Answering Vocab's Malone critique

[Daniel Hoseini]

️ May the Christ God bless you! ️ I came across a video of a street apologetic with a protestant background Vocab Malone. He criticizes eastern orthodoxy. But I think his critique is more based on his lack of understanding of our theology and conservatism. Here is what I wrote to him on YouTube. If you can add something or correct me, please be welcome to write your thought here.

[...] But I am still orthodox because there is a profound spiritual experience on the unseen warfare in the Orthodoxy (as you can read it in Philokalia) and the ascetic way of struggling with passions in us. Besides that I have experienced that my baptism and chrismation in the eastern-orthodox church were real, that I really received invisibly but tangibly God's grace through it. So the priests can be evil, but God still uses them to give us his grace through the so-called sacraments. Praise be to God for His great amazing goodness!
Besides that the orthodox church keeps for the world the true undistorted theology on the Holy Trinity down the ages. And you believe in the Trinitarian theology as well.

9:00 Chrismation is basically the same ritual as the laying of the hands by the apostles on the new converts. For example, you know there is a passage in the book of Acts where Peter laid his hands on the baptized Samaritan Christians and only after that they received the Holy Spirit. The chrismation has another form, but the effect of the sacrament remains the same. Of course, the Holy Spirit can come down without the laying of the hands or chrismation, as was the case with Cornelius the centurion. But his case was an exception.

9:30 From my personal point of view as an orthodox: Even if the child baptism is not narrated in the Bible, it doesn't mean it is per definition false. Because the books of the new testament are just brief recordings of the authentic Christian system of belief and practical expressions of this belief (the so-called holy tradition). For us our criterion of truth is God's revelation. And there is also live experience of God's will (and in some cases direct revelations from God) that doesn't contradict the Bible and the authentic Holy Tradition and is accepted as a part of the Holy Tradition itself. This includes the child baptism. Although it might be not revealed by God himself, nevertheless it doesn't contradict the Bible.

9:50 From my personal point of view as an orthodox: The water of baptism is the material means through which the Holy Spirit works in baptism. It is not the 'magic' water itself that washes away the sins, but God the Holy Spirit by means of water (even if He can do it without water as well).

11:00 Again, the myrrh is the anointing oil that was used in the old Testament to anoint the God-chosen priests, kings and prophets for their holy work. The composition of it was probably less complex, but its recipe is also not mentioned in the Bible. The Jews simply followed their tradition of making and using myrrh or chrisma. Through the eastern-orhtodox sacrament of chrismation the chrismated one receives God's protecting grace with which they have to cooperate. Only then it has an effect.

20:30 "The things of old" are consequences of the primordial sin in the nature of a human being from his conception on.

49:00 The bowing to God in the church or at home is done by having God in your mind and heart and physically bowing or prostrating before His icon on the wall or the altar table in the sanctuary of the church or towards the east direction. Look for a correspondent video on my channel.

52:00 In the orthodox church the Bible has been interpreted by the so-called holy fathers, the monastic saints and holy bishops. The Biblical interpretation of each of the holy fathers is considered orthodox if it is not in opposition to the understanding of the majority of the previous holy fathers. There are also other interpreters, but their interpretation must not contradict that of the holy fathers and other saints, like Justin the Martyr.

54:00 There is no purgatory, only hell or heaven. The soul of a sinner that is in hell can be saved by God's grace in answer to the earnest prayers of the living Christians. Or if that sinner rejected God in their life, God might not deliver him from hell, but there is a hope that He will relieve his eternal suffering in hell.

1:10:00 We believe that God predestination of someone to salvation is based on His foreknowledge of that person. Namely even before the existence of that person God knew that that person would say yes to Him, would believe in Him and express their love and faith through good works. That's why the good works and faith have merit, but not in the sense that faith and good works save. No, it's God's grace that saves a person for all 100%, but their faith and the good works of their faith and love make them fit enough to receive and accept that saving grace of God, which alone saves a man. Is that clear enough?

1:17:00 Filioque is a heresy because it is added to the original Nicaean creed as if to correct it. For roman-catholics this distinction was important enough to correct the whole universal creed of the Church. The eastern church simply opposed this alteration, that was not approved by the Ecumenical council of bishops.

Vocab, I am sorry for the ugly behaviour of your opponent. I am ashamed of it too and I want to answer all your question on Orthodoxy as good as I can. Thank you for your critique and let's seek God's truth together. ️ May the Christ God bless you! ️

To be continued.

 

[Lukaris]

Seems like you are responding effectively to a lot ignorance & misunderstanding. I have just read your post.

 

[Daniel Hoseini]

In the 'Conversing RESPECTFUL Eastern Orthodox!' he talked politely with three members of the orthodox church. Two of them are priests. It was not so informative discussion. But there were few questions that I tried to answer.

Question about the original sin. How do we inherit it?
1:40:00 In my personal point of view as an orthodox: We inherit indeed the consequences of primordial sin (passions, inclinations to sin, death and decay), but not the responsibility for it. We inherit it through our birth from the descendants of Adam and Eve. The inclinations to sin can also become stronger through the influence of our surroundings, if we are not watchful on ourselves.

I had difficulty though to answer his question about what the definition of eastern-orthodox church is. Whether it consists of 14 or 16 churches; whether the Ukrainian orthodox church is part of that church or not. He brought also the issue of the instances of concelebration of eastern-orthodox priests and bishops with their oriental-orthodox counterparts (this information he quoted from a critical book issued by the Gregoriou monastery on Mount Athos). This puts us even more before the question what the true church is or what the easter-orthodox church (that claims to be the true church) is. I were not intelligent enough to write the answer. What I know is that I consider the oriental-orthodox to be non-orthodox. So there is no way for me to go to their church for communion (neither will they accept me themselves. I know it from my experience when they didn't let me in their church to attend their service in Eindhoven. It was a Coptic church). But I can and if needed will go to the eastern-orthodox parish which fully, but unofficially accepts the oriental-orthodox without them converting to the Chalcedonian Orthodoxy and leaving their former non-Chalcedonian tradition.

Conversing w RESPECTFUL Eastern Orthodox ! - YouTube

 

[Lukaris]

The thing about original sin is that it brought death upon us as St. Paul says in Romans 5:12-14. We all inherited the mortality & propensity to sin; St. John in 1 John 3:11-12 that the mark of Cain is where our critical state of sin lies.