Former Priest Critiques Orthodox Theology (with Joshua Schooping)

0:00Gavin OrtlundHey, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. Truth Unites is a place for theology and apologetics done in an ironic way. And this is my second interview with Josh Schooping,

0:10Gavin Ortlundwho is the pastor of Alliance Church in Russellville, Arkansas and the author of this book that we're gonna talk about today called disillusioned,

0:18Gavin Ortlundwhy I left the Eastern Orthodox priesthood and church.

0:22Gavin OrtlundSo the last interview that we did talked a little bit more about your story,

0:28Gavin Ortlundand there's a link to that one in the video description. In this one, we'll talk a little bit more about your theology and the theological concerns you have that you work through in this book.

0:38Gavin OrtlundSo I'm really excited to get into this. Thanks for doing this, Josh. How are you doing today?

0:42Joshua SchoopingThank god. I'm alive. I'm well.

0:45Joshua SchoopingGod is good.

0:47Gavin OrtlundAwesome.

0:49Gavin OrtlundLet me ask you first. I mean, we we had just mentioned this a moment ago that in response to our first video, there's a lot of negativity that was directed toward you and toward your wife.

1:00Gavin OrtlundNot everyone responded badly, but there were a lot of people who responded with anger, with rage,

1:06Gavin Ortlundwith

1:08Gavin Ortlundkind of over the top criticism.

1:11Gavin OrtlundAnd I I remember watching one interaction on social media where someone was giving an anathema to you for your decision to leave the Orthodox Church, and I thought it was very honorable. You responded by blessing the person who did that.

1:23Gavin OrtlundBut

1:24Gavin Ortlundhow how have you endured that

1:26Gavin Ortlundkind of negativity without becoming embittered in the process?

1:31Joshua SchoopingIt's been a

1:33Joshua Schoopingit's been a wonderful journey, to be honest. God's grace has been just coming along and holding me and my family and keeping us,

1:42Joshua Schoopingyou know, protected, I think.

1:44Joshua SchoopingA lot of it didn't come as a surprise,

1:47Joshua Schoopingand so that allowed me to kind of steal myself in some ways and protect myself,

1:53Joshua Schoopingemotionally,

1:54Joshua Schoopingnot to be guarded, but to just trust that that, you know, people are gonna be hurt. People are gonna express their hurt.

2:01Joshua SchoopingI know I I did disappoint a lot of people, and I think some of some people may have even said those things that were very mean out of,

2:09Joshua Schoopingout of love,

2:10Joshua Schoopingyou know, in first feeling hurt or betrayed,

2:13Joshua Schoopingand, some, you know, just being sectarian and and petty, as well.

2:19Joshua SchoopingI don't wanna paint in too broad of brush strokes, but I know that I did disappoint some people. And so, you know, I I tried

2:27Joshua Schoopingto feel,

2:29Joshua Schoopingyou know, where they were coming from and and and not just interpret it as being them being harsh or dumb or,

2:36Joshua Schoopingyou know, simple minded or something like that, but that maybe they felt genuine pain at it,

2:42Joshua Schoopingespecially if they're people that I had known. If there are people that I didn't know, I

2:47Joshua SchoopingI just, you know, just said, okay. Well, they don't know me. So it's like, you know, what what am I gonna do about people that don't know me? And, I mean, people like, oh, he left in order to become a millionaire, you know, or become to sell to sell things or something like that. And it's like, no.

3:02Joshua SchoopingNobody nobody's getting rich here.

3:06Gavin OrtlundSome of those comments are are funny. You just have to laugh at them. And you mentioned earlier before we started just the wisdom of kinda blocking out a lot that's on the Internet from all sides because all church traditions can have nastiness and and unpleasant dynamics online,

3:20Gavin Ortlundespecially.

3:21Gavin OrtlundSo one thing I wanna say is as we start off here, we're going to be getting into some criticisms,

3:28Gavin Ortlundtheological criticisms of various Eastern Orthodox beliefs and practices.

3:32Gavin OrtlundAnd the intention behind it is not primarily just to attack or especially at a personal level or to kind of vent or something like that, but it comes more from a sincere concern for the truth and the desire for a pure gospel.

3:46Gavin OrtlundSo that's kind of where we're coming from here.

3:51Gavin OrtlundSo I'll just say that at the beginning. But you've got three sections in the book.

3:55Gavin OrtlundYou deal with ecclesiology,

3:57Gavin Ortlunddoctrine of the church, iconology,

4:00Gavin Ortlunddoctrine of icons, and mariology,

4:02Gavin Ortlunddoctrine of Mary.

4:04Gavin OrtlundSo would those be, like, the biggest three areas of concern for you with orthodox theology?

4:12Joshua SchoopingYes.

4:13Joshua SchoopingAnd particularly because I believe they're wedded to actual formal canonical positions

4:18Joshua Schoopingwithin the church.

4:20Joshua SchoopingIt takes it out of the realm, in my opinion, of just whining about what is contemporary or what might be a trend or something that is just kind of overtaking, you know, the populace within orthodoxy.

4:33Joshua SchoopingSo I found that those three particular issues, because of where they're located

4:38Joshua Schoopingon the map of the larger orthodox Christian,

4:41Joshua Schoopingtheological framework,

4:43Joshua Schoopingit I think they're particularly

4:45Joshua Schoopingfatal to their overall position.

4:48Gavin OrtlundMhmm.

4:49Gavin OrtlundGive us just basically a a rundown of the concern about an exclusivistic

4:54Gavin Ortlundecclesiology.

4:55Gavin OrtlundWhat does that mean exactly, and what is the concern there?

4:58Joshua SchoopingYeah. My view of the this exclusivistic

5:01Joshua Schoopingecclesiology

5:03Joshua Schoopingthat they have is

5:05Joshua Schoopingis just quite simply that they'll formally claim that no one is a Christian other than them according to their own canons.

5:12Joshua SchoopingThey'll say that no one is even a Christian, much less in a in a church.

5:17Joshua SchoopingSo

5:18Joshua Schoopingto even approach them as an evangelical,

5:22Joshua Schoopingas a as a Lutheran, as a Presbyterian,

5:24Joshua Schoopingas a Baptist,

5:25Joshua Schoopingor even technically as a Catholic, they're not really Christian. They don't have the spirit of Christ. They're outside of the ark. They're in the floodwaters,

5:34Joshua Schoopingyou know, of sin, and and they're so they're unsaved.

5:38Joshua SchoopingAnd so to me, that is almost the definition of a sect is to say that we alone have the truth and that no one else really even has a meaningful realistic hope for salvation.

5:50Joshua SchoopingAnd so that's kind of how I understand their their notion of exclusivism.

5:55Gavin OrtlundYeah. Now when when we talk about this and when this has come up,

5:59Gavin Ortlundsome in response, including some orthodox commenters,

6:03Gavin Ortlundhave expressed great surprise or disagreement saying, oh, not at all. We you know? But to my awareness,

6:09Gavin Ortlundand this is what I want you to speak to in terms of the history, the backlog on this issue, to my awareness, there there really isn't much deviation from this older, more exclusivistic view that outside of the church, there is no salvation.

6:23Gavin OrtlundThe boundaries of the church are determined institutionally.

6:26Gavin OrtlundSo if you are not Eastern Orthodox, you are damned.

6:29Gavin OrtlundThat there really is no divergence upon that until starting a little bit in the nineteenth century and then a little more in the twentieth century.

6:36Gavin OrtlundIs that your perception of the historical background to this?

6:40Joshua SchoopingYeah.

6:41Joshua SchoopingI guess if I were to try to paint a fuller picture of what I see as happen as as having happened historically,

6:49Joshua Schoopingit would be that sometime after

6:51Joshua SchoopingConstantine and the conversion of the empire itself where we start getting into Theodosius,

6:57Joshua Schoopingend of the fourth century,

6:58Joshua Schoopingas we're moving along the trajectory to Justinian,

7:02Joshua Schoopingwe see an identification

7:03Joshua Schoopingof church and state

7:06Joshua Schoopingto the point where

7:07Joshua Schoopingto be a citizen is to be a Christian. To be a Christian is to be a citizen.

7:12Joshua SchoopingAnd so it amplified the or it intensified

7:16Joshua Schoopingthe rigidity of the boundaries of what it means to be a Christian at all, and it gets connected with this sort of secular arm of the empire.

7:26Joshua SchoopingAnd so once you have this, you are all of a sudden intensifying again

7:32Joshua Schoopingthis

7:33Joshua Schoopingthe the risk of what it means to not be in the church because now you're you're going against the emperor himself if you're disagreeing on this or that issue.

7:42Joshua SchoopingSo icons, for example, were an incredibly

7:45Joshua Schoopingpolitical,

7:46Joshua Schoopingyou know, politicized

7:47Joshua Schoopingissue. So you have one emperor,

7:49Joshua Schoopingbeing against icons and then the next emperor being for icons.

