Speaker 1: The human guinea pig stuff in Africa.
Speaker 2: It's so insane.
Speaker 3: All right, what's up? Welcome everybody. We are back with
live stream number two today. Hopefully you enjoyed part one
with our bros Kai and David Arhon and now we're
back with a new bro. Bros are being birthed left
and right, bros being birthed. My big thick burthen hips
are contributing, by God's grace to.
Speaker 4: Birthing more and more of our bros being silly. But
tonight we have a guest. I want to play a
little introductory song for our guest. His name is Alex.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 3: It was all right, I'm not gonna play the whole song.
Speaker 4: Y'all can go.
Speaker 3: Y'all can go vibe out to that classic track very soon.
But it's relevant for our guests because Alex himself was
a Pentecostal. He was raised a Romanian Pentecostal, and he
has an amazing story about how he eventually found his
way by God's grace and buying providence to the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 4: Alex, how you doing, dog, I'm great.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me on Jay. I appreciate that. Shout
out to the Romanian mafia thereas.
Speaker 3: Back I'm assuming like every group has a mafia. Is
there an actual Romanian mafia?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: We try to keep it low key though, because you
know Romanians, you put them all together. The only way
you can get them to do something is if you
have one strong man in charge. It's really truly a
shock that it's not a Catholic country. I think because
Orthodoxy is so intertwined in the DNA, that's how they
were able to work it out there.
Speaker 3: Well, you being a lawyer, you could be like the conciliary,
you know, to the crime family. You could give them
all the legal advice.
Speaker 4: So you are an Orthodox lawyer. Before we get into.
Speaker 3: Your backstory, can you I want to ask you this question.
You seem to appreciate and enjoy debate, and I'm just
wondering might that have something to do with the fact
that you're a lawyer.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. I think lawyers, probably litigators in particular, they have
a specific way where they debate.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: There's an old saying that says, if you have the facts,
pound the facts. If you have the law, pound the law.
You have neither, then pound the table. But there's like
a form of debate in lawyering that is like storytelling,
which is slightly different from the philosophical mode of debate
that you're a little more obviously very well acquainted with.
In our view, we're focused more on like persuasion, and
although in an academic setting, of course, a syllogism may
persuade somebody, within litigation, you're working with laypeople, you know,
in a jury. Yeah, so we're focusing on like telling
a compelling story and working with the facts. And I
think from that perspective I bring maybe a unique approach
to apologetics.
Speaker 3: Now, I think that's a perfect descriptor of where your
approach is unique, because as I was watching your videos
and catching up on some of the responses which we're
going to get into the response to Joe Lene Heshmeier
and some of the other characters that you have interacted
with and responded to, you have a unique approach which
I think is very persuasive. And I would say that's
probably a deficit in my approach because a lot of
the you know, I don't know, spurgatisms and the silliness
can be off putting to some people.
Speaker 4: But you have this very smooth, very.
Speaker 3: Polished, persuasive approach which I think is a stellar in
the domain of rhetoric. But you're not just a skilled rhetorician.
You're also actually really good at presenting the facts and
doing an analytical approach. And so that's what I want
to get into today. So let's get your rewind you're
from a Romanian Pentecostal background. How do we get this.
Speaker 4: Long story from that into the world of the Orthodox Church.
Speaker 5: Well, it's certainly a long story. And thank you for
the compliments. I think it's high praise coming from someone
like yourself, who has you know, established himself in this
arena already. But for me, I am thankful. Growing up
Romanian Pentecostal in a way, they have a strong emphasis
on the scriptures, and my parents really immersed me in, like,
you know, even as a child, you know, those old
Hannah Barbera Bible cartoons, to where like even when I
was eight or nine, I already had a general idea
for like the overarching narrative of the Bible. Of course,
you know, I was a kid, so I didn't know
all the details or you know, how to structure persuasive
argumentation there, but there was a very strong emphasis on
like you know, maybe an excess that this book is
like so important, you really have to know this book,
you really have to know it covered to cover, and
a very strong emphasis on experience with God, not just
you know, theoretical intellectual knowledge, also experiencing God at the
same time. Of course, you learn later that within Pentecostalism
there are no guardrails there, which is what Orthodoxy provides
to experience God. But yeah, it was emphasized scripture a lot,
and I'm really thankful for that upbringing. Now Romanian Pentecostalism
and I think that Eastern European Pentecostalism in general it's
slightly different. Maybe it was just like thirty years behind
the American style of Pentecostalism because they were still very
traditional when I was growing up. The men and women
sat segregated, all of the women had head coverings. So
I think there was probably like holdovers from Orthodoxy because
it was really like.
Speaker 3: Got to be because I've never heard of that American
Pentecostal charismatic church, and I had a period where I
kind of visited a lot of those when I was younger.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and today that is not the case. You see
within the Romanian Pentecostal community that I think it was
over COVID there was like an acceleration to the natural
conclusion of what Pentecostalism is. And that's really when my
radar went up and I was like, man, this is
really going towards a word of faith New Apostolic Reformation.
It's like really extreme hyper charismaticism.
Speaker 3: Now before we move on, help us understand because a
lot of people in my I didn't even know what
this was until the other day when we were doing
like a Candice you know, TPUSA analysis downstream, What is
the new Apostolic Reformation and tie that into what you're
talking about with Pentecostalism.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So with Bill Johnson and this movement in California,
I think that's probably one of the most popular places
where you see the new Apostolic Reformation, where these people
believe that they are on the same spiritual level as
the Apostles themselves, and they think that there are new
Apostles that are coming out from this charismatic movement. And
of course this is a point that you yourself make
jay with any new sect that Jude is very clear
that the entirety of the Apostolic deposit has already been
given to the church. There is no new revelation. We
have all the new revelation already. So yeah, it's just
it's a sect within Charismaticism that talks about these apostles
that are coming up ruling the church in a way.
Speaker 3: It's weird though, it's almost like they kind of realized, hmm,
we kind of need some kind of living body of authority.
Let's just say we're apostles, you know what I mean,
Like maybe they're sensing that, you know, there's something missing
in the world of nobody can bind anybody else, you know,
in terms of conscience in the Protestant world. So I mean,
I know it's silly, but it's almost it's always funny
when you get like these elements of Evangelicalism or Protestantism
that kind of start suddenly tacking on ideas that are
already kind of in orthodoxy. There was a push, for example,
some years ago, about twenty years ago, when the emergent
Church movement was kind of getting popular, which was a
very obviously concocted, sort of corporate approach to Christianity. But
what was funny about it was at a certain point
they started saying, ooh, why don't we put like liturgical
patterns into the worship like instead of a like it's
like they just had this new, you know, branding idea,
and it's like, this is not new. It's like you're
doing the things that I've been here for two thousand years.
Speaker 5: That is actually a huge theme I think and how
I made the move over to Orthodox, you know. And
as we will get to that eventually. But when I
was growing up, I was always interested in theology. I
was always interested in philosophy. However, I wouldn't say that
like I'm a philosophy bro. I wouldn't say that I'm
a theology bro either, Like I think I'm very much
formed by my profession of advocacy. But I remember through
high school legality bro. Hopefully not a legalist bro, you know.
But yeah, I remember in high school. That's when Christopher Hitchens,
I think, was like at the top of his game,
fifteen sixteen or so years ago, and I remember watching
his debate with John Lennox, like over and over again.
It's been a while since I've watched that debate, but
if I remember correctly, John Lennox was like slamming this
objective truths from maths and fine tuning, and Christopher Hitchens
was just bringing this like extreme skepticism, and you know,
in my sixteen year old brain or whatever it was
at the time, I found Hitchens very convincing because he
was a very good rhetoricician, you know, And although I
think John Lennox won that debate, I think on rhetoric
Christopher Hitchens might have taken it there. Looking back at what.
