear references that in Luke twenty one, Jesus
says there are some of you standing here who will
not die. You will see Jerusalem surrounded by enemies. You
will see it raised to the ground. And he says,
don't try to flee on the sabbath, or pray that
it's you don't have to flee on the Sabbath. Well,
that's not relevant to us post seventy eight D or
after the Book of Hebrews is written. We're not sitting
around worrying about traveling on the Sabbath. So it has
to be relevant to the immediate hearers of Jesus' message.
And I have a I wrote a grad paper on
this about seventy a d. And Josephus's eyewitness account of
the destruction of Jerusalem. So I think that partial preadterism
is one of percent true men. Most of the Eastern
fathers agree.
Speaker 1: There was a who's that Protestant guy? The conservative he've
retweeted your your posts on that.
Speaker 2: I have to Oh, yeah, I'm not super super familiar
with this guy. Nope. Father Moses kind of asked him,
challenged him on some things.
Speaker 1: But Joel or whatever, Oh yeah, Joel web that might
be interesting to have a chat with with him. He's
kind of like popping off right now.
Speaker 2: I think he did reply a while back somebody said,
do you want to have a debate or discussion, because
remember they did that podcast about orthodoxy maybe six months ago,
and I think somebody asked him and he was like,
I'm not really confident to debate or he said something
like that, but yeah, I'm always open. I'm always open
to chatting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you guys both agree
on that, so that might be a good Uh. I
don't know something interesting. Uh film Lincoln trailer is American
orthodox film dot com. Okay, cool, thanks for thanks for
letting me know. Man, I'll have to check that out later.
I haven't I haven't seen anything about it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Lots of people are talking about the Folks publication book
that spends a long time discussing your article about analogy.
Any plan on doing a response?
Speaker 2: Lots of people? Yeah, I mean that following. That's a
guy who started his own publishing out of his own basement,
and I think he has like a handful of followers.
So I don't think there's a lot of people, I
mean can simply address the issues themselves. That Romanites is
a open nominalist. It's really not possible to have a
Christological approach where Christ assumes universal human nature. If you're
a nominalist, how could you believe in universe human nature
being assumed if you're a radical nominalist. I mean there's
many other mistakes as well. I think Romanites is a
he's a controversial, conflicted figure, but I mean that's one
of the biggest problems. I mean, the Cappadocians use analogia
all the time, so it would be fundamentally opposed to
Capitocian theology to say that there is no analogia, and that,
as Rumani says, all he says, all the sickness of
religion is based on analogy or analogia. I just think
that's preposterous.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a look at this one. A
lot of Protestants like Gavin Ortland are really leveraging ecclesiological anxiety.
I guess he calls he calls it acclesial anxiety against inquirers.
Feels like emotional blackmail. I mean I can kind of
speak to that, if that's all right.
Speaker 2: Go ahead. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, Gavin, Gavin's a friend of mine.
He was actually one of the He was actually one
of the only Protestants that were kind of cool after I, uh,
after I made the announcement. So I don't want to
be rude to him or anything, but to be fair
to his brand, his brand is very You have these claims,
these exclusivity claims are Roman Catholics and Eastian orthodox make right.
So that causes people anxiety. His brand serves to ease
that anxiety. They call that ecclesial anxiety. Oh yeah, I
mean I would I would agree a lot of the
Protestants do have this anxiety. I was never really one
of them. The exclusivity claims it was either true or
it wasn't. You know what I mean, The Orthodoxy was
ever either true or it wasn't. So it really had
nothing for me to do with anxiety. But I will
say one of the ways that I had gotten kind
of in contact with him for networking was I used
to run a discord server back in the day called
the Scripture Alone Discord. It was the largest Protestant discord
back then. It's probably not anymore, but back then when
I helped run it, I had reached out to Gavin.
He had done some events with me, I joined his server,
and his server was for people with ecclesial anxiety. So
it was like the whole brand is to kind of
we're going to present arguments that you can kind of,
in my opinion looking back at it now, is more like,
so you can compartmentalize this information because we're gonna cast
just a little bit of doubt on this particular claim,
this particular claim just enough to kind of stall your
decision into moving into one of these traditions, whether it's
Roman hoolicism or orthox, which is why you'll see in
the videos. In my opinion, it's always like very minor objections.
It's like, okay, well here's a very specific, nuanced claim
about icon veneration. I'm going to attack this very specific argument.
So that way, if you know objections are brought from
maybe an earlier date or another icon or whatever, I
can say, well, that wasn't what I was addressing in
the video. I'm just addressing this thing to debunk this
one argument that's causing people anxiety. So that's kind of
the brand there. But I mean a lot of people
that's true. That is kind of the motivation for why
he does what he does, and feels like emotional blackmail.
I mean, I don't want to speak to intentions. I
don't think that is his intention. I think he sees
a lot of people with this anxiety, and from his perspective,
he's trying to ease it. Whether or not that's you know,
it is what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, only thing I'll say to that is that one
thing we do plan to do is to kind of
resurrect discord. So I kind of handed that off about
three years ago just because I was too busy. I've
seen now that there is a kind of a need
for maybe weekly Q and A because so many people
are interested in Orthodoxy and a lot of people don't
have due to their location necessarily like an immediate parish.
So I think we do need to step up and
try to offer you know, maybe not full on katechisis
per se, but like at least answering a lot of
those kind of basic questions that a lot of people
are having. So we will be reviving my discord in
the next week or two. We're going to start doing
the weekly Q and A.
Speaker 1: So right on I might need to make a discord
account again. I haven't been on that thing in years.
Let's see.
Speaker 2: I mean it can be a lot of work, Like
I mean, you as you know, right, Like yeah, I
would say from like twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two,
like I was in discord a lot, right, it got
to be almost too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that was probably about
the same same time period, you know that I I
was active there. You know, I did the I did
the one. I did a lot of debates on there
back in the day. That's kind of where I started off.
And then Redeem Zuomer was like, hey, you need to
make in a well I guess maybe I haven't been
on it in like over a year then justly probably
just about a year, because why I started my YouTube
was Redeem Zoomer was like, hey, nobody's doing the Protestant
apologetic stuff. Why don't you go make a YouTube and
hop in these debates. So I did it maybe six
months after he told me that, But uh, you know
that was eventual. That was originally where that was, And
I told you in a in a conversation we had
before that. Uh, that Cannon's argument that I gave I
gave him he used in the debate with Luigi. That
was where he got that Trullo PiZZ because he was like,
how do I you know, what do I do here?
I'm like, all right, try this one out. I'll give you.
I'll give you a couple a couple of tools. Yeah,
kind of interesting. All right, let's see, Uh, Jay, Jay,
how does it feel that you're conversing side by side
with someone, okay who not even six six months ago
called you into debate orthodoxy? Do you see fast conversions
on the horizon?
Speaker 2: I mean it feels great. I'm really happy for Cleve.
I think I want him to know, as everybody else,
that is not about winning the debate. I know people
might think that how could die or say that that's
so disingen. No, it really isn't about winning some debate
or winning some arguments. Really, all that matters is was
true and everybody, at the end of the day is
bound by what's true. And most of the people, I
think in our space, people who are out there vocally talking,
I want to hope that they have the right motives.
