I had a look at that guy's website. He's deranged by his hatred of you. His latest piece seems to literally suggest you are possessed by the Devil.
Five thousand words of argument, and not one of them contains the spirit of Christ.
If I were you I wouldn't even bother writing responses like this. It will just feed whatever is going on with him, and he will now respond with another long-winded attack. My advice - based on my own experience of such people - is just to leave them to it.
Also, if I can offer some more advice: now that you have this new Substack, why don't you republish that piece about why you became Orthodox? Not to explain yourself to angry online Catholics who like arguing, but because it was very good and might be useful to others. Just a thought.
That's good advice. Thank you, Paul. I thought about just reposting "Why I Became Orthodox." It's very "apologetic," though, and I'm not sure I want to open that door again. But I'll pray about it. Thanks again brother.
The three first articles were bad enough, but to see a fourth one where he tries to "discredit" parts of St. Seraphim of Sarov's life and miracles was unbelievable to me...
Yeah, calling Mischa a "myth" is bizarre—especially when non-saints can befriend bears. I can imagine a skeptic arguing that Seraphim tamed Mischa by purely natural means... feeding him when he was a cub or something. But there's no reason to dismiss the story out of hand. Strikes me as a little petty.
I came to write something similar. It could barely get through part one to then see there was a part two!!! Oof. As another convert of Catholicism to Orthodoxy - seeing this kind of attacks from Catholics shouldn't surprise me - although every time it does. What I love about Orthodoxy is the focus on one's self - and not the constant policing that I experienced in Catholicism. It is sad to see it is very alive and well.
I do agree because as far as I remember it felt more personal than polemical. I think it’s a good thing to share what led you down this path. what you’ve found and your reasoning, because it’s a worthwhile story. Your not picking out some enemy to argue with but sharing your story.
Sir, I am sad that you were led into such an impression. And I never claimed that Mr Davis was actually possessed by Devil. But I do claim, out of his public testimony, that the Devil might well have influenced the way Mr Davis does his apologetics.
Well, I shall reflect on if I had some personal negativity and repent this. But consciencly, no hatred meant. For if meant, it would be more than motes and beams.
I wonder what would happen if you shared the articles with your spiritual father? How would he react? It’s a useful thing to think about before posting anything. I fail to do this often-I know because I would be embarrassed if my priest saw all the dumb things I say here on notes.
Thank God, thank God for your post. It articulated much of my posture since I became Orthodox. I had spent my whole 45-year publishing career writing apologetics published by Zondervan, Baker, Kregel and others. I've spoken at national apologetics conferences. And yet when I became Orthodox (sparked by attending a parish with my newly-illumined daughter and family, remembering and reading Father Peter Gillquist who had been my editor at Zondervan when we were both still Protestant, and re-reading the New Testament laboriously in Koine -- bc I'm not that good at it -- and realizing that Luke, John and Acts burned all my bridges to Protestantism) -- I've lost my taste for apologetics. No way will I argue with anyone. I tell them, read the New Testament with clean eyes. And as the Orthodox say, "Come and see."
For years before I became Orthodox I was interested in apologetics, especially those that tried to answer skeptics by appealing to the socio-historical context of the ancient near east. I was tremendously bothered by how the more I learned, the more it felt like Evangelicalism was taking Scripture out of context and using it as a sort of borrowed intellectual property to construct its own version of Christianity. But at the time, I didn't know any alternative so I just went on being an Evangelical, trying to contend with the cognitive dissonance.
When I encountered Orthodoxy, it was like the light switch finally flipped on, like the puzzle pieces fell into place: I'd found a Church that answered all of the questions for me that Evangelicalism couldn't.
Dear Br. Theophan, this was a very touching article. Thank you for being an example and writing this with a lot of grace. And the description of your daughter is so touching as well!
I really like the peace of this words and at the same time I hope you will republish, sooner or later, even the older articles.. I think they are really interisting for inquirers.. thanks again for your works!
