I appreciate the OP, however I would honestly see the advantage that the Orthodox and we Catholics have over Protestantism is the Holy Eucharist. It is the body, bloody, soul and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
John 6:53
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.

We all have differing opinions we struggle to find the balance between what everyone should adhere to and what liberties we have from there. This has always been present in the Church from the earliest of times.

What unites us as the True Body of Christ, his Church, is reception of his Body and Blood that he gives us to nourish and strengthen us both physically and spiritually and to transform us into what we consume. He took on our humanity so we could share in his divinity.

I wouldn't say unity of doctrine is an advantage. Unity of the faith as St Paul puts it is an endpoint, a mark of the Church which is participating in and led by the Spirit. Actual unity is not found laterally between men, but in participation in Christ. so in this sense, I agree with jrico completely because this unity is found in the eucharist, in the communion we have. As St Paul says, "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about doctrine. At least for the Orthodox, believers can "believe whatever they want" as well. The only difference is at some point if your faith departs from that of the Apostles, you are no longer in a unity of faith. Again as St Paul puts it, we have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Doctrine is not the product of deliberations or councils. Doctrine witnesses to the faith, it represents the faith, it is an icon or symbol of the faith (hence in Greek it is not the "creed" but the symbol of faith, that which represents the other). At some point if you depart from the faith, you have a difference experience than that of the Apostles, Fathers, and the Church - therefore there is something different about your faith which must be examined.


If you break down the categories, a useful way to think about it is dogmatic fact, dogma, and theologoumenon.

The Church, from the beginning, abides in dogmatic fact. The life of the Church is the life in Christ, and He alone guides, leads, and shepherds the Church. To be in the Church is to encounter Christ as a community. From this reality, this dogmatic fact, comes dogma. Dogmatic fact is unchanging. Dogma comes into being.

Dogma is an expression of the dogmatic fact of the reality of the life in Christ. For example, that Yahweh the God of Israel is three Persons is something that was revealed in the life of Israel and the Church. From it, the declaration of the dogma of the Trinity comes. These are things you must believe, and if you do not believe them, you are outside of the faith - because you are not in the same reality of experience. The list of dogmatic statements a Christian must accept are limited. For the most part, the symbol of faith covers them.

Finally, theologoumenon are things that are opinions about God. This is gray area, or things which are not revealed divinely, outside of authority. You may have a theologoumenon or disagree and still be in the Church. Most disagreements in my experience are theologoumenon.

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Conversely, I don't see Orthodoxy bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit that are supposed to be the hallmark of true Christianity. Where is Orthodoxy's great mission or evangelism programs, its hospitals, its universities? How has it changed and improved the cultures within which it exists?

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Forgive me, but this seems to be simple ignorance of history. Orthodoxy's great missions includes the Christianization of England, Wales, Ireland, Scandinavia, North Africa, and the Slavic peoples, as well as Christian missions to Persia, India, and China. Indeed it also included fighting the so-called Trilingual heresy, teaching that the scriptures and divine services should always be presented to the people in a language they can understand. To this end, for example, the whole language and alphabet of Church Slavonic and the initial Cyrillic alphabet (named for St Cyril) was created. That the modern evangelical tradition enjoys scriptures and services in their native tongue is an Orthodox idea (Luther appealed to Orthodoxy in this regard).

The concept of a hospital was indeed invented by an Orthodox saint - St Basil the Great - The Basiliad. So the entirety of the Christian hospital tradition has its roots in Orthodoxy.

Nearly all of the scriptural manuscripts (and many other documents) we enjoy are the product of Orthodox monasteries, many of which have been continuously operating for over 1500 years. This includes St Catherine's in Sinai (the world's oldest library) and of course the monasteries on Mt Athos. Orthodoxy is the root of the entire monastic tradition, which started in the deserts of Africa and was imported by St John Cassian to the West.

Orthodoxy Christianized Rome, and indeed the Romans (later Byzantines) carried the light of civilization through the medieval period, bequeathing science, medicine, philosophy, and a theological inheritance to the west, the Arab east, and the Slavic north. (Sailing from Byzantium is a great non-religious book on this topic).

Perhaps the best mark of "true" Christianity is the blood of the martyrs, the seed of the Church. This is the struggle, tragedy, and triumph of Orthodoxy for the past 1500 years. Orthodox nations have been under nearly continuous persecution variously from Islam, western Crusades, the Ottoman empire, and Communism. Due to persecution, the first Greek copy of the scriptures was not printed in Greece or Turkey until the twentieth century. Over 100,000 Russian clergy were murdered in 1937-1938 alone. Some twenty million Christians were martyred by the Soviets. The continuity of the witness of the Russian Church is a jewel in the crown of Christian history.

