Engaging with Eastern Orthodoxy

[JonahMac]

Hello everyone,

So up until 5 minutes ago, no one knew about Eastern Orthodoxy. I remember a couple years ago hearing about it for the first time and simply dismissing it as an internet fad.

Now there is a large EO church being built in my town and a couple of the young men at my church are exploring the EO. I do not know anything about EO and after spending a couple hours researching I feel like I know just as much about the EO beliefs as I did when I first heard about them. Do you guys no any resources, videos, books, etc. that I can look into so that I can veer my fellow Christian brothers away from the EO and two just learn more about them so that I can engage more offensively with their theology?

 

[Ye_Olde_Heidelberger]

This would be a good place to start:

 

[Ye_Olde_Heidelberger]

Also, here is a brother who engages EO theology from a classical Protestant lens. I have not watched most of his content, and I believe he may be an Anglican, if I'm not mistaken: https://youtube.com/@byzantinereformation?si=MTyc2OYKY73nUj5P

 

[philomath]

I second ancientpathstv, they're excellent. Here's a list of other sources / people that I have found helpful on the topic in the past:

• The resource page at Monergism will be able to point you to a lot of good works on the topic. They also have some solid write-ups on the topic.
• Dr. Gavin Ortlund at Truth Unites has some solid videos on the subject. I highly recommend him.
• Turretin Fan has some videos and blog posts that may be helpful
• Samuel Farag is a Baptist pastor who was Coptic Orthodox for 32 years and has some works on the topic. I have not read them personally, but they have been recommended.

Here are some other folks that i've profited from, though they do not hold to WCF, 3FU, or the 2LBCF, but rather are Anglican and Lutheran. There will be multiple things at variance with the Reformed, but chew the meat, spit out the bones and all that jazz. One specific thing to note, they don't hold the same view as the Refomed on 2CVs and it may show up in some of their videos:

• Dr. Jordan B. Cooper is a confessional Lutheran pastor and Seminary professor that has a lot of great videos on the topic. I highly recommend him.
• Javier Perdomo is an confessional Lutheran layman with videos on the topic. One particularly helpful person he interviewed was Joshua Schooping, an ex-EO priest.
• You may find some helpful stuff by James Swan at Beggars All: Refomation. I believe he is a Lutheran.
• TheOtherPaul is an Australian Anglican (think conservative, broadchurch Sidney Anglicans) who has had some helpful videos on the topic in the past.
• Sean Luke at Anglican Aesthetics has some helpful stuff on the topic. It should be noted he is a bit closer to the Anglo-Catholic side of Anglicanism, though he seems to have reformed a bit over the years.

EO has some similarities to Rome, but they also have a lot of differences, so not all Reformation-era polemics against Rome will work. Many can still be helpful though.

I'll tag @RamistThomist on the subject.

 

[RamistThomist]

Some random thoughts:
1) There is no silver bullet argument against EO. You have to meet people where they are.
2) Ignore ALL EO claims that millions are converting. The data says otherwise, no matter how big the local church is.

Post in thread 'Reformed persons going Eastern Orthodox'

Oct 17, 2023

Knowing one of the men of whom you speak as a close personal friend, I have not yet spoken to him and cannot speak to his reasons. Indeed, it is hard to identify all the particular reasons why people go the EO route. It's put within me a recognition that I need to actually know what the EO teaches and, beyond that, to identify what about it holds out some attraction. What resonates. It's easy to move directly to "this is how they are wrong", which indeed they are. But that does little to address the root cause without first understanding what resonates with a particular person.

As...

• RamistThomist

 

[bookish_Basset]

A couple months ago, New Horizons (the OPC magazine) published an issue with several articles on EO.

I think this wave of interest in EO comes around every generation or so. Twenty years ago, I was reading essays by Frederica Mathews-Green and listening to Ancient Faith Radio and things like that before I eventually learned that EO wasn't all it seemed to me at the time. It's possible that the fad has greater momentum this time around because of social media like YouTube; or it's possible that it just appears like it does.