Thank you for your perfect response. I came across the posts a while ago and was taken aback - definitely a bit unhinged. And thank you for the beautiful Roerich painting! ☦️
Well put and I’ve found your posts since you quit apologetics quite edifying—it brings a different spirit into everything. I have to say that for me going to mass with my grandmother was one of the most important experiences that led me to orthodox because God was present in the sacraments, the blessed water, and the church was beautiful. Growing up otherwise Protestant without this experience I might have left the faith altogether. But in the end I have to say the spirituality, theology, historical consistency and no notion of substitutionary atonement did grab my attention allow with Dostoevsky, but what really made me want to enter the church and made me immediately decide to become orthodox was attending my first Divine Liturgy. I have many Catholic friends who I greatly respect and I am thankful to the Catholic Church for providing me a sense of real sacrament and the presence of God, but in the end I can’t say there wasn’t something that I found in the Orthodox Church and spirituality which seemed unique to it. I can’t say though that, for instance, I feel it beneficial or necessary to try and convert a friend of mine who goes to mass each week with his mother who is a devout Catholic and treasures it—and seems to care about the right things and wants to do Gods will. I tell him simply I think he would benefit from becoming orthodox but leave it at that.
Very well put. When folks ask me why I became Orthodox, I used to say, "Because it's true." Lately I've started saying, "Because it's more true." Hopefully that shows more gratitude for the many blessings I received in my years as a Catholic. But even for evangelical purposes, I think it makes more sense. Thanks for the comment Nicholas!
Thank you, Levi! The new Substack is growing much more slowly than the old one. A lot of people are interested in the more combative stuff. But I'm happy with my own writing for the first time in years, and I love the community we're building here. So, the trade-off is well worth it. Thank God!
I completely forgot about the provocation in the course of reading the account. Utterly charming portrait of your family life. Loved every minute of it.
Haha! Well then my evil plan worked. :) Also, confirms my suspicion that children teach parents as much (if not more) about Christianity than we teach them. Thank you Mariellen!
Reading the beginning of Maxim G.’s piece (as far as I could get) I thought to myself, my goodness his soul is so utterly Catholic, of course he converted. Is it possible that he belongs there and we who have migrated in the other direction belong where we are?
I believe you chose your response very well- a pleasure to be transported into the world of Bea.
It's my favorite place in the world. I need to slow down and appreciate it more often. Having kinds, and especially seeing how they interact with the Church, you get why Christ told us to become like little children.
I find the attempts to distinguish differences between Catholicism & Orthodoxies to be very curious. As an outsider I get the impression there are at least as many similarities as differences. While they all claim to be Divinely guided, they seem very humanly constructed; it's religion.
I grew up in a Protestant denomination so that formed my perspectives but as I have aged I see the same sort of human construction in Protestantism as well. Much of that human construction detracts from the sole focus of Christianity, Jesus the Christ. Christianity is not a religion, it's a personal relationship with the Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Religion is to Christianity what water is to whiskey; dilution.
Father Alexander Schmemann said the same thing. Religion is like a tower that people build reaching up to the heavens, but we believe that God came down to Earth. We don't need religion because we have the Church.
(When we hear a Christian say, "Christianity isn't a religion," we usually think of guys like Rob Bell or Craig Groeschel. Of course, they don't mean the same thing Schmemann meant! But I do think they're speakin into the same discontent with America's ossified, lifeless religious institutions. It's interesting that this highly revered, "mainstream" Orthodox theologian preempted those hipster megachurch pastors by three decades!)
Bishop Kallistos Ware, speaking of his own experience converting from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy, said: "The more I learnt about Orthodoxy, the more I realized: this is what I have always believed in my inmost self, but never before did I hear it so well expressed. I did not find Orthodoxy archaic, foreign, or exotic. To me it was nothing other than simple Christianity." That has been my experience, too.
"that this highly revered, "mainstream" Orthodox theologian preempted those hipster megachurch pastors by three decades!)"
I think I understand your context, and I more or less agree. The things we are witnessing these days, supposedly under the name of Jesus, for the most part don't seem to have any true connection with what I believe is Christianity.
