Fr Josiah Trenham on Eastern Orthodox Theology, Catholicism, and the Reformation

all right well hey everyone welcome or welcome back to the channel my name is austin this is gospel simplicity and i am so glad that you are here today i have a very special guest here with me today father josiah trenham and i am so excited for you to get to hear this interview father josiah is a native of southern california and attended westminster seminary california receiving his m div in 1992 while studying under some of the most influential teachers in the reformed tradition including r.c sproul in 1993 he was ordained to the holy priesthood of the orthodox church and in 2004 he was awarded a phd in theology from the university of durham england father josiah has published numerous articles and two books including this one rock and sand which we'll be talking about a little bit today and is also the founder of patristic nectar publications a non-profit ministry his weekly homilies are available on his podcast the arena produced by ancient faith radio his reflections are also available on youtube under patristic nectar films father josiah has been married to his wife katherine christie since 1988 and together they have 10 children including i just found two grandchildren and a third on the way is that correct it's correct wonderful well father josiah thank you so much for being here i'm happy to be with you austin thank you so if people were listening closely there they might have noticed something interesting in 1992 you graduate from westminster seminary in california which is a bastion of reformed protestant thought if people aren't familiar with it and then just a year later in 1993 you're ordained to the priesthood in the orthodox church now i've listened to some other interviews that i'll link down below including the wonderful interview you did with michael lofton and you described that you went into westminster a presbyterian you came out not quite a presbyterian and in a year you're an orthodox priest can you break that down a little bit and explain how that happened sure sure i was born and raised in southern california as a presbyterian i was baptized at glendale presbyterian church as an infant when i was eight years old i visited the orthodox church for my very first time i had a good buddy uh named paul who was a greek at greek orthodoxy and his family and we used to play baseball together and on some weekends i would spend the night at his house and on some weekends he would spend the night at my house and when i was with him i would go to his orthodox church and when he was with me he would come to the presbyterian church and when i was eight i i participated in the liturgy there i was completely confused it was very unlike my presbyterian church i was fascinated i had a marvelous actual spiritual experience there at the end of the surface the orthodox go up and receive a blessing from the priest who was serving the liturgy and are given a little blessed bread and i went up and i kissed the priest's hand and just felt like lightning bolts were shooting out of my mouth it was a completely surreal experience i can see even now the sun was coming in as i was walking down the center aisle to leave the church and i i still see it 10 years later i'm 18 years old and i am a student at westmont college which is a sister school of wheaton in santa barbara and i meet my wife on the first day of her first year of i helped her carry her her luggage in to the dorm it was a wise move and she was the youngest of six from a methodist family and her oldest brother uh who had gone off to wheaton had become orthodox uh he was at wheaton he had he was studying under a professor who's who's now passed on dr robert webber's his name god rest his soul but he taught he taught a lot about worship and he was a great admirer of orthodox liturgy and he had his students go to the orthodox church for to experience a liturgy and he went and basically never came back ended up marrying a russian girl becoming an orthodox christian and a dentist and he began to send me materials as i was dating his sister he did not want his sister uh marrying and a calvinist and i was convinced i was going to bring him to the reformed faith and so we had quite a lively discussion for some years catherine and i were married in college and we began to visit local churches really just to to understand him better and to be able to communicate and i was immediately attracted immediately attracted to the orthodox faith we began to attend vesper services on saturday nights on a regular basis i was completely overwhelmed with the centrality of scripture in the services listening to so much of the old testament and the psalms read and chanted it was it was deeply moving for me and that began a dialogue that i had a very formal dialogue between my reformed faith and orthodoxy and it continued through college as i began to read futuristic works and ortho contemporary orthodox literature when i went to seminary i naturally went to a presbyterian seminary and i i started at reform theological seminary in jackson mississippi and the connection there was was rc sprole this was just at the time that he was trying to open a new campus in orlando florida it was a credible experience but i i in all three years of doing my mdiv which i completed at westminster west here because i wanted to come back to my home state uh i i did independent studies with various professors on areas that i was out of accord with orthodoxy so for instance i i did an independent study with the late dr edmund clowney who's kind of the most famous presbyterian reformed ecclesiologist on the subject of bishops um i corresponded with j.i packer about the subject of bishops so it's not as though i i graduated from a seminary and then just boom i i joined the the orthodox church i was visiting orthodox churches and seriously thinking about the differences between my reformed faith and the orthodox faith and through that process i gradually began to accept orthodox teachings i knew that when my last year of seminary i knew that i would not be able to be ordained in the presbyterian church i had i had moved past that so but i wasn't quite confident that that i was ready to be orthodox and so i together with a number of friends who were in a similar position approached the reformed episcopal church which which seemed to be a bridge for me i communicated very cl clearly to the bishop at that time his name was royal groat he just passed away actually last year bishop groat i wrote him a letter and i said look i i'm very interested in becoming an orthodox christian i no longer can become a con can be a presbyterian i believe in bishops you're a bishop could you accept me and my family even if in a year i i come to resolve that i need to become orthodox and he was so gracious he said absolutely uh if that happened i will accept you if that happens i'll even write you a letter of reference to the orthodox bishop and in fact that's what happened i became reformed episcopal for a little more than a year uh and then i informed him that i wanted to become orthodox and he was very gracious and wrote a pastoral letter putting me