7:53Joshua SchoopingAnd so if you're going to be on one side or the other, now all of a sudden, you're part of some rebel element. You're some antipolitical

8:00Joshua Schoopingelement. You're you're you're no longer, with the empire itself.

8:04Joshua SchoopingAnd so you're starting to to undermine the very fabric of even the society

8:10Joshua Schoopingto to have a difference of opinion.

8:12Joshua SchoopingAnd so they start making these incredibly,

8:15Joshua Schoopingrestrictive sorts of claims that unless you bow down and kiss the icon with with affection,

8:21Joshua Schoopingyou are now outside of the church itself. You are condemned by God. We're going to use the keys. We are the church. We have the keys. We're locking you out. The condemnation is upon you. Gehenna is your destiny if you don't do this. And so

8:36Joshua Schoopingthat's kind of where I I see some of the the historical, I mean, in in broad brush strokes where I see some of the historical leading up to that.

8:43Gavin OrtlundYes. Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, I've heard people say, oh, well, the anathema didn't necessarily mean damnation,

8:49Gavin Ortlundbut we'll come back to icons more later. But if you read through it, I see it too, the the

8:53Gavin Ortlundbishops there write a letter to the empress right afterwards and say, hey. Just so you know, here's what we mean by anathema.

9:00Gavin OrtlundDamnation,

9:01Gavin Ortlundseparation from God. And as I as I said, I don't see any exceptions to that in the East or in the West in the medieval era for centuries and centuries until you start to get up to much more recent times in church history, which is just interesting.

9:16Joshua SchoopingYeah. And

9:17Joshua Schoopingand this sort of attempt at getting out from underneath,

9:20Joshua Schoopinglike, for example, the synod of sixteen seventy two in Jerusalem where it makes some of these claims that if you're not under an Eastern Orthodox bishop, then you're not even a Christian.

9:31Joshua SchoopingIt's it's really kind of a double edged sword in my opinion because either it's true or it's not.

9:37Joshua SchoopingAnd if this patriarch in Jerusalem at the time was saying falsehood, why has no one condemned it?

9:44Joshua SchoopingHow how how is he able to make this claim? And now people can just you know, well, we'll play the Protestant here for our own sake and, you know, get outside of whatever we don't like that the church may, you know, may have said in its past.

9:58Joshua SchoopingSo it's like they'll try to have their cake and eat it too. So it's like, well, you know, we'll we'll call that a Latin captivity,

10:05Joshua Schoopingwhich I believe is a phrase from who

10:09Joshua SchoopingI know has just recently

10:10Joshua Schoopingdeparted,

10:12Joshua Schoopinghopefully, to be with the Lord. And so it's it's very regrettable

10:17Joshua Schoopingthat

10:18Joshua Schoopingin the twentieth century, you have this kind of rationalizing and intellectualizing

10:22Joshua Schoopingand relativizing

10:24Joshua Schoopingof what what you just pointed out very well. It's like you don't find any deviation until

10:29Joshua Schoopingmaybe the '18 late eighteen hundreds, but certainly coming into the nineteen hundreds. And I think some of it may even come from coming into the West, coming into America,

10:39Joshua Schoopingtrying to kind of blend in with Western culture a little bit. You have George Florovsky.

10:43Joshua SchoopingHe's entering into teach at Princeton.

10:47Joshua SchoopingHe's actually teaching at Princeton right aft right after, the Westminster,

10:52Joshua Schoopingprofessors had left to go form,

10:55Joshua SchoopingWestminster Seminary. So you have a lot of the conservative theologians

10:59Joshua Schoopingwho had just left Princeton, and then Florovsky coming in, and he's starting to kind of rub elbows

11:05Joshua Schoopingwith some of these more liberal professors. And so it's like, I I have a I don't know. I can just see sort of, see sort of an academic camaraderie

11:13Joshua Schoopinghappening among these various theologians, and you start to soften. I don't wanna come into your seminary and say you're not even a Christian and expect to be able to teach.

11:23Gavin OrtlundYeah.

11:24Gavin OrtlundYeah. And one thing I hope it's okay. And every now and again, I might just make a comment of my own and then see just what you if you wanna interact with it a little bit. But one thing I wanna clarify

11:33Gavin Ortlundin my own thinking about this, because I've articulated this argument from Matthew seven that the good fruit the good fruit reveals a good tree,

11:42Gavin Ortlundand therefore, we should not restrict the church to one institution because we see good fruit in multiple institutions.

11:48Gavin OrtlundAnd I think one of the things I've seen so much in response that has surprised me that I thought it might be helpful just to throw this out there in this conversation

11:57Gavin Ortlundbecause I think a lot of,

11:59Gavin Ortlundviewers have this concern.

12:01Gavin OrtlundThey think also are you against exclusivism

12:04Gavin Ortlundof any kind? Are you advocating for universalism?

12:07Gavin OrtlundWhat about Mormons? What about Buddhists?

12:10Gavin OrtlundYou know, does spiritual fruit mean some generic positive religious experience? And I I you know, my response to that is no. We're we're not against I'm not advocating for universalism.

12:20Gavin OrtlundWe're just against an exclusivism

12:23Gavin Ortlundthat is inconsistent

12:25Gavin Ortlundwith the New Testament,

12:27Gavin Ortlundan institutional

12:29Gavin Ortlundexclusivism.

12:30Gavin OrtlundBecause spiritual fruit

12:32Gavin Ortlundis

12:32Gavin Ortlundthat's a term that Jesus means something very specific by.

12:36Gavin OrtlundHe Jesus was not a religious pluralist. He Jesus didn't mean, you know, just spiritual fruit reveals a good tree. So any kind of positive religious experience means you're part of the church.

12:46Gavin OrtlundSo that's one thing I just wanted to clarify

12:49Gavin Ortlundin terms of my arguments, and I'll probably do another video on that some some point.

12:53Gavin OrtlundI have one more question about this, but I'll give it you a chance to comment on that if you want to at all first.

12:58Joshua SchoopingYeah. Well, I think that you're right to talk about fruit because the scripture asks us to to to judge the tree by its fruit. So I think the objection sounds a little bit weak to me if they're gonna say, oh, well, if you're going to use a scriptural standard, that that's now

13:13Joshua Schoopingobligating you to affirm that if a a Buddhist is very peaceful,

13:18Joshua Schoopingthat that means that he is saved, you know, because

13:21Joshua Schoopingit

13:22Joshua Schoopingit's like it's you're actually just obeying what scripture says to use that as a fruit. But part of the fruit is also the proper confession of Christ.

13:31Joshua SchoopingAnd

13:32Joshua Schoopingso a person can't confess Christ. I mean, the the the the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

13:40Joshua SchoopingAnd so the ability to believe and trust oneself

13:44Joshua Schoopingto Christ is a supernatural operation of the gospel, the gospel being the power of God unto salvation.

13:51Joshua SchoopingAnd so we're not saved by fruit, but we're asked to utilize fruit

13:55Joshua Schoopingas a means of verifying whether this confession in Christ

14:00Joshua Schoopingis consistent you know, is is authentic.

14:05Joshua SchoopingYou know? So I I think that it's perfectly fair to be able to say, well, one of these fruits is the proper confession of Christ.

14:13Gavin OrtlundYes.

14:13Gavin OrtlundWell said. And and, know, with the test of first Corinthians twelve three that no one can say Jesus is Lord except speaking by the Holy Spirit, there we've also have a doctrinal test that a Buddhist or a Mormon wouldn't pass. They wouldn't say Jesus is Lord in the sense that Paul understands that. So I think, to me, just obeying these scriptures is, as you put it, is what we're required to do.

14:37Gavin OrtlundBut let me let me ask you a question about the anxiety that that these exclusivistic claims

14:42Gavin Ortlundput people in because I wanna read a great quote from your book on page 30, and, again, encourage people to pick the book up

14:48Gavin Ortlundby the link in the description. You you talk about how these exclusivistic claims

14:54Gavin Ortlundare represented by multiple churches. So, for example,

14:57Gavin Ortlundthe same claim

14:59Gavin Ortlundthat the Eastern Orthodox make is made by Roman Catholics and oriental Orthodox in broad form. We're the one true church.

15:08Gavin OrtlundAnd you say, this sends credulous inquirers and would be defenders of the faith on a man centered hunt to find out which one true church is really the one true church according, of course, to the investigator's

15:21Gavin Ortlundgasp, private judgment.

15:24Gavin OrtlundNow it requires a PhD in church history and theology together with mastery of multiple languages, not to mention access to all the relevant resources to find out whether

15:33Gavin Ortlundone is even in the church and therefore saved.

15:36Gavin OrtlundAnd you quote Romans 10 and say, no. You know, you know you're saved if you have Christ.

15:42Gavin OrtlundAnd I just thought that was helpful because so often we're Protestants are criticized

15:46Gavin Ortlundfor over relying upon private judgment. But one of the things you're pointing out here is it's unavoidable to use our judgment

15:53Gavin Ortlundto make a decision of which church we will be in. And it really does put people in anxiety to try to figure out, you know and I know so many people like this. They're thinking they're worried about getting damned

16:06Gavin Ortlundby making the wrong ecclesial decision. Do you see people feeling that anxiety at all?

