This guy is a complete idiot

Yeshua HaDerekh said:

I think if they are in the same world as the author of the video then they are more likely to agree with him even if they are curious...and it would stop there.

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if they are curious, it won’t stop there. someone who is actually curious would see what the Orthodox think from the Orthodox.

childeye 2 said:

For what it's worth, it might be useful if Christians would practice articulations that convey the Gospel as a revelation from God according to His purpose, His foreknowledge, and unto His Glory (That's what scripture does).

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I’m sorry, what? I don’t understand what you are saying relative to the subject matter of the thread.

childeye 2 said:

The video states there is a false Gospel being promoted yet speaks against infallibility and reverence to Icons as if they have something to do with the Gospel. To elaborate further upon my post, the Gospel is a revelation from God which necessarily means that The Holy Spirit is present with the believer as they come to see and believe. Again, infallibility and Icons have nothing to do with the event of receiving Christ through the preaching of the Gospel.

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Are you a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church? (or the Oriental Orthodox for that matter) If so, please explain what you mean, because I still don’t get you.

If not, you can ask us anything about our faith on this forum: St. Basil the Great's Hall

or you can debate any aspect of Eastern Orthodoxy in this forum: St. Justin Martyr's Corner: Debate an Orthodox Chr

I can post a thread for you if you wish to address this issue specifically, if that would help.

As an Eastern Orthodox, I am humbled by the piety of my brethren* on ChristianForums who have made this subforum the only congregational forum on this entire site (to my knolwedge) that provides a space, St. Justin Marty’rs Corner, where non-Orthodox can debate our doctrines; we also offer another forum, St. Basil’s Hall, where anyone can ask us any question they want about our faith.

*I could also say “I’m proud of them”, but in Orthodox Christianity we try to avoid pride; I object to the “LGBTQ Pride” movement not only because it promotes sexual immorality but also pride, a dangerous passion.

Yeshua HaDerekh said:

maybe...and maybe not

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if someone is looking into a particular faith but doesn’t want to talk to the members of that faith, they are not curious or serious about it.

Yeshua HaDerekh said:

So you know that for everyone? I can't make an absolute statement like that. Even if we loose one person because of that video, that is fine with you because they were not really curious or serious in your opinion...OK. Someone could be curious, watches that video first and is instantly discouraged. Gone. However, there are a ton of videos like this one so one can't counter all of them...

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except according to you, inquirers and catechumens aren’t what we’re talking about. so we’re not talking about us losing anyone. we’re talking about someone who only saw this video.

that’s like someone saying they are interested in dinosaurs but are turned away because they thought one Barney episode wasn’t realistic. And they never spoke to a paleontologist, never spoke to a geologist, never watched a documentary, never went to a museum, never read a book on dinosaurs, never spoke to a natural historian, and never did fossil hunting.

and I am not fine with erroneous stuff like this being out there.

and I can say that about everyone. your hypothetical person is definitionally not curious.

childeye 2 said:

I see the church as the body of Christ on earth in unity through the Holy Spirit and the Christ Jesus, being the head, is in heaven above sitting at the right hand of the Father God Almighty --->The Eternal Power. Whatever divisions have occurred between congregations, I would surmise that they are disputes built upon misunderstandings of terms we use to express our sentiments. Words can sometimes be feeble things due to subjective perspectives. God is not the author of confusion, however I find it credible that the spiritual enemy can use the occasion of semantics to create division. I therefore do not claim to be of any denomination because there is only one body of Christ, and I do not want to project otherwise.

I try NOT to think in terms of "our" faith or "their" faith. That is to say, while I understand you're alluding to the denomination/congregation you participate in as a "faith", I also see that such an articulation presents a premise that there are other faiths. More likely you mean to say, "our doctrines".

To be clear as to why this is problematic, I would explain it by saying that the term "faith" in the linguistics of my thought's is a sentiment expressing "trust" that is directly pointed at God the Father maker of heaven and earth, the Eternal Power. If it is not pointed at Him, His Person depicted as trustworthy, then objectively speaking it is not faith. Hence, because there is only One Most High God, there can only be one Faith/Hope/Love. If perchance I were to say "your" faith or "my" faith or "their" faith, I would be alluding to measures of trust in the Most High, which would be alluding to a matter of degrees of trust towards Him, rather than my doctrine or your doctrine or their doctrine.

