The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Why Young Men Are Flocking To Eastern Orthodoxy

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00:00:30.000 Despite Protestants' many attempts, little has stemmed the tide of young Western men crossing

00:00:35.500 over to Eastern Orthodoxy. It would seem that there's a deeper underlying reason for Eastern 0.93

00:00:41.560 Orthodoxy's appeal than merely doctrine. This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors,

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00:01:08.500 Today, we'll be joined by Pastor Jay Chase Davis to discuss what is driving men to the

00:01:15.000 East and why our apologetics against it aren't working.

00:01:19.820 Tune in now.

00:01:25.440 all right we are back ga we are good afternoon good afternoon i am joined by wesley todd and

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00:05:19.940 RightResponseMinistries, patreon.com forward slash RightResponseMinistries. So here we go,

00:05:25.440 ready for the episode, EO, Eastern Orthodoxy. We're going to talk about Eastern Orthodoxy,

00:05:32.240 which we've done before, but we want to try to do it from a little bit of a different angle.

00:05:36.840 And let me just say from the outset, if you are an EO bro, and you've got 14 different anonymous

00:05:44.740 accounts on X, and you're clocking in 14 hours and never touching grass, God bless you. You're

00:05:49.920 probably, you know, are single-handedly responsible for getting Donald Trump elected. We've got a lot

00:05:54.340 of things in common. We appreciate you. We're going to try not to beat you up. I know you think

00:05:59.500 we're stupid, and we don't think you're stupid. We just think you're, you know, a little mystic 1.00

00:06:03.700 and gay, you know, but we think intellectually, I would never try to insult you. I'd just insult 1.00

00:06:08.580 you in other ways. You know, you're not distinctly American. You know, I have problems with that. 1.00

00:06:12.500 But we're going to go for this episode a different angle, right? We've done the doctrinal thing,

00:06:17.520 and a lot of Protestants, not just us,

00:06:19.680 but a lot of Protestants have gone from that angle

00:06:22.140 and we'll be the first to admit

00:06:23.260 we want to exercise some humility.

00:06:25.340 I know that sounds kind of ironic

00:06:26.540 because I just said the whole mystic and gay thing. 0.99

00:06:29.000 That was tongue in cheek,

00:06:30.380 a little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit serious.

00:06:32.360 But we really do want to exercise some humility.

00:06:35.320 We don't want to just make this about how we think

00:06:38.600 Eastern Orthodoxy is off on the doctrinal merits,

00:06:42.640 but we want to talk about some of the cultural aspects.

00:06:45.040 We want to talk about even politically,

00:06:46.380 the voting patterns, these kinds of things. And then most importantly, we want to talk about

00:06:51.400 masculinity. That's just a constant theme over the last few years. Praise God, I think providentially

00:06:56.360 so, that the church and Christians, whether they be Protestant or Eastern Orthodox or Roman

00:07:02.340 Catholic, in all three of these major spheres of Christianity, there's been a rise, a massive

00:07:09.840 increase of people realizing the need for a biblical, robust masculinity. We realize that

00:07:16.180 the church across the board is lacking greatly in masculinity, which gives rise to guys like

00:07:23.380 Andrew Tate, who we'll probably talk about a little bit later this week. Michael's preparing

00:07:28.080 an episode for that, that we're going to do our best to address Andrew Tate and all those kinds

00:07:33.500 of things on Wednesday. So I'm going to hand it over to Wes to kick us off a little bit and outline

00:07:37.740 this particular episode. Yeah, absolutely. When the rubber meets the road, it's oftentimes a lot

00:07:44.800 different than you imagine it to be. So imagine that you're training for apologetics, and you go

00:07:48.900 out in the street, and you actually engage with people. And you've read Van Til's Defense of the

00:07:52.940 Faith. You've read Bonson. You've read Rush Dooney, By What Standard. And you have an idea of what

00:07:57.260 apologetics and everything looks like. And then you go out, and you actually interact with people,

00:08:01.980 and you realize once you get there that it never goes the way you intended to go. It never falls

00:08:06.720 along the lines that you thought it would. Every question, denomination, baptism, this, that, or

00:08:12.420 the other, they have their academic, intellectual questions, problems, debates, where pages,

00:08:19.060 thousands upon pages in books have been spilled trying to solve them. But then there's practically

00:08:23.560 just on the ground what actually happens and how people are convinced. It's very easy to think.

00:08:29.560 It's the arguments. It's the syllogisms. It's the logic and the reason that if you take someone and

00:08:34.180 you lay it out for them and you really just answer every objection, then they'll be convinced.

00:08:39.120 And I would say for many years that I thought that. That's how if you have a disagreement with

00:08:42.760 your spouse or like for, well, maybe not your children when they're young, but when they get

00:08:46.060 older, you reason with them and even other adults that you sit down and you hammer it out and you

00:08:50.640 go to the text, you go back and forth. And when you do that, the best argument will win. The

00:08:55.880 problem is that's not just the case. People don't typically arrive at the positions they hold,

00:08:59.700 not always, but the average person, even the average man does not typically arrive at the

00:09:04.160 positions he holds because of that intellectual rigor, but he arrives them because of emotional

00:09:10.000 reasons. He has friends and family that take a certain view. He goes to a church that teaches

00:09:15.000 something like this. He's surrounded by this influence at work. The reason we come to a lot

00:09:19.500 of our decisions, again, are not that hard, intellectually rigorous work of parsing throughout

00:09:24.800 all of it, studying all of that. We do it because, well, you go to a church that's Calvinist.

00:09:30.540 Like, when I first became a Calvinist, why was that?

00:09:33.380 Well, I had a pastor that taught Calvinism from the pulpit, and I was surrounded by Calvinists.

00:09:36.880 Now, on the back end, I have a fully orbed defense of Calvinism, and I fully believe that it's true.

00:09:41.080 But the reason it changed, and it happened to change within a couple years of starting to attend a Reformed church versus an evangelical kind of Arminian church,

00:09:49.660 well, what was it? Did I come into better arguments?

00:09:51.960 Some, sure, but I was also just surrounded by those kinds of people.

00:09:55.620 And so when it comes to the Eastern Church, so many Americans are so sick of modernity.

00:10:01.720 We don't even realize it.

00:10:02.820 It's like being homesick without being able to put your finger on it.

00:10:05.840 We're sick of cheap apartment complexes.

00:10:07.700 We're sick of shallow friends.

00:10:10.000 We're sick of consumeristic cultures and lifestyles.

00:10:13.900 And so man, especially the Western man, he's longing for something deeper.

00:10:17.860 It's been said that he's surrounded by all this beauty that the Western world made,

00:10:21.200 but he lacks the worldview.

00:10:22.560 He lacks everything that made it there in the first place.

00:10:25.220 And so he longs for beauty. He longs for tradition. He longs to be grounded and rooted,

00:10:30.440 but nothing is like that. And so you take a man like that, that has feminism that's infected his 1.00

00:10:35.000 church, modernity everywhere he goes, and he's trying all of this. And then one day he walks in,

00:10:40.260 is invited, brought in somehow to an Eastern church. And he encounters things in a different

00:10:46.140 language. He encounters masculine men. He sees icons and images that are Eastern and strange

00:10:53.300 and foreign to him, and as he's thinking about spirituality, and he's thinking about the church

00:10:57.320 and God and religion and eternal matters, when he steps into an Eastern Orthodox parish, temple,

00:11:03.460 whatever it would be, he steps into something a bit otherworldly. And again, because it's not just,

00:11:10.020 although a good man will parse through and arrive at his conclusions, it's not just the

00:11:13.860 intellectual arguments. It's not Nicaea II and the iconoclasm debate. It's not debates about

00:11:19.680 justification that are first and foremost on his mind. He steps in and there's families and there's

00:11:24.420 children and there's men and there's rigor and there's challenge. And it's a community of excited

00:11:29.480 people. And that has done a lot. The point is there are thousands and thousands of people

00:11:34.280 that their experience, what put the seed in their heart of considering it and even going over,

00:11:39.640 it was not so deep. It was not so complex as all of these arguments and all of the reading,

00:11:44.280 so much as they walked in somewhere. And it didn't look like a warehouse that you put pallets

00:11:49.580 and stage lights on they didn't see a woman on stage and they said i kind of like this right

00:11:54.940 that's so much of it yeah not all of it it wasn't hill song you know like taylor swift

00:11:59.840 you know with um instead of you know singing about travis kelsey you know he just replaced

00:12:05.160 his name with jesus jesus is my boyfriend songs and and then you know a ted talk you know and

00:12:10.880 smoke machines and all that kind of you know people you're right west like people are sick

00:12:14.960 of modernity and they want something that's rooted they want something that feels steady

00:12:20.740 stable everything else is shaking around them so they want security stability tradition something

00:12:27.240 that's old tried true tested and and anything that even has the veneer of that whether the

00:12:34.200 substance is there or not and we can make arguments about whether it is or whether it's not

00:12:38.300 but anything that even has the appearance of tradition old tested tried true is going to do 0.99

00:12:46.780 exceptionally well in our incredibly faking gay culture that we live in today and so i i don't 0.64

00:12:54.000 think that this was always a thing i tweeted out a couple days ago um i said you know i think that 0.89

00:13:00.300 eastern orthodoxy is a fad and you know the eo bros god bless them you know they immediately got

00:13:05.760 in the chat and uh we're like a 2 000 year old fad you know and like what do you mean a fad you

00:13:12.360 know it's uh it's uh eastern orthodoxy was was there you know uh before the foundations in the

00:13:18.560 world were laid you know and like you know make it making those kinds of arguments and i think

00:13:23.080 they misunderstood my point i i don't mean that it's a fad um everywhere i meant here right i

00:13:29.200 in america and and that is that's that's just undebatable that's inarguable um you can look at

00:13:37.020 the statistics and the graphs and the charts and uh eastern orthodoxy has certainly had a a rise

00:13:43.880 in america and it's a very recent uh rise mostly post-covid because a decent amount of them didn't

00:13:49.900 shut down exactly yeah they stayed open you have dudes with beards doing you know low register

00:13:56.300 bass gregorian chance um and they're open and meanwhile you know like uh it's like the meme

00:14:04.540 with you know the the dog that's like ripped with like an 18 pack you know and then like the little

00:14:08.880 quivering chihuahua you know and you've got like the quivering russell moore you know uh wearing

00:14:14.760 his his hobbit mask you know this iconic picture that i can't get out of my head which is terrible

00:14:19.760 you know it's stuck with me every you know for the rest of my life probably but he's like double 0.72

00:14:24.040 mass you know and bragging about getting the vax you know this hobbit got his vaccine you know and

00:14:28.800 teamed up with david french and you know and whatever francis collins you know and they're

00:14:34.380 all doing the bidding of fauci and um and and even the churches that they closed down were you know

00:14:40.420 uh feminist you know run churches to begin with with beth moore preaching on sunday for a 20-minute 0.72

00:14:46.800 ted talk and you know the jesus is my boyfriend worship and smoke machines you know and your 0.66

00:14:51.540 iced latte you know as you're in the the actual sanctuary you know and the lights are turned down

00:14:56.640 low and um and so that's that's church and then even that you know gets shut down for three months

00:15:04.980 six months 18 months in some cases and meanwhile the ortho bros are uh you know they're back at it

00:15:13.240 yeah they're doing church in a masculine way on on the lord's day and then on you know monday

00:15:20.160 morning they're over at you know father so-and-so's uh garage uh putting up iron lifting weights and

00:15:28.680 so you know and and then with a claim whether the claim is true or not is is you know for our

00:15:34.220 purposes today is largely irrelevant but at least still a claim nonetheless of this being very old

00:15:40.520 and so yeah on the on the backdrop of modernity feminism covid blm you know all these kinds of

00:15:50.000 things um eastern orthodoxy went to the moon as a fad not in the world as a whole that wasn't my

00:15:58.680 point in america that was my point in the world so if you have your three large i don't know if

00:16:03.420 you call them denominations but we could say traditions catholicism clocking in 1.5 billion

00:16:08.600 might be up to two at this point protestantism is around 800 to about a billion adherents eastern

00:16:15.120 Orthodoxy, the last I'm aware of the statistics, it's about 200 to 250 million. And that number

00:16:20.520 is declining. So it's kind of rising in the West. But as far as general religion numbers rising,

00:16:25.780 it's going to occupy a smaller share by 2050. And it's tough because I've met many, seen many

00:16:31.720 online who would say, my parish is exploding. We have so many catechumens. We have so many new

00:16:36.040 people, so many families, so many young men. The world is a big place, my friend. You definitely

00:16:41.640 may be experiencing a growth, as in your parish may have grown by 50%, 100%, doubled in size.

