Speaker 1: Dire wave. The scientific method cannot justify the scientific method.
Speaker 1: Therefore itself is a dogmatic.
Speaker 2: Respre submissions stood stop stop stop stop stop.
Speaker 3: Stop stop stop stop stops stop stop stop stop.
Speaker 2: STA standings standing.
Speaker 3: Assist.
Speaker 2: It's ssssss stop stops its stocks asses.
Speaker 1: The Presenski model of techno crowd model was much more
Speaker 1: interested in incremental slocal babing out approach to bringing the.
Speaker 4: Technocracy into being.
Speaker 1: So they're not going to send the Homeland Security troops
Speaker 1: to round you up and put you in a FEMA camp.
Speaker 1: They'd much rather promote everybody being in mesched.
Speaker 4: Video games, the Disney.
Speaker 1: Gulog, the virtual reality gulog, all this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: is in much better FEMA camp in your home. They
Speaker 1: don't need the FEMA camp.
Speaker 4: It's it's too messy, it's a big ordeal, and it's
Speaker 4: all the nonsense of all.
Speaker 1: The patriot crap on the radio. That's not gonna happen.
Speaker 4: They don't need to the shadow of the global government
Speaker 4: is already here, and as we said, it's in the
Speaker 4: latter stages of the mopping up process.
Speaker 1: To move it into the next phase ig between two
Speaker 1: ages of the next age. Once you have atheism. There's
Speaker 1: not really any foundation. Anything can come and go.
Speaker 2: Ship no sishlish elish a fish ship, fish ships, ship
Speaker 2: shipsh ash ash ash ash ash lash ships ship ship
Speaker 2: shish ships, the storm of wish ship ships and ashsh
Speaker 2: ash ash ash ash.
Speaker 1: Welcome. I'm a little bit late, so it's not Snack's fault,
Speaker 1: it's my fault.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's see. I gotta move.
Speaker 4: Me.
Speaker 1: There we go, bathing that light baby, Here we go?
Speaker 1: Here he comes almost, he's almost here? M hm, can
Speaker 1: you hear me?
Speaker 4: Bro?
Speaker 1: Should I rib it to you? Frog man? Can we
Speaker 1: be heard? Everybody here? Is okay? Everybody hear me? I
Speaker 1: don't know if he's used he may not have used
Speaker 1: Scott yet. There we go? Can you hear me? We're
Speaker 1: almost there? Hello?
Speaker 5: Hello? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Perfect? Yes? How you doing man?
Speaker 5: I'm doing all right?
Speaker 1: Can you speak up? A little bit? Is much better?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. We've got our ortho bro from France holding
Speaker 1: it down. He's the French. He's the I was trying
Speaker 1: to come up with something clever. I couldn't. He's the
Speaker 1: master French apologist. How's that? And he joins us tonight
Speaker 1: to cover idols icons iconicalasm. What's up.
Speaker 5: Hello, happy to be here once again, and yet today
Speaker 5: you're going to cover a big topic itys a youte
Speaker 5: history you theological ramifications, iconoclasm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know we've done. By the way, if you're
Speaker 1: new to Snax's material, you can follow him on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I've got his link below. He and I have done
Speaker 1: multiple streams now where we've covered histrionic women, so called
Speaker 1: saints of the Roman Catholic era. We've covered our church,
Speaker 1: We've covered the Jesuits, we've covered christology, the logos. We've
Speaker 1: done multiple high quality streams. So I hope that you
Speaker 1: will go check out all of the previous snack streams.
Speaker 1: I don't know why these messages keep getting deleted. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry about that. I didn't mean to delete that message.
Speaker 1: There not averse. Tonight we're gonna talk about aconoclasm. Sneck
Speaker 1: has done a lot of research in and covering new
Speaker 1: historical material. He's really good at digging out this just
Speaker 1: really obscure historic stuff. He's he's the master of that.
Speaker 1: I have an old essay that I did just kind
Speaker 1: of defending iconography from the Bible, So I'm gonna touch
Speaker 1: on some of that and we're also going to get
Speaker 1: into the heresy and motivations of iconoclasm where it comes from.
Speaker 1: We're gonna try to touch on all of it, but
Speaker 1: on our mind. Viewers, if you have superchats, the new
Speaker 1: way to superchat is through stream Labs, so you can
Speaker 1: ask your questions there through the superchats at stream Labs.
Speaker 1: And we'll go ahead and get started here, snack. Where
Speaker 1: do you want to start? What's what's the good place
Speaker 1: that you think you've uncovered something worth getting to.
Speaker 5: I think we should start from the beginning, from the
Speaker 5: biblical times, and actually we should start in Genesis because
Speaker 5: the first occurrence of the idea of the icon the
Speaker 5: image is interestingly linked to Genesis, to creation and to
Speaker 5: the fact that our God is a creator God. He
Speaker 5: is interacting with matter. And that's why you see the
Speaker 5: first departure between you know, iconoclasm and iconodulia, which is
Speaker 5: what we practice. God being a creator is him interacting
Speaker 5: with matter, so matter cannot be intrinsically bad, as many
Speaker 5: gnostics believe. And that's why you will see that the
Speaker 5: gnostics will actually believe that matter was created by a
Speaker 5: demiurge or something like this, and therefore all matter is bad.
Speaker 5: And that's why the also iconoclastic to an extent that
Speaker 5: in Genesis you can already see interaction in the creation
Speaker 5: of them. Specifically, Adam is in the image of the
Speaker 5: and the rest symblance of God. So it's you already
Speaker 5: have the term I can't present here. So from the beginning,
Speaker 5: a conoclasm wasn't really a thing in you know, Judean
Speaker 5: times and things like this, because because you have this
Speaker 5: idea of God interacting with man, and you can you
Speaker 5: can see it all throughout the Bible. So obviously idols
Speaker 5: are bad. We don't like idols, and idols, according to
Speaker 5: the Bible, are God that are that we made by
Speaker 5: ourselves false gods. It can be ideas, and it can
Speaker 5: also be statues or anything, or oftentimes they are referred
Speaker 5: to as being gods of metal, wood and so on.
Speaker 5: So you have the first distinction. And that's where many
Speaker 5: people would you know, solely take the Bible. We say,
Speaker 5: any graven image, any any painting and so on, it's
Speaker 5: already an insult to God and we cannot we cannot
Speaker 5: allow this. If you look a little bit further in
Speaker 5: the Bible, you will we will see that God actually
Speaker 5: a loose worship in a physical sense. It's a temple
Speaker 5: of David, perfect example. Example, the tabernacle as well, full
Speaker 5: of imagery, full of engravings, sculptures of angels and so on,
Speaker 5: the arc of the cabinet as well. You can see
Speaker 5: the exodus as well, give the brazen snack snake sorry
Speaker 5: a serpent. And you can also see it a bit
Speaker 5: later on in the Book of Daniel, chapter five. So
Speaker 5: you have any any commonsence this before I go a
Speaker 5: little bit further, just.
Speaker 1: To lay out that right away at the beginning, the
Speaker 1: notion of man in the garden. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this is another reason why genesis and creation is important,
Speaker 1: is that we have to maintain the doctrine of man
Speaker 1: as an icon of God. Image. The word is icon.
Speaker 1: Man is an icon of God. That's what it means
Speaker 1: to be made in the image and likeness of God.
Speaker 1: In the teaching the Church fathers, the image is what
Speaker 1: man possesses in terms of his reason and his faculties
Speaker 1: and all that. And then the likeness is the presence
Speaker 1: of the Holy Spirit, the deifying power, the uncreated energies
Speaker 1: that man possessed and then lost when he fell. So
Speaker 1: for the father's image and likeness go together, and when
Speaker 1: Adam fell, he lost the likeness the theosis, so that
Speaker 1: has to be regained, and that's why we are told
Speaker 1: that Christ comes as the re establishment of that icon,
Speaker 1: of that image of man as the type to prototype, right,
Speaker 1: God being the archetype and then Man as prototype. So
Speaker 1: that will be a consistent philosophical train of argumentation that
Speaker 1: Saint John Damascus and St. Theodore the Student will use
Speaker 1: in their defense of iconographic theology. But you're absolutely right
Speaker 1: to go back to the garden that the beginning of
Speaker 1: the rejection of man has made in the image of
Speaker 1: God is actually inspired by Satan, and it's the original
Speaker 1: attack on icons. Absolutely, it's Satanic in its origin. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Correct, So we already established that icons are present, these
Speaker 5: images are not idols, and they're present in the space
Speaker 5: of worship. But now the question is we venerate icons
Speaker 5: and where where can we find that in the Bible?
Speaker 5: And I think Daniel chapter five is an excellent example
Speaker 5: because so it's it's after and as a, it takes
Speaker 5: over Jerusalem and Nebrakatin as A celebrates his victory with
Speaker 5: the vases of the temple, and it desecrates them and
Speaker 5: forces it gets killed a bit later on by God.
Speaker 5: And how does it desecreate the vases? It de secreates
Speaker 5: them by using them in a profane manner and praying
Speaker 5: to false God, idols of wood, metal, and so on
Speaker 5: with it. So we can see that there is a
Speaker 5: veneration that is required of the objects of worship. There
Speaker 5: are the veneration of the object of worship is already
Speaker 5: present in the Old Testament. And we'll see that since
Speaker 5: very early Christian times and at the time of David's Temple,
Speaker 5: icons were depart of the worship. So here you know,
Speaker 5: many pros and for example, will say, oh, veneration adoration,
Speaker 5: there's no such distinction. But here we can see that
Speaker 5: clearly people are killed because it did not venerates a basis.
Speaker 5: Obviously they did not believe the basis. When Gods God
Speaker 5: doesn't mand it to to you know, worship basis, but
Speaker 5: to respect what is part of the liturgy, I hope
Speaker 5: they disagree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've got a bunch of examples of this too.
Speaker 1: So if we look even in the Old Testament, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, typically when Saya Protestant has a problem with
Speaker 1: this idea that's, oh, the Ten Commandments, you can't do this,
Speaker 1: can't have images, can't do that, you can't bow before
Speaker 1: anything that's created, because they'll view it in this legalistic
Speaker 1: way as if the action of bowing itself is the
Speaker 1: root of the idolatry, when it's actually the motivation of
Speaker 1: the heart that's the root of the idolatry, and the
Speaker 1: bowing or the bodily express essions are just the external
Speaker 1: manifestations of what is in the heart of the mind.
Speaker 1: So it's not really so much about that. Because you'll
Speaker 1: notice in let's see Genesis forty two seven, all the
Speaker 1: Joseph's family bows and prostrates themselves before Joseph. In Second
Speaker 1: Kings two fifteen, the prophets bow and prostrate themselves before Elijah.
Speaker 1: And if you look at Romans thirteen seven, Paul says
Speaker 1: to give honor or give honor to whom honor is due.
Speaker 1: So there's nothing wrong with giving honor when honor is due.
Speaker 1: And in the ancient world, there's nothing wrong with reverencing, prostrating.
