C (6:08)

And I think it actually makes Mary, like, so much greater in the Orthodox. Like, more people think that she's greater and Catholic, but, like, she's greater in orthodox realism because she still had the corrupted nature that is, you know, subsidized to death. And even with that nature, she chooses to, you know, not sin, to actually follow God.

A (6:28)

Exactly. And.

C (6:29)

But in Catholicism, it's a little bit different. She doesn't have that nature.

A (6:33)

She has a cheat code.

C (6:34)

She.

A (6:34)

There's a cheat code with Mary and. Exactly, yeah. Immaculate conception.

C (6:38)

So it's more about, like, you know, not what she did at all, more about God is just kind of rolling the dice and granting someone this nature already.

A (6:45)

Exactly. Black kings, black bishops, Black players, Contemporary compendium says, happy birthday, Jay, and what's up, Nick? Thank you. That's a great Cliffs channel. Be sure to follow a contemporary companion. By the way, the clips channel's been popping off. Shout out to Jake Rattlesnake between Instagram and YouTube, he did some clips of me that got like 500, 000 to a million views total. Shout out to Orb on. On Twitter over here, or what's Orbo Bro. Or Orbo Bro did some clips. One that got a hundred thousand, another got a hundred thousand. So appreciate those where the clips are popping off, y' all. Keep doing it, Keep turning it out. Feel free to clip myself anywhere. Do whatever you want, I don't care. Monetize it, go for it. Just Link back to me. It's the only thing I request. Let's see. I think I've got all the super chats. Let's see who's next is Enchanted. What's up, man? Hello, Jay.

B (7:40)

Hey, happy birthday. Hello, Nick.

C (7:45)

What's up?

B (7:46)

I just had one idea, one short idea I'd like to share and two questions. Okay, more on the reading list. So the idea currently I have is it's related to how dualism and modernism just destroyed metaphysics. And even our basic understanding of the world is basically about the free will and free choice. Orthodoxy teaches that the free choice is given to choose between goods, good things, that it is even possible to have multiplicity of good things and which, by.

A (8:27)

The way, if beatific vision was true, is not possible. But go ahead. Yeah.

B (8:33)

And currently, even in the fallen state, we still experience and choose between good and evil things as if they both are good. And so like we still see them as equivalent or possible paths, let's say, when they're not. Because that is basically part of our nature to choose between good things. And that's how we perceive them.

A (9:07)

Yeah, I think when we are in the fallen mode of willing and we choose evil, we're choosing. We might deceive ourselves into thinking that we're choosing a good, but we're still choosing something that is ultimately a negation or a privation, if that makes sense.

B (9:25)

Yeah, yeah, we. If we talk about light and shadow, we even just in the basic words, we still presume that shadow has its own ontology when it doesn't.

A (9:40)

Right. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I like the analogy of. I mean, they didn't really have this in the patristic era, but like negative numbers are a good, you know, idea for how kind of. I mean, it's a thing, but it's not really a thing. Right. So it kind of has a, you know, a linguistic, linguistic existence. But, you know, negative 253 doesn't actually have ontological existence. Right. Other than some sort of conceptual analogical reality that we're saying it's kind of evil is kind of like this, where you kind of keep digging yourself, you know, deeper and deeper into negative reality, so to speak.

B (10:17)

Yeah, so that was kind of my idea. I wanted to share. And so the first question I had is I've been watching your debate with Tim Gordon on and on the section of Filioque, the topic of the Trinity came up and Tim said that we know members of the Trinity based on relations of opposition. And I understand the intuitive argument for why it's wrong, especially since we have the Orthodox model, but I don't have the specific concepts and, you know, formulations for that.

A (11:00)

Yeah, so first and foremost. Yeah, absolutely, gladly, in fact, because this is a persisting problem. So the first and best orthodox essay on this issue of the problem of relations of opposition in terms of the Trinity is Loski's essay Procession of the Holy Spirit in Orthodox Doctrine. Let me get that PDF for you. That one is absolutely necessary. And when you, if you read that and understand that, you really probably won't need any of the other critiques because Lawski is so precise and so clear and so just devastating in this. I mean it's only like 20, I think it's only 20, 15, 20 pages. I'll put it in the chat right here and if you pull it up that you'll get on Google, you'll get the PDF right away. I think it is a chapter in the book Image and Likeness. Yes, it is. So it's chapter four. If you have the book Image and Likeness, you don't have to get the PDF, but there's the PDF. There's multiple levels of critique here. And this is relevant too because if you remember when I had that so called interaction debate, quote unquote with Wagner, Wagner had no idea what I was talking about and he just assumed that everything that I was saying was somehow my ignorance of Thomism had nothing to do with that. I was pointing out that in the Cappadocians, relations of origin or relations of the persons is not the same thing as a relation of opposition. Relation of opposition is a theory that Augustine begins to kind of toy with that really gets solidified in the Medieval Latin Church and in Aquinas. Now Lotsky deals with all this in this essay and he explicates it very well. And some of the main critiques would be first of all in a. This is a critique that Pharrell makes in God History and Dialectics. So I think it's in book. It's either book one or two. This is another book you should get if you can. God History Dialectic Volume 1 or 2. It doesn't make sense in a triad to talk about opposition because opposition in the ancient and medieval world relates to a dyad, right? Because remember, they counted by division. And we've covered this in the debates with the Muslims about counting by division versus counting by identity. In the ancient world, for example, in the Nicene Creed we count by division because we say that God is one and undivided. There's also counting by Identity in the ancient medieval world, too, but specifically for the triad. When the Church Fathers and the early writers talked about. And the medieval writers thought of counting, they counted by division, which means that you have a whole, and then to count to two, you divide that by. By itself and you get two. Right? And then you divide from that and you get three. So they're counting by dividing a whole or a monad. And this is kind of Platonic counting as well. And that's why the creed says one and undivided. Why would they use that term? Well, they're counting by Division. And Dr. Branson has shown this, by the way, in a lot of his essays and debates. They got into this with Jake years ago with Dr. Branson versus Jake in their debate. I got into this in my debate with I think Jake or Hikikachu, one of the two. I forget. But this has come up multiple times to refute the lpt, Right? So the logical problem, the Trinity, you got to understand this kind of stuff anyway, that's separate from this, but it relates because in a triad, you can't have opposition. There is no opposition. If you read the Cappadocians, for example, and Big or Maximus ambiguous number one, he goes to the Cappadocians to say that the Trinity cannot be a dyad. There's no opposition in God, so it has to be a triad because the triad transcends the dyad. This is a numerical argument the Cappadocians make. This is what I was trying to explain to Wagner. He didn't care about any of this, had no concern with it. All he wanted to do was clip a supposed own. But here's the. The problem. If you read Kongar, Kongar has an essay making all the same points that I made to Wagner. So Eaves Congar on the Trinity and relations of opposition in Augustine. And I'm going to give you that essay right here. You'll notice that. Oh, okay. So Jay actually did know what he was talking about between the Roman Catholic theologian and the orthodox theologian critiquing relations of opposition. It's all in these two essays. And actually, Wagner was the one that had no idea what he was talking about. But. But. And I, I since have asked Wagner if he would like to read these things and we can revisit this conversation. He has, to date, no interest whatsoever in looking at any of the materials or discussing it. Now, last point, beyond the fact that, I mean, Kongar in this essay basically says everything that I argue that relations of opposition is not the way that the cappadocians lay out their triad. That's a later medieval specific development in the Latin Church. Loski says there's a really. There's a couple easy points here. Number one, the Cappadocians teach relations of origin, not relations of opposition. And if they use the terminology of opposition, it's not relations of opposition. You can't define persons by what they're opposed to because it begs the question. So the Father is the Father because he's not the Son and not the Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit because he's not the Father, not the Son. That doesn't tell you who they are, that tells you what they're not. So they're negative statements. And Loski critiques this and says a relation is a predicate, not a subject. So it's confusing subjects and predicates to say that the Father is the relation that he has with the Son. I am not the relation I have to my dad. That's a property or an attribute about me. That's not who I am as a subject. It's just one of the many predicates that you could say about me. So it's confusing subject and predicate. It's so stupid. But Aquinas says person is relation, Persona at relatio. So it makes sense why Tim would argue that way. Because in Thomistic theology, the persons are, because of divine simplicity, the relations that they have to the other persons. But that's preposterous. A person is a subject, not a relation. So the Father is not the relation that he has to the Son. The Father is a divine subject, the Father, the cause, the arche, the fountain, etc. All of those terms that are hypostatic properties go into defining the person's not relations of opposition. And that's why when I said it's hypostatic properties that define the person, something very basic to Orthodox and Eastern and triad and Cappadocian Christology. Tim Gordon had no idea what that even is. What do you mean? Hypostatic properties? What is that? Relations of origin? What is that? Well, just read the Loski essay and it's all right there. I apologize for that long rant there.

B (17:45)

Yeah, I just wanted to quickly clarify. So my understanding that they basically have the only way out of absolute divine simplicity in relations of oppositions and just basically taking the can down the road.

A (18:01)

Yep.

B (18:02)

When you critique the ads position.

A (18:04)

Correct.

B (18:04)

And that is basically their last resort and.

A (18:07)

Yeah. Well, if you read on the Trinity. If you read on the Trinity, Augustine struggles with and he says you know, if God is this absolutely simple Neoplatonic definition of simplicity, and he explicitly uses the Plotinian definition of what simplicity is, which is not what the Cappadocians do, he says, how can we distinguish? How is there a real, you know, distinction between father and son? He says, well, maybe we could say that they're not the other. You know, the Father isn't this one and isn't this one. Well, but that's true. But that doesn't really tell you anything about, like, who they are. And it's. That's also not a relation of opposition, because there's two things that it would be opposed to. Relation of opposition is 2. So how can it be a relation of opposition when there's actually the Father and the Son and the Spirit? So that would be triad of opposition, which is just nonsense. It makes no sense.

B (19:03)

Yeah. And basically what I wanted to say.

A (19:09)

Oh, is that it?

B (19:11)

No, I just forgot. One second.

A (19:13)

Okay, I'll read a super chat here while you're thinking. So we got Nick, if you want to say anything, feel free.

C (19:22)

I mean, yeah, to your point about when you're talking about counting by division and stuff like that, and how they used to count by division, I mean, there's a paper you're probably read by David Liesman, he says we don't count by division. He gives some good examples in that as to why we don't count by division. Like, for example, if you have. If you know, like a baseball analogy, if you have. You say eight. There was eight batters struck out. Right. Does that mean that eight people struck out? Well, no, not necessarily. Because there could have been, you know, two persons that batted twice. Right. And so we're not going to count two different things that can be predicated differently necessarily by identity, because that can lead into issues. And then obviously, Bo Branson gives his whole analogy with like the gallon of water and stuff like that. If you drop a molecule, is it still a gallon of water? So we say in everyday life, we're not counting by identity. And, you know, in everyday scenarios. Right.

A (20:08)

We.