And so I think it's an amazing testament to you know,
his search for truth and his putting truth first over
what he wants to be true or what I want
to be true anybody, and that's that's just how we
ought to be. So that's great, thank God for that.
I don't know about how fast, but I mean, I
don't even I can't even believe, Like from what's happened
from twenty seventeen till now, this kind of blows me away,
Like so many churches are tripled in size, they have
one hundred two hundred CD of humans, and I keep
hearing that, like they don't even have enough priests to
deal with people wanting to inquire and be kind of humans.
So that's why I'm saying, like another reason to kind
of get the discord going again. But I would guess probably,
and I will say this, it seems like back in
twenty seventeen to twenty twenty, the ripe ground for conversion
was Catholic because I was dealing with a lot of
Catholics and a lot of trad Cats that were converting.
But from twenty twenty till now, it seems like it's
dominated by Protestants converting. So I think we kind of
got most of the Roman Catholic which is not to
say that in the next several years there won't be
more Roman Catholics. It's just that a lot of them
are so dug in, they're so like just like there's
there's some hole that you know, the papers he has
as kind of you know, unique. I guess you could
say I think the fertile ground now is Protestant in
my view. But I mean again, I think God's grace
is going to work with a lot of people. I mean,
hopefully Tim Gordon will come around one day. I've been
working on Tim for.
Speaker 1: So long, but it'd be awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think, uh, yeah, I don't know what
your experience is or what you've noticed, but it seems
to me that just the last few years there's a
lot more Protestants are open than Romancolics are. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just if I were to go off,
I mean, obviously my audience was mostly Protestant, but you know,
all the emails like I've gotten from people who were
Protestant watching my staff that are now saying, well, you know,
I'm going to try to become a catechumen, or I've
started attending Divine Liturgy. They've all been Protestants, And I
thought I thought those emails would slow down. They have
it Like I'm still getting them almost every day, so
people are it's ripe that there's a lot of people
that are that are interested right now.
Speaker 2: So and Roman Caolic churches are really helping us by
pushing all the woke shit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I just got a message today from a
Roman Catholic said he was becoming Orthodox. So you know,
I think I think it's both. I think you're right though.
The Protestant camp right now is experienced a lot, like
a lot of a lot of various losses recently, and
people are expecting, I mean, really the only viable options
for people if they want it to be anything other
than maybe like a non denominational evangelical kind of like
low church. Guy, what are your options? You look at
the lcms, you look at Anglicanism, or people really going
to go the Anglicanism route now after all the stuff
that's happened in the media. I mean, I don't know.
To me, it doesn't seem like a very easy decision
to make when part of you joining that denomination is
you having to preface no, we're actually not the gay ones.
We're not those you know. I mean, you have the
same problem in Lutheranism. But I mean, look at what
was just what people were talking about very recently. If
you're if you're any kind of like I mean, I
know people don't like the title, but if you're interested
in like Christian now rationalism or anything like that, they
posted a whole uh this has been kind of resurrected.
There's a whole uh confession about their doctrinal values and
basically it says you can't be a Christian nationalist. It's
it's condemned.
Speaker 2: So a thing that like James White and people to
sign on too.
Speaker 1: No, this was this is an older document that's kind
of resurfaced, but it was one of the foundational documents
in the l CMS. So like guys like, I mean,
I don't I don't take this guy seriously. But guys
like Corey Maler or whatever, they're like, oh, you need
to be l CMS because we're based you know. It's
like okay, well.
Speaker 2: But there the their synod is saying you can't be
a Christian nationalist.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, gotcha? All right? Uh do you still listen
to any Protestant warship? No?
Speaker 2: I mean I might maybe around Christmas time we hear
like Handell's Messiah and it doesn't bother me, but really
most of the Protestant stuff ever since. I mean, I
haven't been Protestant since two thousand and three, so I
think I've only stepped foot into Protestant church a couple
of times since two thousand and three. So you got
to you gotta understand, that's like a world that's like
twenty two years removed from my life. So now I
don't I don't recall. I mean maybe every now and
then I hear like an evangelical like Toby Mack or
something that you know what I mean, Like when I
was in the a kid in the nineties, I've listened
to DC Talk or something like. I think it's funny.
But no, I don't. I don't listen to any Protestant work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a big deal. Like I'm not
knocking you if you do. I just it's just so
far removed from like, you know, I think the last
time I was in a Protestant church other than I
think one went to somebody's wedding back in the two thousands,
was probably two thousand and three, and I was at
like a Doug Wilson Herry c Church. So it's been
since two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never really been a huge fan of evangelical
worship music to begin with. Now there's like, I mean
we're kind of joking about the like Christian rock bands
or whatever, but there is one I actually do like.
It's called Dogwood. They're actually pretty good. They're like a
punk war.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of Christian rock bands that I
could probably still listen to, like I would, I like,
let me turn this line back on here. Yeah, I
mean I always like Skillett. I saw Skullet back in
the day.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I saw them live.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, I've seen them live I think twice.
Speaker 1: But yeah, how does Eastern Orthodox approach global missions?
Speaker 2: I mean missions are always handled by the bishops sending
out missionaries. So you know when you we have a
friend that just went to a church in Korea and
even I didn't know there was a Korean Orthodox bishop,
So I mean usually, you know, prior to the modern era,
it would be also in Tannem with the state, right,
so like Zar Nicholas would send you know, missionaries out
to Alaska or whatever. So if you want more of
a detailed history of that. Ubi Petris actually made I
think a three part documentary on the history of Orthodox missions.
So I highly recommend his three part series. It's really good,
but it's usually handled like at the bishopric level. I mean,
America is kind of unique because we're going to have
this organic and actually genuinely organic kind of interest in
Orthodoxy in the last few decades. It's really kind of
kind of coming to a head and kind of exploding
in the last five years. Yeah, but I would say
that's outside the norm of history.
Speaker 1: Quick question for Jay can inquire to the Orthodox faith
prayer that Jesus prayer before they're a catechumen.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean everything I've ever heard would say absolutely,
anybody can.
Speaker 1: Can you explain why absolute divine simplicity does not allow
for Theophanes?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think the way that the Roman Catholics themselves
define it. They themselves say that the Theophanes have to
be created in stantiations, iterationss angels. However you want to
frame it or they want to frame it. And it
is true that some Roman Catholics want to say, no,
it's really Christ, it's really Christ, right, but I think
they're not really on board with the trek that their
church went down, because the actual theology doesn't say that,
particularly if you read doctor Bradshaw's article on essence synergy,
what kind of distinction? The longer version he gets into
the fourth ladder in Council, which has a definition of
divine simplicity that you could call in the literature, it's
called identity thesis. So basically, any predicate of the divinity
is identical. It's isomorphically identical with the divine essence. So
if you say divine knowledge, divine mercy, divine justice, they
are the divine essence. And this becomes even more problematic
when Roman Catholics want to say that God is pure
act or act as purists, Well, is that also a
predicate of the essence? So God's essence is pure act? Well,
if God is eternally pure act, then you're now in
these weird ari Resitilian categy glories of does he eternally
then move? What to be first act means that you're
always actualizing something else, and that would require an eternal
world to eternally actualize, and so that's why, for example
Basil and the Hexameron. He criticizes Aristotle as a bitheist
he says, Aristotle believes in a diad because you have
the eternal actualizer and what he actualizes eternally. So that's
also a problem for the incarnation, because if you really
canosis Passage of Philippians too clearly, there's a willful self
limiting that the son did to step in the time
and space. It's not the Father, it's not the spirit.
