The Reconquista of Mainline Protestant Churches

hedrick said:

Luther rejected tradition

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No, he rejected certain doctrines which the Roman Catholic Church had embraced during the Scholastic era in the course of its schism from the Orthodox. Except in one respect:

hedrick said:

Remember "always reforming." Luther rejected tradition, and followed the best contemporary understanding of what Paul really meant.

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That’s not quite correct - in interpolating the word “alone” into the writings of the Holy Apostle Paul, Luther introduced a serious error and distorted their meaning. This was his one major failure, but it occurred nearer towards the end of his life, during a period when Luther continued to make increasingly dubious moral decisions which we see echoed in the willingness of some mainline churches to consider permitting polyamorous relationships, which is so far beyond the pale, a direct pathway to the kind of abusive relationships that characterize the FLDS. There is a reason why Christianity always refused to perform marriages of those already married, and likewise rejected other forms of sexual perversion, because of the injury they cause spiritually.

Likewise towards the end of his life we see Luther engaging in disturbing anti-Semitic behavior in the form of his vile collaboration with Lucas Cranach the Elder, for which reason I am not sure I could ever be willing to venerating Luther even though i admire his early actions.

hedrick said:

The question is whether his followers should turn Luther and Calvin into new unchangeable tradition, or continue to follow developments in scholarship and our understanding of the world.

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Neither. They should return to the teaching of the early church where Luther and Calvin contradicted it (in many cases by accident). Luther for the most part did not contradict the teachings of the early church, except towards the end of his life with, for example, the aforementioned openness to the possibility of polygamy, the interpolation of “alone” into the words of St. Paul in the German text despite there being nothing in the original Greek or other ancient translations such as the Latin or Syriac to indicate the word belonged there, or the aforementioned anti-Semitism. To a very large extent I see confessional Lutherans doing that - almost everything said by my Evangelical Catholic friends of the LCC and LCMS on this forum I agree with as an Orthodox Christian and also supported when I was a conservative Congregationalist and during my brief time as a communicant in the Episcopal Church.

With Calvinism, the primary doctrinal differences with the early church pertains to the issues of the denial of the physicality of the Real Presence and of Iconoclasm, but fortunately there are Reformed Catholics who have rejected these errors. Also among Reformed Christians in general I see much less veneration of Calvin than, for example, of Wesley by Methodists or Luther by Lutherans, indeed one seldom hears of a church named in honor of Calvin and one is just as likely to encounter one named for Knox among Presbyterians.

But you are right about one thing - the mainline churches do need to reform, because right now I am unable to worship in the church in which I was baptized because it permits someone who lives in a manner not permitted by Scripture or Tradition.

bbbbbbb said:

Do you believe that unrepentant murderers, rapists, and adulterers ought to be in the church simply because they have a psychological disorder which inclines them to such activities?

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I don’t believe that someone who refuses repentance for any sin but rather redefines that sin as a virtue, which would include being uncharitable towards homosexuals, or engaging in slander, which the early church and the Orthodox fathers regard as a kind of homicide, or other errors should be allowed to partake of the Eucharist. However, even among the holiest of us there is a question of what we are repenting of. Many Orthodox scholars have concerns about the statement of St. Francis of Assisi that he had repented of all sins he had conducted; we contrast that with Abba Sisoes the Great who when he was dying begged the angels for more time, in which to repent - when his disciples told him “but you are holy father, you have no need of repentence” Abba Sisoes said “surely I cannot know if I have even begun to repent!” and then his face lit up and he exclaimed “My savior has come!” and he died glowing. That is the correct attitude, since most sins I have conducted I am not even aware of, and thus I must regard myself as the worst of sinners, and in Orthodoxy we actively confess to being the chief of sinners before partaking of Communion at every Divine Liturgy in the confiteor ante communionem. This I regard as extremely healthy, since it excludes from us the delusion that we can save ourselves through correct behavior - rather we are entirely dependent upon Jesus Christ.

Depending on what they had done, the early church would exclude them from Communion for a time and require them to stand in prayer among the penitents rather than among the communicants and to perform prostrations, except where applying such penances would cause them additional harm. However at no point have I found anything in the canons of the early church or in Orthodox teaching that says that hose who have committed sins and are unrepentant should be treated in a cruel manner.

Additionally regarding homosexuality, the early church did not apply penances to it as one might think, indeed the category of homosexual as an orientation apart from the acts involved were unknown. Rather the church was concerned only with conduct, and interestingly the specific conduct that concerned the church the most, that being arsenokoetia, (which means infernal or flaming coitus) was differentiated from lesser failures which were treated as comparatively minor mistakes, and with regards to arsenokoetia, it was penanced the same way as if committed by a married heterosexual couple as if committed by arsenokoetai (which was the closest category to the modern idea of homosexuality known to the early church, from the writings of the holy Apostle Paul).