C (20:08)

So we still do at times, but it doesn't mean that we all.

A (20:10)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so county by identity works for certain specific things that you can't kind of put into parts or divide, for example, a logical law or a set. Right. It doesn't make any sense to say, you know, half of the law of logic. So things that are abstract or conceptual, you kind of have to count by identity. And this is in medieval philosophy, as Dr. Branson pointed out. This is first and second imposition. But things that are objects or mundane objects, everyday world objects, even the ancient medieval world, they would count by division. But in abstract objects, they would count with identity. So, and I think in the Trinity you could argue that. Well, we're kind of doing both because we're counting the essence by division, but we're counting the persons by identity. So this is something, of course, that the Muslims just. This is way too high tier for the Muslims. They have no idea what you're talking about. But JB says for $10, a ton of heterodox positions are premised on the idea that none of those orthodox saints or church fathers are better than me. God just picked them and it makes it easy. I think you could argue that. Yeah. I mean, it's like a lot of the Protestant attitude is just like, you know, it's so based on hubris, they don't even realize it. You know, it's like, no, actually, I don't need 2000 years of church fathers and saints and scholars. I, I can figure out what the canon is and I'll read some books and that'll tell me what the Bible canon is. Let's talk God. $5. Why would Oriental Orthodox have a dogmatic problem with infant baptism if they hold or iconoclasm? I don't think they have a problem with infant baptism, so I'm not sure what you mean. Now you say they have a problem with iconoclasm. I mean, I think Snack pointed out several years ago that there is a kind of a tendency amongst Orientals to become more and more iconoclastic and to. And to lose their iconographic traditions. But I'm not sure what you mean by them not believing infant baptism. I thought they did. Birds aren't real. $10. Thank you, Jay. We appreciate you. Appreciate that. I think I'm getting a cold for my birthday, so. Oh, trombone, $5. Happy birthday. Does astrology play any role in your spiritual practices? No. Can the energies of the celestial luminaries be called God's energies? No, because anything that would be a created energy is not a divine energy. All of God's energies are uncreated.

C (22:46)

Sounds very originistic.

A (22:48)

Yeah, that does sound like origin. And I mean, if you go back to the church fathers, I mean, they, they thought the celestial spheres had influence on earth, but they would be, you know, like the moon, the tides, that kind of a thing. It's not like, you know, the moon is like a deity that's, you know, controlling us and causing women to have periods or something huge. Jackman, $5. How would you respond to the objection that divine conceptualism conflicts with define divine? I don't see why that would be a problem. If God is a. Or exists of himself, that really wouldn't have anything to do with whether he's a divine mind who can conceive of things. So I'm not, I don't understand that objection. You have to flesh it out more. Crypto crusader, $5. Did Aquinas know? Did Aquinas not know that I think you're talking about relations of opposition or did he just think he didn't need to address it? Well, one thing that you have to understand about Aquinas and a lot of the medievals and people today don't really get this and I'll let Nick talk. I don't mean to be hogging the microphone, but in the medieval era, in the medieval world, it was actually considered an argument to, to cite an authority. I mean, I think they had a conception of the fact that authorities could be wrong. But if you're citing Aristotle or August to the medieval world, that's a really strong argument. And so authorities had a lot more power in argumentation than they do nowadays post Enlightenment. So I think, you know, if you read, say Summa contradict and tiles like volumes one or two or three, where Aquinas makes a lot of argumentation about apologetics or about the Trinity and how he thinks, he, for example, he argues, I'm pretty sure in Sima Contras, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the essence, which is a really bad stupid position. Right? But he's forced into that position because of his presupposition about divine simplicity. And when he in De Veritate is arguing against John Damascus on the energies, Aquinas says, well, Maimonides says that simplicity can't have any real distinctions or any strong hard distinctions because that would mean that, that there's parts. So he just assumes that comp. That distinction entails composition or division. And his source is literally Aristotle and Mymenides. So I mean, I know people want to exalt Aquinus like he's quasi infallible, but like that's just not a very good argument. And as you get older and more mature, I think you'll understand that Aquinas makes a lot of mistakes. And to sort of put these individual people on pedestals as Rome does, is just, just doesn't make sense.

C (25:33)

So I've literally, I literally hear so many like Catholics on tick tock and like being so serious, they'll say that like, he's greater than all the church fathers and that he is. Like, he might even be greater than the apostles.

B (25:46)

Yeah.

A (25:46)

And that's. That's really a papal. It's a papal Protestant mindset. Right. I mean, it's not accidental that the church that exalted one bishop to be the dude. They're also going to pick and choose the dudes. And the irony here, of course, is that the modern Vatican for the last hundred years, they don't care about Aquinas. They move past homeism. Darkamer, $20. Happy birthday, Jay. What's up, Nick? You and Made by Made by Jim Bob were successful in getting me back into church. Well, that's good, man.

C (26:14)

Great.

A (26:14)

Here. That dark banana up to about $5. How come there's no people calling in? He's great, man. He's like the biggest super chatter of the last month. He sent like hundreds of dollars of super chats. Banana up the butt.

B (26:28)

Yeah, brother.

A (26:29)

And by the way, is that a reference to TJ Kirk? I'm assuming that's what that means, Banana of the butt. Because he famously, you know, supposedly did that to prove something about atheism. I don't know what it was. It was gross. But how come no callers are calling in to disprove Yakub and that he manifested wigs antium? That's because they can't, because the transcendental argument for Yakub is so strong. That's why you'll never see him call in. What's up, man? Go ahead. Enchanted. Did you have any last comments?

B (27:09)

Yeah, I just wanted to make a brief point. It seems that the Roman Catholic view, they have collapsed energies partially into the.

A (27:19)

Essence and into person and in the.

B (27:22)

Person, and it's completely incoherent.

A (27:25)

Yep.

B (27:25)

And maybe some. Someone, you know, from the orthodox sphere could, you know, make a video or something to actually, you know, deconstruct the Roman Catholic view and show how all these attributes that don't match up.

A (27:40)

Bro, we've been. We've been. We've been making those videos. We've been making those videos for 10 years. So go back to my series on that, man. Yeah, we've been. I mean, I'm not dissing you. I'm just saying, like, we've been making those videos. They don't care. Like, they don't. Like, they. They. Roman Catholic apologetics, by the way, is dying. Like, it's resorted now to like, tick tock. Just gibberish. That's it. Like, all, All Roman Catholic apologetics is Tick tock gibberish and Trent Horns, you know, low tier videos. I mean, they're pretty much cooked, man. They have totally just had disaster after disaster in the last six months. Whether it's Trent Doherty and all the, oh, we were the same as the Muslims. God, like, all that was a massive flop. What was the last debate? Alex, Soren, Yossi flopped bad. I mean, they're, they're cooked, dude. All they have is the low tier. All they have is the lowest common nominator low tier stuff. That's all they do. Ms. Roberts, $5. What is the difference between Orthodox sex? I mean, there's not really Orthodox sex. There's a few groups that are like small groups that claim to be, you know, true Orthodox, but I, I don't even think that's even comparable because that's just like a few thousand people in the world. I don't even think that's comparable to Protestant denominations. So. But I wouldn't. We're not arguing that Orthodoxy is true because no one claims to be a sectarian. We're arguing that Protestantism's own ecclesiology allows for multiple sects. Orthodox ecclesiology doesn't allow for that, even though there are some groups that claim to be Orthodox.

B (29:10)

Sect.

A (29:10)

Sects.

C (29:11)

Yeah. And the only way these small little groups like genuine Orthodox and stuff like that are growing is just because people are going to the church thinking it's just regular Orthodox. They don't know that it's like a schismatic sex.

A (29:22)

Yeah, go ahead.

B (29:23)

Can you hear me?

A (29:23)

What's up, man?

B (29:24)

Hey. So as somebody who is wanting to.

A (29:27)

Get into online debating, I just want.

B (29:30)

To know, how do I, how would I determine if I'm engaging in Christian apologetics? Like if I, if I'm debating, like, let's say a secularist, you know, about, you know, the existence of God, is that, would that be considered engaging in Christian apologetics?

A (29:49)

Well, I mean, to be honest with you, I would say you got to be an orthodox Christian. Like, I mean, I know, I mean, I know there are apologists that are Protestant and Catholic and all that, but I mean, I mean, I can't support or, you know, condone apologetics that isn't orthodox.

B (30:10)

Gotcha.

A (30:10)

So I would say, I would say I need. A person needs to become Orthodox first and then kind of go through catechesis. And usually, you know, people need a time period to not, you know, immediately be debating when they're a catechumen. There might be some exception to that, but usually it doesn't work out. Good. Okay, here we go. God, God, what's up? Here we go. We got Reddit live. What's up, man? God can't connect. I would think you would have omnipotent powers, but God doesn't have a good cell connection, apparently. And I'm not being blasphemous because this isn't actually God, by the way.

C (30:48)

Of course.

A (30:50)

Let's see. We'll try somebody else. All right, we got all these orthodox guys. Is there anybody who disagrees? So every time I do a live stream, which I don't mind it, it's because it's no more. And Muslims don't come atheists. It's all just piles up with all the ortho bros, which is fine, but it's like, does anybody in the chat disagree? There's still, like, almost 20 people. Give me, like, an emoji or something if you disagree and I'll bring you up. Okay. Cart, Cart, car. He disagrees. What's up, Kartike? What's up, my mute? Can you hear me? Yeah, what's up?

B (31:31)

Yeah, I had a question related to TAG.

A (31:35)

Okay.

B (31:36)

So I was watching, like, a debate with Dr. Alex Malpas, and I was a bit confused about why TAG presents, like, a better alternative to, let's say, just taking things as an assumption or taking things as metaphysically assumed. So, for example, regularity of nature versus just assuming the reduction happens. Well, is the better thing to do.

A (32:05)

I mean, you can't come to a debate and say, well, I just want to assume it. I mean, can I come to the debate and say, well, I just assume God exists, so debate's over.

C (32:14)

Right.

B (32:14)

But, like, it was more. So why is that better alternative? What does it solve exactly?

A (32:23)

Well, if you read David Hume, for example, he argues that if you're an empiricist, you can't prove or justify induction. So the solution to that, to just say, well, I just assume it. I mean, you don't see why that's philosophical nonsense to just. I just assume it. I mean, that's the thing in question.

B (32:41)

Right, but. So I guess what I'm trying to understand is why does assuming the Christian God help explain that better?

A (32:51)

Well, because if God exists and if he's provident, then that explains why there's regularity in nature because of divine Providence. Right? In a world where God exists, where there is a creator and a created order with intentionality and purpose, it makes sense why there would be regularity in nature. In a world where it's pure chaos and materialism, there is no Justification for the regularity of nature.

B (33:19)

So by makes sense, what do you mean in that context?

A (33:23)

That it's justified and coherent. It makes sense in a sense of it being purposeful and intentional because the world has order, the world has telos. Purpose, and it has an end in a world. Without all of that, it doesn't make sense. It's incoherent.

