The Reformed Ninja

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...

  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 Orth...

The Normative Evangelical Doctrine of the Church as “Mother” 1. Earliest known explicit Christian usage of the concept of the Church as our mother: From 2 Clement 2.1 (dated somewhere between the end of first half of the 1st Century and the first half of the second), commenting on Isaiah 54:1 and the "barren woman" (and so appears to be the earliest known Christian commentary on Isaiah 54:1), states that the prophet Isaiah "spoke of us, for our church ( ecclesia ) was barren before children were given to it" ( The Apostolic Fathers , 3rd Edition, tr. Michael Holmes). Also, from Cyprian (3rd Century, i.e. prior to Constantine): “No one can have God as Father who does not have the church as mother.” 2. Basic Scriptural data: (22) For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. (23) But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. (24) Now this may be interpret...

Orthodox ecclesiology, which is to say the Eastern Church’s understanding of the nature of the Church, is necessarily and permanently exclusivistic. This means that, according to the Orthodox position, the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Church, which is to say an identity with the Body of Christ. Whatever calls itself church that is also not in immediate external communion with the Eastern Churches is therefore not in inward communion with the Church, and so not in communion with the Body of Christ, and, a fortiori , not in communion with Christ. Patriarch Dositheus’ synodal and canonical Confession states: That the dignity of the bishop is so necessary in the Church, that without him, neither Church nor Christian could either be or be spoken of. For he, as a successor of the Apostles, having received in continued succession by the imposition of hands… is a fountain of all the Mysteries [Sacraments] of the catholic Church, through which we obtain salvation. And he is, we affirm, as n...