Truth Unites - Where Is the True Church? (Fr. Stephen De Young & Gavin Ortlund)

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Gavin Ortlund and Fr. Stephen De Young discuss Eastern Orthodox exclusivity, the boundaries of the church, and what it means to be a Christian.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

I genuinely don't understand why someone would believe that only the Eastern Orthodox Church is the one true church when the fruits of Christianity and everything I know Christianity to be is so beautifully abundant in other contexts as well. If the Orthodox Church is right, if we are Christ Church on this earth and the body of Christ, and you make videos dissuading people from joining Christ Church, you can see why, from our perspective, that would be a very bad thing to do. This is another thing that's been lurking in the background of our discussion is, at some point we've got to be honest, we at least have a somewhat different definition of the gospel, honestly.

Let's talk about that. Let me ask one last question, and don't take offense at this. No. Do you think it's possible to make an idol out of the church? Hey, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I am here with Father Stephen DeYoung, and we are going to have a conversation about issues related to salvation,

and especially salvation outside of Eastern Orthodoxy and how that is viewed. Many of you will know we've been having. having some discussions about these things, and I'll say more about kind of to set us up for this conversation in just a moment. But I'm grateful. Father Stephen, thanks so much for taking the time. It means a lot to me. Yeah, it's my pleasure to be here, and hopefully this will be helpful. Absolutely. Yeah, we were just talking about, you know, in these conversations, the need for patience and the desire to have light, not just heat, and these kinds of things. And so maybe I can just say a few words about that to set us up, and then I'll let you weigh in, too, on anything you want to say of an

introductory nature, and then right after this, I'll give kind of a table of contents of where we're going to go. But just to explain, so people may have watched me and Jonathan Pajot have a dialogue that came out on both our channels a little bit ago. I'd actually emailed you prior to hearing back from Jonathan, and so I'm happy we can have both conversations, but the reason I reached out to you is I feel like this is one of those moments where we want to be talking to, to one another. And I think, you know, people talk a lot about talking past one another. That's probably inevitable to some degree, but we can reduce that if we just get together and have conversations. And so I think you are a great person for me to interact with. I know for me,

my academic work and my pastoral work are both two pillars behind me that sort of inform how I approach conversations like this. And you are a priest in the Orthodox Church. You are also an academic. So you have qualifications and credentials, and those are things that I look for in dialogues that I often will incline toward people like that that I feel like can really represent their tradition well. So it's an honor for me to talk with you.

And we've also had a discussion in the past that I think was good, and we were able to just work through things. And like we're going to say for this dialogue, too, we don't have to agree. We're going to disagree, but at least we want to have a disagreement that's productive and clarifying

and viewers can see. And so the only other thing I'll say is just what I constantly try to beat this drum is that I really regret the way the Internet can escalate hostilities. And I would like to try to keep really positive relationships with Eastern Orthodox Christians. And so that's partly why I'm grateful to be talking with you because I feel like we can have a good interaction where we're not shying away from the issues, but we're just kind of patiently plodding along, disentangling, working at things and so forth. that is set up to say thanks for being willing. Yeah, I just wanted to say to start out that when I listened to the discussion you had with Peugeot, something finally sort of clicked for me because you've done some videos in the past and you've talked in the past about the exclusivism of the Orthodox Church being sort of an obstacle.

to your wanting to join. And that had intellectually not made sense to me in the past, right? Because I was approaching it from this intellectual level of, well, wouldn't you want to find out if that was true first? Because if that's true, then it doesn't matter if it's mean or something. Like if it was true, then you'd want to join because you'd want to find salvation, right? But hearing you talk about it with Pajot, it finally kind of clicked with me.

In the Orthodox Church's understanding of the scriptures, there are two sort of greatest examples of love from human beings. And it's Moses and St. Paul. When each of them say they would be willing to be blotted out of the Book of Life, they would be willing to be condemned. Right. Damn, go to hell, however we want to describe that. in order for the people who, many of whom hated them and were persecuting them, right, would be able to find salvation. And so it occurred to me that you can approach that from a place of love.

That the question of whether I need to join the Orthodox Church to be saved can be less important to a person than I would have to condemn this person I love and that person I love and these people who have meant so much to me in my life. And I would rather risk it than do that. And so to me, that spoke to me because I have come into the Orthodox Church from another tradition. And I had one of my parishioners, actually, who watched your conversation with Peugeot, completely separately from what I thought about it, reached out to me on this same point because he clicked with it, too, having come from a different background.

that, you know, I was raised, like, in a Dutch reform community. I went to school and church with the same kids, all these blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids with names that started with Vander and stuff, right? And went through a reform seminary and had mentor figures and men who taught me a lot and who I deeply admire there. And so I felt that coming into the church of the friction of the friction of, the friction of, of am I going to be, am I being compelled to say something about them, right? Am I being compelled to sort of anathematize them, right, by making my allegiance with the Orthodox Church? And somewhat famously now, when people do interviews with me and stuff, they always want

to ask about how I join the Orthodox Church. And I don't talk about that. You will not find that on the Internet because, and the reasons I tell you. them. I tell them two reasons I don't talk about it. Number one, I don't want to say anything bad about where I came from. I don't want to say anything negative about those people. And number two, as I look back at my life now, I think God was working the whole time to bring me to where I am today. I don't think God was not working at all in my life. And then suddenly I walked into an Orthodox church and he started. I think I see God working in the whole scope, right, across

my whole life when I was outside the church and now that I'm inside the church. So I wanted to say to you that I have been called upon to renounce a lot of ideas and opinions and theological principles, but the Orthodox Church has never required me to renounce or denounce any of my people. And I wanted to say to, especially the Orthodox folks in the audience, who are watching these exchanges, that that kind of understanding I gained from that video, I am convinced that, while I think you're probably wrong about a bunch of things

or don't understand some things or whatever, that you're being honest when you say that this is what you think, this is what you believe, this is what you're, that you're not misrepresenting your own views or opinions in these exchanges. Thanks for that. Yeah, I appreciate that because it has been a little unusual to receive this cascade of accusations of dishonesty. And then, you know, boy, how many people call me a snake and this kind of thing? And it's very, I don't know, I sort of chuckle at a certain point, just let go. I mean, it's like, whatever.

I can't control this. I don't know what this is. I don't know where it comes from. I don't even experience that from Catholics or atheists online. and I engage with them a lot. It's something I don't quite get, and part of it might be Protestants and Orthodox Christians don't have a long track record.

We haven't been doing this for very long, so it's just a tough conversation. The general cultural Eastern versus Western differences are on the table. So thank you for that. And, yeah, I think we should try to approach things from the standpoint of assuming good faith unless we have some clear evidence. I mean, you know, it's kind of odd.

I do want to say, so, you know, I think the general table of content for viewers and they can skip around in the timestamps is going to be, what is the Eastern Orthodox view of the non-Orthodox? Second, has that view changed over time? And then third, is that view correct? And when we come to that third point, I'll want to offer some clarifications to what you just described.

You were saying something along the lines of Gavin's view, you know, wouldn't you want to know whether this is true and this kind of thing? and that's it. That is it from the beginning. And I've, you know, I've been pretty clear in my argumentation that it is inconsistency with the New Testament that is my concern. It is not an emotional appeal. It's not that it's mean. It's that I don't know how to recognize that as Christianity from the fruits. And we can come to that. So I guess I'm just kind of putting a stopgap there so we can kind of return to that and work through that. That was my old understanding of part of what you were saying. That was I was trying to say, I'm

I see. I got to pass that. Yeah. I got you. Okay. So we're getting, see, that's why we got to do these conversations

because even though they're kind of clunky at times, we actually can make progress. And oh, boy, there's plenty of times I'm talking to someone. And six hours later, I'm like, oh, now I understand what they're trying to say. Because, you know,

it happens, like we said. So that's why whenever people are saying, oh, so and so are talking past each other, I think, well, there's no way to learn how not to talk past one another than to talk.

