Evaluating Eastern Orthodoxy & the Biblical Canon (Part 1)

Описание: Tyler Fowler, one of the hosts of Faith Unaltered, is my friend and brother in Christ. Recently, he has decided to commit himself to Eastern Orthodoxy. One of the main reasons he left Protestantism and got interested in Orthodoxy was due to the issue of Biblical Canonicity.

Orthodoxy makes the claim that they have infallible extra-biblical traditions that warrant their inclusion of deuterocanonical books in the inspired Bible; I assess whether such claims are really warranted or not!

RSM Blog = https://realseekerministries.wordpres...

Update: Tyler asked me to provide some clarification on what I said about him/Orthodoxy around the 18-20 min mark. Here is Tyler's question;

"Well I need to clear something up before I go any further into this with you because I'm taking what you said on your episode at the 18ish - 20 min mark in one way that I'm not sure you meant. So I'll just ask, what did you mean when you:

1. Compared "what Tyler was doing here" in the way I responded to Vulture to Satan tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and adding "didn't you have the Church or some authority tell you...."

2. then said that you don't believe me or the Orthodox Church is doing that

3. But then coming back and saying you played this for the shock value of it all?

If, in your mind, Satan tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is an accurate representation or even comparable to what I did with Vulture then just say so bro. But if not, please help me understand what you meant by even using that example in the first place, then stating you did it for the "shock value" after claiming you don't believe that's what I was doing".

DALE'S RESPONSE;

"Yeah, I think what I was trying to say there, is that there is this fundamental difference in our mentality whereby you and the Orthodox almost see the fact that we all as individuals interpret the Bible as we read it that this makes it a free-for-all of private interpretational chaos and hence why you guys think we need the normative authority of "the Church" to give us the one true interpretation. So, when I said I don't think you guys are being like Satan in the garden, I mean that you guys are obviously not intending to cause doubt for Bible readers in a nefarious way, though that is the effect that happens with Protestants, it's almost like you are saying that we have to doubt everything if we are just reading the Bible ourselves- no matter how clear the verse seems to be. One helpful analogy I should have used here is that, I think the Orthodox almost thinks that without the Orthodox Church to infallibly interpret Scripture us Protestants are in a state of pure Postmodernism where we can't know the truth of any Scriptures. So that was the point I was trying to shock people with as it is a radically different mindset whereby for us, we can read and understand a lot in the Bible without need of any infallible authority.

P.S.- Actually, sorry the Postmodernism is wrong, I didn't raise that analogy because the Orthodox criticism is not that we are relativists who deny objective truth- so that is why I went with Satan in the garden there, as individuals interpreting the Bible we don't have an infallible access to the truth and thus this is why you say we need an infallible authority to give us THE interpretation. So yeah, disregard my point on Postmodernism, it is irrelevant to the difference between us there.

Also another point that annoys me, but I recorded things at different times- I keep saying your traditions are oral when what I'm really trying to say is that you have extra-Protestant Biblical traditions of "The Church" (oral, written, practices, etc + the Apocrypha), I hate that I say this wrong throughout the show and I plan to edit in a note for Part 2 correcting that to prevent confusion".

Hope that is helpful :)