16:12Joshua SchoopingYes.

16:13Joshua SchoopingI've had many long conversations with people who really did struggle and suffer with that very anxiety.

16:20Joshua SchoopingAnd, I mean, some of them

16:23Joshua Schoopingwrite multiple hundreds of pages,

16:25Joshua Schoopingyou know, of books on trying to figure this out, and they're combing through church history or they're looking almost to the point where they're looking at newspaper headlines. I mean, maybe the the patriarch of Constantinople

16:39Joshua Schoopingis is it's a false church because because of who he is or or maybe now because of the war of in Ukraine.

16:46Joshua SchoopingMaybe the the Russian patriarch

16:48Joshua Schoopingis

16:50Joshua Schoopingis is maybe that's the wrong church.

16:52Joshua SchoopingAnd, like, people get these sorts of really intense ideas. I I was speaking with someone very recently,

16:59Joshua Schoopingand they were walking me through, you know, the history of, like, late nineteenth,

17:03Joshua Schoopingearly twentieth century

17:05Joshua SchoopingRussian Orthodox

17:06Joshua Schoopingpolitics

17:08Joshua Schoopingin relation to the churches.

17:10Joshua SchoopingYou know, after the Bolshevik revolution, which bishop was a real bishop, which bishop was a false bishop,

17:15Joshua Schoopingwhich bishop is a k j k j b k k j v, I was thinking, KGB agent.

17:22Joshua SchoopingYou know? And there's all of these sorts of things. So it's like, well, these churches are in the a part of the world council of churches, like the Antiochian Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church, and they're a part of this world council of churches. And how do we understand that? And and there's these true Orthodox churches or these

17:38Joshua Schoopingold calendarist sorts of churches, and and these are the real ones, and they have the right history. And and it's like there's this underlying

17:46Joshua SchoopingI mean, frankly, the I I can't help but wonder if they understand the gospel itself.

17:51Joshua SchoopingIf they think that that this late

17:54Joshua Schoopingnineteenth, early twentieth, mid twentieth century history all the way up to today,

18:00Joshua Schoopingit it it it's really up to you to find this out at

18:05Joshua Schoopingthe cost of your at the risk of your salvation.

18:08Joshua SchoopingAnd it's like, how can I all of a sudden have to become a contemporary,

18:11Joshua Schoopingyou know, a historian of contemporary politics

18:15Joshua Schoopingin order to

18:17Joshua Schoopingto discover this? I mean, where's the gospel at this point? Where's the New Testament? Where's where's Romans? Where's Ephesians? Where's where is all of this? What kind of how do I connect that? Like, what a tenuous web. And you have similar anxieties with, like, the SSPX,

18:32Joshua Schoopingyou know, the the Saint

18:34Joshua SchoopingPius the tenth

18:35Joshua Schoopingsociety of you know, that that a lot of traditionalist Roman Catholics will they'll go in there, and it sort of creates this sort of, I I ultimately think, an alternative object of faith

18:47Joshua SchoopingYeah. You know, that's not just Christ and the gospel.

18:50Gavin OrtlundHow would you pastor someone with the gospel who's watching this video and is experiencing that anxiety? Because I know one of our motives, our shared motives in talking about these things is to help

19:00Gavin Ortlundpastor people, help encourage people who are

19:04Gavin Ortlundthey are a sheep of Christ, and they're drowning in anxiety about these questions. What would you say to them?

19:10Joshua SchoopingThat's a really tough question because of the diversity of problems that people present, you know, that they're what they're wrestling with.

19:18Joshua SchoopingBut often, I'll look at the doctrine of the church.

19:21Joshua SchoopingI'll take them perhaps to the Nicene Creed or to the apostles' creed, and we'll see that that the doctrine of the church is an item of faith.

19:31Joshua SchoopingIt's not an item of calculation

19:34Joshua Schoopingand mathematics.

19:37Joshua SchoopingAnd being an item of faith, it's something that we ultimately trust Christ for.

19:43Joshua SchoopingIt's not something that we figure out

19:46Joshua Schoopingthrough kind of a ecclesiological

19:48Joshua Schoopingrationalism.

19:50Joshua SchoopingAnd so I think that that's kind of where I'll typically lead someone, and it's so it's it's something we we trust is there.

19:57Gavin OrtlundThat's that's really good. The last comment or question about this issue of ecclesiology I wanted to ask is,

20:06Gavin Ortlundwhat would you say

20:07Gavin Ortlundis the strength of Protestantism

20:10Gavin Ortlundin contrast

20:11Gavin Ortlundto these more

20:13Gavin Ortlundinstitutionally

20:14Gavin Ortlundrestrictive

20:15Gavin Ortlundvisions of the church. Because I think you're arguing that Protestantism offers us a pathway.

20:20Gavin OrtlundUltimately,

20:21Gavin Ortlundif you understand

20:23Gavin Ortlundunity, the nature of unity,

20:26Gavin Ortlunda bit more broadly, the nature of Catholicity

20:28Gavin Ortlunda bit more broadly,

20:30Gavin Ortlundthe Protestantism actually offers us a us a pathway toward

20:33Gavin Ortlundgreater Catholicity.

20:36Joshua SchoopingYeah. And I think it's kind of a counterintuitive

20:38Joshua Schoopingclaim if someone has absorbed

20:41Joshua Schoopingthe kind of Catholic or Orthodox kind of ecclesiological

20:45Joshua Schoopingassumption

20:46Joshua Schoopingthat

20:47Joshua Schoopingdiversity of administration or diversity of institution

20:51Joshua Schoopingjust automatically

20:52Joshua Schoopingmeans schism and sectarianism.

20:56Joshua SchoopingBecause sectarianism,

20:58Joshua Schoopingin my understanding, is to say we have the church and you don't.

21:03Joshua SchoopingBut

21:04Joshua SchoopingProtestant confessional Protestantism

21:06Joshua Schoopingdoesn't have that claim. The the the Lutheran Book of Concord, the the Westminster

21:12Joshua Schoopingstandards,

21:13Joshua Schoopingthey don't make these sorts of claims, the the three

21:16Joshua Schoopingstandards of unity or the

21:19Joshua Schoopingyou know, like, Dort and the Belgic confession and Heidelberg catechism, the three forms of unity. That's what they're called.

21:26Joshua SchoopingThey don't make this kind of claim. So when we look at at at the magisterial,

21:30Joshua Schoopingthe confessional documents,

21:32Joshua Schoopingor the 39 articles, or the London Baptist confession of 1689,

21:37Joshua Schoopingnone of them make this sort of reductionistic

21:39Joshua Schoopingclaim

21:40Joshua Schoopingabout the nature of the church. So so for them, administrative

21:44Joshua Schoopingdiversity

21:46Joshua Schoopingis just a sign of the inevitability of human nature of of time, place, culture, language.

21:52Joshua SchoopingAnd I think to to ex expect

21:55Joshua Schoopingthat Jesus'

21:57Joshua Schoopingadmonition for us to be have oneness of mind and oneness of spirit has to be expressed in lock in bureaucratic lockstep,

22:06Joshua SchoopingI think, is is just an absurd assumption that comes from the the Byzantification

22:11Joshua Schoopingof the church after Constantine

22:13Joshua Schoopingand Theodosius especially.

22:16Gavin OrtlundYes. That's really helpful. Let's

22:18Gavin Ortlundtalk about

22:20Gavin Ortlundicons a little bit. This

22:22Gavin Ortlundis another

22:23Gavin Ortlundmajor

22:24Gavin Ortlundarea in the book that you address. Just give us a brief brief introduction to the nature of your concern in relation to this issue.

22:32Joshua SchoopingYeah. Well, one of the concerns one of the primary concerns I have is kind of a popular claim as well, from the Orthodox Church where they say we're the we're unchanged. We've never changed. It's the church of the fathers.

22:45Joshua SchoopingEvery you know, everything's been maintained the same.

22:48Joshua SchoopingAnd it's a really rude awakening for people when this sort of pietistic

22:52Joshua Schoopingkind of,

22:53Joshua Schoopingnonsense

22:54Joshua Schoopingreally gets absorbed. It it can be very, very painful.

22:58Joshua SchoopingI remember in seminary,

22:59Joshua Schoopinglike, I I felt sick to my stomach when I'm in a liturgical theology class,

23:04Joshua Schoopingand they're going through the history, and it's like, this has changed. This has changed. This has changed. This has changed. This has changed. This has changed. This has changed. And I'm like, wow.

23:13Joshua SchoopingPeople say, oh, well, if you got into a time machine and you were worshiping with Justin Martyr, and then you got into a time machine and went and worshiped with Cyril of Alexandria, and you got into a time machine and worshiped with John of Damascus, and that it would always be the same. This is the sort of popular image.

