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@EtrnlVw
You can see it as trash talking, but that isn't really it. The truth is, The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is an institution, and protestantism, being a reaction against Latin Papalism(they broke away from the true church), is by nature at least 2 steps away from the true church.
This is all very well historically documented.
And if that isn't proof enough, look at how fractured and anarchistic protestantism. It is unified only in its rejection of church tradition.
Protestant, evangelical, western Non Catholic Christian... whatever you want to call it.
And how can they be blamed for being ignorant of Orthodoxy? Well, it is my hope that they find their way back home and that there is a real explosion of the true church here in America. Protestants are, despite many of the things they are taught to make the conversion difficult, are better prepared to receiving the true church than most.
There is an ecumencial movement to try to unite all the churches, but it there is no precedent for the orthodox church to hold ecumenical councils with heretics as voting members. If we let everyone, who by self declaration claim to be Christian despite their rejection of church tradition form an ecumenical council with us, it would only serve to corrupt the faith. Many of these evangelical churches have outright rejected the ecumenical councils, and many of them even preach heresies from the pulpit. It isn't surprising to us, because the entire point of the ecumenical councils to begin with was to clarify what the church teaches in the face of rising heresy, not to innovate the faith.
The Orthodox Church doesn't need a reformation.
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@janesix
Snagged from "orthodoxwiki"
"The Church is an object of faith, that is, Orthodox Christians believe in the Church. The traditional belief in the Church is attested to in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. By this phrase is meant that the Church is undivided and not many (one), sanctified and set apart for the work of God (holy), whole and characterized by fullness and universality (catholic), and has at its essence the going out into all the world to preach the Gospel and baptize the nations (apostolic).
Because the Church is the Body of Christ, it is also the temple and dwelling place of the Holy Spirit."
"The community of the Church is the locus of salvation for mankind; it is truly the Ark in which mankind may be saved from the flood of corruption and sin. In it, Christians sacramentally work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), worshipping the Holy Trinity in spirit and in truth. The Church is the pillar and ground of truth (I Tim. 3:15) and thus may be relied upon in the Christian's struggle to apprehend the one truth for himself. The Church is eternal, and the gates of Hell will never prevail against it (Matt. 16:18)."
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@janesix
You being unable to perceive a meaning is not proof of meaningless.
It seems meaningless to you. That doesn't mean it is meaningless. It is certainly not meaningless to me, and neither is it meaningless to the church.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Well, you have to understand that thd bible is a part of our church tradition. The protestants broke off from a church that broke off from us.
So yeah, protestantism is a corrupt and incomplete form of Christianity.
And well, the secularists are way off. the mark. Protestant academics are not really too far removed from the secularists.
And the thing is, one of the major overarching themes of the new testament is how the letter kills bit the spirit gives life. What is the spirit? Truth. How did the west take this? They took this to mean that everything has to be rationalized, academicized, and intellectualized. We Orthodox take that to mean purifying the heart and intelllect. We don't mistake knowledge for Truth.
And these two vastly different approaches are the difference between actually practicing the faith and practicing something else entirely. Knowledge isn't going to help you see God. Purifying the heart is how you see God.
But you would greatly benefit from having an Orthodox Priest to consult during your studies. They are trained to help with these things. If you find a good one, they will get you to see things in ways you never would have before.
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@janesix
Yet, the church is here, and the church is the body of Christ.
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@brutalblocker
You can't show anything to someone who has embraced epistemelogical nihilism.
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@janesix
If you embrace epistemological nihilism, you can't verify anything because even seeing isn't believing.
But the church that followed Christ certainly proves his existence, and indeed, the church is the body of Christ.
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@brutal
Yet we can verify the existence of Jesus because Jesus is The Truth, and we know The Truth is real.
And if the church that followed Jesus isn't evidence of the so called "historical Jesus", there is obviously nothing that will satisfy your standard of evidence.
Default to disbelief.
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@keithprosser
It would probably be better to assume that it was intended to be this way.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Thats a lot of reading you got to do though, and I encourage you. Don't be discouraged.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
I don't think there is any good reason to believe the Lilith explanation, yeah. I don't believe it was ever a part of Genesis.
The origin of this I believe can be traced to a rabbi who was trying to think up an explanation to this two different accounts. Other than that, I am not aware of any substantiation to this "2nd Eve/Lilith" theory.
But I think it is important to note that in Orthodoxy, the scripture that we have is considered canon, and we aren't really concerned with issues like this or even issues of authorship. These are the scriptures we use.
As I did say, we do not use the same source material as these protestant bibles. The protestant bibles translate from the masoretic text, which they mistakenly believe is in the original language. It is actually not, the masoretic text is in itself a translation, because ancient Hebrew isn't the same written language. Besides that, the masoretic text was translated in at the earliest, the 6th century.
