J
JesusforMadrid
Guest
Can you recommend this book?
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Contarini
Guest
There were some Anabaptists in it, which I think I mentioned to you.
My point was that the EKD is a Lutheran-Reformed fusion like its Austrian equivalent, though it’s different in that it’s a federation of regional churches which may be entirely Lutheran or Reformed, or united.
Yes. I may well have transcribed the rest of it wrong, but I’m sure he used Altar, because I hadn’t heard it phrased that way before either.
These Lutherans thought they did.
True. He didn’t seem to realize that. If this incident hadn’t happened toward the end of my time there, and if I’d had more chances to discuss the matter with them, I might have tried to explain this as a matter of honesty.
Edwin
Gurney,
I don’t post that often anymore, so you may or may not remember I was curious about the Anglican Communion for awhile. In the end I felt called to the catholic church though as a maronite instead of a latin catholic. I loved the eastern theology and traditions of the maronites more than the novus ordo style of most roman churches today. The maronites never formally broke communion with Rome, so I felt I was getting the best of both worlds the ancient traditions of the eastern church and being in communion with Rome.
The funny thing is now that I’m an eastern catholic I’ve started reading the early church fathers. As I do I find that the views expressed in the beginning are similar to to whats being expressed today concerning Peter’s Chair. Though I’d say its just been more fleshed out.
I don’t post that often anymore, so you may or may not remember I was curious about the Anglican Communion for awhile. In the end I felt called to the catholic church though as a maronite instead of a latin catholic. I loved the eastern theology and traditions of the maronites more than the novus ordo style of most roman churches today. The maronites never formally broke communion with Rome, so I felt I was getting the best of both worlds the ancient traditions of the eastern church and being in communion with Rome.
The funny thing is now that I’m an eastern catholic I’ve started reading the early church fathers. As I do I find that the views expressed in the beginning are similar to to whats being expressed today concerning Peter’s Chair. Though I’d say its just been more fleshed out.
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What I mean is the early church was in it's infancy but now though going through growing pains its growing up as it's faced persecution and the age of reason and had to combat both. So, in the west started using philosophy as a medium the church formed the doctrines and defined them whereas in the east it was viewed more as a great mystery.
I personally like some aspects of the orthodox church monastism being one of them. However for me atleast the 2nd and third Rome idea ie Constantinople and Russia designation confuse me. Then when the Russian Church said no to communion that cemented it for me. Great traditions though I really like the way of the pilgrim.
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Bluegoat
Guest
What I find really difficult in Orthodoxy is this constant desire to show some deep-seated basic difference in understanding between the East and West, and sometimes attempting to show every East-West issue springs from this. Everything I have learned as important in Eastern theology I had already encountered in some form in Western theology.No worries, Edwin. I equally wish you well, always have. You have a brilliant mind for religion, truly brilliant. The amount of history and scholarship you’re able to devour and synthesize, it’s remarkable. I’ve always felt that way.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on this by a longshot. I’m a modest amateur student of Christianity. I think sometimes the Orthodox try to downplay the role of the papacy, especially during tense times like the Iconoclast controversies. It was the Imperium and Constantinople that was the problem and the pope played a tremendous role. In squashing heresies, the popes were key. I hate it when the Bishop of Rome is downplayed. But I cannot see the unilateral powers that were granted him in recent centuries being present pre-schism.
It seems like the Schism was caused more from a growing apart than anything. Language barriers, liturgical differences, having “two Romes,” barbarian invasions, Islam, mutual distrust, etc. But I do think the papacy is a problem for reunion and that’s why I think reunion will never happen. I think there is some self-fullfilling prophecy and circular reasoning in the papacy.
When I look at the liturgy, like on my thread that I started, I’m at a “proof is in the pudding stage.” Maybe it’s a phase I’ll grow out of? I went to confession today actually but plan on attending Divine Liturgy this Sunday again. I’m ecclectic!The Divine Liturgy is so untainted by modernity, so unspoiled, and the lex orandi lex credendi approach is something I do “get.” The Novus Ordo liturgy honestly makes me nervous!
I often feel like both sides are creating a kind of mythology of themselves themselves as they go along, and it makes me very uncomfortable.
I do think that relation to Rome was important, but I can’t see this as necessary, no matter what. Probably this is because the more I have learned about Catholicism, t keep coming up things I have really serious problems with. The way private revelation is treated, or some of the Catholic devotions, have become such a problem for me that I couldn’t think that it was necessary to be under the papacy, unless it actually said so, explicitly, in Scripture.
I find myself wishing that Orthodoxy didn’t try to make quite such grand claims about Eastern thinking vs Western thinking.
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Harpazo
Guest
It bugs me, too. I’ve pointed out in various threads to different people that this whole “Eastern v. Western” thing isn’t healthy, as I am coming to understand it. Either something is Orthodox or it is not. The “West” has many beautiful traditions and ways of approaching the faith that certainly are compatible with the “East.” Luckily, those who make those distinctions are coming to grips with the fact that Orthodoxy has embraced the traditions that came from those on the other side of the continent and find them quite compatible. For example, the Fraternity of St. Gregory promoting the “Western Rite” in Orthodoxy, as it is commonly called, has liturgies from pre-schism England, which I would find interesting. Friends and acquaintances of mine don’t categorize Orthodox parishes that they visit as “Western or Eastern” it’s just Orthodox.