So that's what we're doing. It's like we just, we've got to give, into the conversation and ask lots of questions and work at things. Yeah, so anything else you want to say to setting us up before we dive in and kind of start working through some of the issues here. No, I think we could just, I think we could just go in. Yeah, I think so maybe so in case someone's not been following along, one of the things I've, what we're basically getting into here is I've raised concerns about the exclusive, I'm going to

call it institutional exclusivity of Eastern Orthodoxy. And one of the questions comes up is, So hopefully in this video, we'll get to some of these things that come up as, what about Calvinism? That people are saying, that's way more exclusivistic and so forth. We'll talk about that. Isn't Christianity exclusivistic? And we can talk about, you know, why I have this concern about EO institutional exclusivity specifically. We could talk through this.

But just to explain a little bit, one of the things I said with Jonathan is I do hear different perspectives from Eastern Orthodox Christians today. And so one of the many things I hear that is, really hard to make sense of when people say, well, we already told Ortland our view, and he doesn't accept it or something like that. It's like, I've heard so many different views. On the one hand, I've sat down with priests and been told, you are a Christian without qualification. On the other hand, I've done debates with priests and apologists from the Eastern Orthodox community, and it's been pretty absolute. No, you're not. You're headed for hell.

And then I've got what is most common is something in the middle of that, where it'll be, whether it's about C.S. Lewis or Tolkien or me, it'll be something along the lines of, you know, like even in my discussion with Jonathan, it kind of came out, you know, Protestants are kind of like Buddhists in some way or another. You may be a Christian in the colloquial sense of the term. And then today you hear a lot of language about Eastern Orthodoxy is the fullness of the church. It's where we know salvation happens, but we're not passing judgment elsewhere and so forth in this kind of language. And so, When I hear these different perspectives, my approach has been, let's go back historically to look at these conversations and figure out which of these multiple views is most historically authentic. And so that's where I think something like the Senate of Jerusalem, specifically responding to Protestant beliefs is a fair place to look. We go back on the filiocque. So the filiocque clause is one of our disagreements. And so I think it's fair to go back to the 9th century where you have pretty explicit classification of this as heresy. You know, Fosius himself is calling it a blasphemy.

You've obviously got the Fourth Council of Constantinople. There's this categorization of this particular doctrine as damnable heresy, and that's pretty consistent there from at least the 860s onward, I would say. I mean, it's pretty bracing. All the rhetoric is applied to the. the filioque, just as the previous heresies of the seven ecumenical councils as perceived, were also addressed. So it's like filiocque is the new Aryanism and the new sebelianism and this kind of rhetoric. So I'm looking back historically and I'm saying, and then you find, you know, as I've gone through in my videos, I won't repeat all the statements about just the very absolute

language about specifically Protestants and Catholics as cut off. Now one clarification, cut off from salvation. One clarification is, I do understand, and I've always said this in my book and in videos, that doesn't mean omniscience about every individual. So I understand you're going to find lots of people who say, well, we're not making the final judgment, maybe there are exceptions. But I think the basic idea here is, and the concern, and it is a concern about what is true, not just what is mean, is the classification of Christians outside of Eastern Orthodoxy,

such as Catholics and Protestants, Roman Catholics, let's say, to be clear. And the classification of these groups seems very clear historically. I mean, from the filiocque disputes prior to the Great Schism up through the early modern era, it seems like a pretty absolute, they are cut off. They are off the arc of Noah, even if you'd allow for some maybe exceptions in individual cases, or even if you say we're not going to absolutely claim omniscience about individuals, the classification of these groups is clear, and as I've said, I don't think the language could be stronger. I wouldn't know how to make it stronger. And so today, then, you hear a little bit more, my perception is when I read like the contemporary Eastern Orthodox theologians,

it seems like there's been a real softening and a real loosening and a real opening up more in an ecumenical direction, though the older hardline view persists. And so I'm seeing multiple things today. And even in the reaction of Orthodox Christians to my dialogue with Jonathan, I hear these different responses. So I'm looking at it, and my position and my concern is there is a softening, there is a change, and that we need to be, we need to really face squarely the language that we find in history for the filiocque and for Protestant doctrines and for these classes of people over here in the West. So that's a little bit of background of just kind of my essential position. Let me pause, so I'm not talking too long and say, do you want to

start here interacting with this? What do you want to say in terms of your position here? Yeah. Well, there's a whole sort of web of things there, right, that are all interrelated. I think on a broad level, I think it's important that you use the word rhetoric. Because I think part of the issue in some cases, so you are very validly seeing in those centuries an escalation of rhetoric, for sure, right? For sure.

No doubt. Right. And I would even add, this is much less well known in the West, but if you look at the rhetoric surrounding the Council of Calcena and all the way up through St. Justinian, the whole issue with the schism of what are now called the Oriental Orthodox churches, you find similar kind of rhetoric there, right, back and forth. So you could even add that, right, too, if you wanted to. So agreed about the rhetoric. The question then is how much of a change in substance is there to the view accompanying that change in rhetoric? Right. So is it substantially the same view, but due to historical circumstances, the rhetoric gets cranked up to 11?

Or is the rhetoric reflecting changes in views as the rhetoric changes? And to what degree? and there's a lot of room in the middle there between zero and 100, right? So it's important to disambiguate that. And I mean, with my background, I can even come up with some examples of reformed confessions, right? So I grew up with the three forms of unity. The Belgian confession says the Pope is the Antichrist. The Heidelberg Catechism says that the papal mass is a damnable idolatry.

Right. But I also know enough from my background to know that, you know, or Sinus wrote a commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, that there are a bunch of important distinctions, like the Pope being the Antichrist is about the office, not the person. And right. So there are all of these distinctions. But those distinctions aren't put into writing in the doctrinal standard that gets signed off on by officers, right? They're understood. They're part of the context. but it's not spelled out. The Belgian Confession doesn't spell out. We're talking about the office of the Pope, not the right person. And so I think of the same way

surrounding a lot of the Orthodox doctrinal statements, there is this context in terms of how they were being interpreted and applied and the context they came out of. The Belgian Confession emerges pretty directly out of violent persecution of Protestants by the Roman Catholic Church, right? And so you would expect the rhetoric toward Roman Catholicism to be turned up higher, right, than normal, right?

That's a normal thing. And so some of these Orthodox statements emerge from anti-missionary contexts, right, where there were people there actively trying to convert, right, to get people to leave the Orthodox Church and join another church. and those kind of conduct. So all of those things kind of have to be taken into account. But I think it's important to start with maybe I should just spell out what I understand substantially the view to be. That sounds good.

I have two thoughts in the back of my mind that I want to come to at some point, but I also don't want to interrupt your train of thought. So maybe do you want to finish off and then I'll and then I'll just write them down here so I don't forget. Yeah. So substantially. So the question of, so it, It is very clear. It's the Orthodox teaching.

The Orthodox Church is the Church of Christ. It is the Church that Christ founded on this earth. It is the body of Christ. The borders of the Church are coterminous with, of the Orthodox Church are co-terminous with the Church. Right. That's very clearly the Orthodox teaching. And that is the place where God is worked. salvation. We understand this very much in parallel to the way Israel functioned in the Old

Testament. Israel had borders, right? It was a visible physical institution that they had received the scriptures, right? That's the, see all of St. Paul's in Romans, talking about Romans too, talking about the advantages that the Jewish people had received, right? that's the place where he was working. But all through the Old Testament, there's also this idea that through Israel, God is working salvation for the nations and for the whole creation, right? That Israel is the vehicle through which he is doing that. And all kinds of examples of that, the 70 bulls for the 70 nations that get offered

on the Feast of Tabernacles. And so you see all along there are people who are not technically speaking Israelites, some of whom become Israelites, some of whom don't like Naiman, but nonetheless are experiencing a form of what we would call salvation. And so for us, the statement extra Ecclesium, Nola Salas is kind of, outside the church there is no salvation, is kind of parallel to Christ's statement to the Samaritan woman, who later tradition would call St. Fortini, when he says, salvation is of the Jews. and I would say the genitive there should be from.

