Catholic theology vs. Orthodoxy theology

Hey bro, I'm in a similar boat to you so I'll throw my cents in. I was raised in a Protestant family but hardly any churches have seemed whole to me. It's hard enough finding a church where they don't ordain female pastors. What draws me to Orthodoxy the most would probably be Theosis. If you're not familiar with it, it's the doctrinal name for partaking of the divine nature as mentioned in 2 Peter 1:4. I'm not really an authority on Orthodoxy though so I'll link a couple resources that might be more useful. ww1.antiochian.org/content/theosis-partaking-divine-nature
deathtotheworld.com/

Attached: doomerdox.png (720x720, 372K)

>muh Jay dyer
he misunderstands the concept of maya and uses his misunderstanding to dismiss a whole belief systems
Take what he says with a grain of salt

Attached: 1556548109784.png (2776x1388, 430K)

Codreneau was catholic tho

Based. Thanks for the links. Theosis comes from The Deification of Man by Palamas, right?

What exactly did he misunderstand and why?

I'm not sure if Palamas was the first to use the specific term Theosis, but I believe that the origin would come from St. Irenaeus.
To my knowledge, the Iron Guard were Romanian Orthodox and I would assume Codreanu would be as well. I don't actually know much about the Iron Guard it's just on the meme.

He implies that the concept of maya means nothing is real so that nothing you learn from this world is real. That is incorrect, the world is very real
youtube.com/watch?v=uJRtTaEhs_4

>In Mahayana sutras, illusion is an important theme of the Prajñāpāramitā sutras. Here, the magician's illusion exemplifies how people misunderstand and misperceive reality, which is in fact empty of any essence and cannot be grasped.

Just reading about it makes it seem that way though. If everything you perceive is an illusion you can never have an epistemic grounding.

the real question is whether you've learned to poo in the loo yet

Jay Dyer is a good dude. Interesting channel.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Rrzo55G364

Not specifically racist just more ethnically proud. I’m arab orthodox Christian we love our orthobros. I visited Russian a few years ago..

This is basically TGSNT for Catholics isn't it? It gets spammed every time someone doesn't have an argument.

go to a latin mass and youll fulfill a piece of your life that you never knew you missed

Attached: 5126.png (884x1201, 1.6M)

is the name of that painting "Prior to Molestation"?

>God
Actually, you're mixing up the god that is properly called Yahweh, the Asian god of the Judeo-Christians with God, the contracted form of Godan which is Lombardic spelling of Woden of Germanic paganism. Godan's name was often shortened to God, but remains an exclusive god of the Aryans, not to be appropriated. Judeo-Christians can shorten Yahweh's name to Yah, but they may not use the word God. It is actually blasphemy that offends both Godan and Yahweh. It would seem that Judeo-Christians would want to use the word Yahweh given their eternal obsession with Jews and Rabbi Jesus . It's the name that Rabbi Jesus himself would have used ( if he were real ) and he would agree with me ( if he were real ) that it's wrong to steal Godan's name. Judeo-Christians do though say Hallelujah, which does include Yah, the shortened form of their Jew-god. You will not be forgiven if you again use God instead of Yahweh.
Christfags disingenuously use the word "God" instead of Yahweh to fake being white and to disguise their Jewish religion. They literally lie every time they say God ( Godan ). They are literally trying to turn whites into Jews by this cowardly and deceptive tactic.

>Jay Dyer
>all these problems with "western" christianity

user, I went down your path to a damn T. around a year ago. Orthodoxy seems like a great thing until you get involved. Let me ask you, why are you "leaving" "Protestantism"? What are you?

I've found that Dyer is quite good at winning debates against shitty atheists, but a lot of the Orthodox justification for being "the one troo church" falls down when you look at it critically.

And take it from me, they don't like it when you question the legitimacy of their sacrosanct Apostolic Succession, or more fundamentally, wether that concept actually means anything.

Attached: 1559833639175.webm (640x360, 2.71M)

if you think catholic priests are more likely to abuse kids then youre brainwashed by the kiked media you dumb retard

Attached: CatholicsTeachers.png (828x623, 169K)

Orthodox aesthetics are very good, even better that Catholic.
You cant always judge a book by its cover, but it matters.

