Orthodox Apologetics

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Hmmm... now, let's see, what happened?



the sufferings of iconodules were mostly later fabrications anyways.

Just like those of the early Christian martyrs, you mean?



iconodules re-wrote the history after their victory, luridly making up stuff of what horrible nasty persecutors the iconoclasts had been.

Christians re-wrote the history after their victory, luridly making up stuff of what horrible nasty persecutors the pagans had been.



your childish apples-and-oranges comparison between the denial of iconodulic martyrdom and the martyrdom of early Christians

Yes, indeed: how childish of me to compare the persecution of Christians with... the persecution of Christians! Dumb, huh? What a totally original, completely controversial, and wholly counter-intuitive idea!... Who'd've thunk it !?



RC/EO historians have slandered the memory of iconoclast emperor Constantine V "Copronymus" - "dung-named"

Curiously enough, I don't see him saying the same about them "slandering" Arius' earthly departure...

[The former defecated in his Baptismal water, whereas the latter died of dysentery: although there was nothing super-natural or un-common and extra-ordinary about any of these things, the Orthodox interpreted them as signs of bad omen: in the first case, as a prophecy of Copronymus' future heresy; in the latter, as a divine punishment for Arius' heretical views].



Nestorian Assyrians have been famous for their detestation of images,

That's why they probably found a huge statue of the Virgin Mary in a seventh-century Nestorian Temple in China...



But here's yet a bit more, from Gibbon: "In their Syriac liturgy the names of Theodore and Nestorius were piously commemorated: they united their adoration of the two persons of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to their ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honors of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When her image was first presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, "We are Christians, not idolaters!" and their simple devotion was content with the veneration of the cross."

I kindly advised him to take the word of an actual Indian Orthodox Christian over that of a man whose main purpose in his book was the "open denigration of organized religion ". -- all to no avail...

[The reason why we even arrived at this point of our discussion in the first place was because I challenged him to answer how exactly is it that the Ancient Churches of the East (that the article was about) had the same teaching concerning the veneration of icons, saints, and relics as we do, even though they broke off from the rest of Christendom whole centuries before the dreaded Seventh Ecumenical Council of Second Nicaea].

John 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

John 15:22 If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.