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To summarize, I don't see the practical, real world evidence that your churches are the "one true faith" as you seem to claim. In terms of fruit, it's hard to argue with what God has done through the Protestant churches.

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Again, this is just ignorance and a one-sided view. By way of example, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism effectively abolished slavery in Christendom. In a real way Protestantism reintroduced it and championed it. Protestants and protestant nations are responsible for unheard of bloodshed and war from the beginning of their history, including presiding over the bloodiest century in human history. (I am being intentionally provocative here, if only to make you consider history from an unbiased lens).

The test of "one true faith" is the continuous, unbroken adherence to the faith of the Apostles. Nothing more, nothing less.

Zobel said:

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I wouldn't say unity of doctrine is an advantage. Unity of the faith as St Paul puts it is an endpoint, a mark of the Church which is participating in and led by the Spirit. Actual unity is not found laterally between men, but in participation in Christ. so in this sense, I agree with jrico completely because this unity is found in the eucharist, in the communion we have. As St Paul says, "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."

I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about doctrine. At least for the Orthodox, believers can "believe whatever they want" as well. The only difference is at some point if your faith departs from that of the Apostles, you are no longer in a unity of faith. Again as St Paul puts it, we have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism." Doctrine is not the product of deliberations or councils. Doctrine witnesses to the faith, it represents the faith, it is an icon or symbol of the faith (hence in Greek it is not the "creed" but the symbol of faith, that which represents the other). At some point if you depart from the faith, you have a difference experience than that of the Apostles, Fathers, and the Church - therefore there is something different about your faith which must be examined.


If you break down the categories, a useful way to think about it is dogmatic fact, dogma, and theologoumenon.

The Church, from the beginning, abides in dogmatic fact. The life of the Church is the life in Christ, and He alone guides, leads, and shepherds the Church. To be in the Church is to encounter Christ as a community. From this reality, this dogmatic fact, comes dogma. Dogmatic fact is unchanging. Dogma comes into being.

Dogma is an expression of the dogmatic fact of the reality of the life in Christ. For example, that Yahweh the God of Israel is three Persons is something that was revealed in the life of Israel and the Church. From it, the declaration of the dogma of the Trinity comes. These are things you must believe, and if you do not believe them, you are outside of the faith - because you are not in the same reality of experience. The list of dogmatic statements a Christian must accept are limited. For the most part, the symbol of faith covers them.

Finally, theologoumenon are things that are opinions about God. This is gray area, or things which are not revealed divinely, outside of authority. You may have a theologoumenon or disagree and still be in the Church. Most disagreements in my experience are theologoumenon.

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Conversely, I don't see Orthodoxy bearing the fruits of the Holy Spirit that are supposed to be the hallmark of true Christianity. Where is Orthodoxy's great mission or evangelism programs, its hospitals, its universities? How has it changed and improved the cultures within which it exists?

---

Forgive me, but this seems to be simple ignorance of history. Orthodoxy's great missions includes the Christianization of England, Wales, Ireland, Scandinavia, North Africa, and the Slavic peoples, as well as Christian missions to Persia, India, and China. Indeed it also included fighting the so-called Trilingual heresy, teaching that the scriptures and divine services should always be presented to the people in a language they can understand. To this end, for example, the whole language and alphabet of Church Slavonic and the initial Cyrillic alphabet (named for St Cyril) was created. That the modern evangelical tradition enjoys scriptures and services in their native tongue is an Orthodox idea (Luther appealed to Orthodoxy in this regard).

The concept of a hospital was indeed invented by an Orthodox saint - St Basil the Great - The Basiliad. So the entirety of the Christian hospital tradition has its roots in Orthodoxy.

Nearly all of the scriptural manuscripts (and many other documents) we enjoy are the product of Orthodox monasteries, many of which have been continuously operating for over 1500 years. This includes St Catherine's in Sinai (the world's oldest library) and of course the monasteries on Mt Athos. Orthodoxy is the root of the entire monastic tradition, which started in the deserts of Africa and was imported by St John Cassian to the West.

Orthodoxy Christianized Rome, and indeed the Romans (later Byzantines) carried the light of civilization through the medieval period, bequeathing science, medicine, philosophy, and a theological inheritance to the west, the Arab east, and the Slavic north. (Sailing from Byzantium is a great non-religious book on this topic).

