Eastern Orthodox Theology: with Frederica Mathewes-Greene

Joe as we normally do but before we do that we want to make sure we've got a couple of viewers coming through making sure that we've got some audio Michael tell us a little bit about what happened last week just kind of catch everybody up yes last night to catch everybody up for last night well we had this incredible conversation with Frederico Mathews Greene unfortunately our audio was just not quite right and for the first time in three years of filming we did not have we did not complete a show on a Monday night and so here we are on Tuesday and Frederick has been so gracious to meet with us again on Tuesday and to make sure this happens but we're talking about the Eastern Orthodox Church and it has been a fabulous conversation so looking forward to continuing that today yeah super excited I see someone there in the chat box if you would just let us know is audio coming through are you hearing audio come through on the sound just just to verify we want to make sure audios is as clean and good before we get started in our broadcast we won't be doing cuts to our intro video we won't be doing cuts into our the worship ad that we typically do on the program just because we don't want the same kind of mishaps we think there's something wrong with the drivers on the computer pulling audio so is everybody everybody Rinna's clear you got any comments coming in no comments are coming in I see that you're watching help us out guys help us out we'll get somebody coming through just now that was you wasn't it yeah I heard that anyway once once we know that we're coming in here I'll turn on my own iPad off volume great we've got audio it's working yeah okay it's working so we're gonna dive in and like it's the real show because it's real so the four of you got to good to watch that there okay go to this one hey everybody my name is Joshua Lewis you're watching remnant radio this is a theology podcast we interview pastors and teachers from all over the world from various theological groups and denominations we don't always agree with the people that we have on the show but we think that listening to these theological views help us challenge our presuppositions when we approach Scripture so we invite all of our Christian brothers and sisters to come on the show and dialogue about theology so we can really understand God's Word so they can better understand the God who has given us his word we've got a really exciting episode for you today on Eastern Orthodoxy but before we dive into that topic I'd love to talk to Mike a little bit just like I just talk to me like doing really well man I've been looking forward to this conversation for for a long time just ever since I I read Frederika Matthews Greene's book on introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy and and just really was affected by by her experience with it the way she articulated it and even though I'm not Eastern Orthodox I am Protestant at the same time have a real appreciation from where she's coming from yeah yeah and I do as well cuz we we started this interview just Monday first Monday in three years that we weren't able to finish a broadcast and we started 20 minutes in we had a great conversation so we're looking to keeper we're begging for us to the word but unfortunately technology is what it is it's not a it's not a for sure thing ever so we're thrilled to have you back on frederica tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry so we can dive into this edge and in your introduction we want to make sure we know what books you're writing what conferences you have well nobody really a conference is coming up but just how people can connect with you and follow what you're doing oh sure yeah and get that out of the way first the name of my book that you read is called welcome to the Orthodox Church came out a few years ago and I've tried to make it just an overview and I guess I quoted the subtitle to it the introduction to Eastern I think so anyway so go ahead because that kind of book can be really boring what I did was I invented a fictitious Orthodox Church and we just keep going back to that church for visits all through the church year through the holidays of the church year so it's got humor it's that storytelling it's a little more fun you see 27 years ago my husband who is then an Episcopal priest decided he wanted to be Orthodox and I didn't like orthodoxy I thought it was boring weird far in I didn't like the music I didn't get it at all and he would give me these books to read and they were so theological and so I finally I followed him he went into the church but I try now to write the books that I wish I could have read back then and the reason I love orthodoxy so much is because I love the Lord Jesus Christ so much because I had a very dramatic conversion experience and I found in orthodoxy 2,000 years of wisdom about how to experience the presence of God and how to maintain that how to do it safely how to do it in a way that you see miracles there's actually a lot in common between orthodoxy and charismatic and Pentecostal it's it's very much experience and you tread a path of humility and prayer and self-discipline and you get closer and closer to being aware of the presence of God with you all the time so my experience of having been at the blasphemer and a scoffer and really antagonistic to Christian is the Lord just took me by the nape of the neck and kind of shook me and I realized that he is my Lord and that he is real I had an experience as a tourist in Europe looking at a statue of Jesus in a church and I heard a voice speaking to me not with my ears it was an interior voice and the Lord said I am your life I am your life he said more than that that is enough for a lifetime for me to ponder I am The Good Shepherd I am the door you know it's all those other I am the light I am the life he said I am your life and all my life I'm like an addict I think this must be what heroin is like but as soon as I had this experience of Jesus I just wanted more of that so it was a surprise to me to find out that this is really what Eastern Orthodoxy is all about everything is there to help you grow closer to the Lord in your daily experience so already you know what we were starting to talk about yesterday was kind of how does it how is it different from the Catholic Church because both churches go back to the first century and then we have this split after about a thousand years I think that is perhaps the first difference is that the priority is very much front-loaded that the change is taking place in your life and if not then it's not worth anything if it's only intellectual then you are missing out on the best of it and what it's supposed to be amen so Frederico could you give us just like a little bit of a perspective on you've told us a little bit of your story and you had this