It's one of the hypostases entering into a motive being
that the other two do not. And if you have
this really radical metaphysical commitment to an absolute neo platonic simplicity,
you have to understand, as Dock Bradshaw shows in his works,
there's not just one model of divine simplicity in the
Patricia era. The Capodocean model is not the neoplatonic model.
Origin and first principles, and Platinis and Augustine have the
same idea of what simplicity has to be. It's not
the same thing is that what the Cavedocians think simplicity
has to be. So the Cavedocean model is first and
foremost concerned with defending the triad. The Western Augustinian or
Originist model is first and foremost concerned with the metaphysics
of absolute simplicity and no distinctions. Right, so you can
see which model, obviously is more trinitarian. It's the cabin
doocean model. That's what's that. Constantinople One and the Eastern
Church fathers, as far as I'm aware, none of them
have the Augustinian speculation that Theophanes could be created things.
Every Orthodox Church father all the way back to Justin Marner,
all the way up to Whenever that Theophanes are really
the logos in time and space. That requires the distinction,
and it requires this not often talked about idea of mode.
Mode is very important for theology because it's the way
a thing is, it's how a thing is, and so
it's the second person that God had entering into a
mode of being incarnate that the other two do not. Now,
think about it, if God is an absolutely simple ball,
you can't have one of the ball be in a
mode of being that the other two aren't, because you're
basically moving in the direction of modalism. And so the
main problem with absolutely my simplicity, especially if you read
even the Catholic just go to the cathlic and Psychopedia
and read the entry on Eunomius.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Aquinas, Yeah, on that same kind of Actually,
I saw that in the Tim Gordon debate where he
was saying the uh, Theophanes were created.
Speaker 2: Tim was just expressing the standard Tomas Cathy decision.
Speaker 1: Right, it does. I think you were You were right
to harp on it a bit though, because that it
does sound ridiculous outloud. Absolutely, and you you had made
an argument a while ago that I thought was really
interesting to think about that essence energy distinction is necessary
to have any kind of coherent Eucharistic theology, because otherwise
you're saying what you're eating the essence of God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an argument that I noticed reading St.
Cyril of Alexandria's two Letters to six Census. So they're
not very long. I recommend everybody read it. You'll notice
that in those letters Cyril says, clearly we are partaking
of the deified flesh the god man that deified flesh
is deified because he communicates his uncreated immortality to it
to raise it, to deify it. And he says, we
all know we're not eating or particular of the divine
usia fusis or essence. Yeah, what's the only other option.
And by the way, if you read Cyril in many
other places, he is very clear about the energies. Saint
Cerril explicitly teaches the essence and interestinction. So we know
that Cyril is arguing that the uncreated energy gees are
what deify and permeate and penetrate the Eucharist, because that
is the deified flesh. And so the principal christology is
the same for the principle of the Eucharist. That's only
possible if you have the essenceentary distinction. And in the
Tomistic or the Roman Catholic scheme, I mean, who knows,
Like I've never really gotten a good answer. There is
a really long discussion in uh, who's the who's the
tomast Lagron Labron, excuse me about this? And he doesn't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean, why would't we just say what Cyril and
the fourth councils and the third Council office to say,
you're eating the defied flesh the gone man. Okay, well,
deified isn't a creative thing. And if you read Paula
MOS's debate with the Barlem, the whole debate shifts towards
what we partake of, what we're participating in. And if
the argument holds that you're partaking of uncreated raise, uncreated glory,
then what's in the eu charus can't be just another creature.
Speaker 1: How much? How much time do you have? By the way,
I didn't ask before we started.
Speaker 2: Let's see what I've got? Some more time?
Speaker 1: Okay, like thirty or an hour?
Speaker 2: Well, what do you How long do you usually go?
Speaker 1: I usually go two hours?
Speaker 2: Okay, how long we've been going?
Speaker 1: Uh, we probably have an hour left if you let's see,
Uh we did that one. I'm an inquirer of my nearest.
My nearest parish has pews in an organ deal breaker
seems like a small thing indicative of a larger attitude
of modernists. Has an organ?
Speaker 2: I mean it could be. I don't about modernism, except
that a lot of times those kinds of it sounds
like a Greek Orthodox church. Like a lot of times
those churches are more so. I mean, they may be modernists,
but they a lot of times have like Roman Catholic influence.
So I would just say, judge it. I'm not saying
those things don't ma matter, but judge it. More so
on like, does the priests say heretical stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wi Fi gospel. Good to see you man, Praise
God for this collab. God bless you both. Hey, dude,
become Orthodox. Dude, it's ending an Antiochian parish, but I'm
thinking about moving given the current EP Should I consider
a Greek parish? Why or why not?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Again, I wouldn't judge the parishes on the basis
of what's happening at that level, because again, there's many,
many great parishes everywhere, So don't worry about the big
I mean, it matters what's happening at the big geopolitical level,
but that doesn't matter so much for like your own
parish unless you begin to notice specific In other words,
don't judge it on that. Just go and just see
for yourself. That's that's the main issue. Yeah. We have
had people though that have left some Greek churches for
Russian churches eventually, so just be prepared that you might have.
Speaker 1: To, right you. I mean, I can speak about this
without being too scandalizing. Some of the advice that I
got was ask if there's if there's a particular scandal
that you're concerned about. I mean, ask the priest how
he feels about it without giving your opinion, and then
that'll basically tell you what you need to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good way to put.
Speaker 1: Uh, howdy, I'm an inquirer and a jeweler. Would it
be okay for a non Orthodox to make and produce
Eastern Orthodox style jewelry?
Speaker 2: Well, if you're an inquirer, it sounds like you're moving
that direction. But I mean I would I would maybe
wait till you're you are Orthodox before trying to cash
in on it. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure. I'm
just taking a joke, but I mean I think it
might come off as like grifty if you're like because
I think there was a dude a while back who, like,
he wasn't Orthodox, but he started selling Orthodox prayer rugs
and prayer ropes and it's like, but you're not Orthodox,
so he's just you know, I mean, I'm not judging
you forever wins, but you know, maybe just give it
some time before you do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just become Orthodox, right now, dude, That'll be that
would be the answer. Can you tell my mother in
law that pigeon shouldn't have blue hair?
Speaker 2: Yes, mother in law, they do not have blue hair.
How's that there?
Speaker 1: You go go ahead and click that, man, Jay, can
you get cleave his own CGI bookshelf?
Speaker 2: Nice?
Speaker 1: Actually I want to move Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It'll only have comment, It'll only have mango on it.