Earlier today on X I saw a post that seemed to be well received, it had the words "This says it all ...." and an artist's rendition of JFK, MLK, Kirk, Lincoln and what was supposed to be Jesus. Most comments were in agreement & the ones that were not, complained that RFK was left out. I see nothing Scriptural in that post.
The only thing I am 100% certain of is God has not made me judge of anyone, other than myself. So I don't go around judging, I do try to let my personal relationship with Jesus the Christ glorify Him, and I pray others will see what He has, and continues to do for me.
Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism can look similar from the outside because of similarities in the external forms and some ritual aspects, but when you investigate the underlying reasons and mindset behind those things, you'll find they're quite different, so I think you owe it to yourself to take a closer look into it.
The entire notion that "Christianity is not a religion, it's a personal relationship with the Savior, Jesus the Christ" is itself a human construction, and an extremely recent one based on the presuppositions and values of the very individualistic modern west. You won't find any such perspective until perhaps the 1800s, and you certainly won't find it in any Christian writings from the first millennium.
As I stated, I realize there are differences too, so I see no reason to take a closer look since there is no objective way for me to do so.
Your claim, "The entire notion that "Christianity is not a religion, it's a personal relationship with the Savior, Jesus the Christ" is itself a human construction, and an extremely recent one based on the presuppositions and values of the very individualistic modern west." doesn't hold water. For most of the past 2,000 years the masses were illiterate. Those who were literate were the ones tasked to spread the Gospels; I'm sure there were many who carried the Gospel around the planet. Thank God for such people! Jesus said "Come unto Me", He didn't say go and do what others say you must do.
At the same time there were others who used their ability to read as a way to enhance their positions in life. They were the early churches' bureaucrats; the scribes & pharisees of the day. Organizations are what they construct; control then, as now, is how bureaucrats thrive.
The thief on the cross didn't have to do anything other than have a personal relationship, a Spiritual relationship, with Jesus the Christ, 2,000 years ago.
"whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”
How does one address the problems within Christianity of not addressing the opposites of evil issue, lack of integrating the feminine, and seeing matter as dead?
I am curious about the limits of reason. I saw that Maxim berated you for not debating him because St. Jerome says to debate people. It's worth noting that the devil could outdebate everyone of us and it's your faith in Christ that saves you, not your knowledge of Aquinas. It seems too that the countries most invested in rationalism are the most atheistic, the most unable to maintain a birth rate, the most prone to social collapse. The Sexual Revolution was led by secular thinkers committed to reason uber alles. The rebuttal would be that they just didn't reason correctly, which feels like cope when the reality is that no country based on rationalism seems to become more pious and more holy. Is the solution to dispense with reason? It can't be. But at the same time it seems like I'd be a cotton headed ninny-muggin if I demanded that my religion based on the mystery of the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection be justified to all people in entirely scholastic terms.
Your post sounds like you are announcing that you want to be the MAGA's Charlie Kirk of Alt-right Christianity, suggesting that Roman Catholicism, which embraces democracy, is Alt-wrong. Last July, I attended a service at St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sophia. The altar was flooded with men in regal robes - some wearing crowns. It was more like attending a Broadway performance about a 12th-century emperor than a religious service. And yes, I have attended a service at the Vatican in contrast. No argument that people of either religion are following a path to God and heaven. It just seems to me that it is easier to fall off a path where all the signs are in Greek vs one in which all the signs are in one's own language.
I had a look at that guy's website. He's deranged by his hatred of you. His latest piece seems to literally suggest you are possessed by the Devil.
Five thousand words of argument, and not one of them contains the spirit of Christ.
If I were you I wouldn't even bother writing responses like this. It will just feed whatever is going on with him, and he will now respond with another long-winded attack. My advice - based on my own experience of such people - is just to leave them to it.
Also, if I can offer some more advice: now that you have this new Substack, why don't you republish that piece about why you became Orthodox? Not to explain yourself to angry online Catholics who like arguing, but because it was very good and might be useful to others. Just a thought.
