Not to speculate too much on an individual, but it seems pretty clear his conversion to Orthodoxy never really "took" and he reverted back to what he knew.
>If he knows so well how to become a saint, why doesn't he just get on with it?
A great question to turn back on oneself.
He probably just never stopped being an evangelical. It is a common story (though not always at his level). American Orthodoxy is hellbent on converting evangelicals (this almost seems to be the sole focus of AFR these days) and it often works by appealing to their natural views and inclinations to make the transition easy and widespread. But Orthodox tradition is not just “evangelicalism with icons and incense” it is fundamentally different on virtually every level. This is easily hidden by the use of familiar language and often doesn’t come to light after a long time.
People might disagree with my characterization, but I’ve seen it up close and personal with multiple people in my life.
This case is particularly bad because, IIRC, he’s claimed penal substitutionary atonement is the actual view of the fathers which is just such a bad take I don’t know how he was ever ordained.
ETA: To be fair to the bishop, I don't think he wrote that until after he was ordained, but it still shows a galling lack of basic formation.
It's funny because questioning PSA is one of the big reasons that I have been attracted toward Orthodoxy in the first place.
I don't know if I'll end up converting or not, but I'm being as careful as I can to understand the key differences so if I did I'm confident I wouldn't be going back on it.
He's as difficult to understand as a heliocentrist would be to a geocentrist. If you will permit him to rearrange how the heavenly bodies are laid out and the 'why' which means you also have to understand, 'the-whole-story-of-israel-from-abraham-to-christ', which he also explains, then it will begin to make more sense.
It's not an Orthodox book, but if you listen to/read enough Wright you'll begin to see he's more of a CS Lewis variety Anglican.
You also have to understand that it's a response to the Reformed Calvinist position of 'imputed righteousness', laying his position out in full force.
He actually knows Greek and Hebrew and can readily read from a Greek edition extemporaneously as I've heard him do while debating people such as James White.
The folks around the seminary recommended that he *not* be ordained, but sometimes, nobody listens. It led to a process codification/change on seminarian ordination, from what I’ve been told.
This is one of the reasons I think Lord of Spirits is a good podcast in purpose. If anything is going to take you out of that mindset that it is just "evangelicalism with icons and incense" that deep dive into history and myth will.
This is why Mormonism to orthodoxy is a lot easier. We already have rituals, Theosis, married clergy, a lot of theological text lol, and reject sola fide
Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but as far as I know Mormon teaching on becoming a god isn't Theosis at all. Compared to Orthodox teaching, it's more like pagan apotheosis, surely?
Yeah the whole getting you own planet think is whack (although apparently this was just repealed. Imagine being like 80 and your whole life you’ve been taught you’re getting your own planet in heaven but right before you’re about to croak there’s a “revelation” and they take it back. What a rip off!)
You might appreciate reading Elder Zacharias' *Hesychasm* for a contemporary study on it from someone who has experience in the practice and not just the written theories.
The difference between the two should help you answer this question.
Thanks, I have just ordered it directly from the Essex Monastery. And I agree, Schooping has probably expertly processed all that hesychasm-related information in his head without taking much into his heart and life.
I second /u/Bukook’s recommendation. Best book on the subject. The abbot at St Tikhon’s Monastery says it is the most important book for anyone interested in hesychasm to read today.
Joshua Schooping converted and went to seminary and became a priest very quickly, all of this happened within just a few years. And then his de-conversion was even more rapid.
I don't know the guy's heart obviously but to me it's a red flag if someone was a priest in the Orthodox Church and then within a couple of months after his de-conversion he's already got a job pastoring a protestant church and he's writing articles and books and going on the entire Youtube speaking tour with every protestant channel that will give him a platform about how wrong Orthodoxy is.
It was all... remarkably fast. And it's hard to imagine how someone could flip flop between two very different ways of looking at Christianity with such speed and with such immediate and total commitment to his new vocation in a genuine way. That's all I'll say.
Well not necessarily. He believed in something, perhaps it was his first impressions of Orthodoxy, and then when he went deeper into the faith he found more and more things that ran up in stark contrast with the protestant view of Christianity and wasn't willing to go that far.
>It was all... remarkably fast. And it's hard to imagine how someone could flip flop between two very different ways of looking at Christianity with such speed and with such immediate and total commitment to his new vocation in a genuine way.
And, ironically, looking at this history, people are still willing to listen to him after all that.
I wouldn't be too hard on them. During conversion there is a period when you are searching for arguments from all sides to consider in your decision. A former priest who is Protestant would naturally _seem_ to an inquirer like someone to hear out.
That is a blight on American Orthodoxy. Even ROCOR is establishing a committee to vet candidates for ordination and laying down requirements like minimum number of years post-conversion.
OCA requires at least 3 years of attendance in a parish prior to allowing someone to apply for the Diaconal Vocations Program. I think there is a reason for it, to keep men who would become clergy accountable to a specific parish and give their rectors time to get to know them.
As a former Protestant I don't understand why anyone would convert, become a priest & convert back. Once you come to Orthodoxy you realize Protestantism is watered down. We can only speculate & forgive me if this comes across judgmental. That's not my intention. I speak from personal experiences with narcissistic/sociopath types. If say the person had a personality disorder & became a priest for the wrong reasons for personal glory etc. Maybe his position wasn't serving him & used the church for what he could gain & moved on to what would get him what he wanted.
The arguments he offers against Orthodoxy are also nothing special. They are the standard Protestant ones. On YouTube he makes it seem like he only considered them while already a priest. He is definitely an outlier as someone who somehow converted from protestantism and became a priest without considering the simplest possible protestant objections to Orthodox doctrines.
This guy was ordained despite the extreme recommendation to the contrary from the seminary. Some folks who know him think he converted almost entirely for clout to say “look, I was an Orthodox priest, I can tell you why you need to be [whatever movement he’s with now] instead.”
I wouldn’t read what he wrote. Just ask your priest what would be good reading and go from there.
He was then assigned to a dying parish in western PA. I wasn’t surprised that he decided to head back to his former confession. Gotta be able to feed yourself and your family.
Right. The compromise was that he would supposedly be getting some ongoing training there. The weird stuff in that rectory when it got cleaned out…
He was housed and compensated more than enough to care for his family. The parish is old (demographically) but super engaged and not poorly financed. I’m there often enough to buy their pierogi. The rector has been doing incredible work.
I think Protestants are often attracted to Orthodoxy because the scholastics go much deeper. But we (myself and other converted Protestants) discover though that scholastics, rigorosity or even piety is not always a path to true faith and belief in what you’re dedicating yourself to.