00:16:46.960 That absolutely could be true in the micro, in the small picture, COVID in these different

00:16:51.580 bumps.

00:16:52.100 But the integrity of a movie, of a movement, my exhortation would be is how long it lasts.

00:16:57.340 The final part of the story is not written at the beginning or written when the movement

00:17:00.580 is exploding and everybody's going to it.

00:17:02.840 It's what are the outcomes of it?

00:17:04.080 What are the fruit of it?

00:17:05.000 Does it have a meaningful impact that in generations to go, they'll talk about how

00:17:09.260 the orthodox church impacted politics and culture and everything in america and i can't jump to the

00:17:14.320 future and say the answer to that either but just because there's a lot of growth and a lot of

00:17:18.000 excitement and a lot of explosion those things aren't inherently bad it's like the search for

00:17:21.860 tradition and masculinity and family and uh and a spiritual transcendental view those things aren't

00:17:28.420 bad but they have to be judged by the fruit judged by what comes out of the tree right it's interesting

00:17:35.140 what marketing research has shown us

00:17:37.600 about why people make decisions.

00:17:40.080 And to some degree, that's what we're talking about today,

00:17:42.120 not so much the apologetic for

00:17:44.140 or against the doctrines of Eastern Orthodoxy,

00:17:46.180 but rather why it seems that so many

00:17:48.460 are moving in that direction.

00:17:50.240 And marketing research has shown us

00:17:51.800 that most people do much more work

00:17:54.960 after they make a purchase to justify it

00:17:58.140 than they do beforehand.

00:17:59.340 Most people, in their gut,

00:18:01.640 they have something they wanna buy,

00:18:04.060 And then they buy it.

00:18:05.440 And then the intellectual work comes in on their part to go through, oh, this was a great

00:18:10.180 purchase because dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

00:18:12.700 And this is something that I think is really a fascinating thing to think about when it

00:18:17.360 comes to cultural Christianity.

00:18:18.940 Because in a sense, we want America to be a Christian nation, but a particular expression

00:18:25.680 of Christianity even.

00:18:27.160 And as we're thinking about Protestantism in the West, in America, there is a sense

00:18:32.280 where we want when people to think of Christianity, we want them to think, yeah, that's the sort

00:18:37.440 of lifestyle that I'm not saying I'm aware that no one seeks God, right?

00:18:43.200 But as far as what people think about when they think of Protestantism in America, we

00:18:48.540 want them to think of us as those are the fighters, those are the muscular, that's the

00:18:52.980 kind of rigorous tradition that I want to be part of.

00:18:55.500 And there is a sense where whoever wins that image debate or war doesn't necessarily win the doctrinal argument, but it does kind of win the cultural Christianity war.

00:19:11.220 What will be the expression of Christianity in a nation or in a tradition based on what that version of Christianity is doing with itself in the public eye?

00:19:23.460 right yeah and i think you know part of my argument and i understand it's not it's not a

00:19:28.800 doctrinal argument i never really claimed that it was um but that war for who's going to get the

00:19:35.400 visible who's going to win the day for being uh the visible sign of christianity in this nation

00:19:44.060 in these united states of america um it will never be eastern orthodoxy right it won't because it's

00:19:51.740 not america right and it never will be it simply won't uh we are not eastern mystics um america's

00:19:59.460 just that's just not what we are uh catholicism could win i hope it doesn't um i think that

00:20:05.960 america i don't think i know america its tradition its history its roots its origin

00:20:10.980 is protestant overwhelmingly protestant now in terms of which protestant denomination i don't

00:20:17.640 particularly care um i don't i think that you know you can have a pan that's what stephen wolf

00:20:22.220 is always talking about that america is a pan protestant nation and the christian nationalism

00:20:26.920 that he espouses would be a pan protestant project and so in these united states it would be

00:20:32.740 um it would be you know distinctly christian um a little less distinctly protestant but still you

00:20:40.920 would have that protestant feel um and then that's at the federal level and then at the state level

00:20:45.860 you could and you know in theory you could have state churches but you wouldn't have a federal

00:20:50.100 church because you know if at the federal level you had the national church was whatever anglican

00:20:56.260 and then mississippi is you know baptist well that would that would conflict um so you wouldn't

00:21:02.820 have a national church you could theoretically have state churches but they would be within

00:21:06.700 that pan-protestant movement you'd have a lot of presbyterian states you know and baptist churches

00:21:11.780 or Anglican churches or whatever

00:21:13.580 could still operate within those states,

00:21:15.240 but still overall for the state of Mississippi,

00:21:17.620 it would be Baptist, you know,

00:21:18.660 in the state of whatever, it would be Presbyterian,

00:21:21.200 state of whatever would be Anglican,

00:21:22.620 but this larger pan-Protestant, you know,

00:21:24.840 project at the national level.

00:21:26.300 And then even that, the only clear distinction

00:21:29.080 probably on paper, like a preamble to our constitution

00:21:32.780 would be something that even, you know,

00:21:34.640 the EO and the, you know, the RC, Roman Catholic guys

00:21:39.560 could still get behind something

00:21:40.860 that's even broader than protestant uh like adopting a preamble to the constitution that

00:21:46.460 would be like the nicene creed or the apostles creed or something like that that's uh distinctly

00:21:51.200 christian and so um but the point is that that that works um in american context and um and one

00:21:59.960 you know this is one of the things that we could get in maybe get into a little bit later on but

00:22:04.220 um the protestant faith that particular tradition within christianity um i think has the necessary

00:22:13.560 ingredients the working parts uh that makes it far more conducive to being a universal lowercase

00:22:21.020 c catholic faith um whereas uh eastern orthodoxy as like a geographic and physical locale even you

00:22:31.400 know roman catholicism certainly i mean it's roman um it has a locale yeah a specific locale

00:22:37.620 uh and there are certain things that don't translate like within roman catholicism you

00:22:42.480 know the latin right there's a language that's baked into the equation with it whereas within

00:22:47.180 protestantism um you don't have to be english speaking you don't have to be latin speaking

00:22:52.680 you don't like i mean there are certain things that would help when you're trying to read you

00:22:56.960 know older protestants and some of their writings but none of it is um a necessary ingredient and

00:23:03.120 so you could keep you know so protestants argue about you know the substance of worship versus

00:23:07.400 the elements of worship so the substance of worship that would be set and defined by scripture

00:23:12.820 all right so all over the world you would have churches that you know that publicly preach the

00:23:18.120 word pray the word sing the word in spiritual songs and hymns and psalms and publicly see

00:23:24.820 s-e-e-i-n-g seeing the word in the only two images prescribed to us by the lord jesus himself

00:23:31.360 being the lord's supper and baptism so you would have the substance of worship across the board

00:23:37.020 but the elements of worship would shift in terms of where church meets what building you know what

00:23:42.220 the building looks like the architecture the music whether or not there are candles or you

00:23:47.200 know whether or not there's some form of incense you know whether or not the music is loud or if

00:23:53.480 soft or you know instruments only yeah or instruments in addition to singing or singing

00:23:58.280 only acapella um all those different you know uh elements of worship um could be at some level you

00:24:05.000 know within theory an argument from permissibility they could be interchangeable but the substance

00:24:09.560 of worship would remain whereas eastern orthodoxy it's not just doctrine um but but it asserts as

00:24:16.920 substance of worship what we would categorize as elements of worship so that if it's wholly

00:24:22.520 incompatible with the nation with its traditions with its its entire world view its its way of

00:24:27.880 thinking its traditions um well tough luck right so you're western and you care about you know

00:24:34.680 cognitive substance right linear thinking linear thinking right so when you think about meditating

00:24:40.760 when you read you know david you know meditating on thy word day and night for you christian

00:24:46.280 meditation is meditating on god's word that is to fill the mind with god's thoughts with substance

00:24:53.560 namely the substance of scripture itself and beginning to think about the scripture what it

00:24:58.200 means and how it applies so christian meditation for somebody who's western is going to be thinking

00:25:06.600 in those terms i'm going to meditate on god's word day and night that means i'm going to be

00:25:10.120 thinking about thy law his law word filling my mind not emptying the mind but i'm filling the

00:25:16.860 mind feasting the mind on the word of god thinking about its meaning interpretation and how it works

00:25:24.200 its application um eastern orthodoxy that's something that is it's that's again it has a

00:25:31.940 physical locale it's it's limited it's not going to work across the board because when they think

00:25:38.260 of meditation even there are forms of prayer within eastern orthodoxy centered prayer these

00:25:43.220 kinds of things where um it very much is the goal is not to feast the mind on the substance of god's

00:25:48.740 word but rather to uh empty the mind and you might even take a phrase uh if you're learning

00:25:54.620 for the first time like a seven syllable phrase and you would repeat that phrase again and again

00:26:00.820 and again and again um and you could argue the counter would be well we're meditating on that

00:26:05.960 phrase no the point is to say the phrase ad nauseum to where uh the mind doesn't focus in

00:26:11.640 on the phrase but the phrase is used as as a as an anchor to help the mind not get focused on

00:26:17.860 anything so the mind doesn't get distracted by any substantive thought whatsoever the phrase

00:26:23.380 becomes an incantation to to blur the mind out and to just to veg out and from this state of

00:26:30.660 emptiness in Eastern concept, the goal is to experience oneness with God. Whereas in a Western

00:26:37.740 frame, it's not experiencing God so much as it is knowing God. I want to know God. And so those

00:26:46.240 are things that are culturally centered. They're bound in place. They're bound in time. They're

00:26:52.260 bound with particular nations, particular cultures. And it makes it very difficult. Whereas

00:26:57.540 the protestant faith i think is it's more translatable you can have a ugandan church

00:27:03.760 that still maintains some ugandan cultural aspects in the elements of worship while still being

00:27:10.020 uniquely christian and protestant with the substance of worship and you wouldn't expect

00:27:14.720 you know christian protestant churches in uganda to look exactly like a church in kentucky and and

00:27:22.400 and that would be okay um and still be biblically faithful and so in terms of winning out who's you

00:27:29.800 know who's going to win the day um well in terms of the world i don't know we'll we'll see what

00:27:35.040 happens but in terms of these united states protestants built this country and i think by

00:27:42.620 god's grace protestants will keep this country and i do think that um five years of being on the rise

00:27:51.820 because of covid and blm and effeminacy and all these kinds of things i get it i get it makes a

00:27:57.820 lot of sense protestants have been sitting on their hands protestants have um massively and

00:28:03.420 utterly failed and so i get it um but long run not just a five-year timeline but looking at a 50-year

00:28:09.980 timeline um i don't i don't think it's going to happen and if it did happen um if eastern orthodoxy

00:28:18.460 won the day uh then you you can't have both you would lose america yeah so you you eastern

00:28:25.840 orthodoxy can uh if eastern orthodoxy wins america loses uh you have you have no more america you

00:28:34.040 and different nation yeah and that would have to do like not only with the culture and um the

00:28:40.580 aesthetics and all these things but i i absolutely think it would play into immigration we've talked

00:28:45.060 about this before, we won't get into it today, but you look at voting patterns, evangelicals, 0.80

00:28:49.420 despite how fake and gay evangelicals are, I pick on evangelicals more than anybody else because I 0.96

00:28:55.940 am one. So I understand the problems. And yet still, despite how bad evangelicals have been 1.00

00:29:01.780 as of recent, it's not even close in terms of voting against abortion, voting for Republican

00:29:09.340 leaders voting against immigration vote you know all those evangelicals are far more conservative

00:29:18.340 politically conservative than eastern orthodoxy yep so all right let's go to our first commercial

00:29:23.400 break and then we're going to bring chase onto the show all right the clock is running out you