At present under current conditions applying penances for sinful behavior has become much more problematic and is more of a danger. Also

bbbbbbb said:

You may argue that they are applying this in a legalistic manner, but they are sincerely applying biblical teaching which denounces homosexuality as a sin, not a mental disorder

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That presupposes that a sin cannot also be mentally disordered. The two categories are not mutually exclusive. Indeed very frequently specific forms of hamartia are sinful because of their adverse impact upon the health of the sinner, mentally or otherwise.

Now it is also possible for someone to have a neuropsychiatric condition which makes it impossible for them to tell the difference from right and wrong and causes their actions to be involuntary, or to be possessed by a demon (the early church regarding actions performed under demonic possession to be involuntary).

Remember the Orthodox reject the idea of sin as a forensic category - from our perspective all sin is disease and the church is a hospital for sinners wherein we are ministered to by God and His angels.

bbbbbbb said:

heartily disagree. As an example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints teaches, wholeheartedly, that homosexuality is sinful. The result has been numerous suicides by homosexuals in the church, the banning of homosexual men from the priesthood (which is a really big deal not unlike forbidding membership except to attend as an observer), and the requirement that any children raised by a homosexual couple cannot be baptized unless they publicly renounce their parents as sinners.

You may argue that they are applying this in a legalistic manner,

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No, I’m going to argue that the LDS “Church” is not Christian in any respect but rather a dangerous cult and that the manner in which it mistreats those of its members who commit any sin is itself sinful. The errors of the LDS are so much worse than mere legalism - the LDS is a system which exploits its members financially and in other respects for the enrichment of a few and in order to preserve its organic status, like a beehive, which is the appropriate image for their denomination, because they only tolerate productive members, they require those members to obey unthinkingly, and they command those members to engage in action for the good of the hive and its leadership. This is demonstrated by the fact that they perform criminal background checks on prospective members and will not accept people who cannot be productive. Its a sinful system. One is only allowed some measure of care within the LDS system if one has either (a) generated substantial value for the cult or (b) the cult believes it can extract value from the individual.

I reject any comparison of the LDS cult to that of even the most misguided Christian denominations such as the ones who constantly attack traditional Christians and accuse us of sinning because they don’t like the day of the week on which we worship, or the ones which perform homosexual marriages.

Those churches which are not loving towards those who have had homosexual issues are teaching a sin that is worse than arsenokoetia.

There is no instruction in the New Testament that voids the requirement of loving the arsenokoetai as lone loves oneself or as Christ loves them or of denying them charity, and the Mormons are creating a situation which is not conducive to the well being of the arsenokoetai or other sinners.

The specific problem rather with the mainline churches is that rather than merely stressing what would be correct, that we should not be uncharitable or unkind towards those who have become ensnared by this sin (which furthermore has been made comorbid with pride in the sinful system of the world at present through the horrifying institution of the Gay Pride Parade - the only answer to which is for us to not react to it but to humbly accept our own sins and not judge our brother, they are now, all of them, as of the recent decision of the UMC to reject the Traditional Plan and perform gay marriages and to encourage homosexual ministers (which previously the conferences in the US were doing in violation of the Book of Discipline), are actively promoting a harmful behavior and creating a situation in which Chrstians like myself are estranged from where we are baptized.

One final point - while politely refusing to perform homosexual marriages and refusing to capitulate to the world on the issue of whether or not various sexual sins or abortion or other transgressions are sinful, that is to say, examples where we have succumbed to the passions and acquired a disease which can become a terrible cross to bear but for the support of Christ who will love all sinners unconditionally, we Orthodox say the Prayer of St. Ephraim particularly during the joyous fast of Great Lent, which is my favorite time of year, the time when we have the most beautiful liturgies and wear the most beautiful purple vestments (indeed it is the custom in the Russian Old Rite to repeat this prayer seventeen times on certain occasions):

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.​

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.​

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.​

The Liturgist said:

The teaching that homosexuality is sinful harmed no one. Any harm resulted from Christians applying this teaching in a legalistic manner rather than a loving manner and being uncharitable to those afflicted with what is essentially a mental illness that results from men becoming confused about the appreciation of male beauty and desiring each other carnally either in preference to or in the absence of women (and vice versa with womenkind, the tragedy of the abuse of prisoners by members of the same sex - I am of the few that prisoners must be given as much access to their spouses as can be accommodated without endangering the public.