Speaker 1: That'd be terrible, dude. Yeah, I have I have a
couple of overflowing bookshelves in the living room. I want
to move them into this office space. I just got to, like,
I have a bunch of boxes right behind this desk,
So I got to move them all out and then
move the stuff around. So it's coming along. It's coming along, man.
So eventually I'll have the bookshelves behind me and I
can look smart and I can like my Scooby Doo
book and say like.
Speaker 2: They're all cardboard, they're not real books. It's just it's
not they think it's that's actually just a set piece
from a movie.
Speaker 1: It's just a bunch of cereal boxes in there. That'd
be funny. As an ex Baptist, Jay, how are you
able to get comfortable with the marriology and icon veneration
of Eastern Orthodoxy? This keeps me from trying Orthodoxy.
Speaker 2: I mean, well I wasn't really I didn't go from
Baptist to Roman Catholic. I went from Baptist to Calvinists,
so I had kind of a phases of you know,
I mean, I think for a lot of Baptists, especially
when I was a Reform Baptist, he's like James White.
And then the thing that kind of clicked was Covenant theology,
and then you get into infant baptism. So once you've
accepted infant baptism, you're kind of moving in the direction
of Sacramentoism, even if you don't want to admit it.
And so I remember the first time that I saw
a relic when I visited my local Roman Colloy church.
We had a relic of Saint Jerome and they took
me in there, and it did weird me out. The
first time I'd ever seen one. I was like, I
don't know about this. I mean, but I think over time,
like you get really comfortable with you know, if you
you know, go watch the documentary that my buddy Lewis
made Christian Worshman the Old Testament, because you really see
the continuity with the way that you know, the ancient
hebrew people who were the proto Christians, the way that
they viewed Holy things and objects. I really I just
came to realize that my Calvinist anti matter, anti image
position was gnostic. It really wasn't even an ancient Hebrew
position because they weren't iconoclass. So I guess the more
that I was around it, the more it kind of
made sense. I also remember, I mean, I would recommend
this book even though he's a Roman Catholic, because you
kind of get the idea that, like if you remarriage
supper with a lamb by Scott Hahn, I mean, he
has a good point about preterism at the beginning too.
The Book of Revelation is a liturgy, and once I
understood the Book of Revelation as a liturgical service, it's
full of imagery. It's full of vestiments and elders and
incense and you know, angels and all this imagery that
it just made no sense that God's using all this
imagery but he's against imagery. It's just silly, right.
Speaker 1: Millstash, Hey, fellas, I've been waiting for the both of
you to speak with each other. There's a couple of
questions I wanted to ask, but I felt it necessary
to accompany the questions with my story a conversion is that. Okay,
he sent me like a couple of things. I saved them.
But your comments are like broken up into like a
million pieces. So I'm gonna pull up what I saw.
There's one one big question here you said, hold on,
give me one second. Sorry dude, Okay, I'm gonna pull
up here. I'm gonna pull up the other thing because
you sent like a million questions in here, I'll pull
up the one I was. I was raised in a
Calvary chapel in southern California. Like many others, I joined
Marine Corps. I joined the Marine Corps and ended up
falling away from the Lord. I never became an atheist, however,
so I guess you're agnostic. I met my wife overseas
in Kazakhstan, so she's Muslim. So my first question as
a Catechuman, how can I show her Christ? How can
I show her orthodoxy? Understand it may be detrimental to
my marriage if I quote unquote debate with her. So
what do I do?
Speaker 2: Well? I mean, you know, women don't respond to theological
argumentation the same as dudes, so you might not have
the most success by kind of arguing, but it can
be helpful to raise issues that are pretty big, like
the Islamic dilemma or you know, Mohammed having child brides.
I mean, that's that's actually the thing that most Muslims
leave Islam over, is actually the Mohammed child bride issue.
When you know, I'm always over here trying to think
about Allah's attributes and all that. Like, they don't really
leave Islam because of that kind of stuff. Usually sometimes
they do, but so you might want to focus on
kind of those more glaring problems. Fart Hadith's I mean,
this kind of silly stuff like that, as of Satan farts,
which he doesn't have gut. He doesn't have a human gut,
so I don't know how you would fart. But I
mean it's just kind of like there's these really weird
things that could probably plant maybe some seeds of doubt.
But you know, it just depends on whether she's interested
in that kind of stuff or not. So you might
want to just kind of invite her to church, get
her to watch the Icon documentary something like that.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Something that Father John Whiteford said, with women oftentimes it's community.
Speaker 2: So I was gonna say people at church, right, community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're able. If you know, like people who
I don't know their wives go to the church you're
looking into attending, maybe get together with them. Because what
I did, you know, because from my background, I was
an associate pastor at a Protestant church. So you know,
we were super well connected. We had good friends. My
wife had all their girlfriends there. She was attended women's groups,
and you know, we're super plugged in. So the idea
of moving from you know, one place to another one
she knows nobody is daunting for anyone, you know. So
I was very I was very lucky. I met up
with Christian Mario actually, and you know, we got to
hang out and chat and had lunch after service, you know,
with him and his girlfriend. So it was like, oh,
these are like normal people, like, oh I've got friends here,
you know, Oh cool, I want to gohea and hang
out with them kind of deals. So that might be
helpful about.
Speaker 2: Your wife as saying like, how does she respond to
your orthodox.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean on board now at first
obviously some pushback for sure, Uh, you know, a couple
not not for very long though. The way that I'm
very blessed to have the wife that I have because
she just kind of trusts me, you know what I mean,
Like I've I've I've guided us through you know, crazy
waters in the past, so she just kind of trusts
my judgment. Uh. But also I think the key is
I've got a good kind of sense of when not
to push an issue. So the days she's maybe a
little more in her feelings or something, I'm not going
to push the issue. I'm just gonna go do the
dishes or something.
Speaker 2: No, when I said your transition, I meant your gender transition.
Oh how does she handle that?
Speaker 1: And I'm just sure that's funny? Uh No, but she's
uh in all, in all seriousness, now she's us she's
awesome with that. Let's see, Oh you sent in hold On,
you sent them something else. Let me get to your
thing real quick. Oh you were saying, gosh, I can't
find your other comment. But this guy said his uh,
his daughter had passed away, so I guess he was saying.
What I found very comforting was that the Orthodox celebrate
the Martyr Paris on my birthday, patron saint of unbaptized babies.
My second question directed at Jay, can I hold on
to that comfort that my daughter may be in heaven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in the Orthoury Church, we don't know
anybody's destiny, and there's prayers for commending the non orthodox
to God, so you know, we leave that up to God.
Speaker 1: All right, let me get back up these questions here.
What's the date for when you'll be on Ruslan show?
Are you going back on Ruslan show?
Speaker 2: Now that I'm where? I mean, I was on Ruslan's
show a few months ago. Maybe they didn't know I
was on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Could the burning bush be an energetic manifestation of
the Father?
