Development vs. innovation

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I have only this to say: to those who rail against so-called “innovations”, get off your high horses. The Church is supposed to be alive - ergo, growth. As the united Church is the pillar and foundation of truth, it can do no wrong in teaching. Conversely, if people want to stay frozen in carbonite, be our guest.
 
I have only this to say: to those who rail against so-called “innovations”, get off your high horses. The Church is supposed to be alive - ergo, growth. As the united Church is the pillar and foundation of truth, it can do no wrong in teaching. Conversely, if people want to stay frozen in carbonite, be our guest.
AMEN!!! This has always been my contention with Eastern Orthodoxy: a complete lack of development of docrine. That is quite unlike the Church of the ecumenical councils.
 
Everything alive is not “growing” larger. Church can grow “larger” in terms of numbers of people in church. Church as truths of Jesus Christ is mature “living being” if you like, but does not grow - that would be monstrosity or a cancer. Such growth would need to be surgically removed. All growth is not so wonderful sign of being alive - cancerous growth - sign of impending death, perhaps.
 
I have only this to say: to those who rail against so-called “innovations”, get off your high horses. The Church is supposed to be alive - ergo, growth. As the united Church is the pillar and foundation of truth, it can do no wrong in teaching. Conversely, if people want to stay frozen in carbonite, be our guest.
You are bringing a sword to those Eastern Catholics who are in union with the Church of Rome? Very not cool - your Pope would disapprove! You should read Orientale Lumen, Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the Eastern Churches. He had much respect for our Traditions.
 
Everything alive is not “growing” larger. Church can grow “larger” in terms of numbers of people in church. Church as truths of Jesus Christ is mature “living being” if you like, but does not grow - that would be monstrosity or a cancer. Such growth would need to be surgically removed. All growth is not so wonderful sign of being alive - cancerous growth - sign of impending death, perhaps.
It would seem St. Vincent’s beliefs are to the contrary:

"*But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning.

The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled.

In like manner, it behoves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits."* (St. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory Chapter XXIII)
 
Both Orthodox and Catholics share in the same doctrinal developments into the late middle ages, but whereas Rome continued to dogmatized these developments (after the Seventh Council), the Orthodox did not (for the most part). Many ideas such as the Immaculate Conception and Purgatory remain theological opinions in the Orthodox Church. I know that is very short, but you get the point…

Prayers and petitions,
Alexius:cool:
 
Both Orthodox and Catholics share in the same doctrinal developments into the late middle ages, but whereas Rome continued to dogmatized these developments (after the Seventh Council), the Orthodox did not (for the most part). Many ideas such as the Immaculate Conception and Purgatory remain theological opinions in the Orthodox Church. I know that is very short, but you get the point…

Prayers and petitions,
Alexius:cool:
But this begs the question…Why does it stop in the 8th Century?

God bless

JJR
 
But this begs the question…Why does it stop in the 8th Century?

God bless

JJR
Why does it need to continue? If the east has not had any problems then why would they need the developments? Look at Eastern Christianity. It is far more united than the west is.
 
I have only this to say: to those who rail against so-called “innovations”, get off your high horses. The Church is supposed to be alive - ergo, growth.
What does it mean that the Church is alive though? Development is not equivalent to the fact that the Church is living. As long as the Church continues to convert the world and solve problems that arise it is alive. It is not life for it to define dogmas.

You support ‘growth’ and I think you mean development by that. But all the developments of the Eastern Catholic Churches have been basically forced upon the east. The changes in the Maronite liturgy have largely been done through the force of Rome. For example in the 17th century Rome sent Jesuits and Franciscans to Lebanon and they burned the liturgical books of the Maronites and rewrote them according to Roman views.
 
Jesus promised that he will lead them in “all truth”. This statement becomes void if everything that God ever wanted to teach His children in the Church Militant was established and known before the last apostle died. This is effectively the Orthodox position as I understand it. Hence, to give actual meaning to this passage, it must necessarily include a progressive theology; the Development of Doctrine.
 
