Byzarchi☦︎ec☦︎
@archisoteric
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Byzantine Architecture Fanatic. Sober Husband, Father and Architect. Student of the Cappadocian Fathers. ICXC NIKA. #OrthodoxChurch circa 33AD ☧ ☦️☦︎
Joined July 2019
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Starting a list of Orthodox books I’ve read & recommend to others - a 🧵.
After starting my journey from Protestantism to Orthodoxy in 2015, I began working my way through history, the canon, the fathers & theology. I still have a long way to go.
So I’ll add chronologically…
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The thief on the crossed did many good works before his death: he confessed his sin, he repented, he defended Christ, he confessed his faith and he was baptized in blood.
Why Protestants can’t see this is baffling.
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What not studying church history or the formation of the Biblical canon does to a fool.
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My favorite icon: Christ the Divine Architect.
The compass is placed on Jerusalem, the center of Church history.
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Protestantism has gone so atheist/ materialist since its inception that they no longer believe God’s presence is in this world at all.
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Is this person a member of the Church of Satan or just an atheist? I can’t imagine hating the image of Christ this much.
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The ridiculousness of Protestantism knows no bounds. Blurring out Christ’s face? Is that how he appeared to everyone on earth for 33 years?
It’s a mockery of the incarnation.
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“Music is liquid architecture and Architecture is frozen music.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Is anyone going to tell him? We are the church who worked out the theology of the Trinity. We canonized the books in Bible he supposedly reads. We preserved every word of scripture for 16 centuries before his religion existed. We have been celebrating the Eucharist all this time.
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Christ walking on water with St. Peter.
Wall fresco from the Dura-Europos Church, Syria.
Circa 230 AD
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Me, on Sunday morning, when my low-church Prot family is in town for a visit.
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Has a single person, in the entire history of Christianity, ever claimed Israel was “venerating” the golden calf?
It’s difficult to comprehend this level of pure ignorance.
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Number of verses in the NT or OT telling us the Apocrypha isn’t part of the canon:
Zero.
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I love it when they post this meme. It completely refutes his own doctrine.
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They call icons idolatry unless they need the most accurate representations of the saints that we have.
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Breaking news!
The church who wrote the Bible, authenticated the Bible & preserved it meticulously for 2,000 years, the church who still speaks & writes in the original language of scripture…
Has NEVER interpreted these verses the way your modern heterodox group does.
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The Bible: here, let me show you that not all images are graven by commanding you to make images for your holy places. Then, let me show you in dozens of places in the OT where veneration is acceptable and not considered worship.
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Says the Protestant who asks his friends, family and clergy to pray for them.
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When you don’t have the Church, the pillar and ground of Truth, to check your comprehension of Holy Scripture.
Who needs correct Triadology & Christology?
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These people would’ve literally turned their back on Jesus when he walked the earth as *gasp* fully man & fully God incarnate.
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Warning: be prepared for the coming backlash against Fr. Seraphim Rose as he’s set to be made a saint in 2024.
As more people actually read what he wrote, they aren’t going to be very happy with what he says on many topics.
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The Christians who have been practicing Christianity in that very spot, in an unbroken lineage for 2,000 straight years, speaking & writing in the same language as Christ, is false and should look like the strip malls & business suits in America.
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Just watched a video on the Orthodox Church and there was a man interviewed who could trace his ancestry through the records of baptism, ordination and bishops back to Zacheus the tax collector in the Bible. 2,000 years of his family in the Orthodox Church.
Impressive.
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This was a common refrain when I was Protestant. Everyone I disagreed with wasn’t “reading their Bible enough.” This even included the thousands of other “Bible believing” sects within Protestantism.
This mindset rests upon a staggering amount of pride & self delusion.
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Many aren’t taught the difference between veneration & worship. Yet, Holy Scripture shows us there is clearly a difference. These are just a few examples from the Old Testament of acceptable veneration:
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“Orthodoxy regards the Bible as a verbal icon of Christ.”
Met. Kallistos Ware
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If Apostolic Succession is true, then Protestantism can’t be true.