Speaker 3: By the way, I think I think we did cover
that a couple of years ago on my channel. So
I'm glad you mentioned that, because I actually forgotten about
that debate, but I do remember him, you know, hammering
home a lot of those sort of mathematical points, which
is interesting because that seems to have had some impact
on cosmic skeptic Alex O'Connor, who's now sort of sort
of saying that he might be open to some kind
of theism, which is fascinating.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think maybe there's something to look out for there.
Who knows, you know, I wouldn't put too many chips
in that after building his career on this extreme skepticism
that we see. Yeah, so at one point after that,
you know, I overcame this atheism because there were I
guess I can't articulate it as well as you would,
but even at that point in my life, I understood
that there were some underlying requirements to have a worldview work,
you know, these regularity in the universe, uniformity, these presuppositions
for knowledge, this epistemic grounding. I think, as you would say,
it was like this atheism thing is not going to
work out. And you know, luckily I had some very
good mentors in the Romanian Pentecostal community then that had
actually gone to seminary gotten their degrees.
Speaker 3: So were you were you atheists for a period or
just sort of open to it.
Speaker 5: It was maybe five or six months.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: I think everybody kind of has that edgy phase in
their like teen, late teens and twenties where they consider it,
and that's that's more of what it was like. But
I considered going into theology at one point there because
I knew I wanted a career of like talking to
people and you know, helping people through their problems. And
then I talked to one of my mentors and he
was like, you have to be prepared to be like
very poor for your life, and I was like this
probably not, probably not the move for me. So that
was a very good sobering conversation. Now, I think today
in Pentecostalism you would not hear anybody talking about that
God is going to provide for you. You just plant so
a seed here and you'll get sevenfold in return.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Would you say that the Word of Faith type stuff
has really spread everywhere, even in so they're like the
Romanian Pentecostal circles, because that's.
Speaker 4: Odd, you know, to me.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was visiting some charismatic Pentecostal type
churches when I was first reading the Bible back in
the in the late nineties. The Word of Faith kind
of you know, name it, claimant, blab it, grab it,
kinde of copeland stuff that was only on TV and
it wasn't really in like local sort of charismatic Pentecostal
churches in the Bible Belt. Would you say that's different now?
Is it like kind of spread to other areas?
Speaker 5: Absolutely. I think if you find a more conservative Pentecostal
church within the Romanian community, that is the exception to
the rule. I think the rule is that they are
leaning towards that word of faith type of name it
and claimate theology. Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you, uh, let's get back to your story.
So pick back up where you were. I apologize, and
I mean to get us distracted, But you were talking about,
you know, meeting some sort of mentors in your which
is again, that's very rare to me to have the
sort of mentors in that domain because usually there's not
a lot of wisdom in that domain, at least not
in the Bible belt.
Speaker 4: Because that was my.
Speaker 3: Only exposure to this kind of a flavor of Christianity.
But so what what was happening next to get you
kind of were you beginning to question Pentecostalism? By the way,
was this a Trinitarian or anti Trinitarian oneness Pentecostal?
Speaker 5: This was Trinitarian. Luckily, Luckily I wasn't born into a
oneness Pentecostal. But I mean I was at a point
in my life where you know, I was interested in
these things, in these theological issues, and we would always
go back and forth, and it really seemed like the
only two positions were like that or Pentecostal. Because you know,
Roman Catholics they worship Mary and the Pentecostal Romanians when
they migrated to America, they had a very like sour
taste in their mouth, I guess from the Orthodox Church,
because there were a lot of conflicts between the Orthodox
Church at that point and the Romanian Pentecostal sectarians. So
it was like, well, the Orthodox were mean to us
in Romania, so that's not an option. The Roman Catholics
they worship Mary, so that's not an option. Lutherans are like, Okay,
I guess, but there wasn't really an emphasis on church
history there, which I assume now is probably for a
good reason because if you look at the founding of
Pentecostalism with Charles Parham, who is like more probably probably
was a homosexual, like a very open racist, like not
race realist, like actual racist, and then the emergence of
the angelic language speaking in tongues over time, church history
is not the friend of a Pentecostal So I understand
why there was not huge emphasis on that there.
Speaker 3: Did you have like the explanation that many of them do,
like if this topic came up that oh, well, Paul's
clearly talking about a kind of an angelic prayer language,
or did you have some other explanation.
Speaker 5: I think that was typically the go to passage, you know,
the standard proof text, like the Spirit intercedes for us
with groaning, or you know in I think it's First
Corinthians twelve where he has that clearly hyperbolic comparison to
the language of angels, and further down in First Corinthians
when he talks about how I prefer like, I've prayed
in tongues more than all of you, but I prefer
you to prophesy. And when I read that, now he's
clearly telling them to speak in tongues. Less he's not
telling them to speak in tongues, but the Pentecostal community
will use that as a proof text to speak in tongues,
and he's saying the opposite, it seems.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you know, that's classic issue that we've covered many,
many times in the last few months because I had
so many people sort of saying, hey, when are you
going to cover more charismatic Pentecostal issues, And then we
did multiple streams, public and private, and one of them
I think was even like four or five six hours.
But you know, one of the issues that you hit on,
I think in the discussion that you had with cleaves antiquity.
What that you mentioned earlier was this idea of new
ongoing revelations. So I'm always curious when I hear you know,
former Pentecostals, like did this issue ever come up when
you were Pentecostal of the problem of like new revelations
and pastors that claim to have a word of knowledge
and then they get it wrong, and like does that
not count? Was that not God speaking through you? Like
does God get it wrong? Like did any of that
kind of like lodge in your mind as like a
problem to kind of grapple with or was it not
really an issue?
Speaker 5: It was more of like a social reinforcement to be like, oh,
this guy prophesied something falsely, so like now we don't
like him any more kind of thing. It wasn't really
like we didn't think about it in terms of our
theological system, which is like a huge problem. But usually
it's just a rationalization. Like there's the reasoning I remember
and that I see now is like, oh, well, the
Holy Spirit gives revelation and prophecy to the individual. But
because we're humans, we're like corrupted creatures. So when it
comes out and we try to express the revelation. Then
it gets all messed up and jumbled up, which is like, it's.
Speaker 4: Actually a pretty creative cope there. I like that one.
That's pretty good.
Speaker 5: A huge problem for the Bible.
Speaker 3: Like I was gonna say, like, wouldn't that apply to
Paul writing epistles?
Speaker 4: And yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, So now so you're you've got these mentors, you're
pentecostal basically, you know, at some point there's got to
be chinks in the armor getting exposed, or is beginning
to be cracks in this paradigm.
Speaker 4: What what were the first cracks that started happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I didn't really think about this until much later.
I think I had already become a lawyer and become established.
You know, I was thinking about a career. I was
considering maybe theology. I was dissuaded from that. I considered
maybe going into like clinical psychology, because, as I said,
I wanted to talk with people and work with people.
And then I show up to like psych one hundred
and everybody has like whispy beards and fedoras and like vests.
This is not my crowd or anything. So I decided, like,
maybe I'll go to law school. At that point so
I go through law school, you know, I find some
mentors in the legal realm within litigation, and that formed
my thinking a lot, going through law school and learning
this profession of litigation, these professional persuaders, and the top
level of that is just insane. Like they I would
compare it to they have magic powers of persuasion. And
I don't think I'm on that highest tier yet. Hopefully
one day I'll get there. But it was really during
COVID that I saw this acceleration within the Romanian Pentecostal
community going more towards Word of Faith and the New
Apostolic Reformation. I'll say, this can't be right. It was
really like twenty twenty, twenty twenty one when I started,
like so five years ago, when I started turning back
the clock and like kind of starting from present day
and going back. And I was very interested in Calvinism
at that time. And there was a documentary that like
some Baptists made called Cessationist, which I think that really
opened my eyes to the false experiences in the pre
list within the Pentecostal movement, because it's really hard, I think,
to shake your identity from like no, I did have
this real religious experience. I did, like people really believe that.
