Very Eastern, Less Orthodox

0:37 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. I am Corey J. Mahler, and I'm still woe. On today's Stone Choir, we are going to be discussing the subject of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is a subject that we've had requested many, many times, pretty much since we began doing stone choir, and we've avoided it nearly as long because frankly it's unpleasant to delve into and it's one that's gonna get people riled up in ways that are not at all productive. But the reason that we're going to discuss it today is that there are a lot of you who are asking for the sake of friends who are in the same position as all of us. You're in a world that is on fire. You see churches that are becoming more faithless by the day.

1:21 And you have friends who are looking around at that and thinking, I need to go find real Christianity somewhere because I think real Christianity has to be the solution to what I'm seeing in the world. And that's absolutely true. Like that is a godly impulse, the problem, and as we've said in the past, the reason that I in particular and the Corey also have spent several years reaching out to men on the right in this political sphere to discuss religion is that most people is especially if you're kind of starting from a you know dead stop or you've been away from church for a long time and you probably never paid much attention to begin with. When you look at the state of the various churches, you're probably

2:06 not equipped to Equipped to judge their theology. And that's not anything to be ashamed of. It's not insulting. It's you're starting from zero. Whatever you know today about whatever church you're going to become interested in, you know the least amount today that you will ever know about it for the rest of your life, because you're gonna spend more time learning about it and maybe you like it, maybe you don't. If you become more invested, you're gonna know a lot more a year from now than you do today. The problem is that when someone is starting from zero, you don't know how to weigh the various claims, you know how to weigh the various doctrines. And one thing that I noticed years ago on the right was

2:46 the guys in that situation not understanding the theology stuff apart from like the very basic like if you're trying to trans kids and you know all that all the obvious wicked things that are happening out in public today. That's obvious. You can tell that's morality. The other distinctive marks of particular churches, usually there's going to be someone's going to look for historical claims. Who has a better historical claim on the oldest version of Christianity, or the purest version, or the most involved version? You know, maybe the liturgical practices and the vestments and the beauty of Rome and of the East are marks of the church that you can rely on even when you don't know how to judge

3:35 their claims based on scripture. And so I particularly, and I think Corey also began talking about Lutheranism as we were discussing religion and politics, because we believe that there are actually Protestant versions of what those men are seeking that do not involve going east or going to Rome. And but we have to make the case. Like if if all you know in the world is that well I see these parishes or you know these dioceses that are full of young kids and full of families, and I know that that is a mark of God's blessing. I'm gonna take whatever else is in that place and you know hope that God will bless that as well. It's a reasonable calculation. The problem is that there are things about theology that God will

4:23 bless us even when we are dumb. That's I I think it's so it's a recurring theme. You can You can disobey God in some areas, but your obedience to God in others will necessarily have the blessing attached to the act that is obedience. And this occurs even for the faithless, even for someone who hasn't anything about Christianity. If they get married, if they're faithful to their spouse, if they do not use contraception, you're gonna have lots of kids. That's a blessing from God. It's free to everybody. Christianity should properly teach you why that happens, how that happens, that it's a blessing. But anyone anywhere who's doing the right things is going to be blessed. Hindus have growing families, Muslims have growing families.

5:09 That's God blessing them in one sense, but it's not because they are obeying the creator whom they know, it's simply because they are following the pattern that God established in creation. So there's certain things in churches that you can point to and say, yeah, that looks good, and it's true, but it does not prove the theology of the place. So today as we discuss Eastern Orthodoxy, it's gonna be in two parts, and the the latter part of the the bulk of this is going to be about the theology and the profound errors in the theology. And I want you to think of this episode as being structurally very similar to the episode that we did on Martin Luther King, our charitic, and on Bonhoffer. And both of those, we didn't try to debunk every single thing

5:58 that those guys taught or said or did. We focused on a few key areas to demonstrate the presence of these teachings cannot possibly be in the hearts or mouths of Christians. And therefore, you don't need to debunk every single possible permutation of whatever they say They said or thought at this time or that time, the presence of certain things naturally demonstrates this is not Christian. that's something that anyone can understand. So that's going to be approach that we take today. The bulk of this, the latter portion is going to be theological. We're going to begin just briefly with a bit of historical context, mostly today, mostly in the last century, about why we're even talking about orthodoxy to begin with, because one of the things that to

6:45 their credit the Orthodox have managed to preserve even though almost all other churches have lost, is the notion that a church is fundamentally racial. It's fundamentally tied to a particular nation. You have blood, soil, culture, and religion. And those four things are inextricably bound. In space and a place and time with a people. And when you change any one of those four things, you have a different kind of people. That's the one of the chief problems in Ireland. You have Protestant Irish and you have Irish Catholics. They're mostly racially homogeneous, but they're divided by religion. And it's a profound division that has caused political divisions and warfare and strife and misery for centuries.

7:30 When we look at Eastern Orthodoxy, they're mostly broken down by various national churches, which is a good thing. That's something that's been preserved from the very beginning of Christianity. And that in and of itself is commendable. Where it becomes something that is Americans, most of our audience is American, is a matter of skepticism, is that why are we in the 21st century seeing so many people on social media adopting Eastern Orthodoxy, mostly Russian Orthodoxy, some Greek Orthodoxy, or some other permutation. Usually just, you know, maybe if you have a local parish. In a lot of cases people are just kind of doing it based on YouTube channels. And it's not even that they're making a connection with a local

8:15 church. They're just making a connection with some ideology that they found on the internet. Yeah, we've we've had people who've have told me on Twitter and elsewhere, you know, I don't have a church to go to, I listen to Stone Choir on Sunday. And I beg them, and I'm begging you if you do that, this is not church. We are we're not pastors, this is not the sort of fellowship that you get when you go to church. We never want anyone to think or to do that. We hope that it's valuable teaching and it should be edifying and it should be good study and impetus for you to go join churches to study your Bible to do all of the other regular Christian things that should be part of all of our lives. And a lot more people have been doing that.

8:56 So it's not that it's not that stone choir is has been a replacement for church. it's usually people who really don't feel like they have any options. Uh would encourage any of you if that's the boat you feel like you're in, to the best of your ability, please try to find a congregation. I'm always happy to help people try to get connected with somebody you know in the area that's at least gonna be a decent congregation, but a YouTube channel, a podcast, is not the fellowship of the saints. You're just listening to a couple of guys talk. That's not it's not the equivalent of attending church and hearing the word preached and receiving forgiveness and absolution, and all the benefits of fellowship that come from actually participating in the divine service.

9:37 The issue with the social media context of orthodoxy is that it is it is a racial church in that virtually all of the adherents in America today, the overwhelming majority are foreigners. Pew data, the Pew Data study in 2013, which is the most recent data I have, it's probably changed some, but as many immigrants as we're having come in from these countries, I doubt that it would change the ratio that much. So So his data's 10 years old at this point, but in Eastern Orthodox congregations in this country, 40% were immigrants. 40% were fresh off the boat. Second generation was 22%. So only 36% were at least third generation. And we know just historically that it probably is mostly third generation

10:28 because orthodoxy has never had any sort of historical foothold in the United States, which is not to be explicit is not an argument against it being bad theology. We're gonna deal with that later. You know, Lutheranism existed prior to the foundation of you know the United States in 1776, but most Lutheranism today, at least what we consider good Lutheranism, came over in the 1840s. So that's kind of new too. It's not a bad thing for new people to show up with new teachings by itself. So I want to make make explicit. I'm not making that an argument against orthodoxy. I just think that it's important to know that when you see the huge volume of people, especially on Twitter but elsewhere on social

11:10 media, getting interested in orthodoxy, they're adopting religions that have come in with foreigners to our lands. That could be good or bad. Again, that's not a value judgment, but it is it's a key fact that if you go down this path, you're adopting something alien. And as we look at some of the beliefs that those people have, and just to give you a sense of numbers, uh both Pew in twenty thirteen and PRRI in twenty twenty when they did surveys, they both pegged the number of Eastern Orthodox adherents on this continent in the United States in particular about one point seven million. That's not that many people. It's about the same numbers in the LCMS. So again, I'm not making an argument that certain number is good

11:56 and then and a different number is invalid. That's not the point. It's just I want to go to the pew answers that came from that 2013 study. Uh, this was the largest most recent study that anyone has done of Christianity in the United States. They asked a large number of questions about a variety of topics for narrowing down to particular subsets. And so it's a great way to contrast what one group believes versus another group. And I'm going to give you some of these numbers and we're not really going to contrast them with other denominations. I will tell you that as you hear these numbers are going to be surprising. And I can tell you that for the most part, Lutheranism fares a lot better. But we're not trying to make the argument here either that, well,

12:43 these survey answers are bad, therefore it's not a good religion. What I do want to make clear is that when you are trying to get your bearings, you're trying to figure out like uh what's a good church? what's a church that's traditional, some degree of based, you know, like whatever your metric is for finding some true version of Christianity, keep these numbers in mind because this is what is actually being produced in Eastern Orthodox congregations in this country. Belief in God. 61% strongly or believe in God. Either they believe or they're absolutely certain that God exists. 29% believe in God fairly certain. Seven percent believe in God not too certain, and three percent don't believe it all.

13:30 Like the three percent's an anomaly, but I think the fact that only sixty-one percent can effectively say, yeah, God is real, that's shockingly low for a Christian denomination. For 29% to be like, eh, then God's probably real. Like that's just by itself, that is Not the hallmark of sound teaching. And again, it's not simply Eastern Orthodoxy. This is repeated in a lot of other denominations. A lot of Protestant denominations, especially mainline ones, are in worse shape. So like I'm not we're not trying to compare apples and oranges. I'm just trying to say that as an exclusive measure, if you look at this sort of answer, you should not find it in something if you're looking for a based traditional church.

14:17 Doubt about God at nearly 40%. No. Party affiliation, you know, this is one that's not at all related to religion explicitly, but forty-four percent of Orthodox in this country are Democrats. Which makes perfect sense when you understand that two-thirds of them are immigrants. they're fresh off the boat or they're kids of immigrants. Those people are overwhelmingly Democrats. That's always been the case. They're much more liberal. They are not interested in this country. They're interested in what they can get from it, but they're not interested in the political values of a of America. So and you know, again, the Orthodox churches are not changing people's hearts. Views about abortion, fifty-three percent say legal in almost all cases,

15:04 but forty-five percent say illegal. I mean that's that's actually a number that's similar to the LCMS. It's i it's obscene. Everyone who would say that is not a Christian. If you think that murdering children is okay, you're you're not a Christian, period. You cannot murder infants in the womb and expect to go to heaven. So again, this is not a case of one denomination is doing really great and other is doing poorly, but when you look at that number, that's just that's impermissibly evil, and it's over half of them. Homosexuality, 62% say should be accepted. Sodomite marriage, 54% strongly favor. So just in a brief survey, if you're looking for based church, it's not orthodoxy, period. Whatever you see online, whatever you know, desert father somebody wants to

15:54 quote and say, oh, well, XYZ says that we must believe this. The truth on the ground when you talk to the people in those churches is it's liberal. They're basically Episcopalians at this point. And the last one I found interesting was views about human evolution. Uh twenty-nine percent said we definitely evolved. Twenty-five percent say we evolved, but due to God's design. Both of those are old earth, both of those are saying that Genesis is a lie, Adam never existed, we came from monkeys. Only thirty-six percent say that we all ex always existed in present form. Again, not base church, not Christian doctrine at all, but we're talking about extremely liberal views in the pews, or I mean in

16:37 a lot of them don't have pews, so that's kind of a misnomer. Pardon my Lutheranism. This sort of belief is not what you should be looking for in a church, any church. Yeah, you could look at these survey results all by themselves, knowing nothing about any denominations or any history or where they're from, or understanding scripture at all, and know that if the majority of people in the pews or in the in the church are they're Democrats, they're pro-abortion, they're pro-sodomy, they uh pro-evolution. That's not historic Christianity. That's not the Christianity you should want. Period. Even if you know nothing. And then when you start looking at why, it starts to make sense when you look at some of the doctrines.