Here’s the kicker, you don’t find anyone, anywhere, at any time, challenging the validity of Apostolic Succession in the first several centuries of the Church.
And the Church argued about almost everything.
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A sure sign someone’s never looked into Orthodox Christianity, is when they say:
-worship Mary
-pagan idolaters
-worship saints
-worship pix
-which church?
-salvation by works
-don’t read Bible
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It’s always fun when Prots will pull out the “well it says in Greek” card to defend heterodox theology.
Like, why did the entire Greek speaking church, raised in Greek culture, directly descended from the Apostles themselves, not interpret Greek scripture the way you do?
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A great first step towards freeing yourself from modern heresy, is to read church history, and learn you are just regurgitating earlier heresies.
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“And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.”
2 Kings 13:20-22 KJV
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Christ is King.
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On Reformation Day, we Orthodox like to celebrate the fact that we never needed nor had a Reformation.
The Orthodox Church. Establish in 33AD. Still the same, 2 millennia later.
We are the sources the Reformers dreamed of returning to.
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I recently learned there are Rabbis who take their students to see Orthodox churches so they can see what early temple worship looked like.
Orthodox Divine Liturgy is the church the Apostles established in Acts, and their successors carried on.
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Sola Scriptura was such an important and vital teaching of the Apostles that it survived nowhere, in the East, West, North or South within a hundred years of them teaching day and night all through the known world. Gone. Like tears in the rain.
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🚨🚨Orthodox Church Inquirers🚨🚨
Pascha Services this weekend!
Come and see!
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Read the OT account of how the Ark of the Covenant was built. Read each and every detail. Then read how it was to be treated by God’s people. Then read what happened to those who treated it as “just another vessel.”
The Theotokos housed the incarnated God-man himself!
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This is what happens when your theology starts with soteriology and ends with Christology.
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The church who established the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and recited that creed while partaking of the Eucharist every single Lord’s day for the past 2,000 years… is being called Trinitarian heretics by someone whose church probably isn’t even a hundred years old.
Rich.
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“If we learn to build with local materials, we have a future.”
~ Francis Kere
Orthodox Church ice sculpture at Vasaloppet China Ski Festival, Jingyuetan Park in Changchun, China
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Contra the Evangelical notion of a suburban living room, the actual Biblical House Churches were estates with large rooms converted into places of worship: complete with an altar, baptismal font and iconography.
Dura Europos, circa 233 AD
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Essential reading for anyone who is Orthodox, and for anyone needing a concise breakdown of our faith.
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A short list of acceptable names to call Orthodox who don’t affirm Calvinism:
Semi Pelagian
Neo Pelagian
Post Pelagian
Nü-Pelagian
Hardcore Pelagian
Pre Pelagian
Pelagiancore
Goth Pelagian
The Pelagian Sea
Bubonic Pelagius
Darth Pelagius
PelagiaStation 5
2 Fast 2 Pelagius
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When did God actually declare Abraham righteous according to St. Paul in Romans 4? It was 4 chapters AFTER he was called by God.
When did Christ actually tell the thief on the cross he’d be with him in paradise? After he repented, confessed his faith, confessed Christ as God.
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Might as well celebrate Reformation Day in typical Reformation fashion: completely ignore and/ or distort a millennium and a half of history they were never a part of.
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Where did Christ or His Apostles tell us which books & letters go into a book called the Bible?
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I just finished reading Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God by St. John Maximovich. Less than 100 pages & easy to read in an afternoon.
I recommend reading it as one of the best refutations I’ve seen of the Latin dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
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Just hit the 78th month of sobriety. 6 years and 6 months off the sauce, the dragon and everything else.
Without the uncreated grace, mercy & power of God, I’d have been dead years ago.
Holy Martyr St. Ephraim of Nea Makri, pray for those of us in recovery!
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“Practice no magic, sorcery, abortion or infanticide.” The Didache, Part 1, late 1st century AD.