basically in the care of the local orthodox bishop and beginning my catechism as an orthodox christian wow that's quite the journey and thank you for sharing so much of that i can just imagine some of my friends that i have here at moody that i know are attending orthodox churches most sundays are investigating all of this and i feel like i'm getting to see some of that journey in in slow motion in them and so it'll be interesting to see where they end up and i know many people on my channel are feeling as though they're they're experiencing that journey wherever um that that leads for myself but i i know many of so i we mentioned this before but the majority of my audience happens to be catholic which is very interesting as an evangelical i'm sure they're going to want to hear they i mean they heard you say bishops and they like they're saying yeah like this is the stuff we investigate too what did you find lacking in catholicism that eventually led you to orthodoxy well first before i say what i found lacking let me just say that i have many beloved catholic friends and i have been exceedingly blessed by the leadership of roman catholic christians in many avenues of ministry in the united states that i find of great import so the the leadership in the pro-life movement which is a great concern to me that the roman catholic church provides is just a second to none the leadership in the defense of the family and the promotion of religious liberty i i am deeply deeply grateful for the roman catholic witness in these areas and for most of church history to be catholic was to be orthodox and to be orthodox was to be catholic so we have unlike the relationship between the orthodox church and the protestant communion we have an organic history we though we have had a terrible schism and have suffered terrible consequences from that system with the roman catholic church we have a common familial bond that spans the majority of christian history so i just want to say that up front before i say a few words about our differences and an orthodox perspective on why we're separated today i would say that it might me personally i was very interested in the roman catholic church and as a reformed person who was exploring uh early church history and trying to to ask the question if i would have been an acceptable believer to the early christians i explored uh roman catholicism as well and i'd say really to comment on why i didn't become catholic i'd have to say that there's really too too strata to to understand the answer to that the first is the strata on the ground like what's really happening on the ground uh in uh in the catholic church in america and in the west in general and the second is the higher level which is the theological level but let me start at the ground first um i had a tremendous disconnect one of the greatest areas of dissatisfaction in my protestant experience was that was the was sunday the actual worship service was so uh unsatisfying to me so out of accord with my sense of of how god was approached in the scriptures in the old covenant and in what i was learning about church history and the centrality of the eucharist and the reverence that's involved in traditional christian worship it was so far from my lived reformed experience and that wasn't just here in in southern california that was also in seminary meal use and usually there's a there's a level of intensity and seriousness around seminary communities and i reformed seminary in jackson in reform seminary in orlando and at westminster seminary in san diego i was members and very active in reformed churches and all those places and it was a great grief to me that i found the worship there also very dissatisfying so when i with that background um and with my experience of of orthodox services over the years since i was young and then since i was in college i was very drawn by the deep reverence and fear of god that appears in orthodox services and worship services especially the emphasis upon theology uh the truth the holy trinity is front and center in all prayer in the orthodox church and in my reformed experience it was the prayers were very thin often just directed to jesus they were not regularly trinitarian prayers and when i began to explore catholicism as a possible option for myself i found on the ground not much difference between my protestant experience and the post vatican ii novus ordo banjo playing uh happy slappy catholic masses i just i read a book by an incredible catholic uh priest musician uh he's written a number of books um see if i can remember his name uh what the title of the book is why catholics cannot sing and he also wrote another book on architecture called where had you gone michelangelo and and this catholic priest uh forgive me for for getting old and forgetting his name uh this catholic priest just pointed out the radical departure from traditional worship and the sacred arts of music and architecture that had been taking place in the catholic church since the since vatican 2 in the 60s and that was very disappointing for me so just on the ground plus i was in southern california and southern california for decades was the province of cardinal roger mahoney cardinal roger mahoney is a heretic and a corrupt bishop he is he held many conferences in which the most radical forms of aberrant theology like denying the resurrection professors would come and say this it was just terrible and i had a number of catholic friends including a dear catholic priest friend who i was interacting with and as i was exploring catholicism who was just traumatized by his own relationship to cardinal mahoney in fact he ended up having his faculties for serving the mass removed from cardinal mahoney and he actually had to leave he went to mexico uh in order to be under a more uh traditionally minded roman catholic bishop so when i was exploring uh it wasn't just that issue of the theological differences between the orthodox and the catholic church it was also the matter that on the ground the catholic church is in complete disarray it's it's really it's a tragic scenario and many many catholics simply are what we would call maybe cafeteria catholics right they they're going through the calf and they're taking what they want from the catholic faith and rejecting others that that kind of radical individualism seemed to be very much like my protestant experience and i did not want that i had no interest in going through the catharsis of leaving my my protestant faith only to get into a catholic milieu in which i was going to be facing the exact same issues catholics who really weren't catholic or were embarrassed of traditional catholic teaching on the theological level the issues really are were that i was i was deeply concerned that my reformed fate had changed so much in 500 years that it would not be able to resist the occurrence of secular culture such that my own children i had when i converted i had two small sons at the time my they're 30 almost 31 and 29 now but they were at that time three and one and i was concerned that the presbyterian church i knew and experienced would not even exist when they were adults and i would have invested my life