In Christ,
Andrew
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tomarin
Guest
I would recommend it, yes. It was a very eye-opening read for me. The author is a Protestant minister (or perhaps layman theologian, I can’t remember) who nevertheless is knowledgable about and enormously sympathetic to Eastern Orthodoxy.
I’m a firm believer in reading everything with a critical eye, however.
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tomarin
Guest
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that Orthodoxy should downplay its Eastern-ness? Wouldn’t that risk denaturing it? I disagree to some extent with Bluegoat in that I think the differences in Eastern and Western thinking are real and profound. But I don’t think one approach is necessarily right and the other wrong.
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ProVobis
Guest
Me too. I’m Catholic but I still get up-to-date information from my birthplace (around Little Paxton) from an Anglican pastor. She sends me a daily prayer to go along with the information. Sometimes sends her sermons as well.
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tomarin
Guest
Yeah, what we have are two parallel worlds, uncomprehending of each other. I just wonder basically how God could let this happen, knowing how much division and dischord it would create and how difficult it would make following Christ. (To quote Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, there’s no emoticon for what I’m feeling right now …)
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Harpazo
Guest
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that you cannot confine Orthodoxy to a geographically area or one set of rites and traditions. It encompasses multiple cultures, traditions and several centuries. Orthodoxy embraces various rites and has preserved the Apostolic faith inviolate. The expressions of Orthodoxy in different areas around the globe lives out in the day to day lives of the faithful, but there is no one expression of it; however, there is ONE Orthodox faith.
In Christ,
Andrew
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Bluegoat
Guest
So, if I understand you, you think that there is a way a Western way of thinking can be authentically Orthodox? So the famed (and rather mythologized) Celtic Church would have been really Orthodox, and really Western. Not Eastern.No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that you cannot confine Orthodoxy to a geographically area or one set of rites and traditions. It encompasses multiple cultures, traditions and several centuries. Orthodoxy embraces various rites and has preserved the Apostolic faith inviolate. The expressions of Orthodoxy in different areas around the globe lives out in the day to day lives of the faithful, but there is no one expression of it; however, there is ONE Orthodox faith.
In Christ,
Andrew
I agree. But I am a bit annoyed having been told today that I obviously could not “get” an Orthodox worldview, since I actually want to think about ethics in a way that makes sense.
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Harpazo
Guest
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “Western way of thinking.”
From what I understand, the Church in Ireland maintained its own rites and traditions but would have held the same polity and eucharistic ecclesiology (per St. Ignatius of Antioch) as the other Orthodox Churches did throughout the world at the time. They all shared roughly about the same fasting periods (but did maintain the same fasting disciplines
), celebrated the same feasts, commemorated the same Saints, had the same ascetic approach as the rest of the Church (especially in Ireland because of its very strict monastic influence), etcetera, ad infinitum. I have a link to a book about this very subject. Also, I understand that certain churches using Western rites in ROCOR have been blessed to use the old Celtic Mass from the Stowe Missal. There is a parish in Iowa that uses the Gallican Liturgy (from France).
In Christ,
Andrew
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Bluegoat
Guest
Holy Moly! That book link is cool! Hard to read though. But I love watching the pages turn.I suppose it depends on what you mean by “Western way of thinking.”
From what I understand, the Church in Ireland maintained its own rites and traditions but would have held the same polity and eucharistic ecclesiology (per St. Ignatius of Antioch) as the other Orthodox Churches did throughout the world at the time. They all shared roughly about the same fasting periods (but did maintain the same fasting disciplines
Also, I understand that certain churches using Western rites in ROCOR have been blessed to use the old Celtic Mass from the Stowe Missal. There is a parish in Iowa that uses the Gallican Liturgy (from France).
In Christ,
Andrew
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gurneyhalleck1
Guest
I often wonder the same thing…what was His plan in it all? And if the Orthodox were right, then all of Western Europe, the New World, the Philippines, and much of the Mediterranean were all lost to a schismatic pope and only the Eastern lands, the Balkans, the Slavonic lands, they were the only places where the Truth in its fullness existed? Hard to imagine all the Christianization of the West as being schismatic and lost…
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Esdra
Guest
In the East of Austria there are also Churches which are either Reformed or Lutheran, only in the West where I live they are always mixed-confessional with the Reformed being a very small minority. They are united here in Austria not because they were forced so (like it was the case in Austria), but because both are minority Churches here. Basis of their unity is the Leuenberg Agreement.
Well, if he used Altar and who haven’t heard that word in this context either, then he well may he said Altar in the first sentence you quoted also!
These Lutherans thought they did.
Yes, they thought so!
I think that would well have been fair!
As a matter of respect towards his tradition and the tradition of this confessional Lutheran Church within the EKD.Actually, according to my pastor, within the Reformed “Landeskirche” in Switzerland it’s also true that there are confessional Reformed Pastors. My Baptist pastor even labeld them Christians (in the Baptist sense this means: enthrusting ones life to Jesus and sticking to the Holy Bible. Meaning no sex before marriage, homosexuality is not tolerated, neither is homosexual clergy. no woman pastors etc. - In short: Being Baptist without the Credo Baptism in this case! - And having read the Heidelberg catechism and the Helvetic Creed/Confession, I know that the Reformed Churches would indeed Baptist, except Credo Baptism and that the Lord’s Supper and Baptism are not sacramental But like in the AnglicanChurch the liberal powers got overweight.)
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