Perhaps the best mark of "true" Christianity is the blood of the martyrs, the seed of the Church. This is the struggle, tragedy, and triumph of Orthodoxy for the past 1500 years. Orthodox nations have been under nearly continuous persecution variously from Islam, western Crusades, the Ottoman empire, and Communism. Due to persecution, the first Greek copy of the scriptures was not printed in Greece or Turkey until the twentieth century. Over 100,000 Russian clergy were murdered in 1937-1938 alone. Some twenty million Christians were martyred by the Soviets. The continuity of the witness of the Russian Church is a jewel in the crown of Christian history.

Quote:

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To summarize, I don't see the practical, real world evidence that your churches are the "one true faith" as you seem to claim. In terms of fruit, it's hard to argue with what God has done through the Protestant churches.

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Again, this is just ignorance and a one-sided view. By way of example, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism effectively abolished slavery in Christendom. In a real way Protestantism reintroduced it and championed it. Protestants and protestant nations are responsible for unheard of bloodshed and war from the beginning of their history, including presiding over the bloodiest century in human history. (I am being intentionally provocative here, if only to make you consider history from an unbiased lens).

The test of "one true faith" is the continuous, unbroken adherence to the faith of the Apostles. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Well stated Zobel. I remember being really hesitant about moving from my Protestant upbringing (and thru college) into the Catholic Church…But when I realized all of the wrong, uninformed things I was taught about the RCC, I considered that 1) I was already a Christian and changing dominations was not going to undo that, and 2) The Eucharist was so impactful for me, but also for myself, the idea of one body in Christ really resonated. As a Protestant it was always drilled in us that we were right and everyone else was wrong. Seemed to always be a very defensive position. So the promotion of the Unity in the Body of Christ was impactful.
In an ironic twist, I also discovered that my grandmother and her lineage were all Catholic and donated the land for the first Catholic Church in the Northern Neck in Virginia. So much of what I discovered had Gods hand in it.

" Again, this is just ignorance and a one-sided view. By way of example, Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism effectively abolished slavery in Christendom. In a real way Protestantism reintroduced it and championed it. Protestants and protestant nations are responsible for unheard of bloodshed and war from the beginning of their history, including presiding over the bloodiest century in human history. (I am being intentionally provocative here, if only to make you consider history from an unbiased lens)."

The "Protestants" learned from being slaughtered by the existing church. The Hussites, Waldensians, Lollards, etc. are prime examples. But to your point about slavery: as the Portuguese explored and colonized, they were granted exclusive rights to slavery (Pope Nicolas commanded the Portuguese to reduce to perpetual slavery all non-Christians as necessary in 1452 and 1455).
https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/african_laborers_for_a_new_emp/pope_nicolas_v_and_the_portugu

The Catholic Spanish kept Indio slavery going in Mexico through a defacto caste system based on percentage of European ancestry as T R Fenrenbach's eminently readable history of the country points out. (Fire and Blood: A History of Mexico)

I am a bit confused about your defense of Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe re slavery/serfdom. It wasn't until February of 1861 that the Russian czar ended serfdom while anti slavery initiatives in the UK were impelled by the efforts of the evangelicals such as Wesley during the 1700s (evangelicals also advocated early for humane treatment of animals) . I am cautious about viewing history in the 18th, 19th or 20th century through the eyes of 21st century sensibilities, but the forward thinking of the British evangelicals is nothing less than breathtaking for the scope of their vision and achievements given the norms of the day.

The Reformation period was ugly, and none of the wars were strictly religious. Even theological positions were often informed by political aspirations - that is a truism as much in Byzantine and Russian history as it is in European. I think we can all agree here, yes?

That being said, it seems shallow to say ((xx group)) did a bunch of good things, like hospitals! without also acknowledging that ((xx group)) also participated in a bunch of bad things, like genocide and wars. If we're going to credit the west with universities and such, we also need to credit them with WWII.

As for Pope Nicolas - this is often a distorted view of history that people make hay with. There has always been a difference between just and unjust servitude. We recognize the same to this day with POWs and prisoners (e.g., Geneva Convention and the 13th amendment). If you're going to talk about Dum Diversas you need to be pretty clear about what "perpetual servitude" means. Would such servitude be just or unjust? Does it refer to slavery at all? Show your work. A good discussion can be found here.

If we mention Dum Diversas, you need to also mention Sicut Dudum, Sublimus Dei, Cum Sicuti, Commissum Nobis, Immensa Pastorum, and In Supremo. As such it is clear that while Catholics may have had a "de facto" caste system in Mexico, this was against explicit and repeated formal prohibitions of slavery including the punishment of excommunication. Contrast this with, say, the Southern Baptist Convention which was formed explicitly in support of slavery.

As for your last paragraph - serfdom is not slavery.