I truly appreciate your helpful guidance. But I didn't post here so as to debate. I posted a suggestion about terminology and how the Gospel should be presented as a revelation of God's Person in the Christ. A false Gospel would therefore present a false image of god. I saw there was some debate about what those who were curious about your congregation might think of the video. I figured that as an outsider I could comment on what I thought of the video and what remedy could resolve the problem I see in the video.

Thank you, that is kind of you in all sincerity. But no, I see no issue other than my desire to point out that the person in the video is mistaken when inferring that doctrines concerning reverence towards Icons or infallibility has anything to do with a false Gospel.

I don't see how any doctrine about infallibility or reverence towards Icons, in any congregation, has anything to do with the Gospel because the preaching of the Gospel is the means God has chosen to reveal the Christ to the world. While doctrines have been derived from belief in the Christ as God's True Image, the Gospel is not actually a doctrine but a report of an event in time depicting an incorruptible Love being crucified on a cross by a wicked world.

I agree, that is really cool. I was brought up in the Roman Catholic congregation and they tend to frown upon asking questions. I have found few people who would take the time to address my sincere concerns about doctrine. Although they ended up agreeing with me when I pointed out the problems, they also indicated it was futile to expect that there would be any changes.

I was taught that those who actually see (spiritually), can see that those who are blind can't see. And subsequently those who are blind, cannot see that those who are not blind, can see. There's always the danger of getting puffed up because of knowledge, and such is vanity. This teaching provides for me a circumspect that is not judgmental. Therefore, I loathe to judge others, for I will be judged by what measure I use to judge others who I now see are blind even as I once was, having myself now been enlightened according to God's mercy and grace. I only owe it to love others as I would want to be loved.

John 9:39
And Jesus said, For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind.

As for sexual immorality, the same can be said. For those who are given over to inordinate passions are enslaved whether they be gay or heterosexual even if they see it as being free. I therefore conclude that virtue is a power from God's Spirit within me and not a product of any creature's volition. In other words, one's volition and passion would be dependent upon valuing or devaluing the virtues God has bestowed upon us.

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Please forgive me - it seems I did not make myself clear in response to your previous post:

What you’re doing in debating us and teaching in this forum is contrary to the rules of this forum, since the Orthodox do believe that icons are an integral part of the Gospel message directly connected to the Incarnation. According to the rules, “Active promotion of views contrary to the established teachings of canonical Orthodox Churches are considered off topic.“

I have provided you with links to the forums where you are allowed to do that, and I must ask you to please kindly stop this, because this particular part of the Orthodox forum does not allow non-Orthodox members to teach, engage in theological commentary, or dispute Orthodox doctrines. Again, since I was evidently not clear on this point, please forgive me.

Thus, I strongly encourage you to delete your posts in this thread immediately, and repost them if you so desire in St. Justin Martyr’s Corner, since it is against the rules of this specific forum, and it would be really silly if someone got into trouble for disputing Eastern Orthodox doctrine in this forum when we provide another forum and have provided links to it, where you can debate us about whether or not there is an iconographic component to the Gospel as much as you wish.

To reiterate, the links are as follows:

St. Justin Martyr’s Corner, where you can debate us (this is where your posts belong insofar as they challenge Orthodox doctrine)

St. Basil’s Hall, where you can ask us questions (on any topic)

The Rules of the main forum where you have posted at present, where you are not allowed to teach or debate us (in contrast to the two forums linked to above).

Please do not continue to discuss this matter in this thread as it is against the rules of this forum, and like I said, it would be absurd if we had to get the mods involved over such an issue when we provide another forum where we can be debated or asked any questions, unlike any other denomination on CF.com.

Yeshua HaDerekh said:

So you know that for everyone? I can't make an absolute statement like that. Even if we loose one person because of that video, that is fine with you because they were not really curious or serious in your opinion...OK. Someone could be curious, watches that video first and is instantly discouraged. Gone. However, there are a ton of videos like this one so one can't counter all of them...

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You know, if you wanted to respond to this video without promoting it, one thing you could do would be to create a React video on YouTube. This allows you to react to the video, including the most problematic snippets of the original, and if you refer to the channel by name but do not include a direct link, that will probably not result in them getting an increase in viewership, which could result from directly linking to them, in particular, from embedding a link to their video off site.

