It is usually the case that a church says it has the doctrines right, meaning that churches which disagree are considered to be, well, in error. BUT that does not mean that they are saying that these other churches are less valid or legitimate as churches. My church, for example, would not say that the church on the next corner is not a valid church with valid ministries, even if we disagree on some practices or doctrines. However, when we turn to the EO or RCC, that doesn't appear to be the case.
And this does point out one difference; Orthodoxy is a
way of life, which is partially why the EO is oft thought of as "ethnic". Because Christianity, EO Christianity seeps into and lifts the culture and the culture becomes saturated with Christianity. (Even when the culture leaves the Church or Christianity, the marks that are left by this "seeping into" still are borne and take some time to 'evolve out of' the culture.) In the instance you point out above, how do I know anything about the Church 'round the corner unless I actively commit and involve myself - steep myself - in the "living it out" for, indeed, years. Its not just through reading doctrine, or citing apostolic succession etc that a Church is "known", but in "living the life of that Church". This (EO view) may be a rather foreign way of looking at the matter, but is indeed central in EO Christianity. To stay with what we "know", and we only "know ourself".
Please forgive me as I do not desire to ruffle feathers or raise distress, but given some of the recent things that seem to be driving apart the AC, how can one know - one parish to the next - what will be taught or what will be the exhibited (shown in action) teaching ?
Even in the denomination of my chidhood, there was an ordained minister who was a self-proclaimed agnostic. I learned that the content of the teaching depended on "which address" one visited.
Some erroneous teachings may be apparent to anyone straight off, others are only discovered in the "living out" over time ... much time.
As for "ministries", as said before, the EO accepts non-EO baptism as valid.
"Have" or "Claim?" "Have" is a matter of what church X says about church Y. If I say that the EO have invalid lines of succession, is that worth debating? Not here. Not with this discussion in which we are only asking what it is that your church makes its basis for claiming a validity that it denies to other churches.
Deny ? I think it is more accurate to say any Church knows itself more than it knows other Churches. Any person knows more of himself than he knows of another.
So you can't answer a fundamental question asked about your own church until you have answered both of those questions for yourself? I find that rather strange.
As I've stated now twice, this whole thing is couched in the terminology of an "outside" viewpoint. How can I answer what I have not understood ? Consider: though I have repeatedly stated that I was asking questions and making observations in order to discover what exactly was "unique" , you seem to think I have a different agenda. Of course, I'm not the most well-expressed poster and your view of the content of my posts is likely indeed the product of my ineptitude. But it does point out the different viewpoints we bring and the difficulties of communicating.
You don't need to cancel anything. The question was on why YOUR CHURCH considers itself to be uniquely valid, not about theirs.
At the risk of your concluding I'm hedging, I will state that I honestly believe the following stement to be true. Every Church - and every person - believes something about itself and knows about itself. "Uniquely valid" applies to the entirety of Churches, or there would not be a discernable "Churches". The EO "uniquely and validly" knows about itself. The Lutheran Church "uniquely and validly" knows about itself. And every thing any Church claims is based on what it knows about itself - and knowledge about self arising from self is "unique" to the extent that there is only one self.
I do think I begin to sense what you are asking. And again I repeat what is oft repeated re: the Orthodox "We know where the Holy Spirit is, we do not know where the Holy Spirit is not." And to re-iterate, the EO knows about itself. To know another as another knows self is not possible; for a Church to approach knowledge and sense or have knowledge of 'other Church' it must "live as" the other Church. If this is to be done, the Church must for a time cease to be itself in order to live as other Church. Which denominations have done this in seeking to "know" the EO ?
OK, so what do you say causes the EO churches to claim a special validity, if it's not that? Correct doctrine and practice? Or do you say that the ministers and sacraments of a number of other (non-EO) churches ARE as valid as yours?
It knows most fully about itself. And as humans tend to know (hopefully) more about self with age, the EO knows self over a very long course of time .
I apologize if you find this post more "hedging", as I truly do not intend to be. But we are coming from rather different perspectives. These differences may appear to us to be a sort of "passing by" each other. But I am reminded of what one (westerner
) said: "But precisely this, their passing by, is the hidden side of their nearness." Thank-you for exhibiting such patience with me ...
