re: How is it possible that some Protestant churches support gay marriage?

So you don’t think it’s possible to believe that Jesus is the messiah without performing good works?

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Yeah, so my point is that I read your quotes and didn’t think that the ECF were promoting your argument. It seems that you are reaching to interpret your words in a way that is favorable to you. And I don’t see how you can claim to have some superior knowledge of what the early church fathers meant apart from the actual words they wrote.

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There are tons of quotes on the subject. I just provided a few. I've actually read many of the works that those quotes are contained within, and the context helps us understand what they meant. It's also important to note the context that they lived in, such as fighting against Gnostic heresies that taught that Jesus didn't have an real body, so the ECFs emphasized that He had "flesh" (the word "flesh" is used very often in many of the writings of the ECF, even when not speaking of His literal body).

I don't have superior knowledge, but I can read, and it's clear that the ECFs actually didn't have total agreement on everything, which, again, was my entire point at the start. RCCs and EOCs often times claim a monopoly on the ECFs as if everything they wrote was in full agreement with what their respective traditions teach today, and that just isn't the case. I wouldn't even say everything they taught was in full alignment with the Protestant Reformation teaching, because, again, there were a variety of beliefs.

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And the members of the early church, the church that eventually split to form the EOC and the Catholic Churches, were the ones that determined which books made it into the Bible that all of the Protestants read today.

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There wasn't a determination of which books were canonical for several hundred years, and yet prior to that, the Church was mostly in agreement which books were Scripture. The claim that the Church simply didn't know what was what until the authority of a Council stepped in and determined what it was is just fiction. Only a few NT books were even questionable.

But even so, the issue is with authority. The Church doesn't create Scripture; she receives that which is Scripture.

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As far as I know, the primary churches that existed before the 16th century, which were the EOC, RC, and Oriental Orthodox churches, all had things in common. Liturgical services, the same understanding of the Eucharist, and no concept of sola fide or sola scriptura.

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There was much in common, but the RCC and EOC were both anathematizing each other.

By the time of the Reformation, the role of good works to merit justification were pretty well entrenched, though there were some stragglers that read the Scriptures and came to a different conclusion. Those individuals and groups were typically killed, though.

That's why the Reformation was a reformation, not a creation, though. The reformers were not looking around at what was at the time but going back to the Scriptures and the ECFs to reform the Church. They were rewinding the clock about 1,000 years or more precisely because the Church had developed doctrines and traditions that were not biblical over a long time.

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Were all of those churches just radically failing to interpret scripture and the teachings of the ECF’s? When Martin Luther came along 1500 years after the death of Christ, how is it that he finally got it right? How is it that he was the first one to correctly interpret the teachings of the ECF and scripture?

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This is a misunderstanding of the Reformation. You clearly think that the RCC and EOC were one single line of continuation (well, I suppose until the great schism between the East and West) from Christ in teaching. In reality, there was a lot of development that occurred for 1000 years that slowly strayed from biblical teachings. The Reformation was a do-over, going back to the Scriptures to understand what Christ truly taught in order to reform the doctrine and life of the Church after so many years of gradual corruption.

Sola scriptura and sola fide were Latin words that represented developed doctrines of the Reformation but those doctrines had their support within the Scriptures, themselves, so they weren't new inventions any more than the Trinity was a new invention as it came to full development a few hundred years after the Scriptures were completed.

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All I’m saying is that if the Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, and the Oriental Orthodox Church never had this idea of sola fide or sola scriptura, for 1500 years, and were on the same page concerning the Eucharist, and were on the same page in interpreting the ECF, it is a little peculiarly that Martin Luther and John Calvin came out of nowhere with these radically new ideas after a millennia and a half of Christianity, especially when none of them actually knew the ECF’s, the Apostles, or Christ.

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Don’t know what an ECF is, but you don’t have to have personally known the Apostles or Christ to point out where the church is going astray, in my opinion. That’s like saying you shouldn’t call for reform or change churches if your church suddenly embraces homosexuality, if you didn’t know the Apostles or Christ.

Depends on if PCA or PCUSA

So you agree there is more to it than just having faith alone, right? You must also live a Christian lifestyle.

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Now I usually listen to the sermon from The Church of the Highlands. These sermons are usually very close to my line of thinking.

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I heard if they say ‘non denominational’ its almost always really Baptist . Don’t know what your new church believes but compare it and see if that denomination lines up with how you feel.

If you know the early church fathers and were taught by them, your idea of what is the true church is more credible to me than the ideas of Martin Luther and John Calvin. The early church fathers were taught directly from the Apostles. Who were taught by Jesus.

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We are part of the original, Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.

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No. Forty to 100 thousand church "branches" were built by Martin Luther and other "interpreters" 1500 years after the Apostolic Church that was built by Christ.

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Most of the Protestant denominations are still in adherence to the core and ancient creeds of the Christian faith. The differences between most are on secondary and tertiary issues, not first-level issues like who God is.

