Why didn't the reformation just side with the Orthodox Church?

Pethesedzao · Feb 23, 2019

HTacianas said:
Is it revelation knowledge that tells the Baptists that women cannot be preachers and then tells the methodists they can?

After two thousand years of Christian teaching that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ and universal consistency in that belief from the apostles through the sub apostolic fathers through the Church fathers down to modern times, is it revelation knowledge that now says it isn't?

It is Revelation Knowledge that says that the Baptist Church is missing out concerning the 3 Baptisms.

fhansen · Feb 23, 2019

JohnB445 said:
But why not join together? And reason through the scriptures?

The problem is that all good little Bereans out there don't necessarily agree at all on the meaning of Scripture.

Gregory Thompson · Feb 23, 2019

Pethesedzao said:
Peter did not live by the sword

probably because of what Jesus said when he did use it.

Gregory Thompson · Feb 23, 2019

Pethesedzao said:
All nine Gifts of the Spirit are available to the Body of Christ Jesus today, let's get on and move in them. Have you been baptized with the Holy Spirit?

I am constantly immersed in the Holy Spirit.

There's way more than 9 gifts, when a gift matures it transforms into something else becoming another gift.

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

JohnB445 said:
I find it a little strange.

Reformers: Can we have the Bible for our Church?
Orthodox Church: Sure here you go!
Reformers: Bye, have a great time!

But why not join together? And reason through the scriptures?

This doesn't make sense to me. I think it's very incomplete. I don't know much about the Orthodox Church. It seems to me you're interested in promoting religion. I understand allegiance to your ideals.

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

Pethesedzao said:
The Church is being built up on Revelation Knowledge, which is one of the rocks that's building up the Body of Christ

Religious groups aren't.

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

HTacianas said:
Here are two articles that explain the dialogue between the Lutherans and the Patriarch of Constantinople. Note that there is no mention here of Calvinism as Calvinism was rejected and condemned in the confession of Dositheus.

https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxyandheterodoxy/2017/10/03/lutherans-greek-church/

The Orthodox Church and the Lutherans

Luther wasn't a Calvinist.

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

Monk Brendan said:
Then why do the different reformation churches teach different things?

Good question. I don't think their original purpose was control over groups of people. These days I'm not so sure that ins't the case.

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

JohnB445 said:
But doesn't division just cause confusion.

I have no clue if I have the right doctrines if Church x,y and z are coming up with different doctrines.

And some doctrines are extremely important to have down.

True if you're following people and not Jesus. I'm not spoon feed by people telling me their version of truth requiring my financial support.

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

Sonny J. Reeves said:
How many "rocks" are we to build?
Is that latter day revelations?
Please explain your metaphor with scripture

Don't those rocks turn out to be sandstone?

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

Athanasius377 said:
The way the Eastern Church does theology is different than in the West. I’ve read volumes on the subject and I’m still not sure I understand the East well enough to speak coherently on the matter. Add to that the history of the East like or not is tied up with the Byzantine Empire and the struggle with Islam. In a real sense you can’t understand the East apart from these two factors. These are factors the West never had to deal with in the same scale. I’m not sure there is a definitive answer.

I don't buy Islam being a factor in the religious split.

ace of hearts · Feb 23, 2019

GingerBeer said:
Gnostic?

no

Mark_Sam · Feb 23, 2019

I remember Jaroslav Pelikan (famous Lutheran-turned-Orthodox theologian) suggesting that had Luther lived a litte farther east, he might have turned to the Orthodox Church instead of starting his own denomination. But I can't remember where I read it.

As many people already have said, the Protestant Reformation was fundamentally a Western thing, in the Western/Augustinian tradition. And as we know, people like Luther and Calvin were too entrenched in the Augustinian tradition to join the Orthodox, at least at that stage.

BNR32FAN · Feb 23, 2019

Ignatius the Kiwi said:
Because the reformers not only disagreed with the Catholics on ecclesiastical issues but theological issues. The reformers invented new dogmatic expressions which were foreign to the Eastern Orthodox Church's vocabulary and also came to reject many ecclesiastical elements that the Orthodox Church agrees with the Catholics on.