Right? Salvation is from the Jews. He's not excluding her as a Samaritan. Right. But in the question regarding, he's in part answering the question, should we worship in Jerusalem or on Mount Garrism? And he says, well, Jerusalem, because salvation is from the Jews, but a time is coming when this is going to change, right? But up until that point, yes, it was Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, where she should have been worshipping, not Mount Garism. Right. And that salvation is from the Jews, but then comes to the rest of the world. It is reflected in our liturgy that we offer, we offer the Eucharist for the life of the world and for its salvation. We pray for the whole world, including non-Orthodox people. Right. And I can keep going. Well, this might be a good place to pause. Yeah, yeah.

So in a second, let me come back to where my mind was going. earlier, remind me if I forget about the Belgic confession, because I think there's some differences between Protestant exclusivity that you see and calling like the papacy of the Antichrist and Eastern Orthodox exclusivity. So I want to come back to that, but just to clarify, so I mean, what does that all cash out to give it to me straight? Am I a heretic? Am I a schismatic? Am I a Christian? Am I a separated brethren? Am I, I, I mean, you know. Right, right, right. Where does the rubber meet the road here? Okay, so you are from our perspective at least a schismatic, right?

At least a smithmic, okay. Someone who agreed with all of the Orthodox Church's doctrine but was not part of the Orthodox Church would be a schismatic. Right. Right. Now, I don't know all of your beliefs on everything, but I know that at least some of them are not the beliefs of the Orthodox Church of those particular issues, which technically, puts you in the category of heretic. Okay. Now, that is not worse than schismatic, by the way. People tend to think that schismatic is actually worse, according to St. Augustine,

because he says, heresy is a sin against reason, whereas schism is a sin against love. So if it's a question for St. Augustine about, well, this person is wrong about this point of theology, and so they won't join the church, that's actually less of a sin. than someone who fully agrees but refuses to submit to the church. And let me clarify why I'm asking it to because I've had people say, why does Gavin want Eastern Orthodox approval so much? And, you know, it's like so many things. People are projecting motives onto me.

I ask about myself because I'm the one sitting here. We could make C.S. Lewis, the person to be asked about too. I'm just asking for clarity. I mean, in my own conscience, I actually don't have any doubt. I stand before Christ. I know I'm a Christian because I stand before Christ. and because of the Holy Spirit's testimony in my life. But I'm asking from the Eastern Orthodox standpoint,

how am I classified? Heretic, yes, schismatic, yes. Am I a Christian? From an Eastern Orthodox perspective. Technically heretic, but not schismatic. Right. If you came to agree with us, then you would be as schismatic.

So it's heretic because there are particular things that we have condemned as heresy that you believe. Right, right. Like Seventh Ecumenical Council. Yeah. Right. Things were the Council of Jerusalem. Right.

So, and like I said, from our perspective, that's not as bad as being as schismatic. From an Eastern Orthodox point of view, am I a Christian? So there is not a standard Eastern Orthodox definition of the word Christian. So if by Christian you mean member of the church, then the answer's no. Right? If by Christian you mean, that's what people are trying to get at when they say to you, colloquially. Because there's a way that word is used. There's a very devalued way that word is used now in American culture, which is anybody who identifies as a Christian as a Christian. That's sort of you

can't. I don't think you would even agree with that. There would be people who you would want to say aren't Christians, right? For my standpoint, what makes someone a Christian would be the doctrinal and spiritual realities, not whether they themselves just say that. And also not just are they in one particular institution. But let's skip over the terms then and say, from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, are my sins forgiven? So a lot of these things are things that just we can't say with confidence. Okay. Right. In that, God is free. Sure. Do you do, do you think, I mean, would you say that from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, am I, do you currently regard me as a fellow you know, indwelt by the same Holy Spirit as you,

expecting to be together on the new earth one day, Lord willing. Do you current, do the Eastern Orthodox currently relate to Protestants such as myself as sort of fellow Christians in the Holy Spirit and dwelt sense? I could not affirm that with confidence. Okay. Could not affirm it with confidence. I would not exclude that possibility. Right? I could not exclude that. But I could not say with confidence.

And here's part of why. Here's part of why. For us, this is a thing that comes ultimately out of love again. Right. So if I look at you, I say, well, he has these beliefs that are wrong. And he has these things that I believe, our Lord Jesus Christ, would have him do that he is not doing. And I say anything to you to imply that, no, you're okay. You don't have to worry about those things. You don't have to do those things. That to me would be both kind of a betrayal of what

I believe to be true and ultimately not loving toward you if I think you really need to do those things. A thousand percent. And I appreciate you being candid. And I'm letting me ask you these questions. And again, it's not to make it weirdly intense. It's just to get clarity because again, you hear different things said about this today. So, and I'm the same as you. If someone asks me if they're a Christian, and I don't think they are, the loving thing to do is to say no.

But also you put it as, you can't say with confidence I am, but that really leaves it open. I mean, your answer there could be anywhere from 1% probability to 99% probability. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, again, my whole position has not been about certainty over individual souls,

but the classification of the group. Right. So let's not make it about Gavin Orton so much. Are Protestants regarded as Christians in anything more than a colloquial sense by the Eastern Orthodox in your estimation? Yeah. Not qua Protestant, no. Not just de facto by being part of a given Protestant group or holding to a given set of Protestant doctrines. No. So part of the zero to one percent would be, you know, I'm just starting to get to know you, right? Like I may, I may, if I came to get to know, know you very well, and I saw certain things in your life, and I saw fruits and evidence of God working in your life, that would raise my confidence level, even though you're not in the Orthodox Church, right? Interesting.

It would never get to a hundred with you not doing those things, but it would raise it. And just like, you can get to know someone and see how they live, and that can lower your confidence level. That'd be like, no, these issues are very severe. I have good reason to doubt that, right. But just qua Protestant, just if you say to me hypothetical member of a Presbyterian church, I can express no degree of confidence in just the hypothetical unknown person. Right.

Well, that's still about the individual, the group. So just, you know, Protestants as a class of people are they? Right, and that's what I'm saying. So what makes them Protestant, right? As Protestants, what makes them Protestant is precisely believing things that I think are false. Right. Well, but not all false. I mean, Protestants have some things you believe in.

They're the theists. Right, right. But what makes the Protestants as opposed to something else, right? Like, as opposed to Roman Catholics. So what makes someone a Roman Catholic is it, right? So it would be the same thing. And so it's similar to the expression I hear a lot of times for Protestants about Roman Catholics. Right.

which is, well, if they're finding salvation, it's in spite of the Roman Catholic Church, not because of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get you. That is clarifying. So I think I've got a rough sense, at least, of your perspective within the various Eastern Orthodox perspectives that I hear of where you fall in that spectrum of views.

Maybe I could share, I'll say two things about it. One is I appreciate the more responsive element to that to say, like when you just said, oh, if you see more fruits in someone's life, that changes the judgment. That is very, in my opinion, a Protestant instinct is to say you're looking at the individual fruits and not just where they stand. So I appreciate that. I think the question that is still on the table for me is to what extent that really is historically authentic and how much you'd find anybody, you know, 500 years ago talking like that.

