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If love for God and charitable efforts are the markers we should be looking for in a church, then we should all go become Roman Catholics (largest charity overall) and Mormons (most charitable per capita) since they far outdo others in these fields.
While I'm moderately liberal on these issues (as my sig somewhat shows), I'm afraid statements that amount to "this is a hurtful, mean view" are often overlooking (without actually engaging) earlier Christian traditions on the topic. One early church father (can't remember who ATM, but I'm certain was pre-schism) actually went so far as to say that the blessings of heretics were rather curses instead. I'm not saying I agree with that kind of anti-other mentality, but I think it needs to be engaged in a way that I never see Anglicans (for example) attempt as they insist on merely decrying it as "mean, uncharitable, etc."
no, taking it down to the essentials is only a modern way that the West uses to explain why they are so divided.
Glad we missed that boat. Oh and firedragon perhaps you should get on a plane and visit a christian community in the east, so you know what true christianity is all about. Have you ever been to a place where the entire community gathers around the church before midnite, shall I say an entire city, to sing the Christos Anesti hymn and then take the holy light to their homes, lighting up the night as thousands walk home in joy holding their candles. And the next day entire villages gathering in the squares where all sorts of food are prepared where they greet one another with Christ is Risen! for 40 days. How about visiting a community on the Dormition of the Theotokos where the people gather to honor the Theotokos and special festivities take place and many wear their traditional garb. How about on the Theophany where youths gather to take a dive into waters to catch a cross tossed in n by the priest after the waters have been hallowed. Or go to the river Jordan julian style where after the singing of epiphany hymns the river reverses its course.
Your right theres more to christianity that just church just like theres more to christianity than getting drunk on christmas eve and giving presents (as the west practises).
That was basically my point.well, love for God is not a numbers game. and I say that knowing we Orthodox have a long way to go. but it does not make Orthodoxy less or more true, it just means too many are not living up to their faith the way they should. but even then, that faith would be the True Faith.
possibility[/I] that there can be grace outside of visible communion with the Orthodox Church. To my knowledge, this view has never been censured by your church, and I have encountered other Orthodox who have expressed views very similar to it.
This distresses me greatly, not only because I know for a fact that it's mistaken, but also because I strongly suspect that it arises from a distortion of the Gospel message itself.
I'm all for keeping old traditions alive and celebrating cultural heritage, but those things are not essential to the Gospel, and should not be confused with it.
Speaking for myself, the problem has never been about Orthodox being "mean, uncharitable, etc." If you look hard enough, I'm sure you could find some distinguished personage in just about every Christian tradition who's said something that isn't very nice, and perhaps even downright mean.
What alarms me is that there appears to be a disturbingly exclusivistic vein of thought that enjoys acceptance within your communion. The reason I've been picking on Archbishop Hilarion is because he seems to have denied even the possibility that there can be grace outside of visible communion with the Orthodox Church. To my knowledge, this view has never been censured by your church, and I have encountered other Orthodox who have expressed views very similar to it.
This distresses me greatly, not only because I know for a fact that it's mistaken, but also because I strongly suspect that it arises from a distortion of the Gospel message itself.
Personally, I wonder how different it is from what occurred throughout the OT/heroes of the Faith (Hebrews 11) - like Rahab the Prostitue in Joshua 2 who lied to protect the spies from Jericho police....or David when on the run from Saul & living in Philistine territory as a Double Agent in I Samuel 27/I Samuel 30 by acting like he worked with the enemy even when he served Israel...and of course, Queen Esther in what she did to save the Jewish population in the time of King Xerxes when she remained undercover/concealing her Jewish identity for a LONG time in order to advance - and later stop Haman (more shared in threads such as Lie or Live: Esther...Is Deception Ever Appropriate If Serving God/Saving Others? ).Well, their manner of concealment (by posing as Buddhists, say) might be morally questionable,
Indeed - as some things were a matter of dealing with them the best they could...and other facts a matter of bad misfortune influencing events.but I don't see them as guilty of the alterations to their faith that occurred. I don't think it was so much a deliberate alteration of the faith they received as a loss of information due to circumstances that were beyond their control.
Personally, I find it interesting to consider what happened...as much of what occurred with them is similar to what went down with the indigenous people of North and South America when the Spaniards baptized them into Catholicism and they adapted to it outwardly while feeling that their culture was not truly expressed enough..and acting differently in secret. People of other cultures have done when faced with a choice of conversion or annihilation.I imagine that what written texts they might have had were confiscated and destroyed. I'm sure they made an effort to commit Scriptures, prayers, liturgical forms, etc. to memory, but when the people who knew that information were martyred and they couldn't go back to the Portuguese to regain it, all they could do was put their heads together and try to remember how it went.
This would explain why they have prayers composed of a mishmash of Latin, Portuguese, Japanese, and even made up words.