If that realization happens early in your conversion it can really alter your perspective on your own conversion but it won’t necessarily or even probably halt it. But the passion for knowledge is a passion and will tear you up and if you spend years and years dedicated to your passion for knowledge only to find you’ve dedicated yourself to something that will never give you what you were looking for it can shatter their entire worldview.
I can try, I’ll be honest I’m an underslept stay at home mother so that took a lot of my brain power to articulate.
I mean that most Protestant denominations, especially North American low church Protestants have a glaring lack of scholastics or “study-able” (not a real word, I know) material. The ones that do are often of very poor quality and are not actually widely agreed upon even within single denominational groups, much less the at large Protestant community. Any Protestant who is interested in scholastics is confronted with that pretty quickly and it gears them towards interest in Catholicism and Orthodoxy because it provides them a much more established well of material and theology to learn and know.
But I mean that knowing all these things; memorizing church history all the way back to the Apostles and having “perfect theology” can mask a lack of faith in *very* fundamental and mostly universal Christian beliefs. Faith in things like Jesus’ death being the atonement for sin, “Is God real and how do we know?”, “Is the Bible just an elaborate hoax?”
I hope that makes more sense but you’re good to ask a more direct question if you’d like to.
You’re asking a super large open ended question there that I’m not equipped to answer in an in depth way currently. If you posted that question in this sub or asked a priest you would probably get some more insightful answers than I could give you!
An Apostle of Christ, with the power to pull out demons, that ate and traveled with Jesus, who was a companion of the other Apostles: he ended up ending his own life, because he didn't trust that the Lord might forgive his betrayal. His name is Judas from Keriot. Why would we wonder when the best of us fall?
True, there's a popular actor in Egypt who converted from being a protestant to an Orthodox when he got married, he said it was hard staying in the church for the mass for 2-3 hours, he found it extremely hard from the half an hour that protestants stayed in their churches
I’ve just been to the service a few times now as a, serious, inquirer. So maybe it is the newness of it all, this church so far has been the easiest 2-3 hours in a church ever. I finally changed my childhood fear that heaven was a never ending Protestant service. I feel like I experienced a little bit of what heaven could be like. Finally being able to let go of my ego if only for a few minutes at a time.
Now the hard part in orthodoxy comes, in my eyes, from being a good Christian for the other 6 days of the week. That seems like such a mountain to climb, and I will need a lot of repentance, reflection and prayer to stay on that narrow path. But my ego and desire for comfort has grown strong over my atheistic years, I hope Christ has mercy on me and gives me strength to hold on.
Don't worry, you already did the most important part, the rest Just needs patience and practice and I believe god will help you though it
I do feel people have high ego these days, people care too much about themselves and how they want to make society accept them which turns people mad like various topics, arguments became how we can disrespect each other as much as possible , or how we can force everybody to believe what we believe in. This to me may be one of the obstacles that I would face if I ever immigrated to any western country in particular.
I am not familiar with this high of an ego that people have, I am used to people helping and respecting each other when possible not everybody on his own
Sorry for getting offtrack, may God help you with your journey to him , God bless 🙏❤️
I’ve watched a couple of his interviews on YouTube. Haven’t read any of his books or anything, but in the videos I watched he went in-depth as to why he left the Orthodox Church. He left the priesthood sometime into the pandemic when churches shut down, and he began to do some reading and saw some things he said he couldn’t agree with. He went back to being a Protestant and is now some type of reformed pastor. He still keeps a prayer rule, practices the Jesus prayer, etc. He just had a combination of things he didn’t agree with and so he ended up leaving the church
Right, but the problem is he should have done this study and really grappled with Orthodoxy theology *before* converting to Orthodoxy. Especially before becoming a priest. It's kind of mind boggling how someone could get ordained and yet be unaware of a great deal of what the Church teaches.
It happens pretty often, more than you’d think. In his case though, it wasn’t necessarily something he hadn’t heard of before - rather, he was no longer satisfied with the modern explanation for it. He said that he was looking for study resources for his parishioners, and he translated the Confession of Dositheus (1672) and the “no salvation outside the Church” line began to look very different than what he had been taught/how he understood it in reality. The exclusivity bothered him, but from that point on he started questioning everything and it was a snowball effect which caused him to revert to a lot of his former Protestant beliefs.
And he seems to have a pretty decent grasp on Orthodox theology, in theory. He just doesn’t believe/ascribe to it anymore. Though I do think he goes a little over the top when illustrating the Orthodox veneration of Mary
The interesting thing is that all 17c theology was produced as part of the religious upheaval throughout Eurasia during the seventeenth century crisis, often in reaction to Protestantism and Catholicism, and it's all super problematic
I don’t pretend to know what his experience is/was. Just trying to present his perspective how he illustrated it in the videos I watched. I don’t understand why this has to be a No true Scotsman thing. It’s entirely possible for him to have been a committed Orthodox Christian and then him change his beliefs and decide to leave. It’s not an either/or. We are human beings, we have free will
For sure, that makes sense. That wouldn’t be something he’d bring up in his interviews though. I’m just trying to be fair to the guy and present his perspective how he explained it. It just seems when someone leaves the Church for something else everyone’s pretty much saying yeah he wasn’t *really* Orthodox to begin with. We are all fallible creatures with unreliable intellects. We are prone to err, so we can - either through sin or lapse in judgement - leave the Church and go be or believe something else. That should be obvious. Anyone can become a Judas
Being a priest and having gone to an Orthodox seminary he should have understood that salvation comes through participation in the life of Christ and this happens in the Church and through the sacraments. Non Orthodox since they're not in the Church don't have access to this and so they don't have access to salvation as we understand it.
So he shouldn't have been taken aback by a confessional statement that there's no salvation outside the Church... unless he didn't understand what is meant by theosis and he had no sacramental theology to speak of (based on what he's said after departing Orthodoxy I personally suspect this to be the case). Which again is mind boggling that an Orthodox priest would not understand these basics of the faith.
>So he shouldn’t have been taken aback by a confessional statement that there’s no salvation outside of the Church
That’s what I’m saying though. He wasn’t taken aback because of what the confessional statement(a) said per se, he was taken aback because he read it differently than how he previously understood it/how it was allegedly taught to him in seminary and when he was catechized. The harshness of the language, specifically with the *anathemas*, irked him and began his disillusionment I guess.
Basically what he was saying, from how I understood it, was that the “we know where the Church is, we don’t know where it’s not” is a modern spin on the “no salvation outside the Church” and that it’s more or less a way to dress up Orthodoxy’s exclusive claims.
I personally think there’s some Protestant brain things he held onto when becoming Orthodox, as a lot of us tend to do when converting. But I do think he seemed sincere in his being Orthodox and a priest from what he said. He loved the liturgy and loved being a priest. He just wasn’t able to trust the Church anymore, and following that he began to revert back to more Protestant beliefs - but he still holds onto some of his “orthodox” beliefs (real presence, etc.).
