Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by Pyro7480
I wouldn't be picking up stones to throw.
As to the other, I think the practical difference MIGHT be something like this: "We" go to the magisterium or the consensus patrum or whatever. We expect to find an authoritative and reliable statement. "They" go to the Bible, and have no expectation of an authoritative interpretation, and see no need for one. Further they expect that since even councils can err, that nothing is reliable outside Scripture. So the Church becomes an association of like-minded people, and fissparates frequently.
We have a greater stress on koinonia and tghe benefits of a visible communion. They teach an invisible Church of those who have made an appropriate appeal to the mercy of God in Christ and, presumably, don't doubt critical things like, say, "blood atonement".
My guess is that either they must appeal to an inner "assurance" or say it's unknowable whether one is in the True Church or not. We say it's easy to tell if one is in the true Church, but harder to know if one is going to go to heaven after one dies.
It's a package, I'm thinking, based around the turning away from the very idea of a magisterium.
I guess one could say, if every one is his own pope, then who says who gets to run services on Sunday? That is, one's entire approachc to the "Ecclesial assembly" will be different. What we think looks like Balogna, or worse, to them. What they think looks like anarchy and a systematic denial of the possiblity of epistemological certainty.
How'm I doing?
Please point to the Catechism allowing for gay marriage or abortion, or Hindu practices. You should know better than to confuse doctrine with individual opinions of Catholics. Protestant denominations exist that allow for abortion, gay marriage, or gay lifestyle doctrinally.
Rome has guidelines about homosexuality. For chaste men with homosexual inclination monastic life is OK. Priesthood is not OK.
Oddly, the work we Orthodox do (ably described in kosta's reply) manages to get the sharing Christ work done, too, though without any obvious mechanism:
Siberia and Alaska were largely converted by monks who didn't go out to preach the Gospel, but to find a northern equivalent of the desert so beloved of the first monastics. Many native Alaskans attribute their conversion to St. Herman, a hermit (!)
And, we now have quite active mission fields in Africa (and in rechristianizing Albania and to a lesser extent Russia). In subsaharan Africa, though the spread of Orthodoxy got its start in what, from the time of the conversion of the Rus, has been a peculiarly Orthodox way: people came looking. As St. Vladimir went looking for the true monotheistic faith and concluded it was Holy Orthodoxy on the basis of our liturgy in its most glorious expression, in East Africa Christians whose ancestors had converted by protestant missionaries began wondering which church was the True Church, and on the basis of patristic and historical studies concluded Holy Orthodoxy was it.
Both stories have been repeated both individually and by groups: converts come to the Church by wandering in and being smitten by the beauty of Orthodox worship (Bishop. Dmitri of the OCA, for example, was raised as a Baptist, but started sneaking off to an Orthodox church as a youth--his sister is now an Orthodox nun) or by studying the history of Christianity as a whole and concluding the same thing the East Africans did (Jaroslav Pelikan--Memory Eternal!--the foremost church historian of the 20th century and the body of protestant evangelicals who converted under the leadership of Fr. Peter Gilquist, being examples).
The Protestant response would be that they have that certainty in the big, e.g. in the four solas, and they don't need the certainty in the rest of the doctrine. Further, contrary to all scripture, they insist that sola scriptura and sola fide is plain in the scripture and needs no pope or magisterium. Apparently the Holy Ghost told them something He did not bother to put in writing, and left them meander in the desert looking for the rest.
That I would agree with. The difference is the Orthodox would change the scriptures to fit the life style they feel necessary. Personally, I would stick to the scriptures and have women covering their heads but people must do what they feel is right. You go to a group of people. We leave it up to the individual.
Don't forget the missionary work of my ancestor Charlemagne. Its how much of Europe "converted" to Christianity.
Having a piece of paper saying what the "official" policy means nothing if you have a bunch of bishops and sisters running around advocating their opposing views. Rome may set policy from the safety of Italy but they do little to hurd in their wayward flock. Does practice what they preach come to mind?
There are very few Protestant groups that allow these sort of things and those that do are finding their denominations dwindling. It would be beneficial to recongize these modernalistic dangers in all of our churches/Churches. This isn't isolate to a select group.
"Oh, please. There are significant differences in the way the East and West view Mary, purgatory, Church authority, sin/grace, and a number of other issues. About the only thing you two agree on is the Eucharist."