The best description I have seen is the analogy of the clay pot. The pot is fundamentally clay but it has the appearance and function of a pot. That is maya, it is how Brahman creates the world. Another way to think of it is maya is ignorance, of our true self, of that the fundamental nature of the pot is clay
If you are interested in the non-dual explanation of the concept this guys lecture is good.
youtube.com/watch?v=MxUXl2YXXL4

Attached: 1563721449777.jpg (1024x813, 424K)

I'm not even going to go into a refutation of those points, this is not the place for it. All of those things have been addressed by Catholics. But it doesn't matter, because you're not considering Catholicism. I'll bet, for some reason, you were initially pushed toward Catholicism and started investigating. I think you're looking for a suitable alternative, to satisfy what initially pushed you away from Protestantism toward Catholicism, without actually having to become a Catholic (and piss off your family and friends in the process). I think that's what you're going through now because I went through that for years before becoming Catholic, and even held to some of the points you listed. My advice to you would be to not get heavily into one single apologist like Dyer or even one perspective. Open yourself up to reading/listening to apologetic material from the Catholic side. Get deep into reading the Church Fathers (east and west), not with commentary or help from people like Dyer. Irenaeus of Lyons is a good place to start, he's really early and he's pretty significant. Good luck and Godspeed.

sorry but nothing in the history of the world is even close to beating catholic aesthetics

Attached: 1563647050080.jpg (1920x1200, 708K)

Also, it is a strawman to state that ADS is the model for all of Western Christianity. I don't know if Dyer makes that point, but most people arguing this point seem to assume this.

You post this in every single thread without realizing you're using absolute numbers rather than percentages. Fucking retard.

>Get deep into reading the Church Fathers (east and west),
careful OP, doing this got me into fire-breathing Protestantism. Jow Forums won't like that.

God is simply the most universal way to refer to the Lord Almighty. In Arabic we use Allah, it still means the same thing. you're just being petty

because its not true that catholic priests are more likely to abuse kids. theyre just being hanged in the headlines in international media whenever they committ abuse, whilst normal people who fuck kids doesnt even make local news.
I read a stat someone posted on twitter some months ago from PewResearch that Catholic priests rated 1,5 to abuse kids vs. the average population at 2,7. LGBT got rated at like 14. I just wish I had fucking saved that stat, damn

Attached: CatholicPriests.jpg (940x848, 374K)

What the fuck is happening in that video?

youtu.be/d07mgLoOW8g
You just got btfo.

>why are you "leaving" "Protestantism"?
Because I don't think Sola scriptura is correct and Protestantism suffers from a lack of interpretational basis. That's why you have all these cucked leftist and Zionist Protestant sects running around. The more I read about theology the more I'm convinced the Protestantism is wrong on almost everything. I was raised Evangelical and solely on the Scofield Bible so you can get some sort of idea of where I'm coming from.

You probably didn't get in very deep at all or now believe they were all heretics and you're smarter than they were. Or you read Origen and lost your mind, staring into the abyss and all.

>Another way to think of it is maya is ignorance

You seem to be agreeing with Dyer's point here. You initially claimed >He implies that the concept of maya means nothing is real so that nothing you learn from this world is real.

If Maya is ignorance then you can't really learn anything about the true nature of reality and are simply experiencing an illusion.

Orthodox in Romania using a dead foot as a "Holy Relic" and people collecting blessed water from it.
Yes thats real and yes that is canonical in Orthodoxy.

Yeah, I had those same worries myself. I was raised in an agnostic/atheist household, so when I finally started believing, the Solas didn't make much sense, and when I combined them with modern politics, it was convenient to blame everything on Protestantism. So I joined an Orthodox (Antioch) church, because they seemed to have justification for what they were saying.

I'm not going to tell you not to join one, because I myself did. I will tell you to not stop questioning. They are going to tell you a lot of stuff and ask that you buy into it in order to be chrismated and join with the church. Don't just accept what your local Father has to say "because the church says so". That is in no way a solid foundation to base truth and faith upon. If asking and learning leads you to Orthodoxy, then I'm happy for you.

Like this shit here This attitude is so prevelent in American Orthodoxy (aka Convertskii, similar to cage-stage calvinists). The same old shit. "If you don't agree with us you obviously are wrong or didn't learn that much." Just a lame, lazy excuse to dismiss criticism. When I was in my catechumen classes there were plenty of ex-Prots who loved to rail on Protestantism, except most of them couldn't even name the 5 Solas, they just were content with repeating literal Jow Forums-tier slogans. Very sad and "angry-ex-girlfriend"-ish.