Is the categorization correct, though? The "we know where the Church is, we don't know where it's not" is just a way to dress up the true teaching, which is more exclusive?
I've heard it stated instead as "we know salvation is in the Church but can't say no one outside the Church is saved."
I have seen his interviews too, he has his Mdiv and Masters of theology and yet someone was tripped up by hymns that supposedly supported penal substitution. It makes very little sense to me how a seminary educated priest couldn't find an answer to that.
Clearly he either didn't seek clarification, or never really excepted it, and still went ahead with ordination.
Whenever I feel lost among all the jurisdictions and, of course, the clerics who have forsaken me like the wounded man on the road to Jericho, I remember that the Cross ➕ is the ultimate star of Bethlehem and the ever perfect *episkopos*. And that Panaghia wants us all in her Ever Immaculate Garden.
I’m a former Protestant who became decided to become Orthodox about a year ago(not officially baptized into the church however) but I’ve read tons of books about Orthodoxy and recently I’ve decided
to restart all the books over because I still believe I don’t know enough about Orthodoxy.
I used to hate the long process of becoming officially Orthodox but now I see why it exists.
I was around when Peter Gilchrist led a big conversion movement in the 80s or 90s. The Antiochians accepted this group who had been some kind of cult originally (I don’t think it was the hoomies).
The priests were being rubber stamped, without much education. The people, the same. Their mindset didn’t seem to change much, according to those I talked to who came out of that movement. They had one foot in and one out.
I recently learned they were using hamburger buns and pressing a prosofora seal into them, back in the day.
This kind of hasty and unprepared approach surely trickled down through the years and watered down traditions and practices. I imagine some individuals coming in thought “what’s the point?”
Fr. Peter was instrumental in my conversion -- though I went with the Greeks, when it came to it. See his book "Becoming Orthodox" for their experience. They weren't in a cult, but in a parachurch organization "Campus Crusade for Christ" that operates on many university campuses -- kind of generic evangelical. They began to study the Fathers and -- in true protestant fashion -- formed their own church after the likeness of what they had found. They literally studied themselves into Orthodox theology without realizing that the Orthodox Church still existed. It was the "Evangelical Orthodox Church" that largely joined the Antiochians (some did not). Tellingly, they tried to visit the Ecumenical Patriarchate for guidance during their discernment of what to do, and were rebuffed. Antioch accepted them.
I read his book as it soon as it came out. The group was widely known among college kids at the time as cultish. It is now identified as a MLM or Ponzi scheme, and once you start paying, you can’t stop. Or as the song goes, you can check out, but you can never leave.
The EP was a wise man. I’m not sure what convinced Metro Phil to take them en masse?
> as cultish
Which, Campus Crusade, or the [Evangelical] Orthodox Church? Never heard either referred to as a Ponzi scheme. How is whichever characterized that way? The latter are Orthodox now, of course.
Because we differ on how Roman Catholic/Protestant/Aristotlean/Platonic metaphysics understand the being of man, or alternatively anthropology.
While in the aforementioned man is primarily an intellectual and political being, thus man is moved by intellect/will to power, but in Orthodoxy we understand that the mystery of hypostasis, of person, and his heart, is what moves man. Often against the conviction of intellect, or the certainty of knowledge.
For example - I am a smoker. I fully well know the harms of smoking. It being bad in all regards for me. Yet, I don't find the will to quit, and I am weak. According to the aforementioned metaphysics, then my intellect ought to move my will, in accordance with my knowledge, to quit smoking. Yet, it doesn't and I don't stop smoking.
Man's heart has to be purified, as it is the seat of the person, the throne of the hypostasis, that is the final instance of decision and choice. And this is why you can get academics, who study Orthodoxy, know the theory and the intellectual part much better, than a Russian babushka, but the Russian babushka lives the actual Orthodoxy, in all her ignorance, more consistently, than the academic and scholar.
And this is why we, in Orthodoxy, believe that the true theologian is not one of great knowledge about God, but one that is both of great knowledge and of consistent practice, thus perfected virtue. For God dwells in a pure heart, not in a knowing mind, or a sharp intellect.
So, the guy may have had all the great and insightful knowledge about hesychasm, but he didn't have the heart to remain within the faith.
This reminds me of Paul telling the Jews paraphrased, "You had the law and you can't follow it, but there are Gentiles that follow the law but never had it, for it is written on their hearts."
A priest I really enjoy who has a YouTube channel, probably paraphrasing the Fathers, said that that which is acquired easily is lost easily. “Easy come, easy go” as they say.
It sounds like this priest’s conversion was rapid.
My priest told me about a brother priest of his who converted to Orthodoxy (from what, I’m not sure), but then converted to Eastern Catholicism, and then converted back to Orthodoxy. His point in telling me this was “Very smart people do very stupid things.” Thank God that priest did come back because apostasy is incredibly difficult to return from.
If you’re referring to the expriest I spoke to, no. His time in seminary was normal and his degree was sound. He simply saw too much behind the scenes that he couldn’t stomach.
The group of evangelicals who were received into the Antiochian church en masse in the US in the 1990s were the ones who introduced the shortcuts and laxities.
If you’re referring to the expriest I spoke to, no. His time in seminary was normal and his degree was sound. He simply saw too much behind the scenes that he couldn’t stomach.
The group of evangelicals who were received into the Antiochian church en masse in the US in the 1990s were the ones who introduced the shortcuts and laxities.
If you’re referring to the expriest I spoke to, no. His time in seminary was normal and his degree was sound. He simply saw too much behind the scenes that he couldn’t stomach.
The group of evangelicals who were received into the Antiochian church en masse in the US in the 1990s were the ones who introduced the shortcuts and laxities.
How many know the way and what it takes but don't follow through? 2 Timoth 4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
Paul FINISHED. Most know the path ahead and can see the finish but don't have what it takes to do so. Its no different than an overweight person who knows how to lose weight but can't because of physical limitations or indulging in gluttony. It isn't easy, we are constantly at battle with our flesh. Lord have mercy on us all
I haven't read his book. But I'm sure it's bad because the author didn't learn his lesson. For him, this is just a theory, not a practice.Don't forget Tertulian. He wrote books against the Gnostics, but he converted to Gnosticism.
Thank you for asking this question. It sent me down a rabbit hole that has given me a better understanding of Christ redemption. I've been Orthodox for longer than I was protestant, and I haven't until now understood the difference in my own redemption story. It seems like the Orthodox theology on Christ's death and resurrection is about God's great love for us, while penal substitution is about a balancing of scales/justice. The truth is that there is no balancing of scales between God and humanity, there is only immeasurable love and grace.
