What Christians Outside Of The Orthodox Church Believe

[Alan Roebuck]

With respect to the post’s criticisms of Calvinism:

I) “[Calvinism] depicts a God who arbitrarily saves some people and damns others.”

Ephesians 1:3—5:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,…

Romans 9:14—16:

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

II) “[Calvinism believes that] God actually decrees the Fall of mankind”

Ephesians 1:11:

…in him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will…

III) “…the gentle Christ who woos His bride..”

John 15:16:

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

Act 13:48:

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

IV) “Rather, this is a capricious, erratic, vengeful ‘God,’ who saves some men and damns others ‘for His glory’ (a phrase used often by Calvin and turned into something of a slogan by Calvinists).”

Romans 9:22—23:

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…

 

[Kentucky Gent]

Hi Roosh,

I like the photo. Can you tell me what church that is? Just curious.

 

[Roosh]

Hi Roosh,

I like the photo. Can you tell me what church that is? Just curious.

It's a stock photo, I don't know.

 

[Alexander_English]

With respect to the post’s criticisms of Calvinism:

I) “[Calvinism] depicts a God who arbitrarily saves some people and damns others.”

Ephesians 1:3—5:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,…

Romans 9:14—16:

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.

II) “[Calvinism believes that] God actually decrees the Fall of mankind”

Ephesians 1:11:

…in him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will…

III) “…the gentle Christ who woos His bride..”

John 15:16:

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

Act 13:48:

And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

IV) “Rather, this is a capricious, erratic, vengeful ‘God,’ who saves some men and damns others ‘for His glory’ (a phrase used often by Calvin and turned into something of a slogan by Calvinists).”

Romans 9:22—23:

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…

You won't be able to convince anyone Orthodox of anything by making an argument from Scripture. In fact, it's not even allowed on this forum. The argument goes something like, "We wrote the Bible and we know the one correct interpretation, and you have no right to form your own independent thoughts based on what the Bible says."

That's why I personally gave up on religious discussions involving any conflicting points of view on this forum, a while ago. Romans 9 directly contradicts what the author says, and could not be more clear. But, that makes no difference to those who hold tradition higher than Scripture, which of course they are free to do especially on their own forum.

To each his own and I pray everyone finds his and her way to the truth. But fair warning to you as a new member, you won't get far supporting your position with Scripture around here.

Edit: I don't mean any disrespect by this post, and I am truly grateful for many things I've learned about the Christian faith on this forum. Anyone please correct me if I'm in error in what I said here.

 

[DanielH]

You won't be able to convince anyone Orthodox of anything by making an argument from Scripture.

If by this you meant to say "You won't be able to convince anyone Orthodox of abandoning the Church and 2000 years of Apostolic succession and saints using sola scriptura" then yes.

Orthodoxy has an understanding of predestination. Read a good explanation here for the curious. You and the other poster are implying Orthodoxy doesn't believe in any sort of predestination; it's just not the same as the heartless Calvinistic understanding of it. The author also wrote much more about Calvinism and predestination than what was shared in Roosh's post.

And (all) shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation (John 5:29)

 

[Boone947]

The Scriptures use the language of “debt” or “crime” in describing our sins against God, but it is not emphasized for the Orthodox as it has been for Rome, nor is there any complex system of satisfaction, merit, and indulgences. The Orthodox do not teach temporal punishment for sins that are forgiven, because forgiveness cancels out any kind of punishment. If God forgives someone, why would He still demand payment through satisfaction? This model denies the full power and implications of forgiveness in Christ’s death and resurrection. We agree that forgiveness of sins in absolution “does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused,” but what is needed is a reorientation of the human person so that he functions differently, not that he “make satisfaction for” his sins.

---

[A problem] with purgatory is that it divides salvation into two parts: getting to heaven and being “purged” or paying off the debt of sin. The emphasis in everyday spiritual life is then placed on externalized works in order to reduce time in purgatory rather than personal transformation in order to unite with God. Christ’s saving work only suffices to get believers to heaven, but they still have to work themselves to be really free from sin. In some sense, full forgiveness can only ever be bought, with money, with good deeds, or with suffering in purgatory.