17:19 it makes sense why they would be so liberal. So I just hope that in this brief few minutes we could have established that the memes and the the chest beating and thumping and the vigorous youthful energy that you find on social media for guys saying, yes, I'm extremely based. I'm finding an extremely based church They're not going to be finding it in Easter Orthodoxy because this is what their doctrines are producing. The people who believe and attend these congregations, this is how they turn out. And the subject of attendance, you know, is as we look specifically at the racial nature of some of these churches, Russian Orthodoxy is is one of the biggest examples. And I think the Russian Orthodox in particular are a crucial part

18:12 of all of this in terms of why it's been memed so heavily online, because when you look at the history of Christianity in the USSR between 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, what you will find was that there was a 25-year period beginning with the revolution where Christianity was effectively stamped out. It was not illegal for you to privately be Christian, but they murdered hundreds of thousands of priests or they arrested them. They destroyed or took most of the church property. They burst basically persecuted the Russian Orthodox Church almost out of existence. And it wasn't until Stalin had been in power for a while and the Germans had opened up the Eastern Front and were invading

19:04 Russia, that Stalin realized the need for bringing back the sort of patriotic fervor that the religion of Russian Orthodoxy in particular brought to the people. Because basically everyone in Russia effectively was Russian Orthodox. Historically, there were quite a few Lutherans in Russia for centuries, but it was an ethnic church. Again, it was Germans who had been imported centuries prior to do particular work in particular places. And up until nineteen oh five, it was It was permissible to be a Lutheran in Russian territory, but Lutherans were not permitted to have their liturgy in the Russian language, and they were also not permitted to proselytize to ethnic Russians. So basically, this is what amounted to pluralism and religious tolerance in

19:57 prior centuries. If you are an alien and you come into a land, perhaps you'll be permitted, perhaps you'll be given some space and some territory, and you'll be permitted to practice your own strange foreign religion, but you cannot corrupt anyone local. You cannot reach out to the locals in Russia and turn them into German Lutherans, because it's it was seen as a foreign religion. So as a result, when when the Soviet Union, when when Jewish atheists stamped out Christianity for 25 years in Russia, they were almost exclusively targeting Russian Orthodox, just because that's most of what was there. And everyone else was was completely either exterminated or gulagged. The most of the the remnant of Lutherans ended up in Siberia.

20:46 And so at the fall of the Soviet Union, the Siberian Lutheran Church was reconstituted with significant support from the LCMS. Something very crucial happened in 1943. After 25 years of Russian Orthodoxy being crushed by the Jewish atheist Soviets, they then made it legal in a In a broader context, and was done for geopolitical purposes. Stalin did not have a change of heart. What Stalin realized was that as they were looking towards the future, towards the end of the war, and hopefully expanding westward into Europe, and in terms of ginning up support against the invading Germans. One of the things that the Germans did is they were taking territory in the East was they liberalized many of the things that

21:39 the Russians had made illegal. So Stalin realized that if he retook lands, Russian lands or Russian controlled lands that the Germans had occupied and the Germans had permitted Christianity again. If the Russians came back in and stamped it out in just a couple of years, it was going to be a huge problem politically. And so what'd he do? He invited in a man, a couple men, and basically made them swear fealty and reconstituted the Moscow Patriarchate. And it was interesting if they chose that particular name because that name had been extinguished two hundred odd years prior. It's something that had existed three hundred fifty years before, but I believe I think it was Peter the Great got rid of it

22:25 and changed the name. So when Stalin repristinated Russian Orthodoxy, he didn't go back to nineteen eighteen version. He branded it as a version that was three hundred fifty years old. And that was a way of disconnecting what Soviets believed and remembered from their own living memory and said this is something much older. And that was a way for him to borrow the cultural effect. Affinity the Russians had for that thing without being necessarily bound to the teachings. Because when Stalin reconstituted Russian Orthodoxy, it was as an arm of the state. It was no longer the religion that it had been previously. It was a state religion at this point that was permitted because it was a political vehic vehicle for Soviet ends.

23:15 And there's a an article that I'll link in the show notes notes. Uh it's from a former former Mellon part fellow who was in the State Department. It's basically a bad guy. So if you think the bad guys writing about this stuff is completely legitimate, all I can say is grow up. You know, if if the bad guys were so terrible that all they ever did was lie 100% of the time, they would be no threat. Most of the time the bad guys tell enough truth that they can get by with whatever lies they're pushing. I don't think there are many lies in the article, but it's a useful view because it goes over how Stalin used restoring Russian Orthodoxy as a means of political control. And it's one that was extended up until the very end.

24:01 Even as liberalization was occurring, it was still not nearly the same degree of Christian freedom that existed in nineteen seventy. So the reason this matters today is that Putin was a KGB agent. That's like being CIA. You don't stop being CIA. You are KGB forever. And Putin was fairly senior when the Soviet Union collapsed and he moved into power. He was trained under the Soviet system. And all the things that the Soviets developed over, you know, 70 years prior were designed around using cultural tools to maintain political control. As we mentioned in the second episode on Martin Luther King, where we talked about his political side, we talked about the pact and then the nineteen twenties, the Soviet Jews created the strategy of using

24:55 racial stratification in the United States as a political weapon to collapse us from the inside. And then Martin Luther King Jr's handlers were Soviet agents. They were using the civil rights movement specifically to collapse the United States in the 60s. It is my belief, and I'm not going to present any evidence. I don't have it. But and so some of you are going to kind of find this completely unsatisfying. But I think that when you look at the way these things are being memed online today, and when you look at the history of the way Russians, you know, when they were Soviet, but they didn't change. You know, like the the flag changed, the the stationary changed. It was the same people with the same training, the same mindset.

25:38 Putin didn't change. He became more convinced than ever that he had to do whatever was necessary to preserve the Russian way of life as he saw fit. And he enriched himself to great means in the process. I believe that when you look at the sort of affinity that is being developed on social media today for orthodoxy in particular, I think that you have to look at it in geopolitical terms. Because again, churches are always necessarily racial. And it's not an exclusive claim. It's not saying if you're not German you can't come to a Lutheran church. But the fact is that ninety-four percent of Lutheran churches are white even today. Despite Lutheran's best efforts for over a century to try to reach

26:25 out in particular to the African American community, they don't want any part of it. Okay, that's you know, at some point you have to shake the dust off your feet. When we look at how things get memed online, it's important to remember that this is a battle space. It's battling for the hearts and minds of people globally. And there are certain entities that are going to be operating on the internet with complete impunity. And we've we've seen the past when there have been outages or events where suddenly, you know, all the shilling on 4chan just vanishes or funding expires and suddenly all the moderators go away on some other form. Like it's you can occasionally see the cracks through the curtain and

27:08 find that what was being portrayed as completely organic, natural, just people talk on forms, is revealed to actually be paid orchestrated action. That is certainly the case with some of this stuff because If you have affinity for Eastern Orthodoxy, you're naturally going to have affinity mostly for Russia. Now, obviously, there's strongly held views on both sides because of what's gone on recently in Ukraine, and there all sorts of historical infighting among the various orthodox groups, but one of the things that's been very clearly laid out as we've seen just the last c couple years online, anyone who becomes involved in affinity for Russian Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy is inherently very pro-Russian.

28:00 That has been virtually all of my experience watching this for many years. I don't believe that's a coincidence. I believe that is a desirable outcome. Now, again, this is not a theological argument against the belief system of the Orthodox. It is simply to illustrate that when you're trying to look at these these patterns and these beliefs as they're playing out in the world, you're dealing with human beings. And human beings are you're never only religious. You're never only political. You shouldn't be. I mean, if you're only ever political, that's also your religion. So you can't escape it. We're always multiple things at the same time. And so it is entirely not only permissible but necessary when you're looking

28:41 at something like orthodoxy coming out of nowhere on social media in the last few years, and it's it's pervasive. Like if you judge from Twitter, you would think that orthodoxy, I mean it's it's kind of like Africans in TV commercials. You just see it everywhere. It's in no way representative of reality. It's just it's representative of a small corner of social media. These things have influence though, because if you think well everybody's like that, then well it it must be normal. If there's a lot of it, it must be normal. Again, it's not an argument against orthodoxy per se. It's simply to say that when we look in the historical context, we see that Russia has always viewed culture as a weapon.

29:25 You know, the the joke has always been that someone, no one's a KGB agent on foreign soil. They're a cultural attache. And we think that's kind of a punchline. Well, I think in part they use that because they understood correctly that culture is a weapon. When it is being used when you're taking your culture and putting it in a foreign place, that's a weapon. That's what we do with with McDonald's and blue jeans. That was a punchline behind the Iron Curtain that we were subverting them with rock and roll music and fast food. Culture's always a weapon. And so it's not simply that these things are religious beliefs, but they also expand your mind in a way that causes you to have affinity for something foreign that you've never would have cared about

30:10 before. You know, there are guys who are very strongly pro-Russia today that never g would have cared in the slightest before they became interested in Eastern Orthodox history and theology. So it's just I I I believe with absolute certainty that that is the case. You don't have to take my word for it. Just consider the fact that when you're seeing these things play out, it's never only one thing. There's always gonna be there's always gonna be several things in motion at the same time and we should take them all seriously because if it's having effects on real people's lives that goes beyond simply a faith life, that's a way that we should view what it is we're looking at. you should never just assume that people are coming to you honestly

30:54 and telling you what they think, including us. You know, be skeptical about whatever we say. I don't want people to just swallow what anyone tells you. When someone brings a message, be skeptical, weigh it against what you have. And when you weigh the claims of the orthodox against reality, you find liberals in the congregations, you find foreigners, and you find no no real connection to this people or to our values or to our our way of thinking about things. I think that by that self, that's a reason enough to maybe just look elsewhere, but it's certainly a reason to be skeptical. Before we get into the bulk of this episode, which will be the theology, although we will attempt not to belabor the points too

31:42 much, there is one other sort of practical or political point that needs to be made about one of the claims that is frequently to say the least seen from particularly the online Orthodox, and that is the supposed unity of the EO churches, and I'm going to use probably mostly EO to refer to them simply because it's short, and under that I mean all of them, I don't just mean one particular group, which is the point that I am making here. They really are not unified. You have different patriarchates, you have different metropolitans, you have different leaders of different groups within the umbrella that is called the Orthodox Church. And so you have the Russian Orthodox Church, you have the Greek

32:33 Orthodox Church, you have the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and they are to some degree in communion, but they're not in full communion. And so when they tell you that there is this unified body called the Orthodox Church, that's simply not true. You've had in the past, and even today you have some of these issues lingering, you've had one patriarchate excommunicate another. You've had this leader say that that one's a heretic. You do not have the sort of full communion and unity that they present to the world when you actually start looking at how things are playing out in reality. And so that claim of unity, which is attractive to some people, because obviously one of the critiques that is often leveraged against various

33:21 church bodies is look at how many there are. Clearly you you must all be wrong because there's so many of you. Which is stupid, of course, because just because there are a lot of people who are in error does not mean there is no one who is right. And it also doesn't mean that just because you have a room full of people who are mostly in error, no one in the room is right. The argument just doesn't follow. But so you'll have the EO who will present the supposedly unified front, and it's just false. It doesn't exist in reality. It is a lie. It is propaganda. You should not believe it. We will put a chart in the show notes showing which group is in communion with which other one and some of the historical

34:05 disputes and arguments they've had excommunicating each other and whatnot. And so just don't believe that claim when it's advanced. It's just not true. There's no church that is going to be able to make the argument that absolutely everyone under this big umbrella is in unity. We all agree. Rome can't make that claim because Rome has different groups that are competing within the umbrella that is Rome. The EO can't make that claim because they have different groups competing within the umbrella that is the Orthodox Church. And of course Protestants compete with each other. We're more open about it. We're not going to say that, for instance, we as Lutherans agree with the Presbyterians on everything.

34:45 We agree on some things, we disagree on some things. That's a more honest way of going about it, and I wish that the EO and Rome would be a little more honest about it, but just don't take that claim seriously because it isn't a real claim. It's not a thing. And so then I guess we will jump into the theology here. When it comes to the theology of the EO, you have to understand there is an initial challenge, an initial hurdle to overcome if it is even possible. If, for instance, I told you to critique the Lutheran faith to say to list the items with which you disagree. You could do that, because I can hand you the book of Concord and tell you this is what we believe. Obviously I'm going to hand you scripture as well, but I can

35:38 give you the book of Concord because that is our interpretation of Scripture. If you find something in there with which you disagree, well you disagree with Lutheranism on that point. No such thing exists for the Eastern Orthodox. This goes back, of course, to my point about them not being fully in communion, because different groups within the Eastern Orthodox will give you different books. Now, I know that some who REO who are listening to this podcast are probably screaming right now because you're saying Well no, we all believe in the ecumenical councils. Okay which ones? Well And there begins the fundamental problem with the supposed unity with regard to councils. They'll tell you that they all believe in the ecumenical councils.