I agree - and as such, it's why I'm cautious as to not say that any saints could never come from them - or any other group similar. For I salute them in their struggle and know that the Lord is the Judge ..a Merciful one at that.Deliberate alteration of the religion would follow a rational pattern of development, and so we should not expect to see the prayers as disordered as they appear to be. Rather, the prayers that we see tell the tale of a severely persecuted and isolated group of Christians desperately trying to preserve what little information they had.
If the Lord is the one who judges all men, then even with those you've noted that you disagree with, they are still Saints ..Archbishop Hilarion Troitsky is one who I've picked on recently. He was a particularly zealous advocate of what I can most charitably call church idolatry. But perhaps I best not get started on him, as he gets me rather hot under the collar...
Another who comes to mind is Nikodemos the Hagiorite. I understand that Nikodemos endorsed the practice of re-baptizing all converts to Orthodoxy from non-Orthodox Christian traditions--including those who had already received valid Trinitarian baptisms from those traditions. This certainly included Catholics (who he branded "heretics"), and I'm sure it would have included Anglicans and Oriental Orthodox as well.
Nikodemos also seems to have popularized the view that non-Orthodox sacraments are nothing more than empty forms that can be 'filled' with grace only by the Orthodox Church.
First of all, there is no singular institution called "the West" that exists in order to be divided. I frequently see this sort of faulty reasoning Catholics, where in place of "the West," they substitute "Protestantism." From a neutral perspective, there are simply a bunch of Christian sects that are separated from each other (for whatever reasons), and the Orthodox Church is one of them, just like any of the others. Yes, I know you think your church is special, and that everyone else has broken away from you, but any other sect could say the exact same thing about themselves.
And second, it surely is of the utmost importance that we be able to identify what is essential to the Christian faith and what is not. It is essential to maintain that, as St. Paul writes, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." It is not essential to use the Eastern manner of crossing oneself, as opposed to the Western. We must always see to it that we keep our priorities straight.
Well I guess thats another aspect that divides us. We simply have radically different positions. What exactly is essential to the gospel in your opinion? Its obvious that in Anglicanism that morality is not essential,
What dogmas have we rejected?most dogmas are not essential,
Ascetic practices are disciplinary. They're purpose is to keep us on course, and they are important for that purpose.ascetic practises are not essental,
So because I say that an entire city gathering around a church to sing "Christos Anesti" isn't absolutely essential to the Gospel, I'm saying that celebrating Christian feasts isn't essential? Is that it?celebrating the joys of the christian feasts are not essential,
We do the same thing that all of the Orthodox parishes in my community do: We observe fasts and celebrate feasts, but we don't make a garish display of it to everyone else in the community. Are those Orthodox parishes therefore omitting essential aspects of the Gospel?How do you make the faith real and vibrant in your community?????
Could you be a bit more specific? Teaching on what, exactly?Cran I see your fixated on the subject of grace in the church & outside it, etc. Let me ask you then, what is your church's teaching
Judge not, that ye be not judged. - Jesus Christand who are your church's teachers of antiquity that have espoused it?
I'm not an expert on JW doctrine, but I am aware that they deny the deity of Christ and the Trinity. These are two dogmas that rather clearly have been held by Christians since the very beginning.Als how do you decipher between a church with grace and a heretical group like Jehovahs witness. What makes one group correct and the other not?
I'm not sure what you mean by a distortion of the Gospel message itself,
And I am thankful that there are at least some Orthodox like yourself.but I do agree with you that grace is not limited to the visible, canonical, intercommuning Orthodox churches.
Yes, Katharine Jefferts Schori is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. In my church, however, women are not eligible to be ordained even to the diaconate. In fact, women's ordination is the main reason why we separated from the Episcopal Church in the first place.The Canterbury Communion seems unlikely IMO as it varies too far to viewing the episcopacy as optional, wide-ranging views on the eucharist, women's ordination (to the episcopacy even in some places, yes?)
The episcopacy is extremely important. St. Charles Stuart, who was discussed earlier in this thread, was canonized precisely because he was martyred for refusing to deny the episcopacy.I don't know enough about Continuing Anglicans to comment much, but do you folks tend to be Anglo-Catholic or more classical viewing the episcopacy as nice but optional and with very low views of the eucharist
No, actually, the first four letters of my last name are Cran- (but not Cranmer). Crandaddy is a nickname that I acquired back when I was in high school (I wasn't even Anglican then), and I've used it as an online pseudonym ever since.(I assume your name is a reference to Cranmer?)?
Yes, some of the extreme on this end are the Orthodox equivalent of the "once-saved-always-saved sinner's prayer" of Evangelicals.I get the impression from some Orthodox (not all) that sincerely and earnestly seeking after God to the best of one's ability is not as important as being dunked in water and smeared with oil by a bearded man from the right ecclesial body while he recites the proper magical incantations.