B (33:42)

Okay, so you're saying that like it's nested in a. Another criteria of, let's say the world being more logical.

A (33:52)

Being what?

B (33:54)

Teleological? Like having a purpose.

A (33:57)

Yeah, I'm saying all of those metaphysical ideas that are part and parcel with a Christian metaphysic makes sense of induction in the regulator of nature and thus the possibility of knowledge. But the other worldview, where there's none of that, it doesn't make sense and there is no justification. That's a. That's a pretty strong argument, I would say. Right. So it's an argument comparing worldviews on the question of induction. That is the argument.

B (34:28)

I. So, okay, I guess. Pardon me, but I'm still a bit confused on.

A (34:35)

Yeah, so it makes.

B (34:36)

It makes more sense because it's more coherent. Like overall.

A (34:42)

Yeah, there's coherence and incoherence. Correct. The argument here is partly hinging on coherence. Correct. But it's not just. It's not just any kind of co. It's not just any kind of coherence. It's coherence in regard to something that is so fundamental to knowledge that it's a precondition of knowledge. You couldn't have knowledge if there weren't the principle of induction. Right. So in other words, it's not just denying any kind of thing. It's denying something so fundamental that to deny it would make knowledge impossible. And that's why it's a strong argument.

B (35:22)

So you're saying that without those assumptions, or without this worldview, knowledge itself is not really possible.

A (35:28)

Yes, correct.

B (35:35)

Okay, let's.

A (35:38)

That is the argument. Exactly right there. That is there. So it's an argument about worldviews.

B (35:45)

Oh, okay. One small question. This.

C (35:48)

So.

A (35:48)

Sure.

B (35:50)

But wouldn't that still assume, like coherence theory before any of your assumptions or any of your.

A (35:58)

No, coherence theory is a. Is a secular epistemology that treats every belief as foundational. So it's a form of foundationalism that treats everything as a foundational belief. It's just. It only differs from foundationalism in the sense that there's not specific beliefs that are foundational. So it's not Coherence theory in a secular epistemic sense. I'm arguing that the Christian metaphysic as a whole is coherent and gives a place for, and a basis for a justification for induction, whereas the atheist metaphysic and worldview does not. So, no, it is not relying on some secular coherence theory, but it is relying on all kinds of things. Sure, but we're arguing that every position relies on things. So the argument is premised on. The atheist view relies on induction. The Christian view relies on induction. Only the Christian worldview as a whole can make sense of induction, whereas the atheist worldview makes induction and knowledge impossible. It's not an argument that's saying that we don't assume things. And you do. The argument is arguing everyone assumes things. Okay, yeah, great questions. I appreciate that. I mean, I welcome and I thank you for being, you know, civil, and a lot of these people are not very civil when it comes to this topic.

B (37:19)

But.

A (37:22)

Feel free to interject, Nick, if you'd like to. By the way, everybody's being very generous. Thank you. I'm going to share the super chats with Nick, so I appreciate all that.

C (37:29)

Wow, what a guy, man.

A (37:32)

Yeah, we're doing very, very nice on super chats already. We got Chad. Nerd. Excuse me. Free reign says my. My Richie family like Christina Ricci, St. Catherine de Ricci, who is a histrionic, hysterical woman. Matteo Lorenzo Ricci, my great grandfather was or with King Umberto, stood up to the Venetians who infested the Vatican. Oh, that's interesting. I didn't know there was a Ricci drama opposing the Venetians. Bootman, $20. Happy birthday, Jay. Your work was critical for me to stay Orthodox during a very spiritual low point. Yeah, just persevere. I think everybody, you know, you're going to hit spiritual low points no matter who you are in your. In your journey. Just try to stay, you know, consistent with attending the liturgy. Croatian, $5. Can you explain the difference between being and person? Can you point me to resources on this idea? Maybe contemporary stuff, Orthodox theologians. I mean, the best contemporary theologians are like, you could read Florovsky, where he talks about the energies and some of his writings. But Dr. David Bradshaw's books, Aerosol east and west and the Divine Energies book that he has a separate little book of essays. Read anything by Vladimir Lawski is good, but I mean, being is a very generic term in philosophy and patristics, and it really kind of is synonymous with existence or, you know, ontology. It's just kind of a. It's Used in different ways. When the church fathers or Palomaster people speak of God's being, that's called an energy as well. So God's existence is an energy. So person is subject or agent in orthodox Christology.

C (39:23)

Yeah. And I actually did an interview with Dr. David Bradshaw on my channel around a year ago. If you can check that out as well, it might help. I think we talked about person and being in there a little bit, but we just talked about some of the major objections and what it is to understand a little bit better. So whoever that person was.

A (39:38)

Yeah. So you could check out Nick's interview. And I also have an interview with Dr. Bradshaw as well from four or five years ago on Essence interview sanction too. So I think you would got you guys would like that. Dan, good. Five dollar. Dan, wait. Dan. Pod. Five dollars. Quick question. Do you believe in act as purists? And if not, why? Yeah, so John Damascus and Gregory Palomas, they talk about God as in his essence or in terms of his. In his eternal existence. God is in a sense, you could say, pure act in contrast to the created order. But you cannot reduce the divine persons or the divine energies to pure act. And the reason for that, first and foremost is that we believe in apophatic theology. So to call the divine essence pure act would number one be not apophatic. It would be a cataphatic attribution to the divine, to the divine essence. And also a divine being that is reduced to pure act. Especially if you reduce the persons to pure act, like Rome does. You can't have one person incarnate in time and space and engage in kenosis or self limitation, as Philippians 2 says, and maintain a God that is reducible to pure act. So that's why also the God that is pure act doesn't create. Because pure actuality must, according to Aristotle, always have something else that it actualizes. And Aristotle's reason this out to mean dyad, right? The first actualizer must always have something other than himself that he eternally actualizes. Otherwise, what is he actualizing? And that's what led Aristotle to a dyad. If you read Basil's Examoran, he critiques this as a nonsense position. And that's why we don't reduce God to pure act. But there is a way of speaking of God that, for example, if you read the first five pages, Saint Maximus's 200 chapters, he says you can call God first cause and first act, in contrast to the created order. Renaciones says the exact same thing. He says in the sense of the Trinity being contrasted to the creation. The Trinity is the monarch of creation. You can't take the economic attributions and import those into the intra trinitarian life. For example, you can't call the divine essence the first cause of the Trinity. You can't call the entire triad the first cause of the Trinity. Only the Father in the inter trinitarian life is the first cause. So you see how this terminology gets confused between economic predication of God and intra trinitarian life predication of God. And this is a common mistake the Roman Catholics make not just with the filioque, but with naming God in general. And again, first five pages, 200 chapters, Maximus explicitly makes this distinction between two ways of naming God. God in contrast to creatures and God in contrast God in the inter trinitarian life.

C (42:21)

Yeah, because I think a lot of the times people like notice pure act. Like it. Just the first thing people think is, okay, he has passive potency and active potency. Does he have any passive at all? Well, I mean, obviously we don't think that like in accordance to creation, he doesn't change how we do it anyway. There's no, like, there's none of his essential properties are going to stop being essential properties. He doesn't have things like accidental properties. And, and a lot of times when people talk about pure act, that's all they mean. They don't kind of take into account everything that it has to do with.

A (42:49)

Also, there's a thing that people, years ago took me out of context to say that I was saying that God is determined or affected by creatures because we were talking about passive potency. And what I was saying was not in the sense of like in himself. No, God is not changed or acted upon by creatures. However, there is a great essay. I think it's Bradshaw's longer essay on the concept of divine energies, where there's a section where he critiques the Thomistic and Augustinian notion of if God is reducible to his essence, then you have a problem with prayer, because prayer in divine revelation, God does react to creatures into prayer. And there's a really powerful critique that Bradshaw does of ads where he says if God is this, there isn't an interaction to prayer. So what's the solution to this? Well, Bradshaw says in the economy, God condescends to will to react to creatures in terms of their prayers. And hence, if you read the book of Amos, for example, God says to Amos, if you had not prayed for Israel, I would have destroyed it. But since you did intercede for Israel. I'm not going to destroy it. That means God condescends to will to react to creatures. It does not mean the divine essence is affected or changed by creatures. And they took me out of context when I. All I did was repeat what Bradshaw argued. So do Dire says that God has passive potency and he's changed my creatures.

C (44:19)

It's funny because I literally get people like, in my life, probably Muslims all the time, that are like, you know, Jay doesn't believe in pure act. He thinks God has, you know, passive potency and all this. I'm like, I can almost guarantee you're clearing them out of context. Like, let's be.

A (44:31)

No, no. So. So if you read Pino's dissertation, right, he says Palomas does say that you can speak of God as pure act, meaning that there's no unrealized, you know, like, deficiency or lack in God. And that's still in contrast to the temporal, created, finite, limited, lacking things of the created order. But you can't say the divine essence is pure act, which is what Thomism says, for example, actus puros act as purist. Thomas says God is in his essence absolutely identical to pure actuality. That is very problematic for orthodox theology and for any kind of trinitarian theology. It really negates the Trinity. Not just that, it also makes the Incarnation impossible. And you'll notice every time I brought this up with Roman Catholic theologians and Thomists, when they call in and I say, let's say you're right, fine. God is absolutely simple essence and reducible to isomorphically identical to pure actuality. Now explain to me how one hypostasis of pure actuality enters into time and space and willfully limits himself a la the kenosis passage of Philippians 2. They have no idea what I'm talking. They don't know. Yeah, because they do. Their metaphysics, irrespective of Christology, orthodox theology is the reverse. Our metaphysics is based on Trinity and Christology, not metaphysics. That then determines the Trinity. That's all Thomas right there. Octavian. $20. If a Mormon and a Calvinist walk into a Catholic church, will the imam give them communion? Happy birthday. If they're at the churches in Germany, probably banana up to bat. $50. Thank you for being such a generous, you know, wealthy super chatter. 50 bucks. I wonder if the Muslim debates. Wait, excuse me. I'm wondering with these Muslim debates, if you guys ever bring up the diacritical dots issues and the seven different readings. I'm curious to know, I know how they would respond to that. Diacritical dots actually change the letters in Arabic into different words and meanings. I'm not familiar with this argument. Have you heard this argument?

C (46:50)

Yeah, I think he's referring to the fact they have like different variants of the text where, like, some will say that like, I created something, or some will say like, you created something. And so it's clearly referring to different subjects. And so there's some textual variants that are considered like major textual variants that they don't know exactly which one it's supposed to be. So the whole one Quran argument kind of falls apart.

A (47:13)

Oh, so this is even after Uthman, right?

C (47:15)

Yeah, it's after.

A (47:18)

And with this. Remember when there was a. Some drama over. Was it Muhammad Hijab, when he was admitting that the Quran isn't free from textual variance? Was that. Remember that? A few years ago? There's like a.

C (47:29)

Was it him? I don't know if it was him or Ali Daw.