Speaker 1: Joseph even bows before Pharaoh. There's the example in the
Speaker 1: case of the Ark of the Covenant, where Solomon prays
Speaker 1: and everybody bows themselves towards the temple, prostrates themselves in
Speaker 1: front of the ark. These were all created images. They're
Speaker 1: all created things, the art, the tabernacle, the temple itself
Speaker 1: is full of iconography. It's full of images of angels
Speaker 1: and seraphim and so forth. So this is just based
Speaker 1: on ignorance that people don't even know that the temple
Speaker 1: itself was full of iconography and even the term if
Speaker 1: you just think of this as an argument John Damascus makes,
Speaker 1: I mean, just think of the word itself, like the
Speaker 1: Bible itself is a bunch of letters, which are symbols words.
Speaker 1: They're just another type of iconographic representation. So if you
Speaker 1: have the word good or y HWH or l r D,
Speaker 1: those are symbols that refer to God. So there's nothing
Speaker 1: inherently wrong with created symbols referencing God. And in fact,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely necessary meaningful conversation, meaningful discussion logos itself, right,
Speaker 1: logical meaningful transference of meaning loogie logic requires the ability
Speaker 1: to signify divine realities in created forms. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: just a stupid idiotic level of thinking to think that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the symbolic presentation of the image is somehow evil. But
Speaker 1: the word that's also a symbolic representation, that's an image.
Speaker 1: Words themselves are symbol images. They're they're good, but pictures
Speaker 1: are bad. They're both pictures obviously.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like you know, that's what genes is important, because
Speaker 5: if you have a god's interactive creation, there's already some
Speaker 5: level of an international principle, you know, or at least
Speaker 5: for us to understand it. Then we're gonna go a
Speaker 5: little bit further in time, and you will see that
Speaker 5: early Christian worship includes frescoes, includes this kind of explanations.
Speaker 1: So did Judas too. By the way, I have a
Speaker 1: screenshot of this that I'm gonna put up here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a very famous synagogue.
Speaker 1: What is it do or Europa or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you'll notice there this is from some blog, but
Speaker 1: ancient dress synagogues were filled with icons. Scripture required the
Speaker 1: inside of the Jerusalem Temple to display icons of angels.
Speaker 1: Icons in the Jewish Synagogue depicted numerous scenes from Scripture.
Speaker 1: This is the Duo Europa Synagogue two forty four a d.
Speaker 1: You'll see images of the Bernie Bush, the rescue of
Speaker 1: Moses Miracle, the Water, Aaron, the Temple, Samuel and David,
Speaker 1: Ark of the Covenant, Ezekiel's vision of the dry Bones,
Speaker 1: and that the blog there has all those pictures. I'll
Speaker 1: put the link into the chat if anybody wants to
Speaker 1: go look at the different images that that blog has.
Speaker 1: I can't vouch for that blog. I don't know who
Speaker 1: it is, just the one that popped up.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, yeah, so we can see that the time,
Speaker 5: be it in Christian worship or Jewish worship, icons are present.
Speaker 5: The only ones that do not have these kind of icons,
Speaker 5: that do not allow images are the Gnostics. To these
Speaker 5: are some some Christian consuls that are influenced by Gnosticism,
Speaker 5: like the concept of Elvira, which is influenced by gnosticisms
Speaker 5: that forbids images. It's the same consul by the way,
Speaker 5: that forbids, which is the first consul that forbids priests
Speaker 5: to marry. You know, so it's linked. You know, rejection
Speaker 5: of the body is rejection of good point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: completely linked. So at the time, you know, today Jewish
Speaker 5: worship is more econoclastic, we'll see why, but at the
Speaker 5: time it did not exist. So if you look at
Speaker 5: the traditions. There's a clear continuation from Genesis to Exodus,
Speaker 5: to the time of Christ, to early Christian period to
Speaker 5: what we do today. But the first real religion to
Speaker 5: institutionalize icono pleasant is Islam. So the rise of Islam
Speaker 5: is linked to the their theology, and the rise of
Speaker 5: icono pleasant is into the theology.
Speaker 1: Well before before we jump to Islam, though, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to illustrate that as this debate takes
Speaker 1: place in the early Church, recall that you can go
Speaker 1: back to, say, the first period of the post appstock
Speaker 1: fought like right after the Apostles. You've already got justin
Speaker 1: Martyr ieron As talking about the real presence of Christ
Speaker 1: in the Eucharist. And so the real presence is also
Speaker 1: connected to this debate because it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: if the incarnation was real, and all those church fathers
Speaker 1: that are defending the reality of the incarnation, it's directly
Speaker 1: connected in their argumentation apologetic to the doctrine of the
Speaker 1: real presence. Right, so it only makes sense to argue
Speaker 1: for the real presence if Christ really did become incarnate
Speaker 1: in the flesh, right, if the Son of God is
Speaker 1: incarnating human flesh. So there's a direct connection. If you
Speaker 1: look at Ephesus, when Saint Cyril is arguing against Nestorius,
Speaker 1: especially in the Anathemas ephesis, is very clear that the
Speaker 1: argumentation for the reality of the second person that God
Speaker 1: had assuming human nature is based on Cyril's argumentation about
Speaker 1: the real presence. He says, you and Astorias, do you
Speaker 1: eat the body, blood, soul, and divinity of a mere
Speaker 1: man or of the Son of God. Right, so it
Speaker 1: necessitates the reality of the incarnation. Arguments based on the Eucharist,
Speaker 1: the real presence of Christ, and the Eucharist, the real
Speaker 1: presence of Christ is an immediate destroyer of all of
Speaker 1: the Protestant sort of gnostic iconoclastic argumentation because it's directly
Speaker 1: connected to correct Christology. Then you'll see that when they
Speaker 1: get up to the Seventh Council, and I see it
Speaker 1: two in seven eighty seven, when the debate is being
Speaker 1: had about whether icons are blasphemous or whether they are
Speaker 1: idolatry or whatever, it's always connected to a consistent argumentation
Speaker 1: about Christology and about the incarnation and the real presence. Right,
Speaker 1: All of these doctrines follow through to a logically consistent
Speaker 1: position that Christ has sanctified matter itself and the Church
Speaker 1: by extension has the power to then also sanctify matter. Right,
Speaker 1: So the priest can bless the waters of baptism, right,
Speaker 1: the priests can, through the epiclasis, pray for the coming
Speaker 1: down of the Holy Spirit to transform the elements in
Speaker 1: the Lord's Supper. All of these things are connected, and
Speaker 1: they're all based on that incarnational principle. It all hangs
Speaker 1: and falls together, right, relics, All of that goes together
Speaker 1: with the same idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, And you know, straight to my point, why
Speaker 5: does Islam promote iconoclasm Because they do not have the
Speaker 5: incarnational principle, and that's why they were fiercely antichonoclastic. At least,
Speaker 5: they do not even believe that God enters creation in
Speaker 5: that sense. It's linked to gnarstissism. You know, the revelation
Speaker 5: that is given to to Muhammad is is done through angels,
Speaker 5: it's not God directly. They do not recognz theophanies. So
Speaker 5: then you've got the first shift, the first real religion
Speaker 5: that institutionalizes iconoclasm, and from them the iconoclass period starts.
Speaker 5: So first the Jews getting influenced by them. So that's
Speaker 5: the period where you know, you see the move from
Speaker 5: these synagogues full of icons to the more modern type
Speaker 5: of synagogues you can see today, just you know, a
Speaker 5: slow shift, and it starts to influence Christian theology because
Speaker 5: in the in the Christian East, Muslim start influence and people,
Speaker 5: people's people start thinking, oh, you know, we we destroyed
Speaker 5: the idols, which is perfectly fine to do, and the
Speaker 5: icons isn't all this iconography sort of it? Other tis
Speaker 5: And then you've got this these debates, and of course
Speaker 5: incarnational principle requires this. You've got the seven counsul, You've
Speaker 5: got a little bit of back and forth. Even we
Speaker 5: look at history, we see that they were present because
Speaker 5: you know, consoles are but affirming previously held dogma. So
Speaker 5: we see that they are present. We see that this
Speaker 5: coherent through theology. We see that Christ is incarnated. We
Speaker 5: see that we have scientification of matter, we have the
Speaker 5: idea of people being icons of Christ, you know, relics.
Speaker 5: You know, why do we venerate relics Because these people
Speaker 5: gain back the image and the resemblance to God. People
Speaker 5: became icons of God once again. And that's why we
Speaker 5: can venerate relics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, second King is thirteen the Bones of Elisha resurrect
Speaker 1: a dead soldier. The same principle carries over into Acts
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven and twelve, where cloths and handkerchiefs touched by
Speaker 1: Saint Paul himself are able to do the same type
Speaker 1: miracles drive out evil spirits, as we see in Tewod
Speaker 1: King thirteen. But to your point about Islam, I want
Speaker 1: to illustrate this to maybe make it helpful through visual illustration.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I'm saying, what we're saying is really
Speaker 1: not that that complicated or difficult if you just think
Speaker 1: about it in terms of Look, if God is supremely transcendent,
Speaker 1: then how are we going to relate or know about
Speaker 1: that God. This is the argument I've been continually making
Speaker 1: to the Muslims when we have these debates. If the
Speaker 1: world is separate, right, God world separate? We agree with
Speaker 1: that God is not identical to his creation obviously, and
Speaker 1: the medium by which we know about God is texts.
Speaker 1: Guess what texts are created? Things that are full of images. Right,
Speaker 1: all a word is is just a different type of image,
Speaker 1: just because I'm not drawing a picture and By the way,
Speaker 1: some languages are pictographic, right, hieroglyphics. That's a language Chinese,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I think Japanese pictographic languages. Doesn't matter whether
Speaker 1: I if I use a pictographic or if I use
Speaker 1: a You know, the English symbols there, these letters are
Speaker 1: standing for in a certain combination. They're created symbols that
Speaker 1: stand for this is just basic semiotics. Let's stand for
Speaker 1: this or truths about this. So you're not avoiding the
Speaker 1: problem when you act like we're going to get rid
Speaker 1: of all images, we're gonna get we're gonna crusade against it.
Speaker 1: That's that's how I'm able to, as an apologists, immediately
Speaker 1: turn that around around around on all the Muslims and say,
Speaker 1: then you don't know anything about God because nothing, nothing
Speaker 1: can tell you about that.
Speaker 5: Exactly. And you know, the funny thing about Islam is
Speaker 5: that you know that God still is a creative and
Speaker 5: it's even adea to natural theology to a huge extent.
Speaker 5: So they still have to venerate to an extent creation.
Speaker 5: And how does it do this.
