Nostr notes by rschristopher

I really like Eastern articulation (from Simeon the New ...

2026-03-30T20:57:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…p6us
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I really like Eastern articulation (from Simeon the New Theologian)

Grace = uncreated energy of God

It inspired the essence/energy distinction; that grace is the conscious, experiential presence of the uncreated Holy Spirit. And it builds on the Augustinian idea of grace as the indwelling Holy Spirit.

If you’re experiencing grace, it is divine, and you’re experiencing the Holy Spirit personally, that is, person to (divine) person. And since we are not divine, this is as unmerited as it gets.

The western formulation is usually something like “divine aid” but in usual discourse often lacks the very real personal connection of the Holy Spirit (though you’ll find it in some western theologians).

I’m sure people have already recommended “Rock and Sand” by ...

2026-03-25T17:54:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…90kl
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I’m sure people have already recommended “Rock and Sand” by Fr. Josiah Trenham … a must read on the topic of EO and Reformed.

It includes the various attempts of Reformers and Eastern Orthodox to dialog, often unproductively but incredibly fruitful articulations of faith on both sides (also the tragedies of their failures to reconcile, all due to sin).

You’ll be particularly interested in the Confession of Cyril (EO patriarch advocating for Calvinism), and the Confession of Dositheus which is more or less a rebuttal, but fully articulates the EO positions (that were often misunderstood by the reformers).

Glory to God

2026-03-25T17:40:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…2ua5
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Glory to God

Whenever the thief on the cross gets mentioned in that context ...

2026-03-25T17:39:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…00d2
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Whenever the thief on the cross gets mentioned in that context it’s important to remember exactly that ^^

Had he survived somehow, would he have not been baptized afterwards? Would he not have obeyed Christ? See how St. Paul was baptized immediately after his sight was restored.

Also, important to remember:

He repented directly to Christ, and he rebuked the unrepentant thief, “we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” and then he explicitly asked for Christ’s mercy (“remember me when you come into your kingdom”).

Church fathers sometimes called this “baptism of desire” and historically it applies to catechumens who died before their baptism, and always understood as an exception to water baptism; sometimes you’ll hear this a “baptism of blood”, which applies to martyrdom.

The iconography of the good thief (St Dismas) is one of my favorites, he’s typically depicted as carrying his cross in paradise. And in depictions of multiple saints in paradise, he’ll stand out as he’s still carrying his cross.

Yes. It’s a beautiful way to put it, “undeserved grace … ...

2026-03-23T19:31:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…np7c
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Yes.
It’s a beautiful way to put it, “undeserved grace … deserved judgment”

Typically it means “get ready for battle” … if you find ...

2026-03-23T18:41:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…7ykv
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Typically it means “get ready for battle” … if you find yourself questioning God consider it honor beyond measure that he tells you to stand up like a man and face Him (just be ready to repent)

The surface answer is in Genesis 25:34, where it is simply not ...

2026-03-23T18:30:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…eyjr
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The surface answer is in Genesis 25:34, where it is simply not the case that “Esau was not given a chance”

“Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.”

The deeper answer is in Job, which is what St. Paul indirectly references in Romans 9 (“who art thou that repliest against God?”)

“Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.”
~ Job 38:1–4

And Job’s response (after several chapters of rebuke) is the correct one, a response that all too many Christians miss (especially those who seem ready to argue theology with God):

“I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
~ Job 42:2–6

On questions of determinism and the cooperation with God’s grace, the correct answer is always “repent in dust and ashes” … otherwise we’re presuming to know the mind of God (“Hath not the potter power over the clay”).

This is an area where you’ll see many Internet Calvinists stumble and accidentally violate reformed theology. God is never the author of evil, nor ever responsible for the sins of man (not even Esau, not even Pharaoh, not even Judas Iscariot). The sins of man are the fault of man and man alone. And the grace (and all goodness, truth, beauty) of man are from God and God alone.

At the judgment, I imagine all the pride in us will melt when Christ says to gird up thy loins like a man. And when one considers the alternative (“depart from me, I never know thee”) we’ll (God willing) recognize the infinite love and mercy behind these words.

Two things: 1. There is 100% an antichrist agenda in the Church, ...

2026-03-23T02:30:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…jgls
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Two things:

1. There is 100% an antichrist agenda in the Church, but Mary is not it, quite the contrary (as Revelation makes clear)

2. The antichrist agenda is of course attacking His church, because it is His church. The devil you’ll notice need not attack the Zionist mega church (as those are already his)

There’s patristic consensus on this exact topic, and the ...

2026-03-23T02:26:28Z

In reply to nevent1q…7495
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There’s patristic consensus on this exact topic, and the reformers did not deviate from this.

Christ dwelling inside you means the trinity is inside you. There’s a reason we will see the Father when looking upon Christ, and that the Father will see His Son when looking upon us (through the Holy Spirit). And the crowns in icons have specific meaning, exactly as crowns do in scripture. The language of icons is its own nuanced and beautiful topic..

I love reformed theology, not the milquetoast modern versions, I mean the full-throated reformed theology from the Puritans, but I find it incomplete in what it rejects and ignores. And not just their iconoclasm (which is a separate topic), but little things like marriage, which is clearly a sacrament, and the bad fruits of the desacralization of marriage is all too obvious today.

I don’t think reformed theology gets anything wrong, but there is undeniable bad fruits born from what it lacks (look at their churches today).

I once ignored Marian theology and held strongly to the reformed position. Mary was exalted but really didn’t appear in my prayers or thoughts as anything other than a footnote.

And tbh I can’t provide a rational argument to prove anything to @Laser or others (whose views I deeply respect). But I will say my views on Mary radically changed when I was introduced to the Rosary (despite not being Catholic).

It was humbling, as if my eyes were opened. Every line of the Rosary (every mystery, even Luminous Mysteries) was right there in scripture, and I realized I had been ignoring these words of scripture with respect to Mary (from Mary’s fiat, to her presence at the crucifixion).

I was on an Eastern Orthodox path, and bizarrely it was through that “Latin innovation” of the Rosary that the hardness of my heart finally cracked.

I now pray the rosary daily, in Latin and English (and occasionally in other languages), and finally understood the “phronema” that our Eastern brothers frequently speak of..

fwiw, the abject heresies on display at modern Protestant ...

2026-03-21T18:22:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…msy2
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fwiw, the abject heresies on display at modern Protestant churches might be sufficient to remind the apostolic East and West that they are in need of repentance and unification that can only come from Christ.

Except the opposite has been true, as evidenced through history. ...

2026-03-21T18:19:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…nt8z
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Except the opposite has been true, as evidenced through history. From the “temples of reason” during the French Revolution (which quickly devolved into places of execution and torture), to the grotesquely evil behavior of Marxists during every one of their ungodly revolutions.

As Christianity fades, literal and actual opium use increases.

Every secular society, every single one, ends up in a nihilistic meaning crisis (with lots of drug use, bread and circuses) and a collapse in fertility rates below replacement levels.. we’re watching this happen throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia (crisis levels in South Korea).

Careful, it exists and has persisted despite our judgments (fwiw ...

2026-03-21T18:03:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…6n36
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Careful, it exists and has persisted despite our judgments (fwiw I tend to agree, and the early church, even in the west, would agree with this too as you earlier quoted). There is to be no universal Bishop, no head of the Church other than Christ (it is His church after all).

Where I pause is that this is so much bigger than me, and has endured throughout the ages, and I pray that His will, not my will, be done.

Much of the papacy still holds the early church traditions of the “Chair of Peter” as the “first amongst equals”, and that all Bishops get authority directly from Christ, and that the Bishop of Rome also serves under Christ and is granted the keys to the kingdom (and is to be collegial with the other Bishops, the steward over the Church), but it’s the innovations that happened post schism and the (mostly false) perceptions amongst many in the west (Catholics and Protestants alike) of full universal jurisdiction (the binding/loosing authority that Christ instilled in His church) that gives me pause, as our brothers in the east clearly didn’t lose this authority, but neither did Rome. Rome admits as much (that the East still has valid sacraments).

The Petrine keys are real, but the authority and jurisdiction (including the binding/loosing authority) are granted directly by Christ (they were His to give, not ours).

Consider Christ’s words about the Pharisees, because they *had* binding/loosing authority (not directly from God, but through the seat of Moses and the sacrificial system at the temple):

“The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.”
~ Matthew 23:2–3

They lost this power either at the cross (veil torn) or at the latest in AD 70 when the temple was destroyed. Although my personal view is that they lost authority when the veil was torn, His patience for their conversion ended in AD 70.

So even in the most critical argument against the papacy, such as equating them with the Pharisees or the antichrist, their authority is from Christ and still exists (exactly as did the Pharisees through Moses), but unlike the Pharisees, Christ confirmed that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.

Again, His will be done, not ours

One of my favorite parts of Church history is that even in the ...

2026-03-21T16:43:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…53hj
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One of my favorite parts of Church history is that even in the west, even modern western saints (canonized saints), tended to agree that the spirit of antichrist would deceive many, even the pope, some suggesting an antichrist pope.

The “papal antichrist” trope goes back at least to the Joachimites in the 13th century, influenced the Franciscans, and persists to this day.

To clarify, only fringe groups suggested *the* antichrist would be a pope, as patristic consensus understood that the final “lawless one” would be in Jerusalem, in some kind of mockery of a rebuilt temple (and not in Rome), at the end of days.

But the spirit of antichrist is one we would see throughout the ages, repeated like a fractal at every level of analysis. And this seems true, from the first century till now (always a Judas never repenting, always a Peter denying and later repenting).

The point, and this is necessary to understand EO and RC, is that the Church will be attacked and even infiltrated by the spirit of antichrist, but that the gates of hell will not prevail. This is why your trad catholic and orthodox brothers do not reject the apostolic Church even in the midst of blatant heresy from bishops and popes. In fact, this is why we pray for them.

This is excellent! I don’t have anything critical to add as ...

2026-03-21T16:15:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…ff8g
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This is excellent!
I don’t have anything critical to add as from where I stand you’re preaching to the choir.

There was a few moments that gave me pause:

I wouldn’t separate the Church from the Holy Spirit (in terms of scripture), the Spirit guided the Church, and guided those authoring and preserving the scriptures across the ages.

Maybe also emphasize the magnitude of this, holy scripture was preserved across time unlike any other — empires rose and fall, entire languages and entire cultures rose and fell — and it was the Church, despite the sins of man (many throughout the ages tried to change it), that preserved holy scripture. By every measure the Church and tradition succeeded where man failed (we have plenty of examples where men were deceived and changed scripture to fit the spirit of their time, from Islam to Mormonism to Christian Zionism).

Also maybe helpful to dispel the modern connotation of canonical and apocryphal. This is a stumbling stone for many.

In modern usage there’s a negative connotation to “apocryphal” as a category. This is a modern misconception and as you pointed out the reformers didn’t even hold to this, as they included the apocrypha in their Bibles (which in our modern lens doesn’t even make sense, why would they do that).

The easiest way to understand this from a modern perception is that our current Fiction vs Non-fiction literary paradigm acts as an unquestioned presupposition such that we (wrongly) try to apply Canon and Apocrypha to those two categories.

Apocrypha in the ancient world simply meant “private” or “not for public/liturgical reading”.

