Why was there no Inquisition in the Orthodox Church

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[@andrewpirr]

Today's materialism/science has very little to do with Orthodox conceptions of logic.

[@bobyrob9261]

Yeah, I totally agree. We don't need to appease the new church.

[@TheFreekg]

I think he means true science, the understanding of the workings of the world around as based on comprehensible and consistent principles that we can understand through observation and reason. Obviously the scientism we have today is blind obedience to people with letters after there name.

[@alexlight4178]

This was an excellent video, thank you. Im sorry youre getting blasted so hard by skeptics, thats how things are i guess

[@ericw3517]

There sorta was an Orthodox inquisition, with the persecution of the Old Believers by the Russian Orthodox Church.

[@danielz.592]

very interesting. thank you!

[@tallmikbcroft6937]

Enlightening Thank you for sharing.

[@mojus2890]

Isn't it just because the government took the place of the inquisition? I've come across the occasional event where the Orthodoxy was having people executed for this or that heresy, but, that aside, the inquisition was actually better than the king's justice. It's why everyone would blaspheme in order to deal with the inquisitors rather than the government judges. Edit: typo

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

The Byzantine government did not deal with matters of the Church. Those considered to be outside the Church dogma, such as Barlaam of Calabria, were expelled from the Orthodox Church but could join for example the Catholic Church as Barlaam apparently did. Nestorianism flourished outside the traditional borders of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Capital punishment was not admissible in the Byzantine empire.

[@mojus2890]

@@NicholasAggelopoulos the incidents I'm thinking of are a crackdown after the orthodoxy moved to Russia. That aside, I know for a fact that Byzantine had religious laws that banned paganism. Thinking about it, the Catholics also seem to think positively of the Orthodox throughout history and Byzantium did have that one massacre of the Catholics in the 1100s. I'm pretty casual, but this seems to just be a structural difference in the church's relationship to the government.

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

@@mojus2890 - The massacre you are referring, in 1182, was restricted to Constantinople and was caused by a mob, likely encouraged by the uncle of the underage heir Alexios Komnenos. The uncle, Andronikos Komnenos, subsequently blamed the troubles on the heir's mother, the former queen, killed his nephew and usurped the throne. It was an unprecedent incident. Andronikos Komnenos was mentally unstable and led a reign of terror for three years until he was himself kileld by a mob. See Massacre of the Latins in Wikipedia.

[@andrewpirr]

@NicholasAggelopoulos What? the byzantine government did not deal with matters of the Church? Do you know who called the seven Ecumenical Councils? You might want to inform yourself more before you start a project like this

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

@@andrewpirr - It was not up to government officials, army generals or high court judges to decide on Church doctrine or denounce heresies. That was the duty of the Church, the Synods.

[@JayDee-x2b]

Jewish Usury and false Conversos . This is the real reason, not spoken

[@antoniodesousa9723]

at least for the spanish and portuguese inquisitions the target was to discover, reform or worst case eliminate jewish and moslem converts who were secretly practicing their old faiths and subverting the local christian communities. can't find fault with christians being suspicious after centuries under the moslem and jewish rule. and

[@vik8126]

blessing

[@AlyoshaBosha]

What about tsar Peter and the old believers?

[@st.michaelthearchangelorth1055]

EXACTLY!

[@johnnyd2383]

Local persecutions of local rulers did happen but EOC has never had any institution like Inquisition with sole purpose of chasing down those who disagreed with it.

[@AlyoshaBosha]

@@johnnyd2383 thank you

[@Forevertrue-z2w]

There was not. Orthodoxy is a relligion , it's because of that fact.

[@hglundahl]

4:41 Mikhail Lomosonov may be as little representative of Orthodox in his time, as Galileo was of Catholics in his. He was a layman who wrote in Russian, not in pure Slavonic. Discovering the _atmosphere of_ Venus would not have been what Galileo had to answer for. Discovering the Venus _passage_ was not what Galileo had to answer for. But perhaps Lomosonov had to do with far less circumspect Orthodox priests than the Catholic ones Galileo had to deal with. He did not have his discourse from Orthodox priests, or you would have cited them. He did get lots of his education in Germany and had it from the German Enlightenment, which was addicted to Galileo, and also to his views on Scripture.

