all right please do not watch it unless you really have to but last Thursday at MIT Stuart and I were confronted by some Orthodox Christians who were really wanting to push transubstantiation and Stuart and I agreed we did not handle it very well we never had anybody really push us as hard and these were great guys all right now sir really I could give a rip whether you believe in transubstantiation or whether you believe communion is symbolic of the death of Christ i really just don't think it makes that much difference and I don't want to offend anybody but if you think our purpose in life is to go around and straighten out people on transubstantiation or s symbolism of communion I strongly disagree we got people starving to death today we got people going to hell who need Jesus and for me to try and convince Catholics that they shouldn't be into transubstantiation or to tr convince Protestants that they should believe more strongly in the presence of Christ in communion i mean come on i'm just glad you celebrate communion okay focus on Christ trust in him and go at it the point I'm trying to make is let's be careful with a false prophet and true prophet and false Christian and true Christian now we do have to draw some guidelines some boundary lines if you deny the deity of Christ I don't think you're a follower of Christ christ claimed to be God so if you deny his deity and reduce him to a good teacher you are not following Christ secondly if you deny his death on a cross to pay the penalty for our sin you are denying the real Jesus thirdly if you deny his bodily resurrection from the dead if you talk about his resurrection simply as a spiritual thing not a physical thing you are not following Christ because the gospels and the New Testament bend over backwards to communicate the dead Christ physically bodily rose from the dead so those are some of the majors and yes there are false prophets and they twist the living daylights out of the Bible and they deny Christ watch out some of those people are Catholics others are Greek Orthodox some are Pentecostal and a bunch of them are Protestant if I want the hardest debates on a university campus I do not go to the science department i go to the religion department sad but true and I am viewed as an idiot a narrow-minded bigoted fundamentalist Christian because I'm convinced Jesus is God in human form he died on a cross for our sins and he bodily rose from the dead and that is characterized on most university campuses by the religion department as pathetic i'm an I'm an Orthodox Christian and uh basically the question I had was directed basically to you endiff which is you've talked about your stance on baptism and the eucharist and how you believe that they're just um basically symbolic outward professions and not as actually efficacious for salvation and basically my critique uh or my question really is when we look at the extent records of the first second third century Christians all of them say that these are efficacious for salvation that they're not just symbolic that they have an actual datifying effect on the person that receives them so I guess my question is how can you say that you're following what the Bible says if your interpretation of the Bible is not lining up with the people that directly received the Bible and even compiled the canon of the New Testament you know it if that's true then what's the history of why so many millions upon millions don't think it's the case you could argue the same thing about why so many people don't believe in the gospel i mean that's that's just No no but but who are the people i want I want you to say the names the church fathers and who you're referring to on both sides of the fence well there's no both sides because we don't have any records of anyone that believes in so you're saying it's later with Luther not even with Luther because Luther famously said he would rather drink blood with the pope than So then how did it come about it came with Olig and some of the radical anti-reformers which is like what 500 years ago no what does it matter the dating what matters is if we're believing in Christianity as historically the faith that Christ gave to the apostles you would expect to find any records of first century Christians that lived in the time of the apostles that would believe the beliefs you have right my friend during that time period not everybody thought that literally Jesus was eating his own body and drinking his own blood yeah whenever they took communion not every Christian did i can promise you historically you got to check your historical facts on that the majority of the church fathers you're exactly right in terms of what they passed down many of them did say that Jesus was actually in the bread and his blood was actually in the wine there aren't any records of anybody but to make that type of claim is is just that's huge stretch it's not it's not it's not a stretch because every single one of the early church fathers say that it's actually his body actually his blood if you go to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 St paul even says that those who didn't examine themselves properly um before taking of partaking of the Lord's supper could die if it's just mere bread and wine why is St paul saying it was killing Christians that didn't examine themselves properly before partaking why did he say what he said that he said because some of you have not examined yourselves and are partaking unworthily he says some of you are sick and some of you sleep this is in 1 Corinthians 11 meaning they died they died from partaking unworthily so if it's just mere bread and wine how why is St paul saying it's killing Christians excellent question contextually because people were not doing it in such a way that was obviously worthy and in a worshipful manner towards God right just like women when they were called to wear head coverings it wasn't because it was a sexist time period involved being sexist but it was because of orderliness of worship at the time sure because of the sex goddess Diana but no one know how they were worshiping Diana so obviously the Me Too movement and all the great movements that uplifted women came from the Christian worldview it's pretty hard to say that Christianity is sexist well well nowhere in scripture so So again a lot of you your your type of thinking which I really respect i have friends as well who assume your type of thought when it comes to communion a lot of them will land on this word truth because so many times when it comes to It's truly I tell you this truly I tell you that and they'll they'll say God is not a god of deception so truly he means it's really his body and I respect that i really do i think that makes a lot of sense so I don't make a huge deal out of it but to say transubstantiation in order to be a strong Christian I hope you would never say saved you have to actually believe in transubstantiation which is the claim you're making that's not the I don't believe in the scholastic idea of transubstantiation but I do believe in the real presence and my argument is I believe that there's presence there well that it's actually his body and his blood that's transstantiation no transubstantiation is the metaphysical idea that the substance goes from being the substance of bread and wine but it's connect but you could you could believe you could believe in consubstantiation like Lutheran believe you could believe in other metaphic do you need to believe in those no what what I think is necessary is to believe in the faith of the apostles and they believe that was truly his his body and his blood that's what all all if you don't believe in what the apostles teach on communion specifically that the body is the actual body and the bread right and the blood in the wine then are you not saved so I I think you're you're kind of viewing salvation as a one-time thing which I