Speaker 1: Well, It's interesting because whether you're Protestant or Muslim or
Speaker 1: Calvinists or whatever. I mean, I know Calvinists. But you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, like, you're still venerating the book, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they treat the book the same way that
Speaker 1: we The Holy Book, right, is like the incarnational principle
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 5: Exactly, the Quran basically behaves like anyposthasis, you know, exactlys
Speaker 5: in Islam. But yeah, like, how do you signify the
Speaker 5: respect to the book? You know, people, people would get
Speaker 5: mad if you do anything to a current, to a
Speaker 5: huge extent in the Muslim world for this reason because
Speaker 5: it's it is, to an extent a type of the prototype,
Speaker 5: which is the Word of God. And how does it
Speaker 5: signify this with calligraphy? You know, Oh, we cannot joy anything.
Speaker 5: We're just gonna make like beautiful, intricate calligraphy. So you
Speaker 5: and you say that this is a technique that is
Speaker 5: actually being used by econoclass. So you know, we're not
Speaker 5: going to have image because this is idolatry, but we're
Speaker 5: actually going to venerate calligraphy. What's the difference? Where does
Speaker 5: it start? You know, like even letters, you know, for example,
Speaker 5: the Greek alph of it, it starts aspectrographic. Well, what's
Speaker 5: what's the difference? And even all defense. You know, in
Speaker 5: the Seventh Council when it comes to the to the
Speaker 5: veneration of icons, we explain that it's part of the liturgy.
Speaker 5: You know, the liturgy is a type of heaven. We
Speaker 5: we venerate all the other parts of liturgy, we kiss
Speaker 5: the Bible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just think about how absurd you know,
Speaker 1: John is seeing into heaven. He's seeing all these things.
Speaker 1: I mean, what about I just did. I covered Isaiah
Speaker 1: one through seven last night, and then I covered the
Speaker 1: next seven chapters after that, and the part too for subscribers.
Speaker 1: If you missed that, you can subscribe and get access
Speaker 1: to all that. But Isaiah says in Isaiah six, I
Speaker 1: have seen the Lord with my eyes. So Isaiah quite
Speaker 1: literally saw that vision of Jesus lifted up on the
Speaker 1: throne in the heavenly Temple, and there's a liturgical worship
Speaker 1: service going on all around him. Right. There's it's full
Speaker 1: of sounds and smells and chants, Holy, Holy, Holy, right,
Speaker 1: a lot of visual imagery. It's exact same stuff that
Speaker 1: John sees in the Apocalypse right chapter four five. He
Speaker 1: sees this liturgical worship going on in heaven. He sees
Speaker 1: saints underneath the altar, interceding for praying for vengeance, for
Speaker 1: the church on earth, offering up incense. Right, that's why
Speaker 1: we do what we do. We're doing the worship that
Speaker 1: John sees on Earth. It's the same service.
Speaker 5: Yeah, correct, So again you're gonna have some level anyway
Speaker 5: of veneration for things. So that's why I kind of
Speaker 5: please him, is you know, not consistent eternally unless you
Speaker 5: believe that like literally everything on Earth bad, including your text,
Speaker 5: and you don't know anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really arbitrary, and they have to the only thing.
Speaker 1: The Calvinists will say things like, well, you can't make
Speaker 1: up a worship service because of the regulative principle. So
Speaker 1: they'll point to like text and the little it because
Speaker 1: we're Nadev and Aby who basically did their own little
Speaker 1: incense thing and God burned them up, and they'll say, ah,
Speaker 1: see the regulative principal worship. That means that you can't
Speaker 1: worship in a way other than God has ordained. The
Speaker 1: problem with that argument is that guess how David organized
Speaker 1: the worship of Israel. If you read my essay that
Speaker 1: I did on tradition in the Bible, you'll see that
Speaker 1: David did it on the basis of tradition. David was
Speaker 1: not given all of the ways that the choir and
Speaker 1: the services were to be conducted. He did it on
Speaker 1: the basis of a tradition that he knew about. And
Speaker 1: guess what, Calvinists, I can turn that regulative principal argument
Speaker 1: right back on you and point out that you're correct.
Speaker 1: You have to worship the way that the Church lays down,
Speaker 1: and that's already been laid down by tradition by the Apostles,
Speaker 1: because they established churches that developed their worship service by
Speaker 1: Apostolic authority on the basis of the temple and the
Speaker 1: synagogue services of that time. So therefore the regular principle
Speaker 1: means you have to obey the Orthodox liturgy, and you don't.
Speaker 1: So by your own argument, you are nadab and abaye
Speaker 1: who Calvinists. Yeah, so.
Speaker 5: Yeah, This mostly influence causes what is called the Ecmoclastic
Speaker 5: period in the East, and people who often focus on
Speaker 5: these sayings that it's strictly a Byzantine thing, and of
Speaker 5: course it was. It was more violent in the Bysantine
Speaker 5: Empires than anywhere else, but it touched the entirety of Christendom.
Speaker 5: So the Seventh Council lays down the seventh Yeah, seventh
Speaker 5: Council explained, yes, we can venerate because it's a type.
Speaker 5: We can we can venerate because the glory of the
Speaker 5: of the given to the type will go back to
Speaker 5: the prototype. We can venerate because icons statues a lot
Speaker 5: before not a problem. And we can venerate because we
Speaker 5: need to we need to give respect to the objects
Speaker 5: of worship, the objects that are used in the liturgy.
Speaker 5: Uh So it explains all this and it sets out
Speaker 5: real rules. For example, the Seventh Council appeals to a
Speaker 5: canon of the Tulo Council. And by the way, it's
Speaker 5: very funny because Tulo Council is not rejected by the papacy,
Speaker 5: but the Purpose very happy to use this canon and
Speaker 5: to declare this exactly. Yeah. But this canon says we
Speaker 5: need to to give real images, and that's where you
Speaker 5: have the idea of, you know, communication between the type
Speaker 5: and the prototype. But we need to represent Christ as
Speaker 5: real images. And we know that in the past there
Speaker 5: were icons of Christ where it was depicted as a lamb,
Speaker 5: and this is not forbidden because Christ too humanity, Christ
Speaker 5: to con human flesh. And this is very interesting in
Speaker 5: the in the current context because many people will try
Speaker 5: to make you know, Choese Jesus or Rasta.
Speaker 1: Jesus or rost Jesus. Mind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like you know, to what to what prototype does this?
Speaker 5: You know, rasta Jesus type will give glory to none.
Speaker 5: Like there's not Rasta Jesus in heaven. So yeah, like
Speaker 5: like we need to you know, and that's why we
Speaker 5: have the first iconographic canons that are really being put
Speaker 5: into place in the Seventh Council. But the problem is
Speaker 5: the Seventh Consul wasn't accepted, wasn't fully accepted in the
Speaker 5: in the West.
Speaker 1: Right, and we cover them stream where we had Charlotte
Speaker 1: Charlomagne basically rejecting it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the Frankish Church actually fought against it. We
Speaker 5: have people a Theodore for Aliance, which is a Roman
Speaker 5: Catholic saint who was econoclastic, but you know, still wanted
Speaker 5: some icons in his in his personal chapel.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But what's very funny is how did Theodolf mark is
Speaker 5: iconoclasm the same way as the Muslim did. He actually
Speaker 5: commissioned very ornate bibles with you know, the pages died
Speaker 5: in purple, which was the most precious pigment at the
Speaker 5: time the most precious colors, colors the kings with very
Speaker 5: ornate calligraphy in letters of gold. So you see the
Speaker 5: same the same strategems that the Muslims had to resort
Speaker 5: to the Franks, and the econoplasm matters all too. We
Speaker 5: have the idea also of increased symbolism, you know, just
Speaker 5: using the cross. That's why you have specific worship around
Speaker 5: the cross that appear, and a full on rejection of
Speaker 5: the theology of the Seventh Council, because the idea of
Speaker 5: the Seventh Console is, as Symtohn of the Mascus puts it,
Speaker 5: we do not worship, we do not venerate wood and paint.
Speaker 5: Like if my icon is broken, if I cannot see anything,
Speaker 5: if it does not represent the type any longer I
Speaker 5: can burn it. It's the idea that it is it
Speaker 5: is the image and not the matter, because if the
Speaker 5: matter had anything to do in the worship and not
Speaker 5: the image, then we would actually focus on matter, and
Speaker 5: that would be like pagan paganism. And act think that's
Speaker 5: an augment that theodoret uses. It says that, you know,
Speaker 5: we ought not to worship these images, but we we
Speaker 5: ought to to to venerate these images. But we are
Speaker 5: to venerate matters that is venerable. And that's why you
Speaker 5: see many, many new relics being made in the West
Speaker 5: because they want, you know, they want to to venerate
Speaker 5: some things that is material and not not t iconographic.
Speaker 5: So we have new relics, you have increased veneration of relics.
Speaker 5: This will give rise to some other kind of worship,
Speaker 5: for example, eucharistic worship. We do not have this because
Speaker 5: you know, we believe that Christ told us to eat,
Speaker 5: to splash and drink his blood. But what happened in
Speaker 5: the Roman Catholic Church later on is that because of
Speaker 5: these ideas, because the Seventh Council wasn't really fully understood, right,
Speaker 5: just added to say, oh, you know, since the Eucharist
Speaker 5: is full of the body of Christ, then it has
Speaker 5: the essence of God and we can worship the essence.
Speaker 5: You know again you see the idea of essence coming
Speaker 5: before per Ma said before image.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, if you go back and listen to the
Speaker 1: old interview that I did, what did we title it,
Speaker 1: uh anatomizing Divinity? The old old talk I did with
Speaker 1: an interview with James Kelly. He made a good point
Speaker 1: at that time that showing that the Carolinian theologians had
Speaker 1: actually adopted a lot of neoplatonic ideas, so they just
Speaker 1: viewed all images as well, this world is basically just
Speaker 1: a path back to the essence of God. Uh So
Speaker 1: they kind of had these weird neopolatanic neoplatonic ideas influencing
Speaker 1: their version of iconographic representations in the Carolinian theological argumentation.
Speaker 1: That's a big part of it, and that actually makes
Speaker 1: sense why they would change or deviate or not understand
Speaker 1: the kind of norms that had that had been, that
Speaker 1: had kind of developed to be in place for how
Speaker 1: we do iconographic representations in the Church. So you know,
Speaker 1: Byzantium had had had developed this very well, not out
Speaker 1: of like arbitr speculation, but on the basis of philosophic
Speaker 1: and logical principles. Right, if you read on the Divine
Speaker 1: Images by Saint John Damascus, or if you read St.
Speaker 1: Theodore Studite's book, I mean, these are the arguments that
Speaker 1: will make up the argumentation of the Seventh Council. And
Speaker 1: it's a very consistent philosophic and theological presentation. It's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's just sit around and speculate about, like you know,
Speaker 1: the mysticism of images or something like that. It's all
Speaker 1: really again premised on correct Christology. All of the theology,
Speaker 1: whether it's the sacraments, or whether it's ecclesiology, or whether
Speaker 1: it's iconography or whether it's anthropology, it all flows from
Speaker 1: the triad and Christology. These are two ironclad starting points
Speaker 1: for orthodoxy that are different, that make it unique. That's
Speaker 1: why the councils hammered out triadology and Christology first, and
Speaker 1: then by extension the other doctrines that kind of flow
Speaker 1: from that. But to Snack's point, it's not by accident
Speaker 1: that at the beginning of this Carolinium period that's when
Speaker 1: you start to see the deviations not just in pictographic
Speaker 1: or images, but also the imagery and statuary. These statuary
Speaker 1: starts to come in. You also see changes in the liturgy.