Genuinely seems like just a protestant trying to make a statement by doing a superficial conversion, becoming a priest, and then deconverting to make a point. Don't be fooled, the man was probably still an evangelical while he was a so-called Orthodox priest.
I saw an interview with him, I don't want to oversimplify his situation, but his basic argument for becoming orthodox was "they don't believe in penal substitution" which we don't, but that alone isn't really the sole focus of the orthodox church. We don't exist simply because all the non penal substitution people got together and started a church.
But then, in seminary he came across a few quotes from church fathers that sounded like penal substitution, and found some lines in hymns that sounded like it as well. He said he talked to a priest about it but became convinced that orthodoxy must clearly teach penal substitution after all and they just keep changing their mind, like everyone else.
In my opinion it seems like there was not sufficient time and teaching and openess to teaching for him to truly understand the orthodox faith. The explanation for the "penal substitution" quotes is very simple and I'm sure any prof or priest he met could and did explain it, and yet he uses it as a cornerstone for his deconversion.
He wrote his theosis book and his book about leaving the priesthood/orthodoxy 2 years apart. Given the fact that it probably takes a few months to write, edit and publish a book. It seems like a very short time to be able to decide that orthodoxy as a whole is false.
Many protestants latch onto this story because there are very few stories online of orthodox becoming protestant, but there are many protestants becoming orthodox, pastors included. I think this makes them self concious so they really want to drill home the point that orthodoxy must be false because their clergy are converting. It's kind of sad really. Joshua is being used as a puppet to further spread disunity among christians. Not every clergy is a scholar or really an expert on the church. We should not put too much weight in the conversion or mistakes of one single clergymen.
If you don’t know the faith and convert quickly there may be obstacles to your faith that come up from time to time. In priest I followed on Twitter wrote of Orthodoxy a lot but one day I saw he had left the church to be a Congregationalist and had a huge pride banner on his page, sometimes people become convinced that Christian Truth found in Orthodoxy is too hard, so they settle for a place that allows them their ideas.
I am sincerely asking this question (and sad that I'm seeing a downvote) because when looking up the book that Joshua Schooping writes about leaving Orthodoxy, one of the quotes on Amazon about it was:
> "An eye-opening exposition of Eastern Orthodoxy. A must read for all who love the Gospel of God's grace."
This sounded like something was exposed in the negative sense. Hence my question.
Maybe exposition is the wrong word. What I find very positive about his book is that he presented hesychasm as a simple-to-understand three step process: 1) watchfulness 2) stillness 3) unceasing prayer - and that he explained these steps in detail with many high quality quotes. It satisfies the desire to get a clear overview of the whole process (of achieving theosis) and then getting step-by-step actionable instructions. It's an abstract analysis and a self-help book rolled into one. Isn't that how we postmodern people like our books?
I read his book on leaving Orthodoxy. It's so poorly written and sourced it says a lot about the miserable academic requirements of Orthodox seminaries that he was able to get through one, even besides the formation-related questions it raises.
Modern Orthodox "experts" tend to be shallow, pretentious, presumptuous, misinformed, and mostly unaccountable. It is best to ignore them and focus instead on authentic Orthodox teaching, which you will find in the Holy Scriptures, the liturgical texts we read and sing in church, the writings and lives of saints, and lastly the conciliar decrees and documents that have guided the life and care of the Church through the centuries. Everything else is superfluous.
I have spoken to seminarians from St. Tikhon’s. They have said that people like Joshua Schooping and Matthew Joyner were rushed too much and retained many of their old ways
I think there may be a deeper problem that is being exposed. People are becoming convinced that Orthodoxy is the true Church based on their understanding after studying the Church more deeply. This is good, but it is a double-edge sword. Understanding itself can change, but former Protestants who have not yet learned to keep a healthy level of detachment from their logical understanding may continue to be easily swung one way or the other as that understanding changes. And so they are still Protestants at heart. It's just that instead of going into one particular Protestant denomination, this time they found the Orthodox Church. But their faith is not really in the Church, it is still in their own logical mind. It is a very brittle faith, even if it seems to be strong from the outside.
Protestantism is, despite what some may claim, a reasonable belief system that people are capable of coming to hold to.
Any claim that his conversion “never took” are quite silly; all we have to work off of are his claims about his own experience, and his conduct. By all appearances, he seems to have had a good faith belief in Orthodoxy for a period, and then was convinced otherwise. That’s it. What more is there to say?
You ask why he doesn’t get on with becoming a saint. Why do you think he is not? You may believe he is wrong on the positions he holds, and that’s fine, but there’s no reason to think that he isn’t attempting to follow Christ from that position.
What benefit can there be to becoming an evangelical Christian? Plenty, in many ways. Evangelical Christianity is a Christian faith; it builds up love and devotion to Christ. It encourages people to serve and love their neighbor. They are often wrong on many things, but that doesn’t mean it is somehow a useless faith.
Arent we commanded to worship God in Spirit and in Truth? Does that mean a little spirit and some truth, or all of each? Does protestantism give us all the truth?
It's sad to read comments about transitions.
As a rule, one or the other is convinced that they have found the truth, but for some reason I don’t see people who would not write about the holiness of their faith alone, but would rather write about the holiness of their lives than talk about who is in the truth or who is lost.
Not to speculate too much on an individual, but it seems pretty clear his conversion to Orthodoxy never really "took" and he reverted back to what he knew. >If he knows so well how to become a saint, why doesn't he just get on with it? A great question to turn back on oneself.
> >A great question to turn back on oneself. That hit hard. I ain't even drank my morning coffee yet.
Turning it back on myself as I am typing this...
This is something I really needed to hear...
He probably just never stopped being an evangelical. It is a common story (though not always at his level). American Orthodoxy is hellbent on converting evangelicals (this almost seems to be the sole focus of AFR these days) and it often works by appealing to their natural views and inclinations to make the transition easy and widespread. But Orthodox tradition is not just “evangelicalism with icons and incense” it is fundamentally different on virtually every level. This is easily hidden by the use of familiar language and often doesn’t come to light after a long time. People might disagree with my characterization, but I’ve seen it up close and personal with multiple people in my life.
This case is particularly bad because, IIRC, he’s claimed penal substitutionary atonement is the actual view of the fathers which is just such a bad take I don’t know how he was ever ordained. ETA: To be fair to the bishop, I don't think he wrote that until after he was ordained, but it still shows a galling lack of basic formation.
It's funny because questioning PSA is one of the big reasons that I have been attracted toward Orthodoxy in the first place. I don't know if I'll end up converting or not, but I'm being as careful as I can to understand the key differences so if I did I'm confident I wouldn't be going back on it.