36:28 Then they'll tell you which ones are the ecumenical councils. The problem is there were more councils than the ones they will list. Now they'll say, well those weren't true ecumenical councils. The way that they do this, and this is a significant problem both for their understanding of councils and just generally theologically, they have developed the idea of what they call receptionism. Now, for those who are familiar with theology this is not Receptionism in the sense of the Lord's Supper, but it is similar. This is Receptionism in the sense that they say the councils are not binding until they are recognized by the Church. The problem with that is that historically the claim and the claim

37:13 of the councils themselves was and is that the councils are binding because the councils are the church in council and therefore they are guided by the Holy Spirit and cannot err. Now I don't believe that. Lutherans don't hold that, so Woe doesn't believe that either. That is the historic position of the EO. It is not the position that they hold today. So they have doctrinal development. So if they try to tell you their doctrine has not changed, well that's simply false. They develop this idea of receptionism because there are certain counsels they want to reject. There are certain things said by certain councils they want to say that counsel was false. That was a a robber council, that was not ecumenical, because the

38:04 church didn't receive it. And so one of these will be some parts of the one of the Jerusalem councils. Well one of the Jerusalem councils said that the laity should not read the scriptures in the vernacular. Some of the EO will tell you that today. They'll try to excuse it, it's false, it's anti-Christian, but some of them will just say, Oh, that's not ecumenical, it's not binding. And you have this with many of the councils, because there weren't just seven ecumenical councils. So even if they give you this list of the ones to which they adhere, there are other councils they are deliberately rejecting or just not mentioning because they do not agree with them. And if you're saying I believe the councils only insofar as I

38:48 agree with them, you aren't saying anything about the councils. You aren't saying councils are binding, you aren't saying that counsels are true, you're not saying they're guided by the Holy Spirit. You're just saying in so far as we like them, they're true. Well that's the same thing as people who try to say, for instance, in Lutheranism, we have those who will say their subscription to the confession is quotinous. Insofar as the confessions are true, I agree with them, those people aren't Lutheran because that's not a subscription. That doesn't mean anything. As I've pointed out before, in so far as the menu at Wendy's is true, I can subscribe to it. It's a completely meaningless statement to say you subscribe to something insofar

39:31 as it is true. Scripture we subscribe to because it is true, absolutely. We do the same thing as Lutherans with the Book of Concord. We subscribe to it because it is a faithful explication of Scripture. It is not insofar as it is true. But that's what you see the EO doing with the counsels. And so advance this claim that our confession is the counsels because the counsels are the church drawn together as one, guided by the Spirit, and speaking the truth without error. But then they immediately undermine that by not actually believing all of the counsels And so the initial challenge is just discovering what it is they actually believe, what do they actually teach. For this particular podcast, we are going to focus on a few

40:23 different theological points. Obviously, we have to go over penal substitutionary atonement because the EO reject it. And the problem with rejecting that is that it is the gospel. We We will make that point in that section, but penal substitutionary atonement is the gospel. The gospel is Christ crucified in the place of, to say, for sinners. He died in your place. He took your punishment on the cross. He was a substitute for you. He atoned for your sins. That is the Christian belief. And the EO reject it. They substitute their idea of Christ as Victor and some other things, which isn't wrong in itself, but it is wrong when you substitute it and you eject, you jettison penal substitutionary atonement because you cannot

41:17 jettison the gospel and then reinterpret scripture in your own light. We will also be going over obviously Palamism, because by and large, the modern EO, which it's important to draw this distinction because Palamus died in the thirteen hundreds, the modern EO are palamites. That is, in fact, an accurate thing to call them, I would say call them palomites or Eo. I consider them interchangeable, because they hold to the teachings of Gregory Palamus when it comes to a number of different things. One they call hesachastic prayer. We will get into that. The other big one being the essence energies distinction. Now yes, there were other so-called fathers of the church on the Eastern side of things who taught this, but the one who really

42:09 formalizes it in a way that is then adopted by the EO churches is Palamus. And so he is a big part of this. We will go over that probably at some length. And then another point is really more the philosophy of it than necessarily just theology, but we do have to go over some philosophy to understand why the theological errors, particularly of Palamism, of Palamis, why those matter? You need a little bit of philosophy to understand what he got wrong and why. And yes, philosophy and theology do interact, they're not at odds, because all truth is one and all truth then is God. We'll compare to Eastern religions a little bit too, because that does play into this. That is a big part of the point.

42:59 And then the last point will be not necessarily in this order as we go over them, but the last point will be monasticism, because that also is a big part of the entire system of the EO and it plays into Palamism and obviously Hesachistic prayer. So before we get into the theology proper, I am going to give you a list of instructions. And I just want you to think about this list of instructions. As I'm reading it, I will comment on it after I give the list so you don't have to this is not a test. You don't have to hold it in your mind and repeat it to me later or think about Think about it until the end of the episode because there'll be, you know, a c a quiz or something. That's not how this is going.

43:42 But just think of this list of instructions for doing something. First, I want you to you don't actually have to do this, so please don't do this as I'm saying it. Just think about it. First you need to prepare your space. So find a quiet and comfortable place where you won't be disturbed. You can sit on a chair, the floor, that's that's up to you. Then begin by by centering yourself, by drawing yourself into yourself, take some deep breath, slow breath, focus on your breathing, something that we kind of have to do on this podcast sometimes to not get too much background noise and things. So relax your body, focus on your breathing. Sort of set aside some of the external distractions. Set an intention for what it is you're going to be doing

44:31 here. And again, focus your attention. Bring that attention to this point. Ignore the external stimuli as best you can. Now, external stimuli are going to arise sometimes. Simply take notice of that and dismiss it. You want to continue to remain relaxed and focused. Now, when you have your intention that you set earlier, the thing on which you are going to focus, make sure to keep that in your mind, repeat that as you are going with this process. When you conclude this process, have a have a moment of gratitude, reflect on what it is that you experienced, what you thought, and then of course try to make this a regular practice. There are going to be two groups of people listening to this podcast who are going to recognize the list through

45:26 which I just went. The fundamental problem is that those two groups are completely different groups. First will be those who have practiced meditation or various Eastern religious practices. The second will be the EO, who practice Hesachastic prayer. Now, the difference, and I use the term from the Eastern practice instead of what the EO would call it, the difference is in that setting of an intention, because that is usually the meditation practice, the Buddhist practice, the Hindu practice, Taoist, whatever it happens to be, whichever group of demon worshippers. The EO, on the other hand, would say that they would set, or rather, begin with an invocation. This is usually the Jesus prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

46:17 have mercy on me a sinner. There's nothing wrong with that prayer. The EO make it a problem because they repeat it ad nauseum. One would think it would come to mind that scripture is very clear. Do not simply pile up meaningless words when you pray. They'll of course say well it's not meaningless. The problem is when you repeat something like that a thousand times, ten thousand times, however many times they repeat it on Mount Athos, it becomes meaningless rote repetition. But I don't want you to focus on that yet. We'll get to that issue more later. I want you to focus on the list. Everything except for the setting of an intention versus an invocation is the same in this supposed form of prayer called Hesychastic Prayer, which

47:03 the EO practice, particularly their monks practice and particularly on Mount Athos, and Eastern practices, Eastern mysticism, Eastern religion. You are going to see a lot of this commonality between the EO, appropriately called the Eastern Orthodox, inappropriately called Orthodox, but and actual Eastern religions that call themselves a different religion. You really should not see this sort of commonality between Christianity and between pagan religions, between demon worship, because that is what these religions, these other religions are. They are demon worship. Now I want to be very clear: meditation is a practice that is appropriate in the Christian life. Meditation is something that Christians do.

48:01 Here is the difference between Christian meditation and Eastern meditation. If someone tells you to clear your mind, it's Eastern meditation. If someone tells you to meditate on the scriptures, so meditate on the first commandment, the fifth commandment, all of the commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Book of Job. If you are meditating on something that is Christian, that is the Christian practice of meditation. The Christian practice is not clear your mind. That is the Eastern practice. Now I'm not saying you can't ever clear your mind and relax. There's a difference between relaxation and this kind of meditation. If you're getting a massage, go ahead and clear your mind and relax. That's fine.

48:46 You should do that. Not when it is religion. The religious practice of clear your mind is Eastern. It is not something that Christians do. It is foreign to the Christian religion. When I was in grade school in the eighties, this is something that was actually being pushed in public schools. My parents ended up pulling me out of public school specifically because teachers were doing guided meditation with students. I don't know what method or uh program that came from, but it was very much something that was being pushed in our culture completely secularly, you know, so they claimed. Of course, my parents as as Christians who at the time were acutely aware of some of the spiritual warfare that was going on

49:38 in this country. They're like, no. I was forbidden to ever participate. I was commanded to leave the room if it ever happened again. And they they pulled me out of public school as soon as they could. Because they understood it's demonic. And I think one of the crucial things that we've talked about a bit in the past, when you participate in something that is physically evil, it may well seem harmless. You know, I I think the best example is fornication. It is it is a sin which you commit within your own body, but it doesn't feel like a sin, usually. the the good version and the bad version may seem the same. The distinction is the context of the behavior. The difference when you're talking about participating in something like Eastern meditation

50:30 is that the act itself has no necessary hallmarks of doing something evil. One must necessarily know from outside of the act, from outside of what you're being taught that this is Eastern, that this is evil. If you haven't already been taught that, if you're not prepared, you just you go along with it. You may think it was a little strange, as I did as a kid, but I didn't know any better. You know, my parents had to warn me. And I thought they were overreacting. Like I'm embarrassed to be singled out once again as a kid that couldn't do stuff that other kids were doing. But it was because they were aware of the nature of the thing inherently. And And the nature of this sort of meditation is inherently one

51:14 of emptying your mind, emptying your soul, and leaving a vacuum for the demonic. And practitioners of Eastern meditation, that is fundamentally their goal is to invite demons into themselves and then to perceive them and communicate with them. And it it's something that's done in a variety of contexts, but the the physical act, like the fact that all those instructions that Corey gave have a repetitive complete process for achieving that particular goal, it's because it works. You do the thing and you get the result even if you don't believe it and that's crucial even if you don't believe it if you do what Corey described as he said please don't do it if you do that over and over again it will work

52:01 it will actually have a spiritual and physical impact on yourself. I was not just body, because we're talking about the mind and the spirit. We're talking about all three elements of the human nature at once being acted upon by a physical and mental act. When you do the thing, you get the result. And you don't you don't have any control over it at that point. That's why it's so incredibly dangerous. Because it seems harmless. Like you're just going along and doing something very peaceful, very relaxing. There's nothing remotely threatening. You're just clearing your mind. What could be less dangerous than that? In that the exact opposite is true. This is one of those fundamental distinctions between the things of Satan and

52:44 the things of God. And I want you to pay very close attention to what I'm going to say here because there is a distinction. The contours of this are very important. You need to understand exactly what the distinction is. There are natural things, and I mean that in sort of the biological sense, the natural world. There are natural things that work ex opera operato by the thing being done it is accomplished. A great example sexual intercourse. If you have sex with your wife, and you don't use contraception, and you know, neither one of you is infertile, obviously, chances are you are going to wind up with children. Children are a blessing from God. That has that happens ex opre operato. It happens by the act having been performed.

53:38 When it comes to religion, here's the distinction. In the natural world many things work ex opre operato In the religious or the spiritual, the things of God occur with faith, by faith. You do not receive the blessings from God except in and by faith. That is how it works on God's side. On the demonic side, ix it is ex opre operato. You do the thing, you get the result. Faith does not play a role on the demonic side. If you you know believe in Satan and you have a true faith in Satan, if that's even a thing, perhaps that makes things worse. But on the demonic side, it is by the act being done that the result is obtained. If you invite in demons, eventually demons will show up. These are not minor matters.

54:36 We're not joking in this episode. This is a particularly serious episode. All of them are serious, of course, but this one is particularly serious. This is your eternal soul that is on the line. Do not play with these things. Don't play with a Ouija board, don't play with a s whatever they do during seance stuff, don't play with any of these things. Do not invite in demons. Do not open a space for them to come in. If you do that, they'll respond. Satan is glad to answer. He's not going to give you what you want. Now, of course, he may in the short term, you may get fame and fortune, whatever it happens to be, but there's always a hook and you're going to lose your soul. Do not play with these things.

55:23 I'd just like to give one brief example. If you're if you're skeptical about doing something physical and mental like that having a profound effect on you. I can give you an example of something that's completely safe that involves a breathing exercise. It doesn't involve clearing your mind. There's nothing spiritual about this. This is a specific breathing exercise that in, you know, someday down the road, you maybe you feel like you're having a panic attack. Maybe you feel like your your heart rate is through the roof. you're amped up. They're like, you know, maybe your hands are shaking. Something's happened and you feel like you're just you're you're jittery, you're you're on the verge of losing control.

56:02 It's called breathing by fours. It's very simple. You take a slow four beat count to exhale hold inhale and hold not gonna do it but just one two three four you know you breathe you hold, you exhale, you hold. If you do that a few times, physiologically it will reset your body systems. Again, this isn't dangerous because it's not you're not clearing your mind. You're just saying, you know what, I'm filtering all the crap out that's got me freaking out right now. I'm just gonna do this one thing. It's something you can do like if I I learned it in the context of of competitive shooting. You can lower your heart rate, you can get your whole body to just settle down. So you don't have to be worked up.

56:50 You can be okay and it will really I don't want to say recenter because we just condemn that, but like it's that there is a physical sensation to pulling it back in and feeling like you have control again like you're not you're not vibrating so it's breathing by force in for hold for out for hold for someday when you're freaking out, try that out and you will find that it will work within just a couple cycles. Because it's not guided meditation, it's not emptying your mind or your soul. It's just working on an autonomic system in your body, gaining some momentary control over it, and you're basically pressing the reset button. And you know, it's just as like our guts and our brains are connected, our breathing and our emotions are connected.