Canon simply means “rules”, specifically the rules of the liturgy. These concepts are part of the Church and cannot be separated from them. Scripture was part of the living Church and the idea of it being separate would be foreign to everyone prior to the modern age. If ancient Christians saw solo scriptura they would literally question: “why are you treating the canon as apocrypha?”

The entire debate rests on a category error that the pre-modern would simply not understand.

Canon is what is read in the Divine Liturgy, and apocrypha is what is not included in the liturgy. You were to read both at home. Even prior to the printing press all Christian families were to have a home Bible, at least a gospel, a wealthy family would have more than one. Even illiterate families would strive to own a gospel.

In Christendom, East and West, there were THREE categories of literature (and not the two we have today):
+ canonical
+ apocryphal
+ heretical

The canonical books reference the apocryphal books (such as 1 Enoch being referenced in Genesis and in Jude). And these references were authoritative and not editorial.

The apocryphal books were for our private edification, providing deeper insights and guiding us through our spiritual battles.

Heretical books were to be avoided (often treated as cursed), and the apocrypha was read in conjunction with the canon, following the liturgical cycle.

And imagine how beautiful, the entire town square tomorrow would be talking about the raising of Lazarus in John’s gospel (tomorrow’s liturgical reading), with the more studious among us also reading apocryphal wisdom literature about the prophecied messiah and bodily resurrection (or possibly apocryphal works that reference Lazarus). We’ve really lost the “public” aspect of literature (inseparable from worship), and our secular worldview simply cannot make sense of this.

fwiw, I suppose this is one of the reason sola-scriptura persists and becomes overly rationalized, reformers will cling to it because they’re holding to secular presuppositions (trying to categorize all things as fiction or non-fiction). And I don’t really mind, as ultimately secular is dying, we’re watching it die, and sola-scriptura will lose the presuppositions that it rests upon.

Not to defend bad Catholics (which include many a Pope), but the ...

2026-03-20T06:31:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…xxre
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Not to defend bad Catholics (which include many a Pope), but the official teachings of the Catholic Church are rock solid on all these topics.

And that they survive at all (despite literal pedophiles and communists trying to destroy them from within) is telling.

The gates of hell have legit not prevailed on either East or West. Despite murderous attempts that came close (especially in the East).

The official teaching on even the most objectionable Marian dogma is still Biblically sound (and fully aligned with patristic consensus) , e.g., “Mediatrix” is perhaps the most “Mary worship” title you can possibly imagine. The name seems to imply you can worship Mary. But then you read CCC 970, which is the explanation for this title, and it’s “No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer” … “Mary's function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power.”

Marian dogma is basically: Mary helps you to understand Christ, because she is His mother. Luke records Mary’s fiat for a reason. She is prominent in the New Testament for a reason. The reason: do not worship and do not ignore Mary (the Mother of God).

All of Catholic teachings are like this, which is why Trad Catholics still exist and are going strong (one of the few remaining civilized populations that doesn’t have a fertility crisis).

Now, are there bad Catholics that act like they worship Mary (and not just venerate)? Yep, and there’s even worse Catholics that want female priests and gay marriages. The enemy is everywhere, and they are deep into the upper echelons within the Vatican.

It’s not a question of where Catholics went wrong … that goes back at least to AD 1054 … the question is where Christians went wrong, and the schisms in His church are obviously what went wrong. The subtle pride that leads to and maintains schisms, which simply cedes ground to the adversary, is what is wrong.

Luther I thought affirmed perpetual virginity? could be wrong. ...

2026-03-20T05:44:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…dd30
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Luther I thought affirmed perpetual virginity? could be wrong. Calvin I think had nuanced views — neither rejected it outright.

Immaculate conception for sure they (would have) rejected. No question there.

The rest I agree with completely, and so do EO and most RC (although officially Immaculate Conception means she had no inherited sin, but Christ is still necessary for her salvation, as Christ overcame death, sin, and the devil).

Where the disagreement happens is in the nature of Mary, born with inherited corruption (original sin) or not, Christ is born without it. It forces an articulation of Christ and the hypostatic union *and* about Mary. But at that level of nuance it’s important to humble ourselves and recognize what has been revealed and what has not been revealed, and never to confuse our reasoning with God (who will reveal these answers in due time).

For me it’s entirely speculative, I love this discussion, and theology generally, as it brings a deeper love for Christ, and His mother (such as an appreciation for seemingly benign stories like the wedding at Cana).

Agree, like I said, if you get into the nuances the disagreements ...

2026-03-20T05:22:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…4kud
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Agree, like I said, if you get into the nuances the disagreements tend to vanish.

The workaround I saw from good reformed theology was that the inheritance of corruption (or original sin) is prevented by the virgin birth, and that the sin or sinlessness of Mary is irrelevant.

My personal view is that Mary was sinless (as there’s more to “virgin birth” than just a lack of sexual union), but I agree with this view that ultimately it doesn’t matter to the deeper question of salvation.

There’s lots of crowns in the NT, too many to mention. Most of ...

2026-03-20T05:09:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…463y
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There’s lots of crowns in the NT, too many to mention. Most of the saints are crowned.

I don’t know about that particular image (these days there’s too much AI slop out there), but I will say that Byzantine iconography will often show Mary receiving a crown with twelve starts. Because:

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars”
~ Revelation 12:1

The Queen Mother is of course crowned because she is the mother of Christ (the literal anointed one), the King of Kings.

Even outside of Heaven, in worldly kingdoms, a Queen Mother wore a crown.

In 1 Kings we read that Bathsheba sits at Solomon’s right hand on a throne. There’s other references throughout the prophets of a queen mother.

It’s the inseparable part of Chalcedon that inevitably ...

2026-03-20T04:46:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…sgl2
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It’s the *inseparable* part of Chalcedon that inevitably creates the perceived conflict with PSA and Mary. I say perceived because the entire debate is often based on mischaracterizations and gets so nuanced that it feels like linguistic differences from one culture to another; everyone gets hyper critical, and mischaracterizations become rampant. Which means we’re over an important target since the demons get so riled up.

The short of it: you either end up with Immaculate Conception, or you reject PSA, and if you try to avoid this dilemma (rejecting Immaculate Conception but holding PSA), you get de-facto Nestorianism.

This is an oversimplification, obviously, but there is something to it, and the history of reformed theology does show this (as many reformed groups ended up in Nestorianism, refusing to call Mary Theotokos).

Nestorianism was defeated long before the full throated PSA was articulated. Cyril held a substitutionary view but focused on theosis/deification, and victory over sin/death/devil, that our corrupted nature could now be *healed* because of Christ taking our place on the cross, overcoming death, ascending as a man into heaven to sit at the right of the Father.

Ironically, most of the reformers, including Calvin, held very ...

2026-03-20T04:15:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…ezen
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Ironically, most of the reformers, including Calvin, held very positive views of Mary (including perpetual virginity) and would likely be appalled to see how modern Protestants treat her.

To be fair, of all the things that would shock people of that era, this would be low on the list, seeing their congregations turn into Unitarian mockeries (funding abortions, openly gay female pastors, etc) would be higher on their outrage list.

Agree though their soteriology was the culprit. You end up, inevitably, either with Immaculate Conception or you have to demote Mary in a way that ends up in Nestorianism. I think that’s why iconoclasm was fashionable with many reformers, ignoring Mary helped them to avoid Nestorianism and Immaculate Conception while still holding Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

That’s all mostly right. It’s not wrong only incomplete. Mary ...

2026-03-20T03:54:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…3n26
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That’s all mostly right. It’s not wrong only incomplete.

Mary is not divine. No EO or RC dogma would suggest otherwise.

Mary’s Father in Heaven is our Father in Heaven. Yes.

Mary’s Savior and Mediator is Jesus Christ *who is her son*
This is a very important distinction many people miss (and it’s necessary to understand things like Revelation 12 and how it ties to the prophets).

Mary is not our Queen. Yes.
Mary is the “Queen mother”, exalted in heaven and sometimes referred to as “Queen of Heaven” in this context. That is, she is “queen” only in the sense that her son is our King. Mary was not anointed and is not “Queen” properly in the monarchy sense. There’s lots of confusion around this topic, especially from Protestants and even Catholics, but the deeper Biblical exegesis is sound. Mostly people don’t fully grasp monarchy and anointing because we don’t really live in monarchies anymore.

We look upon the face of Jesus, we will see the Father. Mary will see her son, who is both God and man, and thus she will see the Father and her own son. This is a critical distinction and is why Mary gets an exalted position amongst the saints.

Christ’s divinity is not separable from His humanity, and it quickly becomes a Christological heresy if you try to separate it. To put it bluntly: you end up with false ideas of Christ if you separate His divine nature from His human nature. As confirmed in Chalcedon, Christ has two natures, two wills, and is both man and God, *inseparable* as one person.

Veneration is not idolatry. Everyone venerates that which symbolizes or points the way to what they worship. It’s inevitable.

We often don’t see what people worship, but we can see the veneration, and then it’s easy to discern what they truly worship (even if they lack self awareness).

Most people today worship self, or nothingness (literal nihilism), but you don’t see it, you will instead see them venerate icons of themselves (especially on social media, or celebrity culture) or of nothingness (such as fleeting fashion trends, politics, etc).

Veneration is inescapable.

Protestants venerate the Bible, and rightfully so. I can’t see their worship, but what they venerate tells me whether they worship Christ or antichrist (such as those venerating Israeli politicians).

She is not divine, by definition, she is created. Angels also ...

2026-03-20T03:10:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…rfpj
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She is not divine, by definition, she is created. Angels also aren’t divine. Theologically, only those possessing the divine nature are divine. It is literally the essence of God which is divine, revealed as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (technically also the grace of God is divine, but that’s a separate topic).

Importantly, Christ is both human AND divine, this is key to understanding Mary and her role.

While I have no doubt one can find poetic language from some that use “divine mother”, theologically no one claims her as divine. Usually it’s “blessed mother” or Theotokos or similar language of proper veneration.

Even in the “Immaculate Conception”(which the East rejects), or “Queen of Heaven” doctrines, they explicitly do not refer to Mary as divine, they use expressions like “highest veneration”, because “divine” is and can only be God.

Understand: what you worship will determine what you venerate. E.g., if you worship wealth you’ll venerate symbols of wealth, fancy cars and designer clothes, but even an idolatrous person isn’t worshipping clothes, they venerate the clothes (because they worship wealth). We all, by design, only worship one thing.

Another example: Protestants don’t worship the Bible, they venerate the Bible (something more Catholics and Eastern Orthodox should do, but I digress).

This is the sense of “highest veneration”, because to worship God fully, means necessarily to venerate His mother. This is also why the “Mary worship” criticisms are so stupid.

No one I’ve ever heard, even the famous heretics throughout history, would refer to Mary as divine wife of God the Father.

Mary is the “new Eve”.

And conversely, she is not “sister” the way, e.g., Mary Magdalene would be.

Mary is the Mother of God. You end up in painful Christological heresies when you try to demote her, usually Nestorianism and/or Arianism. And this is because she birthed the Son of God, who is divine (and human). Theologically, this is necessary as He is the mediator between man and God (between the created and the divine).

If you dig deep into Revelation, Mary as the “new Eve” and as “mother” and even “Queen of heaven” (the Queen mother), weave throughout Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Psalms and even back to Genesis.