For Orthodoxy, it is even more nonsensical to suggest that one may essentially “buy” another person’s spiritual advancement by gaining indulgences on their behalf. We may affect another person’s life by our prayers, but we cannot exercise critical control over their spiritual experiences. Are spiritual realities so discrete and external to us that we can pay off the debt of punishment owed by another?

I’m having trouble understanding Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick’s criticisms of Catholic doctrine and the alleged “errors” of purgatory in light of the following:

And such [among the faithful] as though involved in mortal sins, who have not departed in despair, but have, while still living in the body, repented, though without bringing forth any fruits of repentance—i.e. by pouring forth tears, by kneeling while watching in prayers, by afflicting themselves, by relieving the poor, and in fine by showing forth by their works their love towards God and their neighbor, and which the catholic Church has from the beginning rightly called satisfaction—of these and such like depart into Hades, and there endure the punishment due to the sins they have committed. But they are aware of their future release from there, and are delivered by the Supreme Goodness, though the prayers of the Priests, and the good works which the relatives of each do from their Departed; especially the unbloody Sacrifice availing in the highest degree; which each offers particularly for his relatives that have fallen asleep, and which the catholic and apostolic Church offers daily for all alike. For course, it is understood that we know not the time of their release. For that there is deliverance for such from their direful condition, and that before the common resurrection and judgment we know and believe; but when we know not.

 

[Alexander_English]

You and the other poster are implying Orthodoxy doesn't believe in any sort of predestination; it's just not the same as the heartless Calvinistic understanding of it.

I have never heard predestination mischaracterized so completely as I have on this forum, basically all the time. Especially the trite sound-bite about how "God is not the author of sin!" One of many sound-bites in the grab-bag of canned replies that just don't reach the heart of the matter. Of course God is not the author of sin. Listen to any of Charles Spurgeon's excellent 19th-century sermons on election and predestination if you really want to learn what Calvin taught, or more importantly than what any man taught, what God tells us about the subject in his clear Word. I think it was about 8 months ago I went deep into arguing about topics like predestination, faith vs. works, etc. on this forum, and no good came of it.

I agree this article is all about driving a wedge between Christians, in the name of "educating" the poor, unenlightened souls who do not share 100% of the author's views. As if anyone would be convinced to change his viewpoint based on this article. This article would cause anyone with faith in his convictions to simply dig in his heels farther, since the faith which God gave him is attacked.

There is a lot I could quote from the New Testament about how we should accept fellow Christians' differences in spiritual beliefs and practices, but it would not profit, and is not allowed on this forum, so I'll leave it at that.

All true Christians will be taught by God as Christ said. As the Holy Spirit spoke through Jeremiah, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest." The Lord comes to weak sinners and saves them because He loves them. Those who are already perfect and righteous don't need Him. If you think you already know everything, and everyone else is wrong, what more do you expect God to reveal to you? And would you even believe Him if He did, or would you need to first check with every other fallible human being in your church first to find out what He "really" meant? If He wrote the law in your heart and everyone will be taught by God, why rely so much on the teachings of other humans beings who are not God? The big risk I see all of you taking, is you place your faith in man higher than your faith in God and the Bible. That's not building on the Rock.

The saddest and most un-Christian part of the quicksand that is this thread, is the idea of "earning" one's salvation. The idea that we do not earn our own salvation, but it is freely given to us by God, along with the ability and inspiration to improve ourselves, is one of the biggest things separating the true religion of Christ from every other false religion in the world. If your religion is just one of thousands of different systems of dogma, honor code, and rituals, where you earn your way into heaven by following traditions, you're not as unique as you think you are. If you already worked so hard and earned your own salvation, what did Christ atone for? Do you need mercy and forgiveness, or are you already entitled to get into heaven because you are so good? The self-righteous are the self-deceived. Also, you ignore large portions of Scripture, which can be understood truly and independently by those who have ears to hear, and doesn't need to be condescendingly explained to us by other men. Remember how Christ said, "But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ." I already know there are canned replies to explain away these verses and defend the traditions of men instead. The Bible told me that would happen. Scripture is written in clear language, and God taught me to read.

