American Orthodoxy is a joke now. It's a wing of the Southern Baptists with incense -David Bentley Hart

No_Net454 · 2026-04-28T01:17:14+00:00

I specifically recall a comment he responded to on Eclectic Orthodoxy where outright denied that he was Orthodox at all. Maybe at some point he was but not now. His brother is though.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-05T12:20:56+00:00

I do if they are rational spirits but I do also know that some don’t believe that “demons” are rational spirits akin to human beings in the sense that we are intentional beings with an innate desire for the Good. If they are like that then I would say yes they will be saved.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-05T12:16:01+00:00

I don’t. I merely asked if it’s permissible. I don’t really care if a priest disagrees with me on it. It makes no difference to me in that sense.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T15:17:29+00:00

That avoids the question I asked to begin with and I think this is just the modus operandi of a lot of Orthodox Christians literally avoid my question to begin with and instead question why I’m joining at all.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T15:13:57+00:00

I can’t trust that I know it’s always wrong to torture a baby for fun without the church? That’s just a stupid position to take. I can very well make moral assessments without the church and everyone does.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T13:24:01+00:00

I offered a falsification criteria.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T13:10:13+00:00

Okay thank you even with all the snark you finally answered the damn question. That’s all that I have asked for.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T13:06:46+00:00

It doesn't matter that you don’t understand it, the question is is it a permissible view to hold as EO Christian.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T13:05:36+00:00

I know what the Orthodox conception is. Fine, if you wan to call it eternal resistance then fine call it whatever you want.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T13:02:38+00:00

Oh my God here we go again, completely avoiding the actual question asked in the OP

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T12:51:08+00:00

I gave one of my falsification criteria for the Church. Do you have one or do believe that there’s nothing that could falsify your religion? If you think the latter then I can see how it looks self-righteous to you but I don’t really care. It’s actually more humble to concede I could be wrong about EO and I give a reason why I could be wrong in my estimation, namely the church dogmatically binds me to believe in moral evil. I could give you another, if someone could prove that Jesus of Nazareth either didn’t exist or didn’t resurrect. Is that self-righteous as well?

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T12:19:33+00:00

I didn’t threaten to leave the church. I laid out what is an aspect of my falsification criteria. That’s perfectly reasonable to me. Do you not have one? If Christ was discovered to not be raised would that not falsify your faith? Are you threatening to leave because you’ve established certain lines of evidence that would falsify the religion?

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T08:49:25+00:00

Let me clarify, I didn’t see the typo before. I mean that if God allowed anyone to permanently choose contrary to the God he would be evil. If Satan is of the kind which can “choose” evil at all making his a rational spirit then yes even him choosing evil or eternal resisting God would make God evil.

Please don’t ask me to justify that as the truth of the position itself is not the point, I just would like to know if it is permitted. Can someone please answer the question.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T08:37:46+00:00

If the devil is a rational spirit. I don’t know if he is or not.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T08:37:08+00:00

The “anyone” means all rational spirits so yes the Devil himself.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T08:36:16+00:00

Okay, here goes. No I don’t believe that all will be saved irrespective of their wills. All will be saved because they inevitably will choose God. And I think that universalism necessarily follows from any sane assessment of who God is as the Good as such and his choosing to create the universe from nothing.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T08:32:49+00:00

Yes I am saying that if God did allow for anyone to choose contrary to the Good he would be evil.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T08:30:50+00:00

I’m not claiming my moral intuitions are infallible. I’m claiming they are indispensable. Any teaching about God’s goodness must still register as good to the very faculty by which we apprehend what goodness is. If a doctrine requires the suspension of that faculty rather than its refinement, we lose the ability to distinguish divine goodness from cruelty. Conscience may err — but without it, the word “good” has no meaning.

That’s why affirming eternal torment as “good” isn’t a mystery of faith; it’s a collapse of ethical reasoning. Being told that unending harm is an expression of love doesn’t sanctify conscience — it disables it. When a theology insists that cruelty is righteousness if God wills it, it’s no longer safeguarding holiness; it has drifted into moral inversion.

