BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Sam Lowry said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:BusyTarpDuster2017 said:Doc Holliday said:
If God judges us by the same standard we use on others (Matthew 7),and you just casually damn all Catholics as idolaters and pagans, then you've just condemned almost everyone, including yourself.
Because let's be honest man, Idolatry isn't limited to icons, statues or incense. It's what owns your heart.
How many people walk out of church and spend the entire week obsessing over football? Structure their weekends, emotions, and identity around a team or player? Idolize actors, celebrities, influencers, or CEOs? Measure their worth by money, status, or image? Would be more devastated by losing their sports team than losing prayer?
If we apply your standards, then modern America is one giant pagan temple and the vast majority of Christian's worship at it.
You shouldn't be damning anyone man. The official orthodox position is that they're the true Church, those outside don't have the fullness of the faith…but they don't assume anyone outside of it is damned or can't be saved.
I DON'T damn all Roman Catholics. I don't damn anyone. You damn yourself by believing in a false gospel. You damn yourself by requiring the practice of blatant and egregious idolatry and heresy for salvation, as you do in your liturgy, thus twisting Jesus' true gospel; which according to Paul's clear and direct teaching, makes that church and those who promote it ANATHEMA.
Within Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, I'm sure there are true Christians who are saved, but who simply are in error, even really bad error. Fortunately for them, they are not saved by their works, but by their faith in Jesus. Sola fide to the rescue! They are saved, however, not because of the guidance of their respective churches, but rather in spite of them.
Your belief that the Orthodox Church doesn't damn everyone outside their church does NOT line up with Orthodox Church history. And HOW is it, that after everything I've discussed, can you possibly believe that their claim to be the true church is correct, given that their church REQUIRES ICON VENERATION for salvation, a belief and practice that is completely absent in Scripture, and completely shunned by the early church - a fact that is clear and demonstrable from early church history? How is this not registering?
Saying "I don't damn you, your beliefs damn you" is still a damnation claim. And saying "Anyone who holds X belief is under God's anathema" is also functionally pronouncing damnation.
So why are you damning Christians to hell?
Icon veneration is not required for salvation. Who told you that? That's completely false. The Orthodox Church does not teach that icon veneration saves anyone. It teaches that salvation is union with Christ, and icons are a natural expression of an incarnational faith…not a condition of justification. There are blind people, that doesn't even make sense.
Scripture isn't just referenced in Orthdoox, it's proclaimed, sung, and prayed throughout the entire service. In a single Divine Liturgy, the Church reads the Psalms woven through the prayers, the Beatitudes from Matthew 5, a full Epistle reading, a full Gospel reading, the Lord's Prayer, and the Creed, which is itself a condensed summary of Scripture. That's in addition to constant biblical language embedded in the hymns, litanies, and Eucharistic prayers. Orthodoxy doesn't minimize Scripture whatsoever. It reads more scripture than any Protestant church.
What you're presenting isn't a critique of Orthodoxy, it's a caricature. It's superficial, historically inaccurate, and dismissive, and it assumes your own theology is so perfect that the Church must be wrong by definition.
Icon veneration was made a requirement upon the pain of anathema (being damned to Hell) in the Second Council of Nicaea.
No, it was not. The active rejection of icons was anathematized, but there is no positive requirement to venerate icons.
Does is ever register with you, the implications of what you argue? Do you even realize that you've made my whole point? Aside from the positive requirement of icons - by you acknowledging that an ecumenical council placed an anathema on the rejection of icons, you're acknowledging that an ecumenical council anathematized what was the clear, overwhelming and universal view of the early church, that icons were to be actively rejected?
As we've discussed, though, that's not what the council did.
