I hope to see humanities departments removed from Universities and people learning humanities from uncensored self published sources instead
This person mentioned how seminaries use statements of faith to censor academics
I hope seminaries get shut down also and people post self published uncensored religious studies instead also
@shortstories He's trying to pretend, that his faith based knowledge is critical thinking. He also intentionally misrepresenting Theology by complaining, that it's not selfcritical enough to push people towards his version of faith.
Also, just the idea that theology is the science of morality is an inaccurate statement. Morality is studied by psychology.
So long story short: He just selling his bible course and trying to do so by running a smear campaing against actual higher education.
Even if this guy is scamming people both seminaries and secular universities are also scamming people
@shortstories @SilentSeeker By this point I see nothing wrong with smear campaigning against the sheer faggotry parading itself about as “higher education”.
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @shortstories The source material is the problem here. There's only so many interpretations you can extract from a book. And this is a problem for other religions too. Especially, because religion itself can't prove anything. They always depended on other sciences to give them new ideas, prove and disprove them. So, at the end, I think the person is more at fault here, than the study itself. It's hard to discover something new at this point in an ancient material.
@SilentSeeker @shortstories People die, and Traditions must be studied generation after generation to keep them alive.
What you’re proposing is the death of an academic Tradition
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
Constantine changed the tradition and people keep rediscovering the same ancient truths that were taught before constantine only to be censored by the academic instituitions that pass on constantine's new version generation after generation
What is constantine's new version
Constantine's new version is that the government has the right to create new religious traditions and claim the new traditjons were the original
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@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
Constantine made the claim that the government determines the truth by having the government appoint a group of religious officials to vote what the religion will be and then having the government enforce their vote as the state religion
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@shortstories @SilentSeeker What gives you that idea ?
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
Are you denying that constantine used his position as a government official to order people to vote on what Christianity teaches multiple centuries after Christianity already existed
@shortstories @SilentSeeker Well I’m Orthodox so, yes; that’s not at all how it went down 😄
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
Does the Orthodox Church have a committee to vote on what real christianity teaches?
@shortstories @SilentSeeker Orthodox neither believe the Deposit of Faith is a matter of voting, nor that “voting on what Christianity teaches” is what happened at Nicaea
@shortstories @SilentSeeker I can’t make you not believe DaVinci Code tier blackwash propaganda, but you probably should understand Traditional Christians generally deny the whole narrative framing you’re leaning into
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
So an ecumenical council could vote on something and that something could be a true statement but the council could vote that statement as false and a council could vote that a false statement is true
because you agree that we do not know what is true based on how councils vote
So the ecumenical councils accepted as legitimate by the Eastern Orthodox Church could have made factually incorrect statements
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
How does one know which ecumenical council votes also certified statements to be true with 100% certainty and which ecumenical council votes are not legitimate after the vote that constantine ordered?
When did Jesus tell people that in the future people should vote on the meaning of his words in ecumenical councils?
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
Why would you assume the majority vote is true when Jesus impliee the majority is going the wrong way in Mathew 7:13-14
13Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. 14How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!
@shortstories @SilentSeeker “Majority vote” really doesn’t have anything to do with it 😆
How does one know which ecumenical council votes also certified statements to be true with 100% certainty and which ecumenical council votes are not legitimate after the vote that constantine ordered?
This is a valid question; the minutes and proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils themselves are a matter of Church and Public Record, and are a significant and central facet of what it means when one claims to study Church History. And one is free to do so; but understandably, the appropriate application of this historical study is the purview of the current living Bishops in the Church; as they’re tasked with Church governance and magisterium. It’s literally the Church’s business to understand the Church’s own history, believe it or not.
The Ratification of a given Ecumenical Council, historically, was the purview of the next Ecumenical Council. In their minutes, they go over the previous Whole Church Council, see if it’s proven true, and it becomes Ecumenical after that. All of these matters conducted in Faith that these means were and are transpiring under the auspices of The Holy Spirit - in Whom we trust to prevent the aforementioned Ratification if anything is amiss, in conjunction of course with the sincere best efforts of the College of Bishops.