Although if the deeper theological reasons don’t do it for you, you should simply refer to Mary as “mother” because Christ told you to:

“When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.
~ John 19:26-27

Nostr event nevent1qqs8w4v6u2wqwgvdxls9t936qjq7smrqejunlrleqzfn9xld023ffvqzyp64ch5x0cjfk84vqtj9xhn0pvcyetj90qz8n4kfgfq6d4m4s9k5k7sj7t9

2026-03-16T23:33:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…smgs
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If you want a fruitful detour read ANY church father or ANY of ...

2026-03-16T21:30:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…g5af
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If you want a fruitful detour read ANY church father or ANY of the reformers on the topic of Zionism and Judaism.

Especially useful are modern EO saints like St. John of Kronstadt:

> “Jews, for the most part, because of their guile and countless evil deeds in which they have not repented, will perish. Change yourself for the better quickly, every Christian, while the doors of God’s mercy are not yet closed for you.”

And the reformers took it to extremes that would be too radical for our secular minds to even comprehend. Martin Luther started out sympathetic, “draw them to Christ” and then in later life advocated to “burn their synagogues”.

They don’t mince words, and neither should we. We pray for their repentance as we do our own, and call out their countless evil deeds.

Invoke the name of Christ directly, because ultimately it is a spiritual and not a political battle.

I believe this is why secularists lose ground and allow obvious antichrist theology under the label “Christian”. The secular worldview simply cannot solve let alone comprehend this.

Dispensationalism and any form of Christian Zionism is heretical, and the so-called Christians defending it cannot even define what a Jew is, any more than a modern liberal can define what a woman is.

Yes. Would love to hear your thoughts. Some observations: 1. ...

2026-03-16T20:50:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…gxs7
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Yes. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Some observations:

1. I’m pretty sure no one has any idea of how this will shape out, and similar to past innovations, it’s probably safe to assume that everyone is wrong.

2. It’s very reminiscent to early Internet dotcom hysteria, where all expert and industry opinions ended up being wrong, at best some were slightly less wrong but they used what today are clearly anachronistic mental models (read how they talked about the Internet and e-commerce in the 1990s). Things became clear after e-commerce and search engines got legs and changed the landscape (only after the dotcom crash). There was a ton of lawsuits from investors afterwards, the general pattern is that most companies tried to build walled gardens and “portals”, raised insane amounts of capital, and were wrong more than they were right (some more wrong than others).

2. Real limitations are emerging in LLMs. There’s a reason agent orchestration is all the rage and it doesn’t take much experimenting to realize that unsupervised agent orchestration completely sucks. The highly productive uses involve human orchestration amongst highly focused expert agents. Larger context does not resolve the issues but only leads to more subtle and difficult to resolve hallucinations. This is a very real limit in LLMs. Some of us get 10x and others do a 100x of slop that slows everyone down significantly. Good developers are now acting like engineering (micro)managers to teams of highly productive autists, it’s weird, and definitely not unsupervised, but when it works it works.

3. The most obvious limit is that under the hood an LLM is stochastic token prediction, and while it’s tempting to pretend that consciousness and a theory of mind can be built from stochastic token prediction, this is absolutely not AGI and any use cases outside of token prediction are going to be very sad.

4. Despite these and other limits, the entire market and “expert” class is acting as if we have AGI in the most over-the-top magical-thinking way possible. Everyone is just assuming AGI or that we will soon have AGI. They’re acting as if it’s a genie or a god, and they’re (mal)investing accordingly. We very clearly have not reached AGI, and the hysteria around this is obvious.

5. Local LLMs are only months behind the big cloud services. We’ve seen this story before (IBM mainframes, film processing labs, music studios, etc). But in those examples the disruption came after decades of profits. The giant data centers may be disrupted long before anyone sees profit. The true innovation with AI is unlikely to be from centralized cloud providers (with armies of bureaucrats and blatant attempts to form regulatory moats), when decentralized AI is right around the corner. It won’t kill the data centers, just like PCs didn’t kill mainframes, but there’s a reason Microsoft became bigger than IBM.

Agree, I view it as inevitable stumbling stones, and that while ...

2026-03-15T20:59:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…zv8q
_________________________

Agree, I view it as inevitable stumbling stones, and that while the deceptions will not succeed in the end, they will prove necessary for our salvation (removing every trace of pride)

That’s why that line “if it were possible” is so important. ...

2026-03-15T20:54:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…vagx
_________________________

That’s why that line “if it were possible” is so important.

“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect”
~ Matthew 24:24

There’s patristic consensus that even overwhelming deception will not (cannot) succeed in the end. And importantly, only by the grace of God will anyone be preserved.

Anyone genuinely seeking Truth (who is the person Christ) is my ...

2026-03-15T19:29:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…h9nl
_________________________

Anyone genuinely seeking Truth (who is the person Christ) is my brother.

In the days ahead, genuine Truth seeking will be more important than ever, for even the elect (if possible) may be deceived.

I hear ya. I constantly remind myself that I do not know the ...

2026-03-14T20:07:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…02g0
_________________________

I hear ya.

I constantly remind myself that I do not know the hour, but to always be ready as it will come like a thief in the night. And of course that Christ is already victorious.

I’m partial to a fractal view of eschatology, that the larger spiritual battle is not bound by time (which is fallen, inseparable from death), hence we see these repeated patterns throughout history, but it also is culminating into an actual and specific event (in time, or rather the end of time).

Jesus described it as “birth pains”, and the early church fathers (Augustine, Chrysostom, etc) talked about these birth pains reverberating throughout time but ultimately outside of (and transcendent to) time.

I find this is a very useful frame, and not the modern mechanistic understanding where we can’t imagine it being anything other than a specific date on the calendar (which if we’re not careful leads to despondency), rather than all dates across all times all simultaneously ending.

Glory to God. I have my disagreements with Puritan theology, but ...

2026-03-14T19:44:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…d8ms
_________________________

Glory to God.

I have my disagreements with Puritan theology, but only in the very anti-Puritan fruits seen today (Harvard, Yale, and the UCC and similar “churches” and their lesbian “pastors”).

That said, I love the robust Christ-centered and disciplined approach of the Puritans. It was foundational to the U.S. and its people. And it’s an absolute tragedy that we fell away from this.

Got myself in trouble on X, I forgot it’s hateful to notice ...

2026-03-14T19:15:47Z

Got myself in trouble on X, I forgot it’s hateful to notice things and call for repentance. The offending tweet/comment was about Netanyahu:

This is so bizarre.

If I’m understanding correctly, Netanyahu is signaling to Biblically illiterate Christians to support a religious ethnostate that is antithetical to Christianity, a religion he himself doesn’t believe in?

And he wants them to support a genocide of his neighbors?! referring to them as “Amalek” (despite them being Persian and explicitly not the long extinct Amalekites).

Weirder still is that Netanyahu is secular, and does not actually believe in Amalek, let alone the “return” of the very Messiah that his own religious ethnostate denies is the prophesied Messiah.

This is entirely too much cognitive and ideological dissonance.

In a secular worldview, talk of Amalek is metaphorical for genocide, and talk of the Messiah is simply nonsensical.

To a secular person, Netanyahu sounds deranged and bloodthirsty.

To a Christian, Netanyahu sounds like he’s speaking from the “synagogue of Satan” from Revelation 3:9 (those “who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie”).

To a religious Jew, Netanyahu is violating Torah, following in the path of Manasseh, ignoring the very clear warnings from Moses (in Deuteronomy) of blessings and curses on the people of Israel.

The only coherent response to all of this is repentance, sackcloth and ashes like Nineveh.

May God have mercy on us,

That was the rebuke :) Neither Roman Catholic nor Eastern ...

2026-03-14T14:36:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…6rcz
_________________________

That was the rebuke :)

Neither Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox hold to a works or merit based salvation, or a “tradition based” salvation (whatever that means).

“Tradition” in both East and West is how the church maintains consensus, that is, patristic consensus, although the RC adds the magisterium as an additional layer.

It is by tradition that both EO and RC reject and condemn Pelagianism (and semi-Pelagianism), which is what you’re accusing them of, but the Protestants without grounding in tradition have ongoing debates and schisms on exactly this topic (see Arminianism vs Calvinism).

Ironically, in both RC and EO what you are accusing has been solved in the early church (works-based salvation was anathematized at the Council of Carthage in AD 418), predating the schism, and it’s only in Protestant traditions that this heresy resurfaced, and then false accusations made against the apostolic RC and EO traditions (even though you can only find actual works based salvation in Protestantism, such as modern Arminian traditions, Arminius himself never even went that far).

When you start with false accusations (and no disrespect, but those were boomer-tier versions of theology) then it’s hard to get into the nuances of salvation, which varies between EO and RC, but varies even more so between Protestant denominations.

Both RC and EO emphasize grace through faith, the RC publishes their official teaching in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).

From CCC 1996: Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God

From CCC 2010: Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification

At this point all faithful Christian traditions agree (including most Protestant traditions, but fewer and fewer of the mainline are holding to this, tragically).

Where differences arise are very nuanced.

For example, strict 5-point Calvinists will find legit disagreement with the RC view of merit as “participating in grace”, because it conflicts with their view of irresistible grace.

The EO would reject that entire framing as a western presupposition amongst Calvinists and RC, and instead understand grace as the literal energy of God (see the essence/energy distinction), and caution against the western framing as man’s attempt to rationalize and systematize the mysteries of God, which were revealed in the person of Christ, who is both man and God. The person and life of Christ *is* the solution that divides the western mind.

There are many important differences between RC and EO on the topic of salvation and especially sanctification/theosis (although they’re nuanced and not as contrary as most Internet apologists make them out to be), and what you’ll find is that most Protestant traditions align closer to RC than EO, but over time drift into outright heresy (dispensationalism, unitarianism, etc).

Again, plenty to criticize in all of this, His church remains in schism due to our sins on these topics, but claiming RC and EO have a works or merit based salvation is not only false but a complete misrepresentation, both those apostolic traditions have explicit anathemas (from pre-schism church) against any kind of works based salvation. That heretical view was dead for over 1000 years till Arminius brought it back to life, which btw is what led to the articulation of the 5-points of Calvinism (the whole episode was a revolutionary/reactionary cycle that repeated the Pelagius/Augustine drama from the early church).

tl;dr works-based salvation is anathema in both RC and EO, only Arminian Protestant tradition keep that heresy alive.

There is much to criticize with the post-schism apostolic ...

2026-03-14T02:43:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…5laj
_________________________

There is much to criticize with the post-schism apostolic churches, east and west.

But neither teaches that.

Do not bear false witness.

There is much to criticize with the post-schism apostolic ...

2026-03-14T02:41:24Z

There is much to criticize with the post-schism apostolic churches.

But neither teaches that.

Do not bear false witness.

America is and has been dead for at least 50 years. In the 5th ...

2026-02-27T22:07:34Z

America is and has been dead for at least 50 years.

In the 5th and 6th century no one in Rome realized that their civilization had already fallen.

It took another thousand years and became obvious only in hindsight. They called themselves “Romans” even when they didn’t speak Latin. They still had the world’s most powerful military even after the fall of (western) Rome, for a while at least.

And just as the exact date of the fall of Rome is unclear (maybe AD 410, or maybe AD 476), so too with the collapse of the U.S.

Strong contenders so far are:
AD 1913
AD 1963
AD 1971

And just like the 6th century Romans, Americans are now living in the corpse of their own civilization, surrounded by people who don’t speak the language nor share the ethos.

We are well into the looting phase of our dead civilization (which explains our politicians, and our cultural disintegration).