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00:30:18.540 okay all right welcome pastor chase davis thanks for coming on the show can you hear me

00:30:24.780 i believe i believe we've got nathan working on the tech side of things there he is pastor

00:30:33.480 chase davis thanks for coming on the show can you hear me we have video he looks wonderful

00:30:40.880 it looks like he can hear us we don't hear him but we do not hear him not quite

00:30:45.320 can you hear me now we can we've got him perfect great awesome thanks for coming on

00:30:51.780 absolutely glad to be here uh tell our listeners just real quick where do you pastor i'm a pastor

00:30:58.640 of the well church in boulder colorado a church we planted back in 2011 and we are still here

00:31:03.320 great great all right so we're talking about eastern orthodoxy chase uh give you a little

00:31:09.980 bit of context we've talked about this before and we've dealt with it from the doctrinal side of

00:31:14.720 things um and and we're just we're trying to exercise a little bit of humility in this episode

00:31:21.980 and just admitting up front that a lot of protestant apologetics uh are falling flat it's just

00:31:29.180 it's not it's not working um and so we're trying to deal with some of the other things some of the

00:31:34.340 cultural aspects i i had a tweet you know part of why we're talking about is i had a tweet that got

00:31:38.860 you know a decent amount of attention uh last week where i said you know aside from the

00:31:44.820 scriptural arguments that would be first for me i'm a christian first um but second and it's a

00:31:50.300 fairly close second i would not go eastern orthodoxy uh into eastern orthodoxy simply

00:31:56.680 on the basis of the fact that i'm an american what do you think yeah i mean i've made that

00:32:03.080 argument i think it's a compelling argument uh the eastern orthodox tradition is foreign

00:32:09.620 to the american experience it's it's a foreign religion now one could argue that protestant

00:32:18.060 christianity was also foreign at one point to different contexts same thing with roman

00:32:23.040 catholicism was foreign the church was foreign to different contexts at different times but in terms

00:32:28.020 of the American experience, Protestantism is where it's at. And so the idea that, you know,

00:32:34.280 you could go to an Eastern Orthodox Church, and, you know, it's a new thing. I don't know what

00:32:42.280 God's plan for the future is for America, but I don't foresee it being Eastern Orthodoxy. I 1.00

00:32:48.000 foresee it being Protestant Christianity, because it has been, provided, you know, certain things

00:32:54.140 happen. But yeah, even we can go so far as to say the way of doing theology in the Eastern

00:33:02.160 Orthodox tradition cultivates a way of doing theology and intellectual discourse in a way

00:33:11.240 that's so incongruent with the Western tradition that it's almost hard to even have theological 0.94

00:33:16.920 discussions, because when they're talking about growing in Christlikeness, there's a whole other

00:33:22.760 way that they're approaching spirituality and our knowledge of God. Now, they may have some

00:33:28.420 insights to offer us there. We may be able to learn some things and exchange ideas in that way.

00:33:33.260 But I think if we just view it as like a denominational switch, like it's just another

00:33:37.700 option out there, I think that's a grave mistake. Chase, you've, well, earlier we rooted it into

00:33:46.000 masculinity. So young men, they're done with. They're done with being weak. They're done with

00:33:51.560 being talked down to. They're done with feminism. And so they look for masculine options for church, 0.99

00:33:56.460 for life, for all of these different things. And that's bringing them, in some cases, to the

00:34:00.220 Eastern Orthodox Church. You have, I would say, the priestly class in the Eastern Orthodox Church

00:34:05.000 on the whole, on average, beats out the evangelical. One of the reasons I wanted to have you on, 0.93

00:34:10.780 I think you're a pretty masculine guy. You do a lot of outdoorsy stuff. You probably could bench

00:34:15.680 more than me if I had to guess. How do you feel like being in your church there in Boulder,

00:34:20.340 having been there for a while, having interacted with a younger, kind of millennial crowd,

00:34:25.300 how is masculinity, as men are looking for different things, do you see that actually

00:34:29.280 attracting men in, that men come in and they say, man, there's families, the worship, the

00:34:34.200 atmosphere, it's reverent, it's somber, it's strong, it's composed. Do you see that playing

00:34:39.500 an impact, at least where you're ministering specifically? Yeah, I see a lot of young men

00:34:43.720 who are kind of fed up with the kind of lukewarm spirituality that they've been offered, the kind

00:34:49.840 of feminized spirituality they've been offered, where the expectation is you go into a dark room

00:34:53.700 and cry to Jesus and sing songs to your boyfriend in the sky. They're fairly disinterested in that.

00:34:59.340 Men, especially as they reach middle age, they start having kids with their wife,

00:35:06.560 that doesn't really do what it used to do for them when they were a young kid,

00:35:11.620 when they were confused. And so people are naturally attracted to that. And that's what

00:35:16.580 what I've tried to emphasize is what we can learn to this so-called, I mean, so far I haven't seen

00:35:23.680 numbers associated with this draw to Eastern Orthodoxy, this masculine draw. So apparently

00:35:31.320 there is a draw, but we don't know how many it is. But I have seen for my entire Christian life,

00:35:36.380 Christians drawn away from Protestantism into Roman Catholicism, now Eastern Orthodoxy as well.

00:35:42.960 And it comes down to an approach to their own faith, the way they carry the Christian faith, such that they're very disinterested in kind of like bending over backwards to please you, whereas most kind of non-denominational churches, their temperament towards either newcomers or whoever is still rooted in a very much like seeker-sensitive evangelistic mindset.

00:36:07.560 and of course we want more people to know Jesus and we want to share the gospel with them

00:36:12.760 but even the way we welcome people to the church or we try to explain our traditions to other

00:36:17.960 people we view most evangelicals view anything that would turn off a lost person as a problem

00:36:24.860 whereas in eastern orthodoxy and roman catholicism more high church protestant traditions

00:36:29.680 they're very unconcerned this is just the way it is this is how we do things you're welcome to come

00:36:35.300 you're welcome to go there's kind of like this well i view it as kind of a more masculine

00:36:39.540 presence about it where it's less anxious it's more settled and how it presents its tradition

00:36:45.820 it it really doesn't care if you understand what's being taught or why different things

00:36:50.820 are happening during the liturgy there's not like a worship pastor explaining everything

00:36:55.040 to newcomers every week it's like this is just how we do things here and we love you we're glad

00:37:00.020 you're here and um you're welcome to stay and learn more so i think that's the difference there 0.88

00:37:05.320 it's so funny with the seeker sensitive they think i'm going to bend over backwards i'm going

00:37:09.760 to have graders and welcome cards and connect cards i'm going to have a gift basket and i think

00:37:14.420 like that's what people want people want brian suveys talked about this a thick culture like

00:37:19.360 it actually belonged to it like it takes effort you've been there for six months you're still

00:37:23.640 struggling to sing parts in the psalms you know like you've got a workout group and they invited

00:37:27.820 you at 6 a.m. You couldn't walk for the next four days after. People want to belong to something.

00:37:32.460 They don't want to be just catered to. They don't want something that's surface level that they can

00:37:36.460 get the full experience of in two weeks. I watched, I think it's Father Josiah, and I want to say he's

00:37:41.140 out in California. He said, you come to an Orthodox church, you're going to be expected to fast.

00:37:45.320 Man, men love that. Men love to be challenged. That's not like a spiritual church thing.

00:37:49.840 That's just in general. Men want to be long. They want to be challenged. They want to have 1.00

00:37:53.520 something where it's not just, again, two, three weeks in, you've exhausted it. This is as far as

00:37:59.280 we're going to push you. The rest, you can take it from there. Yeah. Yeah. Men need to be challenged

00:38:04.380 with rigor. They need to be, you know, loaded up with certain expectations to grow because men want

00:38:11.740 to grow. All people want to grow, but men especially, they want to see a challenge in

00:38:15.360 front of them. And unfortunately, many evangelical churches today, they put a big emphasis on

00:38:21.260 belonging and inclusivity and all these kinds of things. When in fact, what people need is,

00:38:29.280 yes, the confrontation of their sin and the welcome good news of the gospel,

00:38:34.100 but even more so the spiritual disciplines that come with our faith, being encouraged to walk in

00:38:39.680 righteousness and put sin to death and practical application of how to do that. And you see some

00:38:44.220 churches try to do this with marriage classes and that kind of thing. But in general, the kind of

00:38:49.040 longstanding traditions, whether Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, they have a long, they have

00:38:54.520 a pattern of the man they are trying to shape, and they have practices that they will instantiate

00:39:00.600 and expect of you if you join. And I think most evangelicals, they hear that as either legalism

00:39:06.240 or scary or putting too much on people or all sorts of different words you'll hear.

00:39:11.640 Though one of the worst things that you could say in an evangelical church today

00:39:16.060 is that you have to behave.

00:39:19.080 You have certain duties you need to fulfill.

00:39:22.180 Instead, the big emphasis is on belonging.

00:39:24.960 And yet, our Lord and Savior says that if we love Him, we will obey Him.

00:39:29.840 There is behavior involved.

00:39:31.440 And we're so scared of that legalism boogeyman.

00:39:33.740 And that is out there.

00:39:34.960 The extra-biblical law is out there.

00:39:37.340 But in general, we're very weak on encouraging people to behave in all of life,

00:39:42.160 to follow Jesus Christ.

00:39:43.240 right i looked uh while you were talking there uh chase and there's not a lot of numbers actually

00:39:51.520 about the switch from um protestantism to orthodox churches however one of the deciding

00:39:58.760 things and this isn't that surprising but most of eastern orthodoxy's converts into eastern

00:40:05.240 orthodoxy in the u.s are from protestants so not necessarily not in christians or buddhists or

00:40:11.720 something like that. Like most of the people who are joining Eastern Orthodox churches, they do

00:40:15.840 have the data on that is from Protestant churches. So that's interesting. That makes sense to me

00:40:21.440 because I really think like, that's part of what we're getting at in this episode is I think that

00:40:25.940 the primary appeal is not doctrinal. So I don't think that it's, um, because if it was doctrinal

00:40:32.680 and it was all the claims of, you know, well, we have the church fathers and we have the true

00:40:36.640 tradition, you know, we have this and we have, you know, our councils were correct. And, um, you

00:40:41.140 know that were you know we we had this council but they ignored our council you know that you

00:40:45.620 know blah blah and it's if it was really an argument from history and tradition and authority

00:40:50.580 an argument from authority and it was a persuasive argument a powerful argument a true argument

00:40:55.440 then i think you would have you there'd be no um there would be no respecters of of converts from

00:41:03.680 protestants or from you know roman catholicism you'd have just as many catholics you know you

00:41:09.440 you know, I think in theory that are like, man, they have the superior argument. They have an 0.96

00:41:13.920 argument from tradition and from authority and from this and from that. But you don't have a

00:41:18.460 bunch of RC, you know, Roman Catholics in America, you know, transferring over to Eastern Orthodoxy. 0.73

00:41:25.280 And I think the reason why is, I think it's plain. The reason why is because the chief appeal,

00:41:32.980 the chief attraction i think is it's um it's the intangibles it's not the actual doctrinal

00:41:39.400 arguments or arguments from authority or tradition or history it's the intangible um aesthetics and

00:41:46.680 the feel and the it's it's my church is a ted talk with smoke machines jesus is my boyfriend

00:41:52.780 music and that's on a good day when they're open but they instead transformed our church for 18

00:41:59.840 months into a vaccine clinic you know and shut down for covet um and over here there's a bunch

00:42:08.660 of dudes with beards lifting weights monday through saturday and then singing gregorian

00:42:13.680 chants you know in the lowest register i could possibly imagine and yeah i'm gonna go there but

00:42:19.640 for the roman catholic guys yeah we kind of already got that aesthetically like we we've

00:42:24.780 got mass there yeah we've got the the latin mass we've got the the feel of old tried true tradition

00:42:31.600 rooted uh tested um and uh some of of also that that masculine uh aspect of the the you know even

00:42:41.820 in the aesthetics of the architecture of the vaulted ceilings that speak to the transcendence

00:42:46.680 of god and the natural light instead of just you know the the colored you know stage lights and

00:42:52.480 You know, as the main lights are turned down low and from the music, you know, it's from

00:42:57.880 tradition, it's old.