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I did not mean to suggest that the traditional beliefs of the church were harmful, beyond the part where they cause some people distress, I do not see how they are. I intended for my emphasis to be on agreeing with you that changing church doctrine can inflict outright moral injury, and therefore itself be harmful.

Regarding prisoners I agree with you, although more on account of their spouses not having done anything wrong, and the purely practical solution to prison violence that access to marital partners might enable.

You have raised an extremely important topic in the reference to mental health problems and sin, and one which could not possibly be more relevant to my own life and faith, for reasons that do not actually involve homosexuality. I am convinced it is the subject that all churches in Europe and America especially need to get clarity on. Having said that, a lot of harm and no really helpful solutions are all that ever came from psychiatry and phsycology defining homosexuality as a mental health problem, and for that reason I am not inclined to call it that myself.

RamiC said:

I did not mean to suggest that the traditional beliefs of the church were harmful, beyond the part where they cause some people distress, I do not see how they are. I intended for my emphasis to be on agreeing with you that changing church doctrine can inflict outright moral injury, and therefore itself be harmful.

Regarding prisoners I agree with you, although more on account of their spouses not having done anything wrong, and the purely practical solution to prison violence that access to marital partners might enable.

You have raised an extremely important topic in the reference to mental health problems and sin, and one which could not possibly be more relevant to my own life and faith, for reasons that do not actually involve homosexuality. I am convinced it is the subject that all churches in Europe and America especially need to get clarity on. Having said that, a lot of harm and no really helpful solutions are all that ever came from psychiatry and phsycology defining homosexuality as a mental health problem, and for that reason I am not inclined to call it that myself.

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Actually, the traditional beliefs of the church have wreaked havoc to the point of martyrdom for various folks who dissented from them. The sword, as they say, cut both ways. One might argue, in retrospect, that the folks responsible for the martyrdoms, wars of Christian religion, or persecutions of varying degrees were not real Christians, or that they did not perform the deeds personally and therefore were innocent, or that they were just legalists who didn't understand the true Christian faith. The reality is that they knew perfectly well what they were doing and why they were doing it, and it is disingenuous to absolve them of any responsibility for have defended the traditional beliefs of the church.

RamiC said:

I did not mean to suggest that the traditional beliefs of the church were harmful, beyond the part where they cause some people distress, I do not see how they are. I intended for my emphasis to be on agreeing with you that changing church doctrine can inflict outright moral injury, and therefore itself be harmful.

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Forgive me, my dear - I was not replying to you and did not think you were.

Rather I was replying specifically to my dear Reformed friends @hedrick and @bbbbbbb who I love very much even though I disagree with them in whole or in part on the issue of doctrine pertaining to human sexuality.

bbbbbbb said:

One might argue, in retrospect, that the folks responsible for the martyrdoms, wars of Christian religion, or persecutions of varying degrees were not real Christians, or that they did not perform the deeds personally and therefore were innocent, or that they were just legalists who didn't understand the true Christian faith.

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I am not going to justify their actions. I would say they had a lot in common with those who would perform gay marriages.

I would also note that the Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East and some of the smaller EO jurisdictions have only ever been the victims of violence, not the perpetrators.

Also the Wars of Religion were a specifically Western response to a Western schism.

Of course in this case we are talking about Western churches and the harm caused to parishioners through pro-gay marriage and pro-choice positions, specifically, where the Episcopal Church, the UMC and other denominations ejected from their seminaries and then from their parishes seminarians and congregants who said “wait a minute, this doctrine isn’t biblical.”

Relying on state power in particular to prevent people from worshipping in the church in which they were baptized due to a dispute over doctrine when one’s denomination changed what it taught since the time of their doctrine is precisely the kind of unpleasantness that presaged the darkest moments of Reformed and Anglican Christianity regarding the persecution of Roman Catholics (who I am by no means exonerating from their own errors, nor do I seek to whitewash EO misconduct).

bbbbbbb said:

Actually, the traditional beliefs of the church have wreaked havoc to the point of martyrdom for various folks who dissented from them.

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Which traditional beliefs are we talking about? Obviously not the faith of Nicaea (at least in the East - there was the unfortunate business concerning Servetus, but that was Calvin apparently misinterpreting Galatians 1:8-9 as a command to execute rather than a command to offer the case of a heretic to God in the hopes that God would convert them, which was the same error Rome had been making with regards to heretical groups like the Albigensians. Indeed his treatment of Servetus and his inaccurate Iconoclastic rhetoric in which he claimed that there were enough fragments of the True Cross to make a galleon, when in fact, the total relics of the Cross measured by a French physicist in the 19th century did not amount to more than a 3rd of the required mass are the main reasons I dislike Calvin.

