Purgatory And Prayers For The Dead.

[The Liturgist]

Is someone who was born over 300 years after the establishment of the church really an early church father?

So I suppose the answer to this question, as I have explained above, is “yes.” For this reason, the Eastern Orthodox regard even recent saints as Fathers, for example, St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas, who lived in the twilight of the Byzantine Empire, and the Athonite monks St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite and St. Macarius of Corinth, who compiled the Philokalia, an anthology of earlier Patristic writings (not to be confused with the Philocalia, an anthology of the better writings of Origen compiled by the Cappadocians, in the 4th century, which basically includes his best Orthodox material while omitting some of his material that was of a more controversial nature, for example, where he speculated about metempsychosis and transmigration of souls), and St. Nicodemus also compiled the Pedalion, which is probably the most complete collection of the canons of the early Church (notice I do not say Canon Law, since Canon can literally be interpreted as Guideline, and that is how they are used in Orthodoxy, with bishops having the flexibility to apply a canon strictly (with Akrivia) or to relax it (Oikonomia), based on pastoral needs, and a major part of the formation of a prospective bishop and what is considered before ordaining one is whether or not they have the needed spiritual discernment, discretion and Orthodox faith to be able to exercise that kind of authority, which is why most bishops were, prior to becoming bishops, the abbots of monasteries, or monastic priests (hieromonks) or archpriests (archimandrites). Likewise, the Russian ascetic St. Seraphim of Sarov, who provided spiritual advise to people who visited his hermitage, and is much loved, being something of the Orthodox equivalent of St. Francis of Assisi, albeit St. Seraphim did not establish any order or engage in any grand organizational plan, but simply provided extremely good spiritual advice and infused some much needed spiritual fire into the Russian church, which had become stale and lukewarm after Czar Peter, in violation of all the ancient canons, refused to allow a new Patriarch to be appointed to replace Nikhon, removed all but three bishops from the Holy Synod, and added a fourth member, a layman, called the Imperial Procurator, as his representative (who controlled the purse strings and thus effectively became a sort of secular crypto-patriarch; this resulted in a phenomenon we call Caesaropapism, in which the leadership of the church is undermined or subverted by the national government, or conversely, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, wherein the church government acquired territory and became a powerful national government in its own right, one that lasted for around twelve centuries as the sole government of the ancient city of Rome). Likewise, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, a bishop and monastic writer whose work for monks, “The Arena”, and whose book for laity, “On the Prayer of Jesus”, became a leading 19th century Church Father, and also helped to revitalize the spirituality of the Russian church, and this is also true of St. John of Kronstadt, who helped to popularize weekly confession and reception of the Eucharist, and attracted many pilgrims to his church, where everyone would confess their sins before the service (this was done, because there were too many pilgrims for St. John to hear all of their confessions individually, by having everyone shout their sins as loudly as possible at once, which preserved privacy and was an effective system), and then would receive the Eucharist.

Now his practice was an extraordinary solution to a systemic problem, which helped revitalize the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Finnish, Baltic, Moldovan, Japanese and Central Asian churches (also at this time almost all Orthodox churches in America were either Russian or were ethnically Antiochian, but the Antiochian parishes operated together with the Russian parishes until the confusion caused by the situation in the Soviet Union that resulted in various Russian Orthodox churches winding up as part of ROCOR, or the Metropolia, which would later become the Orthodox Church of America after receiving a Tomos of Autocephaly from Moscow in 1970, with a few remaining under the Moscow Patriarchate directly, this naturally resulted in the Antiochians having their own hierarchy in North America, but there is a discernable Slavonic influence, for example, many Antiochian churches use music that is equivalent to that of English speaking OCA, ROCOR, MP and Bulgarian Orthodox parishes). Because what St. John of Kronstadt accomplished in terms of pastoral care and revitalizing frequent communion, without allowing it to become casual communion, by insisting on preparation through confession and so on, his book My Life In Christ can be considered another example of a 19th century Patristic work. And there are 20th century Church Fathers as well, such as St. Tikhon of Moscow, who died under abusive conditions in a Soviet prison in the early 1920s, and St. Rafael Hawaheeny of Brooklyn, who during the aforementioned period where the Antiochian churches in North America operated with the Russians (which at the time included Ukrainians, Belarussians and other citizens of the Russian Empire) in a unified hireararchy, when St. Tikhon of Moscow was the Archbishop of New York and of the Americas (or perhaps the Metropolitan; the title is Metropolitan today; I can’t remember off hand what his title was in the 1900s), served as the coadjutator bishop together with St. Tikhon, leading the Antiochian part of the church, and the two men worked well together until the Czar abdicated and St. Tikhon was recalled to Moscow, where he was made the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia since the death of Patriarch Adrian in 1700. More recently, we have St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco, and St. Alexis Toth, among American Eastern Orthodox saints, and in the Coptic Orthodox church there is Thrice Blessed Bishop Karas, who is one step away from becoming a saint, who founded St. Anthony’s Monastery near Barstow, California.