[@hglundahl]

5:20 "energeia" is typically translated "operatio" in Latin. Ephesians 3:7 for instance: οὗ ἐγενήθην διάκονος κατὰ τὴν δωρεὰν τῆς χάριτος τοῦ Θεοῦ τῆς δοθείσης μοι κατὰ τὴν _ἐνέργειαν_ τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ cujus factus sum minister secundum donum gratiae Dei, quae data est mihi secundum _operationem_ virtutis ejus. Of which I am made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God, which is given to me according to _the operation_ of his power:

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

Thank you for this very helpful response, especially with the quotes. It is, indeed, helpful that the Latin translation is close to the Greek meaning. There is still the question of how operatio is translated into English. I have come across English translations of energy being translated as grace of God or power of God. Some of these translations may give to the layman the wrong impression. I have the feeling that in the early centuries, during the Synods, the Latin and Greek-speaking branches of the Church sought to retain a consensus on theological points but that the consensus was not seamless especially after the Great Schism. My argument is that some practices in the West were caused by a belief in the Old Testament as God's unalterable truth, irrespective of how the Apostles, Evangelists and patrisitc tradition had qualified the position of the Old Testament in the Church, something that has come to haunts us again with religious fundamentalism in America.

[@Mrlucky_dan]

Great video. I loved the narration. My primary issue is regarding "slippery slope". If we assume that the Old Testament is allegorical, then why not the New Testament as well? Because we believe it and the Jews don't? How does this reconcile non-Scriptural Tradition, like Kismis Tou Theotokou, when the Apostles were transported via clouds. If we assume this is allegorical, then a core belief is moved into contention. Ultimately, this "slippery slope" culiminates into moral relativism, which the Church most definitely does not support. I'd advise the author partner with Jonathan Pageau.

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

The Church is guided by the Holy Spirit and has Christ at its head, so the Church as a whole cannot go wrong. The Nicene Creed is a litmus test. There has not been disagreement in the Synods and among the Fathers on the essential points. The Old Testament was always canonical, however, it was interpreted according to Christian belief. Moreover, Christian as well as Jewish scholars generally agree on which parts of the Old Testament are myth, which are legend and which contain verifiable historical elements. Orthodox faith is very much about living a Christian life following the example of Christ and even if some historical fact about the New Testament turns out to be incorrect, the site of Christ's crucifixion or where the sermon on the Mount took place, these historical details are of no consequence for the Christian faith.

[@npc6352]

@@NicholasAggelopoulos But these are not "historical details". There is no historical source for that ever happened besides of Harry Potter letters, written anonymously by one church to other churches decades after it allegedly happened.

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

@@npc6352 - Indeed, someone had to write something and it was written in the time of Christ by St Paul and the Evangelists who were contemporaries. Similarly, all we know about Socrates has been written by one person, Plato, and it was written after the death of Socrates. All we know about some ancient philosophers such as Heraclitus are statements attributed to them often centuries later. There are no writings of the founders of Athenian democracy such as Solon or Cleisthenes. That is not reason to say that Platonic philosophy or Athenian democracy are Harry Potter stories.

[@npc6352]

@@NicholasAggelopoulos This only proves, that the Greeks are same Harry Potter figures. 🤣 Like Pythagoras, son of the Greco-Roman idol "Apollo". The same story like the story of Pauls made up figure, just the name has been changed from "Apollo" to "holy ghost" to anonymize the guy, who commited adultary with the imaginary wife of Josef, who is just another made up figure. The same way today nobody knows who wrote "Luke", nobody knows who invented mathematics or democracy. So they invented figures and idols and then they dedicated the existing inventions to them.

[@npc6352]

@@NicholasAggelopoulos Letters from Paul are not history. They are the same like youtube comments today. If I write a youtube comment today, that Harry Potter is an existing person, it this a prove in 100 years from now, that Harry Potter is an existing person? Because that's exactly what the church and the followers of the church claim.

[@hglundahl]