I am not saying the Orthodox church is wrong. The Orthodox church, as far as I can see, is the closest to the truth which God preserved on Earth, seeing as Protestantism thoroughly corrupted and emasculated itself in its modern form, and I'll just leave the Catholic-Orthodox split alone. Yet I still consider myself a Protestant because Protestants believe in the authority of the Bible even if as humans we disagree on how to interpret it. "You idiots have 40,000 denominations" is another one of your canned rebukes of Protestantism, but Protestants are not as obsessively concerned with agreeing perfectly about how to interpret or explain away every letter of Scripture in exactly the same way. That's missing the point. Christ came to free us from obsessive legal interpretations of the law so we could worship Him in spirit and truth, not obsess over legal, semantic arguments and look down our noses at others who don't share our exact views.

I know your church canonized Scripture. Who led you to choose those books and write those words? God did. God canonized Scripture, not you. You take too much credit when it really belongs to God.

I am not rebuking God's church. I am rebuking Christians who think their particular church, and only that church, is God's church. God's people are found in all churches and probably some of them are even currently worshipping elephant-gods in India in a sincere and devoted manner, or even loudly denying His existence, until God leads them to the truth.

I hope I am not banned for this post, but if this forum is too fragile to handle ideas like mine, coming from a man who loves God and seeks the truth, then it would be a blessing for God to remove me from it.

It's obvious this forum is meant for Orthodox only, but this article is a very poor attempt at evangelizing. And if it's not an attempt at evangelizing, does it have any purpose beyond simply looking down on others and basking in your own self-righteousness? Writing like this definitely won't convince anyone to change his mind.

 

[Hermetic Seal]

You won't be able to convince anyone Orthodox of anything by making an argument from Scripture.

You can make an argument from Scripture but it means nothing if you can't prove that this is how Christians have always understood it. No matter how much rhetoric you use to insulate the Calvinistic doctrine of determinism, it is nowhere to be found in the first-millennium Church, not even in St. Augustine (whom Fr. Seraphim Rose carefully explains in his excellent "The Place Of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church" never taught the Calvinistic doctrine and whose teachings were largely misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misused by Reformers a millennium later, who were incredibly distant from St. Augustine's particular circumstances and heretical opponents in response to whom he wrote many of his "controversial" works.)

I have never heard predestination mischaracterized so completely as I have on this forum, basically all the time. Especially the trite sound-bite about how "God is not the author of sin!" One of many sound-bites in the grab-bag of canned replies that just don't reach the heart of the matter. Of course God is not the author of sin. Listen to any of Charles Spurgeon's excellent 19th-century sermons on election and predestination if you really want to learn what Calvin taught, or more importantly than what any man taught, what God tells us about the subject in his clear Word. I think it was about 8 months ago I went deep into arguing about topics like predestination, faith vs. works, etc. on this forum, and no good came of it.

The problem with this response is the same problem with Nestorious complaining at the Third Ecumenical Council: the advocates of Calvinism assert their doctrine but deny the logical implications of where it leads, such as God being the author of sin. The problem is that these implications are pretty obvious when you've examined the Calvinistic tradition, and it takes a great deal of effort to obscure them. They are far more easily resolved by taking the same stance of first-millennium Christians and the Church Fathers: that God knows the future, being outside time, and predestines those who choose to follow him; and maybe more importantly and largely lost on modern westerners, "predestination" in St. Paul's epistles is collective predestination of groups of people, not specific individuals, and rhetorically used by Paul in response to Judaizing heretics, to explain that saving the Gentiles was not God's "Plan B" but his intention all along. With these understandings in mind, the anachronistic, modern western European idea of determinism melts away.

All true Christians will be taught by God as Christ said. As the Holy Spirit spoke through Jeremiah, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest."