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If you want to know everything there is to know about the Holy Scriptures in the Tradition of Orthodox Church, this is the definitive work of our time. Weighing in at nearly 700 pages, the book is packed with contributions from nearly 50 Orthodox scholars & theologians.
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He’s right in a Nietzschean sense. That’s why people are flocking to the Orthodox Church… which has survived immense persecutions for thousands of years… creating martyrs & saints in the name of our Holy & Almighty Triune God.
Lord have mercy.
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An eye-opening thing to me about early church history, was finding out who the successors to the Apostles were. Men that followed & listened to the Apostles preaching day & night for years. These men were ordained directly by the Apostles.
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Prot: Faith Alone!
Ortho: False dialectic.
Prot: Chapter & verse!
Ortho: “Faith without works is useless.” ~ James 2:20.
St. Paul: “Faith, which works through love.” ~ Gal. 5:6.
Etc…
Prot: not those chapters or verses!
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“The essence-energies doctrine is Eastern woo-woo mystical pagan nonsense!”
No. The energies doctrine is Biblical. The Greek translation of the Bible speaks of God’s energies in terms of work, virtue, operation, etc…
Here is a thread of scripture references:
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So how do “Christians” respond to being called out for having atheist/ materialist paradigms when it comes to miracles? Copy and paste r/Atheist responses to any Biblical claim.
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Not many things make me laugh harder than the Protestant, armed with a couple years of Greek studies & his lexicon, telling the Orthodox Church, which has spoken & written in Greek for 2,000 straight years, that we got our own language wrong.
It’s staggering pride & ignorance.
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It’s amazing how all doubts & questions I had about Trinitarian theology melted away & everything fell into place once I understood the E/E distinction taught by the Cappadocian’s, Sts. Dionysius Areopagite, Maximos, John Damascus, Photios and Gregory Palamas.
This book is gold.
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A question that vexed me as I was inquiring into Orthodoxy as the good little iconoclastic Evangelical:
Is it idolatry to bow, make the sign of the cross and kiss the Gospels?
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According to a couple of 20 year old recent converts & laypeople, we are not supposed to listen to:
St. Dumitru Stăniloae
St. Justin Popovich
St. John Maximovich
St. Seraphim Rose
Fr. Pomazansky
Fr. Meyendorff
Bp. Kallistos Ware
Vladimir Lossky
Fr. Romanides
Fr. Florovsky
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One reason Western Christians have a hard time grasping the essence energies distinction, is that English translations of the Greek word “energeia” get chopped up in our Bibles, and in particular, the teaching of St. Paul.
Dr. Bradshaw’s chapter on Divine Energies in the NT:
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Thanksgiving with my Protestant family: all staunch iconoclasts. In the afternoon, one of the kids open their Sunday School book and **gasp** religious images of Christ, the Apostles, OT saints, etc…
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I know others have posted this before, but it feels pretty good knowing the Orthodox Church can trace our bishops all the way back through 2,000 years of history to the original churches Christ & His Apostles set up.
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If you’re a Protestant who thinks it odd that Orthodox apologists always bring up the canon of scripture in response to the modern doctrine of Sola Scriptura, I’d encourage you to read this chapter from Lee Martin McDonald.
Learn where our Holy Scriptures came from. 🧵
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These books are very helpful for anyone looking into the continuity between OT worship and NT/ Early Church worship. Liturgy, hymnography, vestments, sacraments, etc…
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The scriptures are clear. The church fathers and all of Christianity was clear for 16 centuries after Christ.
Our faith in God must be in love & humility. Not some lowest common denominator modernist heresy from the 16th century.
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@anqlican
Typical: you want to reduce Christianity to the lowest common denominator.
Faith without works is dead. His faith was not dead. End of story.
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Do you go to the gravestone of a loved one and place flowers on it?
Have you pledged allegiance to the flag?
Have you kissed a picture of a loved one?
Have you bowed before royalty?
Congrats, you now know veneration of images & people isn’t worship!
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It’s hard to believe someone who claims to have read his Bible front to back, could make a statement like this.
Nowhere does the Bible say it is limited to 66 books. Nowhere does it say that everything God said was limited to those 66 books.
