RetiredAg said:
Can you explain the differences between the Orthodox and Catholicism? Do the Orthodox hold Mary in the same esteem as Catholics? What about Protestants? Key differences?
Basically we were one Church until 1054, and practically a bit longer than that. However, the seeds of variance in tradition and theology were sowed fairly early east and west.
On the superficial level, the Latins have a pope and we do not. We don't recognize any clergy structure other than the three levels of diaconate, priesthood, and bishop. We don't think he or any other man act as God's vicar or the leader of the Church. Christ alone is our leader, the High Priest of our faith, and He alone guides, directs, heals, etc. the Church through the personal activity of the Holy Spirit. Bishops act in place and as a type of Christ, but are not personally infallible or even collectively infallible. The Church itself is infallible as far as it is "the Body of Christ" and is "the Pillar and Foundation of Truth". Of course the Church includes both the clergy and the laity, so together we collectively inherit these guarantees as one body.
The variances in let's say philosophical theology lead to some unfortunate distinctions in practice and separation from the safeguards of patristic wisdom, theology, experience, and philosophical language used to safely express ineffable divine truth. This is reflected in a lot of ways, whether you look at the rise of the filioque controversy (a local effort to combat heresy expressed in unsafe philosophical language with unacceptable theological consequences), the rise of rationalism as a means to approach God vs a one-way divine revelation, or the changes in church structure,
praxis (practice or process), and so forth.
On a day-to-day level this really means that in Orthodoxy we see our faith as experiential and not rational. We see God as ineffable and unknowable in His Being or Essence, but experiential in His Grace or Energy. Grace is a participation in the Divine. The life centers around participation in the mysteries of God, which we don't limit to seven sacraments but instead recognize as any means of divine reception God's grace in our lives.
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We do not have the same place for Mary (the
Theotokos or "God-birther" lit. the person who gave birth to God). She is a unique person in the history of mankind, she has a once-in-time title in scripture of "
Kecharitomene". This is a
hapax legomenon, a one time made up word for a specific purpose: the feminine present perfect passive voice participle of the verb for to be endowed with grace. So when the Theotokos was greeted by Gabriel she was already endowed with grace.
In Orthodox icons Mary represents alternately we the faithful and the Church. You'll see in icons Christ looking to her, and she looks to you. In the typical icon, you see just as Christ comes to us (Mary is us) and we are called to join to the body of Christ and are ministered to by the Church (Mary in the Church). In the icon of the Nativity, for example, she looks at Joseph who is doubting or wondering or being tempted (just as the Church witnesses to us in our human weakness).
We ask for her prayers to save us (in a Liturgy you'll hear "Most Holy Theotokos, save us" many times) in the same use of the word "save" in 1 Corinthians 7:16.
However, the Orthodox do not on the other hand hold to the Latin dogma of the immaculate conception. Mary is not a co-Redemtrix with Christ, who alone and exclusively is our Savior and Redeemer, the Great Physician, etc.
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We have a different soteriology than the Western church, especially later formulations such as those expressed by Anselm of Canterbury. The whole Western debate over merits is peculiar and confusing to me. In many ways, Protestants are closer to Catholics than we are to either one. So when it comes to Protestants, the entire notion of the solas, the means and modes of salvation and really what it even means to be saved are so far apart you almost have to spend a long time in mutual definitions before you can discuss in a way that makes sense.
For us, salvation begins and ends in union with God. The Gospel is that we can know God. Not merely that Christ is Risen but that in Him we can be like Him. For us, salvation is deification, as expressed by St Irenaus He "became what we are in order to make us what He is Himself". St Athanasius said "Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life."
It's not payable on death, it's payable now. Theosis or divinization is a process that we enter into on this side of eternity.
This is the common inheritance of Christianity east and west that was almost completely lost by the rational fruit of the medieval scholastic movement and later the enlightenment. I find it to be uniquely preserved in Orthodoxy.