We Orthodox use the septuigate, which though in Greek, is a translation nearly a thousand years older, done by the 70 best scribes and scholars of the Jewish faith(who give the septuigate its name, which means "70"), and for 300 years even before the events of the new testament had good reputation. It is also the text that the church has used since the beginning.
The protestants use the masoretic text because I think going back even to Martin Luther, believed it to be the original text, which it is not.
So if you are not using an Orthodox bible, the old testament is translated from the masoretic texts. Should this make much of a difference to you? Probably not. So at least now, I suppose you can consider this trivia unless you were interested in securing an orthodox study bible.
The westcott-hort and Nestle texts that come from the west's school of textual criticism are the basis of all translations of the new testament, and these are not the texts that the orthodox church uses. Oddly enough, the old King James' Textus Receptus is closer to what we use. To my knowledge, only The New King James is the only modern translation that uses this source text. So if you were going to use a modern protestant bible(as they are easier to obtain), I would go with New King James over New International Version.
As far as texts that use the same base texts that the NIV uses, the English Standard Version seems to be the best based on my examinings of these translations. That said, being Orthodox, I would say an Orthodox Study Bible is the best. I know people who helped write the commentaries and articles contained in it, and they are very knowledgeable people. Besides, you will also get commentaries from Church Tradition going back 2000 years.
Anyway, pardon me for the wall of text. I know it is a bit of a tangent.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
The next verse that catches my attention that I would like to talk about is Genesis 1:27. In most teachings of the biblical creation story Eve is presented as being the first human woman. In this verse, however, it states that man and woman were created at the same time. This is not an obscure translation error that got missed, the NIV is not the only English version to say this. For those of you that do not know there are many books and stories which existed within the same tradition as the original biblical stories but were later removed from the narrative and this verse is an example of a vestigial remnant of one such story. In the original story the first woman on earth was Lilith, and she was made from the same dirt that Adam was made from. She refused to be subservient to Adam however and she left the Garden of Eden prior to The Fall. This story does not exist in the Bible today because of mankinds tinkering with the stories over time, but it existed within the tradition at one point and this verse is one piece of evidence for that.
The 2 different accounts focus on two different aspects of the creation. The lilith theory is a creative explanation that to my knowledge has no actual factual basis.
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I recently set out to do this myself again not too long ago. Just a moment ago, I finished 2 kingdoms(2 samuel in protestant bible) and am going on to 3 kingdoms(1 kings in protestantbible).
The orthodox bible is a bit different than the protestant bible. In fact, the base texts are different! There are more books in the orthodox bible too. The protestant bible chops the beginning and end of the book of Daniel off too... its also ordered differently... ah well..
Anyway, if you are going to use a protestant bible, there are many reasons not to use an NIV. Even some protestant circles jokingly call it the non inspired version.
Modern bibles remove a lot of scriptures. I use the King James online mostly because it doesn't have a copywrite, but also because the base texts are closest to what we use in the orthodox church(for the new Testament). The New King James uses the same base texts, and is a bit more modernized in its English.
I think that the approach you are taking to reading the bible right now is going to frustrate you tremendously. I would be surprised if you could make it through the whole thing going about it in the way you are doing it.
Good luck. I'd write more, but I am on a break. When I can, I'll talk a bit more on Genesis chapter 1.
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@3RU7AL
The Orthodox Church is New Israel.
That is how it has always been understood. And with that, both those who are under mosaic law(Jews) and those who are not under Mosaic law(non-Jews) can be together in the church.
"Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
The letter kills, the spirit gives life.
Our religion is not about following set of instructions. The point of the law was to write these two commandments on the heart of Israel.
It is certainly not required, but I already follow the mosaic law quite naturally due to my lifestyle.
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@EtrnlVw
"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us"
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@3RU7AL
Well, we wouldn't call someone a heretic simply for belonging to a protestant church. A heretic would be someone who say, admits that the orthodox church is the real church, but prefers to go to their church on the corner because they like the band that plays there.
Otherwise, it is kind of rude to call someone a heretic.
But just because we don't call someone a heretic doesn't mean that they don't have heretical beliefs.
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@3RU7AL
Yet it was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah
"Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people."
And so we now have a covenent not of the letter, but of the spirit.
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@EtrnlVw
"a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."
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@Discipulus_Didicit
The Orthodox Church has always understood God as being That which Truly Is. The Ultimate Reality. The Supreme Being. The Absolute Truth.
It means exactly what it means. In fact, so integral is this to everything that it would be impossible to make sense of our faith without this.
What confuses people is that we use the medium of creation to express what is fundamentally uncreated. It is really impossible to avoid no matter how lucid one communicates. The church teaches in parables, or comparisons even for this reason.