dramatic conversion but what's the story of the Eastern Orthodox you mentioned the split and around what was it 1054 is that right that the Great Schism so so could you tell us just the story like maybe behind the schism itself and what led to that that when the Christian when the church was founded it began in Jerusalem and it spread out in all directions at once and I think before I was Orthodox I had the impression that it went directly to Rome and then Rome was in charge of everything from then on but there were plenty of missionaries that went into Africa and India and everywhere without Rome even being established enough to be sending missionaries so we had a very international and multi-ethnic multicultural cultural church from the very beginning and when we were talking last night this is something I invented when I was writing my book welcome to the Orthodox Church that when you look at history you always need a map and so for this history lesson we will use your left hand if you imagine putting your thumb is room and then here are cities in Africa and Asia Constantinople in Turkey Istanbul anybody know that they might be giant song is fabulous Constantinople Antioch Jerusalem and then Alexandria in Egypt and there's almost like a split right down the middle here between Rome and these four for one thing Rome they speak Latin over here they're all speaking Greek Greek was like the language of trade like English is today it was the common language everybody knew it as a second language and also these are Roma's just remarkably clear minded organized that they're very good at passing laws and enforcing laws and managing cultures everywhere all these people they conquered but it's a different kind of mindset and over here including Jerusalem including the Middle East there's more of a sense of the immediacy of God and openness to the spiritual reality more poetry more more beauty I mean that was one of the things that tormented Rome about this time was the Greeks did everything better than the Romans did and they were trying to learn to how to do sculpture and art as well as the Greeks did so there's already a bit of a cultural split here right from this start over the centuries and with understanding reason as the West was falling as Rome fell it was chaos everywhere the Pope began to insist more and more on his authority over all the church all Christians everywhere it was a time of chaos and terror and you can kind of understand why you did that and also just kind of the Roman way of looking at life you know like I'm supposed to be the boss I'm supposed to rule the world it's something I think in the water Rome that they just picked up that way and these four guys over here of the five great early cities of Christianity they just didn't really engage it they didn't go along with it they didn't believe that the Bishop of Rome was their boss they believed every Bishop is the equal of every other boss every other Bishop but that heated up Oh in the 10th century 11th century over changing a word in the Creed and that's kind of a rabbit trail I'm gonna try to resist going down all the theological significance we're gonna bring you back to that rabbit trail yeah yeah if you if you a few so choose will bring back to the Filioque yeah that would it just so wordy and after a while I'm keep talking and talking and I wonder if anybody's even listening anymore we theology on this show so we have is what we do a preconditioned audience for reference so the Pope starts asserting more and more authority and it became a sticking point this theological point in the Nicene Creed of the Filioque that is the question of whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from just the father or the father and the son why don't we actually stick with this rabbit trail and we'll come back to the papacy okay and legitimacy or not legitimacy of it or whatever word we want to use right but why don't we why don't we come back to the Filioque did I articulate that the way that you would that that's the big question was does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father or from the father and the son and the Eastern Church said it's from the father which was the original Creed and then the Pope came in and said well but it's the father and the son and what I say goes and what I say goes and so there was a theological issue but the deeper issue was that the that the Pope was over asserting his authority is that the Eastern Orthodox kind of is that how they would articulate what happened yes it was it's when an objection to the Filioque which is the Latin word that means and the son maybe your audience already knows this but where in the Creed it says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father the Pope was inserting this word that means and the son so the question was the theology of that is that true but secondly does the Pope have the authority to kind of impose this and say I am the boss i define theology for everybody in the world now we protestants say no around yesterday about the Orthodox you know just bailed out of the situation with Rome 500 years before you guys did we're late to the party I should say I choked around a lot mint and T's Catholics but I really do respect a great deal about the Catholic Church there are wonderful saints and martyrs there there's a lot of wisdom and a lot of profound faith and I get a little irritated because people seem to assume that Rome was in charge from the very beginning so I get kind of antsy about that but please forgive me any Catholics listening yeah for sure no no well again we are a theology show so we're inviting people to come on to disagree in a charitable way so don't worry you're not you're not amongst audience members who are looking to find pitchforks and throw them so so don't don't worry the whole point of the show is to dialogue about the difference of theological opinion so we have the the West the Church of Rome saying it the spirit proceeds from the father and the son we have the East the four other bishops of mostly African or Middle Eastern Asian churches I say no no it's not that so really as a vote of majority as we are democratically minded we go obviously the Pope was wrong here right but but but let's just let's play the game of theological semantics why why only the father doesn't Jesus in the book of Acts said he's going to send the Holy Spirit help us out with that yeah yeah I think that's I think that's really legitimate and also that when we breathe on the Apostles and says receive the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit comes into this world through the son but that's not what the Creed is talking about at that moment every part of the Creed when it talks about the father of the son and the spirit it's talking about the eternal origin so to speak of these since of the Trinity so the father is a creator that he begot the son the