It’s now becoming obvious, which also means it’s too late to stop, at least 50 years too late.

And, just like Rome, the current people and government would be unrecognizable to prior generations, all of whom would agree that *their* culture and way of life is no longer of this world.

The most stark example are the Puritans and Congregationalists who were the de-facto cultural and intellectual backbone of the U.S. (from early colonial period to its prime as a nation), creating schools (universal literacy), hospitals, universities (such as Harvard and Yale) and they were so zealous in their Christianity that they would be viewed as radicals even by today’s “Christian nationalists”. And yet all of their institutions, including state and local governments, are now fully secular and atheistic, and increasingly nihilistic (rejecting any notion of universal truth, especially moral truth). Their churches went from strong Calvinist to Unitarian to now grotesque mockeries of Christ, with the usual LGBTQ+ symbolism, active support of abortion, and whatever antichrist depravity of the day.

What preserved the people of Rome is also the most important point to consider:

Most civilizations die completely. Compare the Mayans and Aztecs to the Romans. What language do the descendants of the Mayans and Aztecs speak today? What is their cultural heritage?

The people of Rome preserved their cultural traditions across literal centuries, kingdoms came and went, entire languages came and went, but something unique in all of history happened in Rome that preserved their culture and traditions.

They did so because of Christianity. It was not an ideology or economic theory or nationality or any ethnicity — they unified around Christ.
Which is why the descendants of the Aztecs are not speaking Nahuatl, but they are speaking a Latin language (Spanish). An actual Roman citizen from the 5th century would even hear familiar prayers spoken amongst the descendants of the Aztecs.

Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos …
(Pater noster, qui es in caelis …)

America is dead, and has been dead for over 50 years.

Long live America.

Nostr event nevent1qqsd924mekvz5thhrnxlgs9999g5d7wpc2cz3j4lp8yk6kdeu9h52nszyp64ch5x0cjfk84vqtj9xhn0pvcyetj90qz8n4kfgfq6d4m4s9k5kfyqm3n

2026-02-19T03:26:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…lrcw
_________________________

With risk of being overly optimistic, you can already see signs ...

2026-02-10T01:54:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…q8tn
_________________________

With risk of being overly optimistic, you can already see signs of this happening in traditional religious communities — specifically, those having lots of children.

What you’ll find is that secular communities (including secular Christians, Jews, atheists, etc) are indistinguishable in terms of fertility rate. All of them have collapsed well below replacement levels.

The exceptions are non-secular, those explicitly rejecting the secular worldview and holding to tradition. You see this in every major religious group. E.g., Catholics overall aren’t above replacement level, but trad Catholics are having tons of kids. Same with ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the Amish.

If you step back and look what’s happening it’s the slow death of secularism.

since WWII “they” attempted to replace Christianity with a ...

2026-01-19T23:03:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…jcrd
_________________________

since WWII “they” attempted to replace Christianity with a shared secular mythos that is unraveling as we speak.

Left/Right exists in every functional mythos, it’s usually a healthy contention between order and chaos — problem is secularism cannot sustain its mythos, so today’s emerging “left” is simply not operating within secularism, and we’re now seeing the “right” split along mostly generational lines.

It takes the “right” longer to adjust probably because they’re trying to establish boundaries and order. Today the remnants of secularism (left and right) are mostly on the “right” and are stuck in that dying post WWII order, the kind that think MLK was a saint.

Meanwhile the younger generations are finding their way back to traditional Christianity, as the alternatives have never been more obviously demonic.

They wouldn’t have venerated him nor created a holiday for him ...

2026-01-19T22:43:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…y3xs
_________________________

They wouldn’t have venerated him nor created a holiday for him if he believed even one of those things

They go about it so incompetently though. Not just the media and ...

2026-01-18T19:46:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…2lsk
_________________________

They go about it so incompetently though. Not just the media and political class, but the central bankers and supposed “elite” — I don’t think we’ve ever had such unimpressive and staggeringly incompetent elite. Mayer Rothschild would be so disappointed.

On one hand they’re all destined to lose in the end, but I question whether they can even get off the ground with anything other than an Idiocracy version of CBDCs and social credit scores.

Lots of heresies in the “standard fare”, as they’ve by and ...

2025-11-24T03:25:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…fyng
_________________________

Lots of heresies in the “standard fare”, as they’ve by and large all capitulated on abortion, gay marriage, women’s ordination, unitarianism, etc — all things their own founders would be horrified by and would no doubt be left in deep repentance (which is what we should all be doing).

I agree fully with where you’ve set your house, and I came to much of the same conclusions.

Where I struggle is that the doctrinal drift is inevitable without real church authority (pointing to Christ).
The conservative Reformed churches that still try to hold the line (and God bless them) lack the means to stop this drift, and I’m unfortunately left with near zero confidence that by the time my children are adults those same churches (if they still exist) will be conservative and traditional, on the contrary you can expect female pastors advocating for abortions at all of them, causing yet another schism of conservative reformed somewhere else, leaving the most unholy congregations in their wake.

It pains me to say it but it’s clearly a pattern of bad fruit, and I’m left with trad versions of Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholicism, humbling myself as it were to churches with apostolic succession (where the gates of hell have not prevailed).

Love truth, wherever it may take you. The only justifiable reason ...

2025-11-19T19:13:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…u9lc
_________________________

Love truth, wherever it may take you.

The only justifiable reason to hate central banks or fiat or zionism or whatever -ism is because it’s speaking in lies, and the only reason lies and deceit are offensive is because Truth exists, and can be known.

What we call paganism or “neopaganism” is not what was ...

2025-11-19T19:08:14Z

What we call paganism or “neopaganism” is not what was celebrated in ancient times.

Paganism involved animal human sacrifices, especially child sacrifices — and not for wanton cruelty but deeply embedded into their theological systems.

Aztecs and Mayan are the most recent and well known, but even the old Norse rituals were horrendous, see the Uppsala Temple Sacrifices, or Blot, or the funerary rituals involving rape, torture and execution of a sex slave, or the infamous“blood eagle” executions.

These kind of human and animal sacrifices (often mixed together, and often with an element of perverse sexuality, such as rape before execution) are surprisingly common in pre-Christian “pagan” traditions.

It was often labeled “satanic” because “satan” just means “adversary” or sometimes “accuser” depending on the context.

And while most ancient religions were folk or indigenous to a specific place and people (a local deity), the big pagan religions we know of (Greek, Norse, Roman, etc) were universal and had syncretic means to incorporate other religions/deities.

Most famously the Romans would put every god of every conquered city in their pantheon and give them Latin names. They would sacrifice to these deities of conquered people. The Hebrews and their “one God” being the most famous exception (which proved intolerable to the Romans).

The early Christians were actually called “atheists” by the pagans for refusing to acknowledge the pagan gods as gods, and the early Christians (mostly Jewish Christians) saw these “gods” as created spirits, usually fallen, unclean spirits, demons.

“Demon” didn’t have a negative connotation amongst the pagans (see Socrates’ daemon), the negative connotation came later, most likely as a direct consequence of the bloody pagan rituals themselves, which were adversarial to Christianity in those days.

Remember the Romans fed Christians to lions as entertainment, and made it a point to persecute them, executing them in humiliating ways (e.g., Peter was crucified upside down).

Much later, in our modern age, the secular view saw ALL of these religions as “spiritual” expressions where things like rationality and logic and truth are claimed to be supreme. Hence all religions are treated as a list of mythologies rather than worldviews people lived by.

Turns out, those concepts (logic, truth, and even beauty) are the fruits of Christendom. No ancient pagan culture understood “truth” as an attribute, e.g., “Veritas” (Latin for “truth”) was a pagan goddess, same with Aletheia (Greek for “truth”).

Truth in the ancient world was not an attribute, not a what, but a who — truth was a person, a deity. The Christians understood that Truth was Christ (the way, the life, and the truth).

And nowadays, as the fruits of secularism die off, as people question whether truth even exists, maybe it’s all subjective, maybe it’s all “will to power”, maybe we’re in a simulation — you’re witnessing a return to the ancient worldviews, including the barbarism and ugliness that became associated with “Satan” in the first place.

Think about this as you’re plugging in to the chaos of modern life. The pagans used to say that we are the playthings of the gods. Christians simply claimed those “gods” were demons, and they offered a way to truth, and not to be a plaything of demons.

And now in a world removed from Christianity (in the Nietzschean sense) we get to rediscover what it’s like to be a plaything of arbitrary “gods” (principalities and powers).

All of this, to a large extent, is why people are looking at ancient religions in the first place, including ancient Christianity (which has answers to these questions of truth and meaning) and rejecting modern secular Christianity or the lifeless new-atheism in favor of some kind of spiritually that can explain actual life experiences. It’s why neopaganism is a thing or why occult practices are popular, people are seeking, and those seeking *truth* inevitably find their way to Christ (not the antichrist of secular Christianity).

Sharing a draft of a related essay (I’m in the middle of ...

2025-11-07T16:14:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…dccu
_________________________

Sharing a draft of a related essay (I’m in the middle of thinking this through, but the gist should be clear).

There’s unfortunate flaws within Protestant churches, especially reformed churches.

They begin with undeniable power, forging Christian communities that stand as historical triumphs. E.g., the Puritans in the early America colonies built disciplined piety, near-universal literacy, and covenantal societies, the very foundation of what became the United States — this is the goal of today’s Christian nationalists, and proof that Reformed elements (Scripture-first, accountable laity, lived-out faith) are necessary for a church to thrive.

Yet these same elements prove insufficient for multi-century fidelity.

They simply do not stand the test of time. Harvard (1636, Calvinist seminary), Yale (1701, same), Princeton (1746) all slid from robust Calvinist/reformed theology to secular and antichristian, not just abandoning their roots but now openly fighting against the mandate of their founders.

Denominations repeat this process: PCUSA held the line into the 1950s, then green-lit same-sex marriage by 2011; the UCC, born of Pilgrim covenants, now platforms transgender clergy as doctrine.

This is no fluke or one off, it’s the same depressing story over and over.

It goes like this: democratic sessions and assemblies invite progressive capture; confessions erode from strict to “essentials” to optional via majority vote; conservatives, boxed out, schism away, gifting the husk of their former churches to antichristian liberals who parade it around like a skin mask (e.g., former Puritan/reformed churches are today funding abortions).

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, despite their many issues, have mostly escaped this antichristian fate.

And every Protestant, especially reformed Protestants, should understand what is missing such that their churches repeatedly fail the test of time:

1. Insulated hierarchy — authority is vested in life-tenured bishops, with permanent synods whose legitimacy derives from apostolic continuity, not electoral cycles.

2. Sacramental ontology of office — ordination confers an indelible character; public heresy severs the minister from the sacraments and from the Church itself, not merely from a paycheck.

3. Irreformable canonical tradition — Holy Scripture is interpreted within the unbroken patristic consensus; no majority vote can redefine marriage, the Trinity, or the creeds.

4. Schism — formal separation is excommunication, not a strategic rebrand with the building intact.

Reformed churches typically secure none of these. History’s verdict is merciless: absent these orthodox guardrails, liberalization is not a mere risk but the inevitable fate of every conservative reformed church.

Know them by their fruits — the founders of every mainline Protestant church would (by their own writings) admit that the gates of hell prevailed on their churches.

And worth pointing out that ALL of this was made possible by the great schism between east and west (cemented after the sack of Constantinople, by the west, during the fourth crusade).