00:43:00.420 And so, yeah, you don't see a whole bunch of Roman Catholics here in America, across

00:43:05.820 the world.

00:43:06.200 I don't know, but I'm thinking about America.

00:43:08.300 I'm a pastor here in America, but in America, that's from what I've seen on the ground,

00:43:13.440 you don't have a bunch of Roman Catholic guys transferring over to Eastern Orthodoxy.

00:43:16.580 You got a bunch of Protestants.

00:43:18.520 And I think that's, to me, that says something.

00:43:21.760 And that makes a statement about what is the particular appeal.

00:43:25.580 I don't think it's just the superior arguments from tradition.

00:43:29.020 I think it's the superior, and I'm fine calling it the superior aesthetics and the superior feel and culture to the vast majority of evangelical Protestants, which is feminine, light in the loafers, a guy who has a plexiglass pulpit,

00:43:47.980 um you know and he's pacing back and forth between two ferns and he's not going to preach he's just

00:43:54.500 going to share you know like that's gay i think people leave protestant churches not because the 0.95

00:43:59.460 doctrine's bad but because protestant churches are gay i think that's it what do you think chase 0.93

00:44:04.620 yeah i think there's a lot there because it's interesting we live in such a sentimental age 0.88

00:44:10.740 people are drawn more to beauty and aesthetics more than they let on most people like to think

00:44:17.100 they're rational creatures that make decisions because they made a good argument. And most often

00:44:21.320 case, we will do things and then justify our behavior and find rational arguments that justify

00:44:27.140 what we've done. But in the same way, we're drawn to beauty, we're drawn to these aesthetics.

00:44:32.800 And so there's actually a really interesting parallel between why people are drawn to the,

00:44:38.820 if we want to call it the secret sensitive church, where it's heavy base, dark, and it gets the

00:44:44.480 feelings going. You know, there's a similar reason people are drawn then to Eastern Orthodoxy. It's

00:44:49.600 also if there's feelings there, there's something there. One thing I would emphasize, like you

00:44:54.000 talked about with the transcendence, is that most evangelical churches, they're very high on

00:44:58.440 eminence, the eminence of God. God is near to us. God is close to us. God condescended to us in the

00:45:04.660 God-man, Jesus Christ. And so Jesus is your friend. All these are very heavily emphasized.

00:45:10.540 And then when people start wanting to grow and they want to know more about God, they often come up short because they keep hearing the same thing.

00:45:19.420 Well, God's not that different than you.

00:45:21.180 Whereas when we emphasize the transcendence, we should have both.

00:45:23.760 But when we emphasize the transcendence, like the more high church tradition, like the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there's a sense that God is other, that we're encountering something that's different.

00:45:32.800 And I think in an age where people are, they're over a life where I come home, I order Grubhub, I turn on a screen, and that's supposed to be a good life.

00:45:44.860 That's not a meaningful life.

00:45:47.600 They're looking for something more.

00:45:49.540 And if Protestant churches, if that's all they essentially offer is kind of a buffet of spirituality where there's not a lot of accountability, not a lot of seriousness about our traditions and our faith and our practices, they're going to look elsewhere.

00:46:03.880 And when they look elsewhere, they see a tradition that's very much where God is other, where sometimes you may not even speak the same language as the songs we're singing,

00:46:17.740 where these are these icons going around and there's this sense of transcendence there

00:46:22.580 uh that is oftentimes lacking now you could try to manufacture that in the mega church world where

00:46:28.860 you've got manufactured transcendence oh we've got fog machines we've you know i've heard of

00:46:34.060 this uh this crazy idea where at some one church they had like gold dust falling from the ceiling

00:46:39.420 uh because they put it but they put it like in the air vents yeah yeah right yeah but they're

00:46:46.160 They're trying to manufacture this transcendence, and people are looking in our age for that connection.

00:46:53.760 They're looking for something more.

00:46:54.860 They're tired of the materialistic worldview, which offers nothing.

00:46:58.700 It offers no connection to God.

00:47:01.240 It offers no connection for a future vision. 0.96

00:47:05.100 It is just eat, have sex, die, have pleasure, avoid pain.

00:47:11.220 People are like, no, there's got to be more to life than this.

00:47:13.080 And so they're looking for churches that are going to speak to that, that are going to take themselves seriously, that aren't just going to constantly condescend to whoever's most offended or anything like that, but they're going to stand up straight and have a sense of propriety about themselves on Sunday.

00:47:30.180 That's one emphasis I've tried to make in our church about dress, and I'm definitely not legalistic by any means on this matter, but I myself have tried to dress more appropriately, more befitting, as a minister should wear, as a Baptist minister could be on a Sunday, to where there is a sense of this isn't just a campus ministry where we're all best buds.

00:47:50.660 And hear me clearly, this is coming from a guy who, when we planted, I would preach in

00:47:54.940 chacos and wear a V-neck and all this kind of stuff.

00:47:57.040 So this took a long time for me.

00:47:59.520 But I think it's important to emphasize for people that, look, when we gather to worship

00:48:03.200 the living God, this is not just another community club.

00:48:07.020 This is not just another hangout.

00:48:08.460 This is something unique that is happening, that God is doing, and God has accomplished

00:48:12.820 for us. 0.98

00:48:13.980 And unless Protestants are willing to go there and really carry that authority that they've 0.83

00:48:18.560 been invested with by god then yeah we're going to continue to see people explore other traditions 0.88

00:48:24.000 which are very foreign to our experience yeah one of the things that i love about the protestant

00:48:29.360 faith is um and i believe you know i'm protestant so i believe it's the true faith uh but one one

00:48:35.040 of the things that i love is is simplicity and i think it's actually you know um a profound tragedy

00:48:41.520 and and a profound irony as well that um like the protestant faith allows for if you have bread

00:48:49.440 wine water and a bible you can do church you know and two or three people souls and you can do

00:48:59.000 church that'll do um and and yet we've we've added all these elements but we've added all all the

00:49:09.540 elements uh are derived all because i i don't think that it means you you only i don't think

00:49:15.340 my point is the protestant faith is there's there's a divine simplicity there um and and

00:49:21.980 you can do it anywhere okay to use an analogy um i think there's a reason why uh soccer

00:49:29.880 or a football is uh like a global sport uh because all you got to do is put you know like

00:49:39.340 two twigs in the ground you know and have a ball whereas like water polo you know like like

00:49:46.280 uganda is probably not gonna you know be winning any you know competitions in water polo anytime

00:49:51.180 soon you know like because it like it it just it mandates um means of you know you like you have to

00:49:59.680 be able to have access to some of these things like the protestant faith really can thrive

00:50:04.020 everywhere it can thrive in the first world it can thrive in the third world it can thrive in

00:50:08.580 developing worlds it can thrive in in sub-sahara africa or in the west or in the east and you know

00:50:14.660 in all these different places because of its simplicity and it doesn't mean i'm not saying

00:50:18.720 is i i'm a regular principle guy but i i don't i don't take it i try not to be um a nazi about it

00:50:25.980 right you never catch me being a nazi and so um you try not to be a nazi about the regular principle

00:50:30.760 of worship so what i'm saying is i think there are aesthetics that you can add in elements of

00:50:34.820 worship that don't contradict any way or even detract from the substance of worship bread wine

00:50:39.540 water bible scripture um and and so you can have in other words you can have a protestant church

00:50:45.660 that might have you know god forbid put a little bit of thought into to the architecture you know

00:50:51.620 a nice building a steeple is a nice look i think it's i think it says something in the way that it

00:50:57.480 points up towards god but it also draws the focus of the town the town sees the church and in the

00:51:03.060 center of of the public square and that's that's and it has a beacon and that's where i go for help

00:51:08.120 and in times of trouble and need and all these different things so you can do that but you don't

00:51:13.380 have to do that there is a a lowest common denominator that makes it universal but then

00:51:18.600 there's room for aesthetics and to add in a way that doesn't detract from the substance

00:51:22.940 the problem is that we as protestants we have added and we've added in all the absolute most

00:51:31.440 modern feministic uh cheap um um materialistic consumeristic like the we've taken the worst 0.69

00:51:44.420 most we're talking about you know i i tweeted the eo is a fad like so i you know to exercise a little 0.51

00:51:49.780 humility here um protestants in in everything that they've added it has been the most fad like

00:51:56.640 substances you could possibly imagine what has been popular for 15 minutes and they've added

00:52:01.900 that so whether it be laser lights or smoke machine or plexiglass pulpits or you know or 0.76

00:52:08.520 having a woman on stage doing everything she possibly can except for preaching the sermon 1.00

00:52:13.400 unless beth moore's in town you know and then we'll let her do that too you know and all those 0.83

00:52:17.440 so like we've we have added the aesthetics we have um we just added all the wrong ones

00:52:23.460 any any further thought doesn't have to be on that you don't have to have thoughts about what

00:52:28.120 i said but i've actually thought about that too there there is something i would say about eastern

00:52:33.440 when when a young person would be drawn to eastern orthodoxy there's a different kind of simplicity

00:52:38.880 thereafter and the simplicity is that all they have to do is show up and obey the tradition

00:52:45.040 like there's not a lot of like i have to come to an understanding of it myself or i like you could

00:52:52.720 become Eastern, in my mind, again, if you're Eastern Orthodox and listening, this is how I

00:52:56.940 perceive it. If you could join the church, and it's literally, you're just inheriting the tradition,

00:53:02.460 so you don't have to be creative, anything like that. The Protestants, what you highlighted,

00:53:09.300 was good and accurate, and there's a reason where the West and Protestantism has flourished

00:53:15.800 is because it's so simple in terms of its faith and practice and what we believe in our tradition

00:53:20.640 that there's actually an onus put on the individual to live out the Christian life

00:53:27.100 and to live out their tradition in a different way.

00:53:30.760 So it's almost like there's this kind of old adage where the accusation against evangelicals

00:53:35.980 is you have to check your brain at the door when you go to an evangelical church,

00:53:39.440 which is just not true.

00:53:40.680 There's many brilliant evangelicals.

00:53:42.280 I would say the same could be said of someone who wants to join the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

00:53:47.240 You really don't have to understand everything.

00:53:50.000 You just have to like submit to tradition. And in that way, I think it's meeting a certain felt need that people have today, where they're having to make decisions left and right. And they're experiencing what some call decision fatigue, where they're, you know, you look at, you move to a new city, and you have to pick an evangelical church, and you've got non-denominus, non-denominat, all this kind of stuff.

00:54:12.860 And not only that, not only for your spiritual life, but food and everything is so easily accessible.

00:54:18.840 And I think with the simplicity offered in embracing a tradition in which you really don't have, there's not a lot of decisions to make.

00:54:26.500 There's not a lot of initiative to take.

00:54:28.600 It's just kind of like, well, this is what we do.

00:54:31.300 There's something freeing, and that's not necessarily good, but there can be something freeing to somebody who's looking for that transcendent experience with God because they're exhausted by modern life. 0.99

00:54:42.860 they're exhausted by kind of this global homo uh kind of like materialistic worldview of 0.99

00:54:49.320 commodification of everything commercialization of everything and you'll see the same thing 0.99

00:54:53.260 happen in protestant churches where spirituality becomes not this is how we do things here this is

00:54:58.140 our tradition it's we have a buffet of 50 ministry options depending on whatever your felt need is

00:55:03.560 we just want you to belong here which one do you want oh we don't have one for you well let's start

00:55:08.220 of mountain biking ministry just for you. You know, you can feel special here. Whereas in Eastern

00:55:13.380 Orthodox Church, you don't get a lot of that. And so it is kind of a, it's a different kind of

00:55:17.360 simplicity. While it's very complicated, like we've already highlighted, if you go to an Eastern

00:55:21.240 Orthodox worship service, incredibly complicated stuff. At the same time, it can be freeing for

00:55:26.680 somebody who is looking for that kind of like, man, I'm just tired. I'm tired of trying to make

00:55:31.420 a bunch of decisions right yeah if we go ahead west you go first and then i'll i have a couple

00:55:38.160 questions mine is the sum up question of what should protestant churches practically do to kind

00:55:43.060 of capture back some of that so why don't you go ahead and then we'll maybe wrap up for that

00:55:46.900 yeah let's do that in the third segment chase do you have time we're going to go to a commercial

00:55:51.000 break here in about five minutes and then come back and we'd love to keep you for another 20 or

00:55:56.180 so to maybe take some questions from our audience okay um so my question is just briefly because

00:56:01.960 we've done this in the past this is not the point of this episode but i'd love to hear from you um

00:56:07.080 just for a moment on doctrine are there any um what would be the doctrinal red flags

00:56:12.820 what would be the things that you're like oh that's doctrinally i don't like that one

00:56:18.340 yeah i i kind of looked into it a little bit in seminary i took some classes that dealt with

00:56:24.160 Eastern Orthodoxy, but since I spoke about it on my own podcast and we're speaking about it today,

00:56:28.300 I've looked into it a little bit more deeply on the stuff I already knew. And I think doctrinally,

00:56:32.840 my big thing is like the way it shapes you as a human, the way it shapes you and treats you as

00:56:37.960 a person is very different than Protestantism. And even the apprehension of God, how we understand

00:56:44.620 who God to be. For example, in salvation, you know, in the Protestant tradition, we have faith

00:56:49.840 alone. You put your faith in Jesus Christ, you repent of your sins, you become a new creation.