2:33 Your comments on "the great divide" make simply no sense, you are attributing to the Roman Catholics a position like that attributed to Calvinists and Judaising Fundamentalists (perhaps spuriously) by their opponents. This is not our position now, it has no place in St. Thomas Aquinas and would have made St. Robert Bellarmine snicker if he had heard you attribute such a position to him. Christ's miracles are fully rational. That doesn't make them non-miraculous. The thing is not that "laws of nature are broken" but that God _adds_ an agency which is not described by them. Remember, the laws only describe what causes in physics need to get as results, if nothing interferes. They do _not_ say that all causes are physical, _nor_ that nothing will interfere with the results. A physicist can calculate with physics at what speed and impetus a pen will fall to the ground if I drop it, but he cannot calculate whether I'll prefer to catch it before it touches the ground. The Orthodox Church at least locally did find cause against Galileo. While the "sigillion of 1583" may be a forgery, it would go back to real decisions by patriarch Jeremias II Tranos in 1583, 1587 and 1593. Here is a quote from the more mediatised text printed on Mt Athos in 1858, New Skete, considered as a forgery and perhaps better considered as a conflation: _"and wishes to follow the newly-invented Paschalion and the New Menologion of the atheist astronomers of the Pope"_ Why the phrase "atheist astronomers"? Was it a reference to Galileo? If this phrase is lacking in all three decisions by Jeremias II Tranos, could it be that Father Iakovos from New Skete in 1858 had a beef with Heliocentrism?

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

There was an inquiry by monks in a Russian monastery that found no objections to the theory of Copernicus and the observations of Galileo. They cited that the geocentric view is not supported by scripture and attributed it to Thomas Indicopleustes, a Byzantine writer of fantastical stories. On your other point, I understand that the position of the Roman Catholic Church on the Inquisition has changed. Some Orthodox writers have written in the same vein. I imagine there is no exact consensus in the Orthodox Church about the degree to which reason and logic overlap. Knowledge is based on the association of a cause with its outcome. However, Orthodox scholars and Saints do not take a clear position on whether logic and reason are the same thing. From a scientific viewpoint, my personal viewpoint not the Church's, it would seem impossible that life, which is tied up with knowledge, would have evolved to detect relationships that are not causal. If so, which seems to stand to reason, such non-causal events are outside the capacities of living organisms to know them. Let's say there would have not evolved such a sensibility, a part of our organism responsible for detecting non-burning fires. A "burning" bush that was not burning away and was not showing any changes related to entropy would provide no physical stimuli that the brain would detect as a fire. A bush not burning would not be detectable as burning. On the other hand, other phenomena can be rationaly explained, but only when they do not violate the laws of physics: I have been told so in our theology lectures at school over a generation ago, for example regarding the curing of the lame as possibly the lame not being physically incapable of walking only psychologically hindered in some way because of psychiatric disability. Such incidents of psychiatric patients believing that they cannot walk or cannot see abound in the modern medical literature. The lame who were cured by Christ were never missing their legs and the blind were not actually missing their eyes, Lazarus had only been thought to have passed away some time prior to the arrival of Christ on the same day.

[@jamessheffield4173]

They had the strong hand.

[@ozzymandias7346]

This is baseless tripe. First, the Inquisition did NOT see science as a "threat to Christianity". Many Catholic priests were in fact scientists and gave the world/humanity knowledge such as the scientific method (Fr Bacon). Second, the Orthodox church ABSOLUTELY had various "inquisitions" or ecclesial courts, most notably within the Russian Orthodox church, such as the Novgorod inquisition in the 15th century then later after the "Old Believer" schism in the 17th century. The greek church did not experience this since a) the Byzantine Emperor was literally the temporal head of the church and would resolve all disputes and b) after the ottomans conquered Constantinople the greek church sold their soul to the sultan and allowed him to resolve disputes acting as the former Emperor did.

[@ofmonadsandnomads9500]

Western converts typically retain some kind of holdover beliefs from their former faith. By his accent, this video essayist would seem to be a former protestant of some kind, beyond which he takes a very Anglo-protestant view of the Roman church This I know because I too am a Western ConvertOdox type. Born Roman catholic and former pagan occult type as well though.

[@ozzymandias7346]

@@ofmonadsandnomads9500 Yes, I caught that as well. I was raised in both the Catholic and Oriental Orthodox church which got along very well with no issues. It wasn't until I came to the US that I felt so much animosity from ROCOR, many former protestants (i.e. the infamous "nathan monk"). It was almost as if ROCOR had one requirement for their priesthood: must hate Catholicism.

[@ofmonadsandnomads9500]

@@ozzymandias7346 hate to hear that this was your experience. I have not had this problem since being chrismated into the OCA, which is Russian-based but independent from Moscow.

[@PauloAndreAzevedoQuirino]

So you believe catholics think God is unreasonable? Sounds biased

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

My understanding is that the method of the Inquisition has been rejected by the Catholic Church. My argument is that the spirit of the Inquisition is alive among American fundamentalists. I am also aware that there was a school of thought starting with Thomas Aquinas where reason was considered as part of Christian belief. Descartes was Catholic. However, the viewpoints differ, for Orthodoxy reason is much more central, even if not perceived so in the West.

