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If you get a chance, Kallistos Ware’s book The Orthodox Church does a pretty wonderful job of detailing exactly the history and ways in which the Church has defended against heresy and maintained the correct dogma and doctrine.
>Oh, then I'm interested! What books?
The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware is a pretty good introduction for people who aren't Orthodox. Ancient Faith Radio also has a lot of good podcasts.
Honestly nothing beats going to an Orthodox service and talking to a priest. They're usually more than happy to talk to inquirers. See if there's an OCA parish near you. They'll usually have a lot of converts.
> How do you have the same approach but end up with different and sometimes opposing doctrines?
Sorry, I don't quite understand the question. Can you explain what you mean?
> Is there a place where I can rid a good surface level summary of how the two churches differ theologically and how they view each other?
From the Orthodox perspective, <em>The Orthodox Church</em> by Bishop (now Metropolitan) Kallistos is a good historical overview.
I made the plunge during Great Lent, and was so glad I did! Yeah, it was "intense," but I came to a much deeper understanding of Orthodox worship and spirituality than I would have if I had started attending after.
Definitely look at the Antiochian (or OCA) parishes first. My first Liturgy was at a beautiful Greek parish, and while most of the parishioners were friendly and welcoming, I did experience a bit of ethnic exclusion.
If you want to learn more about Orthodoxy, look at Bishop Ware's The Orthodox Church. It's a fantastic read that really lays out Orthodox history and spirituality in a way that's easy to understand to a newbie. I found it absolutely indispensable. Also, come hang around /r/OrthodoxChristianity. We love inquirers!
It's kind of a funny question, because we view such questions in the same light as writing your Congressman to prove that he is serving in the original government of the United States, as established by the Constitution. :)
I would recommend that you take a look at Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Church. He is pretty non-confrontational and, I think, objective.
Another interesting exercise is to go through all the churches listed in the New Testament (e.g. Corinth, Philippi, Antioch) and see what church is there today. I think in almost all cases (except Rome) you will find that all of them have Orthodox churches of one sort or another; or, as is in the case in Turkey (Asia Minor), the church disappeared due to some conquest. Try to find the break with what might otherwise be considered the "true church established by Christ." I think usually you will not be able to find such a break.
Welcome! We believe that the Orthodox Church is the original Church founded by Jesus Christ, yes. The best way to get a good idea of what Orthodoxy is about is to visit a local parish near you, but here are some books that I would recommend:
On the topic of visiting a local parish - do you live in the US? If so, there is a great online search engine to help you locate nearby Orthodox churches.
> I'm not even sure you mean the same thing by "hypothetical".
Hypotheticals allow you to talk about situations not fully established by the available evidence, and additionally, can relax something you do know in order to explore the causal powers of the remaining things.
> God could not annihilate, as it contradicts his nature, and ours. He could not annihilate, as it contradicts realities purpose. He could not annihilate, since it contradicts scripture and ecumenical councils.
First, ceasing to uphold the existence of people experiencing eternal conscious torment is not the same thing as annihilating a soul which has existential inertia. Second, 1&nbsp;Cor&nbsp;3:10–15 pretty clearly talks about annihilation of the wood, hay, and straw. See also 2&nbsp;Pe&nbsp;3:10–13. Feel free to look at the word παρέρχομαι (<u>parerchomai</u>), translated as by all but one of the Biblehub translations as 'disappear' or 'pass away'. There is also the word λύω (<u>luō</u>), which all but one of said translations translate as 'dissolved', 'destroyed', and 'melt'. It's almost like the word describes disconnecting the matter from its form.
If one were to read from Genesis to Revelation, I am pretty confident you could accumulate quite a list of God annihilating. I would be curious as to how Christians have found a way to argue against all of them. Maybe starting with Is&nbsp;45:7.
> I don't think there is anything explicitly stating a specific philosophical position on [universals, in the Bible], though there also isn't anything explicitly stating Trinitarianism and many other positions. I hope you're not making the argument from silence fallacy.
I would be quite content to see universals argued for after the style that Trinitarianism is argued for.