Find me the Church Father who interprets this to mean that the Church is anybody who professes a vague allegiance to Jesus and has his own opinions about how to interpret everything rather than a concrete, sacramental institution. I doubt you will, though, because this interpretation is a novelty.

The Lord comes to weak sinners and saves them because He loves them. Those who are already perfect and righteous don't need Him. If you think you already know everything, and everyone else is wrong, what more do you expect God to reveal to you? And would you even believe Him if He did, or would you need to first check with every other fallible human being in your church first to find out what He "really" meant? If He wrote the law in your heart and everyone will be taught by God, why rely so much on the teachings of other humans beings who are not God? The big risk I see all of you taking, is you place your faith in man higher than your faith in God and the Bible. That's not building on the Rock.

What you call "God and the Bible" really means "the Reformed interpretation and paradigm surrounding God and the Bible." It isn't the "traditions of man" in the Orthodox Church versus "God and the Bible", it's "the Apostolic tradition transmitted by Christ to His Apostles and the entire Church" versus "the 16th century tradition of Calvin, Luther, etc."

The necessity of knowing how the Church has always interpreted Scripture is crucial for passages like Matthew 19.12:

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

Reading this passage in isolation you could easily misinterpret it as an endorsement of castrating yourself for the Kingdom of God, rather than voluntary celibacy and Monasticism. To say nothing of other hyperbolic statements by Jesus (Cutting off the hand or eye causing you to sin.)

The saddest and most un-Christian part of the quicksand that is this thread, is the idea of "earning" one's salvation. The idea that we do not earn our own salvation, but it is freely given to us by God, along with the ability and inspiration to improve ourselves, is one of the biggest things separating the true religion of Christ from every other false religion in the world. If your religion is just one of thousands of different systems of dogma, honor code, and rituals, where you earn your way into heaven by following traditions, you're not as unique as you think you are. If you already worked so hard and earned your own salvation, what did Christ atone for? Do you need mercy and forgiveness, or are you already entitled to get into heaven because you are so good? The self-righteous are the self-deceived.

How long have you been on this forum? You should know better than this; or you haven't bothered to really try to understand what Orthodox actually believe. Christ earned salvation when He overthrew death and sin at his crucifixion and resurrection. We are incapable of accomplishing this. However, we must cooperate with God to accept the work he has accomplished before us, just as Christ submitted his human will to the divine will, and this is always how Christians understood salvation before the Reformation.

Sometimes you'll hear Roosh or Orthodox people say they're "saving myself", "working on my salvation" or something similar that sets off your Sola Fide alarms but this is really just semantic shorthand for "working on submitting myself to God's will by fighting against my passions, abstaining from sin, doing good works, etc."

Also, you ignore large portions of Scripture, which can be understood truly and independently by those who have ears to hear, and doesn't need to be condescendingly explained to us by other men. Remember how Christ said, "But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ." I already know there are canned replies to explain away these verses and defend the traditions of men instead. The Bible told me that would happen. Scripture is written in clear language, and God taught me to read.

Calvinism is a tradition of men, an interpretative school of thought that emerged fifteen-plus centuries after Christ. The great irony of protestants throwing around this accusation is that they are, by any objective measure, far more guilty of it than anybody in the Orthodox Church. And this interpretation of "call no man father" is a silly, boomer-tier argument that reflects typically poor understanding of hyperbole in the Ancient Near East that is contradicted by the entirety of the Church's interpretative history and by St. Paul.

"You idiots have 40,000 denominations" is another one of your canned rebukes of Protestantism, but Protestants are not as obsessively concerned with agreeing perfectly about how to interpret or explain away every letter of Scripture in exactly the same way.

That's because their hermeneutic and ecclesiological foundations make it impossible to determine the correct interpretation and ultimately leads to relativism.

It's obvious this forum is meant for Orthodox only, but this article is a very poor attempt at evangelizing. And if it's not an attempt at evangelizing, does it have any purpose beyond simply looking down on others and basking in your own self-righteousness? Writing like this definitely won't convince anyone to change his mind.