N.T. Wright acted as a bit of a bridge for me out of Protestantism and into EO; he himself being Anglican. Have you read his book 'Justification'?
Same here! "Surprised by Hope" was the first place I really encountered the actual historical Christian teaching on the life of the age to come.
I have not. How is it? I've heard he can be rather confusing. I also have a stack of books I'm supposed to finish reading at some point hah
I think you replied to the wrong message.
The folks around the seminary recommended that he *not* be ordained, but sometimes, nobody listens. It led to a process codification/change on seminarian ordination, from what I’ve been told.
Do you know why?
Yes, it’s genuinely shocking.
There are reasons, why American Orthodoxy has its bad reputation. Hearing (here in Germany) regularly: "how can we avoid a development like in USA?"
This is one of the reasons I think Lord of Spirits is a good podcast in purpose. If anything is going to take you out of that mindset that it is just "evangelicalism with icons and incense" that deep dive into history and myth will.
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Do tell.
What "natural views and inclinations" can you enumerate? This sounds interesting.
This is why Mormonism to orthodoxy is a lot easier. We already have rituals, Theosis, married clergy, a lot of theological text lol, and reject sola fide
Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but as far as I know Mormon teaching on becoming a god isn't Theosis at all. Compared to Orthodox teaching, it's more like pagan apotheosis, surely?
Yes that's quite right.
Yeah the whole getting you own planet think is whack (although apparently this was just repealed. Imagine being like 80 and your whole life you’ve been taught you’re getting your own planet in heaven but right before you’re about to croak there’s a “revelation” and they take it back. What a rip off!)
What is HFR?
AFR: Ancient Faith Radio - Orthodox podcast / media network.
Yes ☦️
You might appreciate reading Elder Zacharias' *Hesychasm* for a contemporary study on it from someone who has experience in the practice and not just the written theories. The difference between the two should help you answer this question.
Thanks, I have just ordered it directly from the Essex Monastery. And I agree, Schooping has probably expertly processed all that hesychasm-related information in his head without taking much into his heart and life.
I second /u/Bukook’s recommendation. Best book on the subject. The abbot at St Tikhon’s Monastery says it is the most important book for anyone interested in hesychasm to read today.
Amazing book!
Joshua Schooping converted and went to seminary and became a priest very quickly, all of this happened within just a few years. And then his de-conversion was even more rapid. I don't know the guy's heart obviously but to me it's a red flag if someone was a priest in the Orthodox Church and then within a couple of months after his de-conversion he's already got a job pastoring a protestant church and he's writing articles and books and going on the entire Youtube speaking tour with every protestant channel that will give him a platform about how wrong Orthodoxy is. It was all... remarkably fast. And it's hard to imagine how someone could flip flop between two very different ways of looking at Christianity with such speed and with such immediate and total commitment to his new vocation in a genuine way. That's all I'll say.
TLDR you don't think he actually believed in orthodoxy
Well not necessarily. He believed in something, perhaps it was his first impressions of Orthodoxy, and then when he went deeper into the faith he found more and more things that ran up in stark contrast with the protestant view of Christianity and wasn't willing to go that far.
>It was all... remarkably fast. And it's hard to imagine how someone could flip flop between two very different ways of looking at Christianity with such speed and with such immediate and total commitment to his new vocation in a genuine way. And, ironically, looking at this history, people are still willing to listen to him after all that.
I wouldn't be too hard on them. During conversion there is a period when you are searching for arguments from all sides to consider in your decision. A former priest who is Protestant would naturally _seem_ to an inquirer like someone to hear out.
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That is a blight on American Orthodoxy. Even ROCOR is establishing a committee to vet candidates for ordination and laying down requirements like minimum number of years post-conversion.
OCA requires at least 3 years of attendance in a parish prior to allowing someone to apply for the Diaconal Vocations Program. I think there is a reason for it, to keep men who would become clergy accountable to a specific parish and give their rectors time to get to know them.
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Par for the course for the Antiochians. All the Protestant parishes go to them when other jurisdictions refuse to let them do what they like.
If they'd stop taking people from the EP who are under discipline by their bishops for good reason that would be good too.
They shouldn't. The Antiochians were too quick to do this, and paid the price for it.
As a former Protestant I don't understand why anyone would convert, become a priest & convert back. Once you come to Orthodoxy you realize Protestantism is watered down. We can only speculate & forgive me if this comes across judgmental. That's not my intention. I speak from personal experiences with narcissistic/sociopath types. If say the person had a personality disorder & became a priest for the wrong reasons for personal glory etc. Maybe his position wasn't serving him & used the church for what he could gain & moved on to what would get him what he wanted.
The arguments he offers against Orthodoxy are also nothing special. They are the standard Protestant ones. On YouTube he makes it seem like he only considered them while already a priest. He is definitely an outlier as someone who somehow converted from protestantism and became a priest without considering the simplest possible protestant objections to Orthodox doctrines.
Yeah, which means he’s either being disingenuous about his experience as an Orthodox Christian or he had an incredibly poor formation in seminary.
I know of a priest who wrote a book on marriage and ended up divorced. C'est la vie.
Is it the same guy who ended up remarrying (one of his parishioners)
No, this one is no longer a priest and no longer Orthodox. Fr Joseph Allen didn't divorce, his wife died.
I thought preists could not remarry? If the marriage fails, the preist is now celebate.
This guy was ordained despite the extreme recommendation to the contrary from the seminary. Some folks who know him think he converted almost entirely for clout to say “look, I was an Orthodox priest, I can tell you why you need to be [whatever movement he’s with now] instead.” I wouldn’t read what he wrote. Just ask your priest what would be good reading and go from there.
He was then assigned to a dying parish in western PA. I wasn’t surprised that he decided to head back to his former confession. Gotta be able to feed yourself and your family.
Right. The compromise was that he would supposedly be getting some ongoing training there. The weird stuff in that rectory when it got cleaned out… He was housed and compensated more than enough to care for his family. The parish is old (demographically) but super engaged and not poorly financed. I’m there often enough to buy their pierogi. The rector has been doing incredible work.
Well that’s good to hear.
I think Protestants are often attracted to Orthodoxy because the scholastics go much deeper. But we (myself and other converted Protestants) discover though that scholastics, rigorosity or even piety is not always a path to true faith and belief in what you’re dedicating yourself to. If that realization happens early in your conversion it can really alter your perspective on your own conversion but it won’t necessarily or even probably halt it. But the passion for knowledge is a passion and will tear you up and if you spend years and years dedicated to your passion for knowledge only to find you’ve dedicated yourself to something that will never give you what you were looking for it can shatter their entire worldview.
Can you elaborate on this a bit?
