Fr. Pavlos is now Metropolitan Pavlos of America, the president of the Eparchial Synod of the Church of the GOC of America (Old Calendar Greek Orthodox). He is my bishop and Geronda.
I found the comment immediately after Geronda's comment to be reflective of our culture in general; Geronda states a theological distinction between internal and external temptation, and instead of debating the merit of the assertion, the gentleman (who clearly had no idea what the point Geronda was making was or what the implications of the Western clergy's assertions were) proceeds to make the statement that "The Bible says he was tempted so I'll take that over your words!" The question is not whether the Bible says Christ was tempted (does he assume we Orthodox don't ever read the Bible?) but rather what the nature of that temptation was.
Also, the man's attitude, manifested in the "oh yeah?! Well then.....!" gotcha-style response is annoying. Basically assume, don't listen, respond quickly. Ugh.
To be clear, Geronda did say though several times Christ was not tempted internally as opposed to externally and that the Devil did dare to tempt Christ. I think that it was the best he could have done in the short time allotted for comments. The problem is that Western Christians and Orthodox Christians often have different ideas of just what exactly is a temptation, since they don't generally have recourse to the neptic fathers' teachings as found in the Philokalia.
Yes, Christ was "tempted" in the sense of things were offered to him that were sinful, but he never entered the state of entertaining them, which is the first state of sin, but where most Western Christians would still think is still the state of "being tempted." In other words, sitting around and thinking about whether one should commit a sin is in and of itself sinful, so Christ did not engage in that.
I am of course generalizing here "the" Western Christian position as there is not one position and many would probably disagree with what I have characterized above, but I am speaking from what I witnessed in general among my co-religionists when I was a Protestant and a Roman Catholic.
The reason this is Nestorian is that if Christ in his human nature could sit around and think about whether to sin, but in His divinity He would not, then there could be a split personality, split will in Christ. Nestorians believed that the man Jesus was overshadowed by the Divine Logos, and that they formed a partnership, but that the Divine properties did not transfer to the human nature and vice versa (the technical name for this is communicatio idiomatum, the exchange of properties). That is why Christ raised the dead through His human voice, but also we can say that "God died" on the Cross, even though of course the Divnity did not.
Contrast this with the Orthodox teaching as expounded by St. Cyril of Alexandria: the Logos took flesh on himself. At no time was this flesh an independent human being that the Divinity overshadowed, even from conception--but rather, the Logos formed the human flesh in Mary's womb through the Holy Spirit and assumed it. Yes, it was fully human and had a soul, but at no time was it a new creation (which is why it was a virgin birth, so that a "new" person was not being created. This is why icons of God creating Adam show Jesus Christ doing it, even if at that time Christ had not yet taken flesh.
These topics are of course very complex, and nuanced, which is why the discussion could not have been handled fully in one comments segment on that TV show