This article is none of those things, it's just a book review. Roosh has done this exact same format for numerous other books.

 

[DanielH]

If you think you already know everything, and everyone else is wrong, what more do you expect God to reveal to you? And would you even believe Him if He did, or would you need to first check with every other fallible human being in your church first to find out what He "really" meant?

Nobody here has claimed they know everything. If God personally revealed something to me, because of how unworthy I am I would not believe it at first, and would ask my spiritual father for help. It's not an issue of figuring out what He "really" meant. If I trust spiritual appearance or voice up front that leaves me open to be tricked by demons, as even demons can appear as angels of light. Perhaps something like that happened to Mohammed and Joseph Smith.

The saddest and most un-Christian part of the quicksand that is this thread, is the idea of "earning" one's salvation.

Nobody claims this. I have never seen this suggested on the forum one time let alone this thread.

If you'd like to talk on Discord some time I'd be willing to do that. I think what I'm saying is coming across with hostility when that is not my intention, and writing out many more paragraphs isn't going to help the situation, like you said that's been done a lot on this forum with no fruit.

 

[josemiguel]

you place your faith in man higher than your faith in God and the Bible.

You place your faith in Calvin higher than God, the Bible, and His Church

That's not building on the Rock.

Project much.

The self-righteous are the self-deceived.

Why is every Calvinist I've met convinced he is elect? And not one think God chose him to be damned?

Scripture is written in clear language, and God taught me to read

Bold claim, you experienced a theophany where Christ taught you the alphabet, grammar and vocabulary?

Christ came to free us from obsessive legal interpretations of the law

Yep, then Calvin decided to build a legalistic theology to satisfy his lawyer autism.

not obsess over legal, semantic arguments and look down our noses at others who don't share our exact views.

Considering Calvinistic apologetics is built on legal argumentation, and Orthodox apologetics barely if at all.

just as Christ submitted his human will to the divine will, and this is always how Christians understood salvation before the Reformation.

Calvinists are monergists. Wasn't able to understand why Calvinist friends believed what they believed until I discovered that, plus Calvin being a nominalist and salvation, in his view, is nothing but a nominalist state where God defines unrighteous people with a fiction of righteousness.

 

[fortyfive]

One of the saddest parts of the human environment in Christianity is this division. Christians are calling others brothers and wishing them the best, yet almost nobody is capable of patience and mercy when there is a theological difference.

But is this working for anyone really? Were you ever blessed by God for denouncing others' beliefs?
Is our main role here on earth to be religious correction officers?

I don't know about you, but such a technique never worked for me.
I spent a lot of time living in my perfectly right theological bubble yet missing God's blessing entirely.

When we can't see the forest for the trees, then I think it's time to stop for a while and reconsider what's all about.

I'm not sure if all my views are right, and am doubt it, but I believe God is right, and I want Him to be merciful to me because His mercy is better than anything. And if my ego and desire to be right is preventing me from God's presence, then I should abandon them.


I was blessed, saved from death, healed, and gifted by God many times, and it happened always because I trusted Him and sought Him, not because I was right in my own eyes.

I don't care about having a monopoly on truth anymore, because I believe we will see a whole picture only in heaven. Jesus was constantly frustrated with people's blindness here on earth because that is the truth.
We are blind fools here, and who thinks he is the wisest is foolish the most.
We are saved only by His mercy, not for anything else. We deserve only death for our sinful existence and depravity.
Without God's mercy, not a single human would ever be saved.

And one of the biggest human tragedies is when people are spending their whole lives by proving to others about their greatness, building pedestals for themselves, but never experiencing being in God's presence.

Sometimes scares me even thinking about the time in heaven when I will discover finally how foolishly I lived here on earth, and for what silliness I wasted time and energy.

I'm thankful to God that I know at least about God's existence. Imagine, that there are people incapable of such realization.
And I have that knowledge and belief also only because of God's mercy, not because I found it with my wisdom.
All glory and gratitude belong to God.