So this is maybe where I can come back to the point about the Belgic confession and rhetoric. And maybe I could just point out two areas where I see a difference between Protestant exclusivity and Eastern Orthodox exclusivity to try to help you understand why I don't agree with that point of view. And then I want to hear how that strikes you and you can interact with it as much as you like. So one basic point is, of course, Protestants, one of our hallmark emphasis is we don't believe that post-apostolic church functions. are infallible. And so, you know, contemporary reformed Christians are not obligated to see the Belgic confession as an infallible statement that they must adhere to. In fact, even ministers will sometimes take exceptions to certain clauses. And for my part, as a broadly reformed Christian,

I don't actually think the reformers were right in calling the papacy the Antichrist. I understand why there was such an intensity in the bloodshed of that times. I know, I don't, I get it, but I don't think that's the right exegetical judgment about the term Antichrist and the New Testament and so forth. And so I think that is a point of difference because I want to come back to this too and see, but I actually think the Senate of Jerusalem is going to be more binding for the Orthodox than the Belgian confession is going to be for the Protestant. And I see that as a difference. But that's a small point.

The main point is this. When the Protestants call the papacy the Antichrist, as you said, they're talking about an institution. And what they are not saying there is that all the Catholic, are non-Christians and they're not saved and they're off the Ark of Noah. And we know that because we have such clear, countervailing evidence of that. Calvin and Luther speaking very clearly of true churches and true Christians under Rome among the Oriental Orthodox and among the Eastern Orthodox.

The 1570s first dialogue between the Lutherans and the Orthodox. The Lutherans are very – I have a whole video on that showing the Lutherans are very clear in their recognition of a genuine Christian ecclesial status to Jeremiah. the 2nd and the church he presided over. And then Richard Hooker and so many others going forward. This has always been there that Protestants have recognized the church is not in just here. There are valid Christians and valid churches over there. But the statement, the papacy, is the Antichrist, is a judgment about the hierarchy and the leadership. And it's not a statement that they're all not Christians. By contrast, the Senate of Jerusalem says, apart from the bishop,

and the bishop is the canonical Eastern Orthodox bishop, neither church nor Christian can be or be spoken of. And so I would say we have two different kinds of exclusivity here. The Protestant exclusivity is there. I mean, there's boundaries. And we're not universalists. We're not relativists. We think there's definite boundaries around the church,

but we don't prescribe them around one institution, and we see genuine Christians outside of Protestantism, and we always have. We always have from Luther and Melanchthon forward always, and I've documented that. And so the papacy as an antichrist or even the mass as idolatry don't really take away from that because those can be true while you still got Christians within that institution. By contrast, the Eastern Orthodox are saying the Protestants are, you know, they're pretty clear. You can't speak of or have a Christian or a church apart from the bishop.

And so do you see what I'm saying here that it looks like these are different kinds of exclusivity? And I wasn't so much trying to parallel the exclusivity claim as just to say, here are very strong rhetorical claims. Okay. Right. That someone who knew nothing about the history of the reform faith could come to you and point at the Hidalberg catacism and say, it says you're a damnable idolatry. You're saying every Catholic who goes to Mass goes to hell. Right. And you would then say, as you just did, well, there's all this other context you're not.

taking into account, right, of when this rhetoric was used and the other, the way other people spoke concerning these things, right, and that condition that, right? And that's not what we're saying, even though the rhetoric is strong and by itself, out of context, you could take it that way, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. But that then leaves it to me to demonstrate that there is this other stuff surrounding the orthodox statements. And that would be parallel, right? Yeah. Exactly. And I'm, you know, I watched Luther Menard's video, great video that he got from another Orthodox Christian named Newman, I think. I really, but two great people. I've been interacting privately with both of them going back over the his data points. And I kind of worked through and I wrote a whole response to Newman kind of explaining all these different things. It, you know, my response to them. But I think, yeah, that is the issue there is, is there that broader contextual data. Do you find people saying, well, yeah, the fili-oque is damnable heresy? But there's lots of Christians over there. Those people who are from the filiope, a lot of them are still saved.

Or is that lacking? And then also, I would say we need to look at the specific kind of rhetoric. Because outside the bishop, neither church nor Christian can be or be spoken of is a particular sentence. It's particular rhetoric. And there's nothing comparable to that sentence in any Protestant confession that I know of. So, you know, we've got to work in the details there. So I don't know if you want to comment on any of that. And then we can keep rolling here.

Yeah. Well, yeah. So the, in terms of some of that context, right, you're not going to find like, oh, yeah, they're all great. They're all fine, right? But I would point at things, for example, there's a really interesting book published years ago now, because I'm getting old, that was called early Orthodox interactions with Aquinas.

because famously after a certain point, really after St. Augustine, there wasn't a lot of Greek literacy in the West, but for at least as long as the Byzantine Empire existed, right, the eastern half of the empire, most of the educated churchmen in the East still knew Latin, right, because they're interacting with Western Europe all the time. Right. And so it's a collection of people commenting on Thomas Aquinas' works in theology at the time. And, you know, in the period we're talking about you don't get a more paradigmatic representative of Roman Catholic theology than Thomas Aquinas. And what you don't find in those early reactions, which certain 20th century Orthodox theologians would be very mad about, you don't find a condemnation of scholasticism as a method. you definitely do not find any condemnation of Thomas Aquinas as a person. What you find, and at one point, a patriarch of Constantinople literally says, if only he had been born here in the East, so he wasn't burdened with things like the filiocque and, right, these things. They were treated as, oh, well, it's sort of not his fault, right, that he believed those things because of where he lived and where he was raised, right?

And his thinking was so good otherwise, right? Like, and so there's this appreciation there, right? I can, and right up to Saint, now saint, he's recently candidized saint in the Orthodox Church, Dumatry Stena Lois, who was a Romanian theologian and professor who spent a lot of his life in prison, imprisoned by the communists. And it's now a saint. He wrote a, what is in Romanian, a three-volume Orthodox dogmatics

that's been translated into six paperback volumes in English called the Experience of God, Orthodox Christian dogmatic theology. He actually borrows John Calvin's treatment of Christ as prophet, priest, and king. So he literally, literally draws on, now he repurposes them, right? He's using them in an orthodox way. He's not doing

an ecumenical thing. But using that paradigm, right, reflects sort of an appreciation there. And there's lots of other, you know, sort of individual examples, right? When we're dealing with individual people from the other tradition, I think the tension you're seeing, and people talk about, and people talking to you now where you're seeing one kind of rhetoric toward institutions and another kind of rhetoric toward individual people a lot of the time, I think that goes back a long way in orthodoxy. That there's sort of no mercy and kind of ruthlessness when it comes to talking about an institution that's foreign to the church or a doctrinal system or a theological point of view. But when it comes to an individual person and the church's assessment of them,

I think a lot more is taken into account. Could you, so I hear you. I guess I'm a little underwhelmed by these examples, though, because it sounds like, you know, okay, some people are speaking appreciatively of Thomas in certain respects, but I'm not really hearing any clear statement of Thomas is a Christian or Thomas is saved or anything like this. It sounds like more like, okay, you know,

we wish he'd been born over here. The use of Calvin's construct, okay, I mean, that doesn't, to me, that doesn't move the needle very much. I mean, they're not even saying Calvin is a Christian, as an individual. They're just using this theological construct he used. I mean, I don't know. I guess I have found one or two examples where you can find medieval Orthodox praying for like a pagan and this kind of thing.

So, again, that's consistent with my thesis for there to be some exceptions. But it still looks to me like the general classification of all this Western Christianity where you've got the filiocque, both. Catholic and Protestant, is basically just across the board, kind of they're off the arc. And then when it comes to individuals, that then sets up the norm from which there could be exceptions. Though I did a whole video on Theophan, and I know Theophan, you know, he's closer to the modern times, and he'll have some statements like I'm saying where he'll say, you know, we can't make a final judgment.

We leave judgment to God. But still, when the Anglican missionary visits, that's an individual that occasions his comments. And that individual Anglican missionary is spoken of, even though he's an individual. you know, like he's very clearly preaching another gospel. He's not of us. He's not, you know, and the Galatians 1 type language for him. So I guess I'm, I await further data that shows, show me the fili-oque-way holders are Christians. You know?