son is the only begotten and the Holy Spirit is proceeded procession proceeds from the father so at that point we're not even envisioning human history existing we're still talking about far far beyond history much so much earlier you can't even say earlier because there's no history certain position would be based upon the the ontological Trinity the spirit the spirit proceeds from the father ontological II but not in the kind of economic way that the Trinity works amongst themselves in the role of creation yes yes I think that's a very ontological it's a very good word to use for it and the other reason the the Orthodox said you you have a triangle with the Father at the top but when you say the spirit proceeds from the father and the son it tips the triangle so now a father and son are powerful in the spirit is just kind of this addendum that doesn't seem significant anymore it diminishes the full personhood of the Spirit and leads to things like theologians saying that the the Holy Spirit is love between the father and the son you know or the Holy Ghost becomes so ghostly that people don't really know what to do with them or what he's good for and from that nobody knows how to articulate very well so so to your to your point you know you've got the you've got the father right if we tip it on its side and the spirits on the bottom you say it makes the spirit feel it makes us feel as if the Spirit is insignificant if we just turn that triangle back ups does that make the son and the spirit insignificant since they're at the bottom of the triangle I don't think that you meant to say that I'm only asking because we're on line you know and if there's that that guy who's gonna jump in the in the dialog so so I'd love to know your thoughts on that there is this this mystery about how the father is above the the son and the spirit but all three of them of course equal each other you know you've got those little equal signs on each bar of the of the triangle but they are not each other and there is in a mystery and an inexpressible mystery there's a way in which the father is the peak of that triangle okay so there's the feel that you have it men there's also how did they arrive at that because of course there was a huge amount of controversy with arias and all those heresies blowing up at that time in the early three hundreds and then again the the part about the Holy Spirit was written in the second constant of pilots and so in the second one when they came up with that the whole idea is how do you make how do you make decisions how do you make theological decisions when people are angry and upset and getting down these rabbit trails and how do you know what's right and wrong so from the beginning the idea was that you would go by you would believe that the holy spirit could speak to the gathered community and you would look for consensus you would look for what was you know what was the Holy Spirit leading you to overall so they worked out this Nicene Creed at those two first and second ecumenical councils and then you go 700 years later and the Pope is saying no I want to change it so that was a very important point to the Orthodox to say no we decided in council the Holy Spirit led us to this consensus you can't one person can't come in and change it I do have a question of clarification because I don't know if it was an intentional or or maybe again just question of clarification you said that when the church was trying to figure out what is orthodoxy when an individual was trying to figure out what orthodoxy was they would go to the Council of the church would you say that they would first go to Scripture and then say the church is going to determine what scripture has said and collectively the church will look at the scriptures and we're going to believe that the Holy Spirit will illuminate those rightly you don't mean that the church was an authority all unto themselves but that the church was collectively interpreting Scripture or I mean a plan please please don't forgive me the sella scripture ablates through and through so I just have to ask a points of clarification yeah yeah is that the holy spirit who wrote the scriptures is also inspiring and guiding us as we read the scriptures and is also present in the community you know our our worship is about 75 percent quotations from Scripture it's just all scripture so if you attend Orthodox worship even if you're illiterate if you're a shepherdess or something and then in the second third century you get so saturated in the scriptures from hearing it over and over and over again and then there are like you have several verses from Scripture but you have a little verse that's tying it together there's the sermons the homilies and songs that are like commentaries that you hear you know every year this feast comes back you hear it again so there's something even more dynamic than just looking at the text the problem with the text you may have noticed is people can interpret at different ways and that's the problem when all you have is text nobody has only text everybody has text less everybody has a tradition sir so the question is who's tradition is right how do you know what's the right tradition and I'm afraid that after after the bumpy road that you've had in the West in the last thousand years or so the idea is come about that the it's like you think of the Bible like a refrigerator and you're watching the Super Bowl and commercial comes on well I guess you don't want to miss those commercials but you're watching something a commercial comes on you run to the kitchen you rummage around and grab the things you like and then you dart back out again I get that feeling about how the scripture is handled in the West that it's like it's just a resource that you can unpack and and you grab the things you want you know I was I was talking to a Protestant once about the real presence in the Eucharist we do believe it's the body and blood of Christ and she was arguing with me and I said well what about John 6 and she said what's John 6 and I thought it's a halt chapter - it's not even like one of hurts she's like I thought it went John five and then seven address Protestant so it's just you know what's the difference between denominations it's just our favorite bible verses so so I thought to use decide who's right and I have a suggestion for that but you go on no that was just and I think that you answered it and to say that it's not tradition and it's not what the Holy Spirit is speaking of independent of Scripture it is in fact the true saying what does scripture say and then we're going to humble ourselves to the corporate interpretation through the leading of the Spirit to understand what the text says right so again the even the Eastern Orthodox in the Roman Catholic the first the first ecumenical Creed's as you would say the church was trying to look to the Scriptures as far as