I'd say we're not a tiny minority, even if we seem like it on the internet. Read some of His Beatitude Partiarch John X's statements, and you'll catch the Antiochian Church's ethos that, while it may not be as dominant in other traditions, definitely puts us out of the realm of an insignificant intellectual minority. Look also at our relations with the Melkite and Syriac Churches, the latter of which I know we have some pastoral provisions for cases of intercommunion and the discouragement of converts passing between sister churches. We may have pastoral agreements with the Melkites too, but not sure.And I am thankful that there are at least some Orthodox like yourself.
A shame. Curious, but did you just choose the nearest Continuing Anglican group or did you choose one over others? I assume they're not all the same in terms of belief and practice.Yes, Katharine Jefferts Schori is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. In my church, however, women are not eligible to be ordained even to the diaconate. In fact, women's ordination is the main reason why we separated from the Episcopal Church in the first place.
This is good to hear, and it looks like my initial thoughts were correct of being inclined to view the Continuing Anglican groups like yours positively. Does Rome recognize your orders, or does it not like the Canterbury Communion? This is something I've wondered about when it comes to Anglican sacraments, but don't know much on it honestly.The episcopacy is extremely important. St. Charles Stuart, who was discussed earlier in this thread, was canonized precisely because he was martyred for refusing to deny the episcopacy.
The Eucharist is truly Christ's Body and Blood. Traditional Anglicanism has always affirmed this. It is true that our reformers did object to the view of transubstantiation whereby the consecrated Elements literally become biologically human flesh and blood; but they did not deny that they do somehow actually become Christ's Body and Blood, and neither do we.
Oh okay. Makes sense I suppose, since you don't seem like you'd agree with what I understand Cranmer's beliefs to have been (Zwinglian, etc.).No, actually, the first four letters of my last name are Cran- (but not Cranmer). Crandaddy is a nickname that I acquired back when I was in high school (I wasn't even Anglican then), and I've used it as an online pseudonym ever since.
I'd say we're not a tiny minority, even if we seem like it on the internet. Read some of His Beatitude Partiarch John X's statements, and you'll catch the Antiochian Church's ethos that, while it may not be as dominant in other traditions, definitely puts us out of the realm of an insignificant intellectual minority. Look also at our relations with the Melkite and Syriac Churches, the latter of which I know we have some pastoral provisions for cases of intercommunion and the discouragement of converts passing between sister churches. We may have pastoral agreements with the Melkites too, but not sure.
I chose the only Continuing church that's within reasonable distance of where I live--which, as it happens, is a 63-mile, 1 1/2-hour drive away. By contrast, there are two Orthodox parishes just across the river from me. The reason I started seriously looking into Orthodoxy in the first place is because it's not easy driving all that distance and putting all that wear and tear on my car just to go to church. But still, I try to do it at least twice a month, and there are others there who commute from long distances as well.A shame. Curious, but did you just choose the nearest Continuing Anglican group or did you choose one over others?
I have heard that there are some Continuing churches that ordain women--which puzzles me because the Affirmation of St. Louis, which started the Continuing Anglican movement, was written primarily because the Episcopal Church made the move to ordain women.I assume they're not all the same in terms of belief and practice.
Rome objects to the validity of Anglican Orders on the grounds that (they say) the consecration of our Bishop Matthew Parker was rendered invalid by defective intention and form of the rite by which he was consecrated. Because Anglican Succession bottlenecks through Parker, if his consecration were invalid, then this would invalidate the Orders of his successors.This is good to hear, and it looks like my initial thoughts were correct of being inclined to view the Continuing Anglican groups like yours positively. Does Rome recognize your orders, or does it not like the Canterbury Communion? This is something I've wondered about when it comes to Anglican sacraments, but don't know much on it honestly.
I am aware that Cranmer has been charged by some Anglicans with having held heretical views with regard to the priesthood (with regard to its sacerdotal nature, specifically), but to my knowledge, he did not deny the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist. With regard to the Eucharist, I'm only aware that he objected to the notion that Christ is re-sacrificed over and over again at every Mass.Oh okay. Makes sense I suppose, since you don't seem like you'd agree with what I understand Cranmer's beliefs to have been (Zwinglian, etc.).
His February 17th Pastoral Letter, for example. I believe this was his first such letter after his enthronement. Look especially at section 9, Towards a Full Sacramental Unity of the Christians. The whole letter is nice from what I recall. His enthronement speech, found starting on page 6 of the March 2013 issue of The Word is definitely worth a read. Also worth mentioning, IIRC, His Beatitude was part of the Balamand discussions before becoming Patriarch.I'll do that. Thanks. Are there any of the Patriarch's statements I should look for in particular?