Just understand that being born into Orthodoxy is fine, you're still in Communion with the true Church. Conversion, however, requires you to join the RCC, otherwise you are committing blasphemy and will not he in Communion.

Both are cringe. Religion is for low IQ autists

Attached: image.png (1200x800, 1.66M)

>I'm not even going to go into a refutation of those points, this is not the place for it.
Where is the place for it then?

>All of those things have been addressed by Catholics.
I haven't seen the rebuttals that's why I posted the OP.

>you're not considering Catholicism.
Yes I am, but the points I listed keep me from embracing its theology.

>and piss off your family and friends in the process
My family is already pissed off because I don't consider myself an Evangelical anymore. I'm not going to make decisions on my faith based on what other people think.

I'm interested in hearing the arguments against the points I listed.

How is it a strawman? Isn't Aquinas's work the fundamental theological basis for Catholicism?

I'm not Orthodox, I'm Catholic. I was just sort of dismissing what you said so I could make the joke about reading Origen and going insane. Sorry it came off as crass.

Again, this thread isn't politics. /his/ would actually be a better place for it than here. I'm surprised this thread hasn't been deleted yet. Another forum for this stuff might be better, or if that other chan was still around I would recommend /christian/.
Ultimately though I don't think discussion does what you think it does. You think you're in the midst of making a logical choice, but you're not. Even if you were, debates (like the ones you talked about Jay Dyer winning) are not the way to find truth, they're just a way to find out who is a better debater or who is more prepared.
My advice is just to keep reading the Scriptures, studying Church history and theology, don't stop praying, and trust God will get you to where He's sending you.

>How is it a strawman? Isn't Aquinas's work the fundamental theological basis for Catholicism?

I'm not Catholic and never have been, but that is not at all a fair assertion.

Rabbi, you are what you think you child molesting baby dick sucking jew. You think that is the name because that is what your child molesting brain is drawn to.

>1. The doctrine of Absolute Divine Simplicity (ADS) leads to monism.
According to Dyer and his irrational hatred of Aquinas.
>2. Since God is only thought of as an /absolutely/ simple essence you can't distinguish between traits such as love, grace, etc.
Everything emanates from God. He makes His essence known to the rational mind which Aquinas is able to infer through Absolute Divine Simplicity.
>3. Therefore, from an epistemic standpoint you can only know and interact with created effects and are fundamentally disconnected from God.
How are they disconnected from God? If God reveals Himself through creation, just how is it disconnected? The fact that some creatures display natures that are fundamentally disconnected from God does not preclude this fact. Mary was sinless, in Her were all of God's graces. He reveals His nature through Her. The Son had a human form, He expressed Himself through creation. I think this is a self-refuting argument.
>4. The Holy Spirit is subordinate in Catholic theology (v. filioque).
I wouldn't put it in those terms. But yes, the Spirit also proceeds from the Son. I see no problem with this.
>5. ADS, Thomism, and Catholic dogma and theology are the reason for the papacy, the corruption, and the way the church is ultimately structured.
I really don't understand your reasoning here. Sin is the reason for corruption, that has nothing to do with Thomistic philosophy or the Pope, the literal head of a Church of sinners in need of a Saviour.
>6. The scholastic approach of "proving" God is the wrong approach.
Why?
>7. All of this ultimately leads to absurdity and an incoherent world view and the only way to resolve it is with Orthodoxy and the Essence-Energy distinction.
The Essence-Energy distinction is also the fruit of intense scholasticism. Aren't you contradicting yourself? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Dyer was a seddie before he was Orthodox, he has irrational hatred of Catholicism.

>Again, this thread isn't politics.
I already addressed this here >/his/ would actually be a better place for it
It would be nuked as soon as I pointed out that Evangelicalism is Zionist. I've been banned for naming the Jew there while providing an actual argument. Religion and philosophy isn't history either. Jow Forums needs a religion board and until then Christian philosophy belongs on Jow Forums.

With the amount of garbage and shitposting on this board it's frankly sad that you that you think this thread shouldn't stay. If you have rebuttals to the points I listed then go ahead and post them because you seem to be reluctant to for whatever reason. "Just trust God bro" is not an argument. Stop making excuses.