Well, yeah. And so that's, that's, there's a couple of things there to pull apart, right? But one of those is clarifying. I mean, if you're looking for, they are a Christian, in some sense, parallel to the way an Orthodox Christian is a Christian, you're not going to find that. Okay. Okay. What you're good, what you will find is, I'm saying, the kind of appreciation. And I mean, you can even find church fathers who talk about even having this appreciation for Plato, Aristotle.

And this idea that somehow salvation extended to them, in the sense of like Christ's harrowing of Hades, when they encountered Christ in Hades, they accepted him or that kind of thing, right, extended toward them. And I think that continues toward people who we would colloquially say are Christians, Christians as opposed to Muslims or atheists or, right, what, who are outside the Orthodox Church, you will find that kind of language, right, extended toward them, which includes the possibility of eschatological salvation. But it's a lot of. always a possibility. It's never going to be a, oh, this person for sure, right? That would seem consistent with my case then because, you know, what I'm saying is it sounds like

the non-Eastern Orthodox Christians are basically in the same camp as the Buddhists and the Muslims in that. God could make an exception. We're not pronouncing a final judgment, but they are outside of the Ark of Noah and they are cut off from salvation. And the scales of rhetoric may go up and down a little. I mean, you spoke more gently of today, of me, of kind of well, you know, but it's pretty bracing back then. I don't find any real reduction of that rhetoric for, so I guess it seems like to me, and correct me if you think this is wrong, it seems like to me the Eastern Orthodox basically sets the bars around the Eastern Orthodox Church, but then says, well, yeah, maybe there could be some exceptions. How many exceptions does feel like it's changed over time to me,

but what I'm as a Protestant setting it around is what I want to do is set it around Christ and the gospel and say, that's where the boundaries are. And so therefore, I would never put an Eastern Orthodox Christian in the same category as a Buddhist, because Christ is what makes the difference, not the institution. Am I, is that unfair? Well, so there's three things I want to pull apart there. I'll try not to filibuster, and I can take a break between the three if you want to interact more. So one of them is in terms of that latter rhetoric, especially regarding Protestants, right, and like the Anglican missionary and that kind of thing.

There is a lot of fierce rhetoric. from the Orthodox Church and Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Saints, directed in a counter missionary way. When someone comes into an Orthodox country and tries to set up a parallel church, even if they identify as Christian, but they're teaching different doctrine, and they're getting people who were baptized Orthodox as children

to go and join the other church instead. which from our perspective is them leaving the Orthodox Church then, there is very fierce rhetoric against that because we believe that this is the place where salvation takes place. And so from our perspective, if you are in the Orthodox Church and you leave, you are rejecting, you are turning your back on at least some of, if not all of the means of salvation, you're disobeying certain commands of Christ from our perspective.

And so the rhetoric against that is very fierce and against someone who's trying to do that, right? I mean, so I've got to be honest with it. And this is, this is, you know, I'm not trying to be mean. Maybe I'm just being Dutch. I don't know. But my concern with you in particular would be that, like I said, I have no idea what Christ is going to say to you on the day of judgment. It may go much better for you than for me. In fact, it probably will.

But if the Orthodox Church is right, if we are Christ Church on this earth and the body of Christ, and you make videos dissuading people from joining Christ's church, you could see why, from our perspective, that would be a very bad thing to do. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just to jump in on that, I mean, that's why we have to have these conversations to check away that is the Eastern Orthodox Church, the one true church, which is our third topic here, is to wrestle with that. And of course, the Catholics say the same thing to me. The Oriental Orthodox say the same thing to me. There's all these churches that claim to be the church.

But I guess, I mean, maybe that's a good topic to focus on, because I think where I'm basically coming from is we have two different paradigms here. And my position is that Christ and his gospel is that exclusivistic boundary marker. I'll have people sometimes in the comments or in reactions kind of saying, you know, but Protestants can be so exclusive too, right? Like I grew up at this one Protestant church and they were so mean to the Orthodox and this kind of thing. And the difference is that I want to say we should measure each tradition by its official theology, not necessarily by just anecdotally what we perceived there. Because I could go to an Orthodox country and just talk to some random Orthodox Christians

and come up with a terribly erroneous understanding of Orthodox theology if it was just what someone was poorly catechized and they shared something or, you know, individual parishes can sometimes go off the rails and so forth. So when we look at historic Protestant theology, one of the things I value, and why I'm just persuaded it's true,

is that it's focused on Christ and the gospel, not one particular institutional set of boundaries. And the reason that's compelling to me is because of the fruits of Christianity. It was really interesting and encouraging to me and heartening to me earlier when you were saying, your confidence goes up

when you see more fruits in someone's life. That tells me we've got some overlap here. We've got some common ground in terms of valuing that. My argument that... Maybe I could lay out my thought on this real quick and then I'll let you respond to. You know, Eastern Orthodoxy currently comprises

about 12% of global Christendom. So about 88% of Christianity's outside of the Eastern Orthodox Church. And my basic argument is not an appeal to emotion or nostalgia or anything like that. It's just an appeal to the fruits. I just would... It's not even an option for me. I just as soon have to cease believing in Christ altogether as to deny the fruits of this 88%. which the doctrinal fruits, the spiritual fruits,

this is so much of Christianity that manifests Christ himself. And so in my cases for this, I appeal to New Testament passages about how we are to measure the tree by the fruits. And so where I see in this 88% of Christendom, the evident fruits of the kingdom of God, glory unto the Trinity, the demons cast out, miracles, you know, everything you'd expect the kingdom of God to look like, I appreciate what

you're saying about kind of like, how's it going to go for Gavin on the day of judgment if he's wrong, but I don't think I am wrong. I mean, I can't even imagine turning my mind to say, oh, we're just going to go down to this one institution as the only true church. I would be like, I grew up in the 90s, so think of the Chicago Bulls. It'd be like if the Chicago Bulls came out to play one night and they just put out Ron Harper, and Tony Kukoch onto the court, and everybody else is not on the bench. And somebody says, wait a second, you've got to play with five people on the court. You need a bench.

Why are you only putting two players on the court? What about Michael Jordan? What about Scotty Pippen? And somebody says, well, they're not valid basketball players. And it would be the same thing of what? You know, why are we only accepting these two players? And so it's the same feeling for me. I genuinely don't understand why someone would believe that only the Eastern Orthodox Church

is the one true church, when the fruits of course. Christianity and everything I know Christianity to be is so beautifully abundant in other contexts as well. So that's where I'm coming from. Let me see what you think about that. Yeah. And that's a little bit what I was trying to address in my introductory comments, right, that clicked with me when you were talking to Pajot, that you're looking at with love at this other context that it's not about, right? And as I said, I've never been called upon to announce, right, to say that anyone who was a mentor to me is like lost because they were a Presbyterian, right?

Like, so part of this, I think, is, I'm going to dovetail this into something else that I keep slipping past me, but we need to get to. So if we take the parallel again with Israel in the Old Testament, Israel, of course, very small, compared to the rest of the world, right? A very small percentage of humanity were Israelites. And when we say that the borders of God's people, for example, we're coterminous with the borders of Israel in the Old Testament, right?

We're not saying everyone outside is completely lost, but we're also not saying everybody inside is in. right like that's important too right right and and that's a response to your thing about the gospel being the limit right well yeah right so there's there's two different right qualifiers there so and i've thrown out as an open challenge in orthodox circles for a long time i've said i've said show me somewhere where any of the church fathers say everyone who's a christian goes to heaven and everyone who's not goes to hell And you can't find any, right? They're very, more often they're threatening people who are Christians where they're listening to them preach with, hey, if you don't yourself to following Christ, you're in danger of hell, right? They're not talking about the people, you know, outside, right? So, but, so another piece of this, and this is the piece I kept somebody that I wanted to come back to.