I'm aware it was in fact looking to the scriptures to say hey what has Christ said what have the Apostle said on the matters of the Trinity and we as a group will acknowledge that as an individual my intellect and my discernment is not infallible so I will submit myself to the Holy Spirit and to the collective church to determine let the Spirit speak through us as we interpret this as a whole so again scripture has supremacy you're not you're not devaluing or dethroning scripture in a sense as much as you are saying when is the soul soul of Scripture I became so last scripture which it was a some people don't like to chop it up like that but it's scripture alone it's me and my family and my Bible and we can determine whatever we want because I've got this independent of history and interpretation and the way that the church hasn't you know interpret it historically you're not you're not making that claim at all it doesn't sound like I would say that the it's it's sort of a beautiful paradox in that the church wrote the New Testament but the New Testament is also in authority over the church and it's it's it's like this it's like a very fruitful thing that is continuing to to bear more fruit although so the the scriptures would be in authority over what the church does but it's also such an organic thing that came right out of the church because it was the early Christians who wrote it yeah so um yeah okay well this might feed back into the conversation that we were having about the papacy and and so that's that's originally where we started down this trail was was the role of the Pope and and then we also have an Eastern Orthodoxy the patriarch who I believe is patriarch bartholomew right now that was that correct okay i should i should have that nailed down really well but anyway so I think Protestants we kind of get confused because when we look at just you know both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox they seem to to like their priests they call them priests they dress up and interesting clothes they are very you know very tied to tradition and ritual and all of these things and then there's a patriarch and there's a pope and I think a lot of Protestants look at that and then they and they think this is pretty much the same thing I know for you Frederika it's very very different so could you talk to us about the difference between the patriarch and the Pope sure the the Pope of course accrued to himself gradually over the first millennium more and more power and asserted that power over all the Christians everywhere the patriarch is there's a patriarch of constantinople patriarch of Alexandria patriarch of Jerusalem so it just means the the highest bishop the top bishop of that place but they don't have any authority outside their diocese or Archdiocese so they're not claiming any universal and they don't claim any power to interpret the Scriptures really the the commentary that we use to understand the scriptures is our worship which is as I said 75 percent scripture to start with so it really is the scriptures that teach us over and over as we listen to these same same hymns same prayers over and over again the patriarch has no power to impose any kind of a change or any kind of interpretation that that he likes and he can't tell people Orthodox in America what they ought to be doing or anywhere else the reason why there is a reason why the patriarch of constantinople istanbul rather would would like to be seen as analogous to the pope and that is that they live in a very dangerous setting in istanbul they are very much hated and disliked and actually in danger and there are bombings there there are threats there's a lot of antagonism to them and they would like to hold on just for historical reasons they would like to continue being there in constantinople istanbul if it weren't for that the most sensible thing to do would be to get out get out while you're still alive so there's a there's there's kind of a PR reason that the patriarch would like to present himself as the equivalent of the pope because it makes him look a little more important and untouchable to the to the people he's having to live among but but actually yeah it's it's not at all parallel to the similar and that he is a high authority in the church but different and that that authority does not express itself in the form of it's not quite as exertive i guess might be the word he can't make any changes and it always has to reflect the thing about the thing about orthodoxy how we understand the scriptures what we live by our authority is not a theologian or a pope it is community memory and when you're guided bike community memory really nothing can change because of the like Chesterton said that you know the vote of the of our ancestors is the vote of the the huge number of the departed so the he can't be a pope like the Pope is because he can't correct and make changes only within his own Archdiocese they're communicating memories like a totally different thing to work with them bright theologian saying things or opposed saving things so when talking about community memory at least as I observe in the Roman Catholic Church there are there seems to be trends said by the early church fathers that were never necessarily made as a doctrine or official doctrine and then were practiced long enough eventually to where they this community memory became an essential Christian dogma you know whether it be the purgatory whether it be the way that they interact with Mary those kinds of doctrines even even more recently have become dogmas in the Roman Catholic Church we talk about community memory you know if I'm if I'm a Protestant if I'm a guy who holds to the the 1689 London Baptist confession or the Westminster but we've got a list of do's and dont's and we can say and I don't either of those I like I certainly like sections of them but you know let's just say I've got a list of these theological things that we can say hey you agree yes I agree let's run together where whereas in kind of a more Eastern Orthodox Roman Catholic sense it's just like well there was a guy who believed this and a few of us still like it so are we gonna make it Dogma or not how does that work like Kant doctrines kind of grow into the church if it's community memory not if the community rejects it that there there really is a living sense yeah I think an analogy one that I used in in the book and welcome to the Orthodox Church is tradition it just sounds so dry and dead but or imposed actually like this is our tradition you have to do this but if you think of Christmas traditions it's a totally different picture that comes to mind that these are traditions that are life-giving and nobody forces you to hang up your stockings you want to do it you want to have a tree why because it gives life because it brings the family together it enhances your love and we see that the the