23:29Joshua SchoopingPeople call me a fool for for having believed what, you know, local priests had told me about these sorts of of romantic legends of orthodoxy.

23:37Joshua SchoopingBut, you know, kind of bracketing that aside, like, and just sort of taking it very seriously where they say because they really do, on some level, say it's never changed.

23:46Joshua SchoopingAnd when it comes to icons, they say, well, we've always

23:50Joshua Schoopingvenerated icons.

23:51Joshua SchoopingIt's just how we've always been.

23:54Joshua SchoopingBut when you go back and you look at the first several centuries of the church, it was a trope. It for them, just a constant repeated thing. Like, every apologist had a chapter or some sort of section

24:05Joshua Schoopingthat that dealt with we don't do images.

24:09Joshua SchoopingWe like or or these images are foolish. Representative images, the whole notion of the transfer

24:16Joshua Schoopingfrom, you know, what is seen to what you know, to the to to the prototype, from the type to the prototype or whatever.

24:23Joshua SchoopingThey knew that argument and rejected it. And so then they say, oh, well, you know, that's an argument from silence,

24:29Joshua Schoopingto say that they weren't venerating images at that time. It's not an argument from silence. It's a fortiori.

24:36Joshua SchoopingIt's by force of argument.

24:38Joshua SchoopingThey're not going to sit there and have a unanimous witness against the veneration of images

24:43Joshua Schoopingand fail to mention for several centuries

24:47Joshua Schoopingthat they weren't themselves doing it the true way.

24:50Joshua SchoopingYou know? And so they're gonna say, well, you you have the false god, so here's the true god.

24:54Joshua SchoopingYou know? This is this is the the the normal way of things. You have the false. Here's the true. If they're gonna say you have the false veneration of images, they're gonna say we have the true.

25:04Joshua SchoopingBut since it's this universal condemnation

25:06Joshua Schoopingof it and and ridiculing

25:08Joshua Schoopingof the veneration of images,

25:10Joshua Schoopingit's an a fortiori argument. It's not an argument from silence. And so you have this clear witness in the first centuries of the church all the way up through at least Gregory of Nausiansus and Bezal.

25:22Joshua SchoopingAnd then it's not until about a century prior to John of Damascus where the very

25:26Joshua Schoopingarguments that Christians were arguing against

25:29Joshua Schoopingare now being picked up by people like John of Damascus and others. And now they're starting to say, oh, no. We've always done it.

25:37Joshua SchoopingWell, here's

25:38Joshua Schoopinga little known secret perhaps, but known to many people in orthodoxy

25:42Joshua Schoopingwhen you're in the local parishes is is if a local church has been doing something for forty years,

25:48Joshua Schoopingthat's holy tradition now.

25:50Joshua SchoopingNow imagine a church has been doing something for a hundred years. They're gonna go back. Well, my my spiritual father and his spiritual father, they were all venerating icons. Well, yeah, from your vantage, it was. But from the actual vantage of real historical scholarship, no, it wasn't.

26:05Joshua SchoopingAnd even they'll say, oh, well, we can find these old architectural

26:09Joshua Schoopingyou know, these pieces of architecture where they had images painted on the walls and stuff. But that doesn't that proves nothing about their usage.

26:17Joshua SchoopingAnd,

26:19Joshua Schoopingalso, in some of these

26:20Joshua Schoopingarch the

26:22Joshua Schoopingevidence that we have of architectural

26:24Joshua Schoopingart, you know, on the walls or whatever,

26:27Joshua Schoopingit it it in some of these cases, it wasn't even in the the, quote, unquote, worship space.

26:32Joshua SchoopingAnd so they'll use this sort of, like, this very flimsy evidence to try to to bring the whole camel, try to get, like, the camel's nose under the tent here and bring the whole camel of of what ends up being in Nicaea 2 is not only did we used to do it because they claim that in in, of course, in their their notion of authority,

26:53Joshua Schoopingthe the councils itself are equal to scripture, and they're as equally infallible.

26:59Joshua SchoopingSo they say that this is an unchanged practice in these councils,

27:03Joshua Schoopingwhich, historically, it's completely unverifiable,

27:06Joshua Schoopingand all of the evidence is against them. So not only would that be false, but they say it's so clear

27:12Joshua Schoopingto them that if you don't do it, you're rejecting Christ,

27:17Joshua Schoopingrejecting the incarnation,

27:18Joshua Schoopingrejecting the significance of it. And it's like,

27:21Joshua Schoopingyou know, it's like if if,

27:23Joshua Schoopingfor example, if the Bible said that there were a 150

27:27Joshua Schoopingboards in Noah's ark,

27:29Joshua Schoopingand if you say, well, maybe there was a 151

27:32Joshua Schoopingor there was a 149.

27:33Joshua SchoopingNo. It has to be you can't be rounding it. And if you and if you think that it was a 149 boards in Noah's ark, then then you don't believe the Bible. And if you don't believe the Bible, you don't believe it's God's word. And if you don't believe it's God's word, then you don't believe in God. So you're an atheist if you believe there's a 151

27:50Joshua Schoopingboards instead of a 150 boards in Noah's ark. And it becomes a sort of absurd maximalism,

27:56Joshua Schoopingin my opinion,

27:57Joshua Schoopingthat the Orthodox Church has has perpetrated

28:00Joshua Schoopingon the people

28:02Joshua Schoopingby saying if you don't worship and or venerate an icon, and they literally define it, you have to have affection for it. Mhmm. And if you don't have affection for kissing these pieces of wood with paint on them, then you are hellbound. You're already condemned. We've put in the key. We've turned it. We've locked it. Mark it down. Unless you repent and join the Orthodox Church and kiss these icons, you're going to hell. The wrath of God is on you.

28:30Joshua SchoopingSo, yeah, I've that's kind of where I stand on that.

28:33Gavin OrtlundYeah. At the beginning of your comments there, you mentioned that feeling of a sick stomach and the and the pain when people come to understand

28:40Gavin Ortlundthe historical record is messy and complicated and there has been change.

28:45Gavin OrtlundAnd I just wanted to follow-up on that myself because one of the pieces of counsel I've gotten used to giving people who are wrestling with these questions is to really slow down and take your time.

28:55Gavin OrtlundNow, obviously, people can slow down too much and take forty years or something like that. But, usually, I think people tend to go too quickly because this is one of those points where I want someone I have compassion on people. I want people to see

29:09Gavin Ortlundthese complexities before they make a big change, and so they don't regret it down the road. And I think if people would look at this issue,

29:17Gavin OrtlundI think they will be overwhelmed.

29:19Gavin OrtlundI'm overwhelmed. I've been studying it recently by the strength

29:22Gavin Ortlundof the biblical and historical argument against

29:26Gavin Ortlundthe veneration of images.

29:27Gavin OrtlundAnd I would just in agreement with your comments, I would encourage people not to dismiss them or think you're overstating it. The damnation and the clarity of that damnation at Nicaea 2 is very clear.

29:39Gavin OrtlundYou know, if you say that it's idolatry,

29:41Gavin Ortlundyou're damned to hell. You're anathematized.

29:44Gavin OrtlundThat's another I mean, there's so many things you can get damned for there, and then they flesh out. This is what anathema means. It's separation from God. It's in hell. It's the same as the heretics of old. It's I mean, you know, they flesh it out as clear as can be. And yet, if people will look into the historical record on this issue, I believe it is decisive,

30:03Gavin Ortlundin and of itself enough to convince. I would go so far as to say this issue alone

30:08Gavin Ortlundis a powerful reason to be a Protestant Christian because Protestants are not yoked to Nicaea two in the way that both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians are.

30:19Gavin OrtlundSo let me read a paragraph, and then I'll let you respond to this quote. I haven't shared this with you in advance, so I'm some sort of putting you on the spot here.

30:27Gavin OrtlundBut this is from Richard Price's translation and introduction to the Acts of Nicaea two, an outstanding piece of scholarship. He cannot be accused of a Protestant bias.

30:37Gavin OrtlundBut here's his summary of this scholarly history.

30:40Gavin OrtlundHe says, the iconoclast claim

30:43Gavin Ortlundso the iconoclast are those who want to do away with images,

30:48Gavin Ortlundthat reverence toward images did not go back to the golden age of the fathers,

30:53Gavin Ortlundstill less to the apostles,

30:55Gavin Ortlundwould be judged by impartial historians today to be simply correct.

31:00Gavin OrtlundThe iconophile

31:01Gavin Ortlundview of the of the history of Christian thought and devotion was virtually a denial of history.

31:07Gavin OrtlundHe goes on from many pages just talking about how the bishops at Nicaea too are just forging documents.

31:13Gavin OrtlundTheir some of their biblical interpretation is very extreme. They're relying on a mis quotation from Basel.

31:21Gavin OrtlundThe case is very weak that the apostles actually taught

31:25Gavin Ortlundvenerating images, and the historical

31:28Gavin Ortlundevidence for that, I think, is pretty overwhelming. That's my take on on it. What would you like to comment on about that?