Speaker 1: This is when infants no longer begin to partake of
Speaker 1: pedal communion. You start to have the banning of infants
Speaker 1: from the table. You start to have these other weird
Speaker 1: practices enter in liturgically that the later Byzantine lists would
Speaker 1: reject in the West. But just to sum up real quick,
Speaker 1: there's a couple points I didn't mention. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for biblical presentation, remember one King six. This tells us
Speaker 1: about all of the variations of imagery in the Temple.
Speaker 1: Number twenty one. This is the serpent lifted up on
Speaker 1: a pole. If it was always wrong to have imagery,
Speaker 1: why did God direct the Israelites to look at the
Speaker 1: serpent on a poll which Jesus says in John three
Speaker 1: was the type of the cross. Paul says in Colossians
Speaker 1: two thirteen to fifteen that the cross itself has power
Speaker 1: to despoil the principalities, demons and powers that had control
Speaker 1: of us through the vices and the passions Colossians one fifteen.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the icon ko n and the Greek of God,
Speaker 1: the direct representation. Remember, Jesus says, no man has seen
Speaker 1: God at any time, but everybody who in the Old
Speaker 1: Testament saw the Word right, the word of the Lord
Speaker 1: came to Isaiah. I saw the Lord. Who's he seeing?
Speaker 1: He's seeing Christ. Paul Tewond Corinthians three argues that Moses
Speaker 1: saw Christ face to face. So if you can't see
Speaker 1: the Father, but you saw God, who did you see?
Speaker 1: You saw the Angel of the Covenant, the Angel of
Speaker 1: the Lord, the Messenger of the Covenant, the Face of God,
Speaker 1: who is Christ himself. According to Paul John five, this
Speaker 1: is an overlooked one. And I'm pointing this out because
Speaker 1: the same a principle applies to locations and buildings. Right, prozz,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about a temple?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: We just have a strip mall.
Speaker 3: Dude.
Speaker 1: My pastor threw up a strip mall in five days
Speaker 1: and big metal building. That's the church. No, dude, that's
Speaker 1: not the church. Strip malls are not churches. Churches still
Speaker 1: exist as holy places, and the New Testament still acknowledges
Speaker 1: locations sites places as holy John five, the Pool of
Speaker 1: Siloam a site where an angel comes down and stirs
Speaker 1: the pool and people are healed there. That's a holy place.
Speaker 1: Tewod Peter One's sixteen to eighteen Peter calls the Mountain
Speaker 1: of Transfiguration the holy mountain where he saw Christ transfigured
Speaker 1: with Moses and Elijah. So places in the New Testament,
Speaker 1: buildings matter can still be holy, holy water. All these
Speaker 1: things still exist just because that was something that you
Speaker 1: thought was in the Old test Oh, we're in the
Speaker 1: spiritual New Testament. Now it's not physical, not true, that's gnostic.
Speaker 1: And then lastly again Apocalypse four and five, when John
Speaker 1: sees into heaven, he sees all this liturgical worship, all
Speaker 1: of the sights, smells, and bells that we think are
Speaker 1: in the liturgy on earth. It's the same liturgy. It's
Speaker 1: not two different things. Right, Jesus brought heaven to earth
Speaker 1: in the first Advent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, you know. And it's not because it's a
Speaker 5: body of chrisis in temple that we cannot all bes
Speaker 5: a temple as well.
Speaker 1: It's a good point either, and that doesn't mean.
Speaker 5: That we cannot have temples. You know, churches are still
Speaker 5: you know, it's still the same layout as a temple.
Speaker 5: It's a bit ludic chrius to create dialectic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a dialectic. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to cut you off. You're you're making
Speaker 1: great points. And just real quick couple. Now. The Protestants
Speaker 1: will love to say, oh, Butanius ep fantas. First of all,
Speaker 1: there's an argument to be made that the writings attributed
Speaker 1: to Epiphanius are forgeries. But even if they're not, so
Speaker 1: what this is the game that Protestants play where they
Speaker 1: just pick out a single church father. Oh look, Jerome
Speaker 1: says that, he lists the canon that we have, and
Speaker 1: then Jerome turns around and talks about tradition, talks about bishops,
Speaker 1: talks about the Eucharist. Oh, none of that, right, So
Speaker 1: they just play this kind of pick and choose game
Speaker 1: out of the church fathers. Right, But nobody actually follows
Speaker 1: any single church father, whether you're Protestant, Roman, Catholic, or Orthodox.
Speaker 1: Nobody has the position that you just randomly pick one
Speaker 1: to follow. Well, unless you just randomly decide that Augustine
Speaker 1: is the one that you're supposed to follow. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Some people do do that, but no, they're just following
Speaker 1: that idea of just picking an individual. When, for example,
Speaker 1: Jerome says it against raparium. He says, we do not
Speaker 1: worship matter, we do not adore, He says the non autoramus,
Speaker 1: for fear that we should bow down to a creature
Speaker 1: rather than the creator. But rather we do venerate hon Oramos.
Speaker 1: In the Latin, the relics of the of the Martyrs
Speaker 1: in order to adore him, whose martyrs they are Saint
Speaker 1: Cyril of Alexandria. Says, we do not consider the martyrs
Speaker 1: to be gods, nor do we bow down to them
Speaker 1: adoringly as if they were gods, but only relatively and
Speaker 1: in reverence. Out of Latria. He says, that's against Julian
Speaker 1: by Saint Alexander, Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Likewise, Augustine says
Speaker 1: the same thing. We celebrate the memory of the martyrs
Speaker 1: with ritual salinity because we want to be inspired by
Speaker 1: their example, We want to share in their merits and
Speaker 1: be helped by their prayers. We erect no altars to
Speaker 1: any of the martyrs themselves, nor even in the martyrs
Speaker 1: burial chapels are they are we honoring the martyrs but
Speaker 1: rather in themselves, but rather Christ. And then he goes
Speaker 1: on to say multiple times the same thing. He says
Speaker 1: that in City of God and in many of his works.
Speaker 1: So excuse me, that's against fossis the Manichian where Augustine
Speaker 1: says that, So you know, Augustine has that distinction, Saint
Speaker 1: Jerome has that distinction, Saint Cerl Alexandria has that distinction.
Speaker 1: And they didn't just make that up. It's based on
Speaker 1: the arguments that I was just pointing out in scripture
Speaker 1: that it's okay to venerate a ruler, to bow before
Speaker 1: a ruler, It's okay to venerate the arc the temple,
Speaker 1: to bow prostrate. All these things occur without it being idolatry.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, Yeah, And so I wanted to stress out
Speaker 5: the difference, you know, with the with the West. For example,
Speaker 5: you mentioned statuary. Statuary are perfectly find in the Ostock scense,
Speaker 5: but statuary taking precedence of icons. Again, that's the idea
Speaker 5: of you know, the physical matter being more important than
Speaker 5: the image as is. And that's again you know, this
Speaker 5: pagan understanding that we are wed to worship something that
Speaker 5: is ultimately material, and that's where we are to look,
Speaker 5: not like, you know, to look directly at the essence again,
Speaker 5: you see essentialism.
Speaker 1: We do not have this.
Speaker 5: We have the essence energy distinction. We believe that icons
Speaker 5: to an extent representation of the type of heaven and
Speaker 5: as such venerable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean the argumentation for example, in St. Theodore
Speaker 1: or the STUDEI, if you read his on the Holy Images,
Speaker 1: on the Holy icons, he premises the argument on the
Speaker 1: nature person distinction and the essence energy distinction. Right, we're
Speaker 1: not signifying the essence of God by the icon, we're
Speaker 1: signifying the hoopostasis that's revealed energetically.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's where I'm going to comment on the icons.
Speaker 5: Everybody knows the hailo and the icon, and that's what
Speaker 5: it represents. So the background of the icon is usually golden,
Speaker 5: and you've got this golden halo around the head, and
Speaker 5: that represents the energies. That represents the light of Tabor,
Speaker 5: the divine light. The fact that this person is in
Speaker 5: a transfigured state in heaven. That's what it represents. That's
Speaker 5: why we have this so even well to we represented icons,
Speaker 5: and this is before the schism, before because you can
Speaker 5: see hellos and every sort of icons from every denomination.
Speaker 5: This Hello is here specifically to signify a transfigured state.
Speaker 5: It's specifically to signify theosis, and it is the energies.
Speaker 5: It is the divine energies. That's somethings that's very interesting
Speaker 5: because if you skip forward to so West, you can
Speaker 5: see that this Hello is being modified after the Renaissance.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, naturally it would be modified if you believe
Speaker 1: in absolute divine simplicity and you don't recognize the reality
Speaker 1: of the distinction between nature and person. You're no longer
Speaker 1: imaging the hopostosis or the particuticular person of the Sun.
Speaker 1: You begin to see all of reality is just images
Speaker 1: of the prototypes in the essence of God. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: the Western view of divine exemplarism then conditions their view
Speaker 1: of iconography. Because Augustine taught the Western view of exemplarism.
Speaker 1: He didn't recognize the essence Inergi distinction, so he said
Speaker 1: that reality itself, all of reality is patterned on the
Speaker 1: divine ideas, the exemplars in the essence of God. So
Speaker 1: ultimately everything is just an icon of the essence of God.
Speaker 1: And then the particularity of the hypostosis of the sun
Speaker 1: loses its significance. It's not picking out icons. Are no
Speaker 1: longer holy images that pick out the person of the logos, right,
Speaker 1: it becomes something else exactly.
Speaker 5: So you start to see more profane images exactly.
Speaker 1: Then you get to Renaissance gibberish pornography basically.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you see many saints. So I'm going to
Speaker 5: talk specifically as a heno because it's very interesting. You
Speaker 5: can see that it sometimes disappears, which is very very
Speaker 5: you know, it is terrible for us, because especially for Christ,
Speaker 5: Christ needs to have is halo to signified divinity, and
Speaker 5: the cruciform halo gives it on.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was gonna say, the whole on is important
Speaker 1: because that identifies him as the I Am. It also
Speaker 1: identifies him as the Angel of the Lord. So actually
Speaker 1: every Byzantine icon that has that identifies him as the
Speaker 1: one right of Exodus three fourteen. And if you read Isaiah,
Speaker 1: then Isaiah explicitly, as Sam Chumon pointed out the other day,
Speaker 1: explicitly identifies Jesus as the Angel of the good Counsel,
Speaker 1: the Angel of the Lord, the Angel of wonderful counsel.
Speaker 1: How do I know that that's Jesus, because it's the
Speaker 1: same subject in Isaiah nine, that is, the son that
Speaker 1: is born unto us. His name will be called wonderful
Speaker 1: Angel of counsel, angel of great Council, or wonderful counsel.