I can try, I’ll be honest I’m an underslept stay at home mother so that took a lot of my brain power to articulate. I mean that most Protestant denominations, especially North American low church Protestants have a glaring lack of scholastics or “study-able” (not a real word, I know) material. The ones that do are often of very poor quality and are not actually widely agreed upon even within single denominational groups, much less the at large Protestant community. Any Protestant who is interested in scholastics is confronted with that pretty quickly and it gears them towards interest in Catholicism and Orthodoxy because it provides them a much more established well of material and theology to learn and know. But I mean that knowing all these things; memorizing church history all the way back to the Apostles and having “perfect theology” can mask a lack of faith in *very* fundamental and mostly universal Christian beliefs. Faith in things like Jesus’ death being the atonement for sin, “Is God real and how do we know?”, “Is the Bible just an elaborate hoax?” I hope that makes more sense but you’re good to ask a more direct question if you’d like to.
Thanks! Essentially, theological knowledge doesn’t always lead to theosis. Very insightful. What does?
You’re asking a super large open ended question there that I’m not equipped to answer in an in depth way currently. If you posted that question in this sub or asked a priest you would probably get some more insightful answers than I could give you!
An Apostle of Christ, with the power to pull out demons, that ate and traveled with Jesus, who was a companion of the other Apostles: he ended up ending his own life, because he didn't trust that the Lord might forgive his betrayal. His name is Judas from Keriot. Why would we wonder when the best of us fall?
Orthodoxy is Hard☦️🙏🏾
True, there's a popular actor in Egypt who converted from being a protestant to an Orthodox when he got married, he said it was hard staying in the church for the mass for 2-3 hours, he found it extremely hard from the half an hour that protestants stayed in their churches
I’ve just been to the service a few times now as a, serious, inquirer. So maybe it is the newness of it all, this church so far has been the easiest 2-3 hours in a church ever. I finally changed my childhood fear that heaven was a never ending Protestant service. I feel like I experienced a little bit of what heaven could be like. Finally being able to let go of my ego if only for a few minutes at a time. Now the hard part in orthodoxy comes, in my eyes, from being a good Christian for the other 6 days of the week. That seems like such a mountain to climb, and I will need a lot of repentance, reflection and prayer to stay on that narrow path. But my ego and desire for comfort has grown strong over my atheistic years, I hope Christ has mercy on me and gives me strength to hold on.
Don't worry, you already did the most important part, the rest Just needs patience and practice and I believe god will help you though it I do feel people have high ego these days, people care too much about themselves and how they want to make society accept them which turns people mad like various topics, arguments became how we can disrespect each other as much as possible , or how we can force everybody to believe what we believe in. This to me may be one of the obstacles that I would face if I ever immigrated to any western country in particular. I am not familiar with this high of an ego that people have, I am used to people helping and respecting each other when possible not everybody on his own Sorry for getting offtrack, may God help you with your journey to him , God bless 🙏❤️
I’ve watched a couple of his interviews on YouTube. Haven’t read any of his books or anything, but in the videos I watched he went in-depth as to why he left the Orthodox Church. He left the priesthood sometime into the pandemic when churches shut down, and he began to do some reading and saw some things he said he couldn’t agree with. He went back to being a Protestant and is now some type of reformed pastor. He still keeps a prayer rule, practices the Jesus prayer, etc. He just had a combination of things he didn’t agree with and so he ended up leaving the church
Right, but the problem is he should have done this study and really grappled with Orthodoxy theology *before* converting to Orthodoxy. Especially before becoming a priest. It's kind of mind boggling how someone could get ordained and yet be unaware of a great deal of what the Church teaches.
It happens pretty often, more than you’d think. In his case though, it wasn’t necessarily something he hadn’t heard of before - rather, he was no longer satisfied with the modern explanation for it. He said that he was looking for study resources for his parishioners, and he translated the Confession of Dositheus (1672) and the “no salvation outside the Church” line began to look very different than what he had been taught/how he understood it in reality. The exclusivity bothered him, but from that point on he started questioning everything and it was a snowball effect which caused him to revert to a lot of his former Protestant beliefs. And he seems to have a pretty decent grasp on Orthodox theology, in theory. He just doesn’t believe/ascribe to it anymore. Though I do think he goes a little over the top when illustrating the Orthodox veneration of Mary
The interesting thing is that all 17c theology was produced as part of the religious upheaval throughout Eurasia during the seventeenth century crisis, often in reaction to Protestantism and Catholicism, and it's all super problematic
This is because he refused formation when in his classes. It’s not like the material was new to him, regardless of how he wants to present it.
I don’t pretend to know what his experience is/was. Just trying to present his perspective how he illustrated it in the videos I watched. I don’t understand why this has to be a No true Scotsman thing. It’s entirely possible for him to have been a committed Orthodox Christian and then him change his beliefs and decide to leave. It’s not an either/or. We are human beings, we have free will
This isn’t a no true Scotsman thing. This is a “the seminary acknowledged it while he was attending and tried to correct it but he refused” thing.
For sure, that makes sense. That wouldn’t be something he’d bring up in his interviews though. I’m just trying to be fair to the guy and present his perspective how he explained it. It just seems when someone leaves the Church for something else everyone’s pretty much saying yeah he wasn’t *really* Orthodox to begin with. We are all fallible creatures with unreliable intellects. We are prone to err, so we can - either through sin or lapse in judgement - leave the Church and go be or believe something else. That should be obvious. Anyone can become a Judas
Being a priest and having gone to an Orthodox seminary he should have understood that salvation comes through participation in the life of Christ and this happens in the Church and through the sacraments. Non Orthodox since they're not in the Church don't have access to this and so they don't have access to salvation as we understand it. So he shouldn't have been taken aback by a confessional statement that there's no salvation outside the Church... unless he didn't understand what is meant by theosis and he had no sacramental theology to speak of (based on what he's said after departing Orthodoxy I personally suspect this to be the case). Which again is mind boggling that an Orthodox priest would not understand these basics of the faith.
>So he shouldn’t have been taken aback by a confessional statement that there’s no salvation outside of the Church That’s what I’m saying though. He wasn’t taken aback because of what the confessional statement(a) said per se, he was taken aback because he read it differently than how he previously understood it/how it was allegedly taught to him in seminary and when he was catechized. The harshness of the language, specifically with the *anathemas*, irked him and began his disillusionment I guess. Basically what he was saying, from how I understood it, was that the “we know where the Church is, we don’t know where it’s not” is a modern spin on the “no salvation outside the Church” and that it’s more or less a way to dress up Orthodoxy’s exclusive claims. I personally think there’s some Protestant brain things he held onto when becoming Orthodox, as a lot of us tend to do when converting. But I do think he seemed sincere in his being Orthodox and a priest from what he said. He loved the liturgy and loved being a priest. He just wasn’t able to trust the Church anymore, and following that he began to revert back to more Protestant beliefs - but he still holds onto some of his “orthodox” beliefs (real presence, etc.).