Holy shit fucking faggot. You do realize God is different in every language and that “God” in English can mean many gods, from yahweh to Hindu Gods. In French and Spanish their words for God come from deus, that doesn’t fucking mean their worshipping Zeus or using the “wrong name”. It’s etymology origins means fucking nothing because it’s just a generic name for a “God”

This

>If I'm going to convert I'm going to do it for theological reasons.

Do it, then. Orthodoxy is as solid as it gets.

Thanks for this post user you might have just converted me

Well if you want to argue percentages then you jews have beat them all. jews are by far the most likely child molesters of them all. Percentage wise of course....

false

I tend to agree with Orthodox over Catholic, but most of all I want reunion.

I don't want autistic hair splitting to let the Devil divide and conquer us.

All who kneel to Christ must work in unison.

>Everything emanates from God. He makes His essence known to the rational mind
If God is this absolutely simple thing then everything is essentially the same. You can't know which element exactly you're experiencing. This is why he says it leads to the conclusion of the monad as the basis for all reality.

>How are they disconnected from God?
Because you never take part in divinity. You just know whatever is created and not what is eternal.

>But yes, the Spirit also proceeds from the Son. I see no problem with this.
See >Why?
He argues that classical foundationalism is inherently flawed and supports a coherentist paradigm.

No need to get nasty. I just don't think telling you things you've already heard and have already made up excuses for is going to do any of us any good. Heresy and schism are not intellectual positions but a spiritual sickness. Acting upon a vice contrary to one of the theological virtues, like spreading heretical beliefs is contrary to the virtue of faith, destroys that theological virtue in you. To get it back, you can't just take it back. You have to approach God on His terms, by humbling yourself before the hierarchy He created in His Church, and confess your sins and get absolved. This is assuming you're baptized. So basically, debating people doesn't do anything for you.

In a similar boat. After researching both for about a year, started attending Orthodox Church a few months ago. Haven’t started conversion, yet, but probably will soon.

Begum Moslim.

The Latin mass nearby has four year old boys as altar servers. Pretty hard to stomach.

>1. The doctrine of Absolute Divine Simplicity (ADS) leads to monism; According to Dyer and his irrational hatred of Aquinas.

The concept of divine simplicity is monist and is the most important thing for a western christian to understand today.

How is this not true?

He just rambles on and ends up tiring people.

Your post suggest nothing will convince you not to go for Orthodoxy (if your post isn't bait), so do whatever.

>No need to get nasty.
I wasn't being nasty and I wasn't insulting you.

>I just don't think telling you things you've already heard and have already made up excuses for is going to do any of us any good.
I haven't heard them though that's the reason why I posted this thread. I've heard the arguments from the Orthodox apologist side (Dyer) but don't know of any Catholic apologists who can present their theology in as good of a manner. I've read into the concepts and can't find any refutation of the arguments Dyer puts forth. At least point me to them.

>So basically, debating people doesn't do anything for you.
Convincing argument you've got there.

>Your post suggest nothing will convince you of not going to Orthodox (if your post isn't bait), so do whatever.
Is this projection or something? Why are so many Catholics assuming this? I'm legitimately interested in hearing the arguments and thus far only 1 user has actually engaged on this

The Son is born from the father and not created , a true god out of the true god , light of light through whom everything was created.
The Holy spirit the sacred , the life giver , the same leveled worshiped as the Father and the son , Coming forth feom the Father.

Read the symbol of faith from the orthodox dogma. It basicaly sums up the whole dogma and every orthodox christian should know it.

Orthodoxy is unchanged and the inly true christian faith.Convert to that

>Convincing argument you've got there.
What do you want to debate me on it lol? Just go read the Church Fathers. Oh and watch the video that one guy posted about the Essence/Energies distinction Palamism stuff.

By that last sentence, you could be Masonic or even Unitarian Universalist.

>If God is this absolutely simple thing then everything is essentially the same.
As expected of Dyer, this is a misunderstanding of ABS. God is Absolutely Simple because his essence is disconnected from sin, He is all Good. Supremely Good in fact in such an incomprehensible way that all graces condensate into one. If He weren't Absolutely Simple, this would mean that God has complex and perhaps even capricious reasons and is not moved by the supreme goodness that is His nature.
>Because you never take part in divinity. You just know whatever is created and not what is eternal.
So you cannot know God? Is my conversion false?
>See
I'm aware of this argument. But only the Orthodox words the filioque in those kinds of inflammatory statements. The Three Persons of the Trinity are coequal, this is Catholic dogma. Subordination is an Orthodox meme. We do profess that the Spirit also proceed from the Son, but this nonsense of there being a slave in the Trinity is just that. If you believe in the double procession, how are not the Son and the Spirit slaves to the Father? They are coequal, Triune.
>He argues that classical foundationalism is inherently flawed and supports a coherentist paradigm.
How very scholastic of him.

