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What is the Gospel According to the Eastern Orthodox Church?

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What is the Gospel according to the Eastern Orthodox Church? What is the Good News? What is it that the Eastern Orthodox Church proclaims to people struggling under the burden of sin and the reign of death? In order to answer this question, we will look at what their factual canonical position is. This will move the discussion past the mystical, impressionistic musings of the modern Eastern Orthodox reconstructions. The contemporary, quasi-conservative reimaginations of Orthodoxy, whether as the Neo-Patristic synthesis, or as a kind of theological-liturgical aesthetics, or as an Orthobro manosphere, or as Christian-flavored universalism and Perenialism, or as hesychastic pietism (the Philokalia was first published in 1782), are really just subtle, imitative departures from Biblical Christianity that are particularly pernicious, because they play to the prejudices of the sophisticated religionist, erecting castles in the sky that each would-be theologian climbs ropes of sand up to. It b
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Cruciform Variata

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If a person thinks they can attain righteousness, life, and salvation by establishing in themselves a faith that is resolute, they will only return again to (a trusting dependence on) the impassioned working of their own heart and mind. And so while it is true that we stress mortification of all sin, Christianity teaches that it is precisely the inability to accomplish such casting off of lingering passions that characterizes fallen, worldly existence. For us, the moment when all calculation and effort are seen to be futile is itself the point in which the Gospel of Christ is realized in the disciple as saving faith, as true entrusting. Thus, we assert a concept of faith, not as an attitude of constancy or sincerity that the disciple assumes or generates toward Christ, but as the Spirit’s gracious inworking and unfolding of Christ's Gospel Word and power in the disciple as eternal Life. In this we emphasize the givenness of living faith, centering Christ’s Gospel on His directing o
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The Foundation of Christian Apologetics: Towards A Revelational Epistemology

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  Presuppositional Apologetics is revelational, theological, and philosophical, beginning in its substance and self-consciously from the God of the Bible, whereas Classical Apologetics, in terms of its internal methodological ordering, is philosophical and theological, yes, but only accidentally, so to speak, revelational. The evidence for the latter is found in the fact that so much of Classical Apologetics is wedded to natural theology, which distinguishes strongly between what can be known by unaided reason and what can known by revelation, a posture which is shared between Christian, Jewish, and Muslim theologians, not to mention Neoplatonism, certain schools of Hinduism, and still others. It is therefore not simply a question of the use of "Aristotle," which as such is a matter of relative indifference, nor of general revelation simpliciter , which is to say the disputed import of that which impinges upon man's senses from the natural world, but of what ultimately di
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Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiological Presuppositionalism: A Mistaken Foundation

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Some Eastern Orthodox apologists have sought to adapt a form of Presuppositionalism in their defense of the Eastern Orthodox Church (EOC). Eastern Orthodox Presuppositionalism (EOP) is an ecclesiological epistemology, and even narrower still it is a sectarian epistemology, i.e. anti-catholic. In other words, according to EOP, the epistemological ground or cause of knowledge is said to be rooted in Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology, for EOP holds that the EOC is a precondition of intelligibility and knowledge. In contrast, Reformed Presuppositionalism (RP) is rooted in the Verbum Dei , with its epistemological ground seen to be God’s Word, and its epistemological consequence being unto and causative of ecclesiology. Put more simply, the RP position is that we can know the Church because of the transcendentally fundamental nature of God’s Word, not vice versa. The EOP position is that we know God’s Word because of the Church, thus causing the Scriptures and epistemology to submit to the Chu
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Reality: Questions Regarding the Authenticity of the Sigillion of 1583

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Following upon the previous article's  discussion of the ritual anathemas called to be pronounced annually on all non-Eastern Orthodox Christians, the question of the Sigillion of 1583's authenticity, especially with its anathemas, involves a few key details which, if glossed over, will lead to an erroneous conclusion regarding the canonicity of its contents. A helpful study of this was done in 2011, entitled, "The 'Sigillion' of 1583 Against 'the Calendar Innovation of the Latins': Myth or Reality?"  This 2011 study contains many valuable details that help to establish the question of the authenticity of the anathemas.  Regarding the occasion of the study, the bishop (Cyprian of Oreoi) who wrote this oft-cited study that purportedly showed the Sigillion was a "forgery," was part of a "non-canonical" Orthodox group called "the Holy Synod in Resistance." This group dissolved in 2014 when it joined another independent Ort
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Anathema: Eastern Orthodoxy and The Ritual Cursing of All Other Christians

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  Many have been told that Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a welcoming, mystical version of Christianity, one that is not “hung up” on legalism or on excessive dogmatism. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Eastern Orthodox Christians not only formally believe that they are the only Christians on planet earth (Synod of Jerusalem of 1672, Decree 10), but that Eastern Orthodox Christians are called to ritually and formally curse, every year, all who disagree with them. The canonical document that they use to curse all non-Orthodox is called the Synodikon of Orthodoxy , and technically is supposed to be read yearly on the Feast of Orthodoxy, also called the Sunday of Orthodoxy, and the Triumph of Orthodoxy. From the titles of the Feast Day on which it is read, it is clearly being associated with the very identity of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and of what it means to be an Eastern Orthodox Christian. It is celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent in the Eastern Orthodox
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