And that's that I think Pasjo met the example of St. Gregory, the bishop of Rome praying for the, the pagan emperor differently than how you took it. Okay. I think you took it as an example. And based on what you just said, I think you took it as an example of an exception. Right. And I think what he was trying to communicate is something very important about how the Orthodox Church views the prayers of the church. In that, if someone finds salvation through the prayers of the church, even though they are outside the church, they are being saved through the church. So that's part of, in our understanding, all salvation coming through the Orthodox Church.

So if I in the liturgy, I pray for you, right, even though you're not Orthodox, right, I pray for you, and God chooses to use my prayers to work in your life, that from an Orthodox perspective is God working in your life and therefore in some sense a kind of salvation through the church. Yeah. I get that. And that would resonate more if in the Senate of Jerusalem, the statement was, all salvation comes through the Eastern Orthodox Church, rather than with apart from the bishop, neither Christian nor church can be spoken of, which I would say at best makes the person outside a little more of an exceptional case. but certainly is just giving a general classification of these entities like Protestant. And so it's making a very strong claim there. It's not just saying, you know, well, through the church, you get saved. It's saying outside of the church, neither Christian nor church can be spoken of.

Maybe there could be an exceptional case, but it's a strong statement. I don't think those two statements contradict each other, though. Sure. Yeah, no. Not necessarily. But it doesn't say the first of them. And you're finding salvation. I'm saying that doesn't make you part of the church.

You're still not part of the church. Right, right, right, yeah. And we would technically say if your definition of Christian is member of the church, you're still not a Christian. Right. But you could be finding salvation through the prayers of the church. So I don't think that contradicts what Jerusalem is saying. Agreed.

I agree. I agree. Yeah. It's not a contradiction. But I'm just saying what you don't find at Jerusalem, is this language that I'm hearing today. You don't find the center of Jerusalem saying, well, we're just not passing judgment.

You know, here's what we know salvation is. We're not passing judgment over there. You find rather a very hard classification that I don't think is comparable to Protestant confessions at the institutional level of this is the church. Those out there are cut off from salvation. If there is exceptions or qualifications, Here's the thing.

I mean, you know, I understand that sometimes the synods will give you the more general categories, right? And they're not going to give you all the particular test cases. But the Synod of Jerusalem is capable of qualification. And it is capable of nuance and of recognizing cases of reduced culpability. You've got Decree 15, which talks about valid baptisms among the heretics. And it's very nuanced and qualified. So it's capable of using that language when it wants to if it wanted to say, you know, but, But some of those over there can be saved.

Some of those Protestants over there, some of those fili-oque holders over there, some of those who believe in justification by faith alone, who believe the presbyter and the bishop are the same office, or who are opposed to the veneration of icons and all these issues that come up in the synod there. If it wanted to leave some wiggle room, it could have, and it doesn't. And so I guess I'm just saying, you know, it looks like the, language is more absolute.

And I think it's fair to say there should be some contextual evidence from that time period, if not in the Senate of itself, from around that time. Otherwise, we get to a point where we say, how could they have given such a classification if not with those terms? If they wanted to say that the Protestants are not saved,

they're out of the church, they're off the Ark of Noah, they're going for the pains of the heathens and the publicans, what could they have said to make that point, if not as they did say? You see the dilemma harmonetically? It makes the position sort of unfalsifiable. Right. Well, so, no, I do understand. I understand what you're saying, I believe. But so there's, there's two factors here. One is, is a factor of rhetorical function and context. Right. So if I am issuing a statement because I am concerned that people are leaving the Orthodox Church to join Protestant groups, I think it would be counterintuitive for me to say in that statement. Well, I mean, it is possible in some cases for

people to find salvation. Right? Like, that's not how I'm going to address. I'm going to make a very, like, look, you know, there's nothing for you there. Right. You need to, right, stay here. And then maybe on an interpersonal level, if I'm a pastor, there's some individual case and it's like, yeah, well, there's no Orthodox Church where this person lives and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. right, you know, you address that there. You don't put that in the strong statement you're trying to make, right? So there's sort of that element of it. So there's another principle here.

And I think Peugeot tried to get at this at one point. I don't think he got it across. And that's in terms of how, so broadly known are sort of the big decisions made by the ecumenical councils, right? You know, Aryanism condemned, right? This and that. Also, of course, the councils issue a whole ton of canons, right, on all kinds of issues, right, resolving all kinds of sometimes very pragmatic, detailed issues, you know, sometimes broader issues. And so in the Orthodox Church, canon law functions a little differently than it does in the West, and that it's not even really canon law for us. So what you get is a very strong statement, a very direct statement.

But then it is the job of the bishops in the Orthodox Church to apply that rule to particular cases. And so that rule is applied in Orthodox circles, we talk about you can, and in general, a rule being applied with a crevaya, which means accuracy, sort of very literally, right, directly what it says. And then also economia in various levels, where you, look at a particular situation and say, well, okay, in this situation, we're not going to be a slave to the rule, right? Because the person in the situation is more important than the rule. The most common example of this is marriage. And when Roman Catholics talk about the Orthodox view of marriage, it's very skewed, right? So we have a rule just like they do that divorce is

not allowed, right? That divorce is a sin. And if you are divorced, you're not allowed to be remarried. Those are the rules if you go to the canons. Now, that said, you will encounter people in the Orthodox Church who are divorced and remarried and who got remarried in the church by a priest. And that's because when that situation happens, when a divorce happens, we penance it, meaning we set up a process for them to be reconciled to the church and be healed and repent of everything involved in the divorce. right and then after that if there's a situation where it's better for someone to be remarried the pastor writes to the bishop and says okay here's the situation here's what's going on here are these people here's what I know about them I think in this case we should make an exception and allow for a second marriage and the bishop can say yes or no the bishop can just

enforce the rule and say no or he can say in this particular situation I'll allow it right because it seems to be the best thing and then we have a service for second marriage that's different that actually quotes St. Paul talking about it's better to be married than to burn with lust and to say, what we're doing here is not the ideal, but that we think it's the best thing in this particular situation for your salvation of the people. Sure. And so that's true across the board with how the statements of councils are applied in the Orthodox Church.

So the idea that we would have very strong statements against Roman Catholicism and Protestantism as isms, right, and as institutions and as bodies and even as categories of people, But then when you get into the historical nitty-gritty of particulars and particular people, there would be this economia, there would be this sort of flexing of the rule of, well, in this case, we see something different going on here. That's not weird from an Orthodox perspective. Yeah. I guess to jump in, what I'm not seeing is that nitty-gritty for the, you know, I'm not seeing the 17th century Eastern Orthodox clergy.

you know, in other contexts outside of a synod, bending and flexing and relate and maybe sharing the Lord's Supper, you know, acknowledging, oh, well, that over there is a valid Eucharist, even though we said no valid Eucharist here. And, oh, you know, that even the examples given of Thomas and Calvin seemed to fall short, if I understood you accurately in them, of any sort of actually recognition of Christian status in them as opposed to appreciation of certain aspects of their thought. So the nitty-gritty there needs to be worked through. I think Newman, and forgive me Newman, I'm forgetting his last name off the top of my head, but he's a wonderful guy. He's done more than anybody to, for my vantage point, really put out some of those particulars,

and then he and I've had a back and forth, and a lot of them are like, they're just talking about, I won't try to work through all of that. But I guess the nitty-gritty needs to be documented, right? It needs to be shown that there was this sort of, or it can just be remained that, you know, the classification of these groups that affirm the filialque is as harsh as it is. And, you know, I guess then the question becomes, well, do we have any actual clear examples?

in like the 1700s or the 1600s are going back, where people are saying, Eastern Orthodox Christians are saying, you know what, we have Christian unity with that, you know, or they're quoting Anselm and saying, this is our fellow Christian,

or they're quoting Thomas Aquinas and saying, you know, we look forward to salvation with him, or anything that is actually the nitty-gritty particulars that would be countervailing data, I've not really seen that, to be honest. And I've, no, and I don't think that exists. I think this is important.