[@hglundahl]

3:20--3:34 _"hence the World created by reason according to the Greek text was created against reason according to the view eventually developed by the Roman Inquisition"_ Is Rome situated on the North Pole too? Does the Pope have three legs? In other words, are you stark raving mad?

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

The Inquisition disagreed with Galileo's observations not because they found some fault with his telescope, that is clear.

[@st.michaelthearchangelorth1055]

Perhaps you have never read of the reforms of Patriarch Nikon Of Moscow(1652-1666) and those now called the Old Believers who continued the old ways of Orthodoxy in Russia. They were persecuted, ostracized, banished; there were tortures and executions! The persecution came to an end only in 1905. So, I ask you as myself an Orthodox priest, was this not an inquisition?

[@johnnyd2383]

Local persecutions of local rulers did happen but EOC has never had any institution like Inquisition with sole purpose of chasing down those who disagreed with it.

[@st.michaelthearchangelorth1055]

@@johnnyd2383 If Czar St. Nicholas II officially put an end to the persecution, then it was for centuries an "official" policy to hunt out and persecute the Old Believers. Whether you call it "The Inquisition" or ""An Inquisition" doesn't matter. It is a grave mistake to paint "Holy Orthodoxy" without fault. As an institution that is both Divine and Human, there will always be the stain of sin from the Human side!

[@johnnyd2383]

@@st.michaelthearchangelorth1055 Still it was localized and not general idea of the whole Orthodoxy. But, since you have malicious ideas to equalize Orthodox with Latins I doubt you will ever see the difference.

[@st.michaelthearchangelorth1055]

@@johnnyd2383 Yes, it was localized -to ALL OF RUSSIA! There is nothing malicious about the truth! Covering it up is deceptive. If it wasn't the truth, then why did the ROCOR issue an "ukase" apologizing to the Old Believers for centuries of persecutions and killings? All things need purification and repentance, not hubris! One alone is sinless, that is Christ the Bridegroom.

[@johnnyd2383]

@@st.michaelthearchangelorth1055 All of Russia is NOT all of Orthodoxy. One local Church does not represent fulness of Orthodoxy, regardless which one we are talking about. Your malice is obvious.

[@sylvaindurand1817]

Miracles must all be allegorical then. Spiritualise everything that contradict modern science. Your religion then becomes unfalsifiable (but also meaningless).

[@gilgamesh7652]

I mean Jesus was talking in parables, and Jesus said himself that he does that because is the best way for people to understand the deeper spiritual truth. Interesting enough even some Jews in Jesus time like Philon of Alexandria didn’t belived that the whole Bible is actual literal history, but more symbolic.

[@sylvaindurand1817]

@@gilgamesh7652 Just stories then. No need to invoque the supernatural in anything then. Modern science would disaprove;-)

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

@@sylvaindurand1817 - The belief in the rationality of the miracles was always Orthodox belief, it is nothing new.

[@sylvaindurand1817]

@@NicholasAggelopoulos But Joshua (not Gideon) stopping the sun is not?

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

@@sylvaindurand1817 - There was an investigation by an Abbot and his council in Russia about the Galileo issue. They found no reason for opposition to the heliocentric system. They stated that the only claim that the sun revolves around the earth, and not the earth around the sun, comes from the fairy tales of a storyteller called Thomas Indicopleustes who had lived many centuries earlier. They found no doctrinal reasons to reject Galileo and Copernicus.

[@Lancer-c2b]

A lot of believe but no guestioning those and no understanding of those you don't agree with.

[@TboneWTF]

Is this really a question of importance? I have a question that is more profound and credible: What evidence do you have that your god is real? Thank you.

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

1. There are axioms. Nothing can be examined without an axiom. This is another way of stating Goedel's 2nd incompleteness theorem. 2. There is causality. All our branches of science are based on causal observation and deductive inference. 3. There is knowledge, that is association of a cause with its outcome or more losely information, the association of one event with another. Without axioms we cannot state reason or any other axiom as an axiom, therefore we cannot begin any enquiry. Without taking reason as an axiom, we reject causality as reason is its first principle. Without causality there is no knowledge. In fact, the only things we know are that we know and that, therefore, there is reason. These are the exact only things we know.

[@TboneWTF]

​@@NicholasAggelopoulos "Nothing can be examined without an axiom." I agree. Here is my axiom: "there has never been any credible, reliable and verifiable evidence to prove god exists" Thank you my friend and good luck.