with them in a tradition that was so weak that it was changing in fact i would say that in many ways that's the case as i've watched it over this amount of time so i was very worried about this uh this the the changes i wanted to find what jude described in his epistle as the faith once delivered to the saints and the faith that paul called the pillar and the foundation of the truth right this is how paul describes the church and i knew that jesus had made incredible promises to his church to build his church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it and so i really tested uh orthodoxy and catholicism based upon this question who has not changed who has been able to weather uh and maintained maintained a semblance you know the core of the christian faith without much change and most of the differences all of the differences on principle between orthodoxy and catholicism are dogmas that the catholic church has articulated of late so for instance the fundamental dogmatic difference between the orthodox church and the roman catholic church is a doctrine with regards to the holy spirit it's a trinitarian doctrine called the filioque way and the philly oak way was first propagated by the popes in about 1009. it had appeared in the west in the 500s in spain but the pope had suppressed it uh in uh uh and under charlemagne in 800 it uh the carolingian theologians tried to promote it again as a way of uh separating themselves from the the byzantine emperor from the orthodox east they tried to say in fact that the filioque was originally in the creed and that we took it out that was actually common catholic apologetics for a long time um but the pope suppressed that as a matter of fact at the time that that was happening he even had the creed the nicene creed written in its original greek and the original latin translation and he had those plaques affixed to the doors of saint peter's to show what the faith was and he was very clear at the time that no pope had the authority to change the creed because the creed belonged to the whole church and was established in ecumenical councils 200 years later the papacy had developed to such degree that that whole orientation towards authority in the church and the supremacy of this of the ecumenical councils had changed so now in the catholic west in the 11th century their canon law books instead of starting with the apostolic fathers apostolic cannons and then the ecumenical council cannons immediately began to put papal cannons at the head of their cannon list as though the pope's rulings were more important than the ecumenical councils and that was expressed in the change in the creed which took place in the 11th century by adding feely oakway to the third paragraph of the creed on the holy spirit when that happened the ecumenical patriarch dropped the pope from his diptych from his prayer list which is a sign that he's fallen out of the orthodox or catholic faith and that something needs to be done to fix this it's not saying that he won't return or won't be corrected but unfortunately that hasn't been the case uh the filioque remains a catholic dogma uh so that was the first big dogmatic difference the second was uh that that was essentially a deal breaker with the orthodox east was the concept of patreon authority which reached a climax at the first vatican council in 1870 with the declaration of papal infallibility this concept of of the pope uh being the one who is superior over all the other bishops i mean today the pope literally appoints personally every bishop uh in every land in the catholic world this is uh absolutely anathema to the orthodox understanding of the church and authority so those two issues if a catholic becomes orthodox uh and there are many many roman catholics who are becoming orthodox constantly in my own parish i i have at least maybe i would say 200 uh in my own parish over the last 20 years who have become orthodox and they have to publicly renounce those two dogmas they have to publicly renounce the filioque and they have to publicly renounce people infallibility in order to become orthodox and those those both of those dogmas and there's it's not those aren't the only ones the dogma purgatory of creating grace the american conception of the virgin mary i mean these are issues as well but they're not of the of the significance of those two yeah thank you and i'm gonna link in the description to you gave a wonderful talk and i think it's the most popular video on patristic nectar films on an orthodox perspective on roman catholicism so if you're interested and i think that's over an hour long if you want to hear more of father josiah on that you can go ahead and check that out as well but along those lines so you've given a lot of the the things that that kept you from catholicism and made you see orthodoxy as as the fullness of the faith today i know at least in the comment sections of my videos a lot of people make a lot of just cries out for for reunification between the east and the west you talk about this a little in that video but you say you know these are the the two main things people infallibility and the filioque way but you also mention that perhaps people are looking at this as though it's much easier than it actually would be that if we could just somehow fix those two things it would magically reunite the churches but it seems that you've said it's not quite that simple perhaps what are people missing when they talk about reunification lightly that's a great question austin i would say that what they're doing is they're taking an intellectual um approach to faith and projecting it on onto the issue of uh orthodox catholic relations uh uh uh of course there is nothing that has saddened the church more than the great schism in my opinion the great system is that is the most terrible interior reality that's ever taken place in the life of the church i would say that the saddest exterior reality uh is the rise of islam uh in the 7th century especially that was just a decimating century for the church at the hands of islam the rise of militant secularism as we've seen it in the 20th century and continuing into the 21st century is a is strongly competing for the greatest catastrophe uh in relationship to the church in exterior relationships um but i would just say that the idea that uh 800 years of separation could be solved if we just had the pope and the ecumenical patriarch declare it to be so uh that's taking a western concept and maybe a papal concept and implying it to us there is no equivalent to the pope in the orthodox world we have a much more organic concept of how the faith is articulated and defended that involves all the bishops including the patriarchs but all the bishops and the clergy and the people uh and so there there were many times when uh or at least two significant times in the 13th century uh at the council of lyon and in the 15th century at the false reunion council of ferrara florence where orthodox bishops tried to reunite with the papacy and even many of them signed documents but when they got back to their home seas uh their people simply met them at the boat tied them up and threw them into the bosphorus to