Importantly, if you read the writings of these 19th century fathers, you will find them consistent with the fathers of the first millenium. For a poignant example, compare Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, translated into English by Fr. Seraphim Rose, with The Fount of Knowledge, including The Exact Exposition of The Orthodox Faith, by St. John of Damascus. With such a comparison, you will notice a lack of any doctrinal variation between the two books, the only difference being the manner in which they organize and present information, and also the fact that Orthodox Dogmatic Theology includes refutations of Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrines which did not exist at the time St. John of Damascus wrote The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith and the other parts of the Fount of Knowledge (the most interesting of which is a section on heresies, including one of the first descriptions of Islam by an early church father). There is also some philosophical material in the Fount of Knowledge lacking in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, which is more narrowly focused, but the two works are completely compatible in all doctrinal respects.

And don’t take my word for it; examine them for yourself, as they both make fantastic reading material.

With regards to all of the material I have mentioned to you in the course of this thread, I can connect you with copies of it.

 

[ozso]

So I suppose the answer to this question, as I have explained above, is “yes.” For this reason, the Eastern Orthodox regard even recent saints as Fathers, for example, St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas, who lived in the twilight of the Byzantine Empire, and the Athonite monks St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite and St. Macarius of Corinth, who compiled the Philokalia, an anthology of earlier Patristic writings (not to be confused with the Philocalia, an anthology of the better writings of Origen compiled by the Cappadocians, in the 4th century, which basically includes his best Orthodox material while omitting some of his material that was of a more controversial nature, for example, where he speculated about metempsychosis and transmigration of souls), and St. Nicodemus also compiled the Pedalion, which is probably the most complete collection of the canons of the early Church (notice I do not say Canon Law, since Canon can literally be interpreted as Guideline, and that is how they are used in Orthodoxy, with bishops having the flexibility to apply a canon strictly (with Akrivia) or to relax it (Oikonomia), based on pastoral needs, and a major part of the formation of a prospective bishop and what is considered before ordaining one is whether or not they have the needed spiritual discernment, discretion and Orthodox faith to be able to exercise that kind of authority, which is why most bishops were, prior to becoming bishops, the abbots of monasteries, or monastic priests (hieromonks) or archpriests (archimandrites). Likewise, the Russian ascetic St. Seraphim of Sarov, who provided spiritual advise to people who visited his hermitage, and is much loved, being something of the Orthodox equivalent of St. Francis of Assisi, albeit St. Seraphim did not establish any order or engage in any grand organizational plan, but simply provided extremely good spiritual advice and infused some much needed spiritual fire into the Russian church, which had become stale and lukewarm after Czar Peter, in violation of all the ancient canons, refused to allow a new Patriarch to be appointed to replace Nikhon, removed all but three bishops from the Holy Synod, and added a fourth member, a layman, called the Imperial Procurator, as his representative (who controlled the purse strings and thus effectively became a sort of secular crypto-patriarch; this resulted in a phenomenon we call Caesaropapism, in which the leadership of the church is undermined or subverted by the national government, or conversely, in the case of the Roman Catholic Church, wherein the church government acquired territory and became a powerful national government in its own right, one that lasted for around twelve centuries as the sole government of the ancient city of Rome). Likewise, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, a bishop and monastic writer whose work for monks, “The Arena”, and whose book for laity, “On the Prayer of Jesus”, became a leading 19th century Church Father, and also helped to revitalize the spirituality of the Russian church, and this is also true of St. John of Kronstadt, who helped to popularize weekly confession and reception of the Eucharist, and attracted many pilgrims to his church, where everyone would confess their sins before the service (this was done, because there were too many pilgrims for St. John to hear all of their confessions individually, by having everyone shout their sins as loudly as possible at once, which preserved privacy and was an effective system), and then would receive the Eucharist.