I like Dyer, but take his Pope derangement syndrome with a grain of holy salt. He was a seddie before being Orthodox and now he just has to be greater than Aquinas despite dedicating a non-negligible amount of time to media criticism.

>The concept of divine simplicity is monist and is the most important thing for a western christian to understand today.
You're declaring it to be so, user, while Dyer at the very least has the very good sense of saying that "it leads to monism". We believe in a God that is less literature and more mathematics, yes, and that all His actions are Good. God can not lie, for example.

There is no proof that God is able to create anything. There is nothing that exist or has ever existed that can be proven to have been created by God.

I became a Catholic several years ago, but I am pretty much sold on Eastern Orthodoxy now. After I researched the filioque controversy that was when I realized the Greeks were correct and the Latins were wrong.

That said, I am still struggling to become Orthodox because it means basically being stuck with one parish and one priest. When I was Catholic, if I didn't like a particular priest or the crowd at a particular church I could move on to the next one. I feel like it is harder for me to sweep my personal problems under the rug by window shopping parishes and confessors. This is a stumbling block for me and I keep delaying my chrismation into Orthodoxy.

>and thus far only 1 user has actually engaged on this (You)
Please don't praise me so highly, user. I confess that I'm always weary when I see anons dropping Dyer talking points. I want to apologise if I'm being rude or overly bitter, I shouldn't presume that you're here just to debate "those darn Papists!" and dunk on Catholicism, it's an expectation that I have from the Dyer crowd unfortunately.

Catholicism
Read up on aerial toll houses and the demonic gauntlet
Just the tip of the """Orthodox""" iceberg of heresy and blatant worship of demons

What's wrong with the aerial toll houses? It's not Orthodox dogma but it's an approximation to the Catholic concept of Purgatory. What is so wrong about it in your opinion, user?

toll houses are not dogma

>I'm a Protestant but
>I've been watching some Jay Dyer videos

stopped reading here. op: you’re a pleb or a shill idiot like jay. get Jesus (He has a church) thank me later.

Jay is just a (((russian protestant))), like what the sand guy roosh is now claiming as well. nothing against russians but everything against protestants. you feel me? those video people are nothing but a pack of jewish video niggers trying to meme on the trad god thing while also inserting bad info out there. it’s to be expected from a bunch of idiots purposely trying to lead people astray. some of them are paid agents of chaos. they are nothing.

again op if you’re serious: get Jesus and the Church He made.

t irish italian genius

>all graces condensate into one
That's actually the point. You seem to be agreeing with the premise here but rejecting the conclusion for some reason I'm not seeing.

>So you cannot know God? Is my conversion false?
Someone arguing in favor of the Orthodox position would say yes; I don't see your point here. The argument is with respect to knowing created effects vs. knowing God's "energies" personally.

>If you believe in the double procession, how are not the Son and the Spirit slaves to the Father?
Good point. This has confused me for a while. If you follow the same reason for asserting subordination of the Spirit in Catholicism then it does seem to imply that in the Orthodox sense the Father is Supreme above the Son and the Spirit. Maybe an Orthobro can clear this up for me.

>How very scholastic of him.
I probably shouldn't have used that word. I was referring to the foundationalism of the West and not to intellectual pursuits.

>I like Dyer, but take his Pope derangement syndrome with a grain of holy salt.
I don't like the Pope and this infallible business either.

>have to sacrifice to demons for forty days to earn entry into heaven
>faith in christ is entirely irrelevant

Find a single priest willing to deny his belief in the demonic gauntlet or aerial toll houses or the need to sacrifice to demons to gain entry into heaven

Well...I'm a former Protestant, here. Non-denominational, which may as well mean Baptist, down here in the South.

I got tired of the constant pozzing of the church, the awful music, the lack of solemnity, the slow acceptance of degeneracy, etc.

Found a board online, and asked the age-old question of "Wat do?".

Guy named Jimmy_da_Gr33k told me to find my nearest Eastern Orthodox Church (didn't matter if it was Russian or Greek) and go for three months, get to know people, and ask the priest questions.