Speaker 1: That's the same person as the sign. And Isaiah nine
Speaker 1: to five. That proves that the Angel of the Lord
Speaker 1: is the sign Jesus Isaiah nine six.
Speaker 5: Exactly. And this Hello, which represents the divine energies, and
Speaker 5: not only for Christ, but also the saints, which represents
Speaker 5: a the fat state. You can see it being further alta.
Speaker 5: So not only it's it's something in Western iconography post Renaissance,
Speaker 5: but it also loses his sense, its sense. So as
Speaker 5: they moved to representation in three dimension, you can see
Speaker 5: it being a plate and then just being a circle,
Speaker 5: and you know, being being matter being limited. Whereas you
Speaker 5: can see that or understanding of iconography, especially the more
Speaker 5: realistic types of air comes we can have always depicted
Speaker 5: as as ray, you know, like like it's either just
Speaker 5: a circle and the more simplistic type or race. But
Speaker 5: by doing this you can see also an understanding of
Speaker 5: creative grace because this this halo, it signifies grace. You know,
Speaker 5: no longer is this light radiant light, it's just circles, plates.
Speaker 5: It starts to be very limited, and you can see, yeah,
Speaker 5: you can train exactly.
Speaker 1: That's a great point snag. You can trace the loss
Speaker 1: of theological teaching in the icons themselves, right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that that goal that's painted there, the halo that is
Speaker 1: supposed to signify transfiguration, the divine, the uncreated, divine light
Speaker 1: in our realm. And you notice there above christ head,
Speaker 1: what does it say, hold on? Right, see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh ho omega new hold on right, the one I
Speaker 1: am he that's what it means, That's what it's referring to.
Speaker 1: So the loss of iconographic truths is connected to the
Speaker 1: loss of theological truths.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So you can see it everywhere, by the way,
Speaker 5: For example, is the Oriental Orthodox, you know the Monophysites
Speaker 5: monophsycte metaphysite. What was one of the first actions of
Speaker 5: servers of Antioch when when seizing his cathedral and removing icons?
Speaker 5: Used to be like that bismal found Yeah, I checked
Speaker 5: the sources that quote scholar.
Speaker 1: Eire you checked it out.
Speaker 5: What check checked? There are several sources that are matching. Uh.
Speaker 5: So they used to be.
Speaker 1: It is hello, hello, snack, Hello, you're cutting out? Can
Speaker 1: you start over?
Speaker 5: There?
Speaker 1: Used to be what.
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, there used to be a bird to signify
Speaker 5: the Holy Spirit, to signify the theophony of Christ. And
Speaker 5: the first thing that he did was remove it, remove
Speaker 5: it melted down.
Speaker 1: Just like now. We got some people in the chats
Speaker 1: trying to say Severs was not an iconoclast. So do
Speaker 1: you have a I'm not saying you're wrong, but do
Speaker 1: you have a source on that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I'm gonna I'm gonna find it. I've got all
Speaker 5: sourced on my server. Okay.
Speaker 1: Second, by the way, so snackt server is listed there.
Speaker 1: His discord is in is in the show description. If
Speaker 1: you want to go in there and or you can
Speaker 1: come to my server and we can we can hash
Speaker 1: it out there if you want to do that. But
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead.
Speaker 5: I don't mean to control all right, Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: send the source, have it right now. But by the way,
Speaker 5: that this is actually a recurrent problem in is your I.
Speaker 1: Mean, they have problems with maintaining their iconographic tradition even now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna go on this one. Actually,
Speaker 5: they had an iconoclastic patriarch in the nineteenth century serial
Speaker 5: the sixth or the fourth I think the sixth, yeah,
Speaker 5: serial the fourth series. The fourth actually burned down icons
Speaker 5: So that was in the nineteenth century. That's that's very new.
Speaker 5: So they lost a lot of the partrimony to to Islam.
Speaker 5: And yeah, this was like the last name on the coffin.
Speaker 5: And today you can see that the tradition of iconography
Speaker 5: in the in the Coptic Church sadly was recreated from nothing.
Speaker 5: So after after they destroyed the patrimony. It was the
Speaker 5: first time of you know, inter Christian meetings, and they
Speaker 5: got help from the from the Catholics in re establishing
Speaker 5: iconographic tradition and basically the flicks and some prost and
Speaker 5: you know, they believe the Cops to be you know,
Speaker 5: Eastern simplistic, and that's why they made icons that were
Speaker 5: based of you know, more shide like. Ye, it looks
Speaker 5: like far to an extent. So yeah, that's why it
Speaker 5: is as it is right now. But there has been
Speaker 5: a constant problem because of Christological problems as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, ultimately the root is Christological quite quite clearly.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting that you see both in the in
Speaker 1: the the so called Oriental Orthodox Churches and in the
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic Churches, both of these groups kind of going
Speaker 1: off and doing all kinds of weird things, right, and
Speaker 1: because there's not a consistent canonical holding to what the
Speaker 1: Seventh Ecumenical Council laid down. And if you don't know,
Speaker 1: the Seventh that Coumenical Council did not just say we
Speaker 1: have icons. Okay, Roman Catholics. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: know this, but that the Council actually produced an entire
Speaker 1: series of anathemas called the Sonoticon of Orthodoxy. If you're
Speaker 1: in a Russian Orthodox Church or more traditional Orthodox church,
Speaker 1: they will actually read all of the anathemas and maybe
Speaker 1: even some spicy little new ones like the Metropolitan surfem
Speaker 1: and Pereis does. So I'll put in the link in
Speaker 1: the chat there the link to the full Sonoticon of Orthodoxy,
Speaker 1: which is part of the liturgy. It's actually read out
Speaker 1: in the liturgy most of the time. If you're at
Speaker 1: a liturgy where the bishop is present, they'll do kind
Speaker 1: of the full thing. You can go to Ortho Christian
Speaker 1: or you can look on YouTube and you can hear
Speaker 1: the full anathemas being read out. And this is interesting
Speaker 1: because the anathemas anathematize Hellenism, Platonism, Arisitilianism, Originism. All of
Speaker 1: these heresies are read in the anathemas. And yet what
Speaker 1: do we have clowns today who want to resurrect all
Speaker 1: of these heresies. Now, a lot of the trads and
Speaker 1: people like this have tried to call out us as
Speaker 1: Hellenists and Neoplatonists actually weakened them. Neoplatonism in the sonata
Speaker 1: con and it's you guys that have adopted the neoplatonic
Speaker 1: doctrine of statue aaryan images. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so again, you know, we only tuit that maintained
Speaker 5: something consistent. There were problems in the Roman Catholic world.
Speaker 5: You can see that it's constantly degrading. You know, it
Speaker 5: moved to more purely symbolical. You know, he started the
Speaker 5: lemb of God. He remembers this canon I mentioned. I
Speaker 5: guess what, you know, it's the canons that allows us
Speaker 5: to have icons, and Rome doesn't follow it. So, you know,
Speaker 5: Zabell allow more and more the artists to come in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chinese Jesus, black Jesus, which is not as gnostic.
Speaker 1: You have to depict, do you ish Jesus?
Speaker 5: Yeah, like you know, and if you want Christ to
Speaker 5: be your race to feel concerned by salvation, you know,
Speaker 5: then you're a really racist. You know, you believe you're
Speaker 5: not consubstantial with a black person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right. Human nature is universal, and Christ assumed
Speaker 1: universal human nature and his singular hypostasis as the teaching
Speaker 1: of the fathers. Yeah, and again.
Speaker 5: It removes the idea of Mesianity. The Messiah is specifically
Speaker 5: a son of David.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament,
Speaker 1: namely that the root of David, right, this is Isaiah eleven.
Speaker 1: I just read it last night. Now noticed also that
Speaker 1: this is I believe. This is why this is not
Speaker 1: a kind of Orthodox. He mentions the Platonic ideas. He
Speaker 1: says to them who refashioned creation by means of mythical
Speaker 1: fabrications and accept the Platonic ideas as veritable, saying that
Speaker 1: matter being subsistent is given form by the Platonic ideas,
Speaker 1: who thereby calumniate the free will of God, the Creator,
Speaker 1: who brought all things into being out of non beings.
Speaker 1: So there's creation x nilo, and who, as Maker established
Speaker 1: the beginning of all things by the authority of his sovereignty. Anathema, anathema, anathema,
Speaker 1: so there's the triple anathema is pronounced by those who
Speaker 1: teach the Neoplatonic doctrine of creation as an emanation of
Speaker 1: divine ideas, to those who then also babble about the
Speaker 1: general resurrection, this is gnostic stuff here. And then to
Speaker 1: those who have the Greek teaching of the pre existence
Speaker 1: of souls and the restoration of all beings, Originism anathema, anathema,
Speaker 1: anathema right to those who have the pagan heterodox teaching
Speaker 1: of Again, it's just talking about the Greeks, Greek Hellenism.
Speaker 1: It's condemned multiple times over in the Sonoticon. So anybody
Speaker 1: who goes to an Orthodox Sunday of Orthodoxy liturgy, I forgot.
Speaker 1: The Aristotle is mentioned too, by the way, the ideas
Speaker 1: of Plato, the heresies of Aristotle, they're all mentioned as anathema.
Speaker 1: So this nonsense that Orthodoxy is neoplatonic is actually ironically
Speaker 1: refuted in the very Council that Protestants and Trads think
Speaker 1: is sometimes neoplatonic. That's the irony here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and of course you know it's the center of
Speaker 5: Orthodox history at the same time where we parade the icons,
Speaker 5: you know, we so everything is linked. That's what It's
Speaker 5: very powerful, and that's why we should really keep to
Speaker 5: our iconographic tradition because it testifies for theology, for history everything. Actually,
Speaker 5: I've made an article on my site and just before icons,
Speaker 5: the economic Crucifixion, I managed to cover the detrition of
Speaker 5: faith of all seven of the first sec medical consuls.
Speaker 5: It's very deep. It's very rich, and that's why we
Speaker 5: really need to keep to it. Everything is there for
Speaker 5: a reason. The hello is specifically here to depig divine energies,
Speaker 5: which is which is why it's funny, because we can
Speaker 5: see degrade very fast in other churches do not accept
Speaker 5: the distinction, and iconography needs to keep to to some
Speaker 5: cannons otherwise it will it will degrade. And that's what
Speaker 5: you'll see in Rome because the prices and become iconoclass.
Speaker 5: And we're going to see why in a minute. But
Speaker 5: how does romance this by using icons to antagonize them
Speaker 5: by starting to paint the theatre because as basically a
Speaker 5: cone of jewelry being being, you know, using more and
Speaker 5: more precious matter, using more and more statuary, and it's
Speaker 5: just a way to empaganize them. So again you can
Speaker 5: see that bad icons. It can evolve to an extent
Speaker 5: into idolatry. And it's also iconopleasm because you're also destroying
Speaker 5: a real type by corrupting the icon and only should
Speaker 5: maybe covers a prostans, yes, because because the prostant's originally
Speaker 5: Lutheran's on the accepted images to an.