31:35Joshua SchoopingYeah. And I I I think it's it is a fairly decisive issue.

31:39Joshua SchoopingThe problem I see is getting people to take it seriously.

31:44Joshua SchoopingThey don't understand that they're blood earnest about these cannons when they make them.

31:50Joshua SchoopingAnd

31:51Joshua Schoopingpeople will say, oh, well, it was contextualized.

31:54Joshua SchoopingThis has to do you know, I mean, you have to understand how it was back then. And it's like,

31:59Joshua Schoopingthe statements still stand

32:01Joshua Schoopingto and say what they say and mean what they say. So they either mean it or they don't.

32:07Joshua SchoopingAnd the other escape hatch that people have is this I would distinguish between

32:12Joshua Schoopingfree and

32:14Joshua Schoopingforced.

32:16Joshua SchoopingUsually, when you go into an Orthodox church and the priest talks to you, oh, hey. I'm curious. I'm inquiring. I'd like to know more about it. And then the local priest

32:25Joshua Schoopingwho probably hasn't studied, and I see it too carefully,

32:29Joshua Schoopingand has probably heard, oh, the iconoclasts

32:32Joshua Schoopingwere very mean and very cruel people,

32:35Joshua Schoopingand they did awful things, which is probably true.

32:39Joshua SchoopingAnd then they'll frame it as we get to. It's it's a free

32:43Joshua Schoopingveneration. We we're free to do it.

32:46Joshua SchoopingBut that's not what the actual council says. It's forced.

32:50Joshua SchoopingIt's actually a forcing of the affections.

32:53Joshua SchoopingAnd so the fact to to me that so deeply betrays the spirit of the gospel

32:59Joshua Schoopingthat it it's just it's just shocking. It's just shocking to me.

33:04Joshua SchoopingAnd you find people going into even someone like John of Damascus.

33:10Joshua SchoopingAnd one of the reasons why I didn't include a chapter on John of Damascus in there is because he's not actually part of the council,

33:17Joshua Schoopingeven though he's one of the framers of of the orthodox position on it. Because

33:22Joshua Schoopingand it's to answer one of the questions from earlier why I chose iconology and specifically focused on

33:28Joshua SchoopingNicaea two was because the second you start talking about John of Damascus, someone will say, oh, well, we don't really take what any particular father says fully.

33:39Joshua SchoopingYou know, that's just his opinion.

33:41Joshua SchoopingAnd so then they'll kind of, like, play that back and forth off of each other. So they'll they'll believe John of Damascus and everything he says about iconology.

33:49Joshua SchoopingBut then when you press it, they'll say, oh, well, we don't wanna put too much weight on John of Damascus because, ultimately, he's just a single father. So they get to have John of Damascus and reject John of Damascus

34:00Joshua Schoopingif if they if they so choose, whenever it is advantageous for them.

34:05Joshua SchoopingSo I really tried to stick with these canonical issues to to really

34:09Joshua Schoopingkind of show that it's critical. It's not just what one father says. It's actually embedded into their whole system. But John of Damascus ultimately makes, in my opinion, kind of a non sequitur.

34:20Joshua SchoopingIt really doesn't follow that because Jesus Christ was incarnated

34:25Joshua Schoopingthat now all of a sudden I can venerate

34:28Joshua Schoopingthe image of him.

34:30Joshua SchoopingAnd then even all of these references back to imagery

34:34Joshua Schoopingor types in the Old Testament, like looking at the at the bronze serpent, for example. They bowed to the bronze serpent. Right?

34:42Joshua SchoopingAnd

34:43Joshua Schoopingor they looked to the bronze serpent or venerated the staff or something like that. And and it's like where they find something that's a type of Christ, sure, it's a type of Christ,

34:53Joshua Schoopingbut it's not a type of iconography.

34:56Gavin OrtlundRight.

34:57Gavin OrtlundExactly.

34:58Joshua SchoopingIf the brass is a type of Christ, it doesn't thereby become also a type of brassware

35:03Joshua Schoopingiconography.

35:05Joshua SchoopingAnd so I I I find that a lot of the bait and switch and the non sequitur type of stuff to kind of get around

35:12Joshua Schoopingthe fact that it's really a corruption of the gospel.

35:16Joshua SchoopingWhere the spirit is, there is freedom.

35:18Joshua SchoopingAnd Jesus Christ didn't

35:20Joshua Schoopingdidn't die on Calvary

35:22Joshua Schoopingto force us to bow down to images of him.

35:26Gavin OrtlundYeah. Well and also with that, I mean, the fact is that

35:30Gavin Ortlundthe biblical testimony on upon this, I mean, it's like it's literally one of the 10 commandments

35:36Gavin Ortlundthat says, don't bow down to images. Now to me, I'm thinking if the incarnation

35:42Gavin Ortlundchanged

35:43Gavin Ortlundthis commandment,

35:46Gavin OrtlundI think it's kind of reasonable that that would be mentioned.

35:50Gavin OrtlundLike, that would come up in the new by the way, second commandment no longer applicable. Or if there's a distinction between veneration

35:57Gavin Ortlundand worship

35:58Gavin Ortlundin this systematic way

36:00Gavin Ortlundin the context of regular religious practice, in the context of a local church, you know, then seems kind of reasonable to think that this distinction would be laid out in scripture.

36:11Gavin OrtlundYou know, you just it's kind of like a metaphor would be like if if in in certain cultures,

36:16Gavin Ortlundif you kiss someone

36:19Gavin Ortlundas a way of form of greeting,

36:21Gavin Ortlundbut a wife says to her husband, don't kiss other women. I don't want you to kiss other women.

36:26Gavin OrtlundAnd then the husband comes back and later says, well, that was just a kiss of affection, not a kiss of romance.

36:33Gavin OrtlundThat's inauthentic because his wife never gave him permission for any kind of kissing. The distinction came later as a way to justify the practice.

36:42Gavin OrtlundAnd that would be the a concern I would have with this distinction between veneration and worship is I just don't see that distinction anywhere in in the holy scripture itself.

36:50Joshua SchoopingI would also say that that's another sort of bait and switch where it's like, that really is an irrelevant distinction in and of itself when the the very

37:00Joshua Schoopingand John of Damascus never deals with this in his treatises against the icons is that is that the reason scripture gives isn't only what Moses says when he says, for you didn't see a form on that day.

37:12Joshua SchoopingWe had seen forms on other days when Jacob wrestled the angel or Abraham

37:17Joshua Schoopinghad

37:18Joshua Schoopinglunch with the with the with the angels, with the three guests. But scripture gives other reasons for not venerating or worshiping or bowing down or

37:27Joshua Schoopingto to images is because they're literally not alive.

37:31Joshua SchoopingMhmm. That those who bow down to them become like unto them,

37:36Joshua Schoopingand they become lifeless like them. And so John of Damascus never deals with those arguments. He just just never talks about it.

37:45Joshua SchoopingBut that's one of the principal scriptural reasons for not venerating them. Think about the notion of of the union that we have with Christ, that it's by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our heart. God gives us the Holy Spirit by which we cry out, Abba, Father.

38:01Joshua SchoopingNow when I start

38:02Joshua Schoopingprojecting

38:03Joshua Schoopingonto this

38:05Joshua Schoopingthis painted image about an absent

38:07Joshua Schoopinga distant god, a god up there rather than god who the kingdom of heaven being within, I start to externalize

38:15Joshua Schoopingmy whole relationship with god

38:18Joshua Schoopingrather than actually depending on the indwelling holy spirit given to me in the word,

38:23Joshua Schoopingwhich comes to me through a living voice into my ear and into my heart. And so it starts to undermine, in my opinion, the very relationship,

38:31Joshua Schoopingthe ordering of the relationship we have with God by getting us to rely on that which is outward

38:37Joshua Schoopingvisually

38:38Joshua Schoopingrather than an outward word coming in.

38:41Gavin OrtlundYeah.

38:42Gavin OrtlundLast question on icons, then we'll move on to mariology.

38:46Gavin OrtlundWhen I read the early, the anti Nicene period, the first 300

38:51Gavin Ortlundof church history, so before council of Nicaea three twenty five,

38:54Gavin OrtlundI am struck that it seems to be, number one, virtually unanimous

38:58Gavin Ortlundroughly against the veneration of images, in some cases

39:02Gavin Ortlundagainst any usage of images,

39:04Gavin Ortlundand also that it it seemed to be a hallmark distinctive feature of what makes Christian worship different from pagan worship.

39:12Gavin OrtlundAnd I'm thinking people like Origen

39:13Gavin Ortlundor Justin Martyr people like this. Do you see the practice of veneration of images as a sort of infiltration

39:21Gavin Ortlundof a broader human temptation into the church? Is that is that how you would interpret how what's going on? Is it starting to come in in that post Constantinian

39:31Gavin Ortlundera?

39:32Joshua SchoopingYeah. I I think it was

39:34Joshua Schoopinga flood

39:36Joshua Schoopingof unconverted people, so to speak, entering into the church.