their deaths so yeah the idea that somehow you know we have the ecumenical patriarch or some other patriarch can just say it is so and it's gonna be that's just not the case so that that's a huge difference um and we i would add on to that as well the whole concept of academia the catholic faith is a is a very rationalistic faith uh one of the great differences is that that that has followed the system is the very definition of what a theologian is in the east and west is just radically different uh the academic theology has almost no place in the orthodox world in fact i would say and of course i'm speaking as an academic theologian i mean i i'm i have a terminal degree in theology i did it not because i think it it means much it was a great opportunity for me to dedicate to mitigate time that as a pastor i would not be able to justify investing in but the idea that somehow phds know the faith and can articulate the faith orthodox people just don't buy that kind of stuff as a matter of fact that america is full of orthodox christians who have phds in theology who think they know things and are smarter than the church and no one's listening to them but other academic theologians so this is not a big deal in the orthodox church whereas in the west uh a theologian uh is is really uh a very different philo phenomenon um the the concept of university the use of reason the place of aristotle the whole scholastic approach which is is still very very big in the catholic world is is much less so uh in the orthodox east so there's going to be there's a certain suspicion in the orthodox world universally about these high-level academic dialogues nationally and international between the roman catholic church and the orthodox church a lot of orthodox are like what's that and what do we care uh that that attitude and i think that's very different than in the west yeah that's really interesting that you bring that up the fundamental difference that you talked about as far as as though it could come just top down that the ecumenical patriarch and the pope would sign some papers and then it would happen i was just reading and this is probably a bit far afield but i was reading the primacy of peter edited by jay myendorf and with father schmidmann and others and they were talking about the fundamental differences in approaching the church as a whole as in the west kind of this universal church made up of parts and whole versus a eucharistic um communion which i think is just really interesting and perhaps if people want to learn more about that that's something they could look into but i i think that's going to be a helpful thing the way you've said that it's not going to be something that just happens top down like that yeah i don't think so that doesn't mean that i'm not interested i i as an orthodox believer i very much have a great desire for roman catholicism especially and protestantism to humble themselves and accept the faith that cre that bound all christians together when all christians were together and to give up in the catholic church the the post-system editions and in the protestant world uh the confessions of faith that are even more recent uh i'm very enthused for that um to happen and the idea of that we that we wouldn't because of our dogmatic insistence that that has to be by embracing the faith that was confessed by christians in the first millennium that with that means we're not interested that's not the case that's really not the case as a matter of fact orthodox orthodox christianity does not practice open communion so we we don't invite roman catholics and protestants to the chalice in our divine liturgies and one of the reasons that we do that it's not because we disdain them one of the reasons that we do that is because we want that to provoke the discussion about why we're separated to facilitate a return to the faith that used to bind us and if we of course if we shared the chalice with non-orthodox believers if you have the chalice you have everything and there there's no impetus to make any correction of at all we then would trivialize the differences between us as though they're just personal theological opinions that we can feel free to hold but that's not what we think they are wonderful thank you so much for sharing that and sorry for the technical difficulties everyone my light went out there but you mentioned that so the great schism is just the the most lamentable thing in the history of christianity and i don't know if you would call this the second most but you did talk about just the the pain of the protestant reformation as well and that you would love to see your pro the protestants come back to what you see as the faith once delivered to the saints so at the time of recording this we're just i believe two days away from reformation day and we are now 503 years from the protestant reformation in 1517 and you've written actually on this subject in your book rock and sand and orthodox appraisal of the protestant reformers in their teachings i would be interested to start and you go over this in the book and i'll link this and i would really recommend i had a great time reading through this but at like the 30 000 foot level what do you see the protestant reformers getting right and where did they go wrong well that's a wonderful question and i'd like to start with the same way that i did when you asked me to speak a little bit about our differences with with roman catholicism by simply affirming uh all of the incredible contributions that the protestant christian faith has made to my life and to the united states brought in in many many areas i view protestant christians as extremely exemplary and uh leading uh christians in many ways their their incredible commitment to missions and to bringing the good news of our savior's uh triumph over death and his sacred death for the forgiveness of the entire human race uh the protestants are just incredibly zealous especially evangelicals and i and i deeply revere that concern for the salvation of of all non-christians this is an absolutely orthodox mentality saint john chrysostom for instance the greatest preacher in the history of the church said that a christian who is not concerned about the salvation of his neighbor is not a christian and to see to see the great zeal of protestant mission work is uh extremely encouraging and also the commitment to scripture the devotion to translating the scriptures uh and producing them at very high levels all of the greek texts for instance that i use in my own study are all produced by protestant scholarship and many of the commentaries fantastic commentaries that i have on my shelf are done by by protestant scholars who are deeply committed to the scriptures so i i just want to say my my critique please uh don't i don't want any of your listeners to think that i'm not appreciating uh many many beautiful things that in my own upbringing you know i was for 25 years the first 25 years of my life which is now uh as i get older a minority of my life but for many for many interviews i've been done over the years it was a majority of my life i'm 53 now but i i had so many touches and so much encouragement um my my love