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This is unequivocally false, and gets repeated so often by protestants who've no idea how large the scope and scale is of the major theological discrepancies are between the tens of thousands of denominations. It's mass confusion and it never stops — if someone doesn't like something, they start a new sect. You have multiple mainline protestant denominations committing atrocious blasphemy and heresies as we speak because of their own interpretations. That's because the reformed church is built upon a foundation of sand. Jesus said HE would build his Church, not Martin Luther, FooManChoo and Joel Osteen. Period.

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There was the OT Bible in use during the very formation of the Church,

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Irrelevant. We're talking about the new church, not the old law. The OT was canonized 200 years BC.

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and it was just a few decades after Christ went up to Heaven that the NT books were starting to be written.

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Correct. What you're failing to understand is the difference between the scripture being written, and it being canonized into the Bible, for which you claim Sola Scriptura and your own interpretations on how Christ wants His Church (not churches, but CHURCH) built, which was not a few decades: it was nearly 200 years that the church existed before the Bible became "the Bible" that 40 thousand different opposing denominations use as a source of Sola Scriptura. That's not up for debate, it's fact. Paul lived in Ephesus for nearly 3 years, yet he only left 6 chapters that were canonized into the Bible by God for humanity. Surely you don't believe Christ's Apostolic church from the day of Pentecost only has 6 chapters of teaching from Paul to the Ephesians, and from the Ephesians to us? Think of all the teaching and instruction they were given on how to build Christ's church as Christ instructed Paul and the disciples. That's why singular church tradition is so important to a unified church.

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I'm not sure what you mean by this, other than that you are claiming that the Church created the Bible rather than receiving it.

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The church received the scriptures, yes, and then they canonized it — 200 years after Christ built up His Church with the ancient oral traditions and sacraments that the Orthodox church uses to this very day. The original Apostolic Orthodox and Catholic churches put together the Bible hundreds of years after Christ was crucified by God's decree and instruction. In the ancient early church they were actively living out their faith without a canonized Bible. This is why the Orthodox church has authority: The ancient Christians and saints had a direct line to Christ Himself on how He wanted His Church built. They were not deciphering the Bible, because they had no Bible. They were building the church as Christ intended. Again, that's not up for debate.

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The Church of Christ is not infallible, and it doesn't take an infallible body to recognize an infallible standard (the Bible). God did use the Church to recognize and receive what He had created and gifted to the Church, but the infallible authority is God, not fallible human beings.

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The Church that Christ built is, ultimately, infallible, and He told us that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. If you don't like that, take it up with Him. He said it. HOWEVER, as far as the individual goes, regarding infallibility, what protestants fail to realize is that it is actually protestants who are the ones that wind up believing their interpretations of scripture are infallible, hence the explosion of denominations that contradict and oppose one another. Sola Scriptura is a man made concept 1500 years after the fact, and that's not up for debate either. Sola Scriptura would've been unrecognizable to the 200 years of OG Christians, because there was no scripture.

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The difference is the type of polity that enables a top-down conformity to those bad interpretations

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The Orthodox church has no "bad interpretations," nor a "top down" conformity to said bad interpretations. What does this even mean? There are no pluralities in Orthodox interpretation, because there's only one— passed down from the day of Pentecost.

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where Christians are free to attempt to reform bad interpretations and then to leave a false or erroneous denomination.

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And that is protestantism's fatal error and why it's drying up as we speak. The shallow plasticity of protestantism is what makes it so unappealing and unrecognizable to the rest of the world, especially young people who are hungry for principles and authority, as well as people who are actually living in a hell on earth under duress and persecution. A Palestinian Christian in the middle of bombings has no use for a church that is capriciously whimsical: they need a faith that is built upon a rock that hell itself cannot prevail against it. It's why our little parish, like most other Orthodox parishes, are overflowing to brim with young and old alike from dozens of countries, and why so many protestant churches are drying up or consolidating into a handful of mega church campuses where you watch the service on a screen. It's why I and so many others fell apart from God: because protestantism stands for nothing, and yet everything at the same time. It is a contradiction if there ever was one, and God is not an author of confusion.

There is one true church, and it's the one that Christ Himself built for 200 years before He deemed it time for His Church to canonize His word, aka, the Holy Bible. If nothing else, put some respeck on Orthodoxy's name for taking His divine guidance so that we have that Bible. It is God's work and decree, and He used His Church to build it.

I say all this in love, by the way. I highly recommend the book Journey to Reality: Sacramental Life in a Secular Age by Zachary Porcu. It's a profound reading and a must have for Orthodox inquirers, catechists, and protestants alike. It will better help you understand where Orthodoxy is coming from and how the ancient church operates in a Secular world just like the early Christians operated in a much more dangerous, pagan, secular world.

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That’s not sola fide

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I hold to sola scriptura, but I do not adhere to the “faith alone” teaching in the sense that faith is devoid of works. Scripture teaches that genuine faith will naturally produce works. However, I also affirm that works are not the means of salvation, they are simply the evidence of true faith.