00:56:54.160 and you become a Christian. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it's going to be in the

00:56:58.580 church. That's where you find salvation. We can find this in the Protestant tradition,

00:57:04.420 but not in the same way. And that's the danger doctrinally with a lot of this,

00:57:07.960 is we're using similar words, but we're saying very different things. So you'll hear John Calvin

00:57:13.080 and others in the Protestant tradition talking about the church being the mother. There's no

00:57:17.160 salvation outside the church, but they mean it in a different way than the Eastern Orthodox,

00:57:21.180 where truly, like, they don't, it's not that they don't care about justification by faith,

00:57:27.740 they don't even, like, that's not even on their radar as far as a doctrinal concern,

00:57:32.520 if that makes sense, like, just because of the way their doctrine and theology has developed

00:57:36.760 over time. So for a Protestant who's clear on Christ's penal substitutionary death and

00:57:44.180 justification in Christ, to then switch to Eastern Orthodoxy, that's like, it's a different

00:57:51.020 rule book. It's a different language completely theologically. We have more in common with Roman

00:57:57.760 Catholics, you might have already highlighted this, than Eastern Orthodox in terms of our

00:58:01.840 Western tradition. Of course, one of the great theological controversies was about the filioque

00:58:09.160 or filioque um and and and you'll see in their own tradition there there is some kind of back

00:58:14.300 and forth on what it meant was it just semantics you know was it a big issue um but i think one of

00:58:20.840 the things that that really strikes me in eastern orthodoxy is the iconography the kind of veneration

00:58:29.360 of they don't as far as they say they don't worship these icons even though to protestants

00:58:34.060 we would say, that's what it seems like to me, they venerate these icons. But even like how

00:58:40.660 they understand hell, for example, whereas Protestants have a tradition of thinking of

00:58:45.780 heaven and hell as realms and even places, hell in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and heaven in

00:58:51.720 the Eastern Orthodox tradition isn't necessarily a realm or a place. Hell is an absence of God's

00:58:56.440 grace, and it's a state of being almost. And it gets into kind of the experiential aspect

00:59:02.360 of Eastern Orthodox and kind of the mystical components. And that cultivates humans that

00:59:09.180 are trained to perceive the world in a way that's just utterly different. And so there are just

00:59:15.180 really, on all sorts of doctrinal matters, such severe differences. Not that they, I'm not

00:59:22.700 necessarily claiming that those who are Eastern Orthodox are outside the faith, but they're just

00:59:27.480 very different, and I think it's very, you know, we should be very cautious about assuming

00:59:33.400 too charitably that we're saying the same thing when we're not actually saying the same thing.

00:59:38.780 You know, they have an experience of God where theosis is a big deal, and becoming like God is

00:59:43.500 a big deal, but even when we say that, we're meaning becoming more Christ-like, more human,

00:59:48.340 in a sense. We should live into our full humanity, and they mean something very different than that.

00:59:53.320 And so those are some of the doctrinal things that I've noticed, that there's just a totally different language that they're using.

00:59:59.240 Right. Penal substitutionary atonement is also a big one.

01:00:02.820 So I do think that Protestants, we would do well to add as a supplement, not as a substitute, so not to replace, but to add to penal substitution. 0.93

01:00:13.900 I believe penal substitutionary atonement, the idea that Christ, our sin, was imputed to him.

01:00:21.140 He who knew no sin became sin on our account so that we might be reconciled to God.

01:00:25.400 So he literally died.

01:00:27.140 And it's not only that, he also lived.

01:00:28.780 I believe like John Owen, the purity, you know, it's the act of obedience of Christ

01:00:32.920 in addition to the passive obedience of Christ.

01:00:35.680 So he lived in our place as our substitute, fulfilling all righteousness.

01:00:40.260 And most importantly, he died in our place.

01:00:43.880 Our sin imputed to him so that his righteousness might be imputed to us by faith.

01:00:50.520 and so um that i i would go so far as to say that penal substitutionary atonement is um it is the

01:00:59.800 gospel it is the gospel and justification by faith is a linchpin or the heart of the gospel

01:01:05.940 that said though i think you can hold to that as protestant and you would do well i think that as

01:01:11.720 protestants we can learn this so not as a replacement not as a substitute but a supplement

01:01:17.480 In addition, I think we can look at some other atonement models as well.

01:01:23.780 So penal substitutionary atonement, yes and amen a thousand times.

01:01:26.920 In addition to that, Christus Victor, ransom atonement.

01:01:30.360 There are other modes of the atonements that I think are all true.

01:01:34.940 I don't think it's a, you can only pick one and therefore the others are false.

01:01:39.740 I think there's a triage there of saying, you know, one is perhaps more important than

01:01:45.780 the others or more integral to the gospel and justification than the others but um but that

01:01:51.960 doesn't mean that um that only one can be true and the others are contradictory christus victor

01:01:57.500 does not on its face it depends on you know what exact you know espousing of christus christus

01:02:04.240 victor you might particularly get into but on its face christus victor does not contradict with

01:02:08.940 penal substitutionary atonement you can hold both of them that in the cross and the life death and

01:02:13.740 burial and resurrection particularly of jesus christ uh that he actually uh he emerged victorious

01:02:19.980 that he conquered uh spiritual powers that were living in a whole new world that he held uh

01:02:25.420 spirits to public shame that that there's uh that something changed in in this victorious

01:02:31.260 christ you can hold to those elements and still hold to penal substitutionary atonement because

01:02:36.380 it's addressing two different doctrinal issues um but in my reading um from eastern orthodoxy

01:02:44.780 their perspective penal substitutionary atonement is kind of like what you were saying with

01:02:48.760 justification by faith chase but uh penal substitutionary atonement is no it's just

01:02:53.640 not talked about it's just silent um it's it's only christus victor um and so that and i the

01:03:00.700 idea even of jesus died on the cross for sin he and and how he did that particularly he took my

01:03:09.040 sin and on the cross took the wrath of god that was merited by my sin that i deserved and he took

01:03:16.900 it for me and so that the the wrath of god this cup of the white hot wrath of god was poured out

01:03:23.340 on christ to the point of every drop to where it was empty so there is no wrath that remains

01:03:29.560 towards god's elect because jesus drank that cup in full um that's that doctrine not just

01:03:37.860 justification by faith but penal substitutionary atonement that that model of the atonement

01:03:42.820 seems to be virtually absent from eastern orthodoxy yeah so i yeah all right we should

01:03:50.220 stop with a doctrine we can come back let's take some questions from the chat you guys do me a

01:03:54.420 favor if you're listening live go ahead and type in questions now you guys got lots of you're

01:03:58.860 interacting with each other. That's awesome. But if you write something in and add a question mark,

01:04:04.060 put it in question form so we know it's for us, then we will come back and we'll address it right

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01:05:47.980 all right we are back okay do we still have pastor chase with us we go great ladies here okay uh let's

01:05:57.340 get some questions from the chat what do we got let's start with a super chat first i saw that

01:06:01.800 the other paul is a good dude we know him um super chat 20 what a baller here we go

01:06:08.160 here in the sydney anglican diocese a reform movement over the past uh 40 years has gutted

01:06:17.020 our tradition to be gospel-centered and bridge with the culture. The 2024 Synod revealed that

01:06:26.120 attendance is at record lows. That's not a question. He just wants it to get out there.

01:06:30.500 There you go. We did a whole episode on different churches, be it in the Anglican tradition or

01:06:34.620 others, as they compromised on women pastors, for instance. They almost always marked the start of

01:06:40.760 the decline. The second you embrace them, you could count on it. You're going to see your

01:06:44.540 attendance drop. You're going to see buildings lost. That is the pattern. Right. Okay, another

01:06:49.840 question. There's a question. Chase, we talked a little bit about America. We are a Protestant

01:06:54.820 nation. By God's grace, we will always be so. But Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, you say we

01:07:00.700 achieve Christian nationalism, and in our conception of ourselves, we are pan-Protestant.

01:07:05.280 Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox. What happens to those churches? They wouldn't enjoy, they wouldn't

01:07:09.660 be state churches, they wouldn't certainly be federal churches, but they would still be what

01:07:14.380 we would call christian churches here in the united states underneath a protestant milieu

01:07:20.240 what do you make of that yeah so if we have uh you know emperor uh baron come to power and call

01:07:27.700 a council and uh you know we have many different protestants come to this council and we argue for

01:07:34.220 what are we going to do with different uh things like this i think there's a way to have carve

01:07:39.940 vouts for whether eastern orthodox or roman catholicism uh there's no doubt that roman

01:07:45.860 catholicism in the country is a very powerful movement has been especially politically for a

01:07:50.120 long time and i think living in kind of a utopic uh lacking prudence vision of you know making

01:07:58.520 nations christian and understanding how they're how they're going to become christian and not

01:08:02.940 really appreciating like hey like there's prudence involved with what people are able to bear and

01:08:08.200 what people are currently citizens and have been citizens for a long time um there's certain

01:08:13.360 prudential measures that should be put in place and so there there can be opportunities for carve

01:08:17.400 outs there can be opportunities for that there can be opportunities for how we involve them

01:08:21.360 i think you know like for example at the inauguration coming up uh it was released

01:08:27.060 that like an imam is going to be speaking um at the inauguration which is very disappointing to

01:08:32.360 Uh, we don't want that. Um, and yet that is, that is reflective of kind of the general, uh, kind of conservative movement today that such a thing would happen. And so there would be ways that there would be exclusion from like public celebration of, of certain, uh, you know, faith, all that kind of stuff.

01:08:52.980 But there could be opportunities for partnership, have conciliatory relationships, all that kind of thing.

01:08:59.620 So we need not think of it too rigidly, but we can think of it creatively and with a bunch of prudence as well.

01:09:07.660 Yeah, that's good.

01:09:09.400 This is a super chat from Bruce Wilkie.

01:09:11.960 Is that okay?

01:09:13.080 Yep.

01:09:13.540 Close to Bruce Willis, not quite.

01:09:15.620 Bruce said, is EO gay because of Greece?

01:09:18.720 Greece the country. 0.96

01:09:19.700 Keep it up, dudes.

01:09:20.360 which greece just an orthodox country by and large like in its composition on paper and they 0.99

01:09:26.760 approved homosexual marriage at least the representatives of the people did by a good 0.93

01:09:30.780 margin about a year and a half ago at this point so you know it's gay and it's coming from greece

01:09:35.520 i regret i regret to inform you yeah it's uh sad but not shocking all right the man in charge asks

01:09:41.900 um how do you help someone thinking of going eastern orthodox so maybe he's been watching

01:09:49.420 in the YouTube videos, maybe has attended an Eastern Orthodox service, really inclined

01:09:54.320 in that direction, how do you help someone who's thinking of going in that direction?

01:09:58.780 What would you say, Chase?

01:10:01.400 Yeah, I would want to meet with them, especially if they're a member of my church, particularly.