They don't want that I've been tricked for like my
whole life, right, nobody wants to come to that conclusion.
But when I saw that, like really, what did it
for me was there was a scene of like some
Kundalini reawakening images and then like a Pentecostal gathering, and
I was like, man, it cannot tell the difference. They
are identical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so sometimes guys, the workaround requires me to flip
the monitor on and off. So that's all that was was.
That's why there was an echo, So just relax, just
sit refresh. We all know that there's perpetual issues with
iOS and Apple and stream labs. But yeah, so I
remember too because I had a Pentecostal phase or I
mean charismatic phase where I went to some charismatic churches
for a while and I think eventually what really sort
of stuck out to me what I thought, you know,
in good faith, that well, this is what's happening in
the Book of Acts, right, like this is them. You know,
they look like they're drunk in the spirit. That's got
to be some kind of like overwhelming you know, flopping
and rolling around and acting silly type of stuff. But
then I remember when I was reading Corinthians, and I
would notice Paul would say things like God.
Speaker 4: Is not the author of confusion.
Speaker 3: You know, you guys are acting insane and crazy, like
what is wrong with what you guys are doing?
Speaker 4: Like what's wrong with you? Right? You got it all backwards,
And I realized.
Speaker 3: Well, so, wait a minute, Actually, the way the charismatic
churches operate is sounds like the things that Paul's complaining about, right,
And at first I thought, well, that would mean that
that's the true church because they're operating the way Paul's complaining.
But then I realized, no, wait a minute, the worship
service isn't actually based on new ongoing revelations if the
faith was once for all committed to the saints. And then,
as you know, there's many other passages that really sort
of back up this idea of the finality of divine
revelation at some point in terms of public dogmatic revelation, right,
And even that text in Daniel nine says the sealing
up of vision and prophecy doesn't mean that all the
prophecies are fulfilled at the first Advent, but the revelation
seems to be in some way completed at the first
advent of the Messiah. You have that passage in Zachariath.
I think it's thirteen that talks about when the Messiah comes,
there will no longer be profits we have. I remember
learning a long time ago Joseph Smith altering Luke sixteen
sixteen about you know, John the Baptist being the last
of the prophets, and of course jose Smith had to
make that, you know, some some other wordings so that
he could be another prophet.
Speaker 4: And then I think, you know, over time you wait,
are you guys saying that the sound doesn't work?
Speaker 3: See, we had a whole how do we have a
whole freaking interview that we had a whole interview that
went perfect with no issues, and then as soon as
I get my law bro on, everything goes insane.
Speaker 5: All right, Right, it's because we started talking about Pentecostalism.
Speaker 3: For sure, the Pentecostals are sending this the angels to
come attack us. Okay, so this sounds good now, So yeah,
so I have to do these workarounds anyway. So you know,
as you mentioned, Jude three says the faith was once
for all committed to the same scalations. One Paul says,
no one else can each a new Gospel other than
what I delivered. Well, that means there has to be
some finality to us delivered to judge anything, you know,
future wise on on this basis. And so even as
you mentioned when I was a Calvinist, you know, I realized, Okay,
there's got to be some kind of like you know,
finality to this, because you know, God.
Speaker 4: Takes people that speak for him very seriously.
Speaker 3: And when you've got ministers and preachers and people who
claim to be prophets getting things wrong or their word
of knowledge or their you know, their their prophetic statements
end up not being true. You know, in the charismatic world.
I was in there, not a long time, maybe a year,
but enough to see like, okay, this isn't really taken seriously,
Like you get this wrong.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh, well, give us another shot here. Right. Well,
in scripture, right, the false prophets, as Jeremiah says, Prophet
I have a vision according to their own hearts and
not according to the Lord.
Speaker 3: And I was like, that's what's actually what's going on
in a lot of these churches. So again, this is
all kind of uh, you know, old news to you.
But I think for people in the audience, we have
to keep hammering this home because.
Speaker 4: Even after here's what you'll notice as.
Speaker 3: You start to make content, Alex, I mean you're already
well into this. You will address a topic with the
utmost most precision for three hours, it will get tons
of views, and the next day you will have someone say,
when are you going to address pentecostalism with any precision?
It's like, dude, did you not just watch this? I mean,
so get ready for all of that. But anyway, back
to you, I'm sorry'm rambling. That's the whole sort of
idea of the finality of revelation. And then when I
started reading the Church Fathers, as you said, you start realizing, hey,
wait a minute, Montanous is like the same thing, and
he was condemned or in the second century. So did
you start to have any interest in the Church Fathers
at this period or was it just sort of the
problems of charismaticism that made you think, okay, this isn't it.
Speaker 5: Well it was a bit of an extended pipeline. I guess. Basically,
I had this friend in Florida, who you know, he
did like seminary at Pentecostal Seminary. He had more of
an open mind to these kinds of things, and he
said he very much disliked that I was getting into Calvinism,
and he was like, you need to go read doctor
Michael Heiser's Unseen Realm because in the chapter there he
makes a pretty good case against determinism. And I know
Calvinists today try to like disavow the term determinism, but
I don't think there's really any work around with that.
But I read Michael Heiser's Unseen Realm, and then he
also recommended because it also talks about like the Divine
Council theology, Father Stephen Dejung's Religion of the Apostles Orthodox
Christianity in the first century. So going through Michael Heiser's
work and then putting an Orthodox lens on that, because
not everything Michael Heiser talks about is Orthodox, but then
putting an Orthodox lens to that through Father Stephen Deyong's
work was like, Wow, hold on a minute, there might
be something here. Like one of my big objections was
seeking the intercession of the Saints, which is the video
I dropped most recently, and the Divine Council theology makes
I think seeking the intercessions of those members on the
Divine Council feasible. So yeah, that was one of the
first pipelines to get me to considering it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, it's funny because I had a
different a different course into that realm, and I remember
that being an issue for me. But I went back
in two thousand and one and two into Catholicism. So
my path for that was hardcore Calvinist. And then I
read Scott Hans's book Marriage Supper of the Lamb, which
is actually still a decent book. You could actually get
some really good sort of liturgical argumentation and meet from
that text, even though obviously I'm not Roman Catholic, but
Marriage Upper of the Lamb really made me understand, oh
wait a minute, you know, I'm already a Calvinist preterist,
personal predist.
Speaker 4: Here I believe.
Speaker 3: Seventy a d was, you know, kind of the finality
of that introduction of the last days into the here
and the now they already not yet framework. And then
it was like, once you understood that, oh, we're actually
all part of the same family. Even those that have
gone on, and we're all part of the same worship
service even though they have gone on, you know, church
militant united with you know, church triumphant, and you know,
you read Hebrews eleven, you see that we're all part
of that same city. It kind of, you know, coalesced
for me, and you know, Revelations five through nine, you know,
clearly saying that it's again a large communal service with
all that liturgical imagery. Did the Book of Revelation play
a role for you in accepting that? Because for me
it was kind of the knockdown.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so, because growing up in a Pentecostal background,
it was like obviously very dispensationalists. So it was like,
Revelation is this book that you can't really understand is
kind of unfolding. And the hermeneutic that you use to
understand Revelation is you take a news headline and you
compare that to a verse in Revelation, and it's like,
what can you get from comparing the news headlines and
the Book of Revelation that was written nineteen hundred years ago, whatever,
you know, And that's a bad hermeneutic really, as soon
as you know, I got interested in Orthodox He's starting
attended attending the liturgy. I was like, oh, hold on
a minute, this looks familiar. It was like, yeah, revelation
played a big role in that, that liturgical component, and
obviously other Orthodox influencers on YouTube like yourself, like Sarah
and Hamilton, I know, is big on this about this,
like sacramental worldview. I think that played a big role
as well as consuming all of this content from the
giants that have come before me. I guess and up
at out this.