That's good advice. Thank you, Paul. I thought about just reposting "Why I Became Orthodox." It's very "apologetic," though, and I'm not sure I want to open that door again. But I'll pray about it. Thanks again brother.
I hope you share this story with us again. As a "Catholic becoming Orthodox," I found it very helpful, and I think others will as well.
The three first articles were bad enough, but to see a fourth one where he tries to "discredit" parts of St. Seraphim of Sarov's life and miracles was unbelievable to me...
Yeah, calling Mischa a "myth" is bizarre—especially when non-saints can befriend bears. I can imagine a skeptic arguing that Seraphim tamed Mischa by purely natural means... feeding him when he was a cub or something. But there's no reason to dismiss the story out of hand. Strikes me as a little petty.
I came to write something similar. It could barely get through part one to then see there was a part two!!! Oof. As another convert of Catholicism to Orthodoxy - seeing this kind of attacks from Catholics shouldn't surprise me - although every time it does. What I love about Orthodoxy is the focus on one's self - and not the constant policing that I experienced in Catholicism. It is sad to see it is very alive and well.
I do agree because as far as I remember it felt more personal than polemical. I think it’s a good thing to share what led you down this path. what you’ve found and your reasoning, because it’s a worthwhile story. Your not picking out some enemy to argue with but sharing your story.
Well then maybe I'll repost it. Thanks brother.
Sir, I am sad that you were led into such an impression. And I never claimed that Mr Davis was actually possessed by Devil. But I do claim, out of his public testimony, that the Devil might well have influenced the way Mr Davis does his apologetics.
Motes, beams. Sometimes, silence and reflection are important. Almost all times, in fact.
Well, I shall reflect on if I had some personal negativity and repent this. But consciencly, no hatred meant. For if meant, it would be more than motes and beams.
I wonder what would happen if you shared the articles with your spiritual father? How would he react? It’s a useful thing to think about before posting anything. I fail to do this often-I know because I would be embarrassed if my priest saw all the dumb things I say here on notes.
He would be fine, thank you. Would you fancy making a more substantial comment on the matter?
I did on your post. I’ve got nothing else for you besides that. Sometimes what “would” happen is not what “actually” happens.
Thank God, thank God for your post. It articulated much of my posture since I became Orthodox. I had spent my whole 45-year publishing career writing apologetics published by Zondervan, Baker, Kregel and others. I've spoken at national apologetics conferences. And yet when I became Orthodox (sparked by attending a parish with my newly-illumined daughter and family, remembering and reading Father Peter Gillquist who had been my editor at Zondervan when we were both still Protestant, and re-reading the New Testament laboriously in Koine -- bc I'm not that good at it -- and realizing that Luke, John and Acts burned all my bridges to Protestantism) -- I've lost my taste for apologetics. No way will I argue with anyone. I tell them, read the New Testament with clean eyes. And as the Orthodox say, "Come and see."
That's awesome. Thank you Latayne! Glory to God.
For years before I became Orthodox I was interested in apologetics, especially those that tried to answer skeptics by appealing to the socio-historical context of the ancient near east. I was tremendously bothered by how the more I learned, the more it felt like Evangelicalism was taking Scripture out of context and using it as a sort of borrowed intellectual property to construct its own version of Christianity. But at the time, I didn't know any alternative so I just went on being an Evangelical, trying to contend with the cognitive dissonance.
When I encountered Orthodoxy, it was like the light switch finally flipped on, like the puzzle pieces fell into place: I'd found a Church that answered all of the questions for me that Evangelicalism couldn't.
Dear Br. Theophan, this was a very touching article. Thank you for being an example and writing this with a lot of grace. And the description of your daughter is so touching as well!
Glory to God! Thank you, Fr. Joby!
I really like the peace of this words and at the same time I hope you will republish, sooner or later, even the older articles.. I think they are really interisting for inquirers.. thanks again for your works!
Thank you, Andrea! And I'll definitely consider it. You're not the first person to say that.
Beautiful.
Thank you for your perfect response. I came across the posts a while ago and was taken aback - definitely a bit unhinged. And thank you for the beautiful Roerich painting! ☦️
Thank you Laurel! Glory to God. I'm sure Maxim's a nice guy in real life. He just sounds like he gets stuck in his head.