57:39 All these you are you're we're all these things at once. We're an incredibly complicated, beautiful machine that God has invented. And that's why the physical can actually affect the mental and the and the spiritual. It goes in both directions. All those things are interconnected. You know, it's it's common that when someone gets old, maybe they lose their spouse, they just lose the will to live. And everything's fine. They weren't unhealthy, but frequently they the the other spouse may die within a month or two or even a day or two. And it's not even necessarily from sadness, it's just a a loss of the will to live. they had something and they didn't. They're like, okay, I'm done here. The mental and the spiritual and the physical are all deeply intertwined.

58:26 And that's a blessing when you're aware of it and you obey God and you stick to taking care of your body and your mind and your soul independently and then collectively, because when one thing is not working so well, the others can help pick up the slack. When you start playing with these things that are exploiting it to allow outside influences, that's it's it's spiritually deadly as as Corey just emphasized. So think about remember breathing by fours, if you ever freak out in the future, try it out. it's not gonna make things any worse, I promise. It will actually help you. And just remember that these connections, even if you don't believe in them, like you if you've never heard that before and it sounds

59:06 ridiculous, great. If you ever need it, try it. It's gonna work because it's a there's an interlocking mechanism between the state of your emotional and the state of your physical. And the true, it's also true of the state, the state of the spiritual. We are one connected Connected entity. You are you are all those things at once. And these tools that are brought in from the outside to exploit that know that if they can get that crack through the physical into the spiritual, a demon can take over everything. That's why it's so incredibly dangerous. But it's it's real. Stuff is real whether you believe it or not. Man is a gestalt, and it is important to remember that you are not just soul and not just body, you are both.

59:52 And we will get into that later on in this episode actually, because there are problems in EO theology with regard particularly to the fact that man is in reality body and soul. There's a focus on the soul at the expense of the body. But before we get into that and before I get into really what Hesychastic prayer is in the practice, I want to go over a little bit of Eastern religion, just a handful of the practices and some differences and commonalities. And so I already mentioned that there that there's meditation and similar practices in various eastern religions, and primarily that's going to be Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, some others as well, and these obviously have different strains within them, but that's not the point of this episode.

1:00:45 During this meditation, and this is common across all of these groups, if you achieve, according to the practitioners, a depth to your meditation, a certain level of inner stillness, a certain level of proficiency in these practices, you will eventually see a light. That is one of their claims. It depends on the particular religious tradition as to what they will claim that this light is. In the yogic tradition, they'll claim the inner light is something achieved during their advanced meditative practices, and they will say this is related to the third eye or seeing through the third eye depending on how they were in which group. That's related to the Ajana Chakra so called, I'll go into that

1:01:33 in a minute here. In Tibetan Buddhism, for instance, they have the practice of Jogchen, which includes the experience of seeing what they call the clear light, which is considered a direct encounter with the true nature of reality, as they call it. And you have in other traditions as well these similar practices. But to go into a little more depth on the Ajna Chakra, so called in these traditions. In Hinduism, this is linked to the god Shiva and represents wisdom and sort of a total understanding of the reality of things rising above the physical world to see the true nature of things. In Tibetan Buddhism, as I said previously is associated with the concept of the clear light, and is often seen supposedly around the time

1:02:25 of death. You'll even have some who practice these religions who will meditate and fast until they die. There are people who have self-mummified using these practices. We'll perhaps link to some of that in the show notes so you can see the results of that. As I already mentioned what happens in yoga. I won't go into that again for this section But I want to focus again on the fact that it is linked to the third eye, which is yes, linked to the yoga as well, but they all sort of have this sort of concept of a third eye, which is a heightened state of perception. You see the ultimate reality, supposedly, instead of the physical reality, because a lot of these religions are, by and large, Gnostic.

1:03:10 They deny the reality of the material, or at the very least, deny the possible goodness of the material, and say that the spiritual is all that really exists, or it is the only good thing that exists. Now, some of them have as their ultimate goal unification with some greater consciousness or some of them have annihilation, and I would hope that Christians can see that neither one of these is the ultimate goal of humanity, although there are some problems we'll get into with Hesachastic prayer on this note. And so obviously you have samsara and these other things where there's the escape from the cycle of suffering because you achieve nirvana, whatever it whatever it happens to be, the specifics of the religions don't

1:03:56 matter. Just focus on this thread of commonality between them. Particularly seeing that light. Because they all mention that if you do these practices, and if you're good enough at these practices and you do them for long enough, you'll see a light. It's a divine light. It's the light of an ultimate reality. Before getting into Hesachastic prayer I would just like to briefly mention you also see these sorts of claims with particular kinds of drugs. You see many drug users who will claim to see visions of lights and colours and things like that, particularly hallucinogens, one in particular that comes to mind would be DMT. There's a little bit of that with ecstasy MDMA use, some with LSD or psilocybin, but really it's DMT is one of the big

1:04:46 ones, and they often see not only lights, but machine elves which are demons. Do not do these drugs. Do not do these practices, do not do these drugs. These are both ways to invite demons into your life, into your soul. And now to get to Hesekastic prayer. One of the things that the Hesekasts, one of the terms for them, have been called that they object to would be amphilosychites, which is not actually derogatory, it is in fact descriptive, because it means one with his soul in his navel. And it is a description of their practice of meditation. They call it hesychastic prayer. It is a meditative practice. What they do, at least those who are new to the practice, they are advised to stare at their navel and to breathe heavily.

1:05:46 This may sound similar to some of the other practices I just described, and that is in fact why I described those other practices, because they are in fact similar. You see the same sort of thing in these eastern religious practices and in Hesachastic prayer. You have the positioning of the body, which occurs in all of them, but obviously yoga is going to be the big one where you immediately recognize, of course, there's positioning of the body and breathing, pranayama as they call it, their breathing exercises. You see that same thing occurring with Hesychastic prayer. What is the point of Hesychastic prayer? And here is where you see the most damning corollary, the most damning connection between these Eastern religious practices and what

1:06:33 the EO say, in effect in their writings, is required of Christians. The goal of Hesekastic prayer is to see the so-called uncreated light of God. So what they claim is that if you do these practices, which usually involve positioning of the body, breathing, if you're a novice it involves staring at your navel. If you do these practices, you will see a light. It is the exact same claim as these Eastern religions. This is not a claim from Christianity. This is not a Christian practice. This is nowhere in scripture, and I will go over their claims to supposed scriptural warrant for this belief. But nowhere in Scripture does it ever tell us to breathe heavily and stare at our navel, and you will see the uncreated light

1:07:31 of God. This is evil, this is demonic To be entirely blunt. This is not something that Christians do. This is not something we are commanded to do. This is not a part of our religion. This is not in our sacred scriptures. This is something that has been imported from the demonic East into the EO churches, and it is something they are now pushing. And to be entirely clear, this is not even the historic practice of the EO. Yes, there were some who engaged in meditation and perhaps breathing exercises and some similar things, particularly amongst the ascetics, the desert fathers and others, so called. But the practice of Hesekastic prayer did not did not really come around, did not become a major thing in the EO churches until

1:08:23 the thirteen hundreds. This is in particular when Palamus was writing, when he defended this. This is when it became formalized, as it were, in the EO practice. This is now part of their church. He is a saint. He is considered a theologian. They hold to what he said as true. This is not some minor or fringe opinion, this is not something that is optional for the EO to believe. This is what their churches teach. This is what they are required to believe. And it began, as I said, to be formalized, to become a thing actually accepted and practiced in their churches in the thirteen hundreds. And so do bear in mind if you're reading older authors from the Eastern churches, they may be sound. John Chrysostom is great on many topics.

1:09:18 He is worth reading. He died long before this became a thing. But we have to deal with the EO churches as we find them. And as we find them, they are palamite. They hold to this practice. They hold to his theology. And we'll get into more of his theology in a little while because there's the essence energies distinction that becomes a major problem, and that is really formalized by Palamus in his book The Triads, which is where he also defends Hesachastic Prayer. In fact the entire point Of the book, the Triads was the defense of Hesochastic Prayer. The subtitle of the book is In Defense of Those Who Practice Sacred Quietude, Sacred Quietude being one of the ways that they translate Hesekasm, and they call the practitioners Hesekast.

1:10:19 This is something they do even to this day. This is a major practice, particularly on Mount Athos. This is basically what their monks spend their time doing breathing heavily, and trying to see the uncreated light of God. It's one of those times where you wish you were exaggerating or joking or Making a parody of what they do, but this is just simply what they do. This is from their own writings. They will even admit this to you. If you ask them, they will try to equivocate or prevaricate about the specifics of the practice to try to say that well it's not really navel gazing it's X, Y, and Z. But this is what's said in their books. This is I could quote from the Triads and others what these

1:11:04 practices are and how they are conducted, because this is what their theologians say about their religion. So ask yourself Is this Christian? Do you see this in Scripture? Search through Scripture and try to find it. You will not find it, because it is not there. Now, I said I would mention where they try to couch, where they try to found this practice. Their firmest foundation, as they believe it to be, their greatest claim, which is completely ridiculous, and I will go over why, but their primary claim about this uncreated light of God and the ability of Christians who do this sort of prayer so called to see it is the transfiguration. They say, they claim, that during the Transfiguration, it is the glory

1:12:01 of God that shone on the disciples, and that glory, that light that they saw, is the uncreated light of God. This is wrong for many reasons. First off, I would point out, Christ took the three disciples to the top of a mountain to show them his glory, and they saw light. Okay, he took them to the top of a mountain, so they would be in seclusion. This was a bright light. This was a light. They actually saw light. That's what Scripture says. It doesn't say they saw the uncreated light of God, it says they saw light. And so Scripture says they saw a light. That is what Christians believe. They saw, we see with our eyes, a light. We all know what light is. This is not the uncreated light of God.

1:12:51 And I will get into this more when we talk about essence energies, because that's where the real problem comes in, because they use this to say that the light and these other things that are seen by those who practice hesachistic prayer are energies, not the essence of God. And so that is where they try to base this belief in the ability of Christians to see the uncreated light of God. And they make this out to be the whole goal of the Christian life. And they make the same mistake that others make about the supposed holiness of monks, and they'll claim that monks are more holy than the average person because they dedicate their lives to these things. And they basically tell them to starve themselves, because if you starve

1:13:37 yourself and then you do breathe heavily, you'll see the uncreated light. That's a better way to do it. They will in fact say that you cannot really pray unless you are also fasting. These are cultic practices. Starving yourself, breathing heavily, is going to put you in an altered mental state. Of course you're going to see something. The best case scenario is that you hallucinate from hunger or lack of auction, whatever it happens to be. The worst case scenario is you simply invite in demons. Satan appears as an angel of light. Do you want to see that light? That's the light you're going to see if you engage in these particular practices, as many in the East have learned, undoubtedly, and I

1:14:20 don't just mean the Far East in this case. It's important to know that this is not merely aspirational for them. They succeed. Just as yogis succeed, just as Buddhist monks succeed, when they go looking to find this light when they are performing these physical actions, they find it. It's not it's not imaginary, as Corey said, like that would be the best case. The best case would be that it was strictly physiological. Unfortunately, it's not. Because if that were the case, you wouldn't find it in all of these demonic religions. Every demonic religion says do the same thing and get the same outcome. And for thousands of years, practitioners have done it because it works. They seek communion with demons, the light appears, and they commune

1:15:09 with the light. They commune with the demons. When these EOs say do this and it works, they're not wrong. They're wrong about the nature of it. They're not wrong about achieving those results. And that's why it's this is not simply a theological disagreement. This is not simply being uncomfortable with something that's kind of a weird cultural pl practice from the wrong side of a mountain range. This is literally Eastern Demon Summoning. It's a universal practice with universal rules and universal results, regardless of what God it is that they're seeking. That is absolute proof all by itself that this is not a Christian practice. This is an antichrist practice. And it works. Again, that's that's the crucial thing.

1:15:59 It's not just that this is a bad idea, it's it's demon summoning that works. When you hollow yourself out and you say, I'm ready, show me the light, it's gonna work. That's it it's it's horrifying, it's the last thing that any Christian would ever want. You know, these people go down this path where they're enticed by these by this esoteric occult knowledge of seeking that which is unrevealed. You know, we have we have scriptures that they're not interested in reading. And they go looking on mountains and caves for things that God did not reveal. That's not the life that we as Christians were told to lead, and it's simply not the life that Christians lead. It is, however, the life that these men advocate for their adherence,

1:16:48 and if they do it, it's gonna work, and it's going to lead to eternal damnation. For anyone that thinks that Woe is going overboard by saying that it's a a mystery cult or implying it's a mystery cult, it is. We'll both say that. that is what this is. But he's not going overboard. And I can prove that by the dozens of quotes I could pull from the triads saying that those who are initiated, those who are taught by the fathers, and it often does use the exact word initiated. This is cultic language. This is what you expect from the Masons or a doomsday cult. This is not what you expect from Christianity. Christianity is not a mystery religion. Now, I want to be careful in this. I do not mean that Christianity does not have mysteries, because mystery

1:17:37 is simply the Greek term for sacrament. Christianity has mysteries. How exactly we're regenerated in baptism is a mystery, it's a sacrament. How God, how Christ is present in the bread and the wine is a mystery, it's a sacrament. There are things that are mystery. There are things that are beyond human knowledge in Christianity. But Christianity is not a mystery religion. A mystery religion is a specific thing. In the Western tradition, as it were, it ties into the mystery cults, which were very popular in Greece and Rome. These are cults you would be initiated with secret knowledge, usually some sort of ritual. We see the same thing as I said with the Masons today. Those are mystery religions.

