Why doesn't Protestantism look like Eastern Orthodoxy?

[Reuben_J]

I never said Beatific Vision is the removal of sin. I said you only get to receive Beatific Vision upon the removal of all stain of sin, which you get either by achieving the State of Grace through the Sacraments, or once you paid your dues in Purgatory.

That’s it. What the big deal here? Where is the biggies? Where is the beef (of difference)?

@ Gabriel of 12. Great posts there.

 

[Reuben_J]

13 pages insisting there is this oh so significant difference. Yet no one has articulated this blatant difference yet.

Here’s Bishop Ware on the Original Sin. Same love story, no different.

blessedisthekingdom.com/2010/09/18/bishop-kallistos-ware-on-original-sin/

orthodoxchristian.info/pages/original.htm

Same story? You guys are funny. You’d think you have a new market on Christianity over there after reading this thread, that’s after the 1000-years in communion.

This.

 

[GaryTaylor]

The idea of purification in not new in the Church, nor is communion with God in eternity, or the Beatific Vision. This is what I referred to with Thomas. We are separated from God in this, well, existential reality which in itself is eviction from paradise. Heaven, communion with God is a perfect state of Grace. This is what is considered the Beatific Vision. Vision isn’t interpreted as a complete knowledge of Gods essence.

Also just to touch on purgatory. Its often suggested the mystics and the Church at some later point in history developed a fictitious doctrine with imaginary ideas of fire and suffering etc. This I also false. These teachings were discussed in Alexandria and Antioch and long before the first council.

Here’s another aspect of Origen’s Fundamental Doctrines. You have to remember he was “teaching” and presenting different philosophical thoughts which indeed were contemplated in the schools and pagan culture of the day.

"Now let us see what is meant by the threatening with eternal fire. We find in the prophet Isaiah that the fire with which each one is punished is described as his own; for he says: “Walk in the light of your fire and in the flame which you have kindled for yourselves”
It seems to indicate by these words that every sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire and is not plunged into some fire which is kindled beforehand by someone else who already existed before him. The food and fuel of the fire are our sins, which are called wood and hay and stubble by the Apostle Paul.

And I think …when the soul is gathered together within itself a multitude of evil deeds and an abundance of sins, at a appropriate time the whole collection of evils boils up for punishment and is set on fire for penalty. When the mind itself. or conscience. by Divine power receives into the memory all those things which, when it is sinning, it impressed upon itself as certain signs and forms, it will see exposed before its eyes a kind of history of each of its own enormities, the deeds which it foully and shamefully performed and even impiously committed.

Then also will the conscience itself be harassed and pierced by its own goads, becoming witness and accuser against itself…From this, then. it is understood that certain tortures are produced around the substance of the soul by the harmful influences of the sins themselves.

It is my judgment, however, that it is possible to understand that their is also another species of punishment. Thus when the soul shall have been found to be outside the order and structure of harmony in which, for the sake its well being and use-full behavior, it was created by God, and does not harmonize with itself in the structure of its rational movements, then it must be supposed that it will bear the agonizing penalty of its own dissension, and will feel the punishment of its own inconsistency and disorder. And…when the dissolution and tearing asunder of the soul shall have been accomplished by means of the application of fire, no doubt it will afterwards be solidified into a firmer structure and into a restoration of itself." Origen 220-230 The Fundamental Doctrines

 

[GaryTaylor]

BTW CTG I hope your feeling better. My son has the same condition. I believe it shows in your thinking. I know his mind starts racing without medication also.

 

[ConstantineTG]

This.

This what? Did you read the link? Met. Kallistos basically shot down the Augustinian view which is what the Roman Catholics follow.

 

[ConstantineTG]

BTW CTG I hope your feeling better. My son has the same condition. I believe it shows in your thinking. I know his mind starts racing without medication also.

Your son has it and you don’t? It’s hereditary, and usually through the males. You’re lucky if you don’t have it.

 

[Adamski]

I have a better one why doesn’t Protestantism look like the
St Thomas church or the east in goa India
Since it had no European or middle eastern contact from 52ad to 1550 ad which means they had no new testement but they had 7 sacraments

 

[dzheremi]

I have a better one why doesn’t Protestantism look like the
St Thomas church or the east in goa India
Since it had no European or middle eastern contact from 52ad to 1550 ad which means they had no new testement but they had 7 sacraments

What on earth are you talking about? The CoE in India was never based in Goa; it’s in South India, just like the rest of the ancient Christian communities in India. Also the Church of the East, as indicated in its name, is Middle Eastern, so it makes no sense to say that there’s a Church of the East in India, but that also they had no Middle Eastern contract from 52 AD to 1550 AD. Particular churches within established traditions don’t just spontaneously generate themselves without contact with the wider tradition from which they descend. :ehh:

What a bizarre post.

 

[Peter_J]

But it is true. Protestantism came out of Catholicism and thus its theology is very Western.

I think you just indirectly showed the anti-Western-ness of the Orthodox. :yyeess:

 

[Peter_J]

I think you just indirectly showed the anti-Western-ness of the Orthodox. :yyeess:

To be fair, of course, Western (western?) Christians can also be pretty anti-Eastern.

 

[Adamski]

What on earth are you talking about? The CoE in India was never based in Goa; it’s in South India, just like the rest of the ancient Christian communities in India. Also the Church of the East, as indicated in its name, is Middle Eastern, so it makes no sense to say that there’s a Church of the East in India, but that also they had no Middle Eastern contract from 52 AD to 1550 AD. Particular churches within established traditions don’t just spontaneously generate themselves without contact with the wider tradition from which they descend. :ehh:

What a bizarre post.

I don’t remember for exact name of the church but they are in goa and claim that thomas the apostle started it in 52ad. And the protégées found them in the 1500’s now they are part of the roman cathic church

 

[RobbyS]

But it is true. Protestantism came out of Catholicism and thus its theology is very Western. Even the heretical doctrines of the Protestants aren’t even close to Eastern theology.

Reformers such as Luther and Calvin were radically Augustinian in their views, as was a later heretic Jansen. The Eastern Church, I understand, did not cotton to Augustine and he could not relate to the Eastern Fathers because he was not fluent in Greek.

 

[dzheremi]

I don’t remember for exact name of the church but they are in goa and claim that thomas the apostle started it in 52ad. And the protégées found them in the 1500’s now they are part of the roman cathic church

This is confusing a few separate issues. All Christians in India (may) trace their roots back to St. Thomas in some way, as it was St. Thomas who brought Christianity to India in 52 AD. However, his travels in India did not include Goa, as he landed in what is now Kerala, and was martyred in what is now Tamil Nadu (both of these locations are in South India; Goa is in West India). What evidence that has been presented to show pre-Portuguese presence of Christianity in Goa does indeed point to Thomasine roots (e.g., the St. Thomas cross at Agasaim), but then so does basically everything else, regardless of where it is found in the country. Knowing what we do from the ancient witnesses of St. Thomas’ travels, it is far, far more likely that Christianity spread from the south upwards and outwards, and that any presence of Christianity in Goa does not predate the 6th century AD, many centuries after St. Thomas’ martyrdom at Mylapore.

Whatever happened even later (1500s) is hence of no consequence.