traditions that keep getting used for 2,000 years north of NZ are the ones that are life bearing and we see the results in the lives of saints who continue today to be miracle workers who continue to be wise and resilient in the face of martyrdom how many you know Russian Orthodox died under communism for example we see the good of it so we know it it works it's a funny thing because I think in the West it's all about this is true no this is true and whose truth is it in orthodoxy you actually see that it works that lives are being changed that people are transformed the people who follow this you know actually you do get better and better at sensing the presence of the Lord so there's that you know it's that it we can it's working so we can see that this is happening but it's also consensus and I can give an example from the from the history of the church from 1450 I forget exactly what year Constantinople fell in 1453 and so this was before that there was a council in Italy and the Orthodox came over and they really needed help because the Turks were threatening them so much they were they were surrounding the city of Constantinople and it was about to fall so they wanted to get some help from Rome just some some military help to protect them and in Rome they said yeah we'll do that if you submit to the Pope you just have to you take the Pope as your head and then we'll help you and everybody all the Orthodox that were there that we're representing the church all but one agreed all but one signed a document but we have this thing in orthodoxy called confirmation to the people affirm it so they brought it back and said this is the document we signed this is the new deal and the people hated it and they said no no this is wrong and we will do it and so that was a decision by a council a small council that the regular people the lay people were able to nullify by just rejecting it so it was so deeply rejected at the grassroots level so that's another thing we we expect these things to be confirmed and to continue to be confirmed over time a way you see it also an orthodoxy is different cultures all these different cultures all around the world so many different places in different centuries and we keep saying the same prayers we keep happily and wholeheartedly affirming these things not imposed from the outside but something like Christmas traditions that we embraced because we love it so there's a much more community feeling to it so let's take maybe like a an ethical question for instance so let's say it's pro-life you know you have a you have a pope and he says we're pro-life everybody Catholic Church says all right we're pro life in Protestantism we just have a bunch of people saying I'm pro-life but how does it work in the Eastern Orthodox on a church on an issue like that how does that work its way through the community whether it be that issue or some other mm-hmm yeah there is to look at it from the other point of view there would be no way to establish a pro-choice group in orthodoxy because we have this community Marie of all these centuries of being pro-life so you can't really change anything and in that case it's a good thing I think that there is probably more the church could do to make Americans for example aware of pro-life stand there's of course people who are conservative Orthodox and who were you know really gung-ho for that are naturally pro-life that just comes naturally but I think there are people who are more cultivated or and cultured by the culture by the larger surrounding culture than the church they may come to church on Sunday sit through worship go home and the whole rest of the week you know the other however many hours that is beside that one and a half hour they're just being catalyzed by the culture the whole time so our church could do a better job of preaching and teaching and making it known the the problem in in America that's different from anywhere else in the world Orthodox missionaries there's always case where a country would send out missionaries to the next country like in Greece they sent out Cyril and Methodius to go to Russia and they preach the gospel they're in converted Russia and then 700 something years later Russians cross the Bering Strait went to Alaska and it's adorable to read the letters saying we're finding the Americans very receptive to the gospel in many of these Americans are becoming to believe in the gospel and in Jesus Christ and of course they're writing about the Alaskans Native Alaskans and it was always the policy that you make it in the local language so they were translating it and to Tingley and all these other you know Ali Hewitt and all these other languages so it remains a very yeah a very sensitive to the culture kind of thing saturating it rather than chopping it down or cutting it out America was the exception Orthodox came to America not as missionaries but seeking a better life and often instead of sending the clergy and the theologically trained first instead it was people came over seeking that better life and then they sent back and said send us a priest so the priests kind of feels like not the authority he's like this guy we hired and so he says by the way the church is pro-life and they go yeah whatever there's not the kind of respect they should have in in many places some places it is it's it's not a you know black and white thing there's also all this chopped up thing where instead of Greece sends the months to Russia and then Russia grows stronger and Russia's independent it should have been like one country sends missionaries to America everybody in America is Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox or something but because it was people coming from all over the world hitting mostly the East Coast shores in the last 200 years and that Sunday they want to worship in the language they're familiar with it's it's just been chaos it's very hard to take all that down again and make nighted church which would kind of be necessary if they want to do teaching on cultural issues like the pro-life issue this is something that it's like everybody knows the situation in America where you've got a Greek Church here in Russian Church here Serbian Church here you know Coptic and Ethiopian and all everybody knows that that is wrong and a travesty and we're trying to fix it but it's hard to take down bureaucracies dismantle is bureaucracy and forge a new and out of that however we already agree on everything theologically so that's not the problem there aren't theological differences that would have to be worked out and as there might be you know in a Protestant or Catholic Church just rang with a congregation people disagreeing theologically we all share the same theology because we're all using the same worship yeah and we see that even in our like I think when you're describing sounds a whole lot to me like the like the Assemblies of God and