It should also be differentiated from inerrancy. Inerrancy is a lack of error, while infallibility is the incapability of error.
A parallel example is the word "saved." The difference between what we Orthodox consider "saved" and most if not all Protestants do, is like night and day.
Have either of you read C.S. Lewis, especially The Great Divorce? It may not be "Orthodox", but perhaps it might (if nothing else) show you something a little different than you're used to seeing from "the West". This is from the Preface:
Blake wrote the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their Divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable "either-or"; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be a disastrous error. You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision. Even on the biological level life is not like a pool but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.
I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A wrong sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, "with backward mutters of dissevering power"--or else not. It is still "either-or." If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) was precisely nothing: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in "the High Countries." In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse and fancy that everything is good and everywhere Heaven.
But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.
***
Kosta: It is utterly un-Orthodox to argue that if we discard or doubt something in the Bible it's not gonna be pretty.
First, I'm not Orthodox, so that doesn't exactly apply to me. :) Second (and more seriously and more importantly) I never said anything about doubt. Doubt can be a very useful thing, and is the basis of scientific inquiry. In fact, if taken seriously, it shows us just how little we actually know, and demonstrates the necessity of faith.
God—our Christian God—does not draw us by fear...
If that were true in full generality, then why did Christ speak of punishment at all? Why wasn't He gentler when He rebuked the Pharisees, when He told the parable of the talents, or when he talked about the goats and the sheep? Do you think that makes Him some sort of "divine terrorist"? Fear can be an attention-grabber. God does not force us to do anything, but there many ways in which He gets our attention.
...but through love.
Yes, always!
Yup
“It may not be “Orthodox”, but perhaps it might (if nothing else) show you something a little different than you’re used to seeing from “the West”. This is from the Preface:”
Well, you are right. Its not Orthodox in the sense that an Orthodox probably wouldn’t put it that way, but ultimately Lewis is speaking of dying to the self and theosis which of course is thoroughly Orthodox.
I have noted elsewhere on these threads that Anglicans are the nearest in mindset of all the Western Christians to Orthodoxy and Lewis of course was the best sort of Anglican gentleman. The finest introduction I have ever read to On the Incarnation was written by Lewis. Some truly magnificent modern Orthodox spiritual writings have come from a monastic who lived in England for forty years at the end of the 20th century. Although the Elder Sophrony was Russian by birth and spent years at Mount Athos, his writings from the 1950s on show the influence of English thought and manner of thinking. When one reads the tracts of +J.C. Ryle, it is often, if not always, as if one of the Greek Fathers was dropped into Victorian England with a complete command of the English language.
That an Anglican would demonstrate something akin to an Orthodox mindset and thus write things which sound like “English Orthodoxy” is not a surprise, ZS.
When we speak of infallibility there is no need to differentiate the two, since infallibility—by necessity—encompasses inerrancy. That which is infallible (incapable of error) is also inerrant (free from any error).
Have either of you read C.S. Lewis, especially The Great Divorce? It may not be "Orthodox", but perhaps it might (if nothing else) show you something a little different than you're used to seeing from "the West".
As Kolo observed, it is a western way of conveying what "dying unto oneself" is, forsaking the world and all its riches which we cannot take with us. I would also agree with Kolo vis-a-vis his comment about Anglicans being the closest (spiritually) to the Orthodox, although some Catholic monastics are too.
Thanks for sharing that. I always enjoy reading Lewis, as I find in him a very recognizable mind set expressed in a "foreign" language. :)
In fact, if taken seriously, it [doubt] shows us just how little we actually know, and demonstrates the necessity of faith
No, it doesn't follow that doubt demonstrates the necessity of faith. Faith and doubt are mutually exclusive.
If that were true in full generality, then why did Christ speak of punishment at all? Why wasn't He gentler when He rebuked the Pharisees, when He told the parable of the talents, or when he talked about the goats and the sheep?
He threatened and rebuked ordinary, insignificant Pharisees, and small money changers. Why didn't He threaten Ponitus Pilate and the Sanhendrin? Do you think God would engage in small talk with local zealots? And where is "love those who hate you" in "your father is the devil," or "you don't know the scripture and the power of God?" Where is compassion? Is it really plausible that this is one and the same Jesus speaking? I doubt it.
+Mark is not a witness, but a follower of +Peter. He is re-telling what he heard. +Matthew and +Luke copy from +Mark, chapter by chapter, verbatim in most cases, and sometimes adding to them their own details (remember that +Luke is also not a witness, but a follower of +Paul, neither of whom knew Christ personally). +Matthew and +Luke also share what they borrowed from another source (the "Q"), which are narratives (popular myths) about Jesus' ministry.
So, when Christ is quoted as saying something, the quotes are not necessarily His words. We have no way of knowing what was said and what was made up and filled in 40 years after Christ's death by the writers of the Synoptic Gospels.
We can judge, however, the behavior of the Church in the earliest days and we realize that it completely rejected any violence, even self-defense. Christians who were in the army had to lay down their arms and get out. The nascent Church was as pacifist as it gets, imitating Christ's final days. If the core of their belief was on Christ making threats, they would have followed His example by imitating that behavior. The complete absence of any violence or resistance among early Christians indicates that the early Gospels did not teach a threatening Christ, but a humble one.