 

[Starlight]

For what it’s worth, the Protestant (“Puritan” as is written in this article) work ethic actually came from the notion of “idle hands make the devils work” not that they thought they needed to work hard to prove they had special material gifts from God due to salvation or whatever…

Respectfully, this article is very one sided (obviously, it’s from the Orthodox perspective, which is fine). However, a better dialogue is to ask certain Christian traditions what they actually believe and why they believe what they do… instead of telling them what you believe they believe and why they are wrong. I know I’ve seen my own Christian tradition misrepresented with posts written in this forum by people who are not of my tradition that write “Lutherans believe this” and “Lutherans believe that” and a good chunk just isn’t true.

Regardless… this “Brothers War” between Christians must stop. We are in a massive spiritual war… cutting our brethren off because of minutiae needs to be halted for another time.

 

[MichaelWitcoff]

As I’ve pointed out several times, Calvinism is a theology designed to appeal to someone’s feeling of specialness. You have never met, and will never meet, a Calvinist who does not believe he’s “elect” yet finds the doctrine so sound that he can’t help but believe in it anyway. It is a theology designed by and for people who want to feel special, pretending to be a serious interpretation of Christian dogma. It is completely alien to the faith of the Apostles.

 

[JustinHS]

Regarding the 40,000 Protestant denominations - that figure is up to 46,000 according to this article: https://evangelicalfocus.com/life-tech/15196/christianity-grows-slower-than-islam

 

[Starlight]

Regarding the 40,000 Protestant denominations - that figure is up to 46,000 according to this article: https://evangelicalfocus.com/life-tech/15196/christianity-grows-slower-than-islam

Why say “Protestant” and not heterodox? “Protestant” has a very specific time and place in Christian history. Just say “non-denominational” instead.

 

[josemiguel]

nobody is capable of patience and mercy when there is a theological difference.

For someone assuming a position of reconciliation, pointing fingers and accusing those you seek to reconcile with of what you are doing isn't the best gameplan

Were you ever blessed by God for denouncing others' beliefs?

God blessed the Hebrew Kings who tore down false idols. He even blessed Gideon who tore down his father's idols during the middle of the night out of cowardice.

Is our main role here on earth to be religious correction officers?

In a sense, yes, our own correction officers. We are to be correcting ourselves individually each via continuous repentance, prayer, humility etc.

The fundamental difference in attitude/ worldview between your stance and the Orthodox stance is one of whether Truth is relative and whether errors that contradict Truth should be permitted uncorrected. Even seeing through a glass darkly we have Divine Revelation, in which Christ himself corrected others who taught falsely. It was important enough to Him to correct errant teaching. Lies cannot mix with Truth without leading people into ever more error, thus there is value in defending that which has been revealed from false doctrines and false practices.

The relativist attitude of agreeing to disagree on even something like the date of Pascha is foreign to the early church, let alone a Christological, soteriological or theological issue.

 

[Paisios Harlan]

Well... They were right about the covid stuff, but they're not the true faith... They're not Orthodox. Their faith falls flat in many regards, primarily in the fact that they have not kept the same traditions as the earliest Christians did.
We must point out other denomination's imperfections if we ever want to bring them closer to Christ

Check out this Amish speaking to a reporter. He says that they all got COVID from the chalice while taking communion. Very blasphemous thing to say.

Amish Covid

 

[Starlight]

Check out this Amish speaking to a reporter. He says that they all got COVID from the chalice while taking communion. Very blasphemous thing to say.

Amish Covid

Calling BS on this. He says “they” first off and he doesn’t look Amish.

 

[get2choppaaa]

Check out this Amish speaking to a reporter. He says that they all got COVID from the chalice while taking communion. Very blasphemous thing to say.

Amish Covid

Welll.... doesnt that kind of depend on your view of whether or not they have a valid sacrament or not?

 

[JustinHS]

Why say “Protestant” and not heterodox? “Protestant” has a very specific time and place in Christian history. Just say “non-denominational” instead.

If it’s very specific time and place why does your tag say it?