Well put and I’ve found your posts since you quit apologetics quite edifying—it brings a different spirit into everything. I have to say that for me going to mass with my grandmother was one of the most important experiences that led me to orthodox because God was present in the sacraments, the blessed water, and the church was beautiful. Growing up otherwise Protestant without this experience I might have left the faith altogether. But in the end I have to say the spirituality, theology, historical consistency and no notion of substitutionary atonement did grab my attention allow with Dostoevsky, but what really made me want to enter the church and made me immediately decide to become orthodox was attending my first Divine Liturgy. I have many Catholic friends who I greatly respect and I am thankful to the Catholic Church for providing me a sense of real sacrament and the presence of God, but in the end I can’t say there wasn’t something that I found in the Orthodox Church and spirituality which seemed unique to it. I can’t say though that, for instance, I feel it beneficial or necessary to try and convert a friend of mine who goes to mass each week with his mother who is a devout Catholic and treasures it—and seems to care about the right things and wants to do Gods will. I tell him simply I think he would benefit from becoming orthodox but leave it at that.
Very well put. When folks ask me why I became Orthodox, I used to say, "Because it's true." Lately I've started saying, "Because it's more true." Hopefully that shows more gratitude for the many blessings I received in my years as a Catholic. But even for evangelical purposes, I think it makes more sense. Thanks for the comment Nicholas!
I hope you can continue to enjoy writing Michael, I enjoyed reading!
Thank you, Levi! The new Substack is growing much more slowly than the old one. A lot of people are interested in the more combative stuff. But I'm happy with my own writing for the first time in years, and I love the community we're building here. So, the trade-off is well worth it. Thank God!
I completely forgot about the provocation in the course of reading the account. Utterly charming portrait of your family life. Loved every minute of it.
Haha! Well then my evil plan worked. :) Also, confirms my suspicion that children teach parents as much (if not more) about Christianity than we teach them. Thank you Mariellen!
LOL.
Reading the beginning of Maxim G.’s piece (as far as I could get) I thought to myself, my goodness his soul is so utterly Catholic, of course he converted. Is it possible that he belongs there and we who have migrated in the other direction belong where we are?
I believe you chose your response very well- a pleasure to be transported into the world of Bea.
It's my favorite place in the world. I need to slow down and appreciate it more often. Having kinds, and especially seeing how they interact with the Church, you get why Christ told us to become like little children.
Perhaps it is just me, but it seems to me that many of the most frantic Very Online Defenders Of The Faith eventually fall away from the faith.
I find the attempts to distinguish differences between Catholicism & Orthodoxies to be very curious. As an outsider I get the impression there are at least as many similarities as differences. While they all claim to be Divinely guided, they seem very humanly constructed; it's religion.
I grew up in a Protestant denomination so that formed my perspectives but as I have aged I see the same sort of human construction in Protestantism as well. Much of that human construction detracts from the sole focus of Christianity, Jesus the Christ. Christianity is not a religion, it's a personal relationship with the Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Religion is to Christianity what water is to whiskey; dilution.
Father Alexander Schmemann said the same thing. Religion is like a tower that people build reaching up to the heavens, but we believe that God came down to Earth. We don't need religion because we have the Church.
(When we hear a Christian say, "Christianity isn't a religion," we usually think of guys like Rob Bell or Craig Groeschel. Of course, they don't mean the same thing Schmemann meant! But I do think they're speakin into the same discontent with America's ossified, lifeless religious institutions. It's interesting that this highly revered, "mainstream" Orthodox theologian preempted those hipster megachurch pastors by three decades!)
Bishop Kallistos Ware, speaking of his own experience converting from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy, said: "The more I learnt about Orthodoxy, the more I realized: this is what I have always believed in my inmost self, but never before did I hear it so well expressed. I did not find Orthodoxy archaic, foreign, or exotic. To me it was nothing other than simple Christianity." That has been my experience, too.