the church of God who initially became two different denominations because of race related issues and have even recently like had these joint conferences where they you know publicly repented for for being racist basically and asking for forgiveness and this is beautiful like melting pot it's a great great kind of reconciliation that took place but to your point they're not gonna merge into one Church because like you said bureaucracies have kind of been established that's not going to happen so they agree they love each other they're they're close brothers but so different to your question or to your statement you'd said that in the Americas it feels as if the priests and the bishops aren't in charge but then come back to your historical kind of creed that you had dirty sorbic read your historical council that you had mentioned you had said that they had signed this document with the exception of one bishop came back and the people said no it sounds like the people are in charge there as well maybe it maybe help me understand is is this a priesthood of believers that are able to kind of say hey I know that you're the priest over us but this is what we have as a people have decided or do the priesthood in the in the Eastern Orthodox are they are they kind of speaking in a kind of leadership role capacity or is it kind of communal II decided yeah I don't want to overstate it too much in America and we're reporting on something that I have observed in some churches and that I think is kind of troubling but it was no means the the natural order of things it's not the way the church is supposed to work and um you know another another thing that's happening is there's huge amounts of converts coming in I read that in the Antiochian archdiocese 73 percent something like that of the clergy are converts so all these converts I mean these are people who are reading the father's are reading the scriptures they love the worship this is a very well informed breeze that's blowing into the church and so embracing theology and embracing the sense that you have a shepherd over the community memory but he's he's only any good as long as he's teaching what we've always taught there's just a it's like a revival is going on inside of Orthodoxy now I had been to a couple of churches more than a couple I guess where I've felt like the balance isn't quite right and it's that attitude of we hired this priest and now you will just do services for us and we don't really respect you as a source of information or authority or teaching us about what how we should look at these cultural issues it's a little burr under my saddle it's something that is much better the more converts come in of course but I wouldn't want to cover it up it is like a priesthood of believers and that priesthood includes those all of those who have already died and who are in Christ now so that's like a lot of all this huge number of believers so you could have stopped little movements you know like I don't like this part I want the Filioque you know whatever your little movement would be you couldn't really change something it's um it's like we've had these Christmas traditions for so long you know and we all know what they are and we all love them and as long as you feel the life working in that that it's bringing about but there's not really like we we have in the West this rebellious kind of a spirit with this idea that things have to be new all the time you know it's catching in God's Word you know if you thought if you found something nobody has seen in 2,000 years it's probably not there is something we've got a couple of shows on like moral therapeutic deism and neo Gnosticism I call that neo nazism because it is it is just that we're trying to find that new secret teaching and God's word that no one's ever seen before so yes very familiar you're even you're hitting on one of our hobby horses even our producer back here is like shout name and just talking about the consumeristic Church I mean Baptist Church is something we all have in America the the the proclivity to say hey I hired you do the job if you can't do it I'll fire you and find someone else to do it because of the way that we kind of structure our lives Michael I know he's got a question he's got his Bible I have several well so I have I'll just ask this question this question came from Benjamin Allen he says what is the Eastern Orthodox view of Romans 5:12 and original sin and just for a refresher i'll read romans 5:12 it says therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin so death spread to all men because all sinned and it goes on for indeed sin was in the world before the law was given but sin is not counted where there is no law yet death reigned from Adam to Moses etc so so fredericka how would you and how would the Eastern Orthodox Church understand this idea of original sin yeah I wish I wish I had it right in front of me because it's a syntax thing and I do get kind of scramble trying to remember but this was a mistake I'll just say it a mistake that st. Augustine made because he couldn't lead Greek for you he had a bad Greek teacher a mean Greek teacher and he never really learned us to read Greek and so what he saw here in life was in whom all sentient right and but it actually says in Greek is because of which all sinned so it's it's not saying what saying what st. Augustine saw was everybody sinned in Adam and Adams fall we send all right from I can't think of a name of that Primmer from way back when that actually we are all guilty of Adam's sin that's that's not what the Greek says and it was a misunderstanding of st. Augustine what it actually says is that because of Adam's sin we all sin we take to it like ducks to water we are born pure we're born innocent but as soon as we understand what sin is we can't wait to get part of it and because that we do also so I don't know if that's getting at the point you wanted to make it might be you resist sin maybe that's it so you would say we inherit adam's sinful nature maybe would you say it that way the his proclivity towards sin but not his guilt as sinners is that how you would say it that's it that's what I would say that it's a we give way to temptation we can we get started quick no no I would I would love to just for clarification is that SRIA Lee really important and it will be really important to our audience when you say so original sin I have I was born with a sin nature but I was not born guilty of sin you're okay with that definition because like a child who dies in infancy doesn't go straight to hell because they have not committed sin but a child who dies in infancy because they haven't broken God's law being sin being defined as a willful transgression of God's law the child is not conscious can do this but it is a life yeah yeah yeah that we are i i'm little cautious about the phrase some nature because the word nature you know