Now his practice was an extraordinary solution to a systemic problem, which helped revitalize the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Finnish, Baltic, Moldovan, Japanese and Central Asian churches (also at this time almost all Orthodox churches in America were either Russian or were ethnically Antiochian, but the Antiochian parishes operated together with the Russian parishes until the confusion caused by the situation in the Soviet Union that resulted in various Russian Orthodox churches winding up as part of ROCOR, or the Metropolia, which would later become the Orthodox Church of America after receiving a Tomos of Autocephaly from Moscow in 1970, with a few remaining under the Moscow Patriarchate directly, this naturally resulted in the Antiochians having their own hierarchy in North America, but there is a discernable Slavonic influence, for example, many Antiochian churches use music that is equivalent to that of English speaking OCA, ROCOR, MP and Bulgarian Orthodox parishes). Because what St. John of Kronstadt accomplished in terms of pastoral care and revitalizing frequent communion, without allowing it to become casual communion, by insisting on preparation through confession and so on, his book My Life In Christ can be considered another example of a 19th century Patristic work. And there are 20th century Church Fathers as well, such as St. Tikhon of Moscow, who died under abusive conditions in a Soviet prison in the early 1920s, and St. Rafael Hawaheeny of Brooklyn, who during the aforementioned period where the Antiochian churches in North America operated with the Russians (which at the time included Ukrainians, Belarussians and other citizens of the Russian Empire) in a unified hireararchy, when St. Tikhon of Moscow was the Archbishop of New York and of the Americas (or perhaps the Metropolitan; the title is Metropolitan today; I can’t remember off hand what his title was in the 1900s), served as the coadjutator bishop together with St. Tikhon, leading the Antiochian part of the church, and the two men worked well together until the Czar abdicated and St. Tikhon was recalled to Moscow, where he was made the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia since the death of Patriarch Adrian in 1700. More recently, we have St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco, and St. Alexis Toth, among American Eastern Orthodox saints, and in the Coptic Orthodox church there is Thrice Blessed Bishop Karas, who is one step away from becoming a saint, who founded St. Anthony’s Monastery near Barstow, California.

Importantly, if you read the writings of these 19th century fathers, you will find them consistent with the fathers of the first millenium. For a poignant example, compare Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, translated into English by Fr. Seraphim Rose, with The Fount of Knowledge, including The Exact Exposition of The Orthodox Faith, by St. John of Damascus. With such a comparison, you will notice a lack of any doctrinal variation between the two books, the only difference being the manner in which they organize and present information, and also the fact that Orthodox Dogmatic Theology includes refutations of Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrines which did not exist at the time St. John of Damascus wrote The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith and the other parts of the Fount of Knowledge (the most interesting of which is a section on heresies, including one of the first descriptions of Islam by an early church father). There is also some philosophical material in the Fount of Knowledge lacking in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, which is more narrowly focused, but the two works are completely compatible in all doctrinal respects.

And don’t take my word for it; examine them for yourself, as they both make fantastic reading material.

With regards to all of the material I have mentioned to you in the course of this thread, I can connect you with copies of it.

