@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

Starting with the untested assumption that the Bible is infallible or inerrant is a violation of Deuteronomy 18 which demands that prophets be tested. The Bible demands that you use historical knowkedge from sources outside the Bible to reject prophets who claim to speak for God who are mentioned inside the Bible if what they say came to pass in the name of God did not turn out to be true

Protesrants who say the Bible is the final authority are wrong

@shortstories @SilentSeeker Agreed; I ”tested” Sola Scriptura for about three years, and found no example of a community built around it that came anywhere near to the coherence I‘d soon find in Orthodoxy.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

I am not saying we should assume both the Bible and the Bishops have some special authority as our foundation but we should assume neither the Bible nor the Bishops have a special authoriry

If God always spoke factually accurate information then what has authority are the words God said and not the Bible

The Bible would merely be a history book containing God's words

The authority would rest on God's words and not the entire book if God is akways truthful

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

Do you claim that God speaks directly to the bishops and tells them exact words in the same way that God gave exact words that he said to the Old Testament prophets?

@shortstories @SilentSeeker In the event God “speaks directly to the Bishop” (which I’m neither confirming nor denying), He isn’t going to tell them anything that He hasn’t already told The Saints — unless if possible, after said Bishop’s bodily death, the Church recognizes them as Glorified Saints, and confirms they have indeed survived death itself, and are alive and well in the Presence of God; at which point it may be discovered the newly Glorified Saint wrote something specific to our era that hadn’t been said, before.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

Unless God soeaks directly to the bishops, I see no evidence that the bishops have an infallible source of information to confirm that their interpretation of the same data about God that other people have access to is any better than anyone else's interpretation of the same data

@shortstories @SilentSeeker Right; that’s addressed in what I just said. The True Orthodox Magisterial authority is preserved and transmitted through the Lives of the Glorified Saints. It’s not up to the Bishops in this earthly life to decide what’s true and what’s not; only to rightly divide what we’ve received.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

So if the bishops have the same data about the history of the lives of the saints as you do then why would you need the bishops to conclude what claims are true or untrue when you can study the lives of the saints yourself and use your own mind to analyse the data instead of just assuming the bishops analysis of the data in ecumenical council votes is always correct

@shortstories @SilentSeeker The Ecumenical Councils have been Ratified by The Church, and have Magisterial authority - becoming thereby an “Icon” of the Deposit of Faith. Councils were held between Bishops alive at the time - all those Bishops are now no longer among the Earthly-living. Some of them are Saints - through whom we learn about the Councils themselves. They are now alive with God in God’s Presence.

Today’s Bishops in the flesh are now in the same roles, as those earlier ones were then. If any of today’s Bishops will become Glorified Saints, we won’t know about it until long after they die. Eventually, what they’re doing now, will be Church History, just like it always was. Not all are Saints, some might be. Some Layfolk might be as well. Some Monastics perhaps. But we won’t know that until after we die.

@shortstories @SilentSeeker We actually believe the Saints are alive after they die, in case you missed that. It’s critical to the Orthodox take on The Faith, and Magisterial authority.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

Let's say the bishops are alive after they died but they still have a dead body

You could not communicate with them without violating the Old Testament commands not to communicate with the dead, which I presume means not to communicate with anyone whose physucal body is dead

If you assume Samuel was a saint Saul got in trouble for trying to communicate with him after his body was dead even if his soul or spirit or mind was alive in an afterlife

@shortstories @SilentSeeker Yeah we have an entire Reliquary Tradition. As pertains to our Earthly bodies, the aim of this life is to leave Holy Relics, for the edification of the Faithful.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

It seems to me that this entire reliquary system is problematic according to old testament standarss if it is used to try to communicate with the dead and receive new messages from the dead that they said after their body died

@shortstories @SilentSeeker Yeah I think you’re thinking about mediums and necromancy. The Reliquary Tradition is like the Iconographic Tradition; Jesus Christ fulfilled the Law and the Prophets. OT rules for Israel have been completed in Christ Jesus - Who has a better Covenant with His Church.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

It sounds to me like the Eastern Eastern Orthodox might be using mediums and necromancy to try to get messages from the saints after they die or would these only be things they said or wrote before dying that you classify as correct because a saint said it that you only know is a saint after they die? But how would you infallibly know which dead people were saints without other dead saints confirming they are saints?

@shortstories @SilentSeeker Glorification is this whole big, long “process”; in Orthodoxy it’s less precisely spelled-out than it is in Papal Christianity, but the idea is the objective verification by an entire Church that So-and-So has given us every reason to believe they’re still alive. Honestly it’s as unique as every Saint. Things like prayers answered in very specific, personal ways, miraculous healings or other signs, Relics with their own associated miracles etc etc … and finally after the Synod of Bishops agrees and the Layfolk say “Amen”, the Glorification of the Newly Glorified Saint So-and-So is its own Church celebration.

It’s not necromancy if the person you’re talking to is still alive.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

So if you are not going to classify talking to people who have dead bodies aw necromancy then how would one break the rule prohibiting necromancy?