Asked why.

Wouldn't tell me why. Just said "Go and see."

I went and never looked back. It's been three years, now.

So, in honor of Jimmy (God bless you, wherever you are), I tell you this.

Go find your nearest EO Church (doesn't matter if it is Russian or Greek).

Attend for three months.

Talk to people, and ask the priest questions.

Go and see.

I don't have to look very far to find one. My parish priest has said he considers these things to be speculation.

Mine. I asked him about it, and he said that it may be tradition in some parts of the EO world, but it is not accepted belief in EO Canon, and he personally finds it ridiculous and does not teach about it.

He's a Romanian and a Protopresbyter, which is as high as you can get and be married, so he should know.

gamergirl bathwater

You just need to find a priest who will be your spiritual guide to whom youll confess to and converse spiritual matters with. If you dont like him you can change , if u end up in a foreign country for many years and want to confess , you can still undergo the mystery of confession with a diff orthodox priest but you should talk your personal spiritual matters only with ur spiritual father.
Ofx you can choose though , other people prefer young educated priests , others older more experienced on life , other strict to discipline them on their sins etc etc

God bless you brother and God bless Jimmy.

>you can't really learn anything about the true nature of reality
Such as? What would be the true nature of reality you're talking about?

I don't understand how one can be a Sede. I completely do not understand how one can square that circle. I didn't know Dyer was a Sede before. Interesting.

Attached: 93e0424eb2e454a95d1d1f5ad745ca76a0e031b1bc72b4b39034df14ae3de325.jpg (626x626, 62K)

In the Christian conception I suppose it would be God Himself. Christians don't hold that ultimately all of our perceived reality is an illusion.

Bump for Jay Dyer. I was born into a strong Irish Catholic community but lost my way and became disillusioned with the church after they started messing with our local little convent. Jay Dyer’s videos got me searching for God again, I can’t thank him enough. Funny guy too.

Attached: BC06A15B-F5E2-45D4-B186-04D3D6AC3A5A.jpg (750x707, 439K)

Imagine hating other whites.

>You seem to be agreeing with the premise here but rejecting the conclusion for some reason I'm not seeing.
God is not an atom and He is very much outside of creation. He is Good, this is His nature. We can infer the properties of God, we can't always understand His motives, but we know that He is Good. Maybe I'm missing something, I don't know, I'm not a philosopher, Dyer would certainly kick my ass in a debate, but I just don't
>Someone arguing in favor of the Orthodox position would say yes; I don't see your point here. The argument is with respect to knowing created effects vs. knowing God's "energies" personally.
I don't see a distinction between knowing God and His created effects. Are they not a manifestation of His nature? I think it's a silly and arbitrary distinction. God is always Good and all His manifestations lead to Good. That's all.
>I don't like the Pope and this infallible business either.
Well, I understand that. Imagine having to deal with Pope Francis. But he and all the other Popes have yet to lead the Church into error.

I'm just a simple guy, I don't have many answers unfortunately, just a hot take or two. I trust in the Catholic Church because She is consistent and there are many graces and miracles that attest Her legitimacy. Tradition has it that Jesus Christ Himself appeared to Aquinas and declared his work to be good, so I don't see much reason to just endlessly scrutinise him. There is also the question of the Marian apparitions that always point to the teachings of Christ and promises the faithful that the dogmas of the Catholic Church would protect them. Everything in Orthodoxy is immediately demons, it's a bit bothersome. I mean, even the Vatican is the first to scrutinise these manifestations, it's not like we're miracle chasers, but everything points towards Christ and then to the Catholic Church.

Yeah, I don't get it either. The SSPX isn't seddie, it was simply excommunicated for a time but that penalty has been lifted by Pope Benedict XVI if I'm not mistaken. I'm unsure whether Dyer was affiliated with the Dimonds or not, only recently was I told that he used to be a seddie, which actually explains a lot of things like him not even being able to not be rude in a simple debate with Erick Y'barra.

>We can infer the properties of God
How can you infer any properties at all if all graces condense into one? How can you tell which is which?

>I don't see a distinction between knowing God and His created effects.
Think of it like the difference between knowing someone personally or knowing only things which he has created. The difference between knowing the architect or only knowing the houses he has created. I think it's an important distinction.

>I trust in the Catholic Church
What happens when the church is corrupt though?