What's up with this bro? Seriously. It's like you've copy pasted an encyclopedia. No one is likely going to read all of that. You obviously have a staggering amount of knowledge, but you need to learn to edit it into a concise forum post for mere mortals like myself.

 

[The Liturgist]

The USA isn't still a developing country though.

We don’t believe in doctrinal development, unlike the Roman Catholics. The Eastern churches stress the importance of the faith once handed down from the Apostles. This faith is immutable; the only thing that has developed over time is how the apostolic faith is communicated, in response to specific heresies and the overall condition of the church and its members, intellectually, spiritually and otherwise. However, given that the liturgy of today is not substantially different from how it was in the fourth century, and furthermore, from the fragments we have of second century manuscripts, and some nearly complete manuscripts like the Strasbourg Papyrus, we can stretch that to the second century, on the basis of lex orandi, lex credendi, we can assert that in all important regards, the faith has remained unchanged.

This is also why Eastern Christians are so resistant to change in the liturgy, to the extent that lasting schisms have been caused by even relatively minor changes such as the reforms of the liturgy of the Russian Church under Patriarch Nikon and the adoption by several Orthodox churches, which represented a minority of the Orthodox population but a majority of the churches, excepting only the churches of Jerusalem, Georgia, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, ROCOR, parts of the Church of Poland and the Orthodox Church in America (in the case of the OCA, specifically those churches in Alaska and also churches where Church Slavonic remains the primary language, such as the Holy VIrgin Mary Cathedral in Los Angeles) and North Montenegro, of the Revised Julian Calendar (in which the Gregorian Calendar, or rather, a slightly more accurate variant of it, is used for fixed feasts, so that Christmas is celebrated on the same day as the Protestants, but the Julian Calendar is still used for Pascha, except by the Finnish Orthodox Church and the portion of the Estonian Orthodox Church which is in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, where the Gregorian calendar is used). It is understood that changing the liturgy represents changing the faith.

Therefore, my view of Orthodox liturgics is that new variations, while permissable, should only occur in new parishes, or in certain existing parishes where the laity is completely on board with them, and these variations should primarily be concerned with reviving certain secondary aspects of the liturgy which for various historic reasons have become disused, as well as changing which parts of the Divine Office are abbreviated and other changes involving the order of worship which do not impact the doctrinal content. An example of such a change would be the introduction of the 1893 recension of the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark on a widespread level as an alternative to the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on feasts of prominent Egyptian saints, including St. Mark the Evangelist, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Peter of Alexandria, St. Alexander of Alexandria, the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council or the Third Ecumenical Council (both of which featured Alexandrian bishops in a leading capacity), the feast of St. Anthony the Great, or St. Paul the Hermit, or St. Serapion of Thmuis, or St. Moses the Black, or St. Pachomius, who invented cenobitic monasticism as a safer option compared to the individual hermitages, and whose typikon, or rule, inspired the Rule of St. Benedict and is also the basis for the Rule of Orthodox monasteries to this day. This would work, because the 1893 recension of the liturgy coupled it with the standard synaxis, and so the only prayers that differ are prayers which in most Orthodox churches the priest either says silently, or while the choir is singing (this sounds remarkably nice, by the way), and so the liturgy could be used without anyone noticing it, however, some people in some parishes might want to notice it, for the same reason the Divine Liturgy of St. James has been revived and is becoming increasingly popular, with ROCOR, the most conservative Orthodox church in North America, having recently released a sluzhbenik, or service book, for it, in English and Church Slavonic, one which is much more academically rigorous and less speculative than some of those produced by some Greek scholars, which feature weird deviations from normal praxis, such as the priest conducting the liturgy from a temporary Holy Table set up in front of the Holy Doors of the Iconostasis, and people receiving communion on the hand rather than on the tongue, which are things we just don’t do in Orthodox churches.

 

[The Liturgist]

What's up with this bro? Seriously. It's like you've copy pasted an encyclopedia. No one is likely going to read all of that. You obviously have a staggering amount of knowledge, but you need to learn to edit it into a concise forum post for mere mortals like myself.