Speaker 2: I know, I think all the church fathers are in
the scripture is very clear that that's the Son. You know,
I think Jesus identifies himself as the one speaking. If
you read Exos three and then twenty three, the voice
that's speaking out of the bush is identified as the
same angel presence in chapter twenty three, and that's where
God says, I will put my name in this angel
that will go before you. So it's the same voice
speaking out of the burning bush. And when I mentioned
an energetic menifestation proper to the Father, I just referenced
the case of where you know, the Father says this
is my beloved son, you know, clearly, that's at the
Baptism of Christ, at Theophany, that's the Father speaking clearly
in the tongues of fire. At Pentecost, that's the Holy Spirit.
But we don't have any incarnation of the Father or
the Holy Spirit. We have these manifestations, which the Icon Council,
the Moscow Icon councils say are the energetic manifestations proper
to those persons, but they are not the hypostaces themselves incarnate.
And really they're just trying to guard against the idea
that the Roman Catholics were pushing that you could have
this old man Jesus next to an old man God,
the Father next to Jesus, and the Holy Spirit kind
of shooting out between them, which is philly oquay. So
they're really just trying to guard again, it's that stuff
with weird kind of you know, and they kind of
call it pagan too, right, Like God, the Father isn't
an old man, he didn't become incarnate, he doesn't have
a body. Jesus says, no one has seen the Father
at any time, so it's really not proper to have
that kind of imagery. But I think that pretty clearly. No,
the all, all of the Theophanic manifestations in the Old Testament,
even though they're trinitarian, because anytime one person of the
trinities there the other the other two are as well,
but they have unique roles and it is not the
Father's role to be incarnate, hence it is the son.
Speaker 1: Can you quickly define personhood? I can't conceptualize the Holy
Spirit as a person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Orthodox theology usually with it, whether it's singular
or polemis or any earlier church fathers. Hypostasis is persona
or subject or agent, so it refers to the one
who does the action. So if you think about the
question of what what refers to the nature, then the
question of who who refers to the person. So in orthodoxeology,
the fundamental number one thing is the distinction between nature
and person. So all Trinitarian theology is based on this
nature person distinction. We Lossie, My allergies are going crazy
in Texas, Dude, it's awful. So you've got this thinction
between nature and person. That's also necessary for human anthropology,
distinguish between I'm the person, Jay, You're the person, Bob,
we're unique instantiated individual persons, subjects, or agents. But we
have the same nature. We both share human nature. So
nature is human. Nature is universal, but it's instantiated in
the specific subjects or agents that have that nature. And so,
but a person is more than just an instance of
a nature. It's the actual subject, the who, the doer.
And so in terms of the trend, there are three
Who's right, there are three subjects or agents with one nature.
So the Holy Spirit is a person because if you
read John fourteen fifteen sixteen, you'll notice that he is
doing the same things that the Father and the Sun
are doing. That tells you he's a person.
Speaker 1: When you when you talk about something serious and I
just read the chat and I see something funny, I
try not to bust out laughing in the middle.
Speaker 2: I know I do the same thing. Dude.
Speaker 1: Why is the channel called antique cleavage?
Speaker 2: I don't know what it's because I got it right here.
Don't go on a little bit of this right here.
That's what this is all about.
Speaker 1: This is that's what that's actually what the channel's about.
This isn't a Q and A.
Speaker 2: It's just now this is I'm actually in the process
of transitioning. Like I mentioned, earlier, and so here's cleavage
to antiquity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thanks, I got to ask my wife what she thinks
about your transition.
Speaker 2: Your wife might get guilty, guilty of these double d's
over here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, man, Hey, J and Ben, what
are the best arguments for the invocation of the Saints
being biblical and not necromancy, idolatry, etc.
Speaker 2: Etc. There's a Protestant dude. What's that guy's name? He
always calls in. We had some kind of debate a
while back. He's the Hispanic dude that's always arguing with
Sam Schuman. I can't remember that guy's name, but we
ended up having like a really good, like ten or
fifteen minute discussion on this, and it got clipped. I
just can't think of that guy's name. But the best
argument is that I think Revelation five through nine, as
we said earlier, if you come to that text with
the understanding that it is kind of a heavenly liturgical
worship service, you'll come away with the idea that John
is interacting with and communicating with the saints in heaven,
the saints in heaven under the altar, the martyrs, et cetera.
They're praying for and they're praying for also in pregatory
vengeance on earth. They're praying for the saints on the earth.
You have angels offering the prayers of the saints on
earth in you know, as the as as if it
was incense. And so no, it's not contradictory. In fact,
some of the Jewish sects believe that there are intercess
free prayers. The Book of Amos, Amos intercedes for Israel,
and God listens to Amos's prayer and he says, if
you had not prayed, Amos, I would have destroyed Israel.
But you prayed, you interceded. And so the argument is
just simply, well, if Amos is interceding as a living
sinful man on earth, then the saints who have been
purified in heaven praying, how much more effective are their prayers?
And David in the Psalms as well, speaks to the angels.
And remember the psalms are liturgical. I think a lot
of Protestants and when I was just sweat, when I
was Protestant, I didn't think about these texts as liturgical text.
That was just foreign to me. I just thought, oh,
the Bible is this you know Holy guide Book and
David's psalms are meant to be temple liturgy songs, right,
and in that context, he's speaking to angels in the liturgy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I talked about it briefly too in the in the
video I did with Orthodox Ethos when I was on
that show. And one of the things that kind of
convinced me was I had a conversation with an Anglican
priest we're talking about where we were talking about where
Protestants and Orthodox and Roman Catholics agree as far as
intercession of the saints. We're trying to get to like
the roots the root disagreement, and it's okay, Well, we
agree that they're alive. The Saints are alive in heaven
because God has got living, not the dead. They're praying
for us. That's, you know, Revelation. I believe Revelation eight
is the prayers of the saints report out so on
and so forth, so we know they're alive and they're
praying in heaven. That the contention is that we feel,
or we felt I guess I felt as a Protestant
at that time, the disagreement would be that we shouldn't
ask the saints to pray for us because prayer should
be directed to God only. The way that I kind
of got around that and this is like a people
people misunderstood this when I said this in the in
the video. This isn't normative. This is kind of a
loophole if you are on the fence and maybe you
don't know, like you're you're uncomfortable with it is just
to get you to try at one time, which is
what I did. And look at me now, but ask
God to ask the theotokos to pray for you, Like
if you're uncomfortable, you could do that. I mean that's
what the Anglican priest said to me. He was like,
that's what That's why I asked God to ask the
theotokos to pray. And I'm thinking about that in the moment.
I'm like, that sounds kind of dumb. But you know what,
I couldn't think of anything wrong with that at all.
Uh So I did. And uh I mean it's kind
of like a little little gateway there for you to,
I guess, open yourself up to that practice. Because no
Protestant could point me out anything wrong with asking God
did do that. They might say it's silly, right, But
look at James. The Book of James says that the
prayers of the righteous avail off much. So why wouldn't
you want the Mother of God to be interceding on
your behalf before God?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think Also, let's keep in mind what necromancy
and all that is. That is you trying to get
forbidden information, secret information from a spirit that is not
what's happening in terms of liturgical prayer and asking for
other people to pray for you. There is no special
gnosis that the Saint comes and gives you some divination
or something like that. So it's not necromancy. When they
ask Jesus, you know, the Pharisees asked, Jesus says, and
John he says, God is not the God of the dead.