for god was sparked by protestant christians who loved me and wanted to disciple me um i had an incredible man uh young pastor protestant pastor when i was in college who taught me to memorize scripture i mean i just can't imagine what my life would be like without him in my life my late mother-in-law my wife's mother uh the the most gracious god-loving person uh that's ever ever touched me uh was a methodist and so i'm uh i'm deeply appreciative i i would say that the protestant reformation if we're going to talk about luther to start which seems appropriate uh luther had a great sense that many things were wrong he was agitating against developments in the catholic west that many of which were shared by the orthodox east as a matter of fact when cardinal cagetin first called luther to his first heresy trial when he was on trial he one of the things he said is i stand with the orthodox now he didn't really know what he was saying because he didn't have great lines of communication he did develop those his his dear you know spiritual brother and uh i should say the one who tamed him to make him more acceptable to popular philip mellington he did in fact correspond with the orthodox east in fact ecumenical patriarch sent one of his scholarly deacons and lived that deacon that greek deacon came and lived with mellington for over a year and they collaborated theologically a lot and it began a theological correspondence between the lutheran theologians and the ecumenical patriarch that went on for over a hundred years uh in which the protestant theologians addressed the ecumenical patriarch as their spiritual father in christ and the ecumenical patriarch wrote back to them and and called them his sons so it began very positively they sent for instance the lutheran confession of faith to the ecumenical patriarch and they asked him to critique it and this is a good window through which you can perceive the initial orthodox praise of some of the aspects of protestantism and critique of some of the aspects of protestantism uh so for instance the the paragraph uh in the lutheran statement on purgatory which attacked purgatory as a heresy left untouched by the ecumenical patriarch i mean he was just saying you've got that right we you this is the or yeah this is the orthodox mind we don't believe in purgatory either and if you wanted to know more about that you could read the the sermons against purgatory that were delivered by saint mark of ephesus in the 15th century he was a participant in the false reunion council of ferrara florence and he wrote a number he defended the orthodox teaching on the afterlife there and wrote a number of sermons on that which is a very good source to find the orthodox mind about purgatory because we also don't hold the protestant idea that you die and instantaneously you're in paradise like one second later um so you could see in that correspondence between the ecumenical patriarch and the lutheran theologians some very good avenues some of the some of the weaknesses uh so a criticism of the papacy and the and the the emphasis upon the temporal uh the idea of the pope having soldiers the whole conflation between the earthly kingdom and that being under the guise of uh ecclesiastical or spiritual leaders is something very not the orthodox way and so luther's strong critique of that was appreciated by the orthodox east uh his emphasis uh on an ecclesiology uh that was early um and and and not something that was post carolinian was also very appreciated by the ecumenical patriarch where where we were uncomfortable his his affirmation of justification by faith alone is something that the ecumenical patriarch critiqued very heavily and he the the orthodox were were affirming that the that there is justification by faith but not faith alone uh we didn't have a we didn't have a full-blown concept of uh works theology that uh and an undergirding of how to understand justification by faith through works that the latin west had uh so he he was the orthodoxies was we were going in between luther and the papacy suggesting that there was a third way to understand justification for instance we were very uncomfortable with the crass nature for instance of indulgences and the way that indulgences were being used by uh the roman by the roman catholic authorities is something that we we didn't appreciate at all but luther uh he we we do think luther threw out the baby with the bathwater on numerous points uh his affirmation of justification the way he did it by literally rewriting scripture in his german bible he actually put the word alone uh into the biblical text which it's just not there in fact the only place it says alone is in james 2 when james insists it's not just we're not justified by faith alone so that was a real stretch on luther's part that wasn't appreciated by by the orthodox east the unfortunately the protestants struck in their in their reaction against an overly earthly uh and made up roman catholic ecclesiology they struck down all the protestant reformers universally struck down the four marks of the church that are articulated in the fourth paragraph of the creed so instead of saying that the church is one holy catholic and apostolic all the reformers in contra distinction to each other uh wrote made up new marks of the church so for instance john calvin said the marks of the church is wherever the word of god is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly ministered that completely begs the question how do you know when the word of god is rightly preached and what are the sacraments that are supposed to be rightly administered um and so because of that striking uh to the to the connection breaking all necessity to have a tangible apostolic succession uh which is what uh all of the protestant reformers even the anglicans did they they severed their ability to be judged by the traditional historical church so from the orthodox perspective the weakest link the biggest mistake that the protestants made was to break with traditional church teaching on what the church herself is and as soon as that happened there was no controlling her from from the protestant movement becoming independent churches which is something luther said he did not want to do uh it happened during his lifetime so he did recognize it he said he said they're now calling themselves lutherans after me i didn't want this but i have to accept it so uh and of course that has led to an incessant systematic nature in the protestant movement uh that is renewed generation after generation i mean there are literally tens of thousands of protestant denominations registered with the us government in currently and new ones are being registered every week all who have separate statements of faith and think that they represent true biblical christianity yeah well that's a great summary and if people are interested in more on your thoughts on the reformation there is plenty in this wonderful book i i wanted to bring up a quote that you i believe it was in your interview with kevin allen which just as an aside could be a master class on how to interview that was a brilliant interview he did on this book but you mentioned that the achilles