I wrote all of that material myself. The majority of OCNet users who I am friends with appreciate my posts, as they are heartfelt, detailed discourses, which I always compose myself, and which contain no copy-pasta, and in which I seek to cite sources and provide reliable information. The length of my posts is simply an inevitable side effect. Theology and church history are complicated subjects, and there is no way I can do it justice with a single paragraph when questions such as the ones you posed are asked.

It’s probably best not to regard my posts or the posts of certain other members such as @Der Alte @Via Crucis and so on as being typical forum posts, since we tend to write detailed expositions of theological analysis. However I will concede Der Alte and Via Crucis are more concise than I am, but the fact is I find this subject endlessly fascinating.

Probably the best way to read the posts I write is to not read them all at once, but rather to use them as reference material as you might use a long blog post or an article. Indeed the majority of my blog posts on CF.com are derived from thread posts like this.

 

[ozso]

We don’t believe in doctrinal development, unlike the Roman Catholics. The Eastern churches stress the importance of the faith once handed down from the Apostles. This faith is immutable; the only thing that has developed over time is how the apostolic faith is communicated, in response to specific heresies and the overall condition of the church and its members, intellectually, spiritually and otherwise. However, given that the liturgy of today is not substantially different from how it was in the fourth century, and furthermore, from the fragments we have of second century manuscripts, and some nearly complete manuscripts like the Strasbourg Papyrus, we can stretch that to the second century, on the basis of lex orandi, lex credendi, we can assert that in all important regards, the faith has remained unchanged.

This is also why Eastern Christians are so resistant to change in the liturgy, to the extent that lasting schisms have been caused by even relatively minor changes such as the reforms of the liturgy of the Russian Church under Patriarch Nikon and the adoption by several Orthodox churches, which represented a minority of the Orthodox population but a majority of the churches, excepting only the churches of Jerusalem, Georgia, Serbia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, ROCOR, parts of the Church of Poland and the Orthodox Church in America (in the case of the OCA, specifically those churches in Alaska and also churches where Church Slavonic remains the primary language, such as the Holy VIrgin Mary Cathedral in Los Angeles) and North Montenegro, of the Revised Julian Calendar (in which the Gregorian Calendar, or rather, a slightly more accurate variant of it, is used for fixed feasts, so that Christmas is celebrated on the same day as the Protestants, but the Julian Calendar is still used for Pascha, except by the Finnish Orthodox Church and the portion of the Estonian Orthodox Church which is in communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, where the Gregorian calendar is used). It is understood that changing the liturgy represents changing the faith.

Therefore, my view of Orthodox liturgics is that new variations, while permissable, should only occur in new parishes, or in certain existing parishes where the laity is completely on board with them, and these variations should primarily be concerned with reviving certain secondary aspects of the liturgy which for various historic reasons have become disused, as well as changing which parts of the Divine Office are abbreviated and other changes involving the order of worship which do not impact the doctrinal content. An example of such a change would be the introduction of the 1893 recension of the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark on a widespread level as an alternative to the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on feasts of prominent Egyptian saints, including St. Mark the Evangelist, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Peter of Alexandria, St. Alexander of Alexandria, the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council or the Third Ecumenical Council (both of which featured Alexandrian bishops in a leading capacity), the feast of St. Anthony the Great, or St. Paul the Hermit, or St. Serapion of Thmuis, or St. Moses the Black, or St. Pachomius, who invented cenobitic monasticism as a safer option compared to the individual hermitages, and whose typikon, or rule, inspired the Rule of St. Benedict and is also the basis for the Rule of Orthodox monasteries to this day. This would work, because the 1893 recension of the liturgy coupled it with the standard synaxis, and so the only prayers that differ are prayers which in most Orthodox churches the priest either says silently, or while the choir is singing (this sounds remarkably nice, by the way), and so the liturgy could be used without anyone noticing it, however, some people in some parishes might want to notice it, for the same reason the Divine Liturgy of St. James has been revived and is becoming increasingly popular, with ROCOR, the most conservative Orthodox church in North America, having recently released a sluzhbenik, or service book, for it, in English and Church Slavonic, one which is much more academically rigorous and less speculative than some of those produced by some Greek scholars, which feature weird deviations from normal praxis, such as the priest conducting the liturgy from a temporary Holy Table set up in front of the Holy Doors of the Iconostasis, and people receiving communion on the hand rather than on the tongue, which are things we just don’t do in Orthodox churches.