1:18:26 Christianity is not. Christianity is open. We literally have a book. Read the book. It tells you exactly what Christians believe and how to be a Christian or not be a Christian. Christianity is not a mystery religion. You do not go to someone living in a desert cave, and he will tell you the secrets of the universe if only you look at your navel and breathe heavily. And it sounds like I'm joking, and perhaps there's some humor to be had there, but it's also deadly serious. This is a wicked evil practice. And I want to read a quote now describing how this works, and I just want you, as a Christian, or even if you're not a Christian, does this sound like a good thing to you? Does this sound like an experience you want?

1:19:09 Or does this sound like the exact opposite of that? In fervent prayer, when the spiritual fire appears, and the spiritual candle is lit, and the mind is raised through spiritual vision to an intense flame, then paradoxically, the body too is lit and warmed, so that, to those who see it, it appears to be coming out of the fire of a visible furnace, according to the author of the spiritual ladder. I don't think I even need to comment on that particular quote. I know how I respond to it, and I think I know how any Christian is going to respond to hearing those words in that order. And to be clear, this is not something that you find in one place, that's from the triads I'm quoting. This is not something found in one place.

1:19:56 This is found throughout the book. This is found throughout the other supposed fathers of the East. This is not a fringe practice. This is central to their religion. And I do mean their religion, because it is not a shared religion. This is not Christianity. This is something that is very much Eastern and very much not Orthodox. And the important thing about the timing of Palamus in the 1300s is that, as Corey said, this is the father of everything that's come since. You cannot be EO without following in his footsteps. And for centuries, the most prominent monks and leaders of this religion did what he said. They went to Mount Athos, they meditated, they summoned demons, and then they went and wrote theology.

1:20:52 Can you trust anything that has come after him? Regardless of when it was introduced, when this came into being, when the 1300s, when Palamus established, from now on, this is EO Orthodoxy, redundantly. Because again, this is not this is not Christian Orthodoxy. This is as far as it could go, which is why one of the reasons Corey's shortening it to you know Orthodox is the same sort of question begging term as Catholic. Catholic means a universal or according to the whole. Orthodox means that it's right, that it's it's on the path, that it's true. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not Christian Orthodoxy. And crucially, if these beliefs and these practices have been in use by adherents for the last 700 years, what must a Christian do?

1:21:48 How must we view whatever theology was produced by such men. No matter how nice it sounds, for forget, forget how pleasing and you know warming you find their words. If you know that they're summoning demons and it's working and they've been doing it their entire lives, is that someone you're going to trust? You know, if if you find if you found out that a couple podcasters were having seances and summoning demons every night, would you keep listening to that podcast for theology or sports or anything? I would hope not. I would hope that if you hear that someone is involved with demons, you would flee from them, you know, pray for them, but stay away. That's not your spiritual battle to engage in.

1:22:32 And when these men are dead and gone, but their words live on, and their words have been removed from this sort of spiritual context, it's very easy to rebrand the products of these mutual manifestations of of demonic entities and whatever teachings they were given. And like here's the thing. Demons don't just show up and call you mean names. They don't just show up and make you sad. They often show up and tell people things. They will give them information. They will give them suggestions. They're there to hurt you and they're there to hurt other people. So when someone is conducting a seance or they're doing using a Ouija board or they're summoning the uncreated light into their own minds

1:23:21 and it works, that person is now in communion with hell. And whatever happens after that must not only be suspect. you need to be, I don't want to say terrified. You need you need to treat it as a spiritual threat to your soul. That's exactly what it is. And the fact that some of it might sound okay should be all the more terrifying. Because guess what? Satan's good at that. Like I said earlier, with that article from this person with a par terrible pedigree describing this history, if most of what she said were lies, it wouldn't do any good. If she sneaks in one or two lies, great, pick them out. But if everything that someone says is a lie, it's easy. That's not what happens. These when when a demon comes and gives you advice and gives

1:24:07 you suggestions, it's gonna be something that's gonna be appealing. It's gonna seem like it's gonna work. That's the that's the hope. They don't just show up and give you misery. we've referenced in the past in one of the episodes we did where we talked about the not conform podcast and work that they did talking about witchcraft, there was a practitioner that they quoted at some length who talked about his demon summoning rituals and how they worked. How he was able to successfully he believed, he thought that he was controlling the demons. He thought that when he would do these rituals and these practices, and then a demon would appear and he would make the demon do his will. That's not how the spiritual works.

1:24:49 You don't summon a demon, you invite a demon. And it doesn't take your orders. It's the one who's nudging you and pushing you towards hell. And so when these men are inviting this stuff in, whatever happens after that is necessarily straight from hell. And it's not necessarily gonna seem like it. Now, if you have the Holy Spirit, if you actually have some degree of spiritual discernment, all of this should be beyond hair raising. And w you know, part of the reason I didn't want to read any of this crap is that as Corey for the last probably two months has been reading this stuff and just giving me quotes periodically, it made my skin crawl. He would he would pick out some per something particularly horrifying and

1:25:29 drop it because he knows that when I hear it, I'm not going to be tricked by it. I look at it immediately. It's just, this is the worst thing imaginable. Until an hour later he has another quote. Someone with spiritual discernment is going to have that response to this sort of evil. Unfortunately, as we said at the beginning, most of the guys who today are attracted to these Eastern practices, they don't know any better. And the worst thing about delving into the so-called fathers is that they all disagree and they all separate like they're making arguments, and fine. Luther makes arguments, most of them are really, really good. That's why I'm Lutheran. Not that we adhere to specifically what he said, but the guy

1:26:07 was really good at theology. He made good arguments, but they're arguments from scripture. It wasn't any revelation. It wasn't anything special. It was just I'm applying reason and what I see in scripture. I think this plays out like that. And when you look at it, it stands the test of time. When these guys who become catechumens in EO start like I've I've I've had discussions with them online where they have these strongly held opinions about these obscure councils and obscure fights with obscure words I've never heard before. And it's the most important thing to them in theology. I'm like, what are you doing? They've never read the Bible, but they're vehemently engaged in these things. That's it's not the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

1:26:54 That's not what God does with people. God does with them what this podcast is doing for guys. You hear an episode pretty much at random, and most people have the response of I need to read my Bible more, I need to go to church. That's not what you find from these guys, and I I desperately want to save as many as possible from going down this path of destruction because they're they're not spiritually equipped to see just how dangerous it is. And you know part of the reason that this episode is not directly addressing VEO To their faces is that they're gonna have a counterargument for everything, or they're just gonna be irrational because fundamentally what they're doing is a rejection of reason.

1:27:36 It's one of the things that they go back on and say, well, that's the distinction between the East and the West. The East is involved in mysteries, and the West wants reason. Well, Jesus used reason. Paul used reason to argue from scripture. Reason is a gift from God. If you are being unreasonable against scripture, you're doing something wrong. And in the narrow cases where scripture itself defies reason, okay, that's because it's supernatural. That's not something for us to worry about. But most of it is not unreasonable. Most of it makes perfect sense when you believe and you have the Holy Spirit. These guys they're just not doing that. And they go down these paths and they listen to these men

1:28:17 who were communing with demons, and then they read their stuff, and then they show up on Twitter and pick fights. I'm like, I God help you, but I don't know how to reach them. You reminded me of a quote from Palamus that I particularly remember because it was somewhat ironic on the topic of discernment. But as a preface to that quote before I read the quote, it's a short quote. If you invite in a demon and that demon particularly hates you or is particularly malicious, you may actually find that the demon incentivizes you, or causes you, depending how far things have progressed, to speak the truth. But in such a way that you are generally damning yourself with it. And so it reminded me of this quote from the Triads

1:29:05 only a few have the gift of discernment, namely those who have the senses of the soul skilled in discerning good from evil. And this is not quite in the middle, it's maybe a fifth of the way bo through the book, give or take. This is right in the middle of some of the most wicked theology I've ever read. That is sometimes how this works, and we see that in some individuals today as well. But on the note of mixing the the bad with the good in order to hide the bad, that reminded me of a paragraph in I have a set of books from the OCA detailing their stance on things so I could see one of the Orthodox Churches what they claim. It reminded me of this paragraph that ends with listing some of the church fathers, and I'll just read this paragraph.

1:29:57 The writings of some of those fathers who have received the universal approval and praise of the church through the ages are of particular importance, such as those of Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyon, Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Photius of Constantinople, and Gregory Palamus. Now for those who are actually familiar with those names, you'll note that the quality essentially decreases as you go on. But you have good Christian men at the beginning of this. Well, I won't say I agree with them on absolutely everything. I won't say they're right on everything, but they are Christians and

1:30:42 I expect to meet them one day. But it ends with Palamus. This is an official book from an Orthodox Church saying that Palamus is one of their most important theologians. So again, this stuff is not fringe. This is the core of their doctrine. This is the core of what they teach, and that is particularly true when we get to the essence energy's distinction. So keep in mind that we are not taking some fringe group. We had those who hoped that we wouldn't bring up the magic foot water. And I'm not bringing it up. I'm mentioning it to say we're not, because we're not saying that that group. They tell us it's a fringe group, a fringe group. I will go ahead and believe them on that. We're not using the beliefs of any fringe group.

1:31:36 We are using the exact beliefs of the mainstream of the EO. This is what their churches teach. This is what their theologians teach. This is what their monks practice, this is what they are told they have to do to be Christians. It is not Christian. It is certainly Eastern. But I don't really want to pick on the East specifically, not because they don't deserve it, because insofar as they're demon worshippers they deserve worse. But I want to mention there is I really did mention it earlier, but I want to make it explicit. There are two prongs, as it were, to Satan's attack when it comes to this particular sort of practice, which is under the umbrella of the altered state of mind that then results in hallucinations or

1:32:24 visions. One is the largely Eastern Asian practice of breathing exercises accompanied with certain positioning of the body that then results in seeing a light The other, as I mentioned, would be drug use. And that's not just modern. Yes, I listed off relatively modern drugs, MDMA and other things. Mushrooms aren't really modern. LSD is because it has to be made in a lab. But you have things like ayahuasca, you have these drugs that were used in other parts of the world to achieve these same results, and so Satan, depending on the culture he was attempting to subvert and destroy, used different methods. For the Indians and the Chinese it was meditation and heavy breathing. For the Amerindians and the South Americans and the Africans, whatever drug

1:33:17 happened to be available. It is the same thing. You see the same sort of outcomes because it has the same animating intelligence behind it. These are not Christian practices, they are not things into which you should look. Now I say that after obviously having read about them a fair amount. This is not something that is profitable for Christians, and we're told to pursue things that are profitable, not in the capitalist sense, obviously, but in the theological sense, in the Christian life sense. There are things that are profitable to explore, to read, to learn, on which to meditate in the good sense. sense and there are things which are unprofitable. These materials are unprofitable. Listening to this episode is fine because it is a live issue.

1:34:06 And many of you will need to know how to respond to this if it comes up in your life, because you may have a friend who tries to go EO. You may have others you know, someone in your family even who is looking at this stuff, you may have been interested in it in the past. You may very well be EO if you're still listening to this episode. Thank you for doing that. I'm glad you can at least listen to this and perhaps meditate on it in the Christian sense, which is to say search the scriptures, and see which beliefs you find, test the spirits as God commands us to do. It's important to know how to respond to these things because they are live issues, and it is paramount that Christians know how to

1:34:47 respond to again, at risk of ad nauseum, live issues. And that plays into this because you'll have those who focus, as Wo said, on some hyper-technical point. I won't say it as an important. They're very important things that were discussed at the councils, and many of the councils did actually produce Christian documents as a result. Their canons are correct in large part. There are errors. We all know that. We all admit that. Even the EO, as I went over earlier. Those points are not unimportant. But they may not be live today. This is something we run into constantly. This is sort of an aside, but this is something we're into all the time. The confessions of most of the major Protestant denominations go over issues

1:35:36 that aren't really live today. Yes, to some degree we still have disagreements with regard to the real presence or the sacramental union or the nature of baptism or any of these other things, the specifics of justification and sanctification, synergism versus monergism, synergism and sanctification versus synergism and justification, all these issues on which we disagree. But the big issues that are tearing the church apart, that are destroying our society around us, these issues are not addressed by and large in our confessions, and that is the case whether we are Baptist or Presbyterian or Lutheran or anything else. In part because the men of the day, when they wrote those confessions, these things were unthinkable.