heel of protestantism is its ecclesiology and i think we do see that really splintering off and i think in a way that splintering is related to this idea of sola scriptura that i want to get into and in your book as well you wrote this evangelicalism is no stronghold itself of traditional christian theology it floats naively in an ocean of theological relativism with no secure anchor having cut its having cut its connection to holy tradition so could you explain to me on an orthodox perspective and perhaps we'll do a bit of a speed round here to respect your time on orthodox theology but the the relationship between scripture and tradition and where did solo scripture go wrong with that uh that's a great question the orthodox concept of tradition what we call paradoxes is includes scripture so what tradition is is the life of the church inspired by the holy spirit it's the kingdom of god on the earth and it embraces and it has an expression in many ways and its chief expression is in the divinely inspired words of scripture but it also expresses itself in the liturgy in the sacred texts of the liturgical tradition uh which provide for us really the heart and content of our faith we have a patristic dictum that we follow lex orandi lex credenti right the rule of prayer is the rule of faith that we believe what we pray and we pray what we believe so if anyone wants to know what the orthodox think they just need to come to services and if they want to think what find out what we think about the incarnation come to our christmas service if you want to find out what we think about the cross come to our great and holy friday service if you want to know what we think about the resurrection come any sunday because every sunday is dedicated to the resurrection but especially holy pasca if you want to know what we think about the ascension and or the dividend you come to the ascension service you want to know what we think about the divinization of man come to the feast of the holy transfiguration on august 6th because that's our that's that's where you're going to really find the content if you want to know what we think about marriage come to a marriage service if you want to know what we think about baptism come to baptism and listen so our tradition is expressed in all of these ways also in the lives of the saints of course and the sacred parts like architecture and iconography and music uh also in the writings of the holy fathers also in the creed also in the definitions the dogmatic decrees of the ecumenical councils all of these ways we find what what christians think and how we live what we call tradition it's all expressed that way so we would not set tradition against scripture we think that's a false dichotomy tradition itself is the umbrella under what scripture is you can't understand scripture except from within the tradition scripture is produced it didn't drop from god in a package with a nice little bow on it it was actually written by members of the church in the church over time and then affirmed against literature that was uh in many different categories some outright outrageously heretical others important but not scriptural and origin or rather eusebius in his uh church history describes the standards by which the church fathers uh were able to discern what was scriptural and what wasn't it wasn't just obvious so the bible is very much in the consciousness of the church a work of the holy spirit in the church and a part of our inner life so that's what we think about the the concept of tradition itself for us it's it's precious unfortunately many protestants have a negative attitude towards tradition one of the reasons is because tradition has been uh improperly castigated even in bible translations so when i was young the most popular evangelical bible translation was the new international version the new international version um did a terrible thing instead of just being authentic an authentic translation it really allowed protestant theology to interpret uh what was being said said in the sacred text of scripture for example in the new testament paradoxes tradition is actually used two ways it's used both positively as holy tradition from god that christians are required to stand fast in and hold to for their salvation and it's also used in the negative sense for instance when jesus was castigating the pharisees and saying uh you hold to the traditions of men and by so doing nullify the word of god uh speaking about their traditions with dedicating things to god making them corbon so that they could not use their money to support their parents or washing their hands and before eating etc jesus called these things traditions of men well the word is both is in both cases it's paradoxes but the translators of the nivea translated all of the positive references of parothesis as teaching not as tradition and all of the negative references as tradition so any innocent evangelical using that bible and we can't count how many millions have used it as their core devotional book are going to naturally think tradition is evil because in their translation it's only used negatively when in fact we have a word in the greek language which means teaching so teaching is not the appropriate word for paradoxes and to use it that way is uh very uh dishonest very dishonest unfortunately would you like me to say would you like me to say anything about solas scriptura if you'd like yeah you you mentioned i think it's the heresy that begets the other protestant heresies if i'm that might be a slight misquote but yeah maybe uh speak on that for a second you know i think most protestants who enthusiastically champion so the scriptura are doing are doing it from piety what they're trying to say is that these words are from god and we trust them 100 percent that is in fact not what sola scriptura means that is the orthodox mind and the catholic mind as well as the protestant mind that no one's questioning the preciousness and the centrality of holy scripture there was a time in the roman catholic world where the church discouraged believers from reading the scriptures that is true and the protestants are right to criticize that although the opposite idea that everyone should read it and think that it's perspicuous which is a protestant doctrine that means that perspicary in latin means to be able to see through to be you know translucent the idea that scripture is just going to make itself obvious to people who read it is not the case so orthodox christians are very aware that we need to read scripture but we need to read it in accordance with the way that the church has understood it so the scripture on in its formal definition is saying that the the scriptures hold a unique authority and uh are the only authority to which we can appeal for establishing dogma and we would just say that that is nowhere taught uh in scripture as a matter of fact scripture itself says it's not sola for instance saint paul who was the spiritual father of the church in the city of thessaloniki which by the way to this day is a very vibrant church i mean i was once when i was a new orthodox priest i was in greece and i was celebrating the liturgy with a