Speaker 3: Did you have a period of Calvinism or you were
just intellectually interested, but you didn't go into a Presbyterian
church or anything.
Speaker 5: Well, it was around twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen when my
wife and I we joined like a non denom evangelical church.
We left the Pentecostal movement, so that was more of
a baptisty church as it would be like a reform disoteriology.
Speaker 3: James White reform Baptist type idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: And a few years after adjoining, you know, reading more
about church history, getting into the church fathers, there was
just like something I couldn't stand about this, like goofy
Calvinism anymore. I just couldn't stand hearing anything about it,
and I went to the leaders of that church and
that at that time, that was after Michael Heiser and
Stephen Deyong and I started going into the Church fathers.
My mindset kind of shifted, and I was like, forget
starting here and working backwards. Let's start from the Book
of Acts and move forwards. And I was like, let's
just get down like the first thousand years of church history.
Speaker 3: Let's get that down and tell me about this because
you mentioned this with your interview with Cleve. You said
something about kind of a lawyer's approach to analytically looking
at each of the heresies as schisms historically.
Speaker 4: Is that we said something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I guess the way my brain has been
trained was to look at all of these is like
court cases almost, so it'd be like Montanus versus you know,
the rest of the Church, or Arius v Alexander.
Speaker 4: I think that's actually really genius.
Speaker 3: That's actually you because I've never heard anyone think about
it this way, but it actually makes perfect sense.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I think folks today are very influenced by Papism,
Roman Catholicism, and they're under this assumption that councils like
declare dogmas, and that is one function, but it's not
like the main function I believe of a council is
to like resolve disputes and to like find the truth
out of this dispute. Right, you have areas who got
excommunicated by Saint Alexander of Alexandria.
Speaker 4: Was that right?
Speaker 5: You know what's going on here? What is the claim?
What is correct? And then out of that you get
the infallible dogma that we hold on to. But like
in law, there's a bunch of like, oh bitter dicta
in there as well that like, not everything from a
council is infallible. And when I heard you talking about that,
I was like, man, there are so many parallels in
this dispute resolution of mechanism within the Church to actual
modern law today, where not everything that the Supreme Court
says in their twenty six page opinions are binding on everybody,
Like they're of course very weighty, but the part that
you take out is like the actual decision, the holding,
which the parallel to that in orthodoxy would be the dogma.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, and key point here too, And I meant
to mention this in today's earlier interview when we were
kind of working through some of the Econmenical councils in
regard to Christology and later you know, fifth and six
Council condinations of you know, monel, thelitism and that kind
of stuff. It's funny that in the in the Roman
Catholic mindset, if you if you really thought that the
Church of the first thousand years was papal and was
Roman Catholic, why all these debates, why why all of
this arguing the nuances of Christology and mono, thelitism and
this and that, Like all anyone had to do was
just so we were talking about the difference in the
attitude between the Roman Catholic approach today and we're going
to talk about replying replying to Roman Catholics here in
a moment, you know, we were just we were discussing
the idea that you know, the early Church, uh, in
the early ecumenical councils, it would have been so much
easier to just ask the Pope what the right answer
is the why all of these disputes, all this nuance,
all this terminology, when we could have just simply said
ron tell us what's right, and then we all because
we all we're all papists, like, clearly this is the
easiest route to resolving disputes. But instead we have very
dogged debates, very abstruse discussions about very difficult theological nuances
and technicalities, and so that shows us. I think that again,
the whole ethos of the first thousand years is clearly
the orthodox to Nodal model, not the Roman Catholic default
autocratic model, which you know, as you're pointing out, like
why there's other things going, like the councils themselves. The
process of the councils shows us so much more than
just like the sort of clipping copy paste, Oh here's
the dogma, that's all that matters, right, Well, for example,
you know, if you look at Constantinople one, you can't
separate the pronunciation of the council from the theology of
the Cappadocians and especially Saint Gregornossa. And you know, if
you have like a romanctholic mindset as an example, you
can just sort of clip out what you want and
say you don't really care about like Basil and the
Cappidocean model of you know, the monarchical trinitarian view. I
only care about the dogmatic pronouncement. And ironically, protests are
the exact same thing as the papist when it comes
to these councils and they say, uh, you know, I
like what Athanasius said here about the deed of Christ.
I don't care what the Canons of Nicia teach about
the Eucharist and deacons and the episcopate. All of that
is irrelevant to me. I just like this part. Papist
exact singing are like this part. And really, ironically, it's
only the Orthodox Church that is actually still doing the
sonodal model.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think it's the only worldview that has successfully synthesized
all of these things together into a coherent worldview. And
they do this especially with the Holy Script. Sure you
know this redefining this doctrinal development. See it in Protestantism,
you see it in Papism. I think Holy Orthodoxy is
the only worldview that has successfully integrated all these things
together because it's true.
Speaker 4: It's right.
Speaker 5: Probably helps to win when you're winning a debate, to
actually be in the right position.
Speaker 3: Well, let's get back to your to your journey. So
as COVID's happened. You're investigating the Church fathers. Now where
when you say that and we all kind of go
through that, you know, not that we don't we're not
still interested in the Church Fathers. But I think there's
a freshness and a newness when you're an Evangelic or
a Protestant and you begin to read the Church Fathers.
I started with things like Jerome, Saint Jerome, I started
with Augustin, and I started with Ambrose, all the Latin fathers.
I did read Athanasius very early on, back in about
two thousand and one, and I was pretty quickly kind
of struck with like, Okay, they're not Calvinists, they're not Protestant.
What was your your journey to the Patristic era writings
and how did that go?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I got this like little anthology by this Anglican scholar Betenson,
who has like little snippets from each church father for
like the first three hundred years, and it's like, what
did Basil teach on soteriology? Okay, what did Gregory of
Nissa teach on soteriology? And it's kind of like a
systematized little snippets a quote mine I guess, but a
well intentioned academic quote mine. And I was struck by
a passage from Saint Ignatius that said, if you follow
a man who causes a schism, you have what hope
is there for you? For salvation? And I was like,
holy cow, Like that is the entire Protestant movement, the
whole thing. And then it's like, maybe I should go
and like look at all of these schisms and see
which one makes the most sense in each schism. And
that's when I took that like, uh, that case law
loyally approach where it was like, okay, we have two parties,
so somebody's making an argument here, somebody's making an argument here.
What did the council decide and what was their reasoning
for it? And trying to put them into the form
of like a narrative or a case for lack of
better terms.
Speaker 3: And what as you're doing this, as you're going through
these heresies.
Speaker 4: And by the way, how far did you go up?
Speaker 3: Did you go all the way up to like the
eighth ninth century or like what where did that process
of kind of doing the legal analysis end?
Speaker 5: Well, it was focused mostly on the seven Ecumenical councils uh.
And then after that, you know, I started making my
way back to the Reformation. But by the time I
got to like the fifth sixth Council, I had a
lot of questions for my non denom baptisty evangelical pastors,
and I had a few conversations with them, and you know,
nice people interpersonally, but I was shocked, Jay, I was
shocked that these people have mdivs and doctoral level degrees.