He's got a living So they live to God, and
so they are not the dead, they are alive to God.
Speaker 1: I just want to say thanks for the content recently
found both of you and have been so impressed and grateful. Hey,
thanks man, appreciate it. Hey guys, big fan for Jay.
Do you think there are other philosophical arguments for God
that rank like tag such as contingency argument argument God
bless you.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think any of them are very good.
I mean, you can reformulate most of the cloud arguments
to be a kind of transcendental argument to make them better.
But the problem is not whether there's causation or whether
there's t lo's or something like that. It's just that
depending upon the atheists or the how cunning or smart
the atheist is that you're talking to, they're going to
just question the things that the contingency argument assumes. So,
I mean it might be it might work to argue
that way with like your coworker or something like that.
But if you encounter an intelligent atheist professor and you
try to use a contingency argument, he's going to shoot
it down right away. So you need be prepared for
the types of critiques that skeptical atheists professors are going
to use for those kinds of arguments. Even if they
work pragmatically to convert a coworker or something like that,
he's not a sophisticated philosophy dork. I still think we
should strive to have, you know, the stronger arguments. So no,
I would not use the contingency argument unless I've reformulated it.
As a transcendental version of that kind of an argument,
where like like I like, let's say causation, right, Like,
I'm not going to make a cosmological argument, but I'll say,
if you don't have the principle of causation as a presupposition,
then knowledge and the world is impossible.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We were just using tag today, me, Mario and
Luigi when an atheist called into Mario's livestream. I was
sitting there. I was I was multitasking, I was lifting
weights and and talking to atheists. That's kind of cool
actually fun fact, my my sister, who was an atheist,
became a Christian after hearing me run TAG, which I
learned from your channel. By the way, Jay On her
now husband, who's her boyfriend at the time. So she
overheard that argument and I was running tag. I got
him to get to the point where I was like, dude,
can you even tell me if the watermelon on the
table exists through your paradigm? And he's like no, okay.
MYS was like, all right, this is stupid. I can't
be an atheist anymore. So it's just kind of to
point out the ridiculousness of that it is.
Speaker 2: And I mean When you say that, people be like,
what do you mean is does the watermelon exist? It's
so ridiculous. It's not because if you read somebody like
Bertrand Russell, I mean in Scientific Outlook, he admits in
the first several chapters, he's like, modern science and skepticism
has gotten us to this point where we can't even
know or prove that there is an external world. Yeah,
he says, there is no proof for it. We don't know.
We just have to act like there is one. You
can't prove it though. So in other words, the top
atheist admit that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so did the guy that called in in that livestream.
He was like, oh yeah, I'm a radical skeptic. I
don't know anything. Okay, great words the debate.
Speaker 2: Exactly how are we going to use logic to debate
when you don't know that there is such a thing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: You guys should tag team Islam, Jay and Cleeve to
Antiquity versus Jake the Muscle Metaphysician and Trent Direrty. Trent's
Trent's Trench is retired. You won't see any more videos
from Trent, So no Trent Trent Doherty, the Roman Catholic guy. Yeah,
he's done. He's not he's not doing any more stuff
after after the debate that you had, and then I
debated him shortly after that, he's not coming back. I
mean unless he changes his mind. But that was the
last word, was he's done.
Speaker 2: Well. He didn't do too well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't I don't blame him. Pray for
that guy, Pray that he becomes Orthodox. There about that
serious question, if did I get he he wants to
know if you're willing to debate the true Orthodox guy, nft.
Speaker 2: I've been. They've been pushing that for years. I'm not issued.
Speaker 1: Temple art. My dad went to high school with Mike
Tate from DC Talk, was friends with those guys before
and during their blow up. Cool tuning in from Jordanville,
curious to hear Ben's current take on the Biblical canons
affirmed at Trulla from y'all's origin. I wasn't talking about
the Bible canon at the end that debate. We were
talking about Yeah, so I don't know what you're what
you mean, I will be doing so for those of
you that are interested, I will be doing like debunk
myself streams so I'm gonna go back and pull up
my my old arguments, and I'll be watching through my
videos and critiquing my arguments. I'm gonna have I forget
the name of that Lutheran pastor I've had on my
show a couple of times, Josh Shuoping, the guy that
was he was a former Orthodox priest. I had him
on my show twice, and some of those arguments really
didn't sit well with me even then, So I was like,
I think that's probably gonna be the first one I
go back and debunk, because I get a lot of
people that will message me and say they were actually
convinced by some of those and I don't know. For me,
I think they're like, there's glaring holes in a lot
of those arguments, so those need to be addressed. First,
not to brag. I open for skillet at Pillar at
two fests. Awesome, dude, nice question, Cleeve. If you adopted
a prayer rule, Jay, what does your prayer rule look like?
And how often do you confess? Also, what's your Social
Security number? What's your last one?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, I'm not going to answer that. Because I
do have a spiritual father. You can come meet him
if you come to the conference, but I'm not going
to tell you all my personal stuff.
Speaker 1: For one, I'm willing to become Orthodox, But what if
your parents won't allow you to become one and you
live far from the church.
Speaker 2: Usually priests will counsel you that you can kind of
privately in an interior way of the Orthodox because you
are under your parents. And then once you're eighteen, you
can make your own decision and you can move near
one or you know, do what you want. So that's
usually what priest wills say.
Speaker 1: Apostolic Christianity is fake. What does the church say about
the Church of the East and Rome evangelizing a good
chunk of the world.
Speaker 2: First, I guess you could say that they prepare the
way for the Orthodox Church. I mean, we're not going
to make a blanket condemnation that everybody's automatically damned because
it was heterodox you know, evangelization. But also we will
just be honest and forth right about what's very lacking
and a lot of that catechisis and approach. For example,
think about you know, Roman Catholics love to tell the numbers,
the numbers, the numbers, but a lot of those converts
in Latin and South America. I mean they practice condomble a,
they practice santaria. The notion of conversion is very very loose.
It's it's very tied up with the you know, the
indigenous pagan traditions. And I don't mean picking in a
baptizing Christianity type of way, but no like actual you know,
forbidden practices type of stuff. So it's like you can
say that, yeah, we got all the numbers, but the
numbers don't matter if people aren't getting good catechises. In fact,
it might even make it worse. I'm not saying that
Mexican human sacrifice should should have remained and that the
Spanish shouldn't have you know, Christianized you know Mexico or whatever.
But I'm saying when you have bad catechises a lot
of times that can be even worse than no catequiss
So you know, there's no easy answers to that. But
I think this even if you're a Roman Catholic or
you were an Apostolic Christianity person, I mean, the tables
could be turned. The same question could be asked, like
what why why did Rome have a problem with the
yeast splitting for a thousand years, but now after Vatican
Two where two lungs of the same church, and rat
Singer says that the East maintained the faith without the papacy.