I think the theology and doctrine of the church was fully established by the third century. As seen in your hundreds of words replies, with over 100 of those words being "liturgy", it's clear to me that man started overcomplicating Christianity after the time of the actual early fathers.

 

[ozso]

I wrote all of that material myself. The majority of OCNet users who I am friends with appreciate my posts, as they are heartfelt, detailed discourses, which I always compose myself, and which contain no copy-pasta, and in which I seek to cite sources and provide reliable information. The length of my posts is simply an inevitable side effect. Theology and church history are complicated subjects, and there is no way I can do it justice with a single paragraph when questions such as the ones you posed are asked.

It’s probably best not to regard my posts or the posts of certain other members such as @Der Alte @Via Crucis and so on as being typical forum posts, since we tend to write detailed expositions of theological analysis. However I will concede Der Alte and Via Crucis are more concise than I am, but the fact is I find this subject endlessly fascinating.

Probably the best way to read the posts I write is to not read them all at once, but rather to use them as reference material as you might use a long blog post or an article. Indeed the majority of my blog posts on CF.com are derived from thread posts like this.

I said it's like you pasted an encyclopedia. Which was hyperbole to make a point. I think you know perfectly well how to be concise and not gish-gallop. I'm not going to buy that you're like Mr. Spock or you're an autistic servant who doesn't know any better.

 

[The Liturgist]

I think the theology and doctrine of the church was fully established by the third century.

I think it was fully established by the end of the first century, whenever St. John the Beloved Disciple finished writing the Apocalypse also known as Revelation.

As seen in your hundreds of words replies, with over 100 of those words being "liturgy", it's clear to me that man started overcomplicating Christianity after the time of the actual early fathers.

If you would take the time to read my posts, you will see that my argument rests on the fact that the liturgical fragments and texts we have from the second and third century correspond with the liturgical texts we have from the fourth century, which correspond with the material we have now.

Also, frankly, what do you expect? I’m a liturgist; I study the history of the church through the history of its worship. And since we have documentary and archaeological evidence that the worship of the Eastern churches today is unchanged in any material sense from the worship in the second and third centuries, and furthermore, the Didache, which probably dates from the first century, shows a continuity from the Apostolic era, along with other first century references to the liturgy, we can assert that the three Eastern churches, the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and the Church of the East, have preserved the essential characteristics of the worship of the early church in its most central form, the Eucharistic liturgy, without any substantial modification.

Lex orandi, lex credendi.

 

[The Liturgist]

I said it's like you pasted an encyclopedia. Which was hyperbole to make a point. I think you know perfectly well how to be concise and not gish-gallop. I'm not going to buy that you're like Mr. Spock or you're an autistic servant who doesn't know any better.

I never claimed to be an autistic savant or to be Mr. Spock. I write long, meditative posts because this is how I choose to write, and because it is what my friends on CF.com expect from me. In three years of membership on this site you’re the only person who has objected to the length of my writing. What most people do is scan it, and respond to the sections they find most relevant.

As I see it, people who want short forum posts should use a platform that enforces that. Many of the best posts on CF.com written by other members, that I have enjoyed the most or found the most edifying, have also been the longest. There is a direct correlation between length of the original writing, and quality. It is when people start using massive amounts of copy pasta that length becomes inversely correlated with quality.

 

[ozso]

I never claimed to be an autistic savant or to be Mr. Spock. I write long, meditative posts because this is how I choose to write, and because it is what my friends on CF.com expect from me. In three years of membership on this site you’re the only person who has objected to the length of my writing. What most people do is scan it, and respond to the sections they find most relevant.