I myself would love to do some videos on YouTube reacting to videos which spread disinformation about the Orthodox Church. I also have a Teams subscription with ChatGPT which includes access to Sora, which can be used to create very high quality animations and graphics for a video (ChatGPT is the only AI which has been programmed to understand human anatomy and which can reliably draw humans without making mistakes such as people having hands with an incorrect number of digits, or people handshaking with their hands sort of blending together in a grotesque manner, which was a major problem with the old image generator they used to use, and which remains a problem with the Grok 3 image generator and the other main AI image generators).

Thus if you wanted to collaborate with me on such a project, that could be very interesting, and it would also negate, as far as I can understand, the disagreement you and @ArmyMatt have on this issue, since I believe he is correct that someone who would be turned off by just this video is not likely to convert, but on the other hand I believe you also are correct in that the large number of anti-Orthodox videos on YouTube could combine with other mass media depictions of Orthodoxy, including the depiction of us as a strange ethnocentric religion from Seinfeld and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the depiction of Russian Orthodoxy as a brutal ideology being promoted by the Ukrainian government, which is seeking to weaponize religion - so that even if one is opposed to what Russia did, which many people are, the result of this is that the media is actively carrying a narrative from the Ukrainians that his hostile to all Russian churches (which would include many churches that are part of the OCA and have no connection to the Russian government) and which has led to the vandalism of OCA and ROCOR parishes in the US and Canada, and indeed other Orthodox parishes by people who assume all Orthodox are Russian Orthodox (thus ignoring even the existence of even the OCU and the UOCNA and the UOC-KP), and I have seen a disturbing amount of comments to this extent on YouTube and other social media platforms.

Thus, there is a need to counter three types of anti-Orthodox propaganda, without inadvertently giving any of them a direct platform:

1. Hellenocentric and ethnocentric depictions of Orthodoxy which ignore the fact that the Eastern Orthodox Church actually regards ethnophyletism, the idea that only those people of a given ethnicity should pray together, as heretical*

2. Russophobic attacks on Orthodoxy which ignore the Orthodox majority in Ukraine and the majority position of the UOC among Ukrainian Orthodox Christians (I have a friend, who has unfortunately since had a total mental breakdown - please pray for him, his name is Jeffrey; I don’t know if he was ever baptized as his parents contributed to his breakdown, who was under the belief that Ukraine had a Jewish majority population, based on his own subjective experience in that every Ukrainian he had met in Southern California was Jewish).

3. Misrepresentations of Orthodox doctrine and the promotion of anti-Orthodox heresies such as Iconoclasm and Nestorianism, such as what we see in the aforementioned video.

In some cases, I take a view that I think @ArmyMatt would agree with, and I hope you would as well my dear friend @Yeshua HaDerekh - that the heretical content is sufficiently wrong and dangerous that it is best left unacknowledged, to avoid giving any platform to it. On the other hand, there are many instances of people repeating common misunderstandings and disinformation about the Orthodox, and where these misunderstandings and disinformation are common, it is entirely reasonable for us to respond in a gracious and loving manner.

I do not believe in the use of negative proselytism to try to convert people - I have written polemics about SDAs and certain other groups whose teachings I regard as contradictory to the Apostolic faith, who I have also found on multiple occasions trying to infilitrate Orthodox churches (most recently I was invited to lunch by a member of a Greek Orthodox church only to be ambushed at the lunch by two Adventists who had nearly succeeded in converting him to their heretical sect, which was very unpleasant; had I known that would have happened I should not have joined him for lunch). These polemics however are not intended to convert members of these churches but rather to discourage other Christians outside of Orthodoxy from considering these churches as a viable option among churches to attend and also to respond to the abusive things members of these churches often say about Roman Catholics which applies to the Orthodox indirectly, for example, their ludicrous claim that the Council of Nicaea was a conspiracy led by Emperor Constantine and the Pope of Rome to ban worship on the Sabbath, or their preposterous assertion, recently made on several forums on CF.com, that the Roman Catholic Church killed 120 million people during the Inquisition (attempts at explaining to them that this would mean the Roman Catholics had killed the entire population of Europe were unsuccessful, but the information provided by myself and other members, including other Orthodox members, has had the effect of showing the serious flaws in their arguments.