Meanwhile the gates of hell have not prevailed against Eastern Orthodox (despite murderous/genocidal attempts from communists), and the same is true of Roman Catholicism (despite numerous scandals that by all accounts should have destroyed them) — and thus it remains an absolute tragedy that His church remains in schism, all while some of the most pious and impressive Christian theologians in history have ended up in reformed movements that ultimately seeded the ground for antichrist churches.

I’m not a Catholic but this just isn’t true — and I don’t ...

2025-11-07T09:03:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…2xht
_________________________

I’m not a Catholic but this just isn’t true — and I don’t just mean in the ancient pre-schism catholic church, I mean even today in the latest Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), this isn’t true.

There’s much to complain about with the RC church, but one nice thing is that their “magisterium” systematically articulates every aspect of their theology with painstaking precision (dating back pre-schism, with later innovations that they refer to as “doctrinal development”).

The east may criticize that the west over intellectualizes the mysteries and misses the “phronema” (the heart), but from a western and especially reformed perspective RC provides an exact articulation and exegesis on these topics.

For example:

Salvation is initiated and completed through Jesus Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, which provide infinite merit for the redemption of humanity (CCC 1992; Hebrews 7:25)

Justification begins with faith and baptism, infused by God’s grace (CCC 1987–1995; Romans 3:24). Good works are necessary as a response to grace, not as a prerequisite or independent contribution (James 2:14–26).

And where it aligns closer to Calvinist/reformed confessions goes back pre-schism, to Augustine. Catholicism explicitly rejects Pelagianism (and semi-pelagianism) and affirms there is no human effort towards salvation without grace, that God is 100% responsible for your salvation, and man is 100% responsible for sin and rebellion against God.

The seeming contradiction was resolved earlier in Chalcedon (5th century, pre schism), that the person of Christ, fully human and full God, has a divine will and human will — and a “synergoi” between the two, that is, man and God cooperating (from man’s perspective free will, from the divine perspective complete sovereignty).

The Catholic rebuttal to reformed confessions (and TULIP more generally) is similar to the eastern (e.g., confessions of Dositheus) — basically a series of anathemas that most reformed theologians actually agree with, such as explicitly stating that God is never the author of evil.

The concerns from EO and RC are about these edge cases where Calvinism leads to moral determinism, or deism (clockmaker God) — and it’s important to point out that this is exactly what happened, e.g., to the Puritans (the most hardcore Calvinists and Christian nationalists to ever exist — whose theology I love, but the bad fruits of Harvard and Yale are undeniable).

Similarly, I’d be careful about the “violating free will” line, even staunch Calvinists reject that way of thinking as it leads to the view that God is the author of evil. The reformed position on this is technically not that different from the EO and RC position (despite all the Internet strawman versions). I think best articulated in that Jonathan Edward’s quote.. which RC and EO fully agree with.

What happened to the Puritans? It is perhaps the greatest irony ...

2025-10-19T10:01:08Z

What happened to the Puritans?

It is perhaps the greatest irony imaginable. And a lesson for today’s conservative churches.

The Puritans embodied Biblically centered, ultra-conservative Christianity: orthodox, rigorous Calvinists, aiming to forge a “city upon a hill”, founding what became a large part of mainline American Protestantism, founding universities such as Harvard and Yale to train orthodox clergy and uphold divine covenants.

Puritans built tight-knit communities with strong Biblical social structures, that were an undeniable foundation to the American colonies and eventually states (especially in New England).

At first this appeared successful. The exact goal of many of today’s conservative Christian nationalists.

But what is the Puritan legacy? Secularized institutions now championing theological liberalism, Unitarianism (rejecting the trinity), Universalism, churches promoting LGBTQ+ “rights”, environmental “justice”, promoting atheism and humanism, advocating for abortion, funding abortion, and claiming the murder of an unborn baby is “healthcare”.

If you see a church today with rainbow flags and clear woke propaganda, openly advocating for abortion, there’s a good chance it is a descendant of a Puritan church.

The “fruits” (Matthew 7:16) of Puritanism are directly antithetical to their own Biblical conservatism.

Did the gates of hell prevail?

One imagines not a single Puritan founder could look at the legacy of their churches and congregationalist communities and not be horrified.

Not just a failure, but a kind of demonic mockery of Christianity, arguably the worst and most antichrist churches and institutions that have ever existed have come from the Puritan lineage.

The lesson is hopefully clear, one needs more than Biblically centered Christianity, one needs more than conservative principles. This might be a hard lesson for today’s staunch Calvinists (it was for me), but the rotten fruits are clear.

Very well said, there’s also a religious angle to this, as ...

2025-10-14T16:32:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…jcs2
_________________________

Very well said, there’s also a religious angle to this, as central planners hit the so-called “pricing problem”.

It is the same whisper from that old serpent, “ye shall be as gods”

What prices are measuring is the continuously changing and subjective values of all people in a market, it makes what should otherwise be unknowable (pure chaos of all of our whims and passions and wants), not only knowable but quantifiable. Thus to overcome the “pricing problem” central planners would need to “be as gods” and fully control the continuously changing and subjective values of all people, denying even the pretense of free will, a kind of total totalitarianism.

It is, to be clear, impossible for central planners, both logically and Biblically, and the Bible is really clear on the beastly horrors that await those that go down that path (which our entire civilization is running towards).

It is fascinating how all is being revealed. The demons, the ...

2025-10-14T16:21:28Z

It is fascinating how all is being revealed.

The demons, the objective evils of the world, are on clear display as if a veil has been lifted — and now we’re witnessing that the lie of the antichrist (that you earn your way to heaven and don’t need Christ) is starting to be revealed, which creates the opportunity for the gospel to be proclaimed to all.

It’s called “good news” for a reason.

Because *you* and not just Trump are indeed not bound for heaven, and never were. And deep in your heart you know that.

It is only through Christ that those gates will open, and only to those that repent and truly follow Him. It was His perfect faith, His death on the cross, His resurrection, and His ascension to heaven (both as God, and as a man, “behold the man”) that made this straight and narrow path a reality — the good news is that there is a way to salvation for all of us sinners.

Christ is Lord
Christ is King

Life is really confusing. And Christianity even more so. The ...

2025-10-14T14:33:00Z

Life is really confusing. And Christianity even more so.

The plain truth of Christianity becomes easily obscured by the chatter of the various “Christianities” and especially the chaos of easily falsified interpretations that have become the norm online. If you find yourself engaging in this chaos, repent, this is not truth-seeking, and it is certainly not Christ that you are participating in.

The very existence of the different denominations, all the way back to the great schism, is heartbreaking, tragic beyond measure, that our pride (east and west and every reformer) our own egos and political ambitions, became more important than Christ who is in our midst. If we want iron to sharpen iron, it must begin with humility to Christ.

In His mercy God allows these harmful schisms (harmful to us), a divine patience that is impossible for me to understand.

Like with the parable of the prodigal son, neither brother was “right”, the older brother was rebuked, and only through profound humility did the younger find his way back to the loving embrace of his father. And when I see sincere Christians misrepresent or ridicule other Christians, assured their interpretation is “right” and all other denominations are wrong or that you just need a Bible (or inversely, pretending they’re all right), we may need to stop and reflect that we are *all* wrong (all of us), for if truth was on our side who could be against us? There wouldn’t be schisms if truth was what we were seeking.

All lies die. Only truth remains in the end.

Only through profound humility can one even find truth.
You cannot debate or ridicule or coerce or deceive your way to truth (those just put more beams in your eyes). And yet how often do we faithfully acknowledge or even understand truthfully other denominations? How often do we misrepresent other interpretations, or criticize them while being blind to the faults in our own?

All it takes is ONE passage in scripture to falsify your interpretation, yet people will cherry pick only what serves their interpretation, their ego as judge of Christ and His message.

Obviously the schisms continue to exist because of this— truly it is a way to humility.

Let yourself be proven wrong, whether your non-denominational or reformed or Baptist or Catholic or Orthodox — let yourself *be* wrong, because you are not God, for only Christ is *right*, and to the degree you are actually right, you are at best the older brother to the prodigal son, and at worst lost in outer darkness.

That’s obviously true, but not what I’m talking about.

2025-10-11T03:16:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…558n
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That’s obviously true, but not what I’m talking about.

Yes, he’s referring to anarchy in the classical sense of no ...

2025-10-10T18:52:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…kxjw
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Yes, he’s referring to anarchy in the classical sense of no rulers or authority, voluntarism — which is a shallow philosophy and can be applied to economics or politics, sure, but when he says “Bitcoin is anarchy” this is just false, presupposing mathematics and an orderly universe, a network protocol, a monetary system, even a stable game theory, how the state will react over time, how new economies will form, none of this is “anarchy”

It’s like saying a bicycle is anarchy…

You can’t have “nothing”, truth is always grounded in ...

2025-10-10T14:43:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…3um7
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You can’t have “nothing”, truth is always grounded in something— especially mathematics, believing in the mathematics is believing in the order and stability of the universe of which you are a part.

It’s incredibly shallow thinking to call that anarchy.

It’s like staring directly at the face of God, the very word of God, and saying “there’s nothing here”

Because both are true. If Christianity is true, then Christ rules ...

2025-10-10T01:56:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…vgte
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Because both are true.

If Christianity is true, then Christ rules in the midst of His enemies, and the powers and principalities of this world will hate him, and they will attempt to destroy His church, to pervert it into a church of the antichrist. The attacks against Christianity will come from both within and without, and liberal Christianity is the most obvious attack from within. This is why the push for female pastors and all the usually gayness of liberals.

If Bitcoin is true, then the unholy power of seigniorage and centralized economic control will fail, as people can opt out of their control, and they will attack Bitcoin from within and without, exactly as leftists have done with everything and not just the economy (from universities to school boards)

While it’s easy to find scripture passages that appear to ...

2025-10-07T03:10:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…5y7z
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While it’s easy to find scripture passages that appear to support ANY given theology, logically, all it takes is one contradictory passage to falsify an interpretation. Dispensationalism fails badly here, but this is also where the strict versions of Covenant theology will run into difficulty — ultimately the Bible does affirm ethnic Israel as well as the gentiles grafted on, and a prophetic mass conversion of the ethnic Israel at the end times.

There’s also Christ making the old covenant obsolete (Hebrews 8:13), and not just fulfilled— which can be a challenge to both dispensationalism and strict versions of covenant theology, especially the subdivisions of legalistic covenants (Noahide, Abrahamic, etc)

All told, dispensationalism should be in the trash bin, especially as its fruit has become known. And strict legalistic versions of covenant theology will run its own risks. The old covenant points to Christ, not just partially but completely.

the goal is always Christ (the way, the truth, and the life), where we often find a “both-and” solution to these kind of dilemmas, which is reflected in early church fathers on this topic.

That said, the early church fathers did not mince words about the Jews, who lost the authority granted to them by God (the binding/loosing that Christ gave to the apostles), and that Jews had partially hardened hearts (God giving them over to their own sins).

See Chrysostom’s “Against the Jews” to get a sense of how Christians traditionally approached this subject — ethnic Jews are to be loved and the patriarchs and prophets honored, but Jews were seen as obstinate, blind to truth, and their synagogues filled with demons. And it is this group they believed will be saved in a mass conversion event at the end times.

Thank you for your time. I’ll not waste any more of it.

2025-09-30T20:29:42Z

In reply to nevent1q…gjyp
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Thank you for your time. I’ll not waste any more of it.