I have only this to say: to those who rail against so-called “innovations”, get off your high horses. The Church is supposed to be alive - ergo, growth. As the united Church is the pillar and foundation of truth, it can do no wrong in teaching. Conversely, if people want to stay frozen in carbonite, be our guest.
Growth, growth, growth! Change change, change… you’re right, we’ll start changing and growing, and hopefully one day I may be blessed enough to watch a young lady clad in a leotard ballet around an Orthodox Church with a bowl of incense over her head while a priest in a clown costume distributes the Body and Blood of Christ. Maybe we can even have a protestant reformation of our own! That is where the mindset you seem to be in gets you… not necessarily overnight mind you, but over time. We don’t need your mess, thanks, we’re allright.
 
Growth, growth, growth! Change change, change… you’re right, we’ll start changing and growing, and hopefully one day I may be blessed enough to watch a young lady clad in a leotard ballet around an Orthodox Church with a bowl of incense over her head while a priest in a clown costume distributes the Body and Blood of Christ. Maybe we can even have a protestant reformation of our own! That is where the mindset you seem to be in gets you… not necessarily overnight mind you, but over time. We don’t need your mess, thanks, we’re allright.
Shame on you. Using the liturgical abuses and desecration against us as if the Holy Father himself approved of them is only a sign of desperation on your defense because that is what you have to resort to. A shame indeed.
 
Shame on you. Using the liturgical abuses and desecration against us as if the Holy Father himself approved of them is only a sign of desperation on your defense because that is what you have to resort to. A shame indeed.
I don’t have to use it, I don’t even feel like I’m resorting to anything, just mentioning. The shame is not my mentioning them, the shame is that these things eer happen. I believe it is the eventual fruit of the sort of attitude you propose the Orthodox Church should adopt. Develop develop, change change seems to be the cry being echoed here. Does everyone just get terribly bored and restless if some new dogma isn’t defined every now and then? We are doing fine maintaining and handing down the faith as we recieved it.

Aren’t there groups right now pushing for another marian dogma- the title of “co-redemptorix”? Maybe if you’re lucky that one will one day be proclaimed and you’ll tell your children of a day before the new dogma and wonder how you ever got by without it. Meanwhile, we will still be here, stale old farts that we are, believing and worshiping as we always have. I guess we’ll just be missing out. 🤷
 
That already happened, just a couple hundred years earlier thou.

1054 and All That
HA! :rotfl: yea… in fact I was thinking of visiting a protestant Orthodox Church next week where grape juice and crackers get passed around and such… know where I can find a protestant church that came from Orthodoxy ? I sure don’t. :rolleyes:
 
Nicholas: You’re fooling yourself if you think Eastern Orthodoxy hasn’t seen considerable developments in doctrine and discipline over the centuries. The Oriental Orthodox traditions (Syriac, Coptic, etc) accuse the Greeks of innovation! 😛

The abuses you mentioned are the natural fruit of heretical modernist views, not Catholic orthodoxy. Surely you know how strongly the Pope has condemned such practices. The Holy Father is doing his best to encourage continuity with the past. There have always been heretics, schismatics, and dissenters within the Church. During the height of the Arian heresy the MAJORITY of bishops were heretics. There is always a stir after an ecumenical council. It will be decades before Vatican II is proper implemented as the Church intended. In my own diocese there are now several parishes thath ave returned to receiving kneeling at the altar rail…grant primacy of honor to sacred latin chant…etc etc. Our archbishop has just erected an all Tridentine Latin Mass parish, and other priests throughout the diocese say the Tridentine mass privately. I find that younger priests tend to be more orthodox and traditional. It’s not unlikely to see aged priests walking around in plain clothes and young 25ish year old priests in a cassock! 😛
 
Nicholas: You’re fooling yourself if you think Eastern Orthodoxy hasn’t seen considerable developments in doctrine and discipline over the centuries. The Oriental Orthodox traditions (Syriac, Coptic, etc) accuse the Greeks of innovation! 😛
Developments in doctrine like any council after Chalcedon or what? Discipline isn’t the big issue for me, that can and does change, although hopefully not drastically or haphazardly.