I think we've arrived at an important point here. Right. You are not going to find that. You're not going to find the, this person is a Christian in the same way that an Orthodox Christian is a Christian. Right. In the same sense. You're not going to find that, a paralleling of that.

Will you find what you've said? What I'm arguing for is that there's a bunch of room between damned to hell for eternity and Christian equal to an Orthodox Christian. And I'm saying you find a lot of room in between there when addressing specific people. That's what I'm arguing for. You're not going to get their Eucharist is as good as ours. You're not going to get, we're going to give them the Orthodox Eucharist

when they're not part of the church. I'm not arguing that you find that. I got you. So we're not as far then. So is the wiggle room equal for a Roman Catholic as for a Buddhist? Okay, good. I'm glad we came back here. This is the other thing I wanted to clarify here.

So when the Orthodox Church has addressed those outside the church, it has not primarily been in the context. And I think this is an important distinction too. people who know about the Orthodox Church have an Orthodox Church near them know about it and choose to reject it versus someone who lived their life in Papua New Guinea, you know, 700 years ago. Right. Like those are two different categories, right, for the Orthodox Church. And most of the time when we address people outside the church, it's been in that context.

People have no idea what Christianity is, have never seen a Bible, right? Have never heard the word Jesus, right? and that kind of thing. And so the Orthodox view regarding that has been that at the last judgment, Christ is going to hold us accountable for what we did with what we received. Right. From those who have been given much, much will be required, right? Those who have been given less, right?

Less will be required. And St. Paul kind of does this in Romans chapters 1 and 2, when he's contrasting the Gentiles. and then how the Jewish people who had all of these things are even more accountable. Yeah. Right. We're in agreement on all that. Yeah.

Yeah. And so for us, there is then this scope of what you have. Right. And so a Protestant or a Roman Catholic has a lot more than a Buddhist, assuming that we're talking about a Buddhist who grew up and lived their life in a Buddhist country. Right. Not a Buddhist living. and not Richard gear, right, but like, you know, that's in China, right, or in Japan. He doesn't know about the church.

And so we would say, right, that you have been given more. Now, part of this is we would say, for example, the reason the Protestant Reformation had a Greek New Testament is because of refugees from the fall of Constantinople, right, that the Greek text of the New Testament was preserved. in the Orthodox Church, right? So even that is sort of coming out of the church, the life of the church from our perspective. But that is something you have. And so you are just as St. Paul says, you know, what's the advantage then of being a Jew? It's like, well, everything, you have the Torah, you have the prophets, you have the, right? So I could say, you know, what is the advantage of being a Protestant?

Well, you've got the scriptures, right? You've got the doctrine of the Trinity. You have all of these things, right? And so when it comes to the day of judgment, God is going to hold you accountable for what you do with those, right? With what you have. The way Archbishop oferke, who is a very famous, may end up being recognized as a saint,

Archbishop in Russia in the early to mid-20th century, so through the communist period. It was very faithful to, Orthodoxy in spite of persecution, said, he was asked if Protestants could find salvation. And he said, well, even in the most sort of remote and weird Protestant sect that he could think of, right? And who knows what that was, right? But he said, there are all of these things from the early church, which of course for him is the Orthodox Church, right, that they still have. And that he believed if people clung to those, if the people who received those, even though they

receiving these other errors and these other things, those things that were authentically Christian, through receiving those and living their life based on those, they had a hope of salvation. Then the flip side of that is there would be a greater condemnation for a Protestant than a Buddhist who... Yeah, that's what I was going to say. What you're outlining there almost would in the majority of cases of conscientious Protestants, as opposed to a Protestant who's just never heard of Eastern Orthodoxy,

would seem to make it worse for Protestants, because if someone knows of Eastern Orthodoxy and yet, as I am, conscientiously persuaded of Protestantism, that would seem to make things worse for that person, which is an interesting state of affairs to be in. I think what I would say in response is, I do, and we can leave this as the disagreements to keep probing. Hopefully this won't be our last conversation.

So just, you know, all this will keep working at. But I do think there has been a softening. because like what you just recounted there, that's just not what the Senate of Jerusalem is saying. And if you don't, like, a moment ago, you were agreeing with me that we're not going to find statements like, well, maybe Thomas is saved, or maybe the Anglicans get a valid Eucharist.

We're not going to find that. And yet today, you actually do. You can find Eastern Orthodox people talking like that. You can find language about separated brethren, and you can language that is a little more so. So I do think there has been a change. I really do. Now, here's what I would say, though,

even if that more flexible construal were the historically consistent one, even there, and this is the final thing maybe to talk through, is I still think the issue we need to work at is, is that, in fact, true? Is it just, is it just the factual truth that Thomas Aquinas is not saved and, and the Anglicans don't have a valid Eucharist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Is it the case that this 12% of Christendom is the one true church? And that is, I guess, maybe the core issue, right? Because I suspect that some of the reason there's such, I need to say, unfortunately, hostility at times at me from Eastern Orthodox Christians is because, and I know Protestants can do the same, but is because of this sense of Gavin's attacking the one true church, right?

That's probably putting a good construal on it. That's probably the motive, as they're saying they see me as the enemy. They see me as, you know, there's the one true church and he's persuading people to leave it. From my standpoint, I just have a different, I just do not think that that is the case. I don't think the Eastern Orthodox Church is the one true. church. And I think that the case for that, you know, it's not as though the Eastern Orthodox church looks very similar to some other churches like the Oriental Orthodox, and yet there is this institutional boundary that is set there. And I think something we need to keep in, keep working at is help me understand why you think that's plausible. Because I look at it and I say, why should I,

and this is my point earlier, which I'm going to reiterate in case you want to interact with it, is when the fruits of Christianity are so evident in the 88%. I mean, that 88% is a massive amount of the kingdom of God. From my standpoint, in just the basics of, again, the glory to the Trinity, the casting out of the demons, the speaking in tongues, the positive inculcation of virtues and Christian character, the translation of the Bible and spread of the knowledge of the Bible. So much of Christianity and its positive impact on the world is in that 88%.

I dare say these Western Christians, and I dare say many of these lowly Protestant missionaries, they've done so much to advance the kingdom of God. So I think where our conversation ultimately is going to get to and maybe where it needs to continue to work at is just help me understand why you think it is plausible to reduce the church to that 12% when the fruits are so evident in the 88% does that make sense? Yeah, yeah.

Part of the fruits thing, I suspect and this isn't just me speculating. Right, this is, this is a thread that you find a lot in 19th century Russian writers. So in the Old Testament,

most of Israel, right, gets destroyed by the, Assyrians and gets scattered among the nations. And there's the whole thing with that being prophesied in Genesis 48, where Jacob tells Ephraim, you know, your descendants will become the fullness of the Gentiles. And St. Paul picks up on that in Romans 11 to talk about the Gentiles then coming into the church, like its seed was scattered and now it's coming back. You find in 19th, a lot of 19th century Russian writers, including Dostoevsky even alludes to it a

couple times in sort of monologues in his novels. This idea that what happened with Rome and with the Protestant Reformation was a similar kind of thing in that pattern and that they actually had a hope, they almost sound post-millennial sometimes when they talk about it, that sort of all of those folks were going to end up coming back into the Orthodox Church and bringing with them sort of the various gifts from the nations, right, like they had received. So there is a thread there, right, in Orthodox thinking of that in terms of the fruit that you're talking about, right? That they're sort of not that we would look out and say, okay, well, all of those

are equivalent churches, right? That there are all these different churches that are all equally valid, but in the sense that God has a purpose behind this, right? that ultimately this is going to be to the benefit of the one church, which is the Orthodox church, the benefit of Israel, right? To the, sorry, reunited larger, greater Israel, right? But so, I mean, central to the claim to us, I think, is just that when Christ speaks about establishing his church, it's in the singular.