39:42Joshua SchoopingBecause now it's it's socially advantageous to be in the church, you know, during the Constantine and the immediately following era,

39:49Joshua Schoopingafter Theodosius,

39:50Joshua Schoopingby the time you get up into Justinian,

39:52Joshua Schoopingyou know, it's like you just have to be a Christian in order to be really be a legal citizen, so to speak.

39:58Joshua SchoopingAnd so I don't think they were able to tame

40:01Joshua Schoopingthe cult of

40:03Joshua Schoopingidolatry

40:04Joshua Schoopingthat just exists in the pagan world. And so they tried to Christianize it. They tried to baptize it.

40:10Joshua SchoopingThey tried to find some way to mitigate

40:13Joshua Schoopingthose forces and powers. And I think that's also where, you know, not to anticipate too much, but where the the mariology came

40:22Joshua Schoopingfrom as well. It's just goddess worship.

40:26Joshua SchoopingAnd and they're just they couldn't really control it, so they tried to use

40:31Joshua Schoopingthey tried a a false hermeneutic and inappropriate use of typology

40:35Joshua Schoopingin order to kind of

40:38Joshua Schoopingfind a way to baptize this stuff. And so once you have all of these people in these churches who really have no respect for for god's word,

40:46Joshua Schoopingnow all of a sudden, let's you know, we have images of the saints. We we pray to them for this. We pray to them for that,

40:53Joshua Schoopingand just kind of like this mushrooming

40:55Joshua Schoopingof, you know, unchristian practices.

40:58Gavin OrtlundMhmm.

40:59Gavin OrtlundWell, that's a good segue to get into Mary.

41:02Gavin OrtlundAnd I suspect that many viewers will be more familiar with Roman Catholic

41:07Gavin Ortlundviews

41:08Gavin Ortlundand attitudes toward the Virgin Mary than Eastern Orthodox.

41:12Gavin OrtlundSo could you orient us to this? What's the basic role of of Mary within Orthodoxy?

41:19Joshua SchoopingWell, I

41:21Joshua Schoopingthe basic role of of Mary within orthodoxy is really rooted in the

41:28Joshua Schoopinghymns that are written about her,

41:31Joshua Schoopingthat are sung within the church. The so these are, like, canonical hymns. These aren't like, what is this church father's quote about her, or what is that church father's,

41:40Joshua Schoopingyou know, quote about her. This is this is what the church formally

41:45Joshua Schoopingconfesses through song

41:47Joshua Schoopingin the various feasts to Mary.

41:49Joshua SchoopingYou have 12 basic feasts of the year,

41:53Joshua Schoopingmore or less, and then you have half of them are to Mary, half of them are to Jesus.

41:58Joshua SchoopingHer birth

42:00Joshua Schoopingis the

42:02Joshua Schoopingfirst feast of the year, and her death, her dormition, her falling asleep is the last. So she kind of frames the entire

42:12Joshua Schoopingchurch year,

42:13Joshua Schoopinglike her her coming into the world and her departing from the world. So she's a very central figure.

42:19Joshua SchoopingAnd if someone examines the hymns

42:22Joshua Schoopingin the Orthodox Church,

42:25Joshua Schoopingwhether that's the acathist hymn or whether those are hymns like to

42:29Joshua Schoopingyou know, for her entry into the temple,

42:32Joshua SchoopingThey

42:33Joshua Schoopingascribe to her

42:35Joshua Schoopingsuperhistorical

42:37Joshua Schoopingor suprahistorical

42:39Joshua Schoopingrole

42:39Joshua Schoopingthat, essentially, you cannot approach Jesus

42:43Joshua Schoopingunless she blesses you to do it.

42:46Joshua SchoopingYou know, they they took how

42:49Joshua SchoopingJesus couldn't come into the world unless he came through Mary,

42:54Joshua Schoopingso we can't get to Jesus unless we go to Mary. They do, like, kind of a mirroring

43:00Joshua Schoopingkind of image there.

43:02Joshua SchoopingThat started

43:04Joshua Schoopingprobably

43:05Joshua Schoopingafter the fourth, fifth, sixth century. You start to see Mary being treated as something more than

43:12Joshua Schoopinga a part of the the historical

43:14Joshua Schoopingsalvation.

43:15Joshua SchoopingThe Historia Salutis, I I get the Latin

43:18Joshua Schoopingmixed up there. You have, the Ordo Salutis, but then you have the Historia Salutis. You might recall how to pronounce that better better than I.

43:26Joshua SchoopingBut,

43:28Joshua Schoopingyou know, we have an Irenaeus.

43:30Joshua SchoopingWe have him

43:31Joshua Schoopingtalking about Mary as a historical phenomenon, a historical personage.

43:36Joshua SchoopingBut then by the time you get up to where these hymns are coming from in the seventh, eighth, ninth century,

43:42Joshua Schoopingnow she is the propitiation

43:44Joshua Schoopingfor the whole world. She's

43:46Joshua Schoopingshe's the one who we have to go to in in order to get to Jesus.

43:50Gavin OrtlundYes. And what I'll what why don't I read

43:54Gavin Ortlundone or two examples from your book of

43:57Gavin Ortlundthis is from a collection of ninth century prayers that you've drawn attention to. And I wanna read these and then ask you to comment on these in terms of are these representative,

44:06Gavin Ortlundor are they exceptional or something like this. And

44:09Gavin OrtlundI'll set it up like this. One of the arguments you hear

44:13Gavin Ortlundto defend mariology

44:15Gavin Ortlundamong Catholic or Orthodox Christians is this

44:19Gavin Ortlundit's a both hand. It's not Mary

44:23Gavin Ortlunddisplacing Jesus.

44:24Gavin OrtlundMary just leads us more into the heart of Jesus.

44:28Gavin OrtlundIt's like the sun and the moon. You know, Jesus is the sun. He's reflecting off Mary the moon. This this way of thinking. This bothand way of thinking. And as one who wants to treat Mary with honor and respect as a great woman of God, that that's not the where this is coming from. We don't hate Mary as some the work uses. Not that at all. And we wanna honor

44:49Gavin Ortlundwhat God did through Mary in the incarnation,

44:51Gavin OrtlundI have to say that I'm convinced in my conscience that these prayers and the general role of Mary in these traditions

44:58Gavin Ortlunddoesn't really fly by the whole bothand way of thinking because particular

45:03Gavin Ortlundsoteriological

45:04Gavin Ortlundroles

45:04Gavin Ortlundare given to Mary that belong exclusively

45:08Gavin Ortlundto Christ.

45:09Gavin OrtlundAnd in in Western prayers that you'll find you'll find basically the prayer is Mary propitiate

45:15Gavin OrtlundJesus.

45:16Gavin OrtlundPropitiate your son.

45:17Gavin OrtlundAnd so we're saying, wait a second. That's not a bothand. That that's Mary

45:22Gavin Ortlundplaying the role toward Jesus

45:25Gavin Ortlundthat the gospel teaches us Jesus played

45:28Gavin Ortlundtoward the father and has already been done at Calvary.

45:31Gavin OrtlundSo here's an example from page 76 of your book. One of the prayers says, I do not dare to draw near with boldness to your son,

45:39Gavin Ortlundbut instead I pray to you

45:41Gavin Ortlundthat I may obtain salvation through your intercessions to him.

45:45Gavin OrtlundDo not allow the dark power to seize me and cast me into the depths of Hades. Grant that the just judge should look upon me favorably.

45:53Gavin OrtlundDeliver me from the eternal fire, for you are the only helper of mankind.

45:58Gavin OrtlundAnother one from page 77. Through your pure and acceptable supplications,

46:02Gavin Ortlundpersuade the righteous judge to have compassion upon me for you are his mother.

46:07Gavin OrtlundOpen up

46:09Gavin Ortlundfor me the compassionate heart of your

46:12Gavin Ortlundmerciful son and beseech him to overlook my transgressions.

46:16Gavin OrtlundWell,

46:17Gavin Ortlundthat sure sounds like it's saying Mary has to propitiate Jesus,

46:21Gavin Ortlundand that to me is a concern that would touch upon the very heart of the gospel message.

46:26Gavin OrtlundSo what what would you like to say about that?

46:29Joshua SchoopingYeah. And, I mean, those prayers, some might say, oh, well, those aren't everyday prayers that

46:36Joshua Schoopingeverybody would always pray

46:38Joshua Schoopingperhaps

46:39Joshua Schoopingeven though it comes from an orthodox prayer book.

46:43Joshua SchoopingBut it actually is completely consistent with the Akathist hymn,

46:47Joshua Schoopingwhich is one of the core central,

46:50Joshua Schoopingeven daily

46:51Joshua Schoopingdevotionals

46:52Joshua Schoopingthat many people have. So I think the both and is really just a rhetorical ploy

46:58Joshua Schoopingbecause

47:00Joshua Schoopingthat's just not really it's not real. It's just not real. I don't I don't know how to say a both and.