Returning to the subject of churches causing harm by punishing those who the church taught one thing, when the church later changes teachings, one of the most extreme cases was that of Czar Peter the Great would make regarding the Old Rite Orthodox, after illegally seizing control of the Russian Orthodox Church and assuming personally most of the power historically vested in the Patriarch through the office of the Imperial Procurator uncaonically installed in the reduced Holy Synod which instead of consisting of all the bishops now consisted only of three Metropolitans including if I recall those of Moscow, St. Petersburg and one other city the name of which escapes me, and used that power to persecute people with violence for continuing to make the sign of the cross in the manner that they had been taught, which caused the largest and worst schism in the history of Eastern Orthodoxy (which was still relatively small, but it did produce, aside from the Old Rite Orthodox, most of whom reconciled with the canonical church after celebration of the Old Rite was authorized through the Edinovertsy parishes, the Priestless Old Believers who remain convinced to this day that there are no living bishops or presbyters who can celebrate the Eucharist, some of whom have also been reconciled such as most of those from the Church of the Nativity in Erie, PA (a small minority continue in a nearby priestless chapel, and there is a large community in Woodburn, Oregon), some groups which were heterodox according to the CF statement of faith, notably the Doukhobors, who were basically Unitarians but with a tendency to engage in nude protests and arson attacks in Western Canada (which was in my view an ungrateful way to treat the country that had welcomed them essentially as refugees from Czarist Russia).

Also that schism produced the Molokans, many of whom settled in California, who either practiced Judaism or something similar to the Ebionite sect of early Christianity, not to mention the mutilators, Immolators and other extremists (which the Czarist regime to its credit took action to prevent the spread of, since the most harm possible is spread by cults which teach people to mutilate themselves or to do the unthinkable, a more recent case being Heaven’s Gate, a cult which really should have been shut down as soon as Herb Applewhite took, shall we say, extreme action, in furtherance of his beliefs.

The Liturgist said:

I am not going to justify their actions. I would say they had a lot in common with those who would perform gay marriages.

I would also note that the Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East and some of the smaller EO jurisdictions have only ever been the victims of violence, not the perpetrators.

Also the Wars of Religion were a specifically Western response to a Western schism.

Of course in this case we are talking about Western churches and the harm caused to parishioners through pro-gay marriage and pro-choice positions, specifically, where the Episcopal Church, the UMC and other denominations ejected from their seminaries and then from their parishes seminarians and congregants who said “wait a minute, this doctrine isn’t biblical.”

Relying on state power in particular to prevent people from worshipping in the church in which they were baptized due to a dispute over doctrine when one’s denomination changed what it taught since the time of their doctrine is precisely the kind of unpleasantness that presaged the darkest moments of Reformed and Anglican Christianity regarding the persecution of Roman Catholics (who I am by no means exonerating from their own errors, nor do I seek to whitewash EO misconduct).

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Thank you. I think the broader is may be Dissent and disagreement. The whole issue of human sexuality in mainline churches was merely the lightning rod for a very lengthy history of liberalism within these denominations. In this case, as you probably known, liberalism was primarily introduced into American mainline denominations from the "progressive" seminaries of Germany through the seminaries of the United States. As the seminaries fell sway to its influence the denominational structures came under its influence with major conflicts which continued throughout the twentieth century. The sweet face of liberalism was the Social Gospel, which still resonates with many Christians who are genuinely concerned with the welfare of disadvantaged people. The poisonous face of liberalism, in my opinion, was its intolerance, especially of its perceived enemies holding to fundamental (i.e. orthodox) Christianity. In the process, the very foundations of the Christian faith, especially the person and work of Jesus Christ, have been systematically replaced with political liberal activism. This is a completely untenable position for any professing Christian community and its failure is now utterly obvious in the wasteland of empty churches and secularization.

The Liturgist said:

Which traditional beliefs are we talking about? Obviously not the faith of Nicaea (at least in the East - there was the unfortunate business concerning Servetus, but that was Calvin apparently misinterpreting Galatians 1:8-9 as a command to execute rather than a command to offer the case of a heretic to God in the hopes that God would convert them, which was the same error Rome had been making with regards to heretical groups like the Albigensians. Indeed his treatment of Servetus and his inaccurate Iconoclastic rhetoric in which he claimed that there were enough fragments of the True Cross to make a galleon, when in fact, the total relics of the Cross measured by a French physicist in the 19th century did not amount to more than a 3rd of the required mass are the main reasons I dislike Calvin.