Speaker 1: Extent, Yeah, this is a weird one. Because you know,
Speaker 1: you've got or the first generation Reformers kind of don't
Speaker 1: go as far as you know, Puritans and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: so you'll get like perpetual virginity of Mary is taught
Speaker 1: by Luther and Calvin. Luther has a you know, baptismal regeneration.
Speaker 1: He has no problem with some weird doctrine of real
Speaker 1: presence based on Christ's humanity taking on divine properties. He
Speaker 1: has no problem with, you know, some imagery and some
Speaker 1: sacraments in the sense of like priests and this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And then over time it just kind of
Speaker 1: falls away because it's all just the next guy's opinion, right,
Speaker 1: It's like it's not based grounded in anything beyond the
Speaker 1: latest dude in his ideas. And that's the bane of
Speaker 1: all Protestantism. And that's why it's the next phase of
Speaker 1: the Puritans who really go crazy with this. And what's
Speaker 1: funny is, and I've spent many years you know, in Calvinism.
Speaker 1: I know it very well. You'll never get a consistent
Speaker 1: idea from Calvinist as to what is and isn't idolatry
Speaker 1: in this sense, right, So I talked about the regular
Speaker 1: principle earlier. But it even goes so far to people
Speaker 1: like if you read Charles Hodge, the famous systematic theologian
Speaker 1: Presbyterian theologian. They were having debates in Hodge's day as
Speaker 1: to whether the Ten Commandments forbade having making a map literally,
Speaker 1: like there were Puritans who argued that you can't have
Speaker 1: maps because it's an idol. It's that stupid.
Speaker 5: Yeah. But the funny thing is that prost and God's
Speaker 5: ConA class him from a Catholic saint, from Theodal Forfolians.
Speaker 5: So Calvin, when he was looking as a consul, he
Speaker 5: found that field Wilf rejected it and he actually went
Speaker 5: none of it. So it's very funny. But the source
Speaker 5: of prost and iconoclasm is a Catholic saint. So today's
Speaker 5: Catholic will be complaining about this, but it came through
Speaker 5: one of your guys, and the president will will be
Speaker 5: very anti Islam. And actually, if you trace the root
Speaker 5: of the econoclasm, you know, from the Muslim to the
Speaker 5: to the Byzantine economclass crisis, to the Franks too, to
Speaker 5: the early reformers to them, their econoclasm actually comes from Islam,
Speaker 5: which is very funny. When you think about it, because
Speaker 5: this iconoclasm is revived by Calvin and you've got people
Speaker 5: who was a president that you have today will tell
Speaker 5: you you cannot you cannot have anything that veneration. You
Speaker 5: can have statues, you can have stuff, but they're gonna
Speaker 5: have pictures, they're gonna have Yeah.
Speaker 1: And ironically, the Protestants, by the way, also almost to
Speaker 1: a t ninety nine point nine percent of them all
Speaker 1: fall into crystallogical heresies. So once again you see that
Speaker 1: the rejection of the liturgical principle. They don't even realize
Speaker 1: that it's connected to their crystallogical heresy because they're almost
Speaker 1: all a historian, especially if you look at their doctrine
Speaker 1: penal sanction, penal sacrifice, penal sanction. Their doctrine of justification
Speaker 1: is premised on the idea of the damning of the
Speaker 1: second person, that godhead, so that leads them to the
Speaker 1: Nestorian doctrine to maintain their justification doctrine, and then everything else.
Speaker 1: Christology is just an afterthought to Calvinism. They don't even
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about when you get into it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a funny thing. Ultimately, the consistency of the
Speaker 5: Orthodox econographic tradition is literally an icon of for theology exactly,
Speaker 5: and that's why it's very important. That's why we we
Speaker 5: accuse the icons as that's why we have no problem
Speaker 5: generating them. That's why it's very important in a worship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why the apathetic theology is connected to iconography.
Speaker 1: That might sound a little bit strange, but once again,
Speaker 1: you have to have the nature Verson distinction, the Essen
Speaker 1: synerg distinction in order to have iconography. And it makes sense.
Speaker 1: That's how we're not ident we're not picturing or circumscribing
Speaker 1: the uncircumscribable essence of God. But the second person of
Speaker 1: the Godhead became circumscribable, as St. Theodore and Saint John
Speaker 1: Damascus say. So even though the interest, by the way,
Speaker 1: I would add, just to kind of go through a
Speaker 1: little bit of Saint Theodore's argumentation, he says, the incarnation
Speaker 1: is a paradox, not a contradiction. How the uncircumscribable God
Speaker 1: became circumscribed, we do not know, but we do accept
Speaker 1: it because it is revealed that way. And then he
Speaker 1: goes on to say that part of the argumentation of
Speaker 1: iconography is based on the fact that there's no human
Speaker 1: hypo states in Christ. It's the second person the God
Speaker 1: had who assumed human nature, and so therefore iconographic representation
Speaker 1: directly refutes Nestorianism. Therefore, it's not an accident that the
Speaker 1: Puritans and the Iconoclasts are an nestorian in their Christology.
Speaker 1: He says, God did not become incarnate in a mental way, right,
Speaker 1: Why didn't God just choose to become a mental representation
Speaker 1: to us? Maybe God could have just beamed right, the
Speaker 1: logos mentality to us in a mental way, but he
Speaker 1: actually chose to become physical you see. Next he st
Speaker 1: Theodore argues the real presence. He says, the real presence
Speaker 1: itself presupposes that it is biblical to iconographically represent Christ
Speaker 1: because Christ chose to icon himself, you could say, in
Speaker 1: an incarnate state. He says that when we look at
Speaker 1: the cross, it burns the devils in exorcisms. Right by
Speaker 1: the way, are the Calvinists exorcists? There aren't any. There
Speaker 1: never have been because they don't have power. They don't
Speaker 1: have the authority of the church because they aren't the church. Next,
Speaker 1: he says that one of the reasons that we can
Speaker 1: know this is true is that the tradition of the
Speaker 1: Church has always held this right. Tradition is another strong argument. Next,
Speaker 1: he goes on to refuting them from scripture. He does
Speaker 1: a bunch of argumentation that I did that you saw
Speaker 1: me do from In fact, I think I wrote that
Speaker 1: article a long time ago, ten years ago. On the
Speaker 1: basis of this writing of this work, I highly recommend this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's still available, but you can
Speaker 1: get it on Amazon, or it's the Saint Lad's edition
Speaker 1: of Saint Theodore the studit. But this should this should,
Speaker 1: this would refute anything like that. We see texts even
Speaker 1: there's one I forgot, Wisdom six five and six, which
Speaker 1: is applied to honoring the emperor. I think Wisdom sixty
Speaker 1: five and six talks about honoring the emperor, and I
Speaker 1: think it uses the Greek word uh dulia.
Speaker 2: What else?
Speaker 1: I'm just breezing through this to see there's any other good.
Speaker 1: He argues that it's pretty much the universal teaching of
Speaker 1: the fathers and the councils. So if you reject imagery
Speaker 1: and icons by extension, you're also going to reject relics,
Speaker 1: and you're also going to reject the reality of grace.
Speaker 1: And the sacraments. And guess what, that's what the Calvinists do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a whole doctrine of deification. Well, what what are relics?
Speaker 5: Relics are part of a person who became an icon,
Speaker 5: a part of a person who became day fighted like
Speaker 5: truly day fight. So it's also fully linked to divine energies.
Speaker 5: You know, we we do not. We do not venerate
Speaker 5: someone was defied by an angel, by by by a creature.
Speaker 5: We venerate a person who truly became the icon. I've
Speaker 5: got through God any divine energies.
Speaker 1: Yep. He also argues that Christ can be circumscribed as
Speaker 1: an individual because he became an individual in terms of
Speaker 1: his human nature. He although he assumed human nature in general,
Speaker 1: he says, he became singular in terms of his historic
Speaker 1: incarnate state. This human nature did not have its existence
Speaker 1: in a self subsisting, circumscribed person. As if there was
Speaker 1: a hypostasis apart from the word. The word is the
Speaker 1: only hypostasis, but has its existence in the humanity has
Speaker 1: its existence in the hypostasis of the word, which is what,
Speaker 1: of course I've always said. If there is, however, a
Speaker 1: second person, Oh excuse me, if because a second person
Speaker 1: is not admitted in the hypostasis of Christ, the iconoclass
Speaker 1: should say that the hypostasis is therefore uncircumscribable in respect
Speaker 1: to his humanity, they must necessarily say that there is
Speaker 1: one nature of the word compounded from two natures, and
Speaker 1: therefore uncircumscribed because the property of one of the two
Speaker 1: natures has been a limited eminated, which is to fall
Speaker 1: into the heresy of the apollinarians. So in other words,
Speaker 1: it's removing the full humanity of Christ to say that
Speaker 1: Christ cannot be circumscribed or pictured or imaged, because if
Speaker 1: he's fully man, he can be circumscribed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Correct, which is because I wouldn't have thought about that
Speaker 1: being an a pollinarian conclusion which removes the full humanity.
Speaker 1: But it would be right. It's not exactly identical to
Speaker 1: what a pollinarist said, because he replaced the mind of
Speaker 1: Christ with the logos, and he said that Christ didn't
Speaker 1: have a fully human mind. But it's the same idea
Speaker 1: of a pollinarianism by making Christ not fully human by
Speaker 1: saying that because of the incarnation, he cannot be circumscribed, right,
Speaker 1: that would be a gnostic a pollinarian slash heresy. Okay,
Speaker 1: those are some good little arguments from a Saint Theodore.
Speaker 1: And then, by extension, although not directly connected just to icons,
Speaker 1: I will add that consistent with this flow of argumentation
Speaker 1: is the classic commentary of Saint Germanis of Constantinople on
Speaker 1: the Divine Liturgy. I read this back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven when I read this the Theodore of the
Speaker 1: Studeic Book, and they're both really good, and they go
Speaker 1: together in terms of showing the continuity between liturgical worship
Speaker 1: and iconography. I mean, these all of these things are
Speaker 1: going to hang or fall together, right, They're gonna They're
Speaker 1: gonna go together consistently. And he's going to argue that
Speaker 1: the liturgy is just the worship of Heaven on earth, it.
Speaker 5: Which is signified by you know, as in Exodus, there's
Speaker 5: the divine beings, Angel and so on. And that's why
Speaker 5: we have the saints. That's why we represent the saints there,
Speaker 5: because when you enter liturgy, you truly are in heaven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you well, we read so when Moses goes on
Speaker 1: top of the mountain, he sees the worship of heaven,
Speaker 1: and then when he comes down to establish the animal
Speaker 1: sacrifices and the Mosaic ceremonies. The text explicitly says that
Speaker 1: he Moses received a type of the things in heaven.