So it's a it's just really kind of a a
difficult question for anybody.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, I was talking about this with dph on
his show, and he was he was telling me some
of the uh, I guess into the world claims have
to do with the Orthodox the actual Gospel getting out
to all these nations. So I guess there was some
saint prophecy that was talking about the Orthodox Gospel has
to reach all of the nations because of the true Gospel,
and then then you'll see, h.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that being the case. I don't
have any hard commitments on that. I would probably tend
towards that position. I've always still favored an optimistic awmill
or post millennial type position, so I've never I've never
been like this sort of pessimistic type of mind, but
that could be the case. I'm also not really super
deep into the Elder Saint prophet to see stuff. I'm
not opposed to it, it's just I don't really get
into that too much.
Speaker 1: Clarification on that super chat there. I thought you had
made an argument at one point Trulau accepted multiple biblical canons. Yeah, yeah,
I did. I mean it's it does you read the
Council of Trula, It accepts multiple different regional councils, so
that wasn't in our debate though.
Speaker 2: I think the canon, though it specified the specification is
that it's Carthage, and Carthage has basically the same canon
as what the Roman decision that the Council of Rome
under Damasis has, so Carthage and around the same time
as Council Rome around the year four hundred. I think
it's Trelo Mensche specifically, which Carthage they're referring to. I
don't remember which one it is. I'll talk there's a
bunch of Carthage, but the one that's about the canon
is pretty much the same as the Latin canon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was talking about a video I did a
while back that was talking about the orth Cannon, and
I was mentioning that it that exact point, it matches
the Latin canon, not necessarily what the Orthodox have, but
you can look at the the Confession of Dycytheus, which
will clarify as well. I guess the only asterisk there
would be it doesn't specify the number of Maccabees. It
just says the Maccabees. So uh, but you can you
can point to that which which kind of works in
our favor too, with the with the additional Maccabees and
the Georgian cannon too. So let's see. Good question, dude.
But I'll be again. I'll be doing videos going back
at debunking my old arguments, so stay tuned for that.
I'm not asking this to be a smart ass. I'm
an inquirer to Eastern Orthodox and I'm struggling with a
letter from Ucbius to Constantine's sister. What bothers me? He
doesn't clarify the difference between the statues he took from
it took and from icon I don't understand that last
part of your question, dude.
Speaker 2: I think some of those people will refer to this
and they think that I mean, I could be wrong.
Maybe the it's not what he means. But sometimes this
argument is brought up if I recall as an argument
against icons, but I think he's talking about like pagan statues,
and so sometimes iconoclass take those comments where like Origin
or Eusebius is saying, and we remove the unholy images
and with this so that but in the context they're
actually talking about like pagan gods and you know, like statues,
if heroes being worshiped. They're not actually talking about the
types of things using the liturgy. But that may not
be what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Tyler big super chatty, thank you so much.
I converted last year. I noticed clergy off and highlight
seminary credentials, yet the fathers and saints emphasized monastic hes,
hechasm and illumination of the news. A theologist one who
praise has orthodoxy drifted towards scholasticism today.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could probably lodge that criticism with areas
of the West, but I don't think it's necessarily wrong
to have the qualification of the criteria. For example, Saint
Photius was widely known as the most learned man of Bysantheum.
I mean, he probably wasn't touting that, But it's also
part of just the culture today that people list their
qualifications for speaking on subjects. So I wouldn't necessarily link
having your PhD and your title or something as necessarily
meaning that they're not spiritual. I think that would be
a false either or but I think separate from the titles, Yeah,
I think everybody in the West has been infected with
enlightenment and scholastic tendencies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were just talking about this on I guess the
Ancient Faith Radio thing. I popped in for like a second.
I normally not a huge fan or I haven't really
watched it too much, but they were saying there was
a crisis with the convert surge and what they were
thinking about. They were kind of brainstorming solutions to it,
and they were saying in the in the American context,
it's very unique because they will force people want to
become priests, to travel and go to seminary at specific locations,
a lot them move. So you're saying maybe adopting the
model that is present already in the East, which is
like more of an apprenticeship, like you're you're kind of learning. Yeah,
so that's what they were talking about on that show.
I saw it pop back up. That's what I was
looking at here on my phone here Ortho Christian Orthodox Christianity,
that news outlet or whatever they were talking about. It's
like huge crisis Orthodox Church, like, you know, they don't
have enough priests, so maybe that might be one model
they moved to. Ye who knows. Question inquirer, why do
Orthodox give incense to saints and not just God? And
why is a sceticism like someone in the desert who
dies in a couple of years considered a positive.
Speaker 2: What the earth one? I would say again, read Revelation
five or nine, and you'll see the significance of the incense.
And even though the incense is in front of an
icon of the saint, the significance is that the saint
is praying and the prayers are going up to God,
because that's what's in the Book of Revelation, particularly chapters
five or nine. But I don't know what you're talking about.
A person who is going to intentionally die in two years.
Most people are not called to a aramatic, radical ascetic existence.
Some people are called to that. And you know, you
have this tradition of the fools for God. So but
I mean that's again, you know, in the Orthodox world,
you're not going into this to do I'm going into
this because I'm going to be the desert ascetic. You're
going into it with a spiritual father who's going to
counsel you. And how many people end up being hermits?
Not many? Okay, so not everyone is called to that
or nor is that the appropriate thing for them. So
God will put you in the situation that you need
to be in at the right time if you obey God,
so you don't have to worry about Oh, you know,
I'm joining a cult where they're gonna like brainwash me
and I'll be dying in a desert in two years.
Speaker 1: Yeah that, yeah, you're thinking of You're thinking of the
Roman Catholic saints like Saint Catherine of Siana who basically
starved herself to death, you know that kind of thing.
I was talking about this with a body of mine
and he was saying, the modern like the ones that
were canonized post Vatican two, are always have the craziest backstories.
You're saying, they're like ripoffs of Orthodox saints, but like
full of prelst. It's like that the early life or
whatever their life story is kind of like was, you know,
received a vision, was given a foreskin ring or something,
and then starving stars to death was considered a heretic
and then guess what they were they're canonized, you know,
woo because somebody was like a fan of them because
they were Yeah, it's crazy that my.
Speaker 2: Video on histrionic women's Saints is it's exactly what you're
talking about. But I think it's very different the Orthodox shirts.
You don't have this sort of like the asceticism is
not an end in itself. Right in Roman Catholic world
penance you're doing these things for penance, so you're trying
to like pay off the temp world debt for the
sins through these excruciating things. And you know, they had
the mistranslation from Jerome that you mortify the body, which
actually was talking about repentance changing the mind. It's not
saying you like literally punish yourself as if that sort
of pays off God. So I think certain things contributed
to this extreme in the Romancalolic world. A lot of
that's taking place in the Middle Ages. That's too deep
to go into right now, But they really just lost
the goodness of the body. In the Roman Catholic world,
the wholeness of man, focusing on the intellect, and because
they don't have the notion of the news. So in
Orthodoxy there's body, mind, spirit or heart and remo. Catholic
Church doesn't have that. It just has soul body, and
the soul is really the intellect.
Speaker 1: How familiar is j with Metropolitan Saba? What are his thoughts?
I admire what I know, but I don't know much.
Speaker 2: I don't know. People ask me all the time, what
do you think about Bishop so and so? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Yeah, maybe he'll come to the conference where we
can hang out and get to know. Uh. You speak
often of the Office of the Keys and how the
Catholics interpret them as a jurisdiction, preaching, et cetera. What's
the Catholic source for this?
