Ancient Faith Today Live - Answering the Claims of a Former Priest

Comments · 566

• HA

  @HannahOrthoMom · 1 year ago

  I heard this man be interviewed by Gavin Orland when I was a catechumen, and I was really struggling with leaving my evangelical roots.  Well the interview really did trouble me because I was already going through a lot of turmoil deciding on making this huge change in my life, I had already seen enough holy people to know that orthodoxy really had something very special and very unique. People like Saint Paisios really put a stumbling block in my shoe That made me say that orthodoxy has something. Now over a year after my chrismation and baptism, I couldn’t be more glad, even though the journey was painful.

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• SO

  @SocialMediaObservatory · 1 year ago (edited)

  JS is an example of why it's a terrible idea to ordain someone to the priesthood who likely hadn't been Orthodox for five years yet; didn't yet fully acquire an Orthodox phronema, or hadn't worked out any of his theological baggage from his previous life. What that man did to his parish was an absolute scandal as well as an egregious afront to Christ and the Holy Spirit.

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• MA

  @MagosCrixus · 1 year ago (edited)

  One thing I personally have found very helpful as a former Evangelical, now Orthodox, Christian when speaking with my still Evangelical family is to unpack what Evangelicals (and most Protestants) mean by a particular term or phrase and doing my best to explain how the Orthodox understanding of the term is different. I think a lot of people talk past each other unnecessarily by assuming that they have the same understanding of a term.

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• BY

  @byzyt6931 · 1 year ago

  Joshua Schooping was my priest for a time, at a little ROCOR mission in Florida. He came across as a studious, intellectual fellow. Then he left under circumstances I never fully understood and was assigned as pastor of an OCA parish in Pennsylvania. Quite after the fact, I learned he had apostasized and joined a Protestant denomination I had never even heard of, and BOOM -- he was a pastor already. The next thing I knew, he was a Lutheran, and BOOM -- a pastor there too! How can someone who has belonged to multiple different religions, with no apparent trajectory, presume to teach others and be allowed to do so? Now, when I see how badly he is distorting Holy Orthodoxy, I wonder two more things: How well did he ever understand and accept Orthodox theological principles, despite his apparent studiousness, and why does he feel the need to bash the Orthodox Faith at this point? Why doesn't he just go about his business practicing and teaching his religion du jour? Another sad aspect of all of this is that Mr. Schooping has a lovely wife and 3 wonderful children, all of whom he is dragging along on what must be a pretty confusing journey. Lord have mercy on us all.

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• CE

  @cecachan467 · 1 year ago

  We knew Joshua. He was very impatient. He rushed into priesthood and then found it lacking when it did not bring him the favor and acknowledgements he wanted. He gave communion to the Orthodox faithful while he was negotiating his protestant future secretly and did not confess this to his Bishop.

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• OR

  @OrthodoxConvert2023 · 1 year ago

  When I was moving from Protestantism to Orthodoxy, I listened to a video from Joshua, heard error, wasn’t fooled by his error. But a Protestant friend of mine was swayed by him and remained Protestant.

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• G_

  @g_r_u_m_p · 1 year ago

  “What’s the best thing that I can do, personally, to try to heal schism? I need to heal the schism I have with the one, true, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” — Josh Sherman

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• CY

  @CymricArchive · 10 months ago

  I was raised southern Baptist and been earnestly looking into the fathers and reading church history and some of these claims are things I’ve been struggling with coming from protestantism. Thank you for this video

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• FL

  @flickering_wick · 1 year ago (edited)

  I have listened to Mr Schooping explaining why he left the Church. My takeaway was that the ancient Church&apos;s teachings about the faith don&apos;t line up with what Schooping subjectively wants Christianity to teach. <br>We&apos;re supposed to submit ourselves to the Church, not the other way around.

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• JO

  @joachim847 · 1 year ago

  Consider this: <i>Worship and veneration are, in fact, exact synonyms.</i><br><br>That&apos;s how it was in English before Calvinism. Now, 500 years on, the language has become Reformed, <i>and the definition of worship went along with it.</i> Settling on &quot;worship&quot; as the translation of &quot;latreia&quot; was a tragic mistake, it turns out. It&apos;s not too late to fix it, though. Translating Orthodox Christianity into English is a relatively new endeavor. A couple hundred years? The Roman Catholics went with &quot;adoration&quot; because of the Latin tradition, but if anything that&apos;s even worse in English than worship is.<br><br>Let&apos;s just import &quot;latreia&quot;. It hooks directly onto &quot;idolatry&quot;, which is the topic in dispute. <br><br>My point is, Evangelicals convert to Orthodoxy ALL THE TIME under the assumption they can cope with an invisible &quot;worship/veneration&quot; distinction. But that distinction was never meant to be invisible. Our latreia is offering the Divine Liturgy to God. It&apos;s actually not a problem to love Mary &quot;too much&quot;. There&apos;s no invisible line to watch out for. We don&apos;t offer the Divine Liturgy to her, because she&apos;s not God. The cognitive dissonance of being told you have to love Mary and kiss icons, while also being told not to accidentally go too far with it... that&apos;s crazy. That&apos;s how you make a Joshua Schooping.

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• PH

  @PhysicianHTS · 1 year ago (edited)

  Thank you so much Father for addressing this. I remember seeing the former priest’s YouTube video about his deconversion as I was discerning Holy Orthodoxy. It didn’t seem to make sense with what I was learning elsewhere, but it is powerful to say he left this place of significant authority for the tradition I myself was leaving. Really truly appreciate you addressing it directly.

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• OR

  @OrthodoxRhetorika · 1 year ago

  I suspect the shortage of Orthodox priests was a factor in his being ordained hastily. However, his Manual Theosis is a solid, easily understood introduction to Theosis.

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