"that this highly revered, "mainstream" Orthodox theologian preempted those hipster megachurch pastors by three decades!)"
I think I understand your context, and I more or less agree. The things we are witnessing these days, supposedly under the name of Jesus, for the most part don't seem to have any true connection with what I believe is Christianity.
Earlier today on X I saw a post that seemed to be well received, it had the words "This says it all ...." and an artist's rendition of JFK, MLK, Kirk, Lincoln and what was supposed to be Jesus. Most comments were in agreement & the ones that were not, complained that RFK was left out. I see nothing Scriptural in that post.
The only thing I am 100% certain of is God has not made me judge of anyone, other than myself. So I don't go around judging, I do try to let my personal relationship with Jesus the Christ glorify Him, and I pray others will see what He has, and continues to do for me.
It's all very amazing!
Amen! Glory to God.
Amen!
Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism can look similar from the outside because of similarities in the external forms and some ritual aspects, but when you investigate the underlying reasons and mindset behind those things, you'll find they're quite different, so I think you owe it to yourself to take a closer look into it.
The entire notion that "Christianity is not a religion, it's a personal relationship with the Savior, Jesus the Christ" is itself a human construction, and an extremely recent one based on the presuppositions and values of the very individualistic modern west. You won't find any such perspective until perhaps the 1800s, and you certainly won't find it in any Christian writings from the first millennium.
As I stated, I realize there are differences too, so I see no reason to take a closer look since there is no objective way for me to do so.
Your claim, "The entire notion that "Christianity is not a religion, it's a personal relationship with the Savior, Jesus the Christ" is itself a human construction, and an extremely recent one based on the presuppositions and values of the very individualistic modern west." doesn't hold water. For most of the past 2,000 years the masses were illiterate. Those who were literate were the ones tasked to spread the Gospels; I'm sure there were many who carried the Gospel around the planet. Thank God for such people! Jesus said "Come unto Me", He didn't say go and do what others say you must do.
At the same time there were others who used their ability to read as a way to enhance their positions in life. They were the early churches' bureaucrats; the scribes & pharisees of the day. Organizations are what they construct; control then, as now, is how bureaucrats thrive.
The thief on the cross didn't have to do anything other than have a personal relationship, a Spiritual relationship, with Jesus the Christ, 2,000 years ago.
"whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”
James 4:14
Thanks for your reply!
How does one address the problems within Christianity of not addressing the opposites of evil issue, lack of integrating the feminine, and seeing matter as dead?
I am curious about the limits of reason. I saw that Maxim berated you for not debating him because St. Jerome says to debate people. It's worth noting that the devil could outdebate everyone of us and it's your faith in Christ that saves you, not your knowledge of Aquinas. It seems too that the countries most invested in rationalism are the most atheistic, the most unable to maintain a birth rate, the most prone to social collapse. The Sexual Revolution was led by secular thinkers committed to reason uber alles. The rebuttal would be that they just didn't reason correctly, which feels like cope when the reality is that no country based on rationalism seems to become more pious and more holy. Is the solution to dispense with reason? It can't be. But at the same time it seems like I'd be a cotton headed ninny-muggin if I demanded that my religion based on the mystery of the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection be justified to all people in entirely scholastic terms.
Your post sounds like you are announcing that you want to be the MAGA's Charlie Kirk of Alt-right Christianity, suggesting that Roman Catholicism, which embraces democracy, is Alt-wrong. Last July, I attended a service at St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sophia. The altar was flooded with men in regal robes - some wearing crowns. It was more like attending a Broadway performance about a 12th-century emperor than a religious service. And yes, I have attended a service at the Vatican in contrast. No argument that people of either religion are following a path to God and heaven. It just seems to me that it is easier to fall off a path where all the signs are in Greek vs one in which all the signs are in one's own language.
I think you see the world through the lens of American politics, which is okay, but you should be aware that not everyone does the same.
Really? Don't tell Curt Mills.
Thanks for the tip.
Is there a way for me to contact you privately? It sounds like you live in my general area, and I'd like to know more about the church you attend. TIA