I'm vaguely aware of such things, and I've read some into the EO-Lutheran dialogues, but I should read the article. The thread was admittedly too long so I had just skipped to the most recent posts.I understand there were also Orthodox provisions for intercommuion with Anglicans once upon a time--before the Anglican Communion (or parts of it at least) ran headlong into heresy. This is discussed in the article I linked in the OP. You might like to have a look at it if you haven't already done so.
I chose the only Continuing church that's within reasonable distance of where I live--which, as it happens, is a 63-mile, 1 1/2-hour drive away. By contrast, there are two Orthodox parishes just across the river from me. The reason I started seriously looking into Orthodoxy in the first place is because it's not easy driving all that distance and putting all that wear and tear on my car just to go to church. But still, I try to do it at least twice a month, and there are others there who commute from long distances as well.
But, it helps that my grandmother (a lifelong Nazarene) lives in the same town. I can stop by to say hi and grab a bite to eat before heading home.
I have heard that there are some Continuing churches that ordain women--which puzzles me because the Affirmation of St. Louis, which started the Continuing Anglican movement, was written primarily because the Episcopal Church made the move to ordain women.
Rome objects to the validity of Anglican Orders on the grounds that (they say) the consecration of our Bishop Matthew Parker was rendered invalid by defective intention and form of the rite by which he was consecrated. Because Anglican Succession bottlenecks through Parker, if his consecration were invalid, then this would invalidate the Orders of his successors.
However, it is worth noting that certain of your Heirarchs have expressly disagreed with Rome's position. Again, see the article I linked in the OP.
It is also worth noting that in the 1930s, Old Catholic Bishops--whose episcopal validity Rome does not dispute--were invited to participate in Anglican episcopal consecrations. The infusion of this so-called “Dutch touch” into Anglican Orders should render the Orders of my church and of the churches in communion with us valid even by Rome's standards.
I am aware that Cranmer has been charged by some Anglicans with having held heretical views with regard to the priesthood (with regard to its sacerdotal nature, specifically), but to my knowledge, he did not deny the Real Presence of Christ's Body and Blood in the Eucharist. With regard to the Eucharist, I'm only aware that he objected to the notion that Christ is re-sacrificed over and over again at every Mass.
Not true. Morality is absolutely essential to the Gospel. It is precisely within the context of the Divine Law as revealed in nature that we are able to recognize Christ as its fulfillment.
What dogmas have rejected?
Ascetic practices are disciplinary. They're purpose is to keep us on course, and they are important for that purpose.
So because I say that an entire city gathering around a church to sing "Christos Anesti" isn't absolutely essential to the Gospel, I'm saying that celebrating Christian feasts isn't essential? Is that it?
Could you be a bit more specific? Teaching on what, exactly?
We don't pronounce where grace is not, if that's what you want to know.
I'm not an expert on JW doctrine, but I am aware that they deny the deity of Christ and the Trinity. These are two dogmas that rather clearly have been held by Christians since the very beginning.
As St. Vincent of Lerins put it, “Magnopere curandum est ut id teneatur quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.” Above all, one must take care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.
As for which individual Jehovah's Witnesses God has not seen fit to bestow his grace, that's not for us to say. And I might also add that believing heterodox doctrine is not by itself sufficient to make someone a full-blown heretic. Otherwise, young children who believe that the Persons of the Trinity are literally three men who live up in the sky are all heretics.
I get the impression from some Orthodox (not all) that sincerely and earnestly seeking after God to the best of one's ability is not as important as being dunked in water and smeared with oil by a bearded man from the right ecclesial body while he recites the proper magical incantations.
I am simply repulsed by this. I believe in the importance of the Church and the sacraments, but we must not make idols of them.
" It is often stated that "by your fruits you will know them" and I think that Orthodoxy sometimes seems like a fruit tree that was protected and stored away for the winter, but hasn't been exposed to the fertile spring in which it can bear fruit.
I am in no way denying this. I had Orthodoxy as a whole in mind when I stated the above. There are definitely wonderful Orthodox Christians out there, but I do think that there is a problem of luke-warmness in Orthodoxy and many other denominations where people just do it because that is what they grew up with. For example, the local Catholic, Episcopalian, Mormon, Presbyterian, etc. parishes are constantly doing things for the less fortunate and community while the Orthodox parishes seem perfectly content to keep to themselves.In fairness, there are Orthodox Christians whose faith is not just a garish display of religious sentimentality or anti-intellectual fundamentalism. I've met them, people that put time at homeless shelters and soup kitchens, for instance.
I am in no way denying this. I had Orthodoxy as a whole in mind when I stated the above. There are definitely wonderful Orthodox Christians out there, but I do think that there is a problem of luke-warmness in Orthodoxy and many other denominations where people just do it because that is what they grew up with. For example, the local Catholic, Episcopalian, Mormon, Presbyterian, etc. parishes are constantly doing things for the less fortunate and community while the Orthodox parishes seem perfectly content to keep to themselves.
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