Speaker 1: So Mosaic worship, according to scripture, is a type tupos,
Speaker 1: an image of the heavenly worship when Jesus came and
Speaker 1: set up the Lord's Supper and all the worship that
Speaker 1: we have. That is the reality of which the type signified.
Speaker 1: So we don't have as the Protestants would have it,
Speaker 1: they would have us back in the Mosaic period of
Speaker 1: still using types. No, the Mosaic administration was the types
Speaker 1: Jesus brought the reality. Therefore you have to believe in
Speaker 1: the real presence. But all the Protestants want to go
Speaker 1: back to the Mosaic period to say always just types
Speaker 1: and symbols. No, it's the reality, the real power, the
Speaker 1: reality of Pentecosts, the reality of body blows soul and
Speaker 1: uncreated grace energy is present in the worship. That's why
Speaker 1: only Orthodox worship is the full continuity with the synagogue
Speaker 1: and temple. If you want to read about that, read
Speaker 1: this book.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's the part for points that I wanted
Speaker 5: to make. If you look at the history of the Church,
Speaker 5: be it in terms of theology, worship, and iconography, with
Speaker 5: the only church that did not degenerate, you know, one
Speaker 5: or the other. We are a perfect continuity. And this
Speaker 5: is all present in the icons themselves, in the way
Speaker 5: we understand them, in the way we pain them. It's
Speaker 5: a complete system.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember when I was when I was looking
Speaker 1: into Orthodoxy, you know, I was. I had gone from
Speaker 1: Calvinism into Rome Catholicism. I'd been Romancalluy for many years,
Speaker 1: and I was starting to look at Orthodoxy about two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven six, and I was thinking, well, why
Speaker 1: do they Why is the iconographic tradition done a certain way?
Speaker 1: And I didn't really understand that it was because of
Speaker 1: the theological positions. Right, So when you read Saint Theodore,
Speaker 1: and I got my notes here that I made back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, where I was, I was
Speaker 1: writing out what hypostasis means, and I was writing about
Speaker 1: what a historian and what fusis is. Right, So I
Speaker 1: was actually making all these notes about the significance of
Speaker 1: these things because Sat Theodore is arguing.
Speaker 5: That the.
Speaker 1: Meaning, the symbolism, the form, the structure, the balance, the colors.
Speaker 1: The way the iconographic presentation is put forth is all
Speaker 1: to teach and signify the theological meanings. And once you
Speaker 1: learn how precise Orthodox theology is, then it makes sense. Oh,
Speaker 1: now I understand why it's so precise like that, it's
Speaker 1: not just made up. Oh, let's just do it this way.
Speaker 5: Exactly. And that's why this is an emphasis on not innovating,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Yeah, because would change the theology.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we don't. We don't call people like, you know,
Speaker 5: icon artists. We call them iconography.
Speaker 1: Writers exactly because they're they're writing the theological truths, just
Speaker 1: like you were writing a book.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, And that's the real danger of you know,
Speaker 5: introducing new traditions and transforming, transforming your iconographic tradition using artists.
Speaker 5: You know, Michael Angelo is a good example. But today
Speaker 5: you can see, especially in the West, and some people
Speaker 5: want to do this to to to orthodox yicography. But
Speaker 5: people like destroying religion itself by destroying these images.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want a good if you want a
Speaker 1: good thing to read on this, if you read The
Speaker 1: Theology of the icon Volume two. The main reason I
Speaker 1: recommend this is because of the chapter on Orthodoxy versus humanism.
Speaker 1: So actually this chapter is about how the uncreated energies
Speaker 1: are shown and taught in the theology of iconography, and
Speaker 1: so the created light of Barlam is actually the reason
Speaker 1: why the Latin tradition goes away from our tradition. That's
Speaker 1: there's a whole chapter on that very doctrine that that
Speaker 1: Snack was talking about earlier. That this book is worth
Speaker 1: it just for that chapter. Noticed that, right, hechasm and humanism.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and many of the things we can we can link,
Speaker 5: for example, is the emphasis of the renaissance and anatomy.
Speaker 5: This is this is you know, we were moving away
Speaker 5: from that.
Speaker 1: Hold on can you say that again, renaissance on what anatomy?
Speaker 1: You know anatomy? Yes, exactly right, what what do you
Speaker 1: make of that flesh? That out some more? That's a
Speaker 1: good thing, you know, and thought about.
Speaker 5: That we're moving away from this, you know, god centric
Speaker 5: worship like why why why do we have a veneration
Speaker 5: of icons Is because these people are saints because in
Speaker 5: heaven you know.
Speaker 1: Now we're like worshiping the form of the body.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you have the form of the body, you
Speaker 5: have humanism, the hello st the beer and I think
Speaker 5: There's there's a painting of Christ's death, you know, Christ
Speaker 5: in his tomb that was commented by Dostoevsky and he
Speaker 5: said this picture could turn anybody into an atheist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, I see.
Speaker 5: Fully defeated Christ, fully defeated in that sense, you know,
Speaker 5: like really represented as a carrier. And and I remember
Speaker 5: was commenting in this painting saying, you're gonna have atheism.
Speaker 5: That's why you have atheism because you you you two man,
Speaker 5: and you you will you worship, you know, with humanism
Speaker 5: man alone, and your iconography is showing it. And since
Speaker 5: man is mortal, you're going to turn to atheism.
Speaker 1: Well, and this also explains why all this Renaissance stuff
Speaker 1: is hermetic, right. I used to think that wasn't the case,
Speaker 1: and then when I started reading like occult Renaissance Church
Speaker 1: of Rome books like that, you realize that no, actually
Speaker 1: they really were Bernini, all these guys were deep into hermeticism, Leonardo.
Speaker 1: They were into the occult alchemy, weird stuff. And that's
Speaker 1: why the stuff that they're painting. Even though we can
Speaker 1: appreciate the artistic skill, I'm not denying that these guys
Speaker 1: are good at what they do. But the point is
Speaker 1: that it is not the tradition of what had already
Speaker 1: been laid down at the seventh Ecamdical Council. I mean,
Speaker 1: look at these two things. You couldn't be further from
Speaker 1: the truth, right. And again, it's not that we're we're
Speaker 1: not rating them on. Oh this one's cooler than that one.
Speaker 1: That's not the point. The point is the theological doctrines
Speaker 1: that are taught by these different traditions.
Speaker 5: You see, yeah, I mean you're showing your assisting chapel
Speaker 5: right now. It's very interesting because what does it teach us.
Speaker 5: First of all, the fathers represented. The father should not
Speaker 5: be represented.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to represent the father exactly, even though yes,
Speaker 1: I will have to admit trad sometimes Orthodox people are
Speaker 1: not consistent with this, they're not consistent. But technically you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to represent the father because the only representation
Speaker 1: of the father is the son.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but here you can see a first Stringerian mistake
Speaker 5: in this very famous painting from the System Chapel. It's
Speaker 5: a father that gives life to creation, that gives.
Speaker 1: Life to Aidam, but worse worse Christ.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the treaty does this, like Tenesis teaches. You can
Speaker 5: see errors being introduced and layered and layered and layered,
Speaker 5: and of course these people are going to you know,
Speaker 5: fully Christian. If you look at yeah, it's very emetic.
Speaker 5: You have a lot of esoteric stuff going in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And if anybody doubts that, just read cult ren
Speaker 1: not short of Rome. It proves that beyond any shadow
Speaker 1: of a doubt, from hundreds of citations of the Renaissance
Speaker 1: hermeticist scholars themselves. So let's see, was there anything else
Speaker 1: you want to get to If you get anything else
Speaker 1: in your notes, We've gone for about an hour and
Speaker 1: a half and then we've got some super chats. But
Speaker 1: we don't have to stop if you got more.
Speaker 5: No, I just want to say that today you can
Speaker 5: see that these paintings here for the art people do
Speaker 5: not the no longer object of veneration. The theology is lost,
Speaker 5: and that's why sometime it will shocked Westerners and even
Speaker 5: Catholic you know, when they say, oh, you know you're
Speaker 5: kissing icons. You know, it's it's weird. It's ironically, there
Speaker 5: will things that it's idolatrous because because of all these
Speaker 5: degradations that they've lost, this tradition, and that's very sad
Speaker 5: because it's part with the seventh console, and you cannot
Speaker 5: bring the seventh console against the price and to then
Speaker 5: not respect it yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it also reminds me of the weird like another
Speaker 1: weird thing that was. I'm pretty sure it's too. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been fifteen years since I looked at this, but
Speaker 1: one of the famous Calvinist, Francis Turitan, speculated that after
Speaker 1: the Resurrection, Jesus would shed his human nature, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: need it anymore. Well, that's just more gnosticism, more proof
Speaker 1: that Protestantism, Calvinism, and Puritanism especially are gnosticism, because the
Speaker 1: whole point of the incarnation was that he would take
Speaker 1: on human nature and that he would always and forever
Speaker 1: be incarnate. That's one of the amazing mysteries of the
Speaker 1: incarnation is that that God will for all eternity be man. Right,
Speaker 1: the second person that got hit will forever an all
Speaker 1: eternity be man. He will never leave it, shed his
Speaker 1: humanity like it was some kind of snake skin or
Speaker 1: some nonsense like this. But I'm pretty sure a Turretin
Speaker 1: speculator said that maybe even Jonathan Edwards or somebody else,
Speaker 1: and the Calvinist tradition said something like that. But the
Speaker 1: point is that that you're only saying that because you're
Speaker 1: gnostic and they don't believe. As if you read the
Speaker 1: Paniotas now Us, a book on deification, the whole first
Speaker 1: chapter is dedicated to showing that the incarnation was always
Speaker 1: the plan. The incarnation is not a plan B based
Speaker 1: on the fall. The incarnation was always the plant. Creation
Speaker 1: itself presupposes the incarnation, and that's unique to Orthodox theology,
Speaker 1: by the way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, correct, Yeah, pretty good. We've covered the whole history
Speaker 5: of it, We've covered the theology of it, gave examples. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm pretty spect Okay, we've just extream. Yeah, we can
Speaker 5: close and this and go to the super checks.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Our Seneca Arseni Boca for thirteen forty eight. He says,
Speaker 1: our base relief presentation is part of Orthodoxy. I've not
Speaker 1: seen them in Byzantine or Romanian churches, but I've seen
Speaker 1: them in Russian churches. Do you have any opinions on this?
Speaker 1: They seem to be classical, Hellenic and Catholic to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know specifically about that, but there are obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, representations that are more Western in style that
Speaker 1: influenced different periods. I mean, this is this is true.
Speaker 1: You know in architecture that you have the you know,
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg kind of being neo classical, and this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff happens, of course, but I'm not so sure
Speaker 1: that that that's necessary. Just because there's a cross pollination
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that, oh well, then we're denying the whole uh,
Speaker 1: you know, validity of the liturgy. I mean the point
Speaker 1: here is that it's what we're talking about is in
Speaker 1: the context of the liturgy, in the context of the church.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, do you know about Bay's relief representations?