As I see it, people who want short forum posts should use a platform that enforces that. Many of the best posts on CF.com written by other members, that I have enjoyed the most or found the most edifying, have also been the longest. There is a direct correlation between length of the original writing, and quality. It is when people start using massive amounts of copy pasta that length becomes inversely correlated with quality.

It feels like you don't have any consideration for the person you're replying to and you're just using me a sounding board.

 

[The Liturgist]

It feels like you don't have any consideration for the person you're replying to and you're just using me a sounding board.

On the contrary, I have the utmost respect for you. Had I remembered your objection to the length of my posts from our previous argument, I would have reluctantly composed something more concise, but in so doing I would have been forced to omit all of the really interesting details.

What I wish you could understand is that the history of worship of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, including the ancient religions of the Patriarchs, the Hebrews, the Jews in exile, and Second Temple Judaism, is the most interesting subject in the world, because it contains within it the entire history of how God’s plan for our salvation has been put into effect, and also of all of the people who have given their lives to preserve it, people like St. Jan Hus, one of the earliest Protestants, who is also venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia.

 

[The Liturgist]

Or the New Testament

There is also the fact, which I mentioned to Ivan previously, that the books people call the Apocrypha were historically regarded as Protocanonical. Indeed, the idea they are Deuterocanonical or Apocryphal originated, as far as I can tell, in the 16th century (St. Athanasius also outlined a sort of Deuterocanon, but the difference was the books he regarded as Deuterocanonical were different from those some Protestants regard as apocrypha, and included some of the 66 books that the Jews, and Protestants using the Masoretic text, regard as canonical, and furthermore St. Athanasius prohibited those books he considered deuterocanonical from being read in church, limiting their use to the edification of catechumens on Christian morality.

If we look at the books in question, in the opinion of many clergy I have met, some of them are actually more important in Orthodoxy than some parts of the Pentateuch, for example, the books of Wisdom, Sirach and Tobith are more relevant than Numbers or Leviticus. And if one should examine their contents, it should be clear why, for example, Wisdom contains a prophecy of the Passion of our Lord, a description of soteriology, and other material of immediate relevance to the New Testament, and it is also striking because it was compiled around 60 BC, just 93 years before the events it prophesied.

 

[The Liturgist]

Tobit and Judith are relatively short, and Wisdom of Sirach is my absolute favorite of the seven (or eight if you are also getting 3 Maccabees).

I myself accept everything the Ethiopian Orthodox regard as canonical - with the proviso that these books must be interpreted the way the Ethiopians interpret them. Since the Ethiopians include 1 Enoch without believing in the peculiar demonology that a literal interpretation would promote, but rather are in harmony with the Coptic church of which they used to be a part, and the other Oriental Orthodox churches, it is clear they are using Alexandrian typological exegesis, rather than Antiochene literal-historical exegesis, as the primary mode of hermeneutics for this text. Therefore, we must do the same, and we can assume that St. Jude was also reading them in this manner when he quoted 1 Enoch, since there is no trace of the unusual implications of a literal reading of 1 Enoch in any part of the New Testament.

 

[The Liturgist]

You are an Anglican who believes in Purgatory? Interesting.

This is not uncommon among Anglo Catholics. Indeed, All Saints Margaret Street in London celebrates a more solemn mass on All Souls Day, complete with a catafalque, than one typically sees in Roman Catholic churches these days, even in some that celebrate the Tridentine mass.

 

[The Liturgist]

The ECF all accepted an intermediate state after death that wasn't heaven or hell and it's certainly biblical. Even Jesus would have prayed for the dead given he was a practicing Jew. St. Paul prays for the dead in one of his epistles.