A (47:31)

Maybe it was Ali Dawa. One of those guys, you know, admitted this and it was like a huge deal and they were all freaking out.

C (47:36)

I mean, it's true, if you actually are being honest. I mean, there's. There's obvious variants there. Unless you just decide to stick with one specific variant and say that's the only one. But I don't think there's any justification for that.

A (47:45)

Okay, lean $3. Happy birthday, Jay. What order of books is the best to read the Bible so that it isn't confusing? Honestly, I mean, I would start with Genesis. I mean, it's going to be difficult, but you really can't understand the New Testament without, you know, the Torah. So it is really important to read the Torah. I would get Orthodox, study Bible and just, you know, start from the beginning and, you know, read all the notes because it's going to help you. Sergius. 50 bucks, man. You guys are being so generous. Thank you so much. He says, happy birthday, big dog. Happy birthday to you, man. Even though it's not your birthday. It could be. How about Merry Christmas, since technically it's still kind of Orthodox Christmas.

C (48:28)

There you go.

A (48:31)

All right, let's see who's next. Any disagreers, by the way? We. We still got. We still got 20 people in here. Give me an emoji if you. Okay, so here. Here's somebody. Amanda disagrees. What's up, Amanda? You gotta unmute. What's up, Amanda? Amanda, I'm you.

C (48:59)

That shirt is so real right now.

A (49:01)

I'm you. Check. Even though it's not A dude. I mean, I guess you could be a dude named Amanda. Are you there? Did you.

B (49:09)

Hey, you guys hear me?

A (49:11)

Amanda's a dude. What's up?

B (49:14)

Sorry, man. My wife made this profile for us.

A (49:17)

I'm just kidding. What's up, man?

B (49:20)

I. I wanted to give you a little bit of pushback, I guess, for your birthday.

C (49:24)

Okay.

B (49:24)

Or it says it's your birthday. We just recently left Baptist church. I grew up Fundamental Baptist, but we've been. We've been attending an Antiochian Orthodox church.

C (49:37)

Okay.

B (49:37)

And certain parts of the liturgy, I noticed when they're talking about Theotokos, they.

A (49:44)

Mentioned save us or Save, save me. I. I guess the last little bit.

B (49:51)

Hanging up on me as a Protestant.

A (49:53)

Would be like, how could you argue.

B (49:54)

That that's not like a statement to her to save us.

A (49:59)

Yeah. So it's just like when Paul says to Timothy, if you act godly and are faithful, you will save those around you. Right. It's not saying that Timothy is the ultimate savior. Sometimes this in theology is called middle salvation. And it just means. Just like with Amos, right? If you read the book of Amos, Amos saved Israel. Oh, I guess Amos is replacing Jesus. No, it just means that God was using that means to save Israel. Right. So in the same way that Theotokos saved us, in that she's the mother of God. She's the mother of, you know, Jesus, the divine person of the Son, in the sense that she gave him his human nature and that she acquiesced to the, you know, let it be done according to thy will. So she acquiesced, and in that sense, she saved us. Not that she is the ultimate cause of salvation. She's the proximate cause of salvation. Just like your mom, Monica prays for St. Augustine, right? So his mom, St. Monica saved Augustine through her prayers, not as the ultimate cause. That's all it means. Anything you want to say on that, Nick?

C (51:05)

I mean. No, I agree. That's what I was going to bring up the prayer example, too. If I pray for someone to go to church, right? And then we would have to say as Christians that God is actually hearing our prayers and our prayers can be efficacious. So if I pray for someone to go to church, and somehow those prayers affect him in a way, to go to church, he goes to church and ends up being saved. Well, my prayers saved him. Am I the Savior, though? Do I, like you said, replace God. No, God used me as a tool, as an instrument to pray. It's like, as an example, my priest gave One time it's like imagine like God is running a hot dog stand, right? And he's giving out hot dogs, these hot dogs of salvation. But the only way that you can get one is you gotta walk by the hot dog stand. So he's giving them out. Either way, nothing changes in him. But the only thing that changes is whether or not you receive one, which is about if you take the hot dog. Now that doesn't mean that you cause your salvation or tell you. Say you told a friend, go to the hot dog stand you saved them because if you didn't tell them to go to hot dog stand, they wouldn't have gone. But the ultimate salvation is what comes from the actual hot dog stand owner is giving it out in the first place.

A (52:12)

Exactly. Anonymous $10. Jay, you argue that Ono Sanctum says all Catholics are temporarily subject to the Pope to be saved. Correct. There's a forged bull sped spread by King Philip that the Pope claimed feudal control of France. Bonavis denied this and its claims. Now I hope you're not saying that Unum sanctum is a forged bull, because it's not. In fact, Unum sanctum is still cited in Denzinger, so that's total nonsense. But. And by the way, Pius ix, as we argued multiple times in Lamenta Billy, and the Syllabus of Errors restates that you still have to believe in the temporal supremacy doctrine all the way up until Vatican 1, that's stated by the papacy as still dogmatic and binding. So the way that you worded this is a little ambiguous because I don't know if you mean that Unum Sanctum is a forged bull, because I've never heard Roman Catholics say this. It's still cited in Catholic dogmatic authoritative sources. Or if you're saying there's a separate bull that is claiming feudal control and let's say for the it's not. But let's say for the sake of argument, you're correct. Okay, well then why is Pius IX citing and reaffirming a forged bull? Right. So that would mean that Pius IX made a huge error. He didn't even know his own documents in his own church history. Nico $3J Cradle Orthodox. I went Protestant, but I'm now back to Orthodoxy. I got an orthodox calendar about feast days. I've been fasting one day, Wednesday, Friday. Etc. Is the non Lent Easter fast something that you do? I mean I, I have medical issues and so we, we do fast, but it's not exactly the same as everyone's fast. But you should Take up fasting and all that with your spiritual father, because that's going to be determined between you and him. I don't give spiritual advice to people. Marco. $10. Jay, I'm Orthodox. I've been hearing an argument that the Orthodox Church is not universal because there is an EP MP schism. How would you argue against this? Well, this is an easy one right away. If a schism between patriarchates means that the church is no longer universal, then the Roman Catholic Church is not universal because there were schisms amongst the patriarchates in the first millennium. So if, let's say for the sake of argument, the Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church is the church of the first thousand years. And if schisms amongst patriarchates is a disqualifier, then you just disqualified Rome as being the Church of the first thousand years. Nick, you have any comments?

C (54:54)

I mean, yeah, I agree. To say that this agreement itself is going to make it, you know, not the true Church. It doesn't make any sense. Right. Because we believe that obviously they themselves are not infallible, but the councils themselves are going to be deemed infallible. So them disagreeing really has nothing to do with anything. We've had individuals have been in certain seats who have been corrupted and been bad. It doesn't prove or disprove anything. Men are fallible.

A (55:18)

Yeah. I mean, in the Orthodox conception, there's many, many patriarchates and bishoprics that have gone into schism. And that's a feature of anybody's church, whether you're Orthodox or Roman Catholic. So really, a schism occurring amongst patriarchates doesn't disprove or disprove anything. However, you could argue that the schism of the Roman papacy and its patriarchate against all the others seems to indicate maybe that Rome was in error. But Marcos. No, we did that one. Yeah. Let's go to the next call.

B (55:54)

Waffle. Hi there. I was wondering if you had any recommendations on. Of books on the Holy Spirit.

A (56:11)

I mean, I would read Losski's works on the Holy Spirit because Processional Holy Spirit that we just referenced earlier by Vladimir Loski. You can get that PDF, that's a good one for orthodox theology. Alexander, what's up? What's up, Alexander?

C (56:33)

Hi, Jay.

B (56:34)

Hi, Nick. How are you doing? Good, good. I have. I have two questions for you if you don't mind. Okay, so the first one is regarding the end times. So what do you believe when Jesus comes back and steps foot on the ground? So somewhere in Jerusalem, what is the order of events that will happen.

A (56:57)

Again? You could read or you could watch the video essays from Jordanville Monastery called Apostasy and antichrist on YouTube for a fuller treatment of this. But I mean, we don't believe that he literally has to like fly down and stand on the Mount of Olives. I mean, he may do that, but I mean really just the orthodox conception is that you have an apostasy antichrist persecution of the church and then conversion of the Jews and then the return of Christ and then you have the resurrection and great White throne judgment. So for us it's pretty. It's a pretty clear, simple process. We don't get into all this, like, you know, John Hagee end time speculation stuff.

B (57:36)

Yeah, I noticed like there is not much details obviously, but I was wondering if maybe Orthodoxy provides like more in detail. Like first this will happen, second this, third, like. But I understand.

A (57:46)

Well, yeah, so I mean, I think like if you read this, Elders and the Saints, they point out that as the church gets closer to the end of the world, the church will have a better sense of the order of these events. But, you know, as of presently, we don't fully know the exact order of the events. But the closest that you could get, I mean, there are some good orthodox commentaries. My godfather printed a three volume commentary on the Apocalypse from James Jordan that he helped edit. It's called I just want to just look up a Dean Arnold revelation commentary. That's a good one. Days of Vengeance by David Chilton's pretty good. Anyway, derps. $10. Great work, gentlemen. Keep it up. Thank you.

C (58:32)

Thank you.

A (58:33)

40 crush, $5. You guys should check out Rob Christian.

C (58:36)

He.

A (58:37)

He has many videos and streams against Islam, particularly the Muslim academic sources and the DoT variants. Are you familiar with Rob Christian?

C (58:45)

I believe he's someone on Tik Tok. Yeah.

A (58:52)

Let's see who disagrees, right? We still got 20 people in here. Give me some kind of an emoji or something if you disagree. Okay. Real wiga disagrees. What's up? Gotta unmute.

C (59:09)

I really understand this right now.

B (59:11)

Unmute.

A (59:11)

Jay.

B (59:12)

I'm mute, dude.

A (59:15)

Okay, what's on your mind?

B (59:18)

Well, it's kind of a personal matter and considering you're the wisest person that I could ask this question, I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

A (59:28)

Okay. Are you trolling? I already detect some.

B (59:32)

I'm serious about this. I'm serious.

A (59:35)

A personal matter with me and you. Or me or you. What do you mean?

B (59:37)

No, no, no, no. My life, when it comes to it, you know, I have a fork in the road.

A (59:43)

In life.

B (59:44)

And I don't know whether I should, you know, go where my heart is.

A (59:49)

Or follow your heart, bruh. I'm just kidding. What's the problem?

B (59:57)

Well, I'm really into mixed martial arts. I mean, I've been training it since I'm 15. And it says if I. I have this. This hard choice to make, either I go full sanded and in the process, I lose my marginally higher intelligence and I become retarded. Because, you know, what are the consequences of full professional fighter?

A (60:23)

What's it called? Ct? Yeah.

B (60:28)

There is no cure, pretty much, because the protein tau builds up in your brain after getting hit. Like every. Every small hit creates a. Like a mini concussion in your brain, which stacks up over time, and it's like, really damaging. And it's as if I have this Faustian bargain. Like, hey, trade my marginal higher intelligence for something that they really enjoy doing.