Speaker 5: Okay, so we do have icons, because that doesn't mean
Speaker 5: we cannot have other sort of representation. We can have statuary,
Speaker 5: at least the cannons that condemned statues. It doesn't condemned
Speaker 5: statues per se.
Speaker 1: It just says make sure, I mean you can have us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I could put a statue of Saint Paul
Speaker 1: right here. So what but in terms of the liturgical worship,
Speaker 1: it's very precise as the point. And yeah, sometimes churches
Speaker 1: do not always follow this, right, I mean You've got
Speaker 1: Western ride churches that are using the some of them
Speaker 1: are putting the Sacred Heart, well, the sacred Hearts in
Speaker 1: the Historian and Jesuit. It's not Orthodox, it shouldn't be there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I don't think barrel LIFs would be would
Speaker 5: be a problem specifically, you know, it's it's not a
Speaker 5: problem of the image being graven or not. So Yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't see I don't see any problem. We should
Speaker 5: try to keep to more classical iconographic standards because they're
Speaker 5: here for a reason. But again, I've really seen like
Speaker 5: really huge iconographic abuse except in some Western rights.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, apartem is, I wouldn't consider this a big problem exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, A good point. Next question is Eastern Rome and
Speaker 1: for five dollars, it's interesting to consider that the historical
Speaker 1: context of why iconoclasm grew grew in popularity and empire
Speaker 1: since the Amorillon. I don't know what that is, the
Speaker 1: Amorione I introduced it in the wake of the loss
Speaker 1: of Egypt and the levant to the Muslims, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, people thought at the time that they were being
Speaker 5: punished the Islam was a score of God, which, by
Speaker 5: the way, some people hold today and it is there
Speaker 5: is the typology of the apocalypse, and you know, anti
Speaker 5: Christian Muhammad. But yeah, people thought that they were being
Speaker 5: punished for excesses, especially in terms of some mosaics, iconography
Speaker 5: and song. So yeah, the idea of iconoclasm in Byzantium
Speaker 5: came from Islam. So yeah, it's right.
Speaker 1: All right. So Eastern Romans says, sorry, my bad, it
Speaker 1: was the Assaryoi. It was the Amorioi were after the Assorioid.
Speaker 1: Jeremy Milford donate his thirty dollars and he says Calvinists
Speaker 1: will cite Irnas critiquing the Nostic carporcration usage of images
Speaker 1: in against Heresy's one twenty five six. Well, first of all, again,
Speaker 1: if you read book three of Irenaeus and book four,
Speaker 1: he's not a Calvinist. So he believes in Abstolt succession,
Speaker 1: he believes in tradition, he believes in the Deudo canon,
Speaker 1: he believes in the real presence of Christ. He will
Speaker 1: believe and it believes in a succession of bishops. So
Speaker 1: they're picking and choosing, obviously, as they always do. But
Speaker 1: the point is not that all images. The point is
Speaker 1: whatever carpent cration images were being used. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of these sex worship the serpent, So we'd have
Speaker 1: to see exactly what image the corpor creations we're using.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, I'm gonna look at that quote and see
Speaker 1: what he says.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're gonna find some church. Father would say that
Speaker 5: good prayers don't visit image. And it is true, like
Speaker 5: you know, when you do the Hezekas prayer, you shouldn't
Speaker 5: you shouldn't image things, You shouldn't have images in your head.
Speaker 5: But that doesn't mean that you cannot have image in worship.
Speaker 5: That doesn't mean that you can signify and teach through
Speaker 5: these things. And actually that's an error that some Oriental
Speaker 5: Orthodox do. So they keep to teachings of Evagrius Spontikus
Speaker 5: on the image, and they actually removed all images from
Speaker 5: the liturgy. They're not econoclastic, per saved. It's a semi
Speaker 5: econoclastic because of this, at least a lot of them are.
Speaker 5: But that's again creating a needless, needless dialectic. You know,
Speaker 5: just because theosis for us is a process of prayer
Speaker 5: and of you know, being apathetic, removing ideas from your
Speaker 5: head doesn't mean that we cannot have images. And again
Speaker 5: we've seen that icons are linked to apophetic theology, so
Speaker 5: it's linked.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and then when we read what the actual
Speaker 1: quote says, it doesn't prove what the Calvinist wants. As usually,
Speaker 1: I'll read the quote, some of the Gnostics employ outward marks,
Speaker 1: branding their disciples inside the whole of the right ear
Speaker 1: from Among these they also arose a certain Marcellina who
Speaker 1: came to Rome under the episcopate of an Isotus, and
Speaker 1: he held these doctrines, and she led many multitudes astray.
Speaker 1: They styled themselves Gnostics and possessed images, some of which
Speaker 1: are painted, others of which are formed of different kinds
Speaker 1: of materials. While they maintained that a likeness of Christ
Speaker 1: was created by Pilot at the time when Jesus lived
Speaker 1: among them. They crowned the these images and set these
Speaker 1: images up along with images of the philosophers of the world,
Speaker 1: such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle. They have modes of
Speaker 1: honoring these images that is the same as the honor
Speaker 1: of the gentiles. So it's talking about idolatrous pagan images.
Speaker 1: It's not saying that all imagery itself is wrong. Let's see.
Speaker 1: But good question, Jeremy. Now Bill for five dollars, what
Speaker 1: snacks imagine? I don't know what that means, but thank you,
Speaker 1: No Bill, Mowgli for ten dollars. What does the image
Speaker 1: at the bottom of some Orthodox Study Bibles represent? The
Speaker 1: image at the bottom that I mean, it's just the
Speaker 1: dome of the church with a cross. So is that?
Speaker 1: I guess that's what you're talking about, Mowgli. If you
Speaker 1: want to qualify that in the chat, let me know.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't know what else you're talking about. Okay,
Speaker 1: it says that the spine of the Orthodox Study at all,
Speaker 1: it's just a church with a dome of a church.
Speaker 5: That's it is the logo of Ancient Face Radio.
Speaker 1: It might be their logo or is it just a dome.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what the logo is anyway, it's
Speaker 1: not a mystic that's the teric symbol.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Thanks has donated fifteen dollars, Thanks well, thank you. Thanks
Speaker 1: Levilla Floria, Levu Floria three dollars. The Renaissance was funded
Speaker 1: by international bank elite families such as the Medicis, who
Speaker 1: flourished in Italy around the center of an international finance
Speaker 1: at the time. Yes, that is true. I have read
Speaker 1: multiple books that cover that, and I think it's also
Speaker 1: covered in a cult Renaissance Church of Rome. That is correct.
Speaker 1: Mima phobe five dollars. Do you have any thoughts on
Speaker 1: the terraffim mentioned many times in the Old Testament? It
Speaker 1: just means statue and what because David had a terraffim
Speaker 1: for example, when he snuck out and he put a
Speaker 1: traffim under the sheets, he did the whole cartoon teenager
Speaker 1: trick of like putting a statue under the sheet so
Speaker 1: it looks like somebody's asleep. That's all teriffim means. But
Speaker 1: it also could be a statue used in pagan worship. So,
Speaker 1: but just having a statue, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: David had a terraffim, It wasn't an idol. What does
Speaker 1: that tell us about changes and what was acceptable in
Speaker 1: the early Biblical era. Well, if you listen to the
Speaker 1: whole talk, nothing changed. That was the whole point of
Speaker 1: this talk is that we have a consistent a kind
Speaker 1: of graphic presentation. There was no no images in the
Speaker 1: Old Testament. Now you can use images. That's simply not true.
Speaker 1: I mean, the temple is full of Imagesiam, do you
Speaker 1: have anything to say on.
Speaker 5: That, Snick, No, I mean, you know, we've we've proven
Speaker 5: that point by point from Oltists and Bible, New Testament,
Speaker 5: apostlic times to today.
Speaker 1: William Bergen ten dollars, snack and jay, I am newly
Speaker 1: illumined here, welcome many years. Is anti is anti Marianism
Speaker 1: connected to iconoclasm? Yes, So, even though it might be
Speaker 1: directly connected to it, the consistent presentation, as we said,
Speaker 1: of theosis, real presence of Christ liturgy, all of these
Speaker 1: things kind of go together. So the very idea of
Speaker 1: the the the theotokis being raised to the status of
Speaker 1: the highest of God's creatures, Queen of Heaven and Apocalypse twelve,
Speaker 1: it would pretty, you know, pretty necessarily be connected to iconoclasm.
Speaker 1: And as we said, iconoclasm is just kind of another
Speaker 1: denial of the incarnation. So when you deny the incarnation
Speaker 1: in the Orthodox sense, you get these weird deviations and
Speaker 1: these weird sex and these weird views that also will
Speaker 1: have heretical heterodox views in other areas of their theology.
Speaker 1: So naturally they're going to you know, prefer Nestorian ideas
Speaker 1: of who Mary is. Right, she's Thestoria says, she's Christodicos,
Speaker 1: not theoticas.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, like icons are signify of the incarnational principle,
Speaker 5: and the Theotokos is you know, the ultimate incarnational principle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she is the new arc of the Covenant, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so if you don't believe in that incarnational principle,
Speaker 1: you're not going to believe in theosis. You're not going
Speaker 1: to believe that that individual humans can become living arcs
Speaker 1: of the Covenant.
Speaker 5: Is going to be messed up.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the Christology is going to be all screwed up.
Speaker 1: All right, I don't see any more super chats. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys. That was a lot of fun. Be sure
Speaker 1: and follow Snack on his He has a pretty hype Twitter.
Speaker 1: He's always rolling up some people. He's fun to follow
Speaker 1: on Twitter. He's got an Instagram as well, And if
Speaker 1: you want to get into our discord or his discord,
Speaker 1: you can follow that as well. In the links. You
Speaker 1: can also join my website anything you want to promote Snack.
Speaker 5: No, it's mostly in French. We're going to start some
Speaker 5: new things. So the discord is mostly in French, but
Speaker 5: we've got like good archives, a good library, and we're
Speaker 5: going to start to do some fundraising soon for monasteries
Speaker 5: for skitties that are being set up in France. So
Speaker 5: we're gonna keep your passion on that. But yeah, it's growing. Actually,
Speaker 5: it's now the biggest Christian server in France because the
Speaker 5: Treads and the and the Concilia just canceled one another.
Speaker 5: So yeah, right now it's the biggest Christian serve in France.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we possess the biggest Orthodox Christian server snacks
Speaker 1: in there as well, So he's got the biggest French
Speaker 1: Orthodox server. So you said the biggest Christian or biggest
Speaker 1: French Christian Christian Oh wow, okay, so so yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of converts being made through his and by God's grace,
Speaker 1: a lot of converts in ours as well. So if
Speaker 1: you want to join the discord, just follow my Twitter
Speaker 1: and periodically I will post invites for debate or whatever
Speaker 1: people want to do to come to the Twitter, I
Speaker 1: mean to to the discord.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's on my Twitter bio.
Speaker 1: Okay, awesome, all right, everybody, have a good night