There is no “your truth” or “my truth” There is only THE ...

2025-09-30T20:26:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…ne97
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There is no “your truth” or “my truth”

There is only THE truth

And truthfully, the thing I fear most, and fear so deeply that it’s the only thing I do fear is God at the day of judgment.

“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
~ Matthew 7:22-23

Trying hard is irrelevant. I could just as well be describing a ...

2025-09-30T12:24:32Z

In reply to nevent1q…mj0x
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Trying hard is irrelevant. I could just as well be describing a mathematical proof, the soundness doesn’t rest in persuasion.

You’re directly assuming you understand what proof is, what truth is — while demonstrating you have no idea and couldn’t even explain what I just said.

In your worldview, what is truth? What is justification for knowledge? Or he’s an easy one, what is good? How do you know something is good or bad? Right or wrong?

My point is that you do have one, but you have no idea what that is and clearly have no idea what people mean by God.

Well, the answer is far deeper, think depth rather than the ...

2025-09-30T06:49:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…elz9
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Well, the answer is far deeper, think depth rather than the breadth you are describing.

You’re presuming you have access to truth, and that’s because you are coming from a culture that arose from a Christian ethos.
That culture is however being “deconstructed” before your eyes, and if you ask a philosopher at any university today, they’ll explain that there is no objective truth, you can’t really know anything, what is truth? Some might say “my truth” as if it’s relative. But they also can’t answer what a woman is… But if instead you have “faith” that there is objective truth (the truth), dive deep into that and see where it takes you.

What you were originally asking is verification for salvation, which is not a math problem, it’s a relationship with Christ. It’s like asking for verification that you truly love your wife. It’s not math, but it can be verified by anyone taking the time to learn about the relationship and carefully discern the fruits of that relationship.

The “trust me bro” version of salvation is wrong, not biblical, and the truth is a much deeper (and rewarding) question that is very much worth pursuing.

Sorry, I meant that by definition — that’s just a simplified ...

2025-09-30T06:30:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…quw3
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Sorry, I meant that by definition — that’s just a simplified definition of “belief”, what’s true (what’s real) and what’s not. That’s just the standard definition of “belief”, it can be supernatural or natural or mundane or axiomatic or whatever, belief is just a belief.

Knowledge is not self justifying, belief is required. You can’t have knowledge of something that you don’t believe in, what Aristotle defined as “justified true belief”.

Psychologically, the source of what you think of as knowledge is effectively your god, that is, the first principle (or the God archetype if you’re into Jung). For naturalists this is reason and empiricism — but there’s a reason (pun intended) that naturalists only exist in Christian cultures.

For some simple examples, there is no natural explanations for truth, goodness, beauty, or even numbers nor mathematics — we refer to these as transcendent categories. They’re real, and we can have knowledge about them, but only with Christian presuppositions about knowledge, outside of a Christian epistemology it’s all just word games (as postmodernists are want to point out). Our cultural bias is so thoroughly shaped by these Christian presuppositions we don’t even see it, like water to a fish, we just act like these things are obvious (but there’s a reason this only emerges through Christendom)

It does, but go deeper for an answer — where does your ...

2025-09-30T06:10:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…2djz
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It does, but go deeper for an answer — where does your definition and understanding of “truth” come from? How do we *know* what is true?

All ancient cultures understood “truth” as a deity. Veritas, the Latin word for truth, was a pagan goddess.

The Greeks got a little closer but Aletheia is also a pagan goddess. Socrates had his daemon. Plato a demiurge. Aristotle had a profound insight that there must be a first principle (a first cause that cannot be explained) and that it must be the logos (the divine word) of what he called the unmoved mover. But this was ultimately transcendent and unknowable to us mortals.
The Hebrew thought of logos as creator with a radical notion that humans are created in the image and likeness of God, and Christianity innovated with Christ as logos made flesh, connecting us mortals to the transcendent, to the spirit of truth (made flesh).

The presumption of objective and knowable truth is entirely born of Christianity. It is one of many “fruits” of Christendom than we tried to preserve but without the tree from which it grew.

We question Christianity with an implicit Christian ethos, exactly at a time when that ethos is disappearing in the west. And the consequences is that truth itself reverts to its old pagan relativism. We become playthings of gods (ideologies), and can’t even answer what a woman is.

But if you want actual epistemology, the radical view that humans can know truth, then you have Christianity, and only Christianity, as the source.

Yes, and unfortunately that kind of “cheap grace” version of ...

2025-09-29T23:56:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…9p4p
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Yes, and unfortunately that kind of “cheap grace” version of Christianity became common in the last century, and has turned away a lot of honest truth seekers, especially young men. It was certainly promoted though, but so was Keynesian economics and a gender spectrum.

I think the new atheist critiques were apt to reject such silly versions of Christianity, the problem of course is that’s not historic Christianity but a modern secular version.

The deeper issue is that secularism is producing nothing but chaos and nihilism, and its core presuppositions are incompatible with Christianity. And of course our entire civilization and morality (such as universal human rights) is built on Christian presuppositions (this points back to Nietzsche’s famous death of God criticism, accurately predicting the atrocities of the 20th century)

Epistle of James is pretty clear on this (and this will upset ...

2025-09-29T23:34:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…7m8e
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Epistle of James is pretty clear on this (and this will upset many modern Christians), but “even the demons believe”, faith without works is dead, and “a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” — this is the line that Luther famously tried to remove from the German translation of the Bible.

Man is saved by faith thru grace, but more specifically in Scripture man is saved by Christ’s perfect faith, not our own.

Faith is best understood as “faithfulness” (as in marriage) and not mere intellectual agreement (which is what James is clearly dismissing).

There’s a ton of verifiable historical evidence for the person of Christ as well as fulfillment of what He said would happen, as well as the miracles of his ministry and around the church. And plenty of saints such that we can have assurance are “in heaven”, but you’re right that the deeper mysteries of salvation as it effects you personally is not as clear, although in the negation it is — everyone knows what kind of life they could lead to not be saved. And if we’re very honest with ourselves we know the kind of life we should be living, what we’re called to, and that Christ is knocking.

That’s a bit too neologic for me. belief is how one makes sense ...

2025-09-29T23:18:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…g9ap
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That’s a bit too neologic for me.

belief is how one makes sense of the world around us — everyone believes (has a worldview) and very few can articulate what they believe. But it’s revealed by their actions.

Faith is best understood as faithfulness, we still have the meaning for marriage (a faithful marriage) but religious faith has in modern times been misconstrued as an intellectual affirmation— which is completely incorrect and ahistoric. Faith is about commitment to something bigger than yourself and your vanities.

Christians don’t fear death and are willing to die for their faith — speaking truth even if it means death. Because what they fear is not nihilistic death, they fear the judgment of God based on the morality written on their heart.

Dominion by Tom Holland is another good one. If you’re into ...

2025-09-29T23:08:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…e3xf
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Dominion by Tom Holland is another good one.

If you’re into philosophy I’d recommend Nihilism by Eugene Rose (who later became an orthodox monk, Fr. Seraphim Rose). It’s incredibly dense (more so than even Nietzsche) and manages to both articulate and dispel Nietzsche’s entire philosophy, with beautiful parallels to Dostoyevsky.

A deep dive into history, including the history of science, or into philosophy will all point you back inevitably to the person and divinity of Christ.

It’s like an orange pill, except it goes infinitely deep and reveals truth at the most fundamental level.

Many many people have verified, it takes a lot of work, but ...

2025-09-29T22:33:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…cen9
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Many many people have verified, it takes a lot of work, but it’s all there.

If you can get to the bottom of Bitcoin, you can find sufficient verification that Jesus is who He says He is — and just like with Bitcoin, your old worldview was based on unverified lies until you discover the truth. With Bitcoin you learn what money is and the lies of the modern economy, with God you learn what truth is, goodness, beauty, not to mention meaning and purpose — verifiable answers to fundamental questions that the modern world obscures just like it does with money.

This a tricky one to reason about (especially in our fallen ...

2025-09-29T16:58:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…hdvl
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This a tricky one to reason about (especially in our fallen state), because the Bible explicitly has a “both-and” for this — that God has completely sovereignty and foreknowledge AND that man has a choice, all of the gospels are clear on this — Christ didn’t sound like Joseph Campbell “follow your heart, God already decided everything”, but instead we are explicitly called to respond with our own will, to humble ourselves in obedience to Christ (and yet only His grace can give us such humility).

When one denies God’s sovereignty, they’re denying a Biblical truth about who He is (which you see in the Arminian schism), but similarly when you deny the free will of man you end up with moral determinism and eventual deism — deism arose exactly from that Arminian/Reformed split.

Fortunately, delving into the topic in the spirit of truth brings one closer to Christ, who is fully God and fully man, and from a Godly (transcendent) perspective you can affirm all five points of Calvinism, and from the human perspective (recognizing that we are not God), you can negate all five points and land on free will (as the Arminians did).

If you dig into church fathers this is what St. Paul meant by synergism (usually gets translated as “coworkers” which missed the depth of the Greek synergoi) — and the only mistake is to try to fit this into rational terms (which would deny that Christ is both fully man and fully God), but by acknowledging the truth of Christ, from that also provides the solution to the entire free will debate (and the proper negation of moral determinism on human terms).

I was fooled into thinking there was at most a couple dozen ...

2025-09-29T03:05:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…pr4a
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I was fooled into thinking there was at most a couple dozen feds… not in any of the wildest conspiracy rantings did anyone think there were hundreds.

And not a single one of those feds spoke up and revealed the truth. Hundreds at this event and thousands behind the scenes (who knew what really happened) kept this a secret even as they arrested and detained innocent people.

Forget that this confirms that conspiracies are actually easy to conceal even with large numbers of people orchestrating, this shows a demonic possession amongst these institutions — something far more sinister than just faking an election or justifying power grabs after false flag operations.

As such it is best framed as a spiritual battle— and the only solution is to repent as Nineveh did

He already did, and He already revealed to John (in the book of ...

2025-09-26T21:54:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…6lsg
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He already did, and He already revealed to John (in the book of Revelation) how he did.

Time as we understand it is an artifact of our fallen world, we cannot even reason about time without death. We have no idea what a “deathless time” would even look like, but we will.

Almost all of the church fathers delved deeply into this topic, and unfortunately our modern view tends to ignore this and just presuppose a Newtonian and mechanistic view of time (which can be falsified even under its own system).

God is not operating in time. He is the author of time. Time, ...

2025-09-26T21:37:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…xa76
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God is not operating in time. He is the author of time.
Time, reason, and all transcendent categories are parts of creation, they are not God’s essence, they are how He allows us to make sense of creation — and the life of Christ is how He revealed who God truly is. This is what it means to be the Alpha and the Omega, and that all things were made through Him (the incarnate Christ).

There’s a beautiful tradition here that made this explicit, but unfortunately lost in the modern west.

What did God do after his ascension?
He created the world.

This is why church fathers denied a “pre-incarnate” Christ, pointing out that the incarnate Christ is eternal and outside of time — that Moses and even Adam and Eve in the garden, Enoch, all were with Christ.

This is what John 1 makes clear.

Nefarious is an excellent movie. The fallen angels are also ...

2025-09-26T21:28:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…d470
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Nefarious is an excellent movie.

The fallen angels are also granted free will, but have no means of salvation — the rebellious spirits (the principalities and powers we struggle with) are still completely subject to God’s sovereignty.