Returning to the subject of churches causing harm by punishing those who the church taught one thing, when the church later changes teachings, one of the most extreme cases was that of Czar Peter the Great would make regarding the Old Rite Orthodox, after illegally seizing control of the Russian Orthodox Church and assuming personally most of the power historically vested in the Patriarch through the office of the Imperial Procurator uncaonically installed in the reduced Holy Synod which instead of consisting of all the bishops now consisted only of three Metropolitans including if I recall those of Moscow, St. Petersburg and one other city the name of which escapes me, and used that power to persecute people with violence for continuing to make the sign of the cross in the manner that they had been taught, which caused the largest and worst schism in the history of Eastern Orthodoxy (which was still relatively small, but it did produce, aside from the Old Rite Orthodox, most of whom reconciled with the canonical church after celebration of the Old Rite was authorized through the Edinovertsy parishes, the Priestless Old Believers who remain convinced to this day that there are no living bishops or presbyters who can celebrate the Eucharist, some of whom have also been reconciled such as most of those from the Church of the Nativity in Erie, PA (a small minority continue in a nearby priestless chapel, and there is a large community in Woodburn, Oregon), some groups which were heterodox according to the CF statement of faith, notably the Doukhobors, who were basically Unitarians but with a tendency to engage in nude protests and arson attacks in Western Canada (which was in my view an ungrateful way to treat the country that had welcomed them essentially as refugees from Czarist Russia).

Also that schism produced the Molokans, many of whom settled in California, who either practiced Judaism or something similar to the Ebionite sect of early Christianity, not to mention the mutilators, Immolators and other extremists (which the Czarist regime to its credit took action to prevent the spread of, since the most harm possible is spread by cults which teach people to mutilate themselves or to do the unthinkable, a more recent case being Heaven’s Gate, a cult which really should have been shut down as soon as Herb Applewhite took, shall we say, extreme action, in furtherance of his beliefs.

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Long before the Reformation there was the heavy persecution of the Waldensians, who have been the exception, having survived, and are now viewed as orthodox Christians by most other Christian denominations. Then there was the sad case of Jan Hus and his followers. There was also the infamous Inquisition, especially in Spain. There were other movements which were exterminated by the Roman Catholic Church of which we know little to nothing about. One can make a case that the Albigensians were, indeed, heretics. I will not dispute that finding. Then there was the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France followed by the mass exodus of the Huguenots.

One branch of my family escaped with their lives to New England in 1635 prior to the bloody Civil War and its aftermath.

I still maintain that disagreements in Christian beliefs can, and have, caused serious harm, to the point of death.

bbbbbbb said:

Long before the Reformation there was the heavy persecution of the Waldensians, who have been the exception, having survived, and are now viewed as orthodox Christians by most other Christian denominations. Then there was the sad case of Jan Hus and his followers. There was also the infamous Inquisition, especially in Spain. There were other movements which were exterminated by the Roman Catholic Church of which we know little to nothing about. One can make a case that the Albigensians were, indeed, heretics. I will not dispute that finding. Then there was the infamous St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France followed by the mass exodus of the Huguenots.

One branch of my family escaped with their lives to New England in 1635 prior to the bloody Civil War and its aftermath.

I still maintain that disagreements in Christian beliefs can, and have, caused serious harm, to the point of death.

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Indeed, now all of these persecutions were by the Roman Catholic Church, and many have been apologized for and we saw equivalent persecutions by Reformed Protestants, particularly in Ireland, in Ulster and the Pale of Dublin (note, I am speaking of the original 16th-17th century colonization of Ulster and the Pale by Scots and English, not the more recent Troubles, in which I find the role of the provisional IRA to have been extremely objectionable, the role of the militant Orangemen likewise, and I have to confess there’s something that I find eerie about the Orange Lodges and especially the Black Lodges (not a Twin Peaks reference, amusingly enough, although I find that Black Lodge eerie also, with the ominous red curtains, the giant, the dancing guy in the red suit, the convenience store, the ominous statues of Venus and especially the floor pattern. Cue the Twin Peaks theme. So with regards to the Troubles I regard the provisional IRA as much more in the wrong, particularly since the Penal Laws repressing Catholics in Ireland had been repressed, including in Northern Ireland, and since the provisional IRA engaged in violence against civilians in England.