And so the enemies of God are made into fools, because when they deny God they are literally denying truth itself. God gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud.
The definition is not useless though. If this was the case, the word wouldn't be used by us.
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@3RU7AL
A heresy is a choice. A choice to depart from the truth.
Heretics are united only in their opposition to orthodoxy, nothing else.
You say heresy doesn't exist. You say evil doesn't exist. It seems to me that you are playing a disruptive game here because you aren't really taking our discussion seriously.
Well, you can walk away triumphant in your delusions if you so wish. You can argue for the heretics you yourself don't even believe all you want. If you really knew the subject matter as well as you'd like to think based on your half hearted googling, you would realize that authority overwhelmingly rules in favor of Orthodoxy, and as every single protestant who converts comes to find out, they have always had an incomplete religion.
It would definitely play in the favor of the secularist to defend a more protestant Christianity, as Protestantism quite naturally leads to deism, which quite naturally leads to outright secularism, even atheism.
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@3RU7AL
Your logical fallacy is the "fallacy fallacy".
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@3RU7AL
Back to your sophistry again I see.
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@EtrnlVw
Your position is very typical for someone who has a lot of pride.
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Brutaltruth likes to insult people because his passions lord over him. That is why he blocks people who frustrate him, like me.
He is too weak to debate anyone he doesn't think are jobbers.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Yet here we are living.
I don't see the inhabitaility of most of the universe as an argument against fine tuning. Clearly there is such an order to the universe that it isn't even fully graspable. If the entire universe was uninhabitable, and there was just this Earth, that would be more of an argument that the entire universe is tuned so that the the note of Earth can ring out than an argument against fine tuning.
But I think that the crux of the issue here is not the fine tuning argument itself, but a misunderstanding about what is meant by "God". The Ultimate Reality is God, and the fact that there is any perceived order or reality at all is all the evidence you need to believe that there is a way things truly are.
And when that evidence convinces you, it is no longer simpy evidence but proof.
The existence of God is a certainty.
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@3RU7AL
Believe what you want to believe.
I care about what is true.
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@3RU7AL
If you are going to have evil suspicions, by all means, believe what the heretics say.
But we Orthodox know what we believe, we have it very well documented, and we have been watching the other "churches" close enough to see where their errors come from.
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@3RU7AL
I think you forgot the analogy I was making.
I was comparing God directing your steps to a parent keeping their kid from drinking the dish soap.
There comes a point when, you being the child, will have to have faith in your parent in order to learn from them with intent. Otherwise, you are going to grow and make a whole bunch of mistakes that you could have avoided by having faith in your parents.
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Some of them were hand-picked by the Jesus, but others, like Saul/Paul had a private, qualitative experience (no formal ordination).
Paul would have had to be recognized and ordained by the church to have been sent out from the church of Antioch on his missionary journies.
I am unfamiliar with "Church tradition" where would I find such a thing?
I would recommend going to an Orthodox Church and looking at their library to find more info, we have a lot of really good books. But Church Tradition is that which has been passed down by the church. There is a lot about the church that is not contained in scripture. The canon are writings that we can use during church services.
There is no one book callled "church tradition", but it can be found in the writings of the church fathers and in things like our liturgy, iconography, and even the bible, which is a part of church tradition.
But those "leaders" were not "ordained" by ceremony in the bible. Your church just made up new rules out of thin air.
That isn't really true, but I would like to point out that The Orthodox Church compiled the canon of scripture and that we knew what we believed before this was done. Sola scriptura is a protestant thing because they don't have church tradition. The church didn't wait around for 300 years for the bible to be canonized. There is a lot that isn't in the new testament.
Please explain specific inaccuracies in any of the information I've provided. The origin of the information does not make it either true or false prima facie
I already did.
I'm going to guess that you are not a fan of the Unitarians.
Unitarians deny the Trinity, so they are not really Christian.
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@EtrnlVw
Jesus was speaking of religious hypocrisy, showing the forms but lacking the spirit.
The spirit being Truth and Love.
And certainly, you could be an accidental pharisee as an Orthodox as well.
The rituals and outward forms are not what the faith is about. To the religious leaders that Jesus spoke against, this is all it was about. We Orthodox use rituals and our liturgy is very ordered. We are very meticulous that we do these things properly.. or at least should be.. but without The Holy Spirit it will be vain. We do recognize this.
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@EtrnlVw
The ideas you are putting forth are fairly new and recent compared to the thousands year tradition of the church, which has remained faithful to what was passed down to them by the apostles and Jesus.
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@3RU7AL
All of this is explained very clear in Church tradition actually.
It wasn't even a 100 years before bishop and priest came to be seperate offices. A deacon was never the same thing as a priest.
