Orthodox Catechism

In this first catechism class, we'll explore God as mystery and contradiction. We discuss how Orthodox tradition helps us draw closer to God, and we'll also look at the essence-energies distinction in the nature of God that St. Gregory Palamas helped to formulate. **The original video that I uploaded had sync issues between the audio and video. Hopefully this one is better. My apologies to those who endured the prior video with the mismatched audio and video! This one's not perfect, but it's better than the last one.

In this second catechism class, we take a look at Holy Tradition. In my Protestant upbringing, I thought of tradition as something that's dead, old, and boring. Now, I see that the Church's holy Tradition is alive and vibrant. It flows from the throne of God through the ages, bringing all to life who encounter it with an open heart. We also look at some elements of holy Tradition, including the daily cycle of services, the service books, how services are compiled, the ranks of ordination, and the role of bishops.

This third catechism lesson focuses on living the Orthodox life at home. Topics include developing a prayer rule (morning and evening), fasting (when, how, why), fixed and movable feast days, and the old and new calendars.

In this fourth class, I address common struggles: -why we Orthodox pray to the saints -why we have icons and why we venerate them -why we venerate relics -how to deal with opposition from well-intentioned friends and family.

In this video we talk about the Bible. How was the scriptural canon formed? Why were some books included and others left out? Why do the Orthodox use the Greek Septuagint instead of the Masoretic text?

An overview of the sacraments of the Orthodox Church are given in this video. 1. Baptism 2. Chrismation 3. The Eucharist 4. Confession 5. Marriage & Monasticism 6. Holy Unction 7. Ordination

In this video we discuss the Seven Ecumenical Councils, plus two! 1. Council of Nicea (325) 2. Council of Constantinople (381) 3. Council of Ephesus (431, 433) 4. Council of Chalcedon (451) 5. Second Council of Constantinople (553) 6. Third Council of Constantinople (680-681) 7. Second Council of Nicea (787) 8. The Photian Councils (9th century) 9. The Three Palamite Councils (14th century) Today, we discuss Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism, Sebellianism (Modalism), the divinity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the humanity of Christ, the two natures of Christ, the hypostasis (person) of Christ, homoousios vs. homoiousios, how the Oriental Orthodox groups came to be, and lots of other topics. I apologize ahead of time for any mistakes. I had notes that I was using from prior research, but I frequently went off-script and might have made a few historical blunders on names or exact dates. Feel free to add corrections in the comments.