[bible]Galatians 1:8[/bible]
Yes, separation from the Church.
We have experienced this in the Orthodox Church but it is only in externals that there appears to be separation. It has never affected the internal realisation that the Orthodox Church is one.
The Lord is not and cannot be divided. It is impossible.
You'd better go look and make sure you get an accurate translation because as Anglian posted in another thread, not even the Catholic Church teaches this.
No. Your Church has long left the communion of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. It has introduced many errors in its teaching and has abandoned a number of important practices of the Church. I know grace abounds in the Orthodox Church. I have grave doubts as to whether any remains in Rome, but the mercy of God is boundless towards those who love Him and I do not doubt the sincerity of your faith.
John
St Augustine
Acts 1:26 What lesson then, my brethren,
did our Lord Jesus Christ wish to impress on His Church, when it pleased Him to have one castaway among the twelve, but this, that we should bear with the wicked, and refrain from dividing the body of Christ? Here you have Judas among the
saints,that Judas, mark you! who was a thief, yeado not overlook itnot a thief of any ordinary type, but a thief and a sacrilegist...
St Chrysostom
Homily 30 on First Corinthians
1 Cor. xii. 12-->
For as the body is one, and has many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is
Christ.
But his meaning is this:
"So also is the body of Christ, which is the Church." For as the body and the head are one man, so he said that the Church and Christ are one. Wherefore also he placed Christ instead of the
Church, giving that name to His body. "As then," says he, "our body is one thing though it be composed of many: so also in the Church we all are one thing. For though the Church be composed of many members, yet these many form one body."
CHURCH FATHERS: Homily 3 on First Corinthians (Chrysostom)[SIZE=-1]The emphatic force of the word "
schism," I mean the name itself,
.... What he says comes to this: "You have cut in pieces
Christ, and distributed His
body.
...[/SIZE]
But what is this, "I beseech you through Christ?" "I take Christ to fight on my side, and to aid me, His injured and insulted Name." An awful way of speaking indeed! lest they should prove hard and shameless: for sin makes men restless. Wherefore if at once (ἄν μὲν εὐθέως ἐπιπλήξης Savil. ἄν μὴ Ben.) you sharply rebuke you make a man fierce and impudent: but if you put him to shame, you bow down his neck, you check his confidence, you make him hang down his head. Which object being Paul's also, he is content for a while to beseech them through the Name of Christ. And what, of all things, is the object of his request?
"That ye may all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions [schisms] among you." The emphatic force of the word "schism," I mean the name itself, was a sufficient accusation. For it was not that they had become many parts, each entire within itself, but rather the One [Body which originally existed] had perished. For had they been entire Churches, there might be many of them; but if they were divisions, then that first One was gone. For that which is entire within itself not only does not become many by division into many parts, but even the original One is lost. Such is the nature of divisions.
.......
[4.] What was "declared? "That there are contentions among you."
Thus, when he is rebuking them, he says, "That there be no divisions among you;" but when he is reporting the statements of others, he does it more gently; saying, "For it has been declared unto me
that there are contentions among you; in order that he might not bring trouble upon the informants.
Next he declares also the kind of contention.
Ver. 12. "That each one of you says, I am of
Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas." "I say, contentions," says he, "I mean, not about private matters, but of the more grievous sort." "That each one of you says;" for the
corruption pervaded not a part, but the whole of the Church. And yet they were not speaking about himself, nor about Peter, nor about Apollos; but he signifies that if these were not to be leaned on, much less others.
......
For that this was what he hinted at he declared in the sequel, saying,
Ver. 13. "Is Christ divided."
What he says comes to this: "You have cut in pieces Christ, and distributed His body." Here is anger! here is chiding! here are words full of indignation! For whenever instead of arguing he interrogates only, his doing so implies a confessed absurdity.
......
But some say that he glanced at something else,
in saying, "Christ is divided:" as if he had said, "He has distributed to men and parted the Church, and taken one share Himself, giving them the other."
I know James and Andrew...but forgot the rest.