The church is the bride of Christ, he's not a polygamist. that the the when he when he when he establishes the church on the the foundation of the the apostles and the prophets right that that this is all speaking of an institution and a visible institution this is a thing you can point to and this is another thing that's been lurking in the background of our discussion is at some point we've got to be honest that we at least have a somewhat different definition of the gospel, honestly. Let's talk about that. Would you mind sharing, and as we're nearing the end here,

would you mind sharing what is your definition of the gospel, and then I can also share mine? So for us, in Orthodoxy, we're reluctant to try and do sort of a real short summary of the gospel, right? Because we'd say we've got four, and the shortest one is 16 chapters, right? By St. Mark. So, any about you're shortening, you're going to leave things out.

But for us, probably the best summary of the gospel would honestly be the Nicene Creed. And that then once you've heard the Nicene Creed, right, we would hope that would provoke the response of what must I do to be saved, right? What must I be to be saved as a response in Acts to having heard the gospel? It's not the gospel itself, right? So, satiriology sort of comes second. Right. So the gospel is about what Christ did, as it's summarized in the Nicene Creed, who God is,

what Christ is done for us, right? And that includes in it, the church, that includes baptism, right? That includes that are in the Nicene Creed. And then someone says, what must I do to be saved? And we tell them, you need to believe, you need to be baptized, you need to, and then by being baptized, you're coming into the church, right, and becoming part of the body of Christ. And then we, like Matthew 28, we teach you all. that Christ has commanded us, right?

And we follow that way of life. Okay. So this is a helpful, I did not plan on us finishing on this note, but I'm glad you brought up this question of what is the gospel, because I think it's a helpful thing to never assume we have, you know, agreeing definitions there. Let's see. It's interesting, you just referenced, what must I do to be saved?

The answer to that in Acts 1631 is quite simple. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. You and your household. That's verse 31. And so I would say the gospel is, I think, I've had, even some Protestants want to say the gospels are the gospel and this kind of thing. I would say it's not wrong to look at the New Testament as a whole and offer a synthesis brief summary because we even have those in the New Testament, like 1st Corinthians 15, 3 and following.

I often will summarize the gospel in personal evangelism in four steps to basically talk about God, sin, Jesus, and response. And it sounds kind of corny, but it helps me if I've got 30 seconds on the subway to share the gospel with someone. So I'll just say that there is a God. He made us in his image. We have sinned against him and that has separated us from him. Christ has come and fixed that problem through his sinless life, his vicarious death, his triumphant resurrection, and he will come again. and we need to respond to the gospel with faith and repentance. And yes, baptism will be a part of that response as well, of course. So that basic message is sort of the core kernel.

Of course we can then flesh it out. I mean, you're right to say. It's like you've got layers to the gospel. We can develop all of that, and it's not integrating every single thing in that brief summary. So, you know, I never want to assume anyone understands that. I meet Christians all the time. I've done many baptism interviews where I say to the person, tell me why you're interested in baptism. And finally, after we go on and on and on, talk about talking past one another, I finally realize they don't know the gospel message.

The Holy Spirit's drawing them, but they have not actually ever had someone share the gospel with them. They don't actually know, for example, that there's nothing you can do to earn God's favor and salvation. They think being a Christian means if I just do enough good stuff. and they don't understand that it's actually Jesus who earned it for you, and you receive that with the empty hands of faith, and your good conduct then will flow out of that reality, but it is not meritorious before God for coming into a state of reconciliation with him. People don't always know that, and so I want to tell them that.

So that's my definition of the gospel. What do you want to comment on there? Or how do we, how do we wrap? Yeah, I mean, yeah, there's sort of different paradigms. Right. And so this is why with Orthodox Christians, if we've got 30 seconds, we say, what are you doing Sunday morning? Right. Come with me to liturgy. Right. Because of the liturgy, both in words and in the ritual actions, so the, I mean, we don't have time to go all into this right now. Right. But we literally go through, and it's even reenacted the life of Christ and his sacrifice for our sakes and these things, right?

And so we're approaching into this more participatory way, right? And so like the question that you just expressed when talking about baptismal interviews, that's very key to you as a Protestant, right, in terms of merit and stuff, merit is not even part of our soterological thinking, like at all. If someone thought, merits of Christ or the person. If someone thought they could merit salvation. Oh, we would say that's wrong. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you'd want to clarify that too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no one could earn their salvation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And similarly, we'd want to invite them into the corporate. And we, Protestants do have this emphasis on the corporate witness of the church. You know, the 1st Corinthians 14, someone falls on their faces and unbelievers says, God is among you because they see how God is at work in the corporate gathered assembly. I think, let me ask one last question. And then, and don't take offense at this. No. do you think it's possible to make an idol out of the church?

So in the strict sense, no, but metaphorically, yes. And what I mean by that is, for example, St. Paul says covetousness is idolatry. Right? It's not literally idolatry. You don't think your money is embodying a God and you're offering food to it. Right. But so in that metaphorical sense, you could, someone could do that. Someone could do that.

And it is a problem. And my bishop at Tripolit Zaba recently even commented on this, that we need to be careful that we don't start speaking more about the church than we do about Christ. As Orthodox Christians. Okay. When we're evangelizing. And I think that's pointing directly at that concern, right, that you're reflecting. And I tell people my catacumans, the people who are in the process of joining the Orthodox Church, I tell them there are lots of reasons you may have shown up here, right?

All kinds of crazy reasons, right, why you walked at the door. So the only reason for you to join the Orthodox Church, the only good reason is that this is the place where you find Christ. that you come here and you encounter Christ here in a way that you have not encountered him before. If that's true, you should become a member of the Orthodox Church. If it's not true, then at the very least you're not ready to become a member of the Orthodox Church. And you need to work through it more. Thanks for letting me ask that. And I think, you know, all of this has been, boy, I feel like we need more.

I would love to talk again, you know, at some point and just kind of, I keep saying this to everybody. And I have a few other dialogues with Orthodox Christians set up as well, more like in August after my July vacation. But I would love to just kind of keep open communication, you know, as we go. I take the approach of we can disagree and still try to keep a positive relationship and keep good communication open. I really want to say thank you. I feel like this has been such a – I almost might sound too strong to speak of it this way, but just such a corrective kind of encounter in terms of, you know, we actually are making progress and listening to each other and having an interchange that's,

like, useful for viewers. My, I mean, I'm not saying that over and against Jonathan, because our dialogue was great as well, but rather more over and against some of the stuff online that feels just really unhelpful right now, just the crazy escalations of, I think I need to say, hostility and hatred and motive projection and all this stuff. that's out there. So this is, so I just want to say thank you. I think this has been really good. There were a couple moments where my Wi-Fi might have dipped down. So if people are watching this, and at any moment, there's like, it gets garbled. That was, sorry, I don't know why that happened.

But I don't think it disrupted it too much. I would love to talk again sometime. Is there anything else we need to work through here? I think we've kind of hit the main topics and work through it a little bit. Is there anything else you want to talk through before we finish off? No, I think we can, there's things we could drill down on on future conversations, but I think, I think we covered everything that I wanted to at least express and try to clarify. Well, it sounds great. And I think, thank you again for being willing to talk. I would love to keep talking and keep conversing and try to have, you know, good faith discussions like this where we work through things. we can honor Christ in how we disagree, right? You know, we can do it in a Christ honoring way. So I'm really grateful.

So, yeah, thanks for watching everybody. Oh, and in the comments, let's avoid comments that are kind of making it hyper-competitive. And let's try to give comments that are edifying, helpful. Pray for all people involved when you comment, those kinds of things. I want my channel to be a place of kindness and clarity in the way we interface. So do that in the comments. But yeah, Father Stephen, thank you so much, and I hope we can talk again soon.

Absolutely, absolutely. My pleasure. Thank God.