1:36:23 You would have never thought you had to deal with men who claim to be women, which perhaps they should have thought of that one because you did have Did have temple prostitution in which that was the case in ancient times. But at any rate, you have the issues that are tearing apart the church, that are tearing apart civilization, that are not addressed. Those are the issues on which we have to focus. And so we're focusing on this issue of the EO, because the EO are a live issue insofar as they are being used, and I agree with Wo, being used as a geopolitical weapon in part, and being used on the other hand by Satan, because these practices are not Christian, they are being used to subvert Christianity, to draw

1:37:05 in men who have been isolated or alienated from society, and it is attempting to attract them psychologically primarily, with the appeal to aesthetics or supposed tradition, historicity, whatever it happens to be, to draw these men in psychologically, and then get them invested in it so they can't possibly leave. And we have seen far too many of those who have become invested in EO and have despaired and then killed themselves. This is unfortunately on an uncommon outcome. Christianity does not drive men to despair. And so that is another consideration in this. If you have a religion that is driving men to despair and suicide, it's not Christianity. Because Christ gives us hope. That is what Christianity gives us.

1:37:56 If you have a true Christianity, it is going to provide you hope, regardless of how bad things may be, how bad they may seem, and they are not good today, most certainly. We've gone over that at length in many episodes. But regardless of how bad things get, we have the assurance of salvation, we have the assurance that Christ will be with us to the end of the age. There is joy, and I do mean joy, not necessarily happiness, but joy. There is joy, even in the face of all the trials, for a Christian. Not despair. Christianity does not cause despair. That is not the religion of God. That is not the religion of the Lord God. That is the religion of another deity entirely. The reason that the suicide thing came up is that Cory and

1:38:48 I, you know, paid attention to Twitter and I would say probably maybe once a month, once every six weeks, you'll see a tweet from someone reposted where someone is clearly at the end of the rope. They're asking for prayers, they're begging, and they're suicidal and they're saying I I'm despairing, I'm about to kill myself, please pray for me or goodbye or whatever. And they always seem serious. And unfortunately, we have seen enough of those go by that as soon as I see one of those appear on my timeline, my first instinct, I know I don't mean this to sound heartless, but the very first reaction that I have is instinctively to check their bio to see whether or not they're Eastern Orthodox. And at least eighty percent of time they are.

1:39:38 Probably higher. I'm not I don't have a spreadsheet. I mean I I pray for them. I pray for mercy and for them to to find God and for God to find them in that moment of despair. But it is overwhelmingly men who are psychologically damaged, who go into EO. And I have never seen someone who's gone in psychologically damaged where I've been paying any attention, come out of it better off. What I do see is the opposite. I see men who emerge from EO teaching and practice in that community killing themselves. I would beg anyone, if you do not know what Christian denomination to join, rather than joining the EO, I would say just load a map or look at a phone book and pick a church at random. It is guaranteed to be less damaging to your soul.

1:40:30 Even if it's p pagans. Even if there's a tranny pastor up there. Frankly you would be better off if you went to a church with a training pastor for the specific reason that you would know was evil, you're not going to know it's evil when you're going into an EO congregation. And again, there are Christians in EO, just as they're Christians in every denomination that's lost its way that has bad teachings and bad practices. The problem is that the thing itself, the body itself, is producing nothing but death and despair, as it must. These teachings that have gone on for probably a thousand years, provably seven hundred years, have been in unavoidably evil. And I don't want that for guys. I mean, this is this is you know this is a discussion

1:41:22 about theology and another denomination. I don't want guys killing themselves. I don't want young men despairing. Period. I don't want anything that would cause that to come about for them. If we were doing episodes that were causing that sort of response, we would stop. I don't think we would be capable of doing that because we're producing the opposite sort of fruits. The fact that men who are exposed to EO end up there frequently, this is not rare, is is proof of the disease tree that they're eating from. And, you know, this is something that came up in another DM group just a couple days ago. Someone said that he had been in a DM group with a bunch of EOs and it was a consistent pattern that a new

1:42:10 guy would come in and say, Hey, I'm trying to find a local church, I want to attend the liturgy. And the response would generally be: this is a fairly common response: here's a YouTube video. Most of them don't attend church. They don't read scripture. They don't attend the liturgy. It's an almost exclusively online online practice for a lot of these guys. Again, that's not church. Stone Choir is not church. This is not this is not the preaching of the word for edification. We try to talk about subjects, they're edifying, and the fruits of our discussions are clearly beneficial. But this is not church. YouTube is not church. Even a YouTube video of a church service is not church. It can be beneficial.

1:42:52 If it's absolutely the best, the only option you have, it's better than nothing. But you have not attended church. You're by yourself. You're viewing something voyeuristically, it's not the same. So much of what we see in particular from the EO seems to be entirely online. And that by itself should be another warning sign. Yeah, we've linked and I've mentioned several times the 10-minute Bible hour pod uh YouTube channel where he did a three-part video with uh Lutheran pastor. And I was very grateful for that and I point people to it as often as possible because it's a great primer for why do Lutherans believe the stuff we do? Why is the liturgy the way it is? When you know they're standing up and sitting down and chanting and

1:43:37 responding. Why do we do those things that seem weird to so many Protestants? And so it does a really good job explaining why it's like that. Prior to that, the same host, Matt Whitman, had visited an Eastern Orthodox congregation And Matt is he's not an old guy, but he's bald, he's lost his hair. And so because he's on camera and there's you know bright lights, so it's well lit, he usually wears a baseball cap. Not because he's embarrassed about not having his hair, but because you get glare and it's blinding and it screws up the shot. And so he asked the permission of the EO priest that he visited if he could wear his hat inside the church. He probably shouldn't have done. It was probably not a great idea.

1:44:23 But he was given permission. He knew that it was questionable. He specifically asked for the reason that he didn't want to screw up the Shaw with his shiny bald head. The pastor said, Yeah, it's fine, don't worry about it. It's not the church service, it's not disrespectful. For the next year, Matt Whitman on almost all the other videos that he did with other people talked about how unbelievably hateful the EO commenters were on that video. He said that he had so much hate mail and vitriol poured out that he had worn that hat and he was doing this and that wrong and said this and that wrong. They were so vicious that this Matt is an incredibly nice, very gentle guy. He's very gracious. Even when he doesn't understand, he's he's there's there's not a

1:45:08 an abrasive bone in his body. And yet he was so shocked by the abuse from just random rank and file EO online commenters that it traumatized him. He was clearly profoundly offended. And he he on multiple occasions has said, I don't necessarily stand in a position to judge another congregation's theology, but I can absolutely judge the fruits. I'm paraphrasing, but he said, I can tell from the EO behavior online that that's not a good church. He didn't say that, but he made it very clear that that was his conclusion because of their behavior. And I see the same thing. There are absolutely Christians that are in EO. I have a few friends online. I I respect them. I like them. I hope we can keep them.

1:45:51 But the vast majority of EO adherents, EO catechumens, yeah, it's not a thing. Like they they they become catechumens, like it's a special status. And then for years they're given reading material and videos and they're not really participating. They're supposed to like study and meditate and at what point do they actually join the church? And frankly, a lot of them don't. You know, they'll stay in that status for years. It's just as a Christian, it's bizarre. But then once you understand what it is that's going on, it's like, well, that's both inevitable and it it's pernicious. it's bad for these people. That sort of environment has created some truly toxic people. The EO people on Twitter are some of the very worst people

1:46:36 I've ever ever enacted. Not all of them. I'm saying I'm not at all saying that every EO guy is terrible. I'm saying that when there is a a seething brigade of horrible, amateur, vicious people, it's usually with the Orthodox Cross in their bio. I just block as fast as I can because I know that there's no getting through to them. That's not a theological critique, but it is tasting the fruit and saying I this tree needs to be chopped down. So when we talk about suicide and bad behavior and all this stuff, these are the fruits of the palamite tree. These are the fruits of hesychasm, of summoning demons for centuries and then writing down the things that they told them, and then passing that on.

1:47:20 What we see is some of the very worst behavior on the internet, some of the least Christian people I have ever seen who claim to be Christian. I there's nothing Christian about them. It's all just fighting and hatred and immaturity. Like they're not bright. They're not, there's it's just it's a train wreck. I I would not wish this for anyone or on anyone. So part of the reason we put this off is like Corey and I have disagreements with Roman Catholics and you know when I was raised as a Lutheran, we talked about comparative religions and yeah, I went to Lutheran schools. They basically taught me that EO and RC were just kind of variations on the same theme. After looking at that stuff, not even remotely true.

1:48:08 I have profound disagreements with Roman Catholic doctrine and disagreements with their view of history, I would in a heartbeat be Roman Catholic before I would even consider going anywhere near the EO. Because for all RC's faults, it's not fundamentally demonic. Their errors are bad. This stuff is an entirely different ballgame. I know that that's a it's a blanket statement. It's the sort of thing that makes people, some of them hate us, some like us. Not trying to be strident, of all the things you could possibly be, please don't be EO. You are it's the fast track to hell. And you can see that if you actually look at the people and track them and follow their trajectories online, you will never see

1:48:52 any good outcomes ever. Not once have I ever seen anyone who was drawn into it exit better or become better as a result. That's all anyone should need to know. I think unavoidably this episode is going to run a little long, so we will just accept that. As listeners, you can of course pause it whenever and come back to it, so it hardly matters how long it is. But we have a few more topics that we have to cover, and one of them is really the core of this matter, as I've said a number of times already. That's the essence energies distinction. I'm not going to start with that one, but I will get to that one. I think we will really close on that and then some concluding comments. But just as an aside, before I get into a little

1:49:37 bit of philosophy that's necessary as a a preamble, as it were, a prelude to the discussion of penal substitutionary atonement and then the essence energies distinction. When it comes to monasticism, obviously as Lutherans, we disagree with it. Our confession rejects it. We reject monasticism as a thing. And we have many reasons for that. The Eastern practice of monasticism is particularly pernicious because it it is everything that we said in our confessions and elsewhere about the medieval practice and more. Because obviously it has all of the demonic stuff on top of it. But you have monks who claim to be humble, to claim to be living these lives of holiness and closeness to God and all these various things.

1:50:37 These are some of the most prideful people on the face of the planet. They believe that because of their works, they are the closest people to God, period. And this is one of the reasons that you see this despair amongst those who go EO. There is no real division in the EO theology between justification and sanctification, they don't even really deal in those categories because again they reject PSA, we'll be getting to that. They have this synergistic view of faith and works. It is you work and you get faith and you work some more because you have more faith and you get faith and you do works. And it's this cycle, this vicious cycle of works that just causes despair. I'm not saying you shouldn't have works because of course you

1:51:29 will have works, but you will have works as an outgrowth of your living faith. God gives you the faith, and then God has already prepared the works that you should walk in and that's just scripture. It is all from God, it is all a gift. All of it is good news for the Christian, and that's just not what the EO teach. And the issue of faith brought to mind another line from one of the other books in this series from the OCA, and here's how they define faith or rather describe faith really, but it is also a definition. Faith is the natural possession of all men who are wise and virtuous. The best thing I can say about that is that it's not Christian. That's not a very good thing to say about something, but it's

1:52:18 certainly not Christian. It's worse than that. It's demonic. Faith is not the natural possession of all men who are wise and virtuous. And of course, this feeds into this is really another aside, but the EO also say that in this life you can become so perfect that you no longer sin. Which goes directly against scripture. You cannot become so perfect in this life that you no longer sin. So long as you are in this life, you will continue to sin. Of course that's an outgrowth of their misconception of original sin. They effectively deny original sin. They say there's ancestral sin, but it's not imputed guilt, and so you're not really guilty, and so you don't really need a savior, you just need an example, you can follow after him.

1:53:02 It gets complicated, their view, but it's not Christian. This is not how Christians speak about these things. The Christian view is very simple. In the death of Christ, all things were redeemed. He atoned for everything. And yes, of course, that is, I'm using shorthand. It is his life and his death. That is the totality of his offering, of his atonement, of his sacrifice. He atoned for all things. And so in that there is the objective justification, which is the justification of all things. Individuals are subjectively justified by faith. You are given that faith by means, typically baptism, but also the word. You are strengthened that faith again by means, the word and the sacrament. That is how Christianity works.

1:53:55 Once you are justified, then begins the process of sanctification. Sanctification is synergistic. Justification is monergistic. That's why it's good news. The work is done. All of the work is of God. It relies on God. It does not rely on you. And so there's no reason to despair. You are absolutely secure because God did the work, not you. Your works don't save you. Your works are a response to that goodness from God, to God's justifying, to his gifts. Works are a response. Works do not contribute to your salvation. And so Christianity is good news. The EO system is terrible news, because the EO system is you have to do works or you're damned. That's awful news. If it relies on Relies on me, I'm screwed.

1:54:42 That's the whole point of Christianity. Yes, there's obviously more to it. The infinite debt of sin requires an infinite sacrifice for to atone for it. But it's terrible news if it relies on man. As Luther said, Everything I have ever held I have lost from my hands. But everything I have given to Christ is still there, to paraphrase his statement. That is the exact right sentiment, if it is in Christ's hands, it is absolutely secure because he has never lost anything from his hands. Everything we hold we will eventually lose because of course we take nothing with us in death. And so if it relies on us, that is terrible news, and that is why the EO system causes despair, one of many reasons.