And if I talk about, like, hey, doesn't monothelaticism from
the sixth Ecumenical Council sound a bit like monargism and conversion,
they look at me like I'm speaking another language, Like
they have no clue what I'm talking about, like not
an idea in the world. And I was like, man,
these people have been short changed by their seminaries. So
I started wondering, like, what do they teach in seminaries
these days? And it's not historical theology. That's that's like
a specialty for sub PhD graduate project. They teach you
about like building organizations, mobilizing volunteers, trying to build a church,
involving the community. It's not so much about theology as
you would think it is maybe.
Speaker 3: Back in the way I remember very well. I mean
I was at a Baptist school. I remember over Christmas break,
I was there for two weeks kind of alone, and
I read almost all of the City of God in
that two weeks, and I wrote down a bunch of
questions and I took it to I even remember who
the professor were. This's like back in like the year
two thousand and doctor hawt Ostrender and doctor Chad Brand,
and I think they're still Baptist pastors. But I took
my questions out of City of God to them, and
it was just like like they'd never even thought about like,
wait a minute, wait, Augustine says that. Augustine says, what
about the real I thought he was our guy. Yeah,
they were sort of yeah, like what so I think
there's a lot of even in the academic realm of
Protestantism and Evangelicalism, there's just this assumption that, oh, yeah, Augustine,
he's our guy, and that's you know, Athanasius, he's our guy.
Speaker 4: But then you.
Speaker 3: Actually start to read the letters, festal letters, you know,
this kind of stuff, the councils, and you start to realize,
wait a minute, I'm not at all like in this domain.
And you know I made the mistake, you know, without
knowing any better back in two thousand and one two three,
of just thinking oh, it's either Protestant or Roman Catholic,
and later you know, got a lot more sophisticated than God.
But what was it that, as you're reading their church
fathers made you not go to the Roman Catholic.
Speaker 5: It was how they acted. You know, people say all
kinds of things, right, there's honorifics, there's flattery, like unfortunately,
it's just a part of it that the Church on
earth is has like a human element to it. So
there you're gonna see flattery in letters. But you know,
all the things that the Papists will use to support
their claim that Rome had universal, unhindered jurisdiction over all
the faithful, throughout the entire church, and they weren't subject
to review by anybody. Every single quote you can find
an identical quote about another church. I think Saint Basil's
Late Letters where he's talking about the Church in Antioch says,
the church in Antioch is the head of the church.
What will the church do the body without its head?
We need to have malicious Saint Malicius as the bishop
in Antioch. He's trying to get Saint Athanasius on his side.
And so you can't really put too much weight in
these like political movements where they're trying to persuade somebody.
You have to look at what they actually do. So
in Roman Catholicism, I was like, Okay, if I were
to join Roman Catholicism today, what am I signing up for?
And I just read through Pastor returnis in my legal mind,
the phrase that stuck out to me is that the
Roman See is not subject to review by anybody. And
the corollary to that in the American court system is
the supreme court. It is not subject to review by anybody.
It's the highest authority. And Pastor Returnists actually uses that
term unsurpassed authority. They are saying that the Roman See
is the supreme court in the church, and you just
don't see anyone acting that way. Like one proof that
they like to use is Pope Celestine and how he
excommunicated Nestorius prior to the Third Council. Okay, well, why
do we have a review from scratch of that entire decision?
They totally disregard Rome's decision, and then in the third
Acumenical Council they relitigate the entire issue from scratch, and
Mystorius is not treated as somebody who's excommunicated. He's treated
as a bishop in good standing at the beginning of
that council.
Speaker 4: Yeah, six nine.
Speaker 3: Why would you redo this at Constantinople if Pope Martin
at latter in six forty nine has already ruled on
the issue.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we see right away that like, hey, these
claims that Rome is making about their role in the
church is just not true. It's nobody acted that way. Uh,
maybe later on they have some claims, and that's I
think that's why they have to get into the minutia
of the Latin and like, didn't Saint Maximus the Confessor
like teach that Rome was divinely inspired. Well, there's another
bishop that says the patriarchy in Jerusalem is also divinely
or divinely founded, I think has divine foundation. So you
have all this flowery, honorific language going either way. Okay,
that's fine. What did they do? How did they act?
And they didn't act in a way that's conducive to
the Roman Catholic paper. Well.
Speaker 3: The other thing too is I've noticed amongst the Roman
Catholic apologists that there's a heavy, heavy tendency, especially in
the last five years of this discourse. And I've been
in this, you know, contra Roman Catholic Roman pro Roman
Catholic discourse since two thousand and one, two thousand, right,
and there is when I really started getting into these
kinds of apologetics, and I noticed that it's gotten less
and less academic, and it's actually more and more, at
least on the internet sphere, like not even polemical. It's
just more like me meme war fare now because the
domain of the Roman Catholic apologists actually they tend to
just completely ignore any counter objections. And you know, when
it comes to the way that we approach these topics,
I think we do pretty good on the Orthodox side
of dealing with the steelman of the Roman Catholic position. Okay,
what's their strongest case. It's going to be, you know, Hormizdus,
It's going to be Pope Bagatho's letter, right, So we're
going to have to work through and deal with these
the Roman Catholice position. They don't even address the things
that we bring up. It's never touched on, at least
not in a lot of what I see. Maybe Jolene
Heshmeier has touched on it. I don't know, but we're
going to talk about that here in a bit. But
I mean, I just feel like they're just sort of
breezing past and they've long given up steelmanning the positions,
at least from the majority of their apologists.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, like I said at the beginning of our talk
here that like when a lawyer will like analyze this,
they'll be like, Okay, what are the facts, like what happened?
And then like what is the law? What is the
principle that you can draw out of what happened? So
my investigation at first was like, okay, objectively what happened?
And I went to I have Philip Schaff's eight volume
set on the history of the Church. He's Protestant, he
doesn't have a bone in this fight to be Roman
Catholic or Orthodox, and I have a few other historical
books up there. And if you just read the source
documents themselves too, like nobody is going out of their
way to submit to Rome. So when I went on
this like fact finding expedition, like what exactly, Like, let's
get to the bottom of this, what happened? It seemed
very clear to me that like Roman Catholicism, that is
not the correct church. It's not the church that you
see for the first one thousand years. Certainly an innovation.
And then that brought me to wholly orthodoxy, and of
course I investigated, you know, the non Calcedonian positions a bit.
I just couldn't get over the tertien quid. And it
really seems like they don't even really understand what their
own position is, right. I'm like, I don't want to
talk too much smack here. I try to hold myself
out as the ironic one. When I've been doing this
for twenty years, like Jay has, then I can bring
myself to be like a little more curmudgeony here. But
I really just I don't think they understand what their
position is. Whenever I hear them talk about it, it's
just like, okay, so a composite nature and they're like, no,
not exactly, it's okay, what are you saying. And then
because I did catch a bit of the stream earlier,
I understand why Kai is like, hey, you need to
write down what you believe, because I don't know what
you believe. I can't engage in a debate with you
if I don't know your position. I don't want to
be swinging at ghosts here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk a little bit about some of the
material that you produced lately, because I've been enjoying some
of these videos, and you know, you hit on topics
even in insights that that I miss.
Speaker 4: And that's a great thing about Orthodoxy is.
Speaker 3: That you know, we're not like we follow that one guy, right,
we have a very sonodal, very diffused gifts idea that
you know, even as somebody who is not you know,
hasn't been in the church for twenty years, they can
even as a new comer, they can have insights, wisdom
and takes and new information that you know, even somebody
who's been studying the stuff for decades can can miss.
