Presbyterian Inquirer Asks Jay Dyer About Orthodoxy & Church Authority

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:01][music] >> Hey, what's up, man?

[00:00:07]Hey, uh me and my wife started uh attending liturgy 3 weeks ago and we're looking to become um inquirers, uh former Presbyterian.

[00:00:15]I'm at a meeting with my former pastor about the canon and had questions and when I asked him about Sola Scriptura, he his only answer was like, "God is canon." And that's how we know like that's how they have the 66-book canon.

[00:00:30]He asked a interesting >> the way, by the way, this is very similar to the Roman Catholic guy that called in the other day just just one point because I want everybody to notice the same line of argumentation that doesn't actually work. So, notice the Roman Catholic guy when he was arguing a couple days ago when I was on the on the road, he said, "Well, the way we solve this issue with going through the papal documents and figuring out which things are, you know, acceptable or fallible infallible or infallible is you just appeal to this {quote} the chair."

[00:01:04]And it's the same with a Protestant when you say, "How do we know what the right list of the canon is?"

[00:01:10]God is the canon.

[00:01:12]Just saying that doesn't actually do any of the actual work to tell you on the grounds book by book or in the case of the papacy sentence by sentence encyclical by encyclical which aspects are infallible and which ones aren't.

[00:01:25]So, you see how useless it is to just say, "Oh, the papacy. Oh, God does it."

[00:01:32]Yeah, uh what was kind of funny is when we prayed at the end of the the meeting during his prayer he said, "Lord, I I I know that no one went wrong with the 66-book canon." So, he's like he's like shaking while he was praying. I kind of feel bad for him. But, um he asked a follow-up question that was kind of interesting. Okay. Was um how do you have epistemic certitude about the the councils? Like what authority do we appeal to to know that the councils are true? Right. So, um a lot of times this comes up and what people are missing and what he's missing, and I I actually blame a lot of Roman Catholic apologists for this point, is that they're ex- they're confusing individual existential certitude, the means that we use to get that certitude, and then thirdly, normative authority.

[00:02:21]They're all three different things.

[00:02:23]They're related, but they're three different things. So, in the first case, when it comes to existential certitude, we would agree with a Roman Catholic and a Protestant that at the end of the day, the highest authority that we're all going to appeal to and rely on is the work of the Holy Spirit. There's no other thing that you can appeal to or or rest on.

[00:02:42]Where we differ though is first of all the means between a Protestant and us, right? A Protestant's going to think ultimately it's them and the scriptures, right? At the end of the day. I know that Protestants believe in confessions and they have their Westminster Confession. I don't know. I'm just saying that at the end of the day the final authority is the Holy Spirit enlightening the believer through the text of scripture.

[00:03:02]For the Roman Catholic at the end of the day, it's the Holy Spirit enlightening the believer to understand the magisterium teaching in Rome, right?

[00:03:10]That's literally what their position is.

[00:03:13]And for us as Orthodox, we agree that at the end of the day it's the Holy Spirit, but we differ from those two by the means that he uses. We think it's the councils, we think it's the teaching of scripture, it's the, you know, experience of the liturgy. All of those things are part of the sources of where I derive my belief systems from or my system from.

[00:03:33]So, lastly though, the key element of departure is not so much about certitude, it's rather about authority and whether Jesus gave any body of people normative authority, that is an ought, that you ought or must believe these things, these doctrines, this canon, etc. And it's just like the Constitution and the Supreme Court, right? You have a document, but there's not just a document that everybody gets mailed out to them when they become American citizens or when they're born.

[00:04:04]You also have a body of people who have normative authority in our country, at least, to bind people to that interpretation. And so when we look at the Council of Nicaea, for example, they are binding people to that interpretation of the deity of Christ.

[00:04:18]And they're saying, "If you follow Arius, you're excommunicated and you are outside the church. So we bind everyone to this interpretation of what it means to be homoousios, you see." That's normative authority that there is whether there is anybody to bind anybody to an interpretation. And in fact, classical Reformation theology is actually built on the denial of that principle because the Reformers taught, pretty much across the board, if there's one that doesn't, I'm not aware of it, there could be, I'm just not aware of it, most of the known Reformers teach the right of private interpretation and the freedom of conscience and that no one, no pope, council, or bishop can bind any individual in terms of their conscience. And that is not the teaching of the Orthodox Church in terms of normative authority, nor is it the Roman Catholic Church's teaching about normative authority. So both Rome and Orthodoxy admit the existence of normative authority and it's rather the Protestant position that that is severely lacking. Of course, I think the Roman Catholic position is crazy, but they at least have the notion of normative authority, whether it's consistent or not is a different question. But in Protestantism, it's explicitly no normative authority that can bind a person's conscience to an interpretation.

[00:05:31]It was It was kind of funny is they're like threatening to excommunicate us cuz we're becoming Orthodox and I kind of laughed cuz I'm like, "That doesn't really mean anything cuz there's three Presbyterian churches on the same street." And like, "I'm not joking, there's a PCA, a PCUSA, and an OPC on the same street within a mile of each other.

[00:05:48]>> Just appeal to the Just like Just appeal to the Reformation teaching of the right of private interpretation, freedom of conscience. So, because I had the exact same thing come up to me when I was leaving Calvinism, my my Protestant Calvinist church when I was like 19 or 20.

[00:06:03]And I was beginning to doubt it and looking into Catholicism. And my Protestant pastor was like, "Our presbytery will excommunicate you." And I'm like, "Well, okay. So, what?" Like, I mean, it's the Is Protestantism Can I just start my own presbytery? You know what I mean?

[00:06:19]Is it like a church larping when they threaten to excommunicate? Like, "Oh, we promise we're going to excommunicate you."

[00:06:26]>> it's funny because what my my pastor would do and the the elders the Well, I think there was only one elder in our in our It's a mission church. Um but they would send a mail certified letter.

[00:06:38]>> [laughter] >> So, you go to the post office and you get a certified I'm not joking, he would do that. He thought that made it like more official. If he went to the post office >> approval?

[00:06:47]>> No, it'd have post office approval. It's a certified letter the I'm serious, the the US post office. I'm not joking, he would do that. Which we all thought it was actually pretty funny though. I mean, he didn't think it was funny. He wasn't doing it to be ironic. He like he thought like, "No, this will actually ratify like a government authority on this document and that that like contributes to the church authority."

[00:07:08]Well, that's crazy. Uh I got one last uh quick question here.

[00:07:12]Um uh me and my wife were in deliverance ministry, you know, like 3 or 4 years ago. And what's a good reputation of that whole demon slaying movement?

[00:07:24]Um I mean, we just did a pretty lengthy reputation of the whole uh Pentecostal charismatic stuff. I would say go back and watch that stream that I did. It was pretty long. Um but we went through all the charismatic stuff. Uh I mean, I think the Orthodox church would agree that there are exorcisms. I don't know that that necessarily means that we're not affirming all this kind of crazy wacky Protestant stuff.

[00:07:44]Uh but I would say that live stream would be probably the best uh debunking of all the charismatic nonsense.

[00:07:54]>> [music]