very esteemed older priest and we were at uh one of the ancient churches in thessaloniki and i noticed that the bishop's throne behind the altar there's always on the eastern wall uh what's called a scene thrown on a a a throne that's with the altar where the bishop would stand at certain parts like during the gospel reading for instance and i noticed that in that throne it was roped off and it had an icon of saint paul sitting on the on the seat of the throne and i asked him i said why is your your throne your bishop's throne roped off and why is saint paul there he said oh our bishop would never sit on that i said it's his throne i mean what are you talking about he goes no no that's the rostrum from which paul preached in downtown thessaloniki in the first century wow two thousand years later right it's it's roped off with his icon on it because uh and now i understood why no bishop wanted to stand on it but uh i got it but when paul was was teaching that he spent months and months and months with that church teaching them every day and he wrote to them two letters which are in the new testament right first and second thessalonians and he said in those letters he said that to stand fast and to hold to the teaching that i delivered to you either by writing or by word of mouth so now imagine that you were a christian in that church and that saint paul was your spiritual father he had baptized you he had taught you the faith and he and you had spent a year every day listening to his teachings because he was trying to establish you he left you two measly letters eight chapters right that compared to what you would have heard for a year of daily teaching are we supposed to think that the moment he died at the hands of nero in rome all of the thessalonian christians said everything he taught us before is now only possible uh the only things we have to obey are the things that are written in the letters i mean of course on its surface it's just beyond ridiculous that's just not how it works there was no one in the church who thought that the apostolic teaching which is the authority but which comes in two ways both through oral instruction and through writing that's the authority what you heard from the amounts of the apostles is what's inspired that's why the scripture is scripture because it actually comes from the mouth of the apostles and this is the orthodox mind the idea that the written portion of the apostolic teaching could be set apart by itself outside of the context of the oral uh is not feasible and so the follow-up on that would be that and the corollary is so we see it in scripture but then that tradition is lived out in the church it's passed on through absolute succession or just like the like the church in general okay yes and that doesn't mean everything is apostolic tradition um but there are many things that are so for instance saying basil the great in his famous work on the holy spirit he describes aspects of holy apostolic tradition that were never codified in scripture but that the church has never questioned one of those is the making of the sign of the cross another one is praying towards the east another is baptizing by trying immersion and immersion in the name of the holy trinity so those are three clear aspects of apostolic tradition that are universal and have been done by the church in all places throughout her history that saint basil says are just as authoritative as anything found in scripture wow thank you there's there's so much i would love to talk about but i do want to make sure you respect your time i think it would be remiss as a protestant to not at least ask this question because it really is at the center of the protestant faith and i think it's the question most evangelicals would ask is so like this all they might be tracking with all this but they might have this question of okay so at the core and again this is evangelicals are fixated on this how are you saved in the orthodox church what is that concept of salvation well that's a wonderful and extremely important question that when saint peter was preaching on the day of pentecost he was asked that very question what should we do to be saved and he gave a very clear answer repent and be baptized and wash away your sins so an orthodox christian would simply say that we need saving by the way just to say that is to set ourselves apart from our current secular context radically yeah right we believe in the fallenness of this life that the world has fallen and is falling we also believe that only one has conquered our enemies real tangible enemies death satan the devils and sin christ is the vanquisher and our champion who has conquered all of our enemies and the way that we're saved from them is by putting our faith repenting of our sins and putting our faith in christ and being joined to him in holy baptism this is why saint peter in first peter 3 says four very important words baptism now saves you four very important words uh and that's simply because baptism is the means of connecting people to christ it's the means by which jesus has appointed people to be joined to him we're not denying that he's the savior but he is the savior but he is the one who defines how someone is joined to him and how someone is saved and it's not just by a prayer on your pillow in your room which mystically connects you to him and seals the deal and now you are uh regenerated and born again through that experience completely apart from the church that's uh made up that's nowhere in scripture you are born again but that born-again experience takes place in holy baptism by jesus's appointment he said no one who isn't born of water and the spirit can see or enter into the kingdom of god yes thank you that was a great answer and again i'll just plug the book one more time this is something you talk about here and you also talk about the three tenses of saved being used in the new testament but father josiah thank you so much for your time i i could do this all day but i know you're a very busy man and i'm sure people have so much to chew on just from this alone so thank you so much perhaps we can do it again sometime but i'd like for you to just close out by letting people know where they can find your work as well as any resources you might recommend if people are watching this and they're interested about the orthodox church well let me say austin to be with you on gospel simplicity has been a great honor i thank you very much for having me and uh if anyone would like to interact with me more you can do so by going to our website at patristicnector.org there you'll find a collection under many thematic heads of all sorts of theological lectures expositions of scripture etc you can also find us on youtube at patricic nectar films either of those channels will allow you to be in contact with myself and with my company awesome well father josiah thank you so much this has been an absolute joy and thanks to all of you for watching this and a special shout out to my patron subscribers and merch buyers who make things like this possible until next time be on the lookout for more videos and as always go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