 

[Knight]

I've written more than a dozen in-depth posts against EO and it's apologists in the past few years (link).

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

Hello Jonah, @JonahMac

Here are three resources:

 

[omniavanitas]

Our beloved brothers here have already shared a lot of great resources, but I'll chime in by suggesting you read the primary sources, especially the councils. The whole allure of the Photian sect is their claim of unbroken apostolic tradition. The councils very quickly show that they do not follow apostolic tradition.

They claim the Apostolic Canons give them the canon of Scripture, but it doesn't match and they don't even agree on the canon sometimes. They claim icon veneration is apostolic, yet we see Irenaeus criticizing the Carpocrations for their images (Against Heresies 1.25.6), Eusebius rebukes the empress for requesting a picture of Jesus (Letter to Constantia), the Council of Elvira condemns the use of images in church, and Nicaea II was overturned by Leo V.

The Council of Laodicaea forbids privately-composed psalms for use in worship, and this council is ratified by Chalcedon (check out the Akathist to the Theotokos to be horrified by how far from biblical orthodoxy their music gets).

The canons of the councils further reveal how subjective their tradition is. They'll claim bishops have oikonomia to decide when and how to enforce canons. They'll use oikonomia to defend their bishops being lax, yet criticize their bishops for being lax by not attacking Protestants or Papists.

Aside from iconography, their liturgical abuses go beyond that. Incense was unheard of in the early church because of its association with the imperial cult. Clerical vestments are actually contested by Celestine I (which cuts against Rome as well considering he was a bishop of Rome).

I've seen the East has started to adopt Rome's argument of the development of tradition, but that ultimately undermines their position of "unchanged tradition."

Some other primary sources to check out are the fathers, some of the medieval and modern Photian writers (Simeon of Thessalonica, Seraphim Rose), and some of the Reformers and Puritans. In reading them, you will quickly see there is spiritual continuity with the fathers in Protestant writers, but not in the later Eastern writers.

I haven't seen these YouTubers mentioned, and they're really solid on using the fathers against them and Rome:

Bibilical Understanding
Canon & Creed

The East is always going to appeal to the fathers and councils. They will always accuse you of cherry-picking. They will resort to ad hominem. It's a cult, and the best thing you can do is to expose the weaknesses and pray some would see the truth.

 

[Knight]

Our beloved brothers here have already shared a lot of great resources, but I'll chime in by suggesting you read the primary sources, especially the councils. The whole allure of the Photian sect is their claim of unbroken apostolic tradition. The councils very quickly show that they do not follow apostolic tradition.

They claim the Apostolic Canons give them the canon of Scripture, but it doesn't match and they don't even agree on the canon sometimes. They claim icon veneration is apostolic, yet we see Irenaeus criticizing the Carpocrations for their images (Against Heresies 1.25.6), Eusebius rebukes the empress for requesting a picture of Jesus (Letter to Constantia), the Council of Elvira condemns the use of images in church, and Nicaea II was overturned by Leo V.

The Council of Laodicaea forbids privately-composed psalms for use in worship, and this council is ratified by Chalcedon (check out the Akathist to the Theotokos to be horrified by how far from biblical orthodoxy their music gets).

The canons of the councils further reveal how subjective their tradition is. They'll claim bishops have oikonomia to decide when and how to enforce canons. They'll use oikonomia to defend their bishops being lax, yet criticize their bishops for being lax by not attacking Protestants or Papists.

I agree that primary sources are important. That can be a tall task in itself even without the aide of scholarly works, which sometimes do come into play. Some EOs (e.g. Michael Garten) argue, for example, that Eusebius' Letter to Constantina is of disputed authenticity. This is not to say I agree but that there's more to the job than just being aware of primary sources (in some cases). Summary arguments are useful introductions, even if inadequate for the purposes of actual engagement with EO apologists.

Your overall point is true: EOs cherry-pick. When they encounter difficulties in the Acts of Ecumenical Councils, even their more visible apologists are willing to throw the historicity of Scripture under the bus tu quoque style, as I show here.