47:06Joshua SchoopingI've I've never really quite been able to to figure out or wrap my head around

47:11Joshua Schoopinghow we can distort the message of the gospel

47:15Joshua Schoopingthat Jesus Christ is the propitiation

47:17Joshua Schoopingfor our sin. And now Jesus Christ gets absorbed into his divinity.

47:22Joshua SchoopingHe's no longer constantly interceding on behalf of the saints, and so now Mary becomes the intercessor.

47:29Joshua SchoopingIt's like a both end of what? Which Jesus are we talking about?

47:33Joshua SchoopingIt's not the Jesus of the gospel. It's both end. It's it's Mary and another Christ.

47:40Gavin OrtlundYeah. And, I mean, would you say

47:42Gavin Ortlundhere's the thing. It's like, at at one point in your book, you had this statement about how

47:47Gavin Ortlundthe East needed a reformation.

47:50Gavin OrtlundThe Eastern Eastern Christianity needed some kind of spark of renewal. But the challenge is it seems as though the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church, to speak specifically of that church, is such that it it sort of makes a reformation impossible to some extent insofar as this whole appeal is of changelessness.

48:08Gavin OrtlundAnd Nicaea too is irreformable. It's not going away.

48:12Joshua SchoopingCorrect. Yeah. And they they dug themselves in through, you know, this excessive

48:18Joshua Schoopingbelief about the nature of the church. It's kind of rooted in their exclusivism,

48:23Joshua Schoopingtheir sectarianism

48:24Joshua Schoopingthat if they admit that they made a mistake at Nicaea two

48:28Joshua Schoopingand said, we need to back off a little bit from the extremity of this claim,

48:33Joshua Schoopingthen now they admit that it was an error and that those church fathers didn't have the authority that they irrigated for themselves.

48:40Joshua SchoopingSo at this point, they would be cutting off their nose to spite their face,

48:44Joshua Schoopingand they can't have their both and here. It can't be the the friendly alternative mystical,

48:51Joshua Schoopingyou know, alternative

48:52Joshua Schoopingto new ageism

48:54Joshua Schoopingand and, you know,

48:56Joshua Schoopinglegalistic

48:57Joshua Schoopingforensic Christianity or something like mechanistic

49:00Joshua SchoopingWestern Christianity or something like that. It it is what it is. It's an extreme claim. It's very harsh,

49:07Joshua Schoopingand they have no problem with it, until they become, you know, Westerners trying to find a way to kind of square the circle or whatever with whatever cognitive dissonance brought them into the church or keeps them there.

49:20Joshua SchoopingTrying to get them to take it seriously is is almost almost impossible,

49:25Joshua SchoopingI think it would

49:27Joshua Schoopingbecause it's it's

49:29Joshua Schoopingit's such a complete picture. It's so culturally attractive. It seems to offer

49:35Joshua Schoopingsomething unchanging in the midst of an of of America

49:38Joshua Schoopingor of a Western civilization that seems to be falling apart all around us. And so a lot of people are holding on to orthodoxy as kind of like a life raft.

49:48Gavin OrtlundYeah.

49:48Gavin OrtlundEarlier, you mentioned the differences

49:51Gavin Ortlundbetween Irenaeus'

49:52Gavin Ortlundmariology and later mariological developments where people will try to

49:58Gavin Ortlunddefend the later developments by saying, oh, look. Irenaeus said this. But then if you look at them both, you're saying, these are pretty different.

50:07Gavin OrtlundSimilarly,

50:08Gavin Ortlundwith Cyprian, you you have a section in the book where you're talking about, you know, people will defend the exclusivist

50:15Gavin Ortlundecclesiology

50:15Gavin Ortlundby looking back at Cyprian and his exclusivist

50:19Gavin Ortlundecclesiology,

50:20Gavin Ortlundand you point out there's some differences here. Cyprian's kind of in a different context. Some of the people he's thinking of as outside the church are a little different than what we're dealing with, say, in, like, the eleventh century or the sixteenth century in these kinds of schisms that are happening later. So would you like to say anything about this of the differences in context from Cyprian's

50:39Gavin Ortlundday to later developments?

50:41Joshua SchoopingYeah. I

50:43Joshua SchoopingCyprian, of course, was before Constantine.

50:46Joshua SchoopingHe was before the secularization

50:48Joshua Schoopingof the church.

50:49Joshua SchoopingYou had a much this was the church that was being persecuted all of the time. And so he's talking about unity

50:57Joshua Schoopingin that sort of context where people are able to

51:01Joshua Schoopingspiritually

51:02Joshua Schoopingunify, unite around

51:05Joshua Schoopingthe basics of the faith

51:07Joshua Schoopingthat were not this was before Nicaea.

51:09Joshua SchoopingThis was before

51:11Joshua Schoopingmany things had been clarified and defined.

51:15Joshua SchoopingAnd so

51:16Joshua Schoopingthe person that he was condemning

51:18Joshua Schoopingin was someone who was saying, you can't return back to the church. You can't repent.

51:25Joshua SchoopingAnd so the person who was separating and creating a schism here was someone who was being a rigorous and not allowing those who had lapsed

51:33Joshua Schoopingduring the persecutions

51:35Joshua Schoopingto to return back to the church. And so he was creating a de facto pure church

51:42Joshua Schoopingthat Cyprian was against.

51:44Joshua SchoopingAnd so here we have the orthodox almost kind of playing

51:47Joshua Schoopingthis other role of where where now they're they're excessively

51:52Joshua Schoopingcreating a rigid notion of the church where they're multiplying

51:55Joshua Schoopingcanons, multiplying

51:57Joshua Schoopingtheir councils

51:59Joshua Schoopingto the point where now you have second seven ecumenical councils. I don't know how many hundreds of canons that are involved in this. And so that in order to be a a church unity,

52:09Joshua Schoopingyou have to be able to actually, at least hypothetically or virtually affirm every single one of those as if none of them had ever aired.

52:17Joshua SchoopingBut Cyprian in did not have anything like Constantine

52:21Joshua Schoopingin his mind, didn't have anything like a Christian Roman empire in his mind. He didn't have anything like the even the debates between the oriental orthodox and the the Byzantine emperor with Chalcedon in 451 or in Ephesus two in 349.

52:36Joshua SchoopingHe didn't he didn't say that church unity had to be at at at such a fine degree of attunement that you couldn't that you had to accept Chalcedon in 451 as opposed to the 349 Ephesus.

52:48Joshua SchoopingI'm not trying to side with one or the other, but but to say that that Cyprian

52:52Joshua Schoopinghad in his mind or in his intention such a maximal level for the to to be able to be kind of like a a a baseline

53:00Joshua Schoopingfor what unity could even be, to me, is is absurd. It's kind of like a a canonical rigorism that I don't think cip Cyprian could have even imagined at the time.

53:10Gavin OrtlundWell, let me just ask one more question, Josh. This was one of the portions of the book that I thought was really

53:17Gavin Ortlundthat you had an appendix that was engaging the work of Josiah Trenum.

53:21Gavin OrtlundAnd one of the points you made for people who wanna follow this in the book is it's from page one twenty two. You made a really good point that I

53:29Gavin OrtlundI appreciated it because I see this happening so much where there's an apples to oranges comparison.

53:35Gavin OrtlundSo so street level Protestant

53:38Gavin Ortlundpractice will be compared to official

53:41Gavin OrtlundOrthodox

53:42Gavin Ortlundtheology or it could be Catholic theology or something like this. So, you know, as as opposed to official theology to official theology or street level practice to street level practice. So it's like this this statement from this church father or this canonical decree or something compared to what I saw over there at that Protestant parish or whatever. Like and it's a very unfair,

54:04Gavin Ortlundobviously, way of freighting the and and and kind of framing the the differences.

54:09Gavin OrtlundSo I thought you had a really

54:10Gavin Ortlundjust a good response to that. I do you wanna elaborate on that at all? I think this was in connection to the doctrine of salvation.

54:17Joshua SchoopingYeah.

54:18Joshua SchoopingYou know, it can get really

54:20Joshua Schoopingsalacious really fast if a person was going to compare, you know, apples to oranges or oranges to apples because I think there's

54:28Joshua Schoopingthere's rotten fruit in all churches. You know? There's always wheat among the tares or tares among among the wheat.

54:36Joshua SchoopingAnd so, you know, it it

54:39Joshua Schoopingit ends up becoming a kind of blind spot if we're just kind of taking our own personal experience.

54:45Joshua SchoopingYou know, I grew up in in this evangelical church. I grew up in this Methodist church or Presbyterian church or Baptist church, and and they taught it this way. And I just assume it because all of a sudden, I get familiarized

54:57Joshua Schoopingto a certain kind of pattern of language.