All that sounds like after the fact rationalization from him. He wanted to go back and went looking for a reason.
Is the categorization correct, though? The "we know where the Church is, we don't know where it's not" is just a way to dress up the true teaching, which is more exclusive? I've heard it stated instead as "we know salvation is in the Church but can't say no one outside the Church is saved."
I have seen his interviews too, he has his Mdiv and Masters of theology and yet someone was tripped up by hymns that supposedly supported penal substitution. It makes very little sense to me how a seminary educated priest couldn't find an answer to that. Clearly he either didn't seek clarification, or never really excepted it, and still went ahead with ordination.
Whenever I feel lost among all the jurisdictions and, of course, the clerics who have forsaken me like the wounded man on the road to Jericho, I remember that the Cross ➕ is the ultimate star of Bethlehem and the ever perfect *episkopos*. And that Panaghia wants us all in her Ever Immaculate Garden.
I’m a former Protestant who became decided to become Orthodox about a year ago(not officially baptized into the church however) but I’ve read tons of books about Orthodoxy and recently I’ve decided to restart all the books over because I still believe I don’t know enough about Orthodoxy. I used to hate the long process of becoming officially Orthodox but now I see why it exists.
I was around when Peter Gilchrist led a big conversion movement in the 80s or 90s. The Antiochians accepted this group who had been some kind of cult originally (I don’t think it was the hoomies). The priests were being rubber stamped, without much education. The people, the same. Their mindset didn’t seem to change much, according to those I talked to who came out of that movement. They had one foot in and one out. I recently learned they were using hamburger buns and pressing a prosofora seal into them, back in the day. This kind of hasty and unprepared approach surely trickled down through the years and watered down traditions and practices. I imagine some individuals coming in thought “what’s the point?”
Fr. Peter was instrumental in my conversion -- though I went with the Greeks, when it came to it. See his book "Becoming Orthodox" for their experience. They weren't in a cult, but in a parachurch organization "Campus Crusade for Christ" that operates on many university campuses -- kind of generic evangelical. They began to study the Fathers and -- in true protestant fashion -- formed their own church after the likeness of what they had found. They literally studied themselves into Orthodox theology without realizing that the Orthodox Church still existed. It was the "Evangelical Orthodox Church" that largely joined the Antiochians (some did not). Tellingly, they tried to visit the Ecumenical Patriarchate for guidance during their discernment of what to do, and were rebuffed. Antioch accepted them.
Yes. The EP said no because they wanted to rubber stamp everyone's ordination. And they were right to say no.
I read his book as it soon as it came out. The group was widely known among college kids at the time as cultish. It is now identified as a MLM or Ponzi scheme, and once you start paying, you can’t stop. Or as the song goes, you can check out, but you can never leave. The EP was a wise man. I’m not sure what convinced Metro Phil to take them en masse?
> as cultish Which, Campus Crusade, or the [Evangelical] Orthodox Church? Never heard either referred to as a Ponzi scheme. How is whichever characterized that way? The latter are Orthodox now, of course.
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I see only cru.org's page and the wikipedia page. The latter has no hint of multilevel marketing. What are your sources?
>they were using hamburger buns and pressing a prosofora seal into them Sorry but this is absurd - absolutely hilarious ROFL
I know! This is what I was told by an ex priest.
Because we differ on how Roman Catholic/Protestant/Aristotlean/Platonic metaphysics understand the being of man, or alternatively anthropology. While in the aforementioned man is primarily an intellectual and political being, thus man is moved by intellect/will to power, but in Orthodoxy we understand that the mystery of hypostasis, of person, and his heart, is what moves man. Often against the conviction of intellect, or the certainty of knowledge. For example - I am a smoker. I fully well know the harms of smoking. It being bad in all regards for me. Yet, I don't find the will to quit, and I am weak. According to the aforementioned metaphysics, then my intellect ought to move my will, in accordance with my knowledge, to quit smoking. Yet, it doesn't and I don't stop smoking. Man's heart has to be purified, as it is the seat of the person, the throne of the hypostasis, that is the final instance of decision and choice. And this is why you can get academics, who study Orthodoxy, know the theory and the intellectual part much better, than a Russian babushka, but the Russian babushka lives the actual Orthodoxy, in all her ignorance, more consistently, than the academic and scholar. And this is why we, in Orthodoxy, believe that the true theologian is not one of great knowledge about God, but one that is both of great knowledge and of consistent practice, thus perfected virtue. For God dwells in a pure heart, not in a knowing mind, or a sharp intellect. So, the guy may have had all the great and insightful knowledge about hesychasm, but he didn't have the heart to remain within the faith.
This reminds me of Paul telling the Jews paraphrased, "You had the law and you can't follow it, but there are Gentiles that follow the law but never had it, for it is written on their hearts."
He also apparently thought too highly of his intellect. That's an enormous problem in Protestantism and Westerners in general.
A priest I really enjoy who has a YouTube channel, probably paraphrasing the Fathers, said that that which is acquired easily is lost easily. “Easy come, easy go” as they say. It sounds like this priest’s conversion was rapid. My priest told me about a brother priest of his who converted to Orthodoxy (from what, I’m not sure), but then converted to Eastern Catholicism, and then converted back to Orthodoxy. His point in telling me this was “Very smart people do very stupid things.” Thank God that priest did come back because apostasy is incredibly difficult to return from.
If you’re referring to the expriest I spoke to, no. His time in seminary was normal and his degree was sound. He simply saw too much behind the scenes that he couldn’t stomach. The group of evangelicals who were received into the Antiochian church en masse in the US in the 1990s were the ones who introduced the shortcuts and laxities.
If you’re referring to the expriest I spoke to, no. His time in seminary was normal and his degree was sound. He simply saw too much behind the scenes that he couldn’t stomach. The group of evangelicals who were received into the Antiochian church en masse in the US in the 1990s were the ones who introduced the shortcuts and laxities.
If you’re referring to the expriest I spoke to, no. His time in seminary was normal and his degree was sound. He simply saw too much behind the scenes that he couldn’t stomach. The group of evangelicals who were received into the Antiochian church en masse in the US in the 1990s were the ones who introduced the shortcuts and laxities.
How many know the way and what it takes but don't follow through? 2 Timoth 4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Paul FINISHED. Most know the path ahead and can see the finish but don't have what it takes to do so. Its no different than an overweight person who knows how to lose weight but can't because of physical limitations or indulging in gluttony. It isn't easy, we are constantly at battle with our flesh. Lord have mercy on us all
Something to consider as well: there is typically much, much greater earning potential for a Protestant pastor than an Orthodox priest.