So we always have to be humble and try to
be teachable about God's grace as best we can. You
responded to Joel Heshmeyer Joe Heshmeyer, whatever it is, and
in an excellent video, And so let's walk through a
few of these because I noticed as I watch his
video and then your response it was, it was he
did a little bit better than the sort of rumman
caltholcy pop apologist does. I'll give him some credit for
at least, you know, putting a little bit more time
and effort into some the argumentation. But let's talk about
strong points and arguments that he relied on, and then
some of your responses.
Speaker 5: Sure well, I guess one of the parts from Joe's
video that stuck out to me was I think one
of the strongest points he made maybe was about how
can we identify what an ecumenical council is? And he
brought up the Council of Florence And for me, I
that was a bit of a stumbling block at first,
because it was like, Okay, did we accept you know,
the phillyoquay and all these papal claims or not. So
I actually I came across a stream with you and
David Hrhon talking about this issue, and there are a
few book recommendations there, and like, guys, don't get me wrong,
Streams are great, Podcasts are great, you can learn a lot,
but nothing replaces buying the book and actually doing the
work yourself and actually going through underlining, notating and interacting
with the material of yourself. So I bought a few books,
and Ostromov's book on the Council of Florence I think
was very enlightening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't uh, I don't know why he would
be muted. He shouldn't be muted. I can hear him. Fine,
it looks like his his audio should be playing, Alex,
can you give me a one two three one two test?
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It's weird because I noticed that it started to Yeah,
I don't know why. I think it didn't. Actually it
didn't actually mute. What it did was h Actually it
was starting to crash because I noticed, like my mouse
froze and inn it. But I mean, this is like
straight up just stream laves issues like there's no.
Speaker 4: So I noticed too, didn't I remember?
Speaker 3: If I remember, didn't Hashmeyer try to go to Clement route,
And it's like, that's funny because you know, if you
read like the Sashinsky book, like Rumman, Cawcol like Apologetics
has dropped using Clement for many, many decades because it
doesn't actually show what they wanted to show.
Speaker 4: Are you familiar with that?
Speaker 5: The two assemblies. He also went through the road of datas.
Speaker 3: And okay, hold on a second, because something has died
in terms of your sound.
Speaker 4: For some reason.
Speaker 3: There's no you're not coming in too. Yeah, try that,
m so hopefully we'll get this ironed out. Like, I
don't know why. This is just it's unreal. It's never
never worked like we had a perfect stream today. Maybe
I should have just used zoom like we did with
Kai and then we wouldn't have had these issues. Okay,
So can you guys hear Alex now?
Speaker 4: Is he back talk for me? You know?
Speaker 3: It's it's crazy because like on the mixer, I can
see that you're coming through and I'm coming through, but
then when I played you like, it's not there's no
audio for you.
Speaker 4: It's weird.
Speaker 3: No, so there's no there's no audio for you for
some reason. Yeah, something happened and it crashed. Uh so
let me try to start stream lives again. So let's
hit Live Go Live again. So let's hit Live Go
Live again? And is Sam.
Speaker 4: Shamun is attacking us with warbs?
Speaker 3: He's ready to finish me off. He's trying to do
his finish hit, you know, his his final move. Okay,
can we hear Alex now?
Speaker 5: Testest test test test one two test test test.
Speaker 4: Is he back?
Speaker 3: We need to know it says, it says you're back.
I think, so pick back up where you were. I apologize.
We're talking about Clement, and yes, so you're right. What
happened was stream Lives is crashing. That's what it was.
Go ahead, Alex.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So in Sashinsky's book, like you mentioned, he talks
about how Roman Catholic apologists and polemicists have kind of
abandoned this, uh, this argument that Clement is a strating
some sort of papal authority. They say that it's very
clear that this is one church writing to another church,
not from some sense of authority, but a sense of
like brotherly affection, like from one church to another sister church,
to where it's like, hey, you guys should probably get
your act in order, because like people are talking about,
you know, this squabble that you have within your leadership.
And he talks about how like the Apostles foresaw that
there would be disputes like this, and they chose these
people on purpose, so you shouldn't depose them without, you know,
some sort of good reason. So yeah, he took that
Clement approach and also Saint Optatus. It's just usually the
same story over and over again that you see with
these Roman Catholic apologists, which from a litigation perspective as
a lawyer, that's kind of expected because they have their story.
We have our story. Now let's subject each of them
to scrutiny and see which one wins out at the
end of the day. So what I like to look
at is like, Okay, you have Saint Optatus. You have
Saint Cyprian at about the same time, who basically says
every bishop has the fullness of Peter within himself. He
says there is no bishop that is a ruler of bishops,
especially in his disputes with Saint Stephen so and also
with Saint Optatus. I don't think you can discount the
special relationship that Carthage has with Rome, because if like literally,
you can pull up a map today and see that
Carthage is just a stone's throw away from Rome. So
although Carthage was its own independent diocese, of course they
had a special relationship with Rome. It had a special
prestige within the Early Church. And I think that lens
of viewing the different patriarchates in terms of prestige is
probably the best way to see it. I don't think
I've seen a better way to interpret those early documents.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: You have some other good insights in the videos that
you deal with with relics things like that, And I
think that probably because you came out of a Pentecostal background,
Protestant background like myself. I wasn't raised Pentecostal, but I was,
you know, charismatic, right, I was charismatic for a little while,
but I was eventually Calvinist and very serious about that.
So I think we all deal with things like relig
intersession of saints and whatnot. And I really appreciated what
you came up with in terms of like Moses's staff.
I never even thought about that as like an Old
Testament relic. So what was the hang up with you
with relics? And then what was the kind of thing
that flipped you over to being like, oh, okay, this
makes perfect sense.
Speaker 5: What was just reevaluating the Bible and taking a systematic
theology approach and just like kind of doing it on
my own while building up this orthodox fronema by reading
the Fathers, right, I think that's so important it cannot
be overstated. But it's in the same way that I
went through the New Testament, and I was like, Okay,
what exactly do they say about the church? Oh wait,
it's the pillar and grounds of the truth. The Church
is indeffectible, the gates of Hades will not prevail against
the Church. And then the Apostolic succession through the laying
on of hands of Paul and Timothy. You see, a
lot of these passages are just excluded completely from these
Protestant circles because they don't help them. So I was like, okay, well,
let's go through the New Testament. Let's see what it
has to say about the Church. Let's go through the
whole Bible and see what it has to say about
like sacred objects in general. So right away, you see
like Joseph's bones were processed through the desert for forty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is another one that I didn't think about
when I was Protestant. I remember hearing this when I
first got into Catholicism. I was like, man, I never
even thought about that that Joseph's bones being treated with
us reverence could be also kind of a relic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I was thinking, surely there is something in
the Jewish tradition about this, like there's no way they
carried Joseph's bones around the desert for forty years and
nobody has anything to say about it. And when I
looked through the Jewish Mishnah on passages about Joseph's bones,
it sounded exactly like a procession in the Orthodox Church
today that you see with relics, And I was like, man, really,
the continuity of the Abrahamic religion is not through modern
day Judaism, it is through Orthodox Christianity. You see them
doing the exact same things that they did with Joseph's bones,
and the way they describe it in the Mishnah as
well as like the passers by couldn't even tell, like
which arc was more special than the other one, Like,
clearly this is some like ornate box, a very ornate
coffin that they're bringing it says in the mission a
side by side with the ark of the Covenant. So
clearly this is something that was held in high regard.
And I guess the retort to that would be like
you don't see them kissing Alex or bowing down to it. Well,
I mean they bow down to the arc into the temple.