Lutherans did try to reach out to the Patriarch of Constantinople and were hoping to be recognized but were ultimately disappointed when they found out the Patriarch corrected them on most points of theology fundamental to the reformation.

I think Protestantism as a whole must conclude the Orthodox were just as apostate as the Catholics in order to maintain their own validity.

I think the problem with Luther thinking that both the RCC and EOC were apostates means that Jesus’ Church no longer existed anywhere. That evil had prevailed over His Church, which Jesus promised would not happen.

straykat · Feb 23, 2019

Jonaitis said:
I don't know why I would deny that, straykat. Protestants are portrayed from the outside as people fixating only on a belief in the person of Christ, and not on about practical issues. Rather, we stressed that all biblical and practical living must have a foundation, and this foundation is the relationship between the creature and his God. You cannot live the Christian life, unless you are a Christian period. And you're right, we focus on the apostle Paul a lot, because his epistles are the bulk of the New Testament document regarding faith and life. But, we recognize that Paul makes it clear repeatedly that ethical living must proceed from that positional and spiritual change of the sinner first. The ordo salutis must be properly understood. How does a sinner reconcile with a holy God? If you get the wiring wrong, you cannot expect anything to function. Your standing before God is chief important to any and all things of the Christian life, everything must proceed from that.

I firmly believe that we are obligated to obey God, straykat, as do Protestants. The issue with Judaizers was chiefly about justification, not just ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. Read Galatians 2:15-3:29, it is all about justification. His point isn't just Old Testament laws being obeyed for justification, but that faith is what saves. "The righteous shall live by faith" (Gal. 3:11). This is one of the clearest passages:

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it - the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." - Romans 3:21-26

Faith unites us to Christ, then fruit-bearing obedience follows:

"Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the [demands of the] law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the [demands of the] law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code." - Romans 7:4-6

It is clearly Paul's point, especially above, that your position and standing before God is before your living "ethically." You need to be right with God first, and there is only one way to do that. We stressed the order, and the particulars, because the apostles did the same.

This is for another discussion, because I agree that moral equity of the Law of Moses is still applicable to the Christian. The rest, such as the ceremonial and civil laws strictly speaking, are done away with for other reasons than you are suggesting. It deals with covenants, something I hardly ever hear the Eastern Churches discuss, when they are the framework of Scriptures and redemptive history. But, again, this is for another discussion. I firmly believe the law still has a place in Scriptures, the Reformers held to this view. It is a more recent invention of what is called Dispensationalism that suggests otherwise.

It isn't so cryptic as you make it, straykat. It does sound strange with a theology that conflates and confuses justification with sanctification. If you read the second letter, this man repented with tears. The excommunication was for the destruction of his flesh, so that he would would repent and remain saved for that day.

I know you feel obligated to do all of these things. That's my olive leaf, I suppose, to acknowledge that you DO believe in sanctification. I don't think Protestants necessarily preach sinful living at all, and I rejoice at that. But it's not the East that's confused. It's the West, because it relied on one man (Augustine) for it's idea of Original Sin. And it's the East that simply follows the Jewish tradition on sin (and which Jews and Orthodox still agree on). Why would Orthodox be confused when it's the older view?

In short, you separate issues like justification and sanctification because Original Sin is so monstrous and debilitating that it requires an absolute one time down payment just to escape from it. Hence Justification becomes so central, because you'd be damned otherwise. Catholics have the same concept of Original Sin, but they're even more troubled since they have no "escape route" like Luther's Sola Fide, and become overly scrupulous, and again, rely on even more legal viewpoints to ease the brunt of it (like categorizing different types of sin into mortal, venial, etc.. and different penances to escape from them, etc).

edit: To be fair, contemporary Catholicism seems a little different than this (like in the RC Catechism. Someone told me it had a lot of input from the Eastern Catholic rite. Maybe that's it).

FireDragon76 · Feb 23, 2019

straykat said:
They weren't debating mere faith and works with the Judaizers though. St. Paul, for example, is a main source for Protestant soteriology, but the big elephant in the room is that the bulk of his epistles were of an ethical focus. They're a treasure trove of all kinds of instruction for Christian living. Surely, you wouldn't deny that, right? He never diminished everyday types of morality. The specific "works" of Judaizers were those that separated Jews and Gentiles specifically (circumcision, diet, etc). Things that specifically got in the way of the new commonality and brotherhood through Christ.