01:10:06.840 But just generally, if they were a Protestant Christian, Evangelical Christian, was thinking

01:10:10.980 of doing that, I would want to have a lot of discussions around why, you know, what

01:10:15.800 What is the draw? You know, a question I always ask when I'm pastoring is, what do you want? What are you after? Jesus asks this question frequently to people, and you can hear them out, you know, you know, and then you can talk about, right, so how do you perceive Eastern Orthodoxy to be meeting that for you?

01:10:35.600 And why have you prioritized, like, getting that need met as the most important thing for you and your current, either current family or future family? Why do you view that as the most important thing? And then, of course, eventually, I would want to get into the doctrinal distinctions and divisions and help that person go like, hey, like, these are clear differences.

01:10:58.060 and so for me when I approach situations like this I want to meet with them hopefully in person

01:11:05.240 and then just talk through the issues it's not complicated but I would be emphasizing look part

01:11:11.900 of the reason I am Protestant is because of my parents and my grandparents that came before me

01:11:16.140 who were also Protestant and so in keeping the Protestant tradition going it's not just because

01:11:22.320 I believe it's true which I do the more I study it the more I love it the more I love God

01:11:25.680 And it's also because it's a way of honoring my forefathers who came before me.

01:11:30.760 And so what would that be saying to others?

01:11:32.760 And so one of the things you encounter in Eastern Orthodoxy, at least from what I understand,

01:11:38.100 the tradition, and the tradition is big in Eastern Orthodoxy.

01:11:41.620 The tradition says that people outside of Eastern Orthodoxy are not Christian.

01:11:45.120 And so what would you be saying by switching to Eastern Orthodoxy of other brothers of me?

01:11:49.520 What would you be saying of other people?

01:11:51.080 these are things you would want to take into account

01:11:53.280 especially as someone

01:11:55.320 might be drawn into that tradition

01:11:56.880 Good point

01:11:58.920 Do we have that quote from Calvin?

01:12:02.140 Michael has it

01:12:02.940 I can answer this quick one, it's just on Gavin Ortlund

01:12:05.120 while he pulls it up, someone asked the question

01:12:07.260 what are your thoughts about Gavin Ortlund

01:12:09.360 consistently pushing against the EO

01:12:11.120 trend by exposing their doctrine

01:12:12.740 and credit where credit is due, Gavin Ortlund

01:12:15.100 does a really good job, he's read a lot

01:12:17.400 of the early church fathers

01:12:18.440 and his apologetic videos

01:12:20.440 that's the best thing that gavin does that's the thing is he needs to stay out of climate change

01:12:24.040 and do eo apologize or young earth or global floods or anything else don't touch any of that

01:12:29.700 but um his stuff on the eo is good yeah yeah you'll probably hear some of his influences

01:12:34.500 visible invisible church to be talking about him because he's talked a lot about a lot about it

01:12:39.280 there's one more he knocked loose here i'll do this one michael pull up the calvin quote because

01:12:44.640 what chase said is important we need to get back to that and wes actually has a graph

01:12:47.640 his uh his chart game is getting stronger and stronger by the day um and so we we got a chart

01:12:54.040 that west made um and so we'll get to that here in just a moment but one more knocked loose he

01:12:58.300 says can we say that those and because it's on the same topic those in rc roman catholicism and

01:13:03.800 eastern orthodoxy are off or at least often uh true christians since their churches are in line

01:13:10.220 with the ancient creeds even if their gospels are whacked i'm going to say yes that is my answer

01:13:16.740 um i you know i've said this for years even even back you know after watching you know american

01:13:23.340 gospel and those kinds of things that's that's really what popularized uh it became uh kind of

01:13:28.500 like um well it just became across the board that the um the answer is you know roman catholicism

01:13:34.840 is um is you know you're going to hell basically uh i think american you know that obviously that

01:13:41.220 had been thought before american gospel but that's where it got into like the layman's

01:13:44.980 vocabulary in my assessment, at least within the Reformed camp. But even back then, I was fond of

01:13:52.720 saying, I think that bad Catholics make for good Christians. And by God's grace, most Catholics 1.00

01:14:00.540 are bad Catholics, like the vast majority, like 90%. I think most Catholics are not like, 0.96

01:14:06.500 yeah, I just got done reading Trent, the Council of Trent, anathematizing the free gospel of grace 0.75

01:14:14.520 and i love it i love that base that's that's what that's what keeps me roman catholic is i love

01:14:20.540 anathematizing the gospel of free grace that's just you know or vatican you know vatican two

01:14:25.380 you know that's that for me that was that's what won me over to uh catholicism um that's just not

01:14:31.960 the case most most roman catholics at least here in america um are yeah i think that most of them

01:14:39.440 are christian and i would be willing to to bet the farm that uh that well over half of them are

01:14:45.380 regenerate um catholicism i think you know if we're talking about with well with a lot of things

01:14:50.700 it's kind of like america like if we talk at a political level a national level um i think a lot

01:14:55.520 of america's civil leaders are traitors and should hang with a fair trial first of course but then 0.97

01:15:03.240 should hang the american people i think there's a lot of wonderful american people uh same with 1.00

01:15:08.940 roman catholicism uh if we're talking about uh catholics and we're talking about the pope and 0.99

01:15:13.780 cardinals and bishops and and priests i'm i'm a little bit i'm going to be i'm going to be bearish

01:15:20.180 on roman catholicism um the priest i'd be a little bit more sympathetic i bet you there's some good

01:15:25.320 priests um but the higher up you get you know the more in the the leadership class i think there's

01:15:31.640 more corruption guys who they actually have done the the reading they they know trent and they like

01:15:36.720 it um but with the parishioners you know like the sweet old lady who's been catholic and going to

01:15:44.500 catholic mass her whole life you know and loves jesus and she loves some mary too maybe a little

01:15:50.020 bit more than i'm comfortable with you know but but but she knows at the end of the day if you

01:15:54.400 said grandma how will we say jesus died for my sin amen and and how how do you you know did jesus

01:16:02.080 died for everyone? Is everybody going to go to heaven? No, you have to trust him. You have to

01:16:07.360 believe it. I've talked to Catholics. That's what the average Catholic says. So bad Catholics make

01:16:14.100 for good Christians. And by God's grace, most Catholics are bad Catholics. Amen. Love it. 1.00

01:16:20.440 And so all that being said, I have the same kind of perspective for Eastern Orthodoxy. I think most

01:16:25.540 of the EO bros, especially the more recent, you know, converts, they're like, it's not because

01:16:31.000 they they love um you know the uh centered prayer and emptying the mind and and because they uh

01:16:37.860 they hate penal substitutionary atonement or this or that no it's because they wanted because 0.83

01:16:43.660 protestants and evangelicals followed russell moore got super gay and the eo you know priest

01:16:50.960 down the road um had a beard and worked out and and and there were some masculine and old

01:16:59.220 tried and true traditional aesthetics and that that was it and so they they they went you know

01:17:05.640 and exactly what chase said and michael i think you said it before chase came on is you you you

01:17:10.980 make a purchase and then it's afterwards not before but afterwards then you do the homework

01:17:16.380 to try to justify the purchase you've already made but but the the original decision is is it

01:17:21.020 most of the time is a gut instinct i want something i want something i'm feeling something

01:17:26.220 is lacking. I perceive some kind of lack, some kind of need, some kind of desire. And so, boom,

01:17:32.500 I'm pulling the trigger. And then afterwards, when I'm asked about it again and again and again,

01:17:36.780 why'd you do that? Why'd you make that decision? Then I'm scrambling to do the reading and to have

01:17:42.780 some kind of justifiable explanation for what I did. But it really wasn't on the front. The front

01:17:48.260 end was my church closed because of COVID. And even when it was open, my pastor, every time I

01:17:54.300 shook his hand, I felt like I might, his arm might be ripped off. I mean, it was the limpest hand I've

01:17:59.780 ever shaken in my life. And this dude kept his church open and he can bench 300 pounds. That's

01:18:05.760 why. That is the reason. They're not going to tell you that, but that was the initial reason.

01:18:10.020 And then the last six months after making the decision for that reason, they tried to come up

01:18:14.160 with other reasons that sound a little bit more fleshed out. But here's the funny thing is,

01:18:19.000 I actually think that first reason is the best one. I don't think you need to justify it any

01:18:22.840 more than that. That is a great reason. And so likewise, I'm going to give you my gut instinct

01:18:27.680 reason that I think eventually, this is my prediction, will bring Americans back to

01:18:32.080 Protestantism. And here's my reason. Because this is America, gosh darn it. We are not Eastern 0.78

01:18:37.920 mystics. We are not monks. We don't do centered prayer and Eastern meditation. We are Americans.

01:18:45.620 we are western we think and jesus paid for sin that's it that'll bring them all back mark mark

01:18:54.300 it out mark my words give it 20 years tops eastern orthodoxy hath no power in these united states

01:19:01.440 so chase any thoughts yeah that was great uh i would add to kind of what you said i you know i

01:19:09.400 i've been curious because i i do have catholic friends uh good relationship with them and i i'm

01:19:15.300 I'm kind of split, like you're kind of handing out, with the actual papal bulls and all this

01:19:21.600 kind of stuff, the magisterium, and yet the average Catholic. There is in our American

01:19:27.180 tradition, and I'm just curious about it, a deep-seated suspicion of Catholics. I don't

01:19:35.000 necessarily want to cultivate that. I don't know if that would be healthy for our body politic or

01:19:40.020 even us relationally. At the same time, I think there's legitimate reasons people were a little

01:19:46.540 bit more, you know, I don't know that they were always wrong to be concerned about Catholic

01:19:52.580 influence in America. I think there's something to that. We've seen the Catholics have incredible,

01:20:00.080 wield incredible influence politically, especially in conservatism. And so I do think that we need

01:20:05.980 to be charitable, like I think you're rightly highlighting in terms of how we understand how

01:20:10.960 people are saved. At the same time, I think we also need to be cautious about how we understand

01:20:18.460 the universal authority of the Pope and how that works out. And I mean, the proof is in Joe Biden

01:20:25.080 being a Catholic. And so there needs to be, like you highlighted, a bit of both interpersonally

01:20:32.420 and working together on issues like ending abortion,

01:20:35.860 all that kind of stuff, as much as we can.

01:20:37.680 At the same time, there needs to be a lack of willingness

01:20:41.720 to go some places because we are so different.

01:20:45.840 We are, like you highlighted, we're a Protestant nation historically,

01:20:48.840 and by God's grace, we will be again.

01:20:50.500 And so that's an important thing that I think I would add to that.

01:20:54.560 Yeah.

01:20:55.720 On this question, Calvin in the Institutes in Book 4, Chapter 2,

01:21:01.260 really an interesting, actually, if you read 1 and 2, chapters 1 and 2 of Book 4, he is just

01:21:07.820 really going back and forth to try and resolve this question of what do we do about the fact

01:21:12.660 that we have split off from the Catholic Church, they have labeled us the schismatics and the

01:21:17.720 heretics and the people who have driven the wedge, and then he's wondering, well, is there anything

01:21:23.240 to the Roman Church, the papists, as he called them? And he, I don't know, his writing is

01:21:29.660 conflicted. But one of the things he lands on is the fact that in the Old Testament, when Israel

01:21:34.580 was apostatizing over and over again—I mean, you open a chapter of the Bible and Israel's

01:21:38.600 apostatizing—he says, well, nevertheless, at that time, they remained truly Israel, right?

01:21:45.960 Like when the prophets of all were sacrificing, that was still actually Israel, though very

01:21:51.940 corrupted and engaged in heinous false worship. And so he says in the same way, it is possible 0.59

01:21:58.660 for the people of God now to have been terribly corrupted.

01:22:05.060 And I mean, they wrote of the Pope as the Antichrist. 0.93

01:22:09.520 To them, the Pope was the most evil human 0.94

01:22:13.280 that you could imagine. 0.92

01:22:13.880 These are the reformers.

01:22:15.220 Yeah, yeah.

01:22:15.920 Nevertheless, he had this line where he said,

01:22:20.000 even the Antichrist is not strong enough

01:22:22.880 to wrestle the church out of Christ's grasp.

