I would be interested in how the Orthodox Church views prophecy in the Early Church. Clearly, it is not infallible like Scripture, but it nonetheless occurred in the first few centuries, so if you are correct, than the Orthodox Church doesn’t consider “prophecy” to be “revelation”.
I know somebody that’s Coptic Orthodox online and they’ve encountered people with spiritual gifts like that. They do believe in it, it’s just not quite the same as Protestant Charismatics.
I think there is nothing in Orthodox doctrine that would inhibit greater reliance on the charismatic gifts (in a biblical way). I would be interested to see how Orthodoxy reacts to an increasingly charismatic Christian world. .
My impression is that Orthodoxy tends to be less flexible to adapting to those kinds of things (though there are exceptions, there was a charsmatic Orthodox misison in the US for a while, created due to a vision by a Russian bishop), I’ve encountered some Anglican converts online that had a bit of “buyers remorse” over that. They were good at lay ministry as Anglicans and found a cold reception in Orthodoxy. OTOH, Anglicanism has tended to have more lay involvement in these things. Mother Dorothy Kerin was a 20th century Anglo-Catholic healer, stigmatic, and visionary who was involved in healing services in the UK and the US, even though she was a celibate laywoman.
- Filioque. This seems like an arcane issue, but in fact I think the logic of the Orthodox position is compelling, aside from historical arguments for why or why not.
I do think the Orthodox have a point of the filioque. And it’s unfortunate that Anglicans never re-thought this position, since they broke from Rome, they should have rethought it- it weakens their/our claims of legitimate rebellion. OTOH… I honestly am not sure it was an issue of heresy, but it was communion-breaking and it was a change in the creed without a council. Papal Supremacy/Infallibility I find hard to stomach.
Mary. You refer to your difficulties with this and while some Roman Catholics will gloss over the differences in doctrine between the two churches, Orthodoxy has not succumb to the same elevation of Mary to a almost quasi-divine status as has the RC church.
The Orthodox don’t believe in the Immaculate Conception. Their teaching on this point is close to Anglicanism (at least the more traditional “broad” church" stance, some Anglo-Catholics have a more Roman belief). She is holy but they don’t define how as rigidly as the Roman dogma. There are several different implications- she was born just like everybody else, then as a young woman she was protected from sin due to grace from the Incarnation, or she was born protected from sin. It’s a vague area and there is room for intepretation or mystery. They have a slightly different view of original sin, too (I’ve ran into Anglicans that hold to a more Eastern view of original sin, therefore the Immaculate Conception becomes a non-issue). I find the Immaculate Conception, on the surface, a hard dogma to stomach. A real barrier.
Orthodox liturgy, OTOH, is even more Marian than Roman Catholicism, and certainly way more Marian than Anglicanism. And yet their actual beliefs are closer to Anglicanism. Alot of Coptic Orthodox, in particular, tend to have more “catholic” type art of the Theotokos in their churches, without Jesus in the picture. There are also some classic icons of the Theotokos alone without Jesus. So, there are exceptions.
Mystery versus scholasticism. I think the EO, by avoiding the tendency of scholasticism, have avoided wrongly defining several doctrines. For example, I don’t understand why the need for defining transubstantiation as such. The EO position is actually remarkable similar to the Lutheran position of co-substantiation, as has been shown in recent dialogues between the two churches.
Exactly. Hesychasm in many ways is preferable to Scholasticism. The whole immaculate conception and transubstatiation are the result of the Western church going nuts with rationalism and nominalism. Some things don’t need to be defined, that’s how I see it. Mary is holy, the bread and wine are Body and Blood. Wow, that’s simple. The result of all this rationalism, of course… when the evidence went against Rome, you get science being condemned. And Protestants, especially Reformed, were even WORSE than Rome over this point. This is where the Creationism vs. Evolution mess comes from. .
I have followed the solid, logical arguments by RCs in favour of purgatory and indulgences. However, defining these as such is unnecessary, especially when these cannot be defended by the consensus of the fathers, in my opinion. If one is going to speculate, as Augustine did regarding purgatory, so be it, but do not elevate this to dogma.
Is Purgatory dogma (in the RCC)? In Anglo-Catholicism, it’s a pious, but optional belief, not dogma (you’ll also find Anglicans who believe in the Orthodox idea of it being a mystery, but that the dead benefit from our prayers).
I would love to check out Western Rite Orthodoxy, because it might seem more familiar liturgically to me.
That’s the rub- there aren’t many “Western Rite” orthodox parishes. Most Anglicans who convert, go Byzantine Rite en masse. And of course, Orthodox have their own problems, like Tradition fundamentalists. I also am not sure why leavening in the Host matters. Orthodox get very much stuck on “we’ve always done this this way, we can’t change”. At least with the Pope in the Roman Catholics, there is an authority to make change. It’s very complicated and confusing if you are trying to discern where God is at in all this.
He’s on a spiritual journey just like everybody else. His one sounds very unusual.