A (60:53)

How old are you?

B (60:55)

I'm 22.

A (60:56)

All right, I'm going to tell you this now. Being over age 17 myself, I. I would. I. In. In middle age, I would not trade my brain for some brawls in my 20s and 30s.

C (61:15)

30S.

A (61:15)

So as you get older, I think you're going to want to not have cte. That would be. That would be me.

C (61:23)

Yeah.

A (61:23)

Yeah. Okay.

B (61:24)

Yeah. Well, the thing is, I'm not looking at it from the, you know, perspective of a brawler. I'm more of a tactician. You know, I've, you know, watched all the greats, if you know who I'm talking about. Gsp. Demetrius Johnson's people who are legit tacticians. They. They don't go there to, you know, brawl, lose brain cells.

A (61:41)

Yeah, but I mean, you know, even still, I just. I don't know if it'd be worth it, man. Honestly.

B (61:46)

I understand that. Yeah, that's also what I was thinking. I mean, I've lost so many opportunities in last couple of years just because of this deadlock in my life. Like, hey, should I pursue this or should I, you know, go down the aviation path?

A (62:01)

Yeah, me personally, Go ahead.

C (62:02)

Me personally. Me personally. I just wouldn't get hit. But, like, that's just me, though.

A (62:07)

Yeah. So just like, do it perfectly and never get punched and you're good, man.

C (62:10)

That'd be all right.

A (62:13)

I like nick's plan. Anthony. $1. I meant King Philip spare spread. A forged bull, okay. Called Da Time that claimed a feudal control over France to deceive French Catholics against the Pope. No Pope ever used the bull to support the papacy. Please learn the full context. Well, what does that have to do with Unum sanctum and the contradiction in Roman Catholic dogma? Post Vatican too? So you can get snarky with me and tell me to learn the full context, but your forge bull has nothing to do with my argument. So you need to learn the context. Contemporary Companions is $5 and says here's some money. Thank you. Anthony, why don't you call in? Since you seem to know everything about setting us straight on papal history. Do you want to address the actual argument or you just want to bring up irrelevant papal bulls that have nothing to do with Unam sanctum? So please let me know. Anthony, I'd like for you to call in and the link is in the show description. Who's in the chat and disagrees, Please raise your hand. Here we go. Fedorov. Where's all these people? In the normal streams. And maybe Nick brought them all. I guess they want a piece of Nick. What's up, man?

B (63:30)

Hey, what's up?

A (63:32)

Yep.

B (63:33)

Nice, nice, nice. Dude, I wanted to talk about the papacy, you know, Jake, are you up for that a little bit?

A (63:40)

When am I not up to talk about the papacy, dude?

B (63:43)

Yeah, exactly, man. That's what I'm saying. So yeah, man, I wanted to talk about it more from the logical point.

A (63:53)

Of view, you know? Okay.

B (63:56)

As you know, in Eastern Orthodoxy there is like this thing as this three tier model, like if you can call it a model, like you have the local synods and then you have the regional. Right. So in the local, you have. When you have an issue which is on the local level, for example, multiple priests or clergy and whatnot, you know, and if it has to be resolved, there is the bishop, but.

C (64:25)

Right.

B (64:25)

Who is the head of this local synod and he resolves. Right. He is responsible for a resolution. Now when you go one level up, on the second level, you have the regional level.

A (64:40)

Yeah. So you're going to argue that the regional should be reflected into the universal. This is a lofton argument that he made like five years ago. Is that what you're arguing?

B (64:49)

Yeah, I mean, pretty much. If you would say that it's loftens. So if this, if we follow this trail of logic, right, and we go up to the universal level, wouldn't you say that there must be a head, just as there is a head on the local and original level?

A (65:05)

Well, what you are missing, that is consistently argued in the New Testament and in the patristic period is that there is a head and his name is Jesus Christ. And the purpose of the Holy Spirit is it's the Holy Spirit, that is his earthly manifestation of that headship. So it's the Roman Catholic position that seems to not grasp that the Holy Spirit is who does that function in time and space. And they think it has to be replaced with a juridical high priest of the Old Testament living person. So you're actually moving retrograde into the Old Testament to think that you need to have a living high priest to solve the problems when why wasn't this established at Nicaea? Like why. In other words, why don't we just move the logic back a little further and say, okay, the Bishop of Rome literally just tells every single bishop and person in the world what to do in every case and get rid of the synods in general.

B (65:56)

Yeah, yeah, I gonna respond to that, you know, to the second one. Just going to the first. Of course, you know, Jesus Christ is the ultimate head of the body, right. He's the source of everything, of all unity, of all truth. Yeah, of course. But that doesn't mean that Christ has not given us a hierarchy. Right? Because if, if we do this reductionist move.

A (66:19)

It's not a reductionist, you're just ahead. Yeah, but the thing in. You're assuming that, you're assuming the thing in question though, because I'm asking you. So in other words, the logic of where we take this models of hierarchy is going to depend on what we think Jesus did and what he established. You think that he established Peter as the sort of arbiter of that. And I'm saying, okay, why didn't Peter, Peter act that way and why didn't they accept this in the first, second and third century when that should have been the logic of it? Do you believe that the papacy was always there from day one as Vatican I says, or do you think it developed?

B (66:56)

Yeah. So Peter, Yeah, of course in Eastern Orthodoxy there is also the belief that Peter was given the keys and he is the head. Right. He is the point of unity of the apostles.

A (67:06)

Was Vatican one there in the beginning or did it develop, developed? Do you believe the Vatican one view was theirs or developed?

B (67:13)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand. So if we think about the papacy like as a dogma of the church which was placed in Vatican one. As a dogma. Right, as a definitive dogma. Now if we think that this is a normal dogma, we also have other dogmas too, like for example, the Trinity. Right. Or, or for example, we have, was.

A (67:33)

The papacy there at the beginning or did it develop Vatican I style?

B (67:38)

I'm sorry, what?

A (67:39)

For the third time, the Vatican I. Definition of the papacy, was it there in the first, second, third century, or did it develop.

B (67:47)

Well, I would say it was better. It was more fully exposited. Right. So there is a fuller exposition of this doctrine. It's not like the way we see, for example, if we go to Pre Nicaea, Right. We don't see the exact definition of the Trinity in like the year 100. We see a. An implicit view of it, but we don't really see.

A (68:11)

So it's doctrinal development.

B (68:15)

What do you say?

A (68:15)

Was it. So it's doctrinal development?

B (68:19)

Yeah, I mean, with. I mean, if you understand by doctrine of development that we just develop doctrine out of thin air. That's not what it's meant.

A (68:26)

Right, I know that. You don't think that. You think it's. I mean, do you agree with the Newman definition that it's a seed that grows into a tree?

B (68:35)

Not even that. Not even that. It's more of the exposition, like a fuller exposition of it. Just like.

A (68:40)

So basically it was there for all those centuries, but the Pope didn't use that authority until many centuries later. That's the Ibarra route sometimes that he takes.

B (68:50)

No, it's not that the Pope never used it. It's that.

A (68:55)

Okay, can you give some examples of the Vatican I style papacy in the first millennium?

B (69:01)

Yeah, so for example, Saint Pope Leo's claims which he made about Peter, about the Church.

A (69:08)

Many scholars have stated in Leo. Hold on. Many scholars. So, but where does that teach Vatican I? Because a lot of those phrases can be read in an orthodox way.

B (69:19)

Okay, so phrases like, for example, that no pagan faithlessness will ever overcome this romanc.

A (69:28)

And. And the same honorifics that are used for the other Cs. Do you agree with that or. No.

B (69:34)

Okay, so you're talking about theory language now. What flowery language like.

A (69:40)

Yeah, honorifics like Alex Thorne just brought up with Yasi, like UBI brought up with Ibarra.

B (69:50)

Yeah, I've seen. I've seen the debate a bit, but.

A (69:52)

Okay, so how do you know which honorifics apply and which ones don't?

B (69:57)

Okay, so honorifics. I see the. You know, when you apply honorifics. Right? I see honorific says when one person says something about another person. I don't think a honorific is when you say that about yourself. At most it would be arrogance. Right. If you, if you.

A (70:12)

Okay, so how do you know that the only. So, so the only honorifics that count are the ones that you say about yourself?

B (70:18)

No, no, I didn't say.

C (70:19)

No, I didn't say.

A (70:19)

I said that's what you said.

B (70:22)

Honorifics are when somebody says, okay, how.

A (70:25)

Do you know that that's the definition of. When you do and don't take it, you just invented a new definition of, oh, these are the ones that count. It's when someone says it about. When you say it about yourself, that's when it counts. Because Leo says this about Rome, so that's when it counts.

B (70:38)

Okay, yeah. So, because, because if you speak honorifically for your own self, that's arrogance, right? That would be basically arrogance. Right? You're just saying something about yourself, which you're actually not. So at most you are going to say that Leo was being arrogant and he was deceiving himself.

A (70:57)

No, I don't have a problem. Well, again, first of all, I don't know that you've yet to show that because he uses those terminologies that are equivalent to Vatican I. That would be you retroactively reading it back into it, which hasn't been demonstrated yet. And that's why you have to go to these honorifics to say that. Well, it only counts when it sounds like Vatican one, when it's the guy saying it about himself. But I mean, but again, how do you know that that's the case? You're just assuming the thing in question. Why is that the thing? You made a qualification, a criteria on the spot to make that count. But how do we know that that's like. So if the council says it about the emperor later on in the seventh Ecumenical Council, why does that one not count?

B (71:36)

Okay, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because he's saying that. I mean, what did he even say to the emperor? Like that the emperor.

A (71:42)

The gates of hell will not prevail against the emperor.

B (71:45)

Sorry, what?

A (71:46)

The gates of hell will not prevail against the emperor and the empire.

B (71:50)

Okay. I mean, I would need the definitive quote.

A (71:53)

These have all been brought up in the debates. You said you just watched these debates. These have been brought up in all those debates.

C (71:59)

I was gonna say, this is funny. It's literally what Alex is bringing up in the debate.

A (72:02)

This is what Alex Soren brought up in the debate and you said you watched it and the OB debate.

B (72:08)

Okay, yeah, but I haven't took notice of like everything they said. I have to rewatch.

A (72:14)

Yeah, go ahead.

B (72:16)

I will take note of it. I. I just going to say that, you know, it's again, like flower language. You could say, because someone else is saying that to the emperor.

A (72:25)

You made up this criterion. So how do you know that the only ones that count are when you say it for yourself, how do you know that?

B (72:31)

Because it would be. Because it would be arrogance and it would just inflate your.

A (72:35)

So and again, that's your criteria that you've invented ad hoc. And I'm asking you, is there anywhere in Catholic theology or in your magisterial documents that tells you that that's the principle?

B (72:44)

Okay, so. Yeah, in theology, right.