As for the Oriental Orthodox, apparently according to Catholic sources the split was all just a big musunderstanding over words and terminology? According to so many posters here it’s basically the job of the Pope to “sign off” as it were in order to make a council ecumenical- he didn’t catch that big misunderstanding or what?
 
Growth, growth, growth! Change change, change… you’re right, we’ll start changing and growing, and hopefully one day I may be blessed enough to watch a young lady clad in a leotard ballet around an Orthodox Church with a bowl of incense over her head while a priest in a clown costume distributes the Body and Blood of Christ. Maybe we can even have a protestant reformation of our own! That is where the mindset you seem to be in gets you… not necessarily overnight mind you, but over time. We don’t need your mess, thanks, we’re allright.
Hmm…While I will concede to you the point that the CC and the Papacy in particular played their part in the Reformation, I *will not *concede to you that it was their existance that lead to such divisions.

By your above post I see that you, like many Orthodox, do not really understand Dev. of Doc.; what you do seem to understand is the word you so frequently use: change, change, change…and you seem to run with it.

Maybe the reason for this misunderstanding is from a lack of a real universal communion that is not blurred by national lines. Maybe this is why Orthodoxy flames with fury at the mere mentioning of Uniatism(I do understand the difficult history behind this issue). However, it should be noted that Orthodoxy has felt no difficulty in establishing forms of Western-rite Orthodoxy in western Europe and in the U.S., to which the Catholic church has no objection. And again, maybe it is the close link between church and national and political consciousness that renders the Uniate churches so unacceptable.

Aidan Nichols sums up the difficulties thus:

*"To a Catholic mind, the Church of Pentecost is a Church of all nations in the sense of ecclesia ex gentibus, a Church taken from all nations, gathering them - with, to be sure, their own human and spiritual gifts- into a universal community in the image of the divine Triunity where the difference between Father, Son and Spirit only subserves their relations of communion.

The Church of Pentecost is not an ecctesia in gentibus, a Church distributed among the nations in the sense of parcelled out among them, accommodating herself completely to their structures and leaving their sense of
autonomous identity undisturbed."*

The Orthodox pride themselves for the attempts to keep the true faith as was handed down by the Apostles, it would seem they, in model fashion, have also followed in the way the church of the ‘Seven Ecumenical councils’ subsisted; that is, in a state of Church & Empire. Maybe the question of: “Why hasnt the Orthodox held any Ecumenical councils?”, should not be posed; rather, should the question of: Can the Orthodox assemble, and heres the fine point, ***universally accept ***said Ecumenical council?

I fear this post may have been a bit off-topic; perhaps I may in the near future open a new thread regarding the subject of Orthodoxy and particularism.

God bless,

JJR
 
Maybe the question of: “Why hasnt the Orthodox held any Ecumenical councils?”, should not be posed; rather, should the question of: Can the Orthodox assemble, and heres the fine point, ***universally accept ***said Ecumenical council?

I fear this post may have been a bit off-topic; perhaps I may in the near future open a new thread regarding the subject of Orthodoxy and particularism.

God bless,

JJR
An apparently reasonable question, but I say if none are needed none are gathered. It is not a “sign” of anything. It’s not like rotating one’s tires.

The assumption seems to be from the Latin side that change in theology is good. From the Orthodox side this cannot be assumed.

Much of the justification for development of doctrine rings hollow. The driving force for change in doctine in the first millennium church was the heretics. The Councils were engaged in “defining” or in other words, limiting, the expansive heretical theology. Frankly, if heretics and gnostics had not advocated the things they did we would not have formalized as much as we had, it would have been unnecssary…

Our creed is a strong example of that, carefully crafted to eliminate unnacceptable novelties. The idea that doctrine must be able to develop to serve new generations is not a given rule, it is a given excuse.