It is important to note that while we are indeed a nation of priests, there is a difference in office between someone who is an elder and leader of congregation and someone who is a layman. This is very clear even in The New Testament.
And I used to buy into this anarchistic interpretation you seem to have until I actually did some studying. The earliest church certainly had bishops. My Church's first bishop was Saint Ignatius, and his writings which date back to the first century make it very clear that there is a distinction. The church has always had leaders.
Sure anyone can start their own church, but we wouldn't call it the church because it isn't the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, which is The Orthodox Church, and we have Holy Orders. They came from us, but they aren't of us. They are schismatics and heretics. The nice word is heterodox, but I personally think that is giving these "churches" too much credit.
And fyi, you in your haste neglected to read anything beyond the question in your first link. Your second link is YAHOO ANSWERS.
But what you expressing is a very protestant attitude, even though most protestant churches still aren't quite as anarchistic as what you are describing.
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@3RU7AL
The law is written on my heart.
I do not steal.
I do not murder.
I do not need laws. Laws are for...
"The lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;"
And I am certainly not trying to do way with governments, who were put in place to deal with such people.
I am not a politician or a statesmen. The people of that world can debate about laws. I don't like the idea of the law being enforced hy robots because I don't think it would leave room for mercy. I think there should be room for mercy.
Not that it matters what I think.
Not everyone is going to purify their heart of defilements for the sake of God, so it would not be reasonable to expect that everyone is going to be a hesychast.
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@keithprosser
Ultimate Truth is meaningless.
You said it.
It means exactly what it means, not "anything".
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Because God could do it, that means God has to do it?
If this planet were the only planet in the entire universe that supported life like this, that would certainly be enough to impress me.
You could think of it another way. There is an entire universe of causality pressing down to make what is going on here possible.
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@keithprosser
First of all, that doesn't describe my faith.
Secondly.....
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@WisdomofAges
I don't think it is fair to compare Mohammed's religion of death and subjugation to the life giving religion of Jesus Christ.
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@Deb-8-a-bull
Nihilists are really boring. Aren't you sick of nihilists reducing the discussion to the swamp?
This forum would be a great deal more interesting if all the nihilists were replaced with people who actually have convictions.
Just so you know, everything instantly becomes stupid when a nihilist is taking part in the discussion.
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@WisdomofAges
We all have our own path.
It is not a very Christian thing to prove our worthiness to God. We would consider this mentality very prideful.
Our motivation for purifying the heart and cleansing our intellect is nothing more than the love of God. We acknowledge The Truth as The Most Perfect Image of God, The Word of God that all of creation came into existence through. This was activated by The Holy Spirit, or The Spirit of Truth, which enlivens all of creation.
And so our God is The Ultimate Reality, and the Christian discipline is about abiding in The Truth, which is done by ridding our heart of idolatries that pervert and skew our intellect away from The Truth.
And we believe that The Truth is what sets you free.
So when you speak against Orthodoxy, you are speaking against Truth worship, and indeed, that is even what the word "Orthodox" means. "True belief" or "true worship"
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@WisdomofAges
So why do you feel it necessary to crusade against my faith, which I know you don't understand? Have you ever considered that you are wrong about it?
I am more interested in helping you to be informed than I am in tearing you down, condemning you, or even inflating my own ego. This stuff isn't just important to me, it really is important to the world. You can dismiss this claim as easily as you hear it, but if I believe this is important, even for you, doesn't that alone strike your curiosity?
After all, I am insisting that you are seriously in error about my faith. I would hope that it isn't in your heart to be in error.
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@Plisken
Because they take it as such a big joke, they never actually come to any deep understanding. They are content to play the part of the mocker and scoffer.
But in trusting in their own wisdom, they have been made into fools. Not realizing that the foolishness of God is greater than all of man's wisdom. In their haughtiness, they deny truth itself. God gives grace to the humble, to the charitable. Resists the proud and haughty.
And so without even knowing, they war against truth itself. It is fitting that they should be made fools. To the glory of God.
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@keithprosser
The reality is that the Jesus we believe in is not a man who came into existence, but The Word of God, the very Word that God spoke everything into existence through.
That being the case, to say that Jesus was just a man or a good teacher is not the same Jesus that we worship as part of The Trinity. It is not actually the same Jesus.
So the Jesus you know is not the Jesus that we believe in.
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@3RU7AL
As I said, the hesychast has no need for laws because they by nature fulfill what the law is made for.
Or as scripture says,
"the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient"
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@3RU7AL
Yes, and your parents would then yank you away from the dish soap and make sure it was in a secure place that you wouldn't get to it. Even though, no guarantees when visiting relatives!
I think you are forgetting the original point of this parable.
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