01:22:26.420 And then he said, he kind of concludes,

01:22:28.660 section 12 by saying this. He says, hence then, it is obvious that we do not all deny that churches,

01:22:35.260 that those churches, remain under his tyranny. Churches, however, which by sacrilegious impiety

01:22:41.260 he has profaned, by cruel domination he has oppressed, by evil and deadly doctrines like

01:22:46.780 poisoned potions, has corrupted and has almost slain. Churches where Christ lies half-buried,

01:22:52.460 the gospel is suppressed, piety is put to flight, and the worship of God almost abolished.

01:22:57.640 where, in short, all things are in such disorder as to present the appearance of Babylon rather

01:23:03.860 than the holy city of God.

01:23:05.760 In one word, I call them churches, inasmuch as the Lord there wondrously preserves some

01:23:11.260 remains of his people, though miserably torn and scattered, and inasmuch as some symbols

01:23:16.660 of the church still remain, symbols especially whose efficacy neither the craft of the devil

01:23:22.760 nor human depravity can destroy.

01:23:25.100 But, on the other hand, those marks to which we ought especially to have respect for this

01:23:31.800 distinction are effaced.

01:23:33.080 In other words, where the marks of a true church are gone, I say that the whole body,

01:23:38.200 as well as every single assembly, want or lack the form of a legitimate church.

01:23:43.240 And he really actually draws a fascinating distinction that maybe shows that he was

01:23:49.280 congregational uh he because he says it's possible that the overarching system and the papacy and and

01:23:56.960 the antichrist is utterly like there is no church there and yet still there are individual churches

01:24:03.980 which as he says are are torn are polluted are infected by the false doctrines remain yet still

01:24:11.400 true churches and that to me is remarkable um coming from coming from calvin yes it's really

01:24:16.800 surprising, actually. Yeah, it is. We've got one super chat. Chase, if you've got time for it,

01:24:21.820 this was a good question. It sounds like from someone who's considering Eastern Orthodoxy and

01:24:25.880 Roman Catholicism. Andrew 2727 says this, did Christ pass down a tradition not written in

01:24:33.900 Scripture? Did Christ pass down a tradition not written in Scripture? If so, it would seem to be

01:24:38.440 important to hold to Christ's oral traditions, even if not explicitly stated. That's one reason

01:24:44.640 that I'm considering going EO or Roman Catholic.

01:24:48.660 Chase, thoughts?

01:24:50.740 That's an issue to phrase the question.

01:24:54.480 Did Christ pass down traditions

01:24:56.540 that are not recorded in Scripture?

01:24:59.140 I think this is the argument

01:25:00.740 that Eastern Orthodox use a lot of times

01:25:03.360 in terms of their liturgy and their worship

01:25:06.220 and even their aesthetics,

01:25:07.980 their building construction,

01:25:10.120 all this kind of stuff.

01:25:11.700 That's what's so fascinating about Eastern Orthodoxy

01:25:13.500 when you go into an Eastern Orthodox Church, it does look so foreign, because it's so ancient

01:25:18.660 in terms of even the way they do art. And so they're trying to preserve something that they

01:25:24.000 believe to be the true kind of liturgical pattern of the early church. The question does get into

01:25:31.820 even in Protestant forms of worship, because like Joel's highlighted, a lot of Protestant churches,

01:25:37.280 not only is there no, well, there's liturgy, but it's not a stated liturgy, and it's a made-up

01:25:42.100 liturgy in terms of their their weekly rhythm of worship uh whether it's they kick off the

01:25:48.260 service with a secular worship or not worship but secular song that they play during worship

01:25:53.420 in order to make people feel more comfortable they have different things they do during the

01:25:57.480 service i remember growing up in churches where they were they would have skits i don't know if

01:26:01.140 you guys ever experienced this skits during the service so a lot of evangelical churches are very

01:26:06.280 uh creative we might say and how they do their liturgy but what he's getting at is the pattern

01:26:11.760 of worship, even drawing from the Old Testament. And what Protestants have traditionally been good

01:26:16.460 at, which many are not today, are drawing the pattern of worship from the Old Testament,

01:26:21.660 whether it's in terms of covenant renewal or other things, and how we conduct our worship together.

01:26:26.860 And so I think speculating on if Christ taught certain things that are not recorded in Scripture,

01:26:33.340 that are traditions that were given to the apostles, that then they were supposed to practice,

01:26:38.540 I don't view that as authoritative, naturally, because I'm a Protestant, whereas in Eastern Orthodox, maybe that would carry some weight.

01:26:45.640 But we actually have, in the Protestant tradition, a way to handle tradition.

01:26:50.660 And I think that's the accusation EO's come up with is, y'all have no traditions, solo scripture means there's no traditions.

01:26:58.160 No, this has been a question we've been wrestling with, we've actually provided answers to for hundreds of years.

01:27:04.300 We are not anti-traditionalist.

01:27:06.640 traditionalist. We have traditions we know how to think of. The Anglican communion has a way of

01:27:11.200 handling tradition. The Methodists have a way of handling tradition. Baptists haven't been as well

01:27:15.500 educated on how they handle their own tradition, but we all have a way of handling how we do

01:27:20.040 tradition and where it fits in relationship to Scripture. As Protestants, of course,

01:27:25.480 Scripture is primary. They submit to Scripture. If something doesn't accord a Scripture,

01:27:29.640 we're not going to practice it. But I think framing it in terms of what Jesus might have

01:27:35.800 commanded outside of recorded scripture i think that is very speculative and i wouldn't put a lot

01:27:42.160 of stock in that yep yep well said all right um we let's let's do the graph and then we'll

01:27:50.180 we'll call it a day all right throw throw it up this is the last big point chase i think you'll

01:27:54.920 agree with uh i'll let west flesh it out but there's one major distinction we'd be remiss if

01:27:59.680 we didn't cover between both roman catholicism as well as these are in orthodoxy versus protestants

01:28:04.580 Yep. So the claim of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church is they are the

01:28:09.860 visible instantiations of the church that Christ established on earth. Think of Peter and his

01:28:15.240 confession, and Christ responds to Peter. He says, you are Peter, on this rock I'm going to build

01:28:19.980 my church. And you'll listen to Matt Fradd, for example, Pints with Aquinas, and he'll have

01:28:23.820 Protestants that came over to Roman Catholicism, and they would go to the Vatican, and they would

01:28:27.960 see it, and they would say, oh, Jesus instituted a visible church, a church that was measurable,

01:28:34.720 a church with real living people.

01:28:36.200 And so the claim is that, for both of them, and they make really competing claims that

01:28:40.420 can't really be reconciled, that they are that visible church, that the succession of

01:28:44.720 bishops and the adherence to councils mean that they have the true church, and there's

01:28:48.980 a continuity all the way back to Christ. 0.96

01:28:51.740 Now, one of the difficulties with this is, what do you do with, you would have the unbaptized,

01:28:56.880 the catechumens, and the apostate. So you have these individuals, and I'm talking about like 0.50

01:29:01.380 apostates or reprobates that are in the church, but it's not known, it's not understood.

01:29:05.740 Francis Tartan, I was reading him on this, and he pushes back on Roman Catholic scholar Bellarmine

01:29:11.400 because what they have to assert for the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox is that the

01:29:16.320 church is visible. But if the church is primarily a visible institution, then that means that

01:29:21.660 everyone in the church would be saved. So we would say there's no salvation outside of the

01:29:26.320 church. When we mean that, we mean the body of believers across all time that are invisible,

01:29:31.000 that Jesus has joined together. The Roman Catholic says that there is no salvation outside of the

01:29:35.900 church, and he means the visible church. But then if there's no salvation outside of it,

01:29:39.500 then you have to be joined to the visible church. But then how do you distinguish within the visible

01:29:42.540 church those that are wicked and reprobate and those that are not? Because if you're a Roman 1.00

01:29:46.720 Catholic and you say there's no salvation outside of submission to the Roman pontiff,

01:29:51.040 then you are in communion fellowship sharing the visible church with joe biden and nancy pelosi

01:29:57.500 every sunday yep and same thing for eastern orthodox brother and sister in christ amen if

01:30:03.980 you're roman catholic not not not for us protestants right and they would have good conservative

01:30:09.700 catholics they would have pushback and say well no for these reasons or that here's where the

01:30:13.840 protestant has the advantage though you can show this graph of the visible invisible church

01:30:17.460 The Protestant asserts that the church is primarily a universal, invisible church.

01:30:24.560 So all believers, I think of Hebrews, the great cloud of witnesses, all believers past,

01:30:29.460 that would be the church triumphant, those who have attained their crown, they've run

01:30:33.120 the race, those present, the church militant, and all those future are being perfected here

01:30:39.160 in this life, have been translated by death into heaven, and will be the bride that Jesus

01:30:44.300 perfects.

01:30:44.920 Now, the visible church on earth is not a perfect overlap with the invisible church.

01:30:51.320 But the invisible church here on earth, those that are living, they're regenerate, they

01:30:56.640 live in, they inhabit the invisible universal church because they've been joined to Christ

01:31:01.260 by faith, and the visible church.

01:31:03.680 But there's one additional category in this visible church.

01:31:06.200 They're in the visible church, but they're reprobate and not part of the invisible church.

01:31:11.200 And so in this way, every given local church, a visible real church, will contain within

01:31:15.460 it the regenerate believers that belong to the invisible universal church.

01:31:20.280 And then they will have some that are reprobates.

01:31:22.380 Hebrews talked about those who were not joined by faith.

01:31:25.660 And we can say, yes, absolutely, they are part of the visible church.

01:31:28.340 They have made, Stephen Wolf, he said, the visible Catholic church is recognized by profession,

01:31:33.360 not an institution.

01:31:34.500 Well, anyone can profess, can't they?

01:31:36.040 Yeah, absolutely.

01:31:36.680 but they cannot profess and be part of the invisible universal church, which is on the

01:31:41.060 basis of faith in Jesus. But they can for a time join the visible church, and at the end of the

01:31:46.140 age, Christ will root out all those who through their professional faith claimed to be, I'm part

01:31:52.100 of the invisible universal church. No, you were wicked. You had an attachment for a time by 0.90

01:31:56.720 profession to a visible local institution, but you never were of the substance of the invisible

01:32:01.760 church. And I think for Protestants, getting this helps you see, you talked about Catholics,

01:32:06.140 that means that a catholic in a visible local parish there will be bad catholics good catholics

01:32:12.100 those that are regenerate and belong to it and there will be some that are they merely attend

01:32:16.640 mass twice a year they're in the visible church a visible true church but not belonging to the

01:32:21.700 substance of it amen i yeah i think this graph is super helpful anybody who's just listening to the

01:32:27.220 audio it this one would be worth going to the website right response ministries.com and pulling

01:32:32.460 up the video and then skipping forward to the end of it or going on youtube or whatever but just to

01:32:36.720 be able to visually um look at that you did a good job it made a lot of for me it helped like i you

01:32:41.900 know i already had that paradigm of visible and invisible church but it really helped to see um

01:32:46.720 to see it to be able to visualize it and yeah as as far as i understand both eastern orthodoxy and

01:32:53.940 roman catholicism um don't have that scheme that that framework that protestants do and i think at

01:33:00.980 some level what it what it allows for um a certain luxury or privilege that allows for

01:33:06.460 protestants that roman catholics and eastern orthodox guys don't have is um more of an

01:33:12.960 ecumenical spirit in a good way in the good sense and not the negative that um i'm able to look

01:33:18.620 like my desire for rome um is you know and this is something that i had to come to over time i

01:33:24.600 didn't always think this but um but for the last few years like my desire for rome is i want to

01:33:30.780 see rome repent um i i and and not just my desire if i could be uh just even a little bit more bold

01:33:37.500 my prediction for roman catholicism is um i don't think i'm post-millennial in my eschatology i don't

01:33:44.360 think if i had to guess if i had to bet i don't think that um roman catholicism will be um

01:33:51.560 completely uprooted and destroyed and removed i think it'll be restored um i think that roman

01:33:58.800 Catholicism is an offshoot, right? It's a pretty profound irony, much to their chagrin, despite all 1.00

01:34:06.380 the claims. They're the offshoot that's gone off the rails, and I think that they will be, by God's

01:34:12.460 grace, brought back in to the fold. And as they're currently off the rails as an offshoot, I still

01:34:18.860 think, my previous statement still stands, I think that many congregants, parishioners within Roman

01:34:24.300 Catholicism are a part of the invisible church, that they really are regenerate, that they really

01:34:30.340 do love the Lord Jesus Christ and have faith in him for salvation. But as an institution, 0.92

01:34:35.760 that sector of the visible church, as an institution, the Roman Catholic, you know,

01:34:40.260 institutional church, I think it's off the rails. But I think the plan of God is not to utterly

01:34:45.800 remove it, but to restore it. I think that Rome eventually will repent. I really do. I think that

01:34:50.980 they will go back and say, yeah, we should have, we should have held a council. We should have

01:34:54.880 heard you out. We should have, uh, we should have recanted here. We should have done that.

