CROWDER Debate & RIFFING Pastor Greg's Movie! 2026-09-30 19:14

38:17 Jay Dyer orthodox Roman imperium of Byzantium, that is a model. That is a standard of synergy of church and state

St. Theodore the Studite (iconodule) Symphonia is an ideal that Justinian's Novella 6 states. It is not a dogma, and Byzantium did not live up to it. Theodore's monastery refused the emperor's iconoclasm outright, and he wrote that the emperor has no authority to define doctrine. The Church honors the empire where it served the faith and resisted it where it did not. Also, "synergy" is the Orthodox word for God and man working together in salvation. For church and state the word is symphonia.

Justinian, Novella 6 (prologue); Theodore the Studite, Letters and Antirrhetics

2:23:50 Jay Dyer we don't have the strict sort of mortal sin ideas of the Roman Catholic church.

St. John Chrysostom (preacher) This is largely right. Orthodoxy has no scholastic scheme of mortal and venial sin, and it treats suicide pastorally, with allowance for illness and diminished responsibility. Two cautions: the canons, such as Timothy of Alexandria's, did restrict funeral rites for suicides, and the Church still counts suicide as grave. The distinction is that the Church does not treat it as automatically damning. I did not open a source here, so the citation is given without an address.

Canons of Timothy of Alexandria (as in the Pedalion); Church practice on funeral rites for those not in their right mind