@shortstories @SilentSeeker Well, not everyone survives death, obviously 😆

@shortstories @SilentSeeker In Orthodoxy, Saints’ Glorification is an “official” recognition of an objective reality. They are actually alive in God, and have no trouble seeing to it that the Faithful on Earth are made aware of the fact.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker

Why are there so many Atheists and Buddhists if people with glorified bodies can make everyone aware that they have been resurrected so easily with so little reason for doubt?

@shortstories @SilentSeeker I think I may have been less than clear; those who died and are now Glorified Saints haven’t received Glorified bodies yet. That’s after the Great and Terrible Day of The Lord. Nevertheless, history is absolutely jam-packed with many miraculous things. Honestly I can’t tell you exactly why so many still doubt. I remember I really resented the idea of eternal accountability, and didn’t like how I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Admitting God would mean accepting these sorts of things.

Lord Jesus in the Gospels consistently refuses to perform miracles for stubborn doubters. The fact that largely remains true is not at all inconsistent with what we would expect from His narrative. He does very often give people entire lives of several decades, and even up to a century in some instances, to decide for themselves whether to believe Him and His Church in history.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories No offence, but SS is right here, if you try to resolve this question with pure logic. Your explanation make sense within the framework of your religion, but if you compare the practices to cult behaviours, then you'll walk away with some uncomfortable realisations. The Ortodox system just filter out the voices, that reinforce it's internal stability.
SS as a priest in your system wouldn't be saintified, despite making good universal observations.

@SilentSeeker @shortstories Thank you for reaching out; I’m not clear either on what SS is “right” about, nor any point on which I’m claiming SS is “wrong”. Please feel free to shine some light on that as I didn’t get the connection between these points, and what you wrote.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories There's nothing wrong with your religion within it's framework. But this create the problem for you. This is a universal human thinking flaw. Your religion approve or discard works once the person is dead, so they can't protest the decision and their work is judged by it's alignment with the main framework of the religion. This is why people complain about the church edited version of the Bible from. They canonized texts based on the church's needs. 2-4th c AD.

@SilentSeeker @shortstories The New Testament Canon wasn’t a topic of discussion at Nicaea, though. It was about the Divinity of Christ, and setting an agreed-upon date for Pascha. The earliest recorded mention of the Canonical New Testament works was in 367AD in St. Athansios of Alexandria’s Nativity Epistle.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories I won't try to prove, that I know these events better than you. But the overall principals remain true. Within your religions framework a priest can try and game the system for recognition by releasing ultra-conservative works, that reinforce the existing believes. Doing the opposite will likely make you erased. Science function the opposite way. It rewards outside the box thinking, especially, if proven right.

@SilentSeeker @shortstories It doesn’t matter to me if you know more historical details 😆 Orthodox simply don’t accept the notion that St. Constantine somehow successfully hijacked the Body of Christ for worldly power - and therefore aren’t going to subscribe to goofy slanted narratives trying to prove that 😂

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories Your system say, that everything is done according to God's will. But God's will is transmitted to us through the priests. And the priests, who served the collective well will become immortalised after death, when they become part of God and in essence God's will. Do you see the circular, self reinforcing logic here?

@SilentSeeker @shortstories Every thing that exists, and every event that transpires, is/happens according either to the Will, or otherwise the permission, of the Almighty God. And this holds and has held and will forever hold; it is an eternal and unchanging fact of absolutely universal scope and applicability.

Considering we believe that, it’s reasonable to assume our worldview will conform to that presupposition.

Given the objective Truth of the above, how could any true statement not, ultimately, be “circular” and “self-reinforcing” ?

You might imagine you’re onto something existing/transpiring “outside this logical framework”, but from our perspective, such an idea is ridiculous at best. And if our presupposition is objectively True, it actually really is absurd.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories Unfortunately we can't confirm this, because God don't speak to us directly. In this aspect, Judaism's explanation on God's nature is superior. They say, that you can get closer to God by studying the Torah and God's creation (the world). The Orthodox mentality is more similar to Islam, where everything is based on the Quran and what Mohammed may or may not said. Although Islam is even more flawed, since the Quran is the smallest of the 3 Holy Books here.

@SilentSeeker @shortstories What can’t we confirm ?

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories We can't confirm, that the world is developing/working/existing according to a Superiour Being's Will. Unless you go with Deist's world view, where God created the universe and then just sat back to watch it work.

@SilentSeeker @shortstories I can absolutely confirm that the Almighty God, about Whom I just poasted, either exists or does not exist.

All that you’ve said since, amounts to you really really hoping such a God does not exist. It’s extremely and incredibly obvious to me that’s the case, simply by sheer logic.

@dictatordave @SilentSeeker @shortstories It‘s utterly bonkers to me seeing how much Faith people pour into their doubt.

@dictatordave @SilentSeeker @shortstories The sheer terror of acknowledging even the possibility of the truly Almighty God, without the Will or permission of Whom nothing exists and nothing happens.

@dictatordave @SilentSeeker @shortstories Endless little leaps and feints and subject changes.

@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories @dictatordave I tried to challenge your system from within. You rejected it, saying that everything can be displayed as circular logic.
I brought in other religions to show a pattern. You rejected it saying, that I'm changing the subject.
DD here using a strawman argument. I never said, that your belief don't make sense. I actually started by saying, that it does within your framework.
I never said anything about my creation believes. I just referenced others.