01:34:58.660 We should have done this. And, um, I, yeah, I'm, I'm very hopeful that that'll happen. I don't know

01:35:04.360 if it happens in our lifetime, but I think that it will eventually happen. And, um, and in the

01:35:09.200 meantime, uh, because if you're not careful, like some of the reformed bros, like I love them, 1.00

01:35:14.020 god bless them but um they talk about roman catholics like this like more harshly than 0.80

01:35:21.140 they talk about muslims and i'm like what in the world are you like they believe in the triune god

01:35:27.020 they believe in in jesus christ that he that he that he died and was buried and rose again like

01:35:33.040 um that you know this is these are completely separate categories like you know yeah but we've

01:35:40.020 had, historically, we've had a war with the Catholics more recently than with the Muslims. 0.98

01:35:44.520 True. True. But we have had centuries and centuries of wars with Muslims. 1.00

01:35:51.220 I agree. 1.00

01:35:51.600 You know, and so, yeah. So anyway, so I would like to see Protestants be a little bit more 1.00

01:35:58.160 charitable towards Catholics, but while still understanding the distinctives, the irreplaceable

01:36:03.480 distinctives of Protestant doctrine, and knowing that, yes, it absolutely matters, and we're not

01:36:08.320 going to compromise on that. But recognizing that those particulars, doctrinal particulars,

01:36:14.580 I think most of them exist, are more etched in stone at the higher echelons of leadership within

01:36:20.160 Catholicism and not necessarily parishioners. And then God's larger plan, I really do think

01:36:26.280 redemption and restoration and repentance is far more likely, if I had to bet, than utter removal.

01:36:33.440 And then I think, you know, I'd have a similar position towards Eastern Orthodoxy, and yet at the same time, and this would be something that would probably get clipped out of context, I'm not going either direction, but if I had two options and only two options afforded to me, I would become a Roman Catholic every day of the week and twice on Sunday before becoming Eastern Orthodox.

01:36:56.480 Same. 0.75

01:36:57.000 Same.

01:36:57.100 same i don't i don't know how any any western protestant could argue otherwise like i mean

01:37:04.340 to me that is just so abundantly clear um just simply the culture and the practices like i would

01:37:10.860 have to um i would have there would be no more joel left in the equation like i would have to lose

01:37:17.900 utterly lose every component about me i don't know i don't even know how to do that it like it makes

01:37:24.060 it feels so foreign to like i'm going to uh i'm going to just empty my mind and i'm going to

01:37:31.280 you know i i just i'm not um i'm an american gosh darn it so anyways and roman catholicism

01:37:41.780 particularly here in america is even yeah you know even closer because it has been you know

01:37:46.460 and same for eo they've had a prostan influence you go to ukraine or romania look a lot different

01:37:52.620 a lot different. Right. Chase, so what do you think about that? In terms of Roman Catholicism,

01:37:59.380 invisible, visible church being a uniquely Protestant scheme that Rome doesn't have,

01:38:04.180 that Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't have. And then what do you think as a pastor, a Protestant pastor,

01:38:09.360 do you think Rome will eventually come back into the fold? Or do you think it's just,

01:38:13.340 we're just waiting for it to all be burnt up? What do you think?

01:38:17.240 Yeah, I think the graphic is really helpful. Actually, I wish I could have that graphic. I

01:38:20.160 I teach that at our church, that distinction that we have as Protestants.

01:38:25.040 And I think it's an important distinction to make, you know, like you said.

01:38:28.760 And I think a lot of even Christians, Protestant Christians are confused on this in terms of how we talk about, you know, belonging to a local church and what it means to be saved by Jesus. 0.94

01:38:39.580 I'm less positive on the Roman Catholics coming back.

01:38:43.620 I did want to, it's an interesting thing, Joel, that I thought I'd ask since we're on the air.

01:38:52.040 You know, I sympathize with treating Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, and I think it's part of our tradition and also part of my temperament and yours, to be somewhat charitable, I might say, with these people.

01:39:07.220 Like you highlighted this Roman Catholic grandmother who loves Jesus, and there's still hope for them.

01:39:14.520 Part of the tension I feel in my mind, maybe you don't feel this tension, but part of the tension I feel in my mind is we look at evangelicals that have compromised with women pastors, with all this kind of stuff, just giving themselves over to celebrating gay marriage, whatever it might be.

01:39:30.960 And we do judge them very harshly, right? 0.59

01:39:33.260 We do almost, I wouldn't say anathematize, but to use a word, there's a sense of like, they're outside the fold. 0.99

01:39:40.500 And yet there does seem to be a proclivity, at least in my mind, to give deference a little bit more so to the Catholics.

01:39:47.920 And that's why I'm less like when I hear guys not dumping on, but, you know, like attacking the Roman Catholic Church and all that kind of stuff.

01:39:57.480 That is more part of our heritage to do that, like was highlighted, where it's like we had wars with Catholics. 0.66

01:40:05.520 And there's a reason all the Reformers spoke of the Pope being the Antichrist.

01:40:09.600 And so there is a legitimacy to that critique, whereas these people that are evangelical ministers in America, Protestant ministers, who are deeply compromised, should we not extend a similar charity in their direction that we are also extending to kind of Roman Catholics and the hope there?

01:40:28.760 Does that question make sense?

01:40:30.460 That's the tension I'm feeling.

01:40:31.420 yeah yeah i think so i think the the reason why i don't is the charity that i'm extending to the

01:40:36.860 roman catholic guys is um i'm i'm thinking i i said it in a macro big picture sense but more

01:40:43.820 particularly i'm thinking of guys like uh what's his name charles taylor i think is his name um

01:40:50.060 my point is i'm thinking of the guys who are culturally and politically conservative

01:40:54.060 i think part of the reason that i wouldn't extend uh the same type of charity because all the

01:40:59.020 the arguments that i made uh doctrinally um certainly um you know you can make that about

01:41:03.600 russell moore you can make that about david french you know or you know anybody of of that of that

01:41:08.760 particular stripe you can say well these guys also believe in the triune god and they believe you

01:41:13.260 know in in this case they even believe in justification by faith and these kinds of things

01:41:16.600 um but the reason why uh the guys that you and i you know have big problems with uh in within the

01:41:23.860 protestant world um it's less doctrinal and it's more political and cultural and i think part of

01:41:29.260 the reason we have the problem with them is um because what they're tampering with isn't so much

01:41:34.060 the doctrine although they they are tampering with some things that are doctrinal um but they're

01:41:38.480 tampering with uh the physical um the physical future and life and and viability of my kids

01:41:46.000 so um so the conservative catholic i think he's wrong um on on a host of things but i think a lot

01:41:54.820 of them are ignorantly wrong again speaking of the parishioners um and in that case many of them if

01:42:00.820 you really kind of dig beneath the surface and you ask the questions you have the conversations

01:42:05.380 they actually you know they actually believe a lot of things that you do and they're not

01:42:09.440 really aware of vatican one and vatican two and trent and these kinds of things

01:42:13.820 um but then culturally that's doctrinally but then culturally and politically they're like yeah we 0.85

01:42:19.320 we got to stop murdering babies we got to stop transing kids we got to stop uh importing you 0.90

01:42:25.100 know in mass the third world um and rape gains and you know all these kind of stuff whereas um 0.99

01:42:31.260 like if russell moore wins my kids die and i mean that in a literal physical sense 0.95

01:42:37.780 russell moore wants to kill my children so i just have less charity for guys who want to kill my

01:42:42.700 kids yeah so we're distinguishing that's helpful so we're distinguishing between what's a more 0.84

01:42:48.540 imminent threat and i think that what you're saying is that the most imminent threat right

01:42:53.840 now are guys that we are within our own what we would say protestant tradition who are deeply

01:42:58.900 compromised politically and so we have to give the most force against that the threat of maybe

01:43:06.400 catholicism overtaking america uh is is doesn't feel like a great as great a threat as the

01:43:13.340 compromised churches left and right that have kind of been over back backwards to government

01:43:18.060 regulation and are are not standing firm on god's word today and i think that's a helpful

01:43:23.560 distinguishing uh to make there so thanks for uh going with yeah no thanks for asking the question

01:43:28.460 yeah and and the way that you are just articulated i think is super helpful it's it's a sense of

01:43:32.540 urgency is the sense of what's most imminent like i think you know if if we were predicting you know

01:43:37.020 the next 10 years um i think political left leftism um overtaking america seems to be far more imminent

01:43:47.180 than um then all of a sudden you know that we have um a catholic christian nationalism

01:43:53.100 that's drowning baptists you know that's drowning baptist yeah exactly so like catholics drowning

01:43:57.580 my baptist children i think they'd burn us at the stake or burning yeah or burning our my you know 0.61

01:44:03.640 so my yeah exactly but seriously like i and i think it helps it's like oh you're being hyperbolic

01:44:07.820 but but really it does help like i i live in a border state state of texas um what seems more

01:44:14.860 likely to me as a husband and father um in the next 10 years uh that texas becomes so overwhelmed 0.96

01:44:21.180 at the southern border by um by illegal immigrants many of them criminals murderers and rapists

01:44:29.360 that my four daughters and wife their physical lives are endangered does that seem more likely 0.75

01:44:37.020 or uh catholics um enacting catholic like taking over the united states enacting catholic laws

01:44:45.360 to where protestants are hung or burnt right like you know what i mean and when you when you

01:44:50.560 pose it like that then we can all laugh at the absurdity because it really is absurd like one

01:44:57.360 of those threats is like right around the corner like right on the doorstep the fact that donald

01:45:02.800 trump won this election is is sheerly the grace of god um if he hadn't won this election then i

01:45:07.800 would say yeah eight eight more if we had eight years of kamala we're done we're done um whereas 0.54

01:45:14.300 i think it would take a hundred years of catholics on their a-game you know and maybe 0.90

01:45:21.320 maybe they they might be able to arrest some protestants and i think still highly unlikely 0.54

01:45:27.620 so chase any final thoughts for you before we um in this episode no i'm good man thanks for having

01:45:34.160 me today yeah thanks for coming on we really appreciate it all right well we're gonna go

01:45:39.280 ahead and land the plane west any final thought the final thought is say you're eastern orthodox 0.57

01:45:43.980 you're hate watching, you're like, that was an hour and 45 minutes, a straw man, didn't like it,

01:45:48.340 and you go to that church and you never leave. There's going to be you. Here's the exhortation.

01:45:54.400 We love you. We want to see you on the final day, name written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

01:46:00.200 In the meantime, wherever you go, be it Roman Catholicism, be it Eastern Orthodox. We think

01:46:05.060 there's great reasons you shouldn't. But if you go there, love Jesus, love your family,

01:46:09.660 touch some grass and be a force for god's kingdom uh that's that's culturally that's politically

01:46:15.960 push back against wickedness push back against darkness love the people around you exercise the

01:46:22.320 fruit of the spirit charity patience kindness goodness to those you disagree with and um i

01:46:27.600 guess we'll see you on the other side yep lord sounds good lord willing all right we appreciate

01:46:32.620 you guys tuning in subscribe to the youtube channel go ahead and follow us on x at right

01:46:37.200 response M at right response M. And we will see you guys again on Wednesday.

The NXR Podcast - January 13, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Why Young Men Are Flocking To Eastern Orthodoxy

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