>There is also the question of the Marian apparitions
This might go off on a tangent but what was the third secret of Fatima in your view? There is speculation that it was covered up by the Vatican and it had to do with the corruption of the Catholic Church.

>Everything in Orthodoxy is immediately demons,
How?

What would work best for you is the wrong choice. Catholic for starters, you have their knack for empty sophistry ie "how many angels could dance on the tip of a needle?" Orthodox don't tolerate it so much though if you went to them, it would be the right choice but you'd be with them for a shorter time. The trick is Protestants ARE Roman Catholic already, just heretical ones. There's no comparison of Prot to Orthodox for that reason. What few people consider is, are you ethnically Orthodox in your ancestry? Like Russian or Armenian, etc. This helps makes the decision but never bars you. It's just that Orthodoxy can be difficult to navigate in practice without the ethnic component. It's simply how people were divided in the before time, now ethnic background matters far less but as an unmodernized age old institution, that's what it runs on. Peace

Attached: 1567209927771.png (2000x2000, 93K)

Also, be very careful with these arguments being thrown around.

>The most damaging consequence . . . of Orthodoxy’s twentieth-century pilgrimage ad fontes—and this is no small irony, given the ecumenical possibilities that opened up all along the way—has been an increase in the intensity of Eastern theology’s anti-Western polemic. Or, rather, an increase in the confidence with which such polemic is uttered. Nor is this only a problem for ecumenism: the anti-Western passion (or, frankly, paranoia) of Lossky and his followers has on occasion led to rather severe distortions of Eastern theology. More to the point here, though, it has made intelligent interpretations of Western Christian theology (which are so very necessary) apparently almost impossible for Orthodox thinkers. Neo-patristic Orthodox scholarship has usually gone hand in hand with some of the most excruciatingly inaccurate treatments of Western theologians that one could imagine—which, quite apart form the harm they do to the collective acuity of Orthodox Christians, can become a source of considerable embarrassment when they fall into the hands of Western scholars who actually know something of the figures that Orthodox scholars choose to caluminiate. When one repairs to modern Orthodox texts, one is almost certain to encounter some wild mischaracterization of one or another Western author; and four figures enjoy a special eminence in Orthodox polemics: Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John of the Cross.

A neat tip I've picked up on is to try to understand these arguments from the source. If OP wants to learn about ADS, he should *actually read* Aquinas. Not debate people on Jow Forums.

Nevertheless, OP it really seems like your mind is already made up. In which case I'd encourage you to just go to an Orthodox church already. See what it is. Just be open to the idea that you are already emotionally invested in one side of this, and you might be wrong.

You only know about God because of divine revelation though. Christians didn't bridge the "Maya gap" and realize the true nature of reality through empiricism or rationalism. So what you think Hindus are missing out on being able to explain isn't because of their maya doctrine but because they lack the Bible.

Also illusion doesn't mean unreal. What is unreal would be a square circle. Advaitins are epistemic realists and ontological idealists. Usually they would say that the world is not unreal nor real. If it was unreal it would be liket the square circle but if it is also not real because it is sublated. Advaitins just took divine simplicity to its natural conclusions.

Maya(the world) is the superimposition upon Brahman(Reality). This doesn't mean it isn't real but that it relies on something else for its existence and this substrate is Brahman.

>are you ethnically Orthodox in your ancestry? Like Russian or Armenian, etc. This helps makes the decision but never bars you. It's just that Orthodoxy can be difficult to navigate in practice without the ethnic component.

Also, OP you will run into this. Maybe it won't be a problem. Maybe it will. Just know that this is an inevitability. The head of my church (Antioch) certainly wasn't on the greatest of terms with the church higher-up because he was........a corn fed white guy with a last name that wasn't Greek, Slavic, or Arabic.

>If OP wants to learn about ADS, he should *actually read* Aquinas. Not debate people on Jow Forums.
Why not both? I have read Aquinas.

>Nevertheless, OP it really seems like your mind is already made up.
Again with this assumption. I'm looking for arguments from the Catholic side and playing devil's advocate knowing what I know from the Orthodox side. In all honesty I'd prefer to convert to Catholicism because like I said it's more in line with Western culture. But I don't like the Pope and these theological issues seem to be hurdles. I'm not invested in anything.

Whatever your religion is don't forget the ultimate goal is to keep our countries homogeneous. If you are against this you are the enemy.