What Does The Greek Orthodox Church Believe?

a while back we released a video of street interviews we did in charleston asking people how to get to heaven and during our interviews we met with two polite people of the greek orthodox faith and ended up having a very informative conversation with them now we trimmed down the original interview with them to just the responses pertaining to the questions that we were asking involving heaven but we always plan to later release it in full and this video is the rest of that unedited conversation we had with them now like i said these guys were very nice and polite to talk with us and give us permission to use this footage so even though we disagree with how they believe we are in no way trying to harm or cast shade in their direction the purpose of this video is to simply inform you on what the greek orthodox believe if i could ask you just some preliminary questions yeah uh what religion are you what denomination greek orthodox orthodox what what is the what is that so we're the original christian church we can trace ourselves all the way back to the time of the apostles we're called orthodox which in greek means true believing because we believe literally the things that the apostles taught and we have been unwavering uh for the past two thousand years so um past the gospels and all that the uh apostles wrote a book called the didachi which is advice of the 12 disciples we still keep that book it's not part of our scripture but it's part of um maybe like an apocryphal or extra book that's good to read we believe the holy spirit has continued to work throughout the years and so we don't stop at scripture scripture is obviously very high for us but we don't stop there we continue um and the holy spirit speaks to the holy people of god um and so we have many writings of what we call church fathers and saints and um and so they continue even in our day and age because you know when we're looking at things like um you know cloning and stem cell research it's not in the bible necessarily but the fathers of the church who have the holy spirit uh very strongly living in them can explain these things a little better to us let me ask you this because i know that a lot of people claim to be the original church um catholicism for one what is the differ difference between greek orthodox and catholicism so theologically there are a number of um differences but i'll tell you why we claim to be the original church uh we were one church until the year 1054 where the great schism took place and of course uh for a couple hundred years before that things had started to split up a little bit the roman catholic church historically can claim to be part of that original church but theologically they changed and when you change theologically you change the natures of god and god can't change and so that's why as orthodox we've never changed what god believes so what we believe 2000 years ago when christ taught it to his disciples we still believe it today in the roman catholic church they've changed and added dogma for one thing the infallibility of the pope we don't believe that the pope is infallible we believe that when christ spoke to peter and said i give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven he was actually talking to all the disciples who are his successors or who are the successors of christ and we the clergy of the orthodox church are the successors of the apostles through ordination you might think ordination wasn't in the bible but it was it's called in greek geretonia which means the laying on of hands and that's how you see it there are a lot of things and the greek orthodox church we understand the original language of the greek that the new testament was written in is that yeah we would pronounce it but yeah greek and um and that's the language that we still read the bible in um in our so you don't use an english translation of of the bible we we do use english translation but at seminary we want to learn the original greek so that we can explain the english not everyone's going to learn greek and it's not necessary but it is so packed every word is packed i remember when i was a kid i would ask people uh from my church like hey what does this word mean and they'd end up giving me like a dissertation i'm like no no i just wanted like one word answer but the truth is you can't explain things i mean each word has so many meanings in it um i'll give you uh an example like the word for eleson people are familiar with that like kiri alaysa means lord have mercy so allah means mercy but it's related to the word eleon which means oil and oil in those days was a sign of mercy because that's what it was like the main medicine try and eat eat food with no oil in it it's dry food right it'd be very uncomfortable but oil is a sign of god's mercy to us and so um that's just one eye example of like so when you say kiria lesson in greek it has so much more meaning than just lord have mercy so would phileo and agape be the same kind of situation with the word love yeah there are uh of course c.s lewis has his famous book the four loves um but yeah there are different kinds of loves that are used to mean different things i have like some of my priests friends when you say like give my love to your family they're very specific give my agape to your family to show that like it's my unconditional love it's the kind of love that god has and there are other kinds of love and the other kinds of love are not bad but there are different kinds of love so i kind of joke that love is not love and you know there are different kinds of love um that are appropriate for different uh things so while we have to love everybody there are different kinds of loves we don't love everybody with eros the erotic love that would be inappropriate okay let me ask you just a couple more questions and then i'll be done if you were to die today are you 100 sure that you'd go to heaven no i'm not because uh god is good and merciful but he also says as i see i judge and my judgment is just so am i going to go to heaven i hope i am i do everything i can on a daily basis the orthodox understanding of salvation is that i was saved by jesus christ i'm currently being saved by him and i will be saved in the future so it's not a one-time thing it's not a one-time decision by me because i change i i sin but then i'm supposed to get up from my sin it's the nature of demons to fall and never get up it's the nature of angels to never fall it's the nature of humans to fall and then to get up again so as long as i keep getting up i can get to heaven but as uh actually this is holy week in the orthodox church right now and so uh one of the themes for our services is behold the bridegroom comes at midnight so we don't know when christ is coming we always have to be prepared we always have to be ready if salvation was a one-time decision then i'd be saved i wouldn't have to do anything that it says on the gospel but rather faith is obedience to jesus christ so i have to like in matthew 25 i have to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and all those things that he said and if i'm not doing those things i'm falling short and will i be saved the lord says no at that time he says you'll go to the left to where the goats are so i have to constantly work towards my salvation so a follow-up question and then i'll let you guys go i know a lot of christian denominations they say that justification is by faith alone so just judging by what you said that that's not true that it's not just by faith alone that you must you must get up and you must persevere and you must overcome and all of those things am i correct in that assumption so um it's it's very complicated it's very simple at the same time um do you have the book of james to read the book of james so james says in his universal epistle faith without works is dead right so how do we put that in again true faith means obedience to god if we have faith in jesus christ that means we do what he tells us if we don't have faith in jesus christ it's like our lord said not all who say lord lord will be saved so not just say jesus christ is my lord and savior that's it i'm going to heaven it i have to show that i have to show the action there's a synergy and again another greek word scenario work together with jesus christ if i'm not working with him then um i have to uh then i'm not really having faith and that's just i'm paying lip service thank you so much for the conversation do you have any other absolutely absolutely i asked him all the questions that's fine he's the priest on salvation the orthodox church is the the experience of salvation it is the mystical ascetic life and sacraments of the orthodox church that that brings salvation to us it's it's a process that each of us is is going through we're we're constantly being saved by god and and in that we need the sacraments to bring us closer to christ we need the holy eucharist we need the holy confession we need holy unction we need all of these sacraments in our lives in order for us to experience christ in the grace of the holy spirit

Channel: Teays Valley Baptist Institute

Views: 54,647

Keywords: TVBI, A Place To Learn The Bible, Learn The Bible, Bible, God, Christ, Christian, Biblical, Christian Videos, Heaven, Way to Heaven, Street Interviews, How Do You Get To Heaven, Greek Orthodox, What Do Greek Orthodox Believe

Id: 1EK0itG_rUI

Length: 9min 30sec (570 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021