It has been correctly asserted by many Orthodox leaders like Fr. Andrew S. Damick that we cannot debate people into becoming Orthodox, and therefore we shouldn’t even try. Rather, the goal of any communications effort concerning misconceptions and disinformation about the Orthodox Church should be providing true and accurate information in order to counter the false claims, not with the goal of converting those who propagate the false claims, who have probably already come to believe an anti-Orthodox position, and whose salvation we must entrust to God (many believe this is the real meaning of anathematization - we are offering up those who have embraced heresy to God in the hopes that he can persuade them to reject the heresy and embrace Orthodoxy, which has worked both in the case of people informed that they were being personally anathematized, and in the case of people who incurred an anathema unknowingly by violating an ancient canon. These anathemas should not be regarded, at least in our case, as being curses; perhaps they came to mean a sort of liturgical curse in the Roman and Anglican churches (and insofar as they did not, the grotesque Anglican service that used to be conducted at the start of Lent known as the Commination, which according to Cranmer was a practice of the early church, but I have found no evidence of this, did amount to liturgical cursing of people who violated the ten commandments).

What we can do, however, and what Fr. Andrew has done, and many others, going back to St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Epiphanios of Cyprus and St. John of Damascus, and indeed St. Athanasius and the Three Holy Hierarchs (which would be an awesome name for a jazz ensemble) is to provide information on the nature of various heresies and theological errors, so the faithful can avoid them, while also having access to information about the true beliefs of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.





*to my knowledge, we are the only denomination that officially defines ethnophyletisim as a heresy, although it is an implied heresy within Oriental Orthodoxy and Anglicanism; conversely, one could argue that it still remains an issue in Roman Catholicism as ethnocentric Catholic parishes even in the Roman Rite continue to exist, and also persons received into an Eastern Catholic Church from an Orthodox Church or the Assyrian Church of the East will be automatically assigned to the corresponding Eastern Catholic Church, which in some cases, for example, Greek or Russian converts, could be extremely inconvenient considering the miniscule size of the Greek Catholic and Russian Greek Catholic churches - and one must write a letter to the Vatican in order to change one’s liturgical rite.

prodromos said:

At least he doesn't preach a flat earth cosmology

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Or that we landed on the moon

Apple Sky said:

Or that we landed on the moon

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Please be advised you are posting in The Ancient Way forum, which is the Congregational forum for Orthodox Christians and I do believe most of us are opposed to your false accusations of dishonesty towards engineers, astronauts, scientists and others involved in the space program and are uninterested in reading remarks of this sort. If you wish to debate the Orthodox you can do so using the links I posted earlier in the thread to St. Justin Martyr’s Corner.

Yeshua HaDerekh said:

um potentially we are...we don't know. I DO know of a deceased Priest's daughter who left the Church because of this. She began watching "Christian" videos on youtube and began to believe in all the protestant evangelical type theology. She was a cradle Orthodox and raised in the Church her whole life. She now attends some type of evangelical congregation and speaks against Orthodoxy. Glad we agree on your last point...

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that wasn’t how you framed the argument in the beginning. you said it was about those looking in from the outside who were not yet Orthodox. you didn’t bring up those who become skeptical after having been in the Church until now.

the daughter you brought up doesn’t fit this point which is where our conversation has gone:

Yeshua HaDerekh said:

They are already in the system...I am speaking of those curious and watching videos on Youtube as a beginning...they might be discouraged if they see this video!

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Yeshua HaDerekh said:

You said "so we’re not talking about us losing anyone"...I just gave an example of one I did know of

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that was because the initial discussion was about people before they became catechumens. that’s what we were talking about. we’re not losing people prior to them joining the Church. the example you just gave was about someone already in the Church, which was not what we were initially talking about when I said we’re not losing anyone. because the “anyone” we were talking about were hypothetical potential inquirers prior to their joining the Church.

it wasn’t an example since clergy children departing the faith isn’t an example of potential inquirers who see a video and never join.