A (72:47)

Is there in anywhere in magisterial documents, is there a thing that tells you that's the criteria?

B (72:53)

Okay, but it doesn't have to be in every magister.

A (72:55)

Is there any magisterial document that tells you that's the criteria when it counts?

B (73:01)

Okay, I want to say this real quick. Right.

A (73:03)

Okay, so no answer.

C (73:04)

No, that's enough.

B (73:05)

No, I do have an answer. I just want.

A (73:07)

Is there. No, you're not answering. Is there in the magisterium any clear identifiable epistemic criterion or principle for that?

B (73:15)

Yes, and I am going to say it. Is that in theology, right? In the Catholic theology and even in Eastern.

A (73:21)

Okay, where is this? What magisterial document are you citing?

B (73:25)

Well, I'm citing the fullness of the faith.

A (73:29)

So the fullness of the faith is a magisterial document. Which one is this? Where's the full fullness of faith document? Can I read that?

B (73:36)

Okay. No, it's not a single document.

A (73:38)

Okay, so name one, name a document. Name any document. Name any document.

B (73:46)

Okay, can I just make. No, just make this point.

A (73:48)

That's crazy. We're done. Yeah, go ahead.

C (73:53)

And it's funny because if you watch the Alex debate, you'll see that Alex, he literally, like, predicted what he'd say, too. If you actually watch him, he said, I know he's going to bring up honorific. So here's some. So if you actually watch the debate. That was one of the first main parts.

A (74:07)

Exactly. And he went through multiple honorifics. And by the way, there's more honorifics than. Than Alex even mentioned. For example, Basil's many, many honorifics in the. In his letters that I pointed out in a podcast five years ago, where he talks about the Church of Antioch being the head of the entire body. All the graces flow from the head to the rest of the church, blah, blah, blah. And he says Rome was worthless in the militian schism. Now if I bring that to Roman Catholic, none of that counts. None of it counts. Fda, did you want to say something about this? Yeah.

B (74:43)

It's a point that I made before with Pope Leo for Example, so the Council of Calum accepts something from Pope Leo. What did the Roman Catholics say? Oh, well, you see, he has supreme authority over councils. And if a council doesn't accept or is called outside of Rome, they say, well, it's not a legitimate council. That's obviously the.

A (75:16)

But I think, you know, it's funny because he came on saying he wanted to talk about the epistemic logical issue. And the problem was that as we do dig into the weeds, it turns out, actually it's just the Roman Catholic position that is the logical position. Okay, but we're asking you, where in your system do you get the epistemic principle? And he says, well, does the system tells you the principle by the system? Okay, where. What's the magisterial document? That tells me this clearly, because remember, they have a system that's grounded on magisterium and that's a fixed set body of propositions and doctrines. Now, it is debatable what makes that up, but that Roman Catholicism is based on magisterial statements and documents isn't in debate. So we know that's their principle, that's their epistemic go to thing. And when we actually asked, Remember the Trent Horn thing? When I asked Trent this and Trent finally, in a video, tried to address it, he said, oh, canon law, which is fallible, by the way, in their view, canon law tells us that it's magisterial and binding when it's manifest that it is. So.

B (76:19)

So how do we know?

A (76:20)

So in other words, a circle. So exactly. The thing in question is the thing in question, or the thing in question is answered by just restating what's in question. Skate monkey. How do you know where I find good material on. I don't. Well, I mean, you could look at, you know, RFK stuff that was. That's probably a lot more acceptable to a lot of people than know. But I have a talk on Jonas Salk's book Survival of the Wisest. So that's, that's what convinced me. I just read his own book. But Nick, do you have any other comments on Roman Catholic papal magisterial, uh, claims?

C (77:05)

I mean, I just think that the point is that it's arbitrary. Most of these things are arbitrary. Like when you ask them for the, the claims in the first millennium, it was. We just, we don't see them there. When you ask them for the justification that you find like, like Alex did in the debate, you know, what's justification for how we know whether or not he's speaking infallibly in the first millennial. We don't find that anywhere. We don't find any sort of criteria there. We don't find anybody speaking about any criteria. So it's all kind of arbitrary. And it's like looking at things from a view of a lens of the future. It's like kind of like a. Oh, what's it called?

A (77:40)

It's an anachronistic present.

C (77:42)

It's like presentism, basically.

A (77:43)

Yeah, anachronism. Where you read back into the history of the prison.

C (77:47)

Yeah.

B (77:47)

Oh, you know, I thought about this. So it's, it's similar to certain Protestant heresies. Right. So that's exactly what Roman Catholicism is. Don't you think it would have been that important that it was spelled out in details?

A (78:05)

Yeah, well, I mean, why, why do we need 18?

B (78:07)

Yeah, we've got to wait 16, 1800.

A (78:10)

Years before we get.

B (78:11)

Then we'll. We'll get our magic glasses from Vatican one that we dug up, and then we'll be able to see.

A (78:22)

Well, just look at, like, if that.

B (78:24)

Is exactly what the Church is like. So you have to quote mine and go through all this stuff. Use a Vatican one principle that doesn't come up until 1800 years later. 1900 what? And that's your position. I mean, think about that. It's exactly the, you know, the same as dispensationalist or any Protestant heresy is that, well, we just have to wait 1800 years.

A (78:52)

Well, they're just like. It's just like James White trying to say. No, actually, the Church Fathers see justification by faith alone. And let me find you a few quotes where it says, just, we're saved by faith, we're saved by grace. See, that's the Protestant doctrine. So they did the same thing as, like, James White reading the Church Fathers where it's like, let me craft out of the Church Fathers with a bunch of, you know, copy paste, you know, phrases out of context, and then I'll ignore all the contrary evidence. That's the whole. That's the whole thing. And by the way, why don't the Church Fathers in the first thousand years argue like today as modern Roman Catholic papist apologists?

B (79:27)

That's a great point.

A (79:28)

Have you ever noticed that they don't argue at all like them, like they're spent. They're spending all their time arguing Christology, transar theology. Why aren't they just doing papal apologetics in the first thousand years? Oh, well, because it developed and it wasn't explicated very clearly. Well, then why wasn't it explicated? Right away. Wouldn't it have been in Rome's interest if they had all this prerogative and power to immediately magisterially state what the doctrine of the Church was? Why isn't this in the Creed, by the way? Okay, so lan, what's up?

B (80:00)

Hey, Jay. I've. I'm sort of pushing back from a Roman Catholic sort of point of view. I converted to the Church probably around three months ago from a Protestant Anglican background. I sort of sort of been pushing through the Church Fathers for the last year and for the last three months has sort of been starting to get into the Greek Fathers at the moment and just started reading through Maximus the Confessor and his sort of logoy doctrine.

C (80:31)

Good.

B (80:32)

And it was sort of his logoy doctrine that sort of realized, made me sort of configure as an Anglican that my sort of view of reformed sacraments didn't really line up with sort of in hypostasis in the Chalcedonian Fathers. And it sort of collapses really, Christology in a sense and sort of isolates it.

A (80:52)

Well, I mean, I, yeah, let me interject real quick here because I had a similar track right, where I sort of was. Was Catholic. I was trad cat and started reading Maximus and Cappadocians and that's when I started encountering a lot of this stuff that just isn't Roman Catholic theology. Like Maximus says, the energies are the things around God. So I mean, are you. How are you going to. I mean, especially when it comes to Christology, right. I mean he makes the energies essential to his Christological doctrine to refute the monotheolites and the mono energists. So I mean, is that not the essence energy distinction?

B (81:29)

Yeah, so I. That's where I like to go with this as well because I've sort of. I haven't really done a lot of parliament theology, if I'm being honest. So I can't really push back too much. But from what I was sort of, from what I understand is, from what I gave from Maximus is he sort of keeps all things in the Logos. So it's like even the logoi doctrine is sort of a procession inside the one Logos. The many is the one and the one the many, you know.

A (81:55)

Well, the procession of the, the procession of the energies and the logi are also energies is through the Logos. But there's no in the Logos procession because all of the energies, as Basil says, have a triadic movement. They move from the Father through the Son and the Spirit. So everything in the Trinity is triadic. And as you.

C (82:14)

If you're.

A (82:14)

I don't know if you're reading the ambigua, but if you progress through the ambigua, you're going to notice that he does. He talks about the energies and the operations all the time, and he explicitly says they're not the essence. So, I mean, Maximus teaches the essence of distinction explicitly, not just in that, but more so in Christology because he says in Christ there's two wills and two energies, and the energies deify the human nature. That is impossible with the Roman Catholic doctrine that grace or the divine energies in us or in the human nature of Christ are a supernatural created reality.

C (82:47)

Yeah, specifically speaks about that a lot.

B (82:53)

See, I would say because sort of the logos of our nature, I mean, you know, sort of in hypostasis. And everybody has a logos of their own nature. And so in a sense, the logos of your own nature is created because it's not. It's inseparable from you. So in a sense it is created grace and that.

A (83:11)

No, sort of. That's not right. No, Maximus, no, you don't understand. You're misunderstanding the. The logi doctrine. So the logi are the divine ideas. They're uncreated divine thought wills, and the created order is created based on the pattern of those. So, for example, your created nature is a created nature. That's not grace. Grace is the uncreated energy of God that deifies you. In fact, there's a specific statement in the ambigua that I've cited in multiple places where Maximus says the same energy that God has is. Is the energy that deifies the saints. So unless you think God has created energies, which would be the Tim Gordon Thomistic position, which is idolatry. No, it's the same energy that God has that deifies us. That's why Jesus says that we partake of his glory that he had with the Father before the foundation of the world. In John 17, God's glory is not a creature. So Maximus is very explicit as you, and I've read him extensively, at least a few thousand pages of Saint Maximus. You're going to notice that he consistently says the energies are uncreated grace. That's not the same thing as the logi of you, which is a divine idea and pattern of you, but your nature is created. It's not a divine grace.

B (84:28)

Yes, but our natures are sort of in hypostasis of these divine ideas. And so there's.

A (84:35)

In hypostasis. You're misunderstanding the terminology in hypostasis refers to the, the mode of the nature that you have. The logi are not in hypostatized. The logi are divine energies. What's in hypostatized is the nature in the person. Bob. In the person. Jay.

B (84:55)

Yes, but I think because my nature is in hypostasized because of the logo, there is a in. There's sort of a inseparableness to the logoi that there is no, there's no compl, you know, there's no complication between my local E and my nature that is in hypostasized.

A (85:13)

Yeah, again, you're not, you're not understanding, using incarnational logic.

B (85:17)

It's.