Views: 79,005

Rating: 4.9289789 out of 5

Keywords: Eastern Orthodoxy, Fr. Josiah, Fr. Josiah Trenham, Fr. Trenham, Protestants and Orthodox, Converting to Orthodoxy, East and West Reunification, Catholics and Orthodox, Orthodox on Pope, Orthodox on Sola Scriptura, Orthodox on Catholicism, Orthodox on Reformation, Rock and Sand, Rock and Sand Book, Fr. Josiah Trenham Interview, Orthodox Interview, Patristic Nectar Films, Orthodox Ecclesiology, Protestant Convert to Orthodoxy, Orthodox Converts, Orthodoxy In America

Id: 1_Fl9XZCDwg

Length: 55min 56sec (3356 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SSPXarecatholic]

His progress is coming along nicely...

Edit: I have a friend at Christ the Savior who says he's come more than just that one time, and has brought some other folks from Moody. Pray for him.

[u/NocturnalPatrolAlpha]

One thing that I've noticed, and I do not intend to say this in a mean way, is that the most learned and credentialed protestant theologians seem to be the most ignorant and incurious about Orthodoxy - with the exception of William Lane Craig, and perhaps others - and tend to dismiss it as Catholicism without the Pope, while the protestants who are more open to learning about the faith in full earnest are mere everymen like this guy, and Matt Whitman of Ten Minute Bible Hour. Guys who don't have degrees, didn't go to seminary, and have a genuine desire to understand what "the other" actually believes.

It reminds me of Matthew 11:25. "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."

Again, I don't mean to dunk on anybody - I want the John MacArthurs and James Whites of the world to come to the knowledge of truth - but the parallels are remarkable.

[u/JackOfAllBlades]

Perhaps one day Austin will join the Orthodox Church ☦

[u/Thrylomitsos]

Great interview. Interviewer's humility is impressive. God Bless him.

[u/RodionUA]

You are going to love this interview. Literally, I just watched and it seemed like time didn’t exist.

[u/GGbrothers27]

Based channel gets one of the most based priests. Nice

[u/squirrelwatch]

Great interview.