Indeed. The Orthodox do not accept purgatory, but we have our own, somewhat more frightening, ideas about what happens to the Soul After Death. I feel that Purgatory was to a certain extent an attempt to make the Patristic idea of what happens after we die less frightening for the laity. One of the reasons why St. Mark of Ephesus led the charge to reject the Council of Florence, however, was because of its doctrinal definition of purgatory, which he regarded as inconsistent with the Patristic concept, and the people agreed to him to such an extent that they were willing to forego the military assistance that acceding to Florence would have ensured, and instead, to preserve the Orthodox faith, accepted the inevitability of Turkocratia, which would come just 20 years later.

 

[ozso]

On the contrary, I have the utmost respect for you. Had I remembered your objection to the length of my posts from our previous argument, I would have reluctantly composed something more concise, but in so doing I would have been forced to omit all of the really interesting details.

What I wish you could understand is that the history of worship of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, including the ancient religions of the Patriarchs, the Hebrews, the Jews in exile, and Second Temple Judaism, is the most interesting subject in the world, because it contains within it the entire history of how God’s plan for our salvation has been put into effect, and also of all of the people who have given their lives to preserve it, people like St. Jan Hus, one of the earliest Protestants, who is also venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia.

I doubt there are many people who expect or desire an essay in reply to a short sentence they wrote as part of a conversation, even if they don't say so. I understand what God said about prayer and worship. Including not overdoing it (Matthew 6:7). Did you know that there are more than 10,000 saints? You see I consider spending gobs of time in venerating praying to over 10,000 people and systems of worship that are so complex that it takes volumes to cover it all, to be a distraction from the direct relatively simple and even child-like relationship with God the Lord instructed us in. As compared to the plethora of extra details the scribes have tacked onto it.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

The USA isn't still a developing country though.

Yet USA juris prudence is still developing; just as doctrine develops within the Church, and they both develop by similar (albeit different) mechanisms, with legislators making laws and the supreme court deciding if the laws are consistent with the USA's constitution in the case of the USA and with theologians writing books and proposing doctrine with the Holy See deciding if the theologians' work is consistent with the Church's deposit of faith (Sacred Tradition) and handing down its decisions.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Indeed. The Orthodox do not accept purgatory, but we have our own, somewhat more frightening, ideas about what happens to the Soul After Death. I feel that Purgatory was to a certain extent an attempt to make the Patristic idea of what happens after we die less frightening for the laity. One of the reasons why St. Mark of Ephesus led the charge to reject the Council of Florence, however, was because of its doctrinal definition of purgatory, which he regarded as inconsistent with the Patristic concept, and the people agreed to him to such an extent that they were willing to forego the military assistance that acceding to Florence would have ensured, and instead, to preserve the Orthodox faith, accepted the inevitability of Turkocratia, which would come just 20 years later.

One wonders what the role of that decision was in God's purposes for the Church.

 

[ozso]

Indeed. The Orthodox do not accept purgatory, but we have our own, somewhat more frightening, ideas about what happens to the Soul After Death. I feel that Purgatory was to a certain extent an attempt to make the Patristic idea of what happens after we die less frightening for the laity. One of the reasons why St. Mark of Ephesus led the charge to reject the Council of Florence, however, was because of its doctrinal definition of purgatory, which he regarded as inconsistent with the Patristic concept, and the people agreed to him to such an extent that they were willing to forego the military assistance that acceding to Florence would have ensured, and instead, to preserve the Orthodox faith, accepted the inevitability of Turkocratia, which would come just 20 years later.

So Orthodox teaching is that after death we will suffer a frightening experience?

 

[ozso]

Here's some interesting depictions of purgatory:

 

[ozso]

The ECF all accepted an intermediate state after death that wasn't heaven or hell and it's certainly biblical. Even Jesus would have prayed for the dead given he was a practicing Jew. St. Paul prays for the dead in one of his epistles.

When did the church start teaching purgatory?

1274
The purgatory of Catholic doctrine. At the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, the Catholic Church defined, for the first time, its teaching on purgatory, in summary two points: some saved souls need to be purified after death; such souls benefit from the prayers and pious duties that the living do for them.