Pure tradition of MacArthur.
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We don’t need traditions of men, all we need is the Bible… so please like & subscribe to my YouTube Channel, read my blog and buy my books that tell you what the Bible says.
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St. Gregory Palamas is one of the “3 Pillars of Orthodoxy.” The other two being Sts. Photios & Mark of Ephesus. While it’s good to read any & all saints, when it comes to Orthodox theology, these names critical.
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“The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization."
~Frank Lloyd Wright
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral Columbus, Ohio
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American Architect Andrew Gould’s firm, New World Byzantine, designed the beautiful Hermitage of the Holy Cross in West Virginia. This ROCOR church serves a predominantly English-speaking community that fell in love with the traditional towering Russian cathedrals.
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Bro needs to read what pre-incarnate Christ told His people to build in the Old Testament.
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The Orthodox Church is Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern.
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Would Christ have told the thief he’d be with him in paradise if he did not repent and confess Christ as God?
The demons believe in God.
Faith without works (love, humility & obedience) is dead… even for the thief… the prime example Prots use for Sola Fide.
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Orthodox Architecture is an extension of the incarnation… Truth, structured in kairos, is a liturgical sanctuary for the bride of Christ. Within His divine body, heaven and earth are united.
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The saints are dead and can’t hear our prayer?
Where is Jesus Christ right now?
Where did Jesus Christ tell the thief on the cross he’d be that very day?
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So there was no accurate representation of Christianity for 1,500 years after Christ… the delusions are beyond comprehension with these Enlightenment Era Humanist’s.
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Like most Prot math problems, this equals your misunderstanding of worship.
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This week marks 6 years of sobriety from every illegal substance known to man. It was at this time I discovered the Orthodox Church, the best hospital. By the grace of God, here I am today.
You end up filling the void of addiction & for me it was the Scriptures & Fathers.
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“The church fathers didn’t agree on everything! Ooooh your church is debunked!”
Yes. Guess who else disagreed on matters of the church? The original Apostles themselves. Good thing they set up a conciliatory way to resolve those matters via councils.
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If we are considered idolaters for venerating iconography, then Evangelical/ Baptists are idolaters for venerating bread and wine.
That’s why St. John of Damascus says iconoclasm is a rejection of the incarnation.
No way around it.
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Apparently, the word “consensus” means 100% agreement in the school this account attended. Must be American public school.
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For anyone new or considering the Orthodox Church, here is a lesson I had to learn the hard way:
Don’t try to cram it all in immediately. Salvation is worked out before God in His Church… not in how many fathers or theology books you read. Take your time. Have patience.
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“Those stupid Apostolic Christians think there is a difference between veneration & worship!” says the proud Evangelical as he solemnly stands, removes his cap, puts his hand over his heart, and sings a hymn to the image of the secular state before the ball game.
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Also, all these cross references are cool, but there are zero verses teaching the Protestant doctrine of either faith alone or scripture alone.
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I can’t stress this enough: during the first 16 centuries of Christianity, 99% of all Christians only heard the scriptures read to them in the liturgy of the One, Holy, Catholic & Apostolic Church.
The personal devotional Bible did not exist.
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Seems like this needs to be repeated often:
The Ecumenical Councils were NOT held to establish new doctrine. They were affirming & defending what was taught everywhere, always and by all against all manner of heresies.
The history of doctrine is clarified under this lens.
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Not gonna lie, when I first sat down to read the church fathers, starting with Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, etc.., the men directly trained by the Apostles, I expected to find all sorts of lost Protestantism. I mean, how could the men ordained by the Apostles NOT be Protestants?
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St. Justin Popovich says there have been 3 Principal Falls:
1. Adam
2. Judas
3. The Pope
From “Orthodox Faith & Life in Christ.”
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And the Orthodox Church, the one Christ & the Apostles set up, and the bishops of our church have succeeded in an unbroken line, had been running for all 1,517 years before Martin Luther was born, and every year since… against whom the gates of hell shall never prevail.
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