The entire point of the post was not to engage in sectarian triumphalism. I reject the premise that we can make a historical inquiry of who has the fullness of truth by counting wars, universities, hospitals, converts, and so on on some kind of aggregated scoring basis. At the same time, most Americans suffer from acute historical ignorance about the Church between Pentecost and 1517, primarily due to the focus of the historical education curriculum in schools and a holdover or acceptance of the pejorative "Dark Ages" and "Enlightenment" descriptions of post-pagan Christendom. The general premise is there was Jesus, the Romans, yadda yadda yadda, the Dark Ages, Enlightenment and the Reformation (we're SAVED!), Columbus discovered America, Puritans invented work ethic, and finally the world had Real Christians again.

I don't claim moral superiority, and I don't think triumphalism is appropriate.

I do confess that the Church has the fullness of truth.

I think there is a lot to in unpack here. First no one disputes the corruption that Luther exposed. However he went far beyond calling out the corruption, he tired to change the faith. He challenged the cannon of scripture and broke his oaths he made in becoming a priest.

A priest after being consecrated gains his faculties to administer the sacraments by his Bishop. It is fair to say Luther lost those faculties the moment he was excommunicated. So subsequently he was unable to pass along any apostolic authority or gifts to any of his followers. I would not be able to trust that beyond baptism that they can offer any of the other the sacraments.

No. Schism is caused by standing up an alternative. If the church excommunicates you in error, God will be the judge. But both you and catag are kinda framing it wrong. Luther wasn't excommunicated for his 95 theses or for calling out the corruption. He was excommunicated later for not recanting some specific theological positions / writings. And more broadly he was excommunicated because he openly revolted against the church.

I'm not defending the RCC or Luther for what it's worth. It's like watching your neighbors fight and you don't agree with either party. The whole theological framework of merit and the background of indulgences and papal supremacy are foreign to orthodoxy.

Catag94 said:

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jrico2727 said:

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Jabin said:

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Whether he was right or not in certain things doesn't justify schism.

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Wasn't it actually the RCC that created the schism, not Luther (for all his faults)? After all, didn't the RCC absolutely reject the criticisms from Luther and others of its clear problems, and excommunicated Luther for refusing to withdraw his criticisms of those faults? Or is that too simplistic?

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Matthew 18:17
If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.* If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

In his criticism of the faith, not the corruption, he was in error. After the Church responded to his thesis, he didn't submit to the authority of the Church, as he previously started he would. Once he refused to stop teaching error, he then left the church no other recourse than to excommunicate him. This is usually a mercy and meant to help them see their error and correct their actions, to restore full communion. Instead of allowing himself to be humbled he decided to cause a full revoult that he was unable to contain.

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What responsibility would you place in the bishops and pope to examine and humble themselves and at least meet Martin Luther on the grounds that their corruption of the church should cease?

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I would put 100% responsibility on the Pope and Bishops to address corruption in the Church at that time and all times. At this time they did address it, in the Council of Trent.

Not interested in litigating the reformation. In my opinion the spiritual decay of the west was a result of the great schism. No party of the western reformation was Orthodox. In different ways they're all wrong. That's why you'll hear Orthodox people say in some ways evangelicals are closer to the RCC than they are to Orthodoxy. Evangelicals boggle at that, but it's true.

As for unity…Your definition of worship is not mine. You are an evangelical so we don't share beliefs in baptism or the Eucharist. We aren't of the same faith, by St Paul's definition. I've said several times on this forum that evangelicals and Orthodox are a different religion. People get upset about that, but I stand by it. No unbiased third party would come to my church and yours and think they're the same religion. We live out the faith in completely different ways - praxis and confession. You say you're willing to worship with us, but that means you're willing to do what you call worship on your terms with us. You're not willing to do what I call worship. And there is the impasse.

Christian irenics should begin with understanding. You probably don't know very much about orthodoxy, much less understand it. So how do you know if you're willing to concede, when you probably don't know what the points to concede are?

I was raised in a southern baptist church and have attended many. I can tell you with complete and utter certainty that orthodoxy is more fundamentally christocentric as a faith than the baptists are. Nothing and I mean nothing in the fathers or tradition of the church in any way detract from that. You're operating from a misunderstanding about how the fathers and tradition inform our practice.

How can you argue what the differences are and whether they're relevant or not when you readily admit you don't know what they even are?

How can you say we've added when you don't know what the teaching is?

The truth is evangelicals have jettisoned so much of the faith because of a concerted spiritual minimalist approach that they no longer have a religion that resembles the faith of the apostles. What you call addition is actually original.

Here's why baptism and the Eucharist are the litmus test. Because they are spoken of this way by St Paul, and because they are the fullness of circumcision and Passover. Happy to discuss it it further, if you want to start another thread on that.