-Sasha-
Handmaid of God
- Apr 12, 2019
- 382
- 472
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Eastern Orthodox
- Marital Status
- Married
Just an anecdotal tidbit, before I found out that Eastern Orthodoxy existed I had never heard that Christ went into hell before His resurrection, let alone anything about victory or triumph.I'm not sure that kind of caricature is entirely accurate (maybe with some), but I do think that the West in general has lost or obscured the idea of "Christus Victor", the victorious Christ Who has conquered death through the cross, and vanquished it forever, offering life to those who are in the tombs and to all of us. While there is a great deal of emphasis on Christ's redemption of mankind on the cross in Catholicism, for instance, it is generally the form of the suffering servant that receives the most attention. That's definitely not wrong (I've learned to be more careful using that word recently, thanks to EO people here), because Christ was indeed a suffering servant (though I like how I've heard the EO put it, that His passion was a "passionless passion", in that though He suffered and died, nothing controlled Him), but as a matter of emphasis, I could certainly see why a victorious, strong Christ Who conquers and liberates is more attractive to men (but maybe not only men? I'm not a woman, so I can't say) than One Who is seen primarily in pitiful/pitiable terms and depictions.
I've made the point before relatively recently that this is a change within Roman Catholicism itself sometime in the 12th-13th centuries or so (or at least so far as I could find in their hymns), when for whatever reason feelings took over to some greater degree than they had been observed before, and so you don't seem to find the distinctly feelings-based devotions like that to the Sacred Heart of Jesus until around that time (e.g., the writings of Bonaventure, who died in 1274, were apparently a precursor to the modern devotion).
This is all too late for me, but it is kind of interesting in a 'what not to do' sort of way.
Upvote
0