1:55:25 But I said I would get to a little bit of philosophy before we talk about penal substitutionary atonement. There are two terms that you need to understand to some degree, not fully, because these are very deep terms, particularly philosophically, which there's some irony there, because the EO love to condemn Greek philosophy and then they use Greek philosophical terms but at any rate the two terms are catharsis and apathea. Apathea is usually translated, you may have sensed what the term is, it's usually translated as dispassion, but obviously it's related to apathy. Catharsis in Greek philosophy is purification or cleansing, particularly related to the emotions. It's a bringing of the emotions under control.

1:56:10 This was particularly important to, of course, the Stoics. But this is also a thing in the EO conception of quite frankly, to call it Christianity is almost misleading, but in their conception of theology For them it is a purification of the heart and the soul from the passions, which they consider to be impurities or disturbances, things that hinder your relationship, your focus on God. And they believe this purification process is repentance, ascetic practices, particularly fasting, the giving of alms to some degree, and obviously Hesachastic prayer and they also often lump the sacraments in there as well. The reception of the sacraments is included in this purification of the passions. Now I would define for you what they mean by the

1:57:03 passions, but I cannot do that because they define the passions differently in different authors and in different books from different Orthodox churches. And so there's no one definition here. Some of them say it is particularly just the evil passions, they will call them literally that. Some of them will simply say it is the passions, some of them seem to include all of the passionate parts of the soul, some of them include only some parts of the soul, and so I cannot give you an exact definition of what they mean by the passions. They just say you have to purify yourself from your passions, which of course is going to cause a great deal of mental and psychological anguish. If you have to clean yourself, cleanse yourself, purify yourself from the

1:57:45 passions, one, it's relying on you to do it, and two, what on earth does that mean? You can't do a thing if they don't tell you what you need to do. And of course that's part of the reason for this. If you're in this constant sense of angst and uncertainty, you're always going to look for more to do. And that's what it is. It's a vicious cycle to cause despair. And then the term, the next one is, of course, dispassion. This again, very important for the Stoics. It is being free from, in the Stoic sense, the passions. The Stoics understood that. That was basically you should not be controlled by your emotions, rather, you should be controlled by your reason and your logic. They wanted rational control over the passions.

1:58:29 Partly because Greek philosophy was largely Gnostic, and so there was this exercise of the rational soul over the irrational material the body, but also just because they did not want to be ruled by the emotions. By and large, not being ruled by the emotions is a fine goal. Making yourself entirely dispassionate or apathetic is not a good goal. God gave us emotions, we have them for a reason. If you are entirely dispassionate in your relationship with your wife, odds are your marriage will not last very long. The goal of the Christian life, the goal of human life, is not to completely cleanse yourself of the passions Yes, you need to bring them under control to some degree, and you should most certainly

1:59:16 not let your sinful nature run wild. But completely jettising the passions is not part of the Christian faith, it is not part of human life, properly understood how God wants us to live. In the EO sense, most of them seem to characterize this dispassion as mastery over wrong wrongful or misguided passions. So I will give them their credit there. They seem to be clearer on their definition of what they mean when it comes to dispassion, more so than catharsis. Yes, I realize there's a little bit of contradiction there, but that's simply what their writings say. And so this relates to your spiritual growth. You're supposed to bring these things under your control, and they help you to complete more and greater good works in your life because

2:00:07 you're no longer distracted by these things. Which, of course, is a problem, because essentially what they're saying is Gnostic. This is just Gnosticism cloaked in supposed Christianity, saying that it is the body that is wicked and wrong and we have to bring it under the rational control of the soul. Of course, the problem with that, additionally, another layer, is that the East again essentially rejects reason? So there's no way to square this circle, but this is just the basic outline of these terms and the setting for how they view things. If it's confusing, don't blame me. I didn't write these books. I didn't write these treatises. But now I want to switch gears, as it were, to a subject that is much more clear.

2:00:59 And you will see it is clear because for this particular section of this episode, I will comment a little bit on one or two, maybe three of these passages, but I just want to read a few relatively short passages from scripture. This is dealing with penal substitutionary atonement, and I just want you to have this in mind, a refresher, as it were, before we get into Palamus and the essence energy's distinction. And so the first reading is from Isaiah, Isaiah 53. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the

2:01:52 iniquity of us all. The second is from Romans three. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he has passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has

2:02:38 faith in Jesus. The next is from Second Corinthians. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Galatians three. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, Cursed is every one who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the nations, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. First Peter, He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, by his wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep, but have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. Again, first Peter.

2:03:30 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit. First John, He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Now I want to stop here briefly and comment on a word, because undoubtedly you have all heard the word, but maybe you don't know exactly what it means, and that word is propitiation. Propitiation comes from popitiatio, from propitiare, which means to win the favor of a god by presenting something that pleases him Christ is the propitiation because his offering, again, the totality of his life and death, his offering to God was pleasing.

2:04:20 It atoned for sin, all sin. The next reading is from Hebrews nine. Indeed under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Again, Hebrews 9. So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. Now from these passages, and obviously there are others, it is very clear the teaching of Scripture with regard to what the good news is, and that's all gospel means, gospel is the good news, is that Christ has paid the price. He died in our place. That is substitutionary atonement. And it is of a penal nature. Scripture speaks elsewhere of the legal debt.

2:05:19 Scripture speaks in many places, in legal language, of this wonderful exchange, as Luther called it, Christ's death is good news for us, because we no longer have to suffer eternally for our sins. Because of course, again, the debt of sin being infinite, the price necessary to pay for it is also infinite, and so it is only the death of God, the death of Christ, the Son of God, that can pay that infinite price. All those in hell are paying the price of their sins. The problem for them is that again the price is infinite, and to pay an infinite price as a finite creature requires an infinite time. And that is why hell is infinite. And so it is good news that we have been declared innocent. We have been declared righteous because of Christ's work on his

2:06:18 behalf, because of his blood. And that is a legal declaration. It is juridical, one of the terms that the E.O. like to use to deride penal substitutionary atonement. This is simply the language that Scripture uses. Scripture speaks of God having a court, of there being a judgment. I don't know what these people think a judgment is, but a judgment is a legal declaration, it is a legal process. Many of you have probably seen one of the most famous uh screenshots on uh theology Twitter that I appear in a couple of years ago. Uh another EO guy was saying Protestant theology is pagan in philosophical orientation due to penal substitutionary atonement. It isn't too complex, mate. The Church Fathers clearly teach Christus Victor and Theosis.

2:07:10 And I replied to him, quote, And you who were dead in your trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. I attributed that quote to Luther, which was the trap. It's also true, we'll get that in a second. And he replied, I don't care what Luther says, I care what the Church Fathers and Apostles said. I said, Do you reject that statement? To which he replied, I subscribe to Christus Victor and Theosis. The last part of that is making it transactional and pits the son against the Father. To which I replied, Then you have a real problem, because that's

2:07:49 Colossians two, thirteen and fourteen. And And he's still mad to this day. They all get incredibly mad that it was cheating or whatever, it was unfair. He condemned Scripture. I read scripture to him and he said, That's evil. That is not my religion. The problem is that that's true. When these men are confronted with scripture, by and large, they revile it. And that's not unique to EO. The LCMS is going through the same thing right now. When Corey and I say what scripture says about other things, there are pastors who say we're going to hell. They say that's not our God, to which I can only say, okay, that's I hope that's not your final answer, because on judgment day, when you say that's not my God, you're going to be

2:08:31 saying it to the God that you're rejecting. And the reason I attribute that to Luther it was it was sleight of hand, but Luther translated the entire Bible. So arguably you could attribute every verse in the Bible to Luther because he translated it. It was cheating a little bit, but I knew that hating PSA is hating scripture because Corey just read all those passages. Penal substitutionary atonement and the fact that we're talking about a divine court with evidence and judgment and sentence is Christian. That's the the earthly court is a model of the heavenly court. All these All these things that we have in human society we got from God. We borrowed from God. We have a type to God's anti-type.

2:09:20 The perfect form is God's form. The imperfect form is our form. But it's the same stuff. So there's no pagan philosophy here. It's just scripture. And that's what they must necessarily reject reject in order to hold to their ob their beliefs. There is a video of an EO priest saying that one of the reasons, or perhaps the reason, why the crucifixion was necessary, is that it makes for a good story. That is the fruit of denying penal substitutionary atonement. I'm not saying that Christus Victor is wrong. I'm not saying that the ransom theory is wrong. These things are all part of it. There are many aspects to the crucifixion, the resurrection, the entirety of the story. But the beating heart of the gospel is penal substitutionary atonement.

2:10:16 You and I sinned. We must be punished for that. That is the penal part. Christ died for us as a substitute. Obviously, that's the substitutionary part. His death was sufficient to atone for our sins. That is the atonement part. PSA is simply the teaching of Scripture. Again, it is the good news. You cannot reject it and be Christian. Scripture is abundantly clear on this point. There are few things, perhaps nothing on which Scripture is more clear, than that this is the good news, and one would hope of all things that Scripture is clear about the gospel, and it most certainly is. But that leads us into really our final section for this episode. And this is one of the big differences. Obviously, there are a number of them as we have detailed so

2:11:09 far, but this is one of the big differences between the theology of the East and the theology of the West. Which I'll just be blunt. It's the difference between the theology of the Christian Church, which is the West, and the theology of the Eastern religion, whatever they want to call it. It's not Christian. And again, we're not saying that there are no Christians, because wherever God's word is read, it does not return to him empty, it is not fruitless. There are Christians in the Mormon church. Again, not a church, but there are Christians, some few of them. The same thing is true with regard to the EO. But if you actually believe what they teach, if you delve deeply into it, you will not remain a Christian.

2:11:55 You will become an apostate, and you will probably, if you engage in these practices, wind up possessed, at the very least demon oppressed. I do not want to go into the philosophy of this too deeply because it gets a little complicated, but it's very simple to understand at a higher level from a bird's eye view as it were. Before I get into the essence energy's distinction properly, I want to read the second paragraph from the Athanasian Creed, and you'll see why when I actually describe the EE. And the Catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance. The Greek word there is Usia, the Latin word is substantia.

2:12:54 For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost, but the godhead divinitas Thaetes, of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal, such as the Father is, such as the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost, the Father uncreated, the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated, the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible, the Father Eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal, and yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal, as there are not three uncreated, nor three incomprehensibles, but only one uncreated and one incomprehensible. So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty, and the Holy

2:13:52 Ghost Almighty, and yet they are not three Almigs, but one Almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and yet they are not three gods, but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son, Lord, and the Holy Ghost, Lord, and yet not three Lords, but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every person by Himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, there be three gods or three lords. And just to make sure that those who are not as familiar with the terms recognize that last bit there, every person by himself to be God is capital P, person, meaning the persons of the Trinity. We're not Mormon.

2:14:44 Now The reason that this is important is that the two terms that I emphasize by stating them both in Greek and Latin, substance and godhead, play into the essence energy's distinction. I won't bury the lead as it were, I will simply state outright. The Eastern conception of the essence energies distinction is polytheistic. And the reason that it is polytheistic is that it posits a real distinction between God's essence and his energies while maintaining that both are divine. Now there's a little philosophy here, but very little, and it's very easy to understand. The difference between a formal distinction and a real distinction is the difference between a distinction in terms and a distinction in we'll call

2:15:36 it kind, for the sake of simplicity. If you say that someone is your son, and you say that he is John, those can both be true. There's a formal distinction there. Just to use a very easy to understand example. There's no actual distinction between John and your son, assuming your son is named John. However, the distinction between John and his brother James is a real distinction. They are not the same person. This is a vitally important thing in theology for well, a complicated reason, to be frank, but a reason that I can explain in a simple way. God is simple. Simple means not composed of parts in the philosophical sense. God is also goodness, beauty, truth, being, and unity, to list the five transcendentals.

2:16:37 He is all those things. God is omnipresent, God is omniscient, God is omnipotent. We speak in these terms. We say that God is, and then we reference not a part of God, and not really actually an aspect, but we can use the term aspect because it's comprehensible an aspect of God, we speak in those terms because as a human being, as human beings, we are limited. We cannot grasp the essence of God as it is. We cannot grasp God as He is in Himself. But we can speak about these things that He has revealed to us, whether they are revealed in Scripture or they are revealed in nature, in creation, because yes, creation does tell us about God. We can learn things about God from what He has created. That should be obvious.

2:17:25 You can learn something about the artist by his art. We all know that. You can learn something about the author by his writings. You can learn something about me and about Woe from listening to us on this podcast. God is the author, God is the artist of creation. We can learn about him from what he created. But when we speak about God, we have to speak in these little divisions because of our limitations. God does this as well when he speaks in Scripture. He condescends to our level and speaks in terms we understand. But Western philosophy, Western theology properly recognizes that God is one. Scripture has something to say about that, perhaps you know what verse I have in mind. And so God is again unity is one of the transcendentals.