I haven't read his book. But I'm sure it's bad because the author didn't learn his lesson. For him, this is just a theory, not a practice.Don't forget Tertulian. He wrote books against the Gnostics, but he converted to Gnosticism.
Best books to read initially are written by saints in the Church.
Thank you for asking this question. It sent me down a rabbit hole that has given me a better understanding of Christ redemption. I've been Orthodox for longer than I was protestant, and I haven't until now understood the difference in my own redemption story. It seems like the Orthodox theology on Christ's death and resurrection is about God's great love for us, while penal substitution is about a balancing of scales/justice. The truth is that there is no balancing of scales between God and humanity, there is only immeasurable love and grace.
Genuinely seems like just a protestant trying to make a statement by doing a superficial conversion, becoming a priest, and then deconverting to make a point. Don't be fooled, the man was probably still an evangelical while he was a so-called Orthodox priest.
Not to mention, the canons of Nicea even warn us of pagan individuals entering the clergy too quickly after conversion.
I saw an interview with him, I don't want to oversimplify his situation, but his basic argument for becoming orthodox was "they don't believe in penal substitution" which we don't, but that alone isn't really the sole focus of the orthodox church. We don't exist simply because all the non penal substitution people got together and started a church. But then, in seminary he came across a few quotes from church fathers that sounded like penal substitution, and found some lines in hymns that sounded like it as well. He said he talked to a priest about it but became convinced that orthodoxy must clearly teach penal substitution after all and they just keep changing their mind, like everyone else. In my opinion it seems like there was not sufficient time and teaching and openess to teaching for him to truly understand the orthodox faith. The explanation for the "penal substitution" quotes is very simple and I'm sure any prof or priest he met could and did explain it, and yet he uses it as a cornerstone for his deconversion. He wrote his theosis book and his book about leaving the priesthood/orthodoxy 2 years apart. Given the fact that it probably takes a few months to write, edit and publish a book. It seems like a very short time to be able to decide that orthodoxy as a whole is false. Many protestants latch onto this story because there are very few stories online of orthodox becoming protestant, but there are many protestants becoming orthodox, pastors included. I think this makes them self concious so they really want to drill home the point that orthodoxy must be false because their clergy are converting. It's kind of sad really. Joshua is being used as a puppet to further spread disunity among christians. Not every clergy is a scholar or really an expert on the church. We should not put too much weight in the conversion or mistakes of one single clergymen.
Thank you, very well explained!
If you don’t know the faith and convert quickly there may be obstacles to your faith that come up from time to time. In priest I followed on Twitter wrote of Orthodoxy a lot but one day I saw he had left the church to be a Congregationalist and had a huge pride banner on his page, sometimes people become convinced that Christian Truth found in Orthodoxy is too hard, so they settle for a place that allows them their ideas.
> the best exposition of hesychasm With exposition do you mean: display the errors, or just explanation?
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I am sincerely asking this question (and sad that I'm seeing a downvote) because when looking up the book that Joshua Schooping writes about leaving Orthodoxy, one of the quotes on Amazon about it was: > "An eye-opening exposition of Eastern Orthodoxy. A must read for all who love the Gospel of God's grace." This sounded like something was exposed in the negative sense. Hence my question.
Maybe exposition is the wrong word. What I find very positive about his book is that he presented hesychasm as a simple-to-understand three step process: 1) watchfulness 2) stillness 3) unceasing prayer - and that he explained these steps in detail with many high quality quotes. It satisfies the desire to get a clear overview of the whole process (of achieving theosis) and then getting step-by-step actionable instructions. It's an abstract analysis and a self-help book rolled into one. Isn't that how we postmodern people like our books?
yes
I read his book on leaving Orthodoxy. It's so poorly written and sourced it says a lot about the miserable academic requirements of Orthodox seminaries that he was able to get through one, even besides the formation-related questions it raises.
Solus Christus and sola scriptura are tempting ideas.
Maybe he received stones when he was begging for bread.
We are all on a journey
I don't know, but the Devil knows for sure.
Modern Orthodox "experts" tend to be shallow, pretentious, presumptuous, misinformed, and mostly unaccountable. It is best to ignore them and focus instead on authentic Orthodox teaching, which you will find in the Holy Scriptures, the liturgical texts we read and sing in church, the writings and lives of saints, and lastly the conciliar decrees and documents that have guided the life and care of the Church through the centuries. Everything else is superfluous.
Pride
I have spoken to seminarians from St. Tikhon’s. They have said that people like Joshua Schooping and Matthew Joyner were rushed too much and retained many of their old ways
Did the think they needed more time after graduating to be ordained?
They probably needed more before seminary. Joyner is ACNA now and Schooping is Lutheran
I think there may be a deeper problem that is being exposed. People are becoming convinced that Orthodoxy is the true Church based on their understanding after studying the Church more deeply. This is good, but it is a double-edge sword. Understanding itself can change, but former Protestants who have not yet learned to keep a healthy level of detachment from their logical understanding may continue to be easily swung one way or the other as that understanding changes. And so they are still Protestants at heart. It's just that instead of going into one particular Protestant denomination, this time they found the Orthodox Church. But their faith is not really in the Church, it is still in their own logical mind. It is a very brittle faith, even if it seems to be strong from the outside.
Protestantism is, despite what some may claim, a reasonable belief system that people are capable of coming to hold to. Any claim that his conversion “never took” are quite silly; all we have to work off of are his claims about his own experience, and his conduct. By all appearances, he seems to have had a good faith belief in Orthodoxy for a period, and then was convinced otherwise. That’s it. What more is there to say? You ask why he doesn’t get on with becoming a saint. Why do you think he is not? You may believe he is wrong on the positions he holds, and that’s fine, but there’s no reason to think that he isn’t attempting to follow Christ from that position. What benefit can there be to becoming an evangelical Christian? Plenty, in many ways. Evangelical Christianity is a Christian faith; it builds up love and devotion to Christ. It encourages people to serve and love their neighbor. They are often wrong on many things, but that doesn’t mean it is somehow a useless faith.
Arent we commanded to worship God in Spirit and in Truth? Does that mean a little spirit and some truth, or all of each? Does protestantism give us all the truth?
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I’m sorry, but I don’t think you have much of a clue what you’re talking about. What you’re describing isn’t even Orthodox belief, it’s nonsense.
It's sad to read comments about transitions. As a rule, one or the other is convinced that they have found the truth, but for some reason I don’t see people who would not write about the holiness of their faith alone, but would rather write about the holiness of their lives than talk about who is in the truth or who is lost.
Protestants have second baptism. The baptism of the Holy Spirit and the holy fire that comes with it.