but i would say we are we are born with a broken human nature we are we are born into a human community that is disabled and that we fall to sin when temptation comes around we just fall to it but we are born pure yes and a child that dies you know before he's capable of actually deliberately choosing the sin of course we would say that child is in the arms of God and when I've had friends who have had miscarriages I always say you know your child is praying for you in heaven tonight your child loves you and longs to see you and is in heaven enjoying and glory and will be praying for you for the rest of your life so that's the way that we look at it as Orthodox that the other sentient that might even clewd include people who become adults but who don't have the ability to consciously choose sin so yeah we we are so much I want to keep unpacking on that question that being said take one more take one more question one more question so so you you you you would say that a person is born pure I would say a person is born defiled by sin because Adamson has an in fact defiled us like you said you said broken human nature what we're doing is we're gonna be talking past each other because we come from different traditions and I'm trying to make sure that we we dig deep into the language so that people who are listening don't go this person doesn't think we're a sinner she's Pelagian you know like I'm wandering in and maybe you are I don't know like I don't know anything about Eastern Orthodox I just know that my people like to throw rocks when someone says Pelagius and just think of these giant boulders in one in one description you said Augustine got it wrong and we're not born sinners and I was hard to get the language right isn't it we Protestant like precision we like to protest so yeah that's we are born I would say more with a broken human nature that as soon as like a broken leg as soon as you put any weight on it you're going to collapse I guess I could prefer a language like broken rather than defiled or it is it's like an illness it's like you you have the genetic makeup to fall sick of this illness when you reach a certain age its latent in you you were defiled by that sickness and yet you're not practicing you're not exhibiting that sickness yet and I'm sure because you have talked about this so much more you have very precise language here but one thing I want to say about Pelagius is that the Orthodox Church called Pelagius heretic and they called Augustine blessed a saint so that should show you where we come down but are you comfortable yeah I certainly feel better yeah she's like hey he's Saint Augustine and heretic Pelagius okay we'll do a part two on the same page there we'll use different language to describe it but it sounds like we're actually we're actually lining up quite quite closer and it's it's worth having that precision to help build those Brits yes Frederika I'd like to come back to the the very first thing that you brought up which was the presence of God oh yeah I know that you've been and you've been in Catholic churches you've been part of Protestant churches charismatic non charismatic and now you you're you've found your home in the Orthodox Church and that that phrase the presence of God really stuck out both in your testimony of coming to faith but in addition just just the way you talk about orthodoxy and the way you were able to find God there and I'm curious is it is it the icons is it the architecture is it the tradition I'm sure it's a combination of all of the above but what is it about the Orthodox Church that has so helped you find the presence of God because as I've read about so many conversions to orthodoxy this keeps coming up when Hank Hannah Graff talked about he's like I was so living in my head I just felt like I connected with God in the Orthodox Church so so could you elaborate on why that is for you yeah it's it's funny even to say the presence of God it sounds kind of static like it's a concept you know that God is omnipresent of course he's here this is so much more dynamic though and it is it is fed by every part of Orthodoxy everything that we have in the church every hymn every icon it's all there like a school to teach you how to become more in tune with the presence of God which is living and active and fluid and flowing through the whole world like that holy wind that Jesus talked about so I would say every part of that is had it had some meaning for me and I think when I approached orthodoxy I thought of it more as like a store where they had all these different objects on the shelves and now I'm going to put up an icon and I'm gonna say this prayer and it becomes so much more fluid and natural as you go along because it really is a way of life you know you're just living into it all the time and you're gradually the presence of God is more and more present to your mind you become aware of that presence right beside you so that it's informing everything you do and everything you say and it's just totally infusing your life if I could I just that on a word study for a minute it would be the word energy I think this is so significant here the Greek word for energy is inner gaya it's the same word that we have in English but they didn't have it in Latin and so when Jerome translated the Bible from Greek into Latin he didn't have any equivalent and so what he used was a Ferrari operati Oh operate which gets translated in their English Bibles work but if you read it in Greek it's all energizing God is energizing and I think broke down a couple here God has enter going in you both to will and to enter gain for his good pleasure the energy of God is flowing through us all the time so if that's part of your concept as you approach the Scriptures as you hear the Scriptures read in church as you're singing the scriptures its energy energy God's energy flowing through you all the time it makes lungs ear to grass what it means to be in the presence of God but you know we everybody has done theology and the West has been doing theology based on a Latin translation of the Bible for 1,700 years yeah so what somebody translates the Bible from Greek into English today they say works work worked they could say energy we have the word angle energy in English it's one of our words you could just say energy energize synergize I mean there's a dozen st. Paul used this these energy words about 30 times it's constantly in his thought it fits right in with in Christ Christ in me I in him a Christ in me energizing in me but he also says synergize about a dozen times God is synergizing working with us it's kind of mind-blowing it sounds new aging when you first hear about it that it is so power so alive orthodoxy to me is not static and theoretically it's so alive it's so down-to-earth I just love it obviously and I'm sowing I hope I'm not stepping on anybody's toes you know actually our homey Luther