Lord Jesus issued the Apostolic Mandate in Matthew 16:18:
“He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar–jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
~ Matthew 16:15-19
While Roman Catholics interpret this as singling out St. Peter as the Absolute Supreme Authority over the Entire Universe, we Orthodox believe this mandate applies equally unto all Right-Believing Bishops - for many reasons not just contrarian.
It is on this specific mandate that we believe in the God-Given Authority of Right Believing Bishops to shepherd The Church, according as they’ve received from their predecessors. We trust God The Holy Spirit has preserved this mission on earth.
Long story short; in Orthodoxy, we believe The Church is the Standard of Inerrancy - in contrast with Protestants who put “The Bible” in that position. While we believe the Bible is also inerrant, it is because it is The Church’s Scriptures that it is.
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
So the correct council is the one composed of right believing bishops and you can know which bishops are right believing because they agree with the correct council?
@shortstories @SilentSeeker For a Layman, I’m also tasked with discernment - as are all Orthodox Christians - to familiarize myself with the Voice of The Master — by getting to know Him personally in the Lives of His Saints. We are instructed to “flee from erring Bishops as from a burning building”. Because it’s The Faith that saves - not which dude you happen to be in Communion with.
On the whole, what emerges from all this, collectively, we rightly understand to be the Literal Body of Christ on Earth, through History, indwelt by the Holy Spirit within each of us and all of us. That’s Traditional Ecclesiology in a nutshell as best I can presently put it.
@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.
@shortstories @SilentSeeker Huge gaping holes, everywhere - even Biblical ones; which only became more obvious by contrast with what I’d learned about Traditional Christianity.
@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 You seem to be hearing me say “the authority rests on the Bishops”. That’s not what I’m saying. The authority rests on the Holy Tradition, as preserved by The Saints. Bishops have virtually zero authority, apart from this Tradition.
Bishops serve a specific role in The Church during their lives. But they’re not inerrant or infallible. We regard The Saints of The Church in history as having the true Magisterial authority. Some, but by no means all, of these Saints, were Bishops.
@KingOfWhiteAmerica @SilentSeeker
Presuming the character called God in rhe Old and New Testament really existed
I would be interested in getting a historic record of the exact words that God spoke to people possibly including other sources than the Bible but I know of no proof that the character called God in the Bible said anything which the bishops had access to that was not in the Old or New Testament
@shortstories @SilentSeeker If The Church were merely some human corporate endeavor, then sure; there’s no guarantee that any old group of dudes arranged hierarchically identically to the Ekklesia would be guaranteed to vote perfectly in line with the Objective Factual Truth.
That established, Traditional Christians believe The Church is the literal Body of Christ on Earth, indwelt personally by God the Holy Spirit; and as such is Divinely Inspired away from any and all doctrinal error.
As stated before, I can’t make you not believe blackwash propaganda; but you should probably understand the Traditional Christian Ecclesiology affirms the basic inerrancy of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Therefore, independently of whatever you might think transpired those days at Nicaea, it is Traditionally believed to have transpired under the deliberate auspices of God the Holy Spirit.
The way this looks to us is this; Emperor Constantine was a recent-ish convert to Christianity, as the Arian heresy began assailing the equanimity of The Church with great hostility - much civil strife. In order to settle the issue to restore peace in his realm, he ordered a Church Council involving every Bishop from around the world, in order to determine for himself and all Christendom what the True Traditional Doctrine of the Divinity of Jesus Christ had actually been since Apostolic times. Arian heretics were of course claiming theirs was “the Original”, and had amassed so many followers - it prompted Constantine to call the Bishops in from all around the entire world.
Because these Bishops were often enough from distant lands, Catholicity would suggest they’d be less likely to have fallen under the sway of popular local trends. The Consensus of all the Bishops in the World would likely settle the issue, Constantine reasoned. He was not wrong. It became rapidly apparent that the Full Divinity of Christ was what they’d received through Tradition. So it was ratified in Council in the presence of the Roman Emperor and all Bishops present, the intention being to cement it into Christian Officialdom.
Can’t make other people believe this, but it is what I believe; and it makes much better sense of everything imo than the DaVinci Code sensationalist pulp.