One way to see it is that doctrinal developments are touted as clarifying theology for the new ages and cultures. The fact is those cultures and times continue to change but it is never admissable that a doctrine mandated in one age for it’s particular circumstances is no longer valid, it cannot be retracted later no matter what the culture.

Nothing is ever retracted, it is only ever added upon, and often for the wrong reasons or by innapropriate methods.

Anyone who knows Orthodoxy knows it is a living vibrant church, not “ossified” or “calcified” as I so often read here by Orthodox bashers.

It is truly a living Body of Christ, and it’s theology and praxis are very stable. I think that is something to be admired. Since battling the gnostics and the Arians no new significant errors have arisien from the eastern Orthodox churches, and the “lack” of a Papacy has not left us vulnarable them.

The rhetorical question is…if a Catholic through no fault of his own, knew only the doctrines taught by Holy Orthodoxy, would he lose his salvation? I think the answer is a definite no. Any Christian who knew only the doctine of Holy Orthodoxy and acted upon that knowledge would have no less a possibility of salvation than any other Catholic. The church teaches as much Truth today as it did in 1053AD, no less and no more, and it is an instrument of salvation.

The Truths are eternal, and change neither for time nor place.

Michael
 
Dear brother Hesychios,
An apparently reasonable question, but I say if none are needed none are gathered. It is not a “sign” of anything. It’s not like rotating one’s tires.

The assumption seems to be from the Latin side that change in theology is good. From the Orthodox side this cannot be assumed.

Much of the justification for development of doctrine rings hollow. The driving force for change in doctine in the first millennium church was the heretics. The Councils were engaged in “defining” or in other words, limiting, the expansive heretical theology. Frankly, if heretics and gnostics had not advocated the things they did we would not have formalized as much as we had, it would have been unnecssary…

Our creed is a strong example of that, carefully crafted to eliminate unnacceptable novelties. The idea that doctrine must be able to develop to serve new generations is not a given rule, it is a given excuse.

One way to see it is that doctrinal developments are touted as clarifying theology for the new ages and cultures. The fact is those cultures and times continue to change but it is never admissable that a doctrine mandated in one age for it’s particular circumstances is no longer valid, it cannot be retracted later no matter what the culture.

Nothing is ever retracted, it is only ever added upon, and often for the wrong reasons or by innapropriate methods.

Anyone who knows Orthodoxy knows it is a living vibrant church, not “ossified” or “calcified” as I so often read here by Orthodox bashers.

It is truly a living Body of Christ, and it’s theology and praxis are very stable. I think that is something to be admired. Since battling the gnostics and the Arians no new significant errors have arisien from the eastern Orthodox churches, and the “lack” of a Papacy has not left us vulnarable them.

The rhetorical question is…if a Catholic through no fault of his own, knew only the doctrines taught by Holy Orthodoxy, would he lose his salvation? I think the answer is a definite no. Any Christian who knew only the doctine of Holy Orthodoxy and acted upon that knowledge would have no less a possibility of salvation than any other Catholic. The church teaches as much Truth today as it did in 1053AD, no less and no more, and it is an instrument of salvation.

The Truths are eternal, and change neither for time nor place.

Michael
This is well said. But there are two points that need to be brought up in response, one of which some others have made as well, but to which no response was given.
  1. Eastern Orthodoxy itself has developed in theology in the second millenium.
  2. Latins DO understand that development only occurs through necessary circumstances, and not through a conscious desire to see development occur. It is just as improper for Latins to claim the Easterns are ossified due to less dogmatization, as it is for Easterns to claim that Latins are innovators just because the circumstances necessary to dogmatize.were thrust upon them in the Western world.
Blessings,
Marduk
 
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