he didn't like the Latin Vulgate either so again you know hang out on all cylinders Protestants like like bashing the Vulgate we had no problem with that no not that you're bashing I'm just I'm just trying to be funny okay Josiah Thompson had a question and I think it kind of piggybacks off of what you had just said you were just speaking of like iconography and those kinds of things he was asking questions about saints and angels and how they play a part in prayer and worship do do do because I don't know when I see when I see Roman Catholic Church and I see an Eastern Orthodox Church as a Protestant looking in I just go oh those look the same are they practicing the same kind of the color generation am i getting my terms mixed up veneration of the saints where we pray and speak to the saints and ask them to pray on our behalf we don't pray to them thinking they're going to answer the prayer that's the way that my roman catholic friends would say it what are your thoughts on on that and how does the ether an orchestra orthodox church approach a veneration of the saints and integrate them into the liturgy the saints it is kinda similar to the Catholic approach but I think the Catholic approach is largely misunderstood I'll speak for Orthodoxy not through phalluses and maybe I don't know that as well and I shouldn't say that but the the basic thing is that everyone who is in Christ is alive in Christ so they're not dead and just as I would ask you guys to pray for me I can ask someone who is departed to pray for me I don't I don't want to have a seance I don't want to try to have a conversation I don't want to ask them to tell me about the future I mean all of that stuff is really scary and really dangerous but I can send a safe a message like sending a text and just like you know if you if you had a friend who died that was really a really a great prayer warrior and if you were with him in the hospital is Easter party and you might say pray for me pray for me when you're in that heavenly throne room don't forget me please continue to pray for me and a week later you know you might think oh no this is terrible I need help Oh Joe you know say a prayer for me now that's how it began that's how it started because they know that the dead are not dead anyone who is alive in Christ is alive forever so somebody who was martyred you know that might have seen this first to die in a horrible way and then a week later they would say Oh Marina please pray for me I saw how bravely you died and so say a prayer for me it's that's really all there is to it it's a lot simpler than it seems it's not a superstitious thing if it didn't we're a little delicious it's a little stitches it's not superstitious it's a little stitches again I've only got three minutes because we do want to honor we've got this space we're actually gonna be using it for for another we're actually in a different space right now because our Studios under construction we just me and Dawson just finished knocking down a wall I changed my shirt so we could come in here and do this this broadcast they're gonna do some worship filming in here in a second so I hope you guys enjoy the set so I would love to give more pushback on the veneration of the Saints in that conversation if you'd be willing to come back on in the future and have that dialogue we did invest the way you invite her that's like I we would love to argue I would really love to argue about that one but and and we've got an Anglican friend who can come on with us and he'll you guys can can can be on one side and me and Michael will be on the other and we will just have fun with it in love and grace yeah yeah we have some people who are asking us to have you back on the show yeah lots of people in the comments section so super-super thought it was such an honor to have you on I really really thank you so much I learned a lot yeah any thoughts man powerful you know for me I just think we experienced Jesus in different ways and and I just honor and respect the way that you experienced Jesus and the Eastern Orthodox Church it kind of makes me want to just like on on some what is it called Vespers the night that it's kind of like easier for guests to accommodate to or whatever I might want to like wander in and just kind of check it out just it's like a service Eastern Orthodox for dummies market if it was a Protestant church because we're we're all about that marketing yeah but anyway I just honored that there's different ways to worship and that's part of what I love about remnant we've got you know friends that are that are angle akin and just kind of method a method ish and Baptist and reformed and all the rest and so it's just fun so just love having you on the show yeah it was a great talk he said we'd love to have you back and if you guys are watching right now what I'd encourage you to you is go to the bottom of the video there's a link description there oh I should have said this at the beginning of the episode when we taped this the first time I said it there's a study guide that is wonderful that you should all check out that was written by my friend Dawson you go down into the video description he does a lot of the research for our show we really couldn't do without him he knocks down walls with us for the new studio space he's running merge audio/video audio/video right now he is a man of many talents so we're thankful for Dawson go he'll go check that out it'll actually really enrich the kind of conversation for win for drink it comes back on and we can all ask her our many questions so there's that and then if you guys want to donate if you've been impacted by our ministry and want to help support us there's a link in the description for that as well.you ID and click that link and you can support us whether it be monthly or one-time gift it would help us quite a bit continue to do just like this that's it like and share and subscribe and just one last time any closing thoughts that you have and then also with material that you've written books any of that stuff you can mention that again and I'll put those well welcome to the Orthodox Church and my website is fredericka dot-com okay excellent be blessed thank you so much guys and we'll see you next Monday 8:30 p.m. Central Standard Time alright see you then I guess she hung up get it again

Channel: The Remnant Radio

Views: 11,634

Keywords: frederica mathewes-green, welcome to the orthodox church, frederica matthewes-green, eastern orthodox church, greek orthodoxy, eastern orthodoxy, eastern orthodox, frederica matthews-green, eastern orthodox church history, eastern orthodox church vs roman catholic, eastern orthodox church beliefs, eastern orthodox church explained, eastern orthodox christianity, eastern orthodoxy explained, eastern orthodoxy vs catholicism

Id: FlGbS9vu-ic

Length: 61min 13sec (3673 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020