Reformed and Lutheran Protestants do have an ethical focus, it just isn't necessarily legalistic in character, nor is it exclusively religious in tone. Lutherans are not antimomian; people should use their Christian freedom to serve their neighbor through their vocation. This is the example Christ himself left us. Not one dictate by centuries of monks and clergy that mixed in Greek Neo-Platonic philosophy, but Christ himself. Therefore, we are humanistic in a way the Orthodox Church never could be, and one that even Rome struggles with.

One of the reasons I was drawn to Lutheranism was the strong ethical focus of Lutheran theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In fact it is an ethical focus that is far more focused, demanding, and compelling, than what I experienced in the Orthodox church.

Concord1968 · Feb 23, 2019

BNR32FAN said:
I think the problem with Luther thinking that both the RCC and EOC were apostates means that Jesus’ Church no longer existed anywhere. That evil had prevailed over His Church, which Jesus promised would not happen.

I'm inclined to think that the Reformers would say that there's only a problem because your conception of the Church that Jesus is talking about is faulty. The Reformation explanation was that Christ's Church was invisible and made up of all true believers and was NOT a visible, Earthly institution like the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Churches.

Silverback · Feb 23, 2019

JohnB445 said:
I find it a little strange.

Reformers: Can we have the Bible for our Church?
Orthodox Church: Sure here you go!
Reformers: Bye, have a great time!

But why not join together? And reason through the scriptures?

Some years into the reformation, the Lutherans corresponded with the Patriarch of Constantinople. Consensus however could not be reached, and communication ended.

Politics, warfare, and geography also played a large part in the issue as well, but I think it was the Sola's, which are not comparable with Orthodox Theology.

All4Christ · Feb 23, 2019

FireDragon76 said:
<snip>Therefore, we are humanistic in a way the Orthodox Church never could be, and one that even Rome struggles with.

One of the reasons I was drawn to Lutheranism was the strong ethical focus of Lutheran theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In fact it is an ethical focus that is far more focused, demanding, and compelling, than what I experienced in the Orthodox church.

I’m truly sorry about your experience that you had in Orthodoxy; I’m thankful that mine has been different. In Orthodoxy, I have seen the strongest focus on Holy living compared to any other church I’ve been to, including the Holiness movement (which is related to my childhood church and is one of the most focused movements in the Protestant Church in regards to sanctification and Holy living). I think the experience you had in Orthodoxy is not representative of the entire Church. Likewise, I’m sure that the experience I had with the Lutheran church likely wasn’t the entirety of the Lutheran Church. My experience with the Lutheran church is very different than yours.

On a personal note, I hope all is going well for you!

ETA: I concur with Straykat on Dietrich Bonhoeffer - his life and what he did is very powerful.

straykat · Feb 23, 2019

FireDragon76 said:
Reformed and Lutheran Protestants do have an ethical focus, it just isn't necessarily legalistic in character, nor is it exclusively religious in tone. Lutherans are not antimomian; people should use their Christian freedom to serve their neighbor through their vocation. This is the example Christ himself left us. Not one dictate by centuries of monks and clergy that mixed in Greek Neo-Platonic philosophy, but Christ himself. Therefore, we are humanistic in a way the Orthodox Church never could be, and one that even Rome struggles with.

One of the reasons I was drawn to Lutheranism was the strong ethical focus of Lutheran theologians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In fact it is an ethical focus that is far more focused, demanding, and compelling, than what I experienced in the Orthodox church.

I'd be the last for saying anything bad about Bonhoeffer. At the end of the day, he did the greatest thing any of us could do for Christ. I can only hope we'd all be as resistant to evil, in the face of death.

But there were many Orthodox who sadly died in these years as well (be it on the Bolshevik end during WW1) or, for example, Serbians killed by the Nazi aligned Ustashe in WW2. Terrible stories.

In a strange twist of fate, however, the Croatian Catholics later on had to face the evils of Bolshevism as well. When they were not bothered by the fascists of the previous years, they met the same treatment by communists. So there are brave stories of, say, Franciscan monks who willingly let themselves get lit on fire before denying Christ.

Why didn't the reformation just side with the Orthodox Church?

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