55:00Joshua SchoopingAnd so once that pattern of language is established, it's hard for me to kind of second guess

55:06Joshua Schoopingand kind of reinvigorate

55:09Joshua Schoopingan assessment of it and get deep down into the theology of it by looking at going from the the apple to the orange, so to speak, from from my personal experience to the actual theological

55:21Joshua Schoopingdoctrine that would be presented in, you know, informal documents like the Westminster Confession or something like that. And and then now let me look at Thomas Watson and his exposition of it or Thomas Boston or or let me look at someone like a Michael Horton or a Robert Lethem, and let me go through their systematic theology and see how they're reasoning this out so I can get the fullness of the doctrine. Because no local presentation of the gospel can actually account for, like, the fullness of the total tradition,

55:49Joshua Schoopingany particular tradition.

55:52Joshua SchoopingSo it's like as good of a preacher as you might be or as I might be or someone else might be, you know, we're not going to be able to give to our local congregation

56:00Joshua Schoopingthe full spectrum that would be present in an entire systematic theology that might run four or five, six volumes.

56:07Joshua SchoopingYou know, that's that's a that would be a lot to cover.

56:10Joshua SchoopingBut when people get dissatisfied

56:12Joshua Schoopingat the local level, what do they do? They go, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna start reading, and they find Athanasius.

56:17Joshua SchoopingThey find Gregory of Nazion's. They find all of these people. Then they're gonna go to Dmitry Stanoloya. They're gonna look at his dogmatic theology, or they're gonna look at Michael Palamizanski.

56:27Joshua SchoopingThey're gonna look, and they're gonna find this kind of, like, idealized picture.

56:31Joshua SchoopingAnd then they create this idealized picture. They get very excited. They come from a bad church. Everybody knows that there's there's tares among the wheat, so they go into this local or orthodox parish with kid gloves.

56:44Joshua SchoopingAnd they say, oh, well, of course, nobody's perfect, but they have this idealized image that allows them to kind of work through all of those problems

56:53Joshua Schoopingthat every single parish has and kind of excuse them.

56:58Joshua SchoopingBut then they use the bad experiences that they had in their previous evangelical

57:02Joshua Schoopingor Protestant parish and say, see, that's just evidence that it's all wrong.

57:07Joshua SchoopingBut that same process can work in both directions,

57:10Joshua Schoopingwhere someone can grow up in a in an orthodox parish. They They never heard the gospel in their life. They never you know, this, this, this. There was bad actions here, bad actors there. And then they get this idealized version of Protestantism,

57:23Joshua Schoopingand then they don't critique their own tradition

57:25Joshua Schoopingin an authentic way. And so either way, you create this kind of impressionism.

57:29Joshua SchoopingI I have this impression here, and then I get the ideal image there or

57:34Joshua Schoopingthe or going doing the same thing, you know, from one church to the other. And so I think actually taking the time to read through,

57:42Joshua Schoopingknow, one of my favorites is Hermann Babinck. I think his four volume dogmatics are great. I also like Francis Pieper. He's a Lutheran dogmatician.

57:51Joshua SchoopingAnd when you go through and you read through, like, just the intelligence that they have, the broadness that they have So if we're talking about soteriology in that from that particular

58:00Joshua Schoopingsection, like, to to say that Protestantism has a reductionistic

58:04Joshua Schoopingsoteriology

58:05Joshua Schoopingthat doesn't involve things like union with Christ,

58:09Joshua Schoopingwell, that's absurd. It's one of the the the basic ideas that you find in all centuries of Protestant thought in their systematic theologies

58:16Joshua Schoopingis the doctrine of union with Christ and how everything flows from union.

58:20Joshua SchoopingAnd that it's not just being saved from sin or saved from an angry god. It's It involves justification.

58:26Joshua SchoopingIt involves sanctification.

58:28Joshua SchoopingIt involves glorification. It involves

58:30Joshua Schoopingbeing liberated from sin, death, the devil, the flesh, the world, all of these things in a full robust soteriology.

58:37Joshua SchoopingAnd so all of those are present within the evangelical and Protestant tradition,

58:41Joshua Schoopingand it avoids all of the the canonical errors

58:45Joshua Schoopingthat are in the Orthodox Church because the Orthodox Church, unfortunately, can't ever fix itself if it ever missteps or mistakes.

58:53Joshua SchoopingAnd so in order to become orthodox,

58:55Joshua Schoopingeven if you were going to bound try to balance their two systematic theologies, let's take Dmitry Staneologia on one hand and and Hermann Babinck or Francis Pieper on the on the other. And and

59:07Joshua Schoopingeven if you like what Dmitry Stanoloa says, you still can't escape the canonical question of iconology,

59:13Joshua Schoopingforced, you know, forced iconodulia,

59:15Joshua Schoopingthe sort of corruption

59:17Joshua Schoopingof the gospel by treating Mary as a second sort of transcendental savior that only can approach Jesus through her

59:24Joshua Schoopingor

59:25Joshua Schoopingthe the idea of the exclusivity

59:28Joshua Schoopingof the church.

59:29Joshua SchoopingAnd so those three particular problems, in my opinion, ultimately even

59:34Joshua Schoopingmake it difficult to just simply take what Dmitry Stanalois says in in his systematic theology or his dogmatic theology set or Michael Palamzanski

59:43Joshua Schoopingversus what you would find in a hermann bavinck because in,

59:47Joshua Schoopingyou know, in the in the Dutch Reformed or in just the Reformed traditions in general, you have confessions.

59:52Joshua SchoopingAnd in those confessions, you have a clear statement of what their ecclesiology

59:56Joshua Schoopingis.

59:57Joshua SchoopingBut you don't have a clear ecclesiology unless you start ransacking

1:00:01Joshua SchoopingNicaea two and all of the various canons and the can and the council of sixteen seventy two. There's no clear statement of ecclesiology

1:00:09Joshua Schoopingin the Orthodox Church until you find these very uncomfortable things that modern day Orthodox people wanna shy away from, unless you find some of the more bold traditionalists

1:00:18Joshua Schoopingamongst them. You know, they'll say, yeah. No one else is a Christian, and you're only saved if you're in the if you're in the Orthodox Church.

1:00:24Joshua SchoopingOf course, these churches are typically a part of a part of the world council of churches as well. So you'll find the true Orthodox and the the Greek, the old calendarist, they'll say, oh, no. Even these traditionalist ROCOR guys are part of the world council of churches, so so they're not even truly Orthodox either. So, you know, this sort of chaos that happens over there. But in the the mess that you have in the Protestant world,

1:00:46Joshua Schoopingbecause they're not exclusivistic,

1:00:48Joshua Schoopingwe can appreciate

1:00:49Joshua Schoopingour differences with a spirit of of collegiality,

1:00:53Joshua SchoopingI think, that allows us to affirm, yes. I can

1:00:57Joshua Schoopingthis is an important enough issue that it becomes like a

1:01:01Joshua Schoopingwe couldn't share the same

1:01:04Joshua Schoopingchurch body necessarily, but that doesn't mean I think you're outside of the church itself as the mystical body of Christ. But, you know, we have we baptize infants,

1:01:13Joshua Schoopingand and you baptize

1:01:15Joshua Schoopingpeople upon profession of faith,

1:01:17Joshua Schoopingand we just can't really work out the pastoral kind of issues that might become complicated through that. So you guys can work that out. It's a serious scriptural affirmation. We work it out this way. It's a serious scriptural affirmation.

1:01:30Joshua SchoopingBut at the same time, we recognize that there is a basic brotherhood even though at the administrative level, we diversify.

1:01:37Gavin OrtlundThat's a really good answer and a good one to finish with. And

1:01:41Gavin OrtlundI I I think this interview will be really helpful for people who are working through these questions. Josh, I admire you and your courage and your convictions, and

1:01:50Gavin Ortlundit's evident to me as we talk. And I know this is both of our heart is we want to honor the truth. We want to

1:01:56Gavin Ortlundstrive for a pure gospel because it's worth doing so.

1:02:01Gavin OrtlundWe're we're trying to do that in a way where that is the the the goal. We're not just trying to attack or we're trying to avoid any sense of vitriol or anger, but but we have to talk about these things, and we can't shy away from the truth because the fact is these things matter immensely.

1:02:18Gavin OrtlundAnd a lot of people you know, I think a lot of Protestants are just too a bit naive too, maybe. Just not

1:02:23Gavin Ortlundcoming into these conversations,

1:02:25Gavin Ortlundand

1:02:26Gavin OrtlundI I think just hearing from you

1:02:30Gavin Ortlundon these topics would just be really helpful for people. So I'm I'm very grateful.

1:02:34Gavin OrtlundWhere can people find a copy of your book if they look for it?

1:02:37Joshua SchoopingOh, it's it's on Amazon.

1:02:39Joshua SchoopingThat's that's where it is. Yeah. Just type my name and the title, and and it and it ought to be there.

1:02:45Gavin OrtlundGreat. So it's Joshua Schooping,

1:02:47Gavin Ortlunddisillusioned,

1:02:48Gavin Ortlundwhy I left the Eastern Orthodox priesthood and church. People can find it on Amazon.

1:02:53Gavin OrtlundThank you everybody for watching. May the Lord bless you and keep you.