[@denniszaychik8625]

Orthodoxy and logic? 😂😂 Considering the fact that in its modern state it resembles a mirror image of American Puritan culture thats beyond laughable.

[@kmj2000]

American online Orthodoxy is the mirror image because it is heavily influenced by Protestant converts.

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

I am referring to Orthodoxy outside America. There are many bloggers and youtubers, converts from Protestantism, that present a view of Orthodoxy that is indeed like Puritan Protestantism. But that is not how Orthodoxy is understood among the Orthodox in the actual Church in the Orthodox lands. Yes, Christ was the embodiment of Logos, the Greek word for Reason. There is no other word for reason in Greek except logos. That is how the word was used in classical philosophy up to the time of early Christianity. It was used in the same way by the Saints in their writings and it is clear because sometimes they wrote very extensively on the topic, wishing to clarify what is meant by logos, so that one does not think it means something different. American Christians have been cut off from that tradition for a very long time and have developed their own ideology, which they sometimes project back to the Orthodox Church, thinking that it is old, therefore it must be backward and fundamentalist. Aristotle lived centuries before Christianity, he was even older. Religious fundamentalism is a modern American problem, it is not a problem in the Orthodox Christian lands.

[@denniszaychik8625]

@@NicholasAggelopoulosI am talking about Orthodoxy outside America as well. Lol. Also you seriously gonna tell a Russian that in the so called Orthodox Christian lands fundamentalism is not a problem? Don't make me laugh 😂😅

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

@@denniszaychik8625 - I would be interested in your observations. I had a look around at recent papers or conferences on religious fundamentalism in Russia. The term appears to be used in those publications as a byword for the Orthodox Church in Russia not to label creationist or fundamentalist movements. I do remember a high-level Russian cleric saying something in favour of Creationism but this may be a problem of using the same word for different things. In America, anything that is religious, any belief that the God created the world, is sometimes labelled fundamentalist even if it would not be opposed to anything scientific.

[@denniszaychik8625]

@@NicholasAggelopoulos I already gave you a major observation. Both Orthodoxy and American Protestantism at the current moment are mirrors of each other.

[@AzureSymbiote]

I can't listen. Too much whistling.

[@cA-8ch]

says who? they just cover it better. and they dont torture you in flesh.

[@johnnyd2383]

Are you calling God's commandments a "torture ".?

[@cA-8ch]

@@johnnyd2383 ah. so...which god wrote those?

[@johnnyd2383]

@@cA-8ch The only God in existence, Creator of everything..

[@cA-8ch]

@@johnnyd2383 looks like there are so many creators nowdays. could have happen before as well you see :)

[@johnnyd2383]

@@cA-8ch Nope. Only One is Creator. Others are human delusions instigated by the devil.

[@hglundahl]

2:37--2:43 _"it had decided that the Miracles of Christ do not have a rational explanation"_ Quis, quid, ubi? Quibus auxiliis? Cur, quomodo, quando? Or what inquisitor decided on what affair, in what city? By what proof texts? Why (on his view, not on yours)? How did he argue? What is that decision dated to? It was certainly NOT either of the two affairs of Galileo. I call your bluff. Either you are lying, or you are repeating a lie. Precisely as Paul Balester, Gk Orthodox Bishop in Mexico, pretended (by some) martyr, lied or repeated a lie about what St. Robert had said about the papacy.

[@hglundahl]

1:12 _"the Inquisition had deemed the use of reason in the advancement of science as a threat to Christianity"_ Do you get this from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, or from some Greek Bishop who had it from some Russian Bishop who had it from the Soviet Academy of Sciences? Scientists are not good historians of science, usually, Soviet biassed ones even less so, so ...

[@NicholasAggelopoulos]

I understand that the position of the Catholic Church remains that the miracles have no rational explanation. I also understand that there was no rational argument against the theory of Copernicus and the evidence of Galileo apart from the quote from the Book of Joshua about the sun standing still above Gibeon. There was also the debate between St Gregory Palamas and Barlaam of Calabria, the position of Tertullian about the infallibility of the Old Testament that I mentioned. I recognise that starting with Thomas Aquinas a different school of thought began to emerge but I am not aware that the scholastic approach was an influence in the decisions made by the Inquisition, at least concerning heliocentrism.

[@espiao7343]

wtf what a load of bullshit

[@TheAncientEmo]

What a insightful response.