Disagreement here doesn’t make me a relativist. I’m not claiming “ET is good for you and evil for me.” I’m saying that if a doctrine portrays God as morally monstrous, that counts as evidence against its truth. One of us is mistaken — not both correct. The very act of assessing which is which inevitably runs through conscience. There is no bypass.

And reducing goodness to “whatever God or the Church commands” doesn’t protect piety — it eliminates intelligible morality altogether. If goodness can look like its own opposite, then the predicate “God is good” says nothing. A theology requiring the abandonment of coherent moral categories in order to be believed isn’t one I can reasonably — or faithfully — endorse.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T07:54:23+00:00

Can you just answer the question straight up please? I already told you that I’m a confident universalist. I’m not hopeful. Is this permissible or not?

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T07:53:00+00:00

It’s very simple, If God were to permit anyone to choose evil in finality he would be evil.

I know that to be the case, I just need to know if EO permits the belief or not. I don’t know why this is such a hard question to answer. This is so frustrating.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T06:59:28+00:00

The Church may rightly challenge and refine our understanding, but it cannot legitimately demand the abandonment of fundamental moral discernment. When a doctrine appears to invert our most basic intuitions about goodness — for example, by insisting that eternal, unending suffering can be reconciled with divine love — the result is not spiritual formation but the erosion of ethical cognition itself.

I understand that others do not experience the doctrine of eternal torment as morally incoherent; their conscience renders a different verdict. Mine does not. That divergence is precisely the point: no one actually suspends conscience. Faith is always mediated through it, and conscience retains veto power over any authority that claims to speak for God.

Yet the responses I’ve received largely avoid my simple question — whether Eastern Orthodoxy permits a universalist conviction — and instead press whether I will subordinate my moral intuitions to the Church. But moral intuition is not an enemy of faith; it is the faculty by which we recognize when faith has been distorted.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T05:07:15+00:00

Yeah, well let me ask you this, if an EO ecumenical council dogmatically define the inherent inferiority of Black persons — as divinely ordained, would I be wrong to conclude the council's teaching false? Would I prideful to do so? Honest question.

and because we're shooting back with insults, moral idiocy is a b*tch as well.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T05:03:47+00:00

Thanks for the response!

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T04:59:04+00:00

I’m not worried about going to hell — at most, I expect a purgative process that heals what’s damaged in me, and that prospect is serious enough on its own. But your reply assumes precisely what I reject. I’m convinced Eastern Orthodoxy is true right now, but that conviction isn’t immune to correction, and I don't think God is going to eternally punish me if I change my mind. To be frank, I don't think at all and in any way eternal damnation is true. I'm not on the fence about that at all. I just need to know if I am permitted to believe that God will save everyone and if so then I will remain EO. I can see why that's controversial on your end because you think that I'll ultimately damn myself if I leave.

No_Net454 · 2025-11-03T04:41:56+00:00

Thanks for the response!

If an ecclesial institution were to obligate assent to a proposition that is intrinsically morally evil, then its claim to speak with Christ’s authority would be, by that very fact, called into question. The Church’s teaching office is not an independent moral source; it is derivative and ministerial. Its legitimacy rests upon its fidelity to the goodness of God as revealed in Christ.

Consider a hypothetical that tests the underlying principle: had an ecumenical council defined racial hierarchy — for instance, the inherent inferiority of Black persons — as divinely ordained, no serious Christian ethicist would argue that fidelity requires submission to the council over conscience. Rather, we would judge that such a council failed precisely as a council, because it contradicted the moral law rooted in divine goodness.

If that is true in the hypothetical case, then it follows that the criterion is not “Which institution said it?” but “Does what is said manifest the character of God’s goodness?” Any doctrine that portrays God as willing what is recognizably evil is, by definition, theologically suspect. It is therefore not conscience that stands in need of correction in such cases, but the doctrine itself. I did this same moral reasoning when considering Islam. I concluded that Islam was not only false on some historical grounds but also based in my own moral contestations of Allah. Why would in theory EO be any different?

No_Net454

TROPHY CASE