ArmyMatt said:

that wasn’t how you framed the argument in the beginning. you said it was about those looking in from the outside who were not yet Orthodox. you didn’t bring up those who become skeptical after having been in the Church until now.

the daughter you brought up doesn’t fit this point which is where our conversation has gone:

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Father, perhaps we might set aside the initial proposal and focus on the idea I;ve now outlined, wherein I might work with @Yeshua HaDerekh (if he wanted to work with me) or another Orthodox Christian to generate react content to debunk videos focusing on well-known misconceptions about the Orthodox faith, as opposed to obscure misconceptions which we don’t want to promote, considering that such “react content” is not required to link to the video it is reacting to, and in the US is protected under the Fair Use Doctrine, and thus can harshly criticize it (which obviously we would not do; I think it is generally unhelpful to come across as snarky or dismissive*.

The problem is these preconceived notions and misconceptions about Orthodoxy do continue to cause us real harm - the beliefs that we are idolatrous, or ethnocentric, or hostile to outsiders, or engage in superstitious rituals, or that we’re dominated by the Russian government, or engage in immoral behavior that Protestants reject.

Every negative stereotype of Orthodoxy was condensed in this now-removed article on the ultra-Calvinist website 9Marks, which obviously we would not resurrect from the dead (other Protestants called them out for it) Journal : Putting Contextualization in its Place | 9Marks

“ In this context, the word "Christian" can be particularly problematic. To much of the Muslim world, America, Europe, and Russia are "Christian" societies, and whatever is true for those countries is true of Christianity. Thus, when a Central Asian Muslim asks me if I am a Christian, what they mean by "Christian" is an alcohol-drinking, pornography-watching, sexually promiscuous, picture-worshipping Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic person who is part of the culture that has attempted to conquer and oppress them for centuries. Therefore, I never simply say yes. However, since Christian is a biblical word, neither do I say no. I define who I am in biblical terms apart from their historical experience.”

This shameful article, from 2009, which did not age well given the subsequent harvest of crowns of confessors and crowns of martyrdom reaped by Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christians, Assyrians, and our Anglican and Catholic friends in Africa, the Middle East, and Pakistan, due to Islamist persecution and terrorism, is useful because it provides a laundry list of some of the worst and most dangerous ideas about the Orthodox that exist. Also it reflects the tendency of many fundamentalist and restorationist Protestants to try to jam us into the false Protestant vs. Catholic dichotomy.

I believe addressing these misconceptions with reaction videos on youtube responding to online videos that contain them, where the Orthodox doing the reaction are buttoned down, ship shape individuals who one would want as one’s friends, coworkers and neighbors, could increase conversion rates and also help to mitigate the use of YouTube as a platform for anti-Orthodox speech.

What do you think, Father?

Please pray for me, a sinner, and also pray for my mother, as an irresponsible case worker created a major headache for her which I am helping her with.


*My only objection to Fr. Andrew S. Damick’s blog, other than some controversial polemics against the Oriental Orthodox contributed by Dr. Nicholas Marinides, is that in responding to some comments on his blog, he occasionally comes across as snarky (but not in the case of the articles of Dr. Marinides, where he was very gracious to a Coptic scholar and others who replied in respectful disagreement), although in most cases Fr. Andrew avoids seeming snarky, indeed these days he no longer comes across like that at all, but rather he replies in a laconic was really well deserved that i admired - for example, back in 2016 when Fr. Andrew criticized this obscene carnival-style mass in Brazil at the RCC’s World Youth Day with dancing bishops, people riding into church on carnival rides, and so on, for a lack of suitable reverence, since worship is supposed to be done decently and in order, a Roman Catholic objected “When was the last time hundreds of Orthodox bishops interacted with thousands of youths in a week long even” and Fr. Andrew replied “Holy week”, which was a sincere answer, a correct answer, and also an answer that was expressed in a brilliant, laconic manner which as should be evident by my florid literary style, I am quite incapable of.

The Liturgist said:

What do you think, Father?

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I am not your priest, so I have no say in what you do.

ArmyMatt said:

I am not your priest, so I have no say in what you do.

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I am not asking you as my father-confessor, but rather, as a more learned Orthodox Christian, whether or not you think the idea is sound or if rather you regard it as problematic.

I want you to know I run everything by my father-confessor, and do nothing pertaining to religion against his instructions. He is a wonderful priest and a starets.