Those are also creating.
Speaker 3: Objects, right, Yeah, and you see bowing to even earthly authorities, right,
you see Joseph prostrating before Pharaoh, you see Elijah and elijhah.
I mean this prostration idea itself, I think is something
that I came to when I was you know, Calvinists
coming into Catholicism back in two thousand and two or three.
Speaker 4: It was like, well, wait a minute.
Speaker 3: It can't just be the external bodily you know, movement
that is the essence of the idolatry first and foremost,
because idolatry is an issue of the heart first, and
then secondly it's expressed and shown by the extra actions
of devotion. So clearly in the Bible there's differences between
you know, showing deference to authority versus actually sort of
from the heart worshiping. Even though the bodily movement itself
might be the same, right, there's a difference there. And
you know, like like FDA is saying, like there's a
lot of times that for a Protestant you just kind
of approach the text with a very flat level of interpretation, like, well,
that verse, you know, has to mean this, right, So
like there's only one way to understand the word, you know,
idolatry or images, graven images or whatever. So it's like
everything is flat, everything has one single reference and there's
no levels of nuance. And I think it was actually
a good thing for me to read Jerome, you know,
back in the day, Saint Jerome talking about the difference
between you know, showing honor and deference versus like worship. Right,
because scriptures say honor your father and mother. So obviously
I have a greater type of honor that I would
give to God the Father versus my father and mother.
But even within the Ten Commandments, you're instructed to show
reverence and honor and devotion to even created beings and authorities.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, another passage that stuck out to me on this
issue was Jacob's Blessings to his sons. The blessing to
Judah says that all of your brothers will praise you
and they will bow down to you, exactly, and also
in Revelation, Yeah, in the same vein where Jesus says
I will bring those who hate you, you know, down,
they will bow down to you. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So this is God speaking here.
Speaker 5: This is not some orthodox theologian, right, this is everybody
can agree on the scriptures, I hope, at least on
the basic sixty six book.
Speaker 4: Cannon right, well, what would you say? What would you
say to somebody said, well.
Speaker 3: But wait a minute, though, Alex, you know that's Old
Testament stuff, like you know what about the New test
And I remember one time I was reading this.
Speaker 4: This wasn't even an argument.
Speaker 3: I remember just eating one day Peter and I was
a Protestant, and I remember reading Peter's Epistles and he
says he's talking about the transfiguration and he mentions the
Holy Mountain. And I'm like, wait a minute, You're not
supposed to call places or things holy in the New Testament.
Speaker 4: That's an Old Testament thing.
Speaker 3: I remember that, Like I was really struggling with that
one time when I was a Calvinist, I was reading
Peter's Epistles and he calls it the Holy Mountain.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a huge objection, guess within like neo Protestantism
to this idea that God can like sanctify matter, that
God can use matter. But we see, like I think
the Epistles to the Hebrews is like spot on in
this because it's like, look, in the Old Testament, we
have shadows in the New Testament. If we have a fulfillment,
that's not an abolishment of it, it's ushering it in
a way that's real now, like ritual washing in the
Old Testament. Like, yes, that was for as a tutor,
you know, as Paul says in Galatians, to teach people
the ways of God. That like, hey, you are a human.
God is God. You know you have to be holy,
You have to sanctify yourself in baptism. In the New Testament,
you get the real thing. When Christ is baptized and
he sanctifies the water of baptism, you have a fulfillment
of these things. A section in Religion of the Apostles
really put this together for me. From Stephen to Young
when he was talking about like the Orthodox Church, this
line still sticks with me today. Says, the Orthodox Church
holds to the Torah to a t. We hold to
the Old Testament law to a t, but the fulfillment
of it where yes, we keep the Sabbath, it's fulfillment
in Sunday in the Lord's Day. Yes, we maintain the
law of the Torah. In Acts fifteen, it talks about
how like these laws that they to not consume blood,
to abstain from sexual immorality, to not worship idols, whatever.
Those were all the laws in the Torah that appeal,
that applied to the gentiles. So we keep all the
laws to a t. We are the fulfillment, We are
the continuation of this Old Testament. So it's just a
more beautiful form of continuity, are more coherent form of
continuity instead of this Protestant approach. That's like they recently.
I don't know if you saw this Jay Joshua Haymes.
I think it is probably the like some reformed influencer
on Twitter who said one of the most abominable things
I've heard, which is a misunderstanding of the law in
the Old Testament. He said, slavery is an institution, is
not inherently evil. Meanwhile, I see Gregory of Nissa talking
about how slavery is a form of blasphemy against God
because every human is made in the image of God
and to have property rights over another human, Well, this
is actually a God.
Speaker 3: This is actually a really difficult, nuanced topic that, believe
it or not. Lewis, our buddy over Orthodoxia Hata has
been working on a documentary on this because there's actually
quite a there's somewhat of divergence between different church fathers
on this issue, and Nissa has a position that is
the most anti slavery. However, there are many other church
fathers that will say otherwise. And I'm only saying that
not to contradict you, Alex, but just to point out
that it's the reason that Lewis has been working on
this is that it's also a huge issue with Muslims.
Muslims are making and have made a pretty big deal
about this. And if you go over to Orthodox Shahata,
if you want to get deep into the weeds on this,
I'm saying eight months ago Lewis uploaded the first part,
which is slavery and Christian and Muslim thought.
Speaker 4: I highly recommend.
Speaker 3: People check out Lewis's documentary or here or at Orthodox Shahata.
But now I don't want to take away from your flow.
We do have quite a few super chats before we
move on to superchats, and everybody should follow Alex his
channels link in the show description.
Speaker 4: Could you tell us about.
Speaker 3: What you think the debate is going to be coming
up and what can you tell us about this debate
and what you plan to without giving us your of
showing your hand here, what what's your what's your strategy
coming up for this debate?
Speaker 5: So I have two debates coming up. My first debate
is on Distrember I thought was one.
Speaker 4: I have two.
Speaker 5: On December nineteenth, I'll be debating Elijah Yassi on is
the Vatican one papacy is true? And as my approach
to that will be, you know, I'm not gonna study
at all. I'm just going to show up that day
and I'm going to be You're.
Speaker 4: Going to tongs. You should just do the debate, and Tongs.
Speaker 5: Should about a yamaha, what's that? John MacArthur quotas Yeah.
And then in April twenty twenty six, this is not
official yet, but I have been going back and forth
with Joe Heshmeier to have a debate with Joe Heshmeyer.
We've been going back and forth a bit on whether
we're just going to do the papacy or if it'll
be like uh a survey of different distinctives between Orthodoxy
and UH Roman Catholicism. So I would like to think,
you know, the Ortho bros. On the interwebs, a few
of them have reached out to me to helped me
prep for some of this stuff. So a lot of
people say that, you know, the orthobro community is like
pretty mean and disinterested. That has not been my experience
at all.
Speaker 3: No, it's just a way for people to fuss about
stuff and have an excuse to oh, he's mean, won't
have to deal with him.
Speaker 4: But in reality, I mean, this is.
Speaker 3: Some of the best dudes out there, right, Yeah, absolutely,
that has been my experience for sure.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let's see we got some superjest notorious seventy
seventy six five dollars Jay, what is your thought about
going to college at this point? What about for somebody
wh wants to study philosophy and higher education? Is that
a lost cause? Unfortunately, especially if you're a heterosexual.
Speaker 3: White dude, you're not going to be very welcomed at
the average university state university system school.
Speaker 4: I would not recommend that.
Speaker 3: If if you have a unique situation where maybe you
have a family that's going to pay for you to
go to a private school, some you know, decent Catholic
school and you want to get that type of an education.