Regarding the case of St. Jan Hus and St. Jerome of Prague, they are venerated as martyrs in the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, because if we look at their objectives, they were seeking to restore what the Czech and Slovak people had access before Vienna conquered them and the Latin Rite was imposed (unlike in the case of the Union of Brest, where for political reasons the Byzantine Rite was retained but under Catholic bishops, resulting in the beginnings of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church). As Orthodox Christians, they were able to worship in a language they could understand, Church Slavonic (which was at least as comprehensible if not more so than Latin was to French, Spanish, Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Monagasque Wallonian, Romansch and Dalmatian spekaers - by this time Romanian was en route to becoming a liturgical language among the Byzantine Rite Latin speakers in Transylvania, Walachia, and Moravia, although I’m not sure if we ever had Aromanian liturgies…. The proliferation of Vulgar Latin dialects at the time, before these later consolidated to a more manageable number makes me understand the RCC wanting to retain Latin in these territories - where it was a problem, and where its retention contradicted their earlier decision to translate the liturgy from Greek, was in the case of the Germanic, Celtic and Slavic languages, but even then a great many speakers were always happy to worship in it, but in the specific case of the Moravians, they had one liturgical language which they could understand replaced by another which they could not without some difficulty, and also were denied the Chalice - for Orthodox Christians, the experience of the Eucharist is centered around the Chalice more than the Diskos (the Byzantine Paten with a rod underneath for holding it), with refusal of Communion being referred to as refusal of the Chalice - the normal Eastern Orthodox procedure is to place a cube-shaped portion of the Body of Christ and intinct it in His Precious Blood on a spoon and use that spoon to place the Body and Blood in the mouth of the laity (in the case of the celebrant, he partakes of both directly, particularly during the ablutions when any unconsumed Eucharist must be used). The Syriac Orthodox process likewise involves intincting a cubical shaped portion of the Body and popping it into the mouth manually without a spoon, and the Coptic practice involves first receiving the Body, and then the Blood, again using a spoon from the chalice, and the main variation with the Armenian Rite is that the Body is confected from freshly baked unleavened bread and Xenon )boiling hot water) is not added to the blood before the communion of the laity.

*The original objectives before the Unitas Fratrum split into three different factions ranging from the very traditional Utraquits and the very non-traditional Taborites, before the remainder were granted asylum on the lands of Count von Ziznendorf and also emigrated to America, where John Wesley was somehow allowed to serve among them despite being ordained as an Anglican curate (presbyter without a permanent parish assignment as vicar or rector of a benefice) who unfortunately due to the influence of Zizendorft became somewhat Pietistic, although as a liturgical church they would be regarded as Traditional Christians; unfortunately there is no confessional movement at all among the Moravians in North America although there are conservative members who feel completely steamrolled by the leadership.

bbbbbbb said:

I still maintain that disagreements in Christian beliefs can, and have, caused serious harm, to the point of death.

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I agree with that, but I will also say that where these disagreements exist, the urge towards murderous violence is not Christian. It is also extremely counter productive to make martyrs.

Part of the reason why I am Orthodox is the very high ratio of Orthodox martyred to those martyred by the Orthodox (in the case of sectarian violence between belligerence, we do not classify those in combat as martyrs, so the tragic violence between the Serbs Croats and Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina was not a case of martyrdom on either side from our perspective but rather an ethnoreligious conflict between the Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Muslims over the territorial division of what remains the most impoverished and corrupt part of the former Yugoslavia, a terrible human tragedy.

The Liturgist said:

Indeed, now all of these persecutions were by the Roman Catholic Church, and many have been apologized for and we saw equivalent persecutions by Reformed Protestants, particularly in Ireland, in Ulster and the Pale of Dublin (note, I am speaking of the original 16th-17th century colonization of Ulster and the Pale by Scots and English, not the more recent Troubles, in which I find the role of the provisional IRA to have been extremely objectionable, the role of the militant Orangemen likewise, and I have to confess there’s something that I find eerie about the Orange Lodges and especially the Black Lodges (not a Twin Peaks reference, amusingly enough, although I find that Black Lodge eerie also, with the ominous red curtains, the giant, the dancing guy in the red suit, the convenience store, the ominous statues of Venus and especially the floor pattern. Cue the Twin Peaks theme. So with regards to the Troubles I regard the provisional IRA as much more in the wrong, particularly since the Penal Laws repressing Catholics in Ireland had been repressed, including in Northern Ireland, and since the provisional IRA engaged in violence against civilians in England.