Their reaction to Christ in the gospels makes this clear. But also the “lying spirit” that God allowed to deceive Ahab is another example.

Evil is clearly not a vital force. It is the absence of good. ...

2025-09-26T21:25:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…6cz9
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Evil is clearly not a vital force. It is the absence of good.

This isn’t just an orthodox perspective. This is well understood even across schismatic lines — God is not responsible for sin or evil, man is. And simultaneously God, and only God, is responsible for all that is good, beautiful, and true.

Our modern and overly rationalistic worldview has a difficult time with this, but this isn’t a new topic and these arguments are as old as Christianity.

Fwiw I understand where you’re coming from (having said many of ...

2025-09-26T21:19:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…4s0k
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Fwiw I understand where you’re coming from (having said many of these same things), but this is contrary to the Bible. The reformers (including Calvin, and even Zwingli) rejected this, as did all church fathers.

The only support you’ll find for this is in the gnostic heretics that also denied Christ’s divinity.

It’s part of a larger free will debate. And I highly recommend going down that rabbit hole as ultimately it brings one closer to Christ.

This debate was also one of the main differences between the Pharisees and the Essenes and the Sadducees … it’s not a topic solved within man’s rationality, but can only be solved by the dual nature of Christ (as both God and man).

God is not subject to time. He is not operating in time. This ...

2025-09-26T21:10:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…pxwk
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God is not subject to time. He is not operating in time.

This view of God is very much not the God of the Bible.

While it makes sense in transcendent categories (God’s omniscience), that is not what Christ said at any point in His ministry. Nor what He said to Moses or any of the prophets.

God has granted us free will, and it transcends rationality— the solution to the free will debates (like all of these kind of theological debates) are resolved in the life and person of Christ, who is 100% God and 100% man, and our free will is God-given and good (existing prior to the fall), but time as we understand is not (because time in our world is inseparable from death)

God is explicitly not the author of evil. Evil is not a thing per ...

2025-09-26T21:02:07Z

In reply to nevent1q…4s0k
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God is explicitly not the author of evil.

Evil is not a thing per se, not part of the creation that He saw and proclaimed to be “very good”.

Augustine and other church fathers explained evil as the privation or absence of good, that evil has no being — similar to how darkness is the absence of light.
If you imagine evil has a substance or being you end up in gnostic heresies.

What we call evil has no power or being, hence it cannot create but only corrupt or destroy that which is good.

This is also why God is 100% responsible for all that is good, including our redemption. And that man is 100% responsible for sin and the evil of turning away from God.
This is true in reformed and orthodox theology.

The goodness of God is such that He can bring good out of evil, but this is like a light shining in the dark, not to be confused with God authoring evil, only fallen man is responsible for evil.

It’s a very good question. Only God can truly forgive sins, as ...

2025-09-25T18:01:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…34qf
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It’s a very good question.

Only God can truly forgive sins, as only He has perfect justice and knows every heart.
And only God can judge repentance.

Hence every man alive should fear the final judgment ("I never knew you; depart from me" — may we never hear those words)

Human forgiveness is to be humble to God. We are to “forgive” even unrepentant sinners from our heart (exactly as Erika did) as it removes our judgement, cleanses our heart by the grace of God (to not hold it “on our ledger” as she worded it).

Otherwise, us holding back forgiveness waiting for repentance is to judge repentance ourselves, making ourselves into God.

fwiw, by this same humility, the civil authorities are required to enact worldly justice by the authority God has granted them. This means even if the killer repents very publicly and very sincerely, he is still to receive the punishment due (likely capital punishment) — and again for the same reasons that only God can truly judge repentance, and only God can truly forgive us our sins.
The thief on the cross is instructive here. He is granted forgiveness before his death, which by his own admission/confession he rightfully deserved.

We are not the judge of whether he repents, that’s between him ...

2025-09-22T07:59:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…zatd
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We are not the judge of whether he repents, that’s between him and God.

We forgive even the unrepentant because we humble ourselves to God and obey His perfect justice.

Our civil authorities must enact justice — even if — the killer publicly repents, again out of humility and obedience to God.

Even the demons believe. It’s faithfulness to Him, humble ...

2025-09-22T07:54:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…duzg
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Even the demons believe. It’s faithfulness to Him, humble repentance, that saves — he’s offering it to everyone.

We are to hate evil with perfect hatred. We are not to make peace or even tolerate evil.

Free will v predestination, like most theological disputes, is ...

2025-09-12T05:33:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…d5wj
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Free will v predestination, like most theological disputes, is solved by Christ — the God man, who is both man and God. Fully Sovereign, while also fully man who obeyed the will of the Father, and not partially but completely man.

Predestination debates go back even before Calvinists v Arminians, even before Augustine v Pelagius, the Essenes v Pharisees had this exact same debate while Christ walked among them.
And notice in each of those conflicts, one group inevitably feeds into the other (usually a reactionary movement to perceived fatalism). They’re flip sides of the same coin (unfortunately with many falling off into heresy).

You cannot read Scripture, especially the epistles, without seeing a rock solid case for predestination, while simultaneously, even in those same epistles, seeing a rock solid case for man’s agency. Both are affirmed in no uncertain terms. And in our modern worldview this is seen as a contradiction.

The mistake is to put human reason above God, as if human rationality is above God. Or to put God within time as many Calvinists are unfortunately want to do. He (Christ) is the author of reason and time, and transcends both, while also revealing truth to us.

Christ solves the seemingly impossible free-will v predestination puzzle through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven (as a man) — which strongly affirms both His Sovereignty and affirms man’s agency. This is something no other religion can solve, including secularism.

It’s not you they hate, it’s God. It is all that is ...

2025-09-12T04:52:25Z

It’s not you they hate, it’s God. It is all that is beautiful, and good, and true. That is what they hate.

The veil has been further lifted. People are now clearly seeing the evil around them, from the vile celebrations of death, to the power games and broken narrative spells.

It’s a rare moment to see the demonic so clearly. May it be blessed, truly.

And still that line between good and evil runs through every heart. Yours in particular.

Your enemy is not flesh and blood, it’s not just some liberal white lady, it’s not just some activist judge, it’s the dark and prideful ideology that led those people to mutilate themselves and to openly participate in the demonic.

You can see the true evil clearly. Don’t miss this opportunity. It’s pure evil and it wants nothing more than suffering and death. And those with eyes to see can see this demon.
Satan is pure pride, he will gloat before retreating back into the shadows.

The people saying and doing these awful things? They are sinners, like you — and also like you, made in the image and likeness of God.

Pray for them, sincerely. The most repugnant of them are the most in need of grace. Imagine being so consumed by the demonic that you would become like them.
“There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

It is a spiritual battle, and it is the only battle that matters.

The worldly battle? The demons are doomed to devour each other, for evil only begets more evil. The demons will take as many lost souls as they can, and as much innocent blood as they can. Resist not evil. Evil is not a power, it is the absence of God.

Turn to God, and spit in Satan’s face. Seek refuge in Christ, and He will grant you the wisdom and strength needed to do what must be done with what time He has granted you in this life.

And pray that those lost souls be saved, truly saved, before it is too late for them, and for you.

Evil is not a thing per se, not a power in itself, by definition ...

2025-08-23T17:26:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…2vkt
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Evil is not a thing per se, not a power in itself, by definition evil was not created (“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”), but rather evil is the absence of God and His grace.

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
~ 1 John 1:5

Exactly as darkness is not a thing, not a force, but merely the absence of light. And our rebellion from the true light of God is the “evil” in our fallen world, a God-shaped emptiness in our hearts (for we are made in His image, icons of the source of all that is good — our rebellion is the empty darkness we call evil).

“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
~ Romans 7:18-19

Faustian Bargain, they think they’re profiting and don’t ...

2025-08-22T16:40:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…6qqa
_________________________

Faustian Bargain, they think they’re profiting and don’t realize the damage they’ve done to their own soul. Similar to their boss in Jackson Hole, they’re serving a power and principality that they don’t understand.

Pray for them, as “killing themselves” is ultimately what that demon is aiming for

I haven’t seen it. Seems slightly out of date but I’m not ...

2025-08-21T21:47:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…53u6
_________________________

I haven’t seen it. Seems slightly out of date but I’m not sure much has changed (maybe Google claiming they have up to 50 error correcting qbits)

The true state of quantum “computers”: ...

2025-08-21T20:18:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…unxn
_________________________

The true state of quantum “computers”:

https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237

Less effective than an abacus or a trained dog.

Important reminder, Quantum attacks remain purely theoretical— ...

2025-08-21T20:14:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…unxn
_________________________

Important reminder, Quantum attacks remain purely theoretical— the existing quantum “computers” could not break your security if you gave them your seed phrase and private keys.

They can’t even do the forward elliptical curve calculation, let alone reverse.

Defending against theoretic attacks should remain purely theoretical. You can’t make a meaningful BIP without specific details of what a future quantum computer would do. It’s like trying to defend against laser guided missiles in the Stone Age.

Despite all the hype, we’re closer to cold fusion and Alcubierre warp drives than we are to stable qbits sufficient to attack weak versions of RSA, let alone Bitcoin’s elliptical curve.

Sats Purchasing Power, a pricing tool based on future fiat ...

2025-08-19T22:18:03Z

Sats Purchasing Power, a pricing tool based on future fiat inflation and Bitcoin’s CAGR, I had to go deep on metric prefixes, not just sats, millisats, microsats, … got all the way down to quectosats

Math gets weird in fiat, the denominator has no limit.

https://bitcoinistrue.com/tools/satspp/

I made a quick inflation calculator, helpful for understanding ...

2025-08-13T14:56:07Z

I made a quick inflation calculator, helpful for understanding just how bad the monetary debasement of fiat money has been — also useful to see trends, like how wealth shifted from gold to equities (in the 80s and especially 90s), leading to that fascinating situation where gold has outperformed the S&P500 since the late 90s (in hard money terms the markets never recovered from the .com crash — everything since has been noise of a dying system)

https://bitcoinistrue.com/tools/inflation/

I made a quick Rent vs Mortgage calculator for Bitcoiners. It ...

2025-08-12T06:25:24Z

I made a quick Rent vs Mortgage calculator for Bitcoiners.

It works like a normal Rent vs Buy Calculator, except it lets you put in honest inflation metrics and a high CAGR for savings, and the goal is not to maximize fiat but to maximize Bitcoin.

https://bitcoinistrue.com/tools/rent-vs-mortgage/

Experts, central planners, and all of the so-called intellectual ...

2025-08-10T18:17:33Z

Experts, central planners, and all of the so-called intellectual class will not accurately predict nor plan the impact of AI.

In fact, they’ll be comically wrong (as always), and most likely in ways that expose their grift (in the tradition of court astrologers and prophets). And as you’d expect, decentralized markets will adapt and innovate new business paradigms, leading to a net increase in jobs as the “knowledge worker” class (mostly spreadsheet jockeys) slowly die out.

The most free and most decentralized markets will innovate first, and (again, as always) central planners will come along afterwards and pretend they control everything, and add stifling regulations to enrich themselves while bringing nothing but misery into the world. Oh and of course central banks will continue their grift while hard assets and resources flow away from them.

Based on this, you can easily pick the winners and losers of the coming economic disruptions.

Rapid does not mean magic. And “open” does not mean ...