In those cases, that might work. But if you're a
working class dude. I would not tell you to go
into massive amounts of debt to get a piece of paper.
It's not worth it. But again that's you know, I can't.
It really depends on your scenario. Flavias ten dollars, thank
you so much. Appreciate that he doesn't say anything.
Speaker 4: Jordaane says, guys, if everybody, if there's audio, refresh the stream.
It'll get better days.
Speaker 3: The King says, for five dollars, can you guys talk
about the early church hierarchy structure in terms of bishop,
priests and deacons. My evangelical friends all argue that they're
the same. There is a great talk that's kind of
a classic that I will put into the chat for
you guys, and it's Perry Robinson's talk on Apostolic succession.
So I'm gonna put that in the chat for you
right here.
Speaker 5: I'd also recommend Father Agree rodgers yessay here on Apostolic succession.
Speaker 4: There's a great essay on that as well. I was
going to bring that up too, so appreciate it. Yeah,
go ahead.
Speaker 5: The Pamazansky dogmatic theology, I know that's a popular one
these days. He has a very good section I think
on apostolic succession in the three tiered office, I think
Perry's point, I think if I remember it correctly to summarize,
is that like, regardless of the terms, you do see
like a distinction between three offices. Like, for example, you
see that Saint Paul has authority over Saint Timothy and
Saint Titus, and Saint Timothy and Saint Titus have the
authority to review complaints against other elders in the church,
So that puts Saint Timothy and Saint Titus above those
other clergy members. So you see a three tiered structure regardless.
Speaker 4: John, and on five dollars, Jay, thank you for your influence.
Good to see you having discussions with Alex Wren on
his journey to Orthodoxy. I'm enjoying.
Speaker 3: Also looking forward to your upcoming Athens and Jerusalem conference.
Speaker 4: Keep up the good work. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: I think next year, since this one sold out so fruitfully,
we will probably try to have another venue with an
even larger crowd, Lord Willings, so maybe next year we
get up into three four five hundred people versus two
hundred this year. But fun ten dollars, Jay, I'm not
sure if you read this last time my brother and
I saw a homeless guy. He said he was speaking
in tongues and it was a woman's voice, but he
was barking.
Speaker 4: Like a dog. But he laughed hysterically.
Speaker 3: It's demonic and people think that that's the Holy Spirit. Well,
like Alex said earlier about like comparing where we sent
some kind of like tribal scenario or something.
Speaker 4: Like compair of the Kundalini.
Speaker 3: Oh Show where if you've seen an O show like
the you know, Wild Wall Country and the documentaries of
people doing you know, the show, oh show stuff, and
just like you might see, you know, it's schizophrenic homeless guy,
you know, out there gibbering at a mailbox, screaming and
cussing out a mailbox.
Speaker 4: It's like, not a whole lot of difference, would you agree? Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think Also for me, they were like two key
tech on this. It was like obviously Father Sarah fim
Rose his orthodoxy in the religion of the Future was
he really made that connection for me explicit. But another
one that I think probably doesn't get enough attention on
this topic is like I think it's the introduction, either
the introduction or chapter one to Losky's Mystical Theology of
the Eastern Church, because he talks about like the title
of the book, and he's like, Okay, mystical theology, what
does that mean. Well, mysticism is experienced. Theology is like
the intellectual side. Orthodoxy has both. And I think that
was like probably a unique advantage of my upbringing, where
it was like, Okay, Pentecostalism was all this experience without
any of the guardrails. Calvinism is just this like intellectual
experience without that much mystical experience, if I could word
it that way, And the way Loski describes it at
the beginning of his book just like connects those two
ideas so beautifully. I was like, this is what I've
been looking for the whole time. He describes it perfectly.
There another excellent point that I think you made in Hey, Jammy,
somebody's out the door, which is weird. We don't usually
get people in them.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, it's a plumber. You made a great point
too about holistic argumentation. I think when you were talking
to Cleeve, I thought that was a really good point
that I'm glad you saw that and you were talking
about reading, you know, Father deconductor and Anisis paper on yes,
you know, revelational epistemology and that kind of stuff, and
how both Protestants and you know with Redeem Zoomer and
that debate that we had, and a lot of the
Roman Catholics like they don't really think about these things
as systems. And I appreciate that you understood the importance
of that. Could you maybe speak to that a little bit,
like why do you think systemic level argumentation is important
in these debates and discussions.
Speaker 5: Well, it avoids a bigger problem, which I think is
theological relativism. I think that's something that you see within
the Protestant movement with and you see akind of in
Roman Catholicism as well with any system that.
Speaker 4: I have to step away for just a second, so
continue to talk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no problem, but yeah, guys, so theological relativism, it's
like a big problem that you see within any of
these other worldviews. Orthodoxy, Holy Orthodoxy was so influential on
me because as a system, it avoids this problem of
relativizing the scriptures to mean what you want them to
mean in a certain context, and it works together as
a coherent truth, and you need some sort of objectivity,
because if we just have you know, these subjective truths,
I mean, I don't think you really have much of
a religion there.
Speaker 4: I had to go talk to the plumber.
Speaker 5: Sorry, so said that you have to fight the plumber.
But I basically just made a point on theological relativism
and how if if you don't have that systemic approach,
then you're just left like kind of creating doctrines piecemeal, right,
And you need it to work as a whole system,
because you know, you can't change one thing in your
Christology and have that not affect your soteriology. So that
systemic level thinking fights against theological relativism and you have
a form of objectivism, objective theological truths. I think that's
why young men are attracted to Orthodoxy these days too,
because we are like, we grew up in a relativistic culture,
a relativist society where your truth is your truth, my
truth is my truth, and it leaks into theology as well, like,
oh that's where you feel God over there, Well I
guess you should go there as well. Oh you feel
like you're called into this ministry? Well then you ask
go ahead, Well, no, there are objective theological truths. You
can't just believe and take whatever interpretation you want.
Speaker 3: Yes, dirt, poor Robbinson's for ten dollars, Alex has three
types of beards at the same time. Is this actually
canonically orthodoxodox? I'm not orthodox enough yet. Well it's a
great fair question. Uh Shaquina. Two dollars.
Speaker 4: Did you know that the Brandes or followers of Brandham?
Is that a Pentecostal.
Speaker 5: Not familiar with the Brandon mice?
Speaker 4: Okay, notorious, No, we did that one. Excuse me, okay,
we've done these contemporary companion ten dollars.
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, diere by fire. This is the law bishop,
so you are apparently the law bishop. I'll take it,
I guess, and then I think we'll see we have
one or two more over here. Notorious, No, we did that, Jordaine,
and I think we have twenty one new members. Shout
out to much Barrat, who also bought more members. He's
a very generous member buyer.
Speaker 4: Guys, be sure and follow Alex over in his channel.
He is linked.
Speaker 3: So anything you want to leave us with before we
close it out tonight. Thank you for coming on. By
the way, it was a great conversation. Also, guys, id
on to Chalk dot com, HQ dot com and use
a promo co Jife was already get forty percent off
of all those great chalk products.
Speaker 5: Alex partying thoughts, say thank you for having me on Jay.
It's a pleasure, you know. It's awesome to you know,
be consuming your content for so long and then to
be able to you know, build up a following, to
come on and to have this conversation with you. You
guys can find me on YouTube, Alex Soren Alex or
tod C on Instagram and Twitter. That's in the Romanian spelling.
It's O R T O d o x i E
or A to dox C.
Speaker 4: See.
Speaker 5: I have a few videos in mind coming out, and
I do have those few debates, so keep an eye out, guys.
Speaker 4: All right, Thank you guys, and a run over, a
good night,