Regarding the case of St. Jan Hus and St. Jerome of Prague, they are venerated as martyrs in the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, because if we look at their objectives, they were seeking to restore what the Czech and Slovak people had access before Vienna conquered them and the Latin Rite was imposed (unlike in the case of the Union of Brest, where for political reasons the Byzantine Rite was retained but under Catholic bishops, resulting in the beginnings of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church). As Orthodox Christians, they were able to worship in a language they could understand, Church Slavonic (which was at least as comprehensible if not more so than Latin was to French, Spanish, Italian, Sardinian, Sicilian, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Monagasque Wallonian, Romansch and Dalmatian spekaers - by this time Romanian was en route to becoming a liturgical language among the Byzantine Rite Latin speakers in Transylvania, Walachia, and Moravia, although I’m not sure if we ever had Aromanian liturgies…. The proliferation of Vulgar Latin dialects at the time, before these later consolidated to a more manageable number makes me understand the RCC wanting to retain Latin in these territories - where it was a problem, and where its retention contradicted their earlier decision to translate the liturgy from Greek, was in the case of the Germanic, Celtic and Slavic languages, but even then a great many speakers were always happy to worship in it, but in the specific case of the Moravians, they had one liturgical language which they could understand replaced by another which they could not without some difficulty, and also were denied the Chalice - for Orthodox Christians, the experience of the Eucharist is centered around the Chalice more than the Diskos (the Byzantine Paten with a rod underneath for holding it), with refusal of Communion being referred to as refusal of the Chalice - the normal Eastern Orthodox procedure is to place a cube-shaped portion of the Body of Christ and intinct it in His Precious Blood on a spoon and use that spoon to place the Body and Blood in the mouth of the laity (in the case of the celebrant, he partakes of both directly, particularly during the ablutions when any unconsumed Eucharist must be used). The Syriac Orthodox process likewise involves intincting a cubical shaped portion of the Body and popping it into the mouth manually without a spoon, and the Coptic practice involves first receiving the Body, and then the Blood, again using a spoon from the chalice, and the main variation with the Armenian Rite is that the Body is confected from freshly baked unleavened bread and Xenon )boiling hot water) is not added to the blood before the communion of the laity.

*The original objectives before the Unitas Fratrum split into three different factions ranging from the very traditional Utraquits and the very non-traditional Taborites, before the remainder were granted asylum on the lands of Count von Ziznendorf and also emigrated to America, where John Wesley was somehow allowed to serve among them despite being ordained as an Anglican curate (presbyter without a permanent parish assignment as vicar or rector of a benefice) who unfortunately due to the influence of Zizendorft became somewhat Pietistic, although as a liturgical church they would be regarded as Traditional Christians; unfortunately there is no confessional movement at all among the Moravians in North America although there are conservative members who feel completely steamrolled by the leadership.

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Thank you, as always, for the wonderfully detailed information. I had a couple of Moravian friends in college who, although devout in the personal lives, were extremely passive in sharing their faith. Sadly, the Moravian church seems to be dwindling not because of twentieth-century liberalism, but because of general apathy.

I agree with you that Orthodoxy holds a more positive image for me because Orthodox Christians have received far more persecution than they have meted out. I think the various pogroms of the Tsar of Russia in the name of Orthodoxy were an enormous tragedy for all involved.

The Liturgist said:

Also the Wars of Religion were a specifically Western response to a Western schism.

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In the East, we didn't have enough territories ruled by Protestants to have a war. I don't attribute this to differences in Christianity, but rather to politics. I've always argued that it wasn't Luther that caused the Reformation, but Prince Frederick. Dissent always existed. What changed in the West was the rulers' willingness to allow it.

Have you ever read Jensen's "Jesus Wars?" The conclusion he comes to is that even though the process of developing Christology was chaotic (not to mention unchristian), providentially we got the right answer. That bothers me. Can a bad tree produce good fruit?

Conflict among Christians goes back to Paul's time, and was common in the 2nd Century, where it became associated with making up traditions and documents, to the point where it's virtually impossible to figure out key aspects of what really happened. As soon as Christians got political power it became deadly. I'm not quite prepared to go the LDS route of saying the Church completely died, but I admit the attractiveness.

I don't share your view of the early church. The more I learn about Church history, the more I find the early church unworthy of being emulated. There are almost no early church leaders that I would believe if they told me the sky is blue. I'd insist on checking.

hedrick said:

In the East, we didn't have enough territories ruled by Protestants to have a war. I don't attribute this to differences in Christianity, but rather to politics. I've always argued that it wasn't Luther that caused the Reformation, but Prince Frederick. Dissent always existed. What changed in the West was the rulers' willingness to allow it.

Have you ever read Jensen's "Jesus Wars?" The conclusion he comes to is that even though the process of developing Christology was chaotic (not to mention unchristian), providentially we got the right answer. That bothers me. Can a bad tree produce good fruit?

Conflict among Christians goes back to Paul's time, and was common in the 2nd Century, where it became associated with making up traditions and documents, to the point where it's virtually impossible to figure out key aspects of what really happened. As soon as Christians got political power it became deadly. I'm not quite prepared to go the LDS route of saying the Church completely died, but I admit the attractiveness.