think in of itself is a Protestant worldview i think our the petristic understanding of the early Christians was that salvation is union with God so it's a it's a process and part of that based off of works and tradition well what do you mean by works you're saying it's a process salvation is salvation is a process sounds like a work versus a one time decision to lay everything at the foot of the cross and say Jesus I am unworthy i need your saving grace you saved me when I hear you say process that makes me very nervous my friend very nervous because now it is becoming a salvation issue well if you seen the writings of St paul he talks about how we were saved yes he also says you're being saved and he also says that you will be saved on the the last day exactly right so this is a justification it's a past present sanctification but the the word being used is salvation in all of them but we also have to remember that in the Bible it says by grace you have been saved of course we believe that too we believe that we believe that but if we believe that salvation is synergistic which means it's a cooperation of energies there's the energy of God which is grace but then we must also cooperate with the grace of God and be faithful to him right that's why St in fact Cliff quoted in Philippians chapter 2 it says "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." There's a faithfulness in Romans 4 when St paul quotes Genesis and he says that Abraham believed and he it was counted to him as righteousness he's quoting Genesis 15:6 which is three chapters after Abraham was already called he had done stuff he was faithful to God that was how he was able to demonstrate his belief it wasn't just empty faith it wasn't just he came to an altar call stretched out his hand and said "I believe." He expressed it on the cross the thief on the cross did he express it after years and years and years it was a process and all of a sudden he was saved that's a good point but consider the circumstances he was nailed on the cross there was nothing he could do all circumstantial it's all God condescends to what we Jesus is all about just circumstantial that's always about No God condescends to what you can do consider the parable of the three servants each one was given course of what he could do one was given one talent one was given two one was given five the person expected i would I would never say for instance that an uncontacted Amazonian tribe is going to hell right because God condescends in accordance to what they can do right or the person who in on his deathbed says "I believe in Christ." I'm not going to say he's going to go to hell because he wasn't baptized but for all of us in this room who can we ought to be faithful it says in Mark chapter 16 he who believes and is baptized will be saved so and and and I also want to preface all of this that my question to you is more epistemological like I could offer my own opinion of scripture you could offer your own opinion of scripture but we should interpret a text based on the people who wrote it the people who directly received that writing right the consensus of the people at that time and there isn't anyone we can find in terms of ex so then you believe in in the infallibility of the councils uh are you talking about the ecumenical council the infallibility of the councils the council is a very general thing that specific oh yes there's many different councils that have to talk about this very topic that we're talking about right but that's and the accountability of the councils make these claims and they've changed over time just like Vatican 1 2 and three i don't believe in those and there's no there's no Vatican i don't this conversation really breaks down if you don't believe in the councils and you don't believe in the No no I'm not a Catholic i'm an orthodox Christian orthodox Christian okay still this conversation starts right now the infallibility of the council that you're finding on based off of the church father's claim and the councils that they had right where they said they this is infallible but based off this tradition which is connected to scripture right there's an internal contradiction because they changed no first off they didn't change and second off the the question I'll ask for you is you believe in a new testament Vatican 1 and Vatican 2 didn't change why do you keep offering that to me I believe that those are heretical councils I'm not a I'm not a Catholic okay but no but you're pushing me though on the church fathers no I'm pushing you specifically on the Christians in the first and second if you can point to me to anyone in the first or second century whose records are preserved because I'll grant you that maybe someone had written about it got destroyed we don't have any extent records of anyone that's saying what you're saying or what Cliff is saying it's not at all that said that the Eucharist is symbolic or that baptism is symbolic or that it's a one-time belief all of these things you're talking about came out of the blue 500 years ago so I'm asking you where's the continuity where's the historical continuity I've looked at all all the records that I see okay of the earliest Christians the thousands upon thousands of Jews who became Christian overnight after the resurrection everything related to communion nowhere does it say specifically they thought the bread was actually Jesus's body jesus could have been there with them the night before his death and Jesus was taking part in this communion so what that meant was when he stretched out his hand to grab the bread to dip it in the wine then he was taking a piece of his kneecap dipping it in some of the blood that perhaps was pouring out of his arms and then eating himself ingesting himself that that's a very So a lot of different Protestants would say it's just completely contradictory but my friends for you to stand up here and say the earliest earliest Christians all thought exactly that Jesus was saying body physical body equates directly to the bread wine directly to the blood i think you don't know what you're what you're really saying right now i can list for you all because I agree with the church fathers yes many of them st augustine you're exactly right justin came like what 400 years after i'm talking about Justin Martyr Ignatius of Antioch Clement of Rome Aanadoras Irenaeus all of them none of them line up with what you're saying and you could you know you could go ahead and say well those are just people but I'm asking you point me for one person even one person in that time that said the things you believe in because right now what's happening is you're interpreting the scripture based on what you think is the case why that's so profoundly dangerous is because in another campus there could be someone else saying the exact opposite of what you're saying based on their own understanding rather we should appeal to the context in any text including scripture but any other text so who's the ultimate authority for you for me the ultimate authority the body of Christ the church the same the same church that's a good question so now we can get to the councils if you want no no no i need a straight answer for me now this is too going on too long from my perspective okay what's the ultimate authority for you the ultimate authority is is Christ and his body the church no no no no yes what does he mean when you say the church heresy what does that mean huh what does that mean the church the church as the concrete body St paul spells out a tripartite hierarchy of authority there's the bishop there's the elder or the presitter and there's the deacon the the uh conglomeration or the council of all these bishops who receive authority directly from the apostles that is the body of Christ that's the head the head bishop well in any given region there's a head bishop i don't believe in good okay good to meet you brother