2:18:15 He is not divided. He does not have parts. And so if you speak about God's essence as being divine, this is the Eastern conception again. If you speak about God's essence as being divine, and yet also his energies being divine, and there being a real distinction between them, your God is no longer unified, your God is no longer God. It may be that essence of which you speak is God, although in the Eastern case it's not, but then the energies can't be God. And so you wind up with at least di-theism, but really polytheism, because they say there are many energies, and yet they're all divine. There's another aspect that is worth noting of this in Palamus, and so this is the EO position, they hold that some of

2:19:04 these divine energies had a beginning. And for those who are versed in philosophy or theology, you'll immediately recognize the problem here. That which has a beginning cannot be God, definitionally. And so if there are energies that are divine but have a beginning, that's another god. This entire system is polytheistic. There is no way around this problem. Their conception of God, this essence energies distinction, is necessarily polytheistic. It is unavoidably polytheistic. And a particularly damning passage in Palamas speaks of it in terms that are completely and utterly undeniable. It is very clear to anyone reading this that the Eor polytheistic. I said the the word for godhead as used in the Greek

2:20:02 is theatase. But I'll spare you the Greek because quite frankly I don't want to bother having to pronounce it. There are two terms used, and the two terms, both attached to theatase as descriptors, as adjectives, are one is transcendent or higher, the other The other is imminent or lower. And so in this passage, Palamas speaks of a higher deity and a lower deity. He speaks of two gods in explicit terms. This is the belief. This is the teaching of the Eastern Orthodox. This is not Christianity. In Christianity, we worship the Trinity. The Trinity is one God. As I just read from the Athanasian Creed. That is what Christians believe. And at the end of the Athanasian Creed, of course it says

2:21:02 if you do not hold this Catholic faith whole and undefiled, you are no Christian. You're outside the church. You're damned. That is the belief of Christians. Not this distinction between the essence and the energies leading to polytheism. And so like I said, it is relatively philosophically complicated if you get into the details, but at the same time, it is very easily understood at a high level, the EO posit a real distinction between God's essence and his energies, and therefore they are necessarily polytheistic. And the reason this ties back into their practices and how this is part of their overall system, is they say that that uncreated light of God that they see through their hesychastic so called prayer

2:21:52 is an energy from God. And so they say they are seeing the uncreated light of God, which is an energy that is divine, that is again uncreated, so has no beginning. And this is God, but it's not the essence of God. The essence of God being truly distinct, being really distinct, and therefore being another God. There is no way to describe this, except well, gobbledygook, when you actually read his writing. But not Christian. This is polytheistic, this is paganism, this has no place in the church, and no Christian should entertain it for even a minute. It's worth noting that in Scripture, you know, in in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, and in particular in Revelation, the only way that a man could be in the presence of God was

2:22:48 not to see him. To see God is to be struck dead. That's how God works. That was what made the incarnation so profoundly special was that the infinite uncreated God entered into creation and was a man that could be seen and touched and perceived and you could talk to him in a way that was not present in the Theophanes uh well that was that is not present when you're dealing with the other manners in which God appears. So there's an explicit claim that the EO make about seeing something that God says, if you see me, you will die. You know, when when a man has to shield his face or he will be struck dead when God passes by, that's precisely what we're talking about here. These people are saying, no, no, no, it's fine, you can look.

2:23:48 God, God can reveal himself to you visually. And we're we're talking about the physical here. You know, it's it's akin to what happened when the man reached out to study the Ark of the Covenant, when it was being carried around on a cart and it s the oxen stumbled and it was about to hit the ground, man reached out to do the right thing, in one sense, to keep the Ark of the Covenant from hitting the ground. But God had said, A they were not permitted to do that and B don't touch it. And so when the man touched the ark, he was struck dead. That's what God's special presence is like. You die on contact. I I I hope that it's coming through that these guys can't be talking about God. All their claims that they're encountering something, I think in most cases

2:24:40 we must take them at face value, but we cannot take the claims of the nature of what they're encountering. Then there is a very easy explanation. Test the spirits. When something comes to you and says I am an angel from God, if he has another message, he is to be anathema. That's not what we find when these men encounter things that say, Hey, I'm from God. Hey, look, you can see me here, even though with your own eyes, even though God says that will kill you, even though the practice by which that light is summoned is a demon summoning practice. They're doing something, but they're not getting God. And I it's one of the reasons that I I'm always f frustrated. I I try to be verbally frustrated when people we've said before

2:25:29 like calling things woke or saying it's just fictional. When you don't take people's claims seriously when they're making a serious claim, you're gonna miss the fundamental nature of what's going on. So the cheap thing to do, the easy way out would be to say, oh those guys are crazy, you know, they're just they're hyperventilating and passing out and you know it's just it's neurons misfiring. I think that's disrespectful and I think it's spiritually dangerous because when they're making very specific claims that are consistent with the claims of demon worshippers in other false religions, and they get the same result, you have to take them seriously. And so this distinction of two gods is in a way it's

2:26:14 their confession when the Christian faith says that God cannot be divided, and they say, look, here's a divided God appearing to us. They're kind of fessing up. They're telling the truth. They're at least admitting, they're confessing that God couldn't do this, that there's a different version of a different God that is manifesting. And that's true. It's a small g god, it's hell, it's Satan, it's a demon appearing to them, but something is appearing. It's not just a hallucination, it's not just them making up stories, they're actually doing it, and they're doing something wicked. To be To be entirely clear, there were a lot of other things in Palamus and elsewhere in EO Theology that could have been included in

2:27:01 this episode, but as we've noted with other subjects, we did not want the episode to be six hours long. Although in fairness we have done that in multipart episodes now. There is one more thing that I want to pull out of some of my notes that I just noted was a thread running through Palamis and elsewhere. This is something that should cause Christians to recoil, particularly now that you've listened to some of the information about Eastern religions and some of their practices. Throughout the triads, and as I mentioned elsewhere in Eo writings, they say that you obtain this state of elevated consciousness, sometimes even described in terms that look like an out of body experience. But they say that you achieve this once quote all rational activity

2:27:55 has ceased. I won't just leave you to try to ponder what that means. That's possession. Nowhere in Christianity are we to cease all rational activity, to totally empty ourselves and be taken over by some external force. That is not what it means to have the indwelling of the Spirit, to be indwelt by God. We don't become less human in paradise, in eternity, that is certainly a thread that runs through these teachings of Palamus and others. They seem to deny the reality of paradise. They seem to think that we just stare at God's face for eternity. That we see this magical light they describe, and that's our eternity. That's not what Scripture says. There's a new heavens and a new earth. God made us to be what we are.

2:28:48 Yes, we exist today in a fallen state, but we will be restored to the state that Adam had in the garden before the fall. We will be perfect again, and we will still be flesh, because we are body and soul, and yes also mind. We are not just soul, we are not just spirit. We are not going to exist as the angels exist because we are not the angels. We do not exist to be angels, to become angels. God made angels to be angels. He made us to be human beings. He made us to be men. We are what we are, because that is what He intends for us to be, and that is what we will be in eternity. And so this idea that you totally empty yourself after every rational activity of the mind ceases, that is an actual quote from Palamus,

2:29:38 and it is throughout, it is repeated many times. In one place it even says so much of these rational and intellectual activities cease that this includes prayer itself again a quote This is not what Christians do, this is not what Christians advocate, this is not what the scriptures teach. In one place it mentions being emptied of these activities to such a point that you are taken over entirely by what he calls the Spirit of God, but that is most not that is most certainly not the Spirit of God that is taking you over if you empty yourself entirely of your faculties, and then some external force appears and takes over. That is demonic possession. That is what is being taught by the EO. But to return to the point of the reality of the flesh

2:30:28 contra the Gnosticism of the EO, Paradise is a physical paradise. In eternity, you will still be a man or a woman, whatever you are now. You will still be flesh and blood, because that is what God made you to be, and that is one of the things that is so wonderful about the incarnation. God became man. God took on, God assumed human flesh. And that is how we will see God face to face. We get to see God face to face because the fullness of deity dwells bodily in Christ, and we will see him face to face in eternity, we will see him face to face in paradise. And in seeing Christ, as he himself says, we see the Father. That is how Christians get to see God. You don't see God by staring at your navel, breathing heavily, and

2:31:26 waiting until you see a light. Whether that light happens to be brain cells dying from hyperventilating or a demon taking possession. That is not the Christian practice. That is not the Christian hope. That is what the EO teach. And if they teach that, and it is contrary to Scripture, then they are not Christian. This is a vitally important point. We mentioned that we are we're not going to go through and refute every single point of what they teach, and we did not do that. That was never the intention. That would be a ridiculous waste of our time and yours. What we have done instead is pointed out some of the most salient, in some cases, literally the most salient, ways in which Eastern Orthodoxy is something other than Christianity, something alien to scripture, something alien

2:32:21 to Christ Church. And the point is, how many of these problems can be present before you as a Christian must reject it. An example I've used. Perhaps it's a bit blunt and crass, but I'll use it because it gets the point across. If I hand you a bag full of dog feces and tell you there's a skittle in there, are you going to dig through and find the skittle to eat it? I would hope the answer is no. On the other hand, if I hand you an entire bag of MMs and I tell you, that bag is 99% MMs, one you're probably going to wonder what the 1% is and be a little hesitant to eat. But if I then tell you that the one percent, maybe it's just one piece, there's just one piece in there, it's not an M M, it's a piece of dog feces that I dipped in

2:33:17 chocolate. Are you going to take a giant handful and eat it? Now, I said it's a somewhat crass example, but it gets the point across. In this case, it's even more important. Yes, eating the bag full of MMs would be deeply unwise and possibly endanger your health. These EO practices endanger your soul. There will be men, will be men, who spend eternity in hell because they looked too deeply into what the EO teach. On the other side, there will be those in EO churches who will spend eternity in paradise. I will be glad to meet them there, because they did not look into what their churches teach, because all they did was listen to scripture, and they believed in Jesus. And that is in fact sufficient, and so there are those in

2:34:12 these wicked apostate churches, who will none the less, who will nevertheless be saved. But that does not mean that you should join them. You do not join a wicked body and hope for the best. I'm not saying, as we have been very clear to explain in previous episodes, I am not saying that if your church is not 100% entirely perfect, that you must leave and find a new church, because if you keep doing that you will never find a church. There is no such thing. There are no perfect churches because they are all composed of, run by, taught by, led by, fallen men. In some cases, even worse, fallen women. Not in the composed by sense, but the other ones. Women are not supposed to be in positions of leadership, as we

2:34:59 have clearly detailed elsewhere. Churches are always going to have these problems because in this life we will never be perfect, despite what again the EO teach about becoming sinless in this life. You will be a sinner until the day you die. The good news is that Christ already paid that price, gave you faith, and so it will not be counted against you at the judgment, because you will be able to point to Christ, say He died in my place. And so you get declared righteous on his behalf. That is the good news. And so I am not saying to leave your church because your church is imperfect. Because your church is imperfect. I can say that categorically, regardless of which church you attend, if you attend the best Lutheran church that has ever existed, and I'm

2:35:49 saying that because of course I'm a Lutheran, I believe in Lutheran doctrine or I wouldn't be a Lutheran, if you attend the best Lutheran church that has ever existed in the history of Lutheranism in the history of the Christian church. It still won't be perfect. One of the best churches to exist in all of human history, obviously had to be the one led by Adam. And yet one of his parishioners killed the other in cold blood. His brother no less. There will always be imperfections in this life. The standard is not perfection. What we are saying with regard to the EO is not that this is a matter of heterodoxy or a matter even of just heresy. And yes, I recognize perhaps the irony of mitigating or minimizing

2:36:43 the term heresy there, but in relation to what is actually at stake, it makes sense. What we are saying here is that what the EO teach is actively wicked, actively endangers your soul. You have the very, very real chance, the very real possibility, of becoming demon possessed if you engage in the practices that they say are necessary to your salvation. Because that is essentially what they teach about Hesachastic prayer. Now some of them will say that oh well it's not necessary it's just the monks that engage in that. I won't tell you to read the writings because I think it will probably harm your soul. It is not helpful to read these things. These things are wicked, and I'm not telling you that just because

2:37:26 oh I don't want you to read it because there's secret knowledge in here. There's no secret knowledge. Again, Christianity is not a mystery religion. Read the scriptures, it is all in there. Compare what you know about them to what you see in Scripture. If you engage in these practices, you will put your soul at risk, you will put the souls of all those entrusted to your care at risk. Then quite frankly it will probably call down the judgment of God on the nation that tolerates this evil. We shouldn't think that God is idle, that He doesn't pay any attention to what it is we're doing. When we tolerate evil, there are real consequences. Look at what happened to Old Testament Israel. These are the sorts of things that if we had godly princes,

2:38:11 they would address, because that is their task, that is their duty, to make sure that this sort of wickedness does not spring up in their lands, and therefore pollute them, and destroy the souls of all those entrusted to their care. And so I hope that anyone who has listened to this episode, particularly if you made it all the way to the end of the episode, is actually not as long as I thought it might be I hope that you can see that Eastern Orthodoxy, so-called, is certainly Eastern, certainly not orthodox, and most certainly not Christian.