I don't share your view of the early church. The more I learn about Church history, the more I find the early church unworthy of being emulated. There are almost no early church leaders that I would believe if they told me the sky is blue. I'd insist on checking.

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The LDS were hardly the only ones who believed that the church completely died and was divinely reinstated. All of the restoration churches (Churches of Christ in their various divisions and the Plymouth Brethren in their divisions), Primitive Methodists and Baptists, as well as the SDA promoted that view. In reaction, there was the Landmark movement which wove together a continuation theory not unlike apostolic succession which proved that God always had a very tiny remnant of His church, so the gates of hell had not prevailed against it, while rejecting virtually all professing Christian denominations.

I think there were two philosophies at work, which have always been present. To simplify matters I will refer to them and as the Western and in Eastern philosophies. In the Eastern philosophy there seems to be a central belief that God revealed His truth once and for all, such that with the passing of the Early Church Fathers, all will remain unchanged. In the West, a concept of change is inherent, such that the Church is progressing toward perfection. Whether or not the church is required to attain perfection for 1,000 years prior to Christ's second advent or the church will only be perfected after Christ's return and His millennial reign have been hotly debated, but the concept of progressivism is deeply rooted.

Thus, in the East, heresy is easily spotted and dealt with. In the West, there is no fixed Tradition by which to judge heresy, so that Dissent in all its manifestations found much more tolerance, as it still does.

The restoration (actually, reinvention) of the early church has been problematic, to say the least. The nineteenth-century restoration movements have wandered all over the theological map. It seems that the more that is known about the early church the more challenging it becomes to recreate it and the prevailing culture which brought it into being.

LOL, it is easy to blame traditions that one is not party to, but the bottom line is not traditions, or Catholics, it is sin.

My family is from Alsace, we were driven out by French/Swiss Calvinists, private properties were seized as were Churches, clergy imprisoned and burnt at the stake.

All have sinned.

MarkRohfrietsch said:

LOL, it is easy to blame traditions that one is not party to, but the bottom line is not traditions, or Catholics, it is sin.

My family is from Alsace, we were driven out by French/Swiss Calvinists, private properties were seized as were Churches, clergy imprisoned and burnt at the stake.

All have sinned.

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Agreed. My paternal side traces itself back to St. Arbogast, who founded the Strasbourg cathedral. As a result, our family line was divided between German-speaking and French-speaking, as well as between Catholic and Protestant. We ended up in America because of military conscription.

bbbbbbb said:

The restoration (actually, reinvention) of the early church has been problematic, to say the least. The nineteenth-century restoration movements have wandered all over the theological map. It seems that the more that is known about the early church the more challenging it becomes to recreate it and the prevailing culture which brought it into being.

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Did the restoration movement aim at restoring the early church? I thought they aimed at going back to the Bible. Or do we mean the same thing? I think of the early church as 2nd through maybe 5th Cent.

Yup, restorations tend to be reinventions. I think of Renaissance Faires. Medieval pagentry with modern fabrics and indoor plumbing.

hedrick said:

Did the restoration movement aim at restoring the early church? I thought they aimed at going back to the Bible. Or do we mean the same thing? I think of the early church as 2nd through maybe 5th Cent.

Yup, restorations tend to be reinventions. I think of Renaissance Faires. Medieval pagentry with modern fabrics and indoor plumbing.

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The basic concept of the restoration culture was immersed in the Romantic Movement as a whole in society, which manifested itself primarily in a longing to return to an imagined golden age of humanity when all was pure and wonderful. With many Christians, that age was the period directly following the Day of Pentecost to the completion of the writing of the New Testament. Thus, they mined the New Testament in a sincere effort to restore (recreate) the "New Testament Church". In doing so, they attempted to eliminate all things that had subsequently corrupted the Church, including the Early Church Fathers. In essence, they were not reinventing the wheel per se, but attempting to reconstruct the wheel from first principles.

bbbbbbb said:

Agreed. My paternal side traces itself back to St. Arbogast, who founded the Strasbourg cathedral. As a result, our family line was divided between German-speaking and French-speaking, as well as between Catholic and Protestant. We ended up in America because of military conscription.

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I did not know about St. Arbogast; interestingly, I am related to Arbogasts; their two homestead farms were within a mile of our homesteads here in Ontario.

MarkRohfrietsch said:

I did not know about St. Arbogast; interestingly, I am related to Arbogasts; their two homestead farms were within a mile of our homesteads here in Ontario.

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Very interesting. Here is the Wikipedia article regarding our common ancestor - Saint Arbogast - Wikipedia