You must have misunderstood my post. Much of what you have written is precisely why we are not in full communion with Rome. That is not to say that Rome is not a particular church within The Church as the Orthodox Churches are.
"And where does the Orthodox stand on the Nicene Creed?"
We wrote it. We still pray it at every Divine Liturgy.
"However, after reading some of the problems with the Catholic Church, there are a number of them I wouldn't attend if I were Catholic. I suspect the same is true about Orthodoxy."
Not to my knowledge, unless you mean certain uncanonical groups. Even with most of them, I'd attend but of course wouldn't receive communion.
"Protestants simply state, "Repent, believe in the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved." We don't need much more "teaching authority" than that."
To the extent that that encompasses Protestant belief, I'd guess I'd agree with you.
"My conception of theosis was an attainment of something, but here it sounds more like an awarding of something. Does that distinction make any sense?"
Sadly, nope! :)
Oh, I agree. I think they do tell us something, though likely not much if in fact God is "Ο ΩΝ".
"These also say that God did it. The LORD crushed him. The LORD put him to grief. The LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all. What do you think? Why else would God do this to His Only Beloved Son if not that our sins are a most severe offense against His Holiness, righteousness and justice?" The ransom was was demanded by and appeared to be paid to The Evil One, or "Death", not to God. It was the only ransom Death would accept and Christ was the only power Who could destroy the bonds with which Death held mankind captive. God did indeed require Christ to die. That's very apparent from scripture. But it wasn't because He was offended. It was because He loves us who were in thrall to Death and the Evil One. In the meantime, of course, Death got snookered.
"I don't mean to be flip with this, but like I wrote (maybe not to you) a few days ago, I have not studied St. Anselm's theology in sufficient depth in order to discuss it. Regarding the Eucharist as sacrifice, it is one and only, perfect sacrifice of Christ. We do not re-sacrifice, but we bring ourselves to that one sacrifice through the Mass. Our purpose therefore is the same as Christ's purpose, so whether God "demanded" the sacrifice as you insist (there are verses to the contrary, as you are aware), or Christ offered it as an expression of His love to us, -- as is the proper answer, -- the fact that we participate int he Eucharist is neither here or there in that."
That's thoroughly Orthodox, Blogger. In all honesty, if you want a primer in the Eucharist theology of The Church, read the letters of +Ignatius of Antioch. Its all there.
"Living the faith, dying unto our pasisons, praying three times a day, charity, loving our enemies, practicing mercy, humility, confessions and communions, repentance, hungering for righteousness, thanking God for everything including bad days, leaving all your earthly cares...I wouldn't call it work. It's a life."
Exactly. And as the Desert Fathers testify, and is to be seen to this day among some holy monastics, the holiness of that life actually restores creation around it to its created state, where the lion does indeed lie down with the lamb (or the donkey in +Gerasimos' case!).
"He is not saying that through the scripture and outside of tradition we get eternal life, which was your original, mistaken, point."
He says that it is the scripture that testify of Him, not tradition that the Pharisees were relying on for their works based righteousness. Jesus was telling them it was the scripture that revealed Him as the Way, but they would not believe Him because they were invested in their tradition interpreted scripture.
No human that ever lived after Adam and Eve are Holy(saints) in any respect, NONE..
Not the Pope, Mary Mother of Jesus, you or I.. or Mother Teresa..
Save imputed holiness by the blood of Jesus or..
other specific limited sacrifices before the cross..
Here is another word(holy) the greeks had no equal to in the Hebrew sense of Holy.. but a word was invented(morphed) to correspond to it in Greek.... The morphing of greek(and other language) words to represent totally Hebrew concepts must surely have confused many non Jews(gentiles)..
Hebrew and Greek are both much richer languages to express concepts than English is.. Its a wonder that the Bible could even be translated into English, fairly accurately.. The science of bibical translation was and is absolutely blessed by God.. Kenneth Wuest(greek scholar) translated the new testament and used AS MANY ENGLISH WORDS as possible to express the greek accuratly... I know of no other translation with that agenda.. even the Amplified... One Greek sentence(or WORD even) could possibly be many english sentences.. I'm awed by the science of biblical translation.. not being a translator myself..
Translating word for word to English would surely produce error..
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