A (85:17)

It seems to be that you don't understand these things. You're confusing the terms. So the things are related, but you're collapsing them. So the logi is the, the plan and process that Mac that God has for you in his divine mind. That includes your birth. It includes your process and maturation and flourish and flourishing and your eschatological end goal. That's the logi, the plan, the architecture that God has for you. It is not identical to your nature. The logi is an uncreated divine thought. It's a divine idea. And God creates you on the basis of the eternal predetermination or plan that he has of you. But you grow and progress and mature, either in accord with that logi or against that logi, which is your downfall. So that's what is the architecture or the structure of reality. It is not reality itself. There's a distinction between, for example, in God's mind, there's an uncreated number seven that he has an idea of, but the number seven is a created reality that. That's based on. Another way to show this is Maximus's doctrine of universals. Universals are not logi. Universals are patterned on the logi of the universal. So there's a universal concept that is in the operant, in the created order. But according to Maximus, universals can perish. They can go away. So that shows us that natures and universals are not logi.

B (86:47)

Okay, I think I get where you're coming from. I just think maybe Rose getting caught up is based on the idea that sort of. I mean, the logoi are sort of where I was sort of placing that was. Well, they in hypostasize each instance of our nature, and we are sustained in a sense by the divine ideas, by, well, how they relate to the one will of God. So in a sense, the logo is sort of their, their sort of relation to us is the constant will of being. I suppose. So there is. We are tied up to it in a sense, I think.

A (87:20)

No, we are. I mean, I mean you, you exist.

B (87:24)

Statement for the Logos of God who is always. God will always and in all things actualize the mystery of his embodiment. And sort of seeing these logo is inseparable from creation.

A (87:37)

No, that's not true. It's not true. That's why they're called thought wills. Don't you think God has, in his mind, God has omniscience and knowledge of worlds that. Worlds that he didn't create. Right?

B (87:50)

Yeah.

A (87:51)

So there are logi of which they were not actualized because God has knowledge of a world where there's no Aquinas or there's no, you know, there's no Beatles. Okay. But God didn't create those worlds. So not every divine idea has its created analog. And that's why Maximus and other church fathers will call them thought wills. And because only certain logi were actualized in the created order, namely the ones that he created on the basis of. But God is omniscient. And as Basil says, God has infinite energies, not just many infinite. So the, the thoughts of God, by the way, which are the divine logi. Basil says the thoughts of God are also infinite. So there's infinite logi. But he didn't create infinite worlds. He created this specific world. Which is what, why it's tied not to Platonic ideas of conceptualism, but that he, that he. He says the logi that he willed are. You're correct to say in hypostatized in the Logos, meaning that the Logos is the one that determined because his creation happens through him which would be created and which would not. I mean the Father and the Son and the Spirit all the decided it wasn't the Son like and not the Father. But when he talks about the. In that the logi are in hypostatized, he means that they're also personal. And this is to. If you read Tolon's dissertation on the logi, he says this is what Maximus is doing to combat Platonic impersonalism because Plato thinks that the divine ideas are really the determiners of what emanates from the Monad. And Maximus wants to distance the created order and the divine ideas from Platonism by saying no, they're not immaterial. They're not ideas that, that are determinative causes. They are ideas that the Son wills to create and hence thought wills for the created. Order. And that makes it not platonic. So there's a very important distinction. If you read the Tolleson dissertation on this, this whole book is about that. This is why it's not Platonism or Platonic Divine conceptualism.

B (89:59)

Them. Yeah, no thanks, Jay.

A (90:03)

Yeah, keep reading though. You're on the right track. Also read Free Choice in Saint Maximus. That will help, I think, sort of lay it, lay this out. Oh, I didn't mean to fda. I didn't mean to remove you. So excuse me. I'm sorry for that. Hit the wrong person. Okay, who disagrees? We're probably going to try to wrap it up pretty soon here because we've been going for three and a half hours. Guys, thank you so much. Nick has available on YouTube and tick tock. He is fearless. Truth. Josh says for $5 do a debate with Wagner on Essence Energy Distinction. I've asked him twice to debate different topics. In the last two times I've asked, Wagner explicitly says I am not a debater and I'm not doing debates. He says if you disagree, reply to the videos. So Wagner has disagreed twice. The last time, two times I've asked to debate. I think it, I mean I don't remember mentioning interviews. I think I'm asked in the debate Thomism and epistemology and he said no. And then I said what about Papacy? And he said no. So Wagner does officially, in two replies in the last year, does not want to do a formal debate. Skate monkey. No, we did that one. The rad God 5 bucks papis are actually Muhammadans in there. In terms of a target argumentation, I would say nowadays they pretty much argue and act like Muslims. Yeah, Vatican 2 doctrine makes complete sense for their religion. Maybe actually Muslims and Catholics worship the same God. Well, yeah, they, yeah, they kind of act the same. Aka Yeshua. $5. Jay, would you debate Deconstruction Zone? He's an atheist and he's convincing people to become atheists. He teaches the God of the Bible is false. I mean he could call in if they want to have a conversation. Is he a tick tock Reddit?

C (91:54)

I mean he, he went on a one time with inspiring philosophy on a big debate and inspired philosophy. It showed like bro, you're, you're a tick tock.

A (92:01)

So it's low tier, very low tier stuff.

C (92:04)

God is God is bad type stuff.

A (92:07)

Alex Orthodox Shout out to Alex soaring. $5. Nick sells coca Cola better than Kendall Jenner sells Pepsi. Blessings.

C (92:14)

Dude, I'm tired bro. They need to sponsor me. I'm telling you, this is Quality stuff here.

A (92:21)

Alex says, why can't we get Roman Catholics to just give straight up answers to any questions? Well, because it's difficult, that's why. Okay, Colin, what's up, man? You're. You're ferociously thumbing down. Go ahead. What's up, man?

B (92:36)

Yes, hello.

C (92:40)

What's up, bro?

A (92:41)

Hey. Go ahead.

B (92:43)

So the table of nations are. It's very accurate, I agree. But I don't think it's talking about every nation.

A (92:52)

Okay, that's fine, man. I don't really have any hard opinion to debate you on the stable of nations in Genesis. Okay?

B (93:00)

But it relates to the flood and your point you're making earlier.

A (93:04)

Okay, how do we know that it's inaccurate? What's. What's the proper view?

B (93:09)

No, I'm saying that it's accurate, but it's not talking about every nation.

A (93:13)

Okay, and how do we know this? What's your source for this?

B (93:17)

Because Native Americans in Minnesota, Ojibwe people. Can you say which part of table nations they come from?

A (93:24)

Well, the fact that there's gaps in the history of the table nations wouldn't mean that. It's not true. It just means that there's a lot of things about the, you know, anti diluvian, post delay, alluvian world that we just don't know. So. But how would that. How would Native Americans necessarily disprove Genesis 10 being universal? Because.

B (93:43)

Well, because I think that the flood didn't kill everybody. It left some people alive. But I have faith that. Well, because the Native Americans were on the continent before the flood happened.

A (93:55)

How do you know that?

B (93:58)

I trust scientific people, but maybe I should.

A (94:00)

Then we go. Yeah. Good job. Trust the science people.

C (94:03)

The science people say.

A (94:05)

Science people said it, man. Dominic, what's up? Yeah, go trust the science building. Go for it. Coleman says for $5. Sorry, I'm new. Do you know Raven Ibrahim? I don't. Is that a. Does he. Do you know who that is? He. Apologist.

C (94:18)

No.

A (94:19)

Cool. Somebody mentioned that the other day, but I'm not familiar with it. Dominic, what's up? Okay, he can't connect. Joseph, what's up? Dominic, are you there? Dominic, what's up? Joseph, what's up? I'm. You. Joseph, I'm mute. Why are you raising your hand? I'm mute.

B (94:52)

Or.

A (94:52)

Excuse me. Jones. Jones. Pepe. I'm mute. Why are you raising your hand, man? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jay. My bad.

B (95:01)

Oh, what's up, Jay? What's up, Nick? I guess, for the sake of time, I'll just. I have some questions here. I'm a Catholic, so I do watch your content, but. Yeah, so I guess I'll just rapid fire these questions really fast if that's okay with you.

A (95:18)

Okay, what's the first one?

B (95:19)

Oh, okay. So how do you view the Fatima visions and the fact that the children said that everyone must do the rosary? Is this evidence of the Catholic faith.

A (95:28)

Or Catholic truth that is is Zeitoun Marian apparitions proof of the Coptic faith?

B (95:39)

I've never looked into that.

A (95:40)

I'm sorry. Okay, well, I mean it was like tens of thousands of people like Fatima, so how am I supposed to know which one is the real Marian apparition?

B (95:48)

So these Marian apparitions in the Coptic faith, so that's. Okay.

A (95:52)

The most famous apparition of like the last 50 or 60 years as ITUN Egypt.

B (95:58)

Okay, good. And then the next question, I guess.

A (96:01)

Also if Nick wants to join, feel free to say what you want.

B (96:07)

So how do you view Catholic monks? Are they heretics necessarily?

A (96:12)

All Roman Catholics as a professor would be here.

C (96:15)

Everyone that is outside the church is going to be formally a heretic.

A (96:19)

It wouldn't matter whether you're a monk or not. Monks are just lady, by the way, unless they're pre.

B (96:25)

Okay, and then the next one is Peter Diamond's Vatican Catholic.com rebuttal video on orthodoxy is a common video I see with trad Catholics. How do you view this? And would. Would we ever see a debate between you and Peter Diamond?

A (96:40)

I've responded to it probably 10 times in the last seven years. So you can find all those response videos on Sedimentism on my channel. And no, I'll never interact with them on a personal level for other reasons. Who's next? Raise your hand. Anybody have specific fda? Did you want to come back? I didn't mean to. To get rid of you. I hit the wrong person. Papist. Oh, we got a Papist. What's up, man? Derp says for $20. Happy birthday, boss man. Thank you. Appreciate that. Happy birthday to you too, man. Papist. What's up? I mean.

C (97:22)

Thought we had one.

A (97:24)

He's trying to connect, so we'll give it a second, see if he connects. Disguise. What's up, man? The sky. You want to unmute while Papis is trying to connect?

B (97:37)

Oh, hi. Good. Good evening. Hey, Happy birthday. I. Mr. J. Dyer. I'm a Papist, for your information, so please be patient with me. So it's an honor to talk to you. First off, I watch your content pretty regularly. I Like your discussion as atheists, they're really awesome and I learned a lot from them. But I guess I had a couple questions in a response to a video you made in regards to Fatima. What would you say is your personal stance on the whole miracle generally?

A (98:08)

I mean, did you hear the previous guy.

B (98:10)

Oh yeah. I'm wondering what your stance is on it because I know, because I think there's errors in the way he, he framed his argument. I'm not trying, I'm trying to understand you before.

A (98:19)

I, I mean I, I don't, I don't think any apparitions or claims like this prove or disprove anything. They have very little weight with me in terms of apologetics or epistemology because every religion, every sect, every cult claims to have miracles and, and visions and predictions and it's literally impossible for any individual to go and empirically, scientifically verify every one of these claims. Now I'm not saying there are no miracles, but I'm saying in my view miracles attend and attest to whatever the true faith is. They're going to accompany it, but they don't themselves necessarily prove it in some strict epistemic sense. So to me it's just classed with, with any of the other types of apparition, Garabandal or Magigore or you know, the Coptics with the Marian apparitions in Zitun, Egypt. Like none of that proves or disproves anything for me. I have, they have little to no weight in my view.