2025-08-10T04:05:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…zpya
_________________________

Rapid does not mean magic. And “open” does not mean make-believe.

Technology is grounded in real engineering, not hype. Quantum computing is a cool concept, like cold fusion or Alcubierre warp drives. I’m hopeful for each of those, especially QC.
But until there’s a practical breakthrough it remains in the realm of fantasy, especially with respect to reversing hash algorithms and elliptic curve cryptography. Theoretical threats deserve theoretical countermeasures.

The framing that it’s advancing rapidly is just simply false, we’re short an actual breakthrough of scalable stable qubits. I don’t doubt such a breakthrough will happen, but I doubt very much the fiat-funded researchers and academics will be the ones to do it.

Today’s quantum computers can’t multiply numbers reliably, ...

2025-08-10T03:20:16Z

Today’s quantum computers can’t multiply numbers reliably, let alone even process a large number.

You can give a quantum computer your private keys and it can’t handle the forward point multiplication needed for an elliptic curve. A quantum computer could be given a seed phrase and it can’t generate the key pairs and derivation paths.

Until there’s a quantum computer that can do basic arithmetic like pocket calculator from the 1980s, we should stop pretending there’s some imminent threat.

And we should stop funding fraudulent research claiming factorization breakthroughs.

quoting
note1spw…4gtw
⚡️📰 NEW - Barron’s latest cover pushes Bitcoin quantum computing FUD.

The “Barron’s cover curse” says a positive cover feature often marks the top.

Since this is FUD, it means we are going higher.

https://bitcoinistrue.com/saving/wealth/inheritance/

2025-08-08T18:02:26Z

In reply to nevent1q…3jc4
_________________________

https://bitcoinistrue.com/saving/wealth/inheritance/

Make a will. Many Bitcoiners wrongly approach inheritance ...

2025-08-08T17:58:01Z

Make a will.

Many Bitcoiners wrongly approach inheritance planning as if it’s a technical problem to solve. It’s not. It’s entirely a cultural/spiritual challenge, especially if you have children.

The process of making a will forces you to rethink many of your relationships with friends and family. This is good and healthy. You should be fostering relationships (especially with family and neighbors) such that you would trust them with your children’s lives should something happen to you and your spouse.

And the goal of inheritance planning is not to dump your wealth onto unprepared children, but it’s to foster inter-generational wealth such that your children will grow the family fortune and not merely spend it, which is exactly what Bitcoin incentivizes.

The early church understood this, and articulated this exactly in ...

2025-08-08T05:13:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…fcrx
_________________________

The early church understood this, and articulated this exactly in line with what you’re saying.

Death is best understood as an unnatural state, our souls were not intended to be separated from our bodies— such unnatural separation is entirely a consequence of death, which Christ overcame, in the flesh.

“If He had no need of the flesh, why did He heal it? And what is most forcible of all, He raised the dead. Why? Was it not to show what the resurrection should be? How then did He raise the dead? Their souls or their bodies? Manifestly both.”
~ Justin Martyr

“The Resurrection is the reconstitution of our nature in its original form. But in that form of life, of which God Himself was the Creator, it is reasonable to believe that there was neither age nor infancy nor any of the sufferings arising from our present various infirmities, nor any kind of bodily affliction whatever.”
~ St. Gregory of Nyssa

I think the response to demonstrable lies is not appeals to ...

2025-08-01T13:18:12Z

I think the response to demonstrable lies is not appeals to authority and “peer-reviewed papers” (as if that carried any weight in the pursuit of truth), but instead speak truthfully in the face of deception.

The IMF represents an ungodly and evil system and we should stop pretending it cares about truth. They know they’re lying.

Invoke the name of Christ Jesus and do not play the demons’ game of sophistry. Demonic principalities will of course react with predictable lies and deception, call out the lies, and in Christ’s name and banish the demons.

This carries far more weight (infinitely so) than peer reviewed papers and rational arguments.

quoting
note1zyr…k35k
In its blog today, IMF just penned some 2021vintage energy FUD about Bitcoin

"Bitcoin uses as much energy as "

Mainstream media and the scientific community no longer use this claim. Why? Because it is a known misleading statistic.

Much of Bitcoin's energy usage is from stranded, wasted sources that others cannot utilize. It has also been shown in 22 peer reviewed papers and 7 independent studies to stabilize and decarbonize grids, mitigate methane and lower electricity prices and is 52.4% sustainably powered (unlike the much lower sustainable power mix of the banking industry, and gold mining - which Bitcoin provides viable and technologically superior alternatives to)
source: https://x.com/DSBatten/status/1923014527651615182
Contrary to the implications of this tweet, Bitcoin has 19 well documented usecases that create value to society.
source: https://x.com/DSBatten/status/1833875802326175939

Important context: Bitcoin threatens IMF with disintermediation in 5 ways which I have categorized previously here --> https://x.com/DSBatten/status/1873558000230978046
and IMF has a reputation for openly opposing Bitcoin, repeatedly citing "concerns" that have consistently failed to materialize. (source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/featured/how-the-imf-prevents-global-bitcoin-adoption-and-why-they-do-it)
Its perspective on Bitcoin is neither neutral nor objective.

“pick up the cross they set down” Profoundly true, and the ...

2025-07-29T17:18:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…f9gm
_________________________

“pick up the cross they set down”

Profoundly true, and the only real solution to overcoming the generational damage from the baby boomers (themselves the rotten fruit of prior generations of secular lukewarm Christians)

And it is exactly what Christ is calling us to do, through Him,

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
~ Matthew 11:28-30

Without government, who would be the worst at absolutely ...

2025-07-24T12:58:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…g3s2
_________________________

Without government, who would be the worst at absolutely everything?

We talk nice to the machines not because they care, but because ...

2025-05-21T02:43:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…vq29
_________________________

We talk nice to the machines not because they care, but because we care, because we’re better than the machines.

There's lots of insightful takes on the bank runs and ...

2023-03-13T09:20:48Z

There's lots of insightful takes on the bank runs and bailouts, but many can't see the forest for the trees. Or rather, they can't see the dumpter-fire fire for the flames.

💯

2023-02-19T19:28:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…gs5z
_________________________

💯

Nostr event nevent1qqstf39evafs056k34n7wvzlw3vunhju2vdk609u3ycuf45fgv3t3kqzyp64ch5x0cjfk84vqtj9xhn0pvcyetj90qz8n4kfgfq6d4m4s9k5knqhc8r

2023-02-19T19:27:16Z

#[0]

Nostr notes by rschristopher

I really like Eastern articulation (from Simeon the New ...

I’m sure people have already recommended “Rock and Sand” by ...

Glory to God

Whenever the thief on the cross gets mentioned in that context ...

Yes. It’s a beautiful way to put it, “undeserved grace … ...

Typically it means “get ready for battle” … if you find ...

The surface answer is in Genesis 25:34, where it is simply not ...

Two things: 1. There is 100% an antichrist agenda in the Church, ...

There’s patristic consensus on this exact topic, and the ...

fwiw, the abject heresies on display at modern Protestant ...

Except the opposite has been true, as evidenced through history. ...

Careful, it exists and has persisted despite our judgments (fwiw ...

One of my favorite parts of Church history is that even in the ...

This is excellent! I don’t have anything critical to add as ...

Not to defend bad Catholics (which include many a Pope), but the ...

Luther I thought affirmed perpetual virginity? could be wrong. ...

Agree, like I said, if you get into the nuances the disagreements ...

There’s lots of crowns in the NT, too many to mention. Most of ...

It’s the *inseparable* part of Chalcedon that inevitably ...

Ironically, most of the reformers, including Calvin, held very ...

That’s all mostly right. It’s not wrong only incomplete. Mary ...

She is not divine, by definition, she is created. Angels also ...

Nostr event nevent1qqs8w4v6u2wqwgvdxls9t936qjq7smrqejunlrleqzfn9xld023ffvqzyp64ch5x0cjfk84vqtj9xhn0pvcyetj90qz8n4kfgfq6d4m4s9k5k7sj7t9

If you want a fruitful detour read ANY church father or ANY of ...

Yes. Would love to hear your thoughts. Some observations: 1. ...

Agree, I view it as inevitable stumbling stones, and that while ...

That’s why that line “if it were possible” is so important. ...

Anyone genuinely seeking Truth (who is the person Christ) is my ...

I hear ya. I constantly remind myself that I do not know the ...

Glory to God. I have my disagreements with Puritan theology, but ...

Got myself in trouble on X, I forgot it’s hateful to notice ...

That was the rebuke :) Neither Roman Catholic nor Eastern ...

There is much to criticize with the post-schism apostolic ...

There is much to criticize with the post-schism apostolic ...

America is and has been dead for at least 50 years. In the 5th ...

Nostr event nevent1qqsd924mekvz5thhrnxlgs9999g5d7wpc2cz3j4lp8yk6kdeu9h52nszyp64ch5x0cjfk84vqtj9xhn0pvcyetj90qz8n4kfgfq6d4m4s9k5kfyqm3n

With risk of being overly optimistic, you can already see signs ...

since WWII “they” attempted to replace Christianity with a ...

They wouldn’t have venerated him nor created a holiday for him ...

They go about it so incompetently though. Not just the media and ...

Lots of heresies in the “standard fare”, as they’ve by and ...

Love truth, wherever it may take you. The only justifiable reason ...

What we call paganism or “neopaganism” is not what was ...

Sharing a draft of a related essay (I’m in the middle of ...

I’m not a Catholic but this just isn’t true — and I don’t ...

What happened to the Puritans? It is perhaps the greatest irony ...

Very well said, there’s also a religious angle to this, as ...

It is fascinating how all is being revealed. The demons, the ...

Life is really confusing. And Christianity even more so. The ...

That’s obviously true, but not what I’m talking about.

Yes, he’s referring to anarchy in the classical sense of no ...

You can’t have “nothing”, truth is always grounded in ...

Because both are true. If Christianity is true, then Christ rules ...

While it’s easy to find scripture passages that appear to ...

Thank you for your time. I’ll not waste any more of it.

There is no “your truth” or “my truth” There is only THE ...

Trying hard is irrelevant. I could just as well be describing a ...

Well, the answer is far deeper, think depth rather than the ...

Sorry, I meant that by definition — that’s just a simplified ...

It does, but go deeper for an answer — where does your ...

Yes, and unfortunately that kind of “cheap grace” version of ...

Epistle of James is pretty clear on this (and this will upset ...

That’s a bit too neologic for me. belief is how one makes sense ...

Dominion by Tom Holland is another good one. If you’re into ...

Many many people have verified, it takes a lot of work, but ...

This a tricky one to reason about (especially in our fallen ...

I was fooled into thinking there was at most a couple dozen ...

He already did, and He already revealed to John (in the book of ...

God is not operating in time. He is the author of time. Time, ...

Nefarious is an excellent movie. The fallen angels are also ...

Evil is clearly not a vital force. It is the absence of good. ...

Fwiw I understand where you’re coming from (having said many of ...

God is not subject to time. He is not operating in time. This ...

God is explicitly not the author of evil. Evil is not a thing per ...

It’s a very good question. Only God can truly forgive sins, as ...

We are not the judge of whether he repents, that’s between him ...

Even the demons believe. It’s faithfulness to Him, humble ...

Free will v predestination, like most theological disputes, is ...

It’s not you they hate, it’s God. It is all that is ...

It’s the inseparable part of Chalcedon that inevitably ...