Speaker 2: I guess I mean that's pretty I mean, off the
top of my head, I'm not sure, but I don't
think that's too controversial. If you look up just probably
the Catholic Encyclopedia or any any standard Roman Catholic theological
theology manual will tell you that the office of the
Keys is the those three things.
Speaker 1: It is. It is in the Catholic Encyclopedia. I had
the same question after your debate, and I looked it up.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, it's something I learned like a long
time ago, when I was a realman. Catholic, and I
don't remember the exact sort, but it's pretty easy to
find topics like that. Yeah, what's up.
Speaker 1: Mario, Thanks for thanks, Thanks for the two bucks man,
appreciate you. Uh, Alex, he's got a good Orthodox channel there.
He's an Orthodox lawyer and he does apologetics. Now, Uh,
Jay is the star of rim Fan in Act seven?
The modern Star of David. Seems like Saint Stephen accuses
the Sanhedrin of literally practicing occultism. How is this connected,
if at all, the demonic influence in geopolitics. Thanks?
Speaker 2: This is a good question. I don't exactly know the
answer to. I've heard this. Uh yeah, I think it's
specifically in the septuagen I think the Maserati text doesn't
say star rem Fan. I don't know if we exactly
know what the star room Fan is. Uh. It could
be the six pointed hexagonal, you know star, And there
could be this sort of you know, tumeltic tradition that
resurfaces at the time of whenever, you know, the rabbi
has decided to use that symbol. I honestly, I mean
familiar with these theories, I just honestly don't know. I
wouldn't be surprised if it has the same significance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for the people in chat to laugh, but carey
thirty eight forty nine, So if you want to laugh,
go look.
Speaker 2: At that for hoodie. So those are awesome.
Speaker 1: Did you see Tim Gordon crash out over annulments on X.
Speaker 2: I did not. In fact, I kind of had to
not pay attention to I don't want to get too
triggered and constantly argue with him. So, I mean we
chat on we chat on d MS and and like
on cell text more than anything on Twitter, because I
don't want to get I'll just argue. I'm too spurgy
about that. I'll just keep arguing. So I just try
to avoid it. But I don't know what he said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I try not to argue in text on like
ever because it's just annoying. I take too much of
my time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna have to go pretty soon. I've got
something I gotta get to pretty.
Speaker 1: Quick here, sure, no worry. How much time you got
like five minutes, A couple minutes, okay, all right, let
me get to a couple So, no, don't send any
more super chats. I'm gonna get to a couple that
are that are good questions.
Speaker 2: Let's see.
Speaker 3: Um, okay, hold on, let's see whatever.
Speaker 1: Prog bull can a liberal be Christian? That's an easy question.
Speaker 2: No, I mean I assume you mean like pro abortion
and like obviously those things are fundamentally incompatible with basic
Christian principles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm almost done with Saint Maximus. Two hundred chapters
on theology, not well formed on Eastern philosophy.
Speaker 2: Take this phone call. Can you hold on a second?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Let's see if there's anything in here that
I can answer. Okay, this is this guy's This guy's
a Luther and he always pops up in my chat.
He's fun. Dude. Uh Jay, what's your workout regimen? Why
has been lifting weights but still fat?
Speaker 2: Dude?
Speaker 1: It's over. It's over, man. I gotta, I gotta, I
gotta enter into my cut season. You know, I got
the I got the gains. I do have to trim
down a little bit though. I started intermittent fasting. I
was doing keto for a while, and you know, I
did jiu jitsu and stuff for cardio. But uh, I'm
hoping I'm hoping that intermittent fasting plus keto combo. It's
gonna really shred down, shred down the uh shred down
the weight there. But I want to keep I don't
want to like, I don't want to diet and like
lose my gains though you know I have like noodle
alarms or something that'd be anoint Uh. You said arguments
from the Biblical canon against Protestants aren't convincing to you. Why, Jay,
do you think Cleaves reasoning is fair? Well, we kind
of talked about it earlier where I was talking about
the Now people get upset when I talk about this
because they're like, oh, no, the canon conundrum converted me.
So this makes retarded or something. You know, I don't
think that's the case. If you think it's a good argument,
go ahead.
Speaker 2: And use it.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying there are holes in the argument that
you could poke, and I have poked holes in the
argument when I did debates with Granted he's not the
best debater, but he's a nice enough guy. What was
his name, Cameron Riiker, that Catholic guy. If you want
to go look at some of the arguments I put
forth on that, it was there. But I mean I
always held to a two tier view so some people
get confused and they think the argument is for a
strict sixty six canon. That wasn't really the argument. The
argument is for a two tier view and that the
Roman Catholic modern view is incorrect because they hold them
all to the same level. They don't have any They
call them Dutero canonical, but it's because the Deutero canon
second in acceptance, not because they hold any kind of distinction.
There a good question. Let's see what else is there?
What rolls be Christians? No? Uh?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Is that? The is that? The is that the stoning
the monkey's hidith? Where there is like I saw a
she monkey committing adultery, so I joined in and stoning
stoning the she monkey. Yeah, that's funny. I sent that
to a buddy of mine when he first became a Christian.
Let's see any other any other ones that I could
possibly answer? Probably not well, if you guys, I guess
while we're waiting on Jada comeback, because the rest of
these questions are for j specifically, If you guys want to, uh,
please re ask my question when Jada's back. What's your oh?
Because he left mid Yeah? Sure, no worries, dude, okay, welcome, welcome,
all right. Uh do you want to do you want
to do like two more questions and wrap up here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we can do that. So big day tomorrow, guys.
No pray for what'll be going on with Gerald from Crowder,
So he's interested in orthodoxy. We'll be talking about all
that tomorrow. So I'm just trying to get all that situated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll be cool man. Yeah we can. Well, if
you want to just finish answering this one, we can
wrap up after that, all right. He says this was
the Saint Maximus two hundred chapters on theology. Doesn't understand
the term gnosissism in.
Speaker 2: There, Well, yeah, I mean the a gnostic is just
one who has knowledge, right, So he's not using it
in the sense of the heresy of the early Church.
He's just talking about the person who has true knowledge
or the saint. That's all he means.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right. Cool. Well, hey man, thank you so
much for coming on the show. This has been awesome.
You know, I'd love to do something again in the future.
These are these are super helpful not only for me,
but also for the inquirers that watch the stream and
stuff like that is anything, Well, you just plugged the
one thing coming up, but what else would you like
to plug before we.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're doing that tomorrow. I don't know when
they're gonna air it. I don't know if it airs
the same day it records or if they have a
delay so that I don't know. But yeah, we'll have
the conference as you guys know, November twenty twenty. First,
you can find those links on my wall or my website.
You can get my books in the shop at Jasonilsons
dot com. We'll be having events in the future. I'm
sure you'll be with us. So glad you're on board,
and glad to look forward to meeting you in a
few weeks. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that'll be awesome. Thanks so much for swinging by,
and thank you all so much for watching. You'll have
a good night, all right later