B (99:18)

But you, but even if they don't have any weight for you personally, but you would also understand that each apparition or each individual miracle probably had the differing amount of substance behind it. Like obviously not every claim is valid just because it's claimed.

A (99:32)

But no, yeah, I mean, I'm sure some of them have more pedigree or more so called evidences than others. I mean, sure.

B (99:41)

And so in regards to Fatima specifically, like, I understand that one of your main rebuttals to I guess Fatima being used is almost kind of like, not as like brute evidence towards sauce, but almost kind of like if it were to point toward the direction it would be towards there, but I wouldn't say it could be specifically to prove Catholicism. You usually rebut it by saying like, well, does they too improve the Coptic Orthodox Church? Right. And I feel like that's kind of misunderstanding the evidence behind both of them because in regards to Our Lady Fatima and Our Lady Zaytun, the Coptic Orthodox is very public and very, very open to the Fact that our lady of Etun was a silent apparition where there was no doctrine bound to her, but she mainly just appeared in miracle healing. Miracle healing.

A (100:31)

What does any of that, what does any of that have to do? You're just sort of like giving this explanation and story about Fatima and Zytun and how does this prove or disprove any anything with a religion?

B (100:42)

Well, I'm telling you that the lady in regards to the difference in substance between the two of them is our Lady Fatima actually has doctrine connected to her. Like for example, the affirmation of why.

A (100:53)

Does having doctrine connected. Why does having doctrine connected to it in any way necessarily make it true or better?

B (101:01)

Well, because if it did happen, right, and if Mary did actually show up.

A (101:04)

So begging the question that her heart.

B (101:07)

Was immaculate, then it wouldn't affirm the immaculate conception.

A (101:10)

That's you know, saying begging the question. Excuse me, do you understand begging the question?

B (101:17)

How would I be begging the question?

A (101:18)

Because you change the criteria of what makes it substantive and namely if it's true, then it would have. Because it has doctrine connected to it. If it's true, then it would have doctrine connected to it. So it's like, oh no, no, no, sorry.

B (101:32)

I guess I'm not really like, like a debater or anything like that. I mean, I just want to know your thoughts.

A (101:35)

But this is why debate matters, is that these bad arguments convince people of things that are not convincing. Convincing or not good arguments. So you're missing the point of like, go ahead, fda. Fda, Go ahead. What'd you want to say, Father Deacon? Go ahead.

B (101:55)

How could it prove something false? That's what all of you guys miss. It's like if it's a false doctrine and a false religion, how can it be like, well, look at this miracle and the Holy Theotokos proving something false. That doesn't make any sense to me.

A (102:14)

Well, they argue that it's proving a true religion.

B (102:17)

Well, I would argue it points. I wouldn't say it's strict proof. I'm not gonna go that far into saying it. But I'd say it would affirm. Why would the Theotokos be pointing to a false religion? Even pointing to and stuff that's false? Like why would she have anything to do with it? Oh, well, I'm not a, I'm not orthodox. I don't believe cause of them is false. So I, I'd argue that it doesn't matter what you believe. It is false. I don't care what you believe. It actually is false. That's the whole point. So you're going, but look, look at this miracle that proves something that's actually false in reality. Regardless, it doesn't change being false because you don't believe it to be false. It's false. I mean, what would you, how, what would you argue happened during the event of Fatima, if you don't mind me asking?

A (103:12)

But it really doesn't matter what I, what we think happened, because it could be, I mean, it could be an actual manifestation of an evil spirit. It could be a government hoax and forgery. I mean, it could just be a fake news story. I mean, the only evidence we have is there's a, you know, Portuguese news article claiming that 10,000 people saw this, you know, that, you know, there was fake news stories in the 1800s, right?

B (103:34)

Yeah, but just because there are fake news stories doesn't mean that this new story must be fake.

A (103:39)

So why. Okay, look, you're missing the, you're missing the point.

B (103:43)

So you're saying it must be true. Jay's just saying we don't know, it could be, it could be false. So especially if it's pointing to a false religion, like that would be evidence itself that it's like, well, obviously it's not legitimate.

A (104:00)

So Father Deacon's point is that evidences and these kinds of events are secondary to the question of the religion itself being true. So you're trying to approach the religion as somehow vindicated or attested to through Fatima. And he's saying it's the other way around. The religion is either true or false first, and that will actually determine whether we accept or reject Fatima. So it's not. So you're approaching it from an evidentialist perspective. And we're saying we're not evidentialist. We're not going to accept all these myriads of competing claims about miracles. I mean, do you accept Sai Baba's claims of miracles in Hinduism?

B (104:37)

Well, I think every miracle claim has different needs to be judged in a case by case basis. Not every claim.

A (104:42)

Okay, so this is, this is why this is so. Okay, this is so low tier and stuff. Silly. How is anybody going to. Are you going to go through 1 million different religious and cult claims about the miracles of that sect? How are you going to judge all those on a case by case basis?

B (104:56)

And also, why don't I just create a newspaper story that can be judged, like you said, on case by case basis, where it has dogma and it has everything that you want, right? To be like, whoa, in terms of the quality, doesn't this seem Better. So if that's your standard, I'll just. We'll just create one. We'll just create a new store and be like, hey, trust us. 20,000 people in this new dogma was given. Oh, it came from the Theotokos too. So if that's your standard, man, that's pretty bad. Oh, well, that's not. Well, I say what would substantial. What makes it stronger evidence in regards as a miracle claim would be the fact that the newspaper and a lot of the witnesses were hostile. The first newspaper to publish the. The miracle was.

A (105:42)

That's what. But again, I add that in too. Yeah, just add that in. I mean, you can tweak the story.

B (105:47)

Yeah, like I can do everything you say about that. I can recreate that. What would have been their motive to, I guess make it some kind of, like.

A (105:57)

I appreciate your question. It's enough of this. We're not going to have to do a whole like, you know, epistemology lecture for like, why. Why this or that claim doesn't prove the thing. John, what's on your mind?

B (106:11)

As you know, I've been combing through all the neopentcostal and Pentecostal stuff.

A (106:17)

Well, there's a lot of claims of visions and Pentecostalism too. Maybe. I mean, I mean, I've seen. I've seen news articles. I've seen news articles claiming Billy Graham appeared to. No, no, listen. What if. Think about cbn, right? Pat Robertson. CBN is the news outlet for Pat Robertson's evangelical nonsense. Okay? Pat Robertson claimed to have visions and messages from Jesus. Maybe there he does a public mega church thing. We've had Protestants and charismatics call in and say, I've witnessed mega church charismatic miracles. Are you telling me that God's Holy Spirit is not healing the people at my mega church? And how is that not a direct proof of my mega church Christianity? So let's take that and then let's take the Roman Catholic Fatima claim. How are they in any way substantially different?

B (107:13)

I have evidence from watching TV in the 1990s that Robert Tilton killed a thousand people.

A (107:22)

There you go. The farting creature himself. He.

B (107:25)

He made that. He made the claim on. On cable TV back in the 90s. You can go on YouTube, get all the clips of Robert Tilton literally blinking and freaking out and say. And claiming that there are thousands of people who have been healed by him just uttering gibberish through the television screen.

A (107:46)

Yeah, well, yeah, but he, as he said, Fatima is more substantive. So now you move the goalposts and you've tacked on this extra thing that. Well, yeah, see, but Fatima has more. More stuff going on, and it's older and it's cooler, and so that's better than Pat Robertson, actually.

B (108:03)

There's Pentecostal. There's Pentecostal visions before Fatima.

A (108:09)

Interesting.

B (108:10)

It. It's like Descartes. Stupid argument that he presents in the meditation. Well, it has more presentational reality.

A (108:18)

You see, Little Big Fish has a good comment and says, at the Azusa Street Revival, there were many, many people claiming that a gigantic fireball of God shot up 50ft in the air. So that proves the Azusa street revival.

C (108:34)

Yeah, we can show something's false. It doesn't matter how many claims.

B (108:37)

And the weird thing is, I. I do believe that a lot of the Pentecostal stuff and, you know, subsequent other stuff is demonic. I'm not saying that it isn't, but. But there were, you know, if you read into that history like we have, is there were people in other parts of the world who were attracted to coming to California and particularly Azusa.

A (109:04)

Yeah.

B (109:05)

That. By. By similar visions in other, you know, like in Romania and things like this and in Armenia. And so, yeah, I do believe that stuff is demonic, but at the same time, once again, just because somebody has a vision somewhere and it appears to be something nice and good, it's not always the case.

A (109:30)

Absolutely. We'll get to the last couple super chats here as we close out about four hours. Ruiz says, for $5, Fatima is actually nowadays a business who can prove whether it was an apparition or was it a demonic interaction? Well, ultimately, it's, you know, Paul says, don't believe visions of angels or whoever. In Galatians 1, he says, use my theology and what I delivered to you as the standard. And Roman Catholics flip it around. Charismatics flip it around. And they make the visions and the experiences the standard of the. The divine revelation. It's the other way around. All right, guys, thank you so much. We got up to about 1500 live today. Shout out to Jim Bob with the Jortlandians coming in. I hope you guys enjoyed my show yesterday with Jim Bob. We went pretty deep on a couple movies that were pretty allegorical, symbolic films that were fun to decode. And thanks again to Nick for joining me today and chiming in with all of his apologetics. He is at Fear, Fearless, Truth. He is linked in the show description. So go follow Nick. Thanks for coming on, man.

C (110:32)

Yeah, definitely. We'll do a live on mine, too. We can try to do some debates as well.

A (110:35)

Yeah, Maybe we can get. You can probably get more Muslims. They don't want to come around here anymore, but they don't come around here.

C (110:41)

Like, put you on a black screen or something so they don't see. And then.

A (110:43)

Yeah, okay.

C (110:44)

Bring you in like a Terminator in.

A (110:46)

The back and hide.

C (110:47)

You're the secret weapon.

A (110:48)

Yeah, well, I'll. I'll have, like, a voice changer or something. I have, like, a really gay voice. And I'll come on and I'll talk like this. I just. I just am so scared of Muslims that. Thank you. Yeah, right on.

C (111:03)

Yeah.

A (111:04)

I'll do the whole debate in Matthew McConaughey. I'll make sure I didn't miss any super chats. Nelly says for 20. Thank you so much. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you, man. Here's another one I missed. Desync says for $10. Happy birthday. Jay. I discovered you in 2024. I've been watching you consistently ever since. My only question is, do you think TAG by itself is sufficient to argue the existence of the Christian God? Yes. And I have a talk called From Tag to Trinity. So I just renamed it so you could find it more easily. Guys, be sure and follow Nick over on Fearless Truth. Be sure and follow Father Deacon Ananias on Twitter on patristic faith. Thank you guys for joining me. A lot of fun. And everybody have a good night.