> labreuer: And I would file the perpetual upholding of people experiencing eternal conscious torment, "commit evil".
> NanoRancor: How is that in any way evil? They only feel that pain because they freely choose to feel that pain. It would be evil of God to take away their free will or force himself upon them. Forcing yourself upon someone against their will is rape.
First, it's easy enough for people who will never not experience eternal conscious torment to want to die. Second, God abridged Pharaoh's free will by hardening Pharaoh's heart. Was God raping Pharaoh?
> NanoRancor: If someone were to will submit themselves completely to Christ, they would become a saint, their body can become incorruptible, and their soul can be raised into heaven.
> labreuer: Would Jesus exercise any authority over them?
> NanoRancor: I'm not quite sure what you mean, but I think the answer is yes.
Mt&nbsp;20:20–28 was most strongly in my mind, but you could add 1&nbsp;Cor&nbsp;13:5 and 1&nbsp;Jn&nbsp;4:8.
> NanoRancor: … I'm a coherentist. Orthodox have a very specific transcendental argument which I believe gives absolute certainty that only Eastern Orthodoxy can be true among all religions or worldviews.
> labreuer: What do you make of the two evidences Jesus gives to outsiders, Jn&nbsp;13:34–35, 17:20–23?
> NanoRancor: Love one another? I'm not sure how these verses are relevant.
You offered one way to obtain certainty about the truth of Eastern Orthodoxy. Jesus seems to be offering a very different way to obtain certainty that: (i) a group of people is Jesus' disciples; (ii) it was God who sent Jesus to earth.
> labreuer: And do you construe the certainty you have according to 1&nbsp;Cor&nbsp;1:18–2:9? I would be curious to know how you understand "God has chosen what is foolish in the world to shame the wise".
> NanoRancor: That isn't a Universally applicable statement. This is just assuming that my view is not wise. And nothing in this verse says certainty is impossible. Again, seems irrelevant.
Paul in 1&nbsp;Cor&nbsp;1:18–2:9 indicates that the core truth of Christianity breaks sharply with contemporary thinking—Jewish and Greek/​Roman. What was considered 'wise', God showed to be unwise. What was considered 'intelligent', God showed to be unintelligent. And God tricked "rulers of this age", which would not have crucified Jesus had they understood what God was up to. So, I'm asking how the method of obtaining your own confidence sufficiently mismatches what was considered good philosophy & religion by the players in town when Paul was authoring that letter.
> I'm not sure it's the kind of book you can skip around through and still make sense of, since each chapter builds upon the earlier ones. However, if I remember correctly (don't currently have the book with me), the book has a part speaking on Moses, and how he shares his authority among elders.
One can skip around if one has seen the general arguments before. As it turns out, Pageau only interacts with the Ex&nbsp;18 instance of delegating judicial discernment. He doesn't mention the relevant bits of Numbers 11, nor does he deal with the New Covenant passages Jer&nbsp;31:31–34 and Ezek&nbsp;36:22–32. Two other passages are Is&nbsp;59:21 and Joel&nbsp;2:28–29, but no dice. So, Moses' sharp rebuke to Joshua, looking forward tot he New Covenant, just doesn't seem to be something Pageau is likely to address. Skipping around a bit, I wonder if his entire book could be read as taking place prior to the New Covenant.
> labreuer: But I don't see how theosis is necessarily dependent on all humans sharing one nature, such that saving human nature risks dooming some to eternal conscious torment. That just seems like an additional posit.
> NanoRancor: If humans didn't share a nature, then we wouldn't all be human, but would all be different kinds of creatures.
By 'nature', we are not just talking of "something which lets you say they're all the same in some sense". Rather, we're talking about the kind of nature which prohibits God from ceasing to uphold the existence of those humans who are on-track to experience eternal conscious torment. I see no reason for why these two notions of 'nature' must be identical.
> If you are learning about Theosis, it is vital to also learn about the Essence Energy distinction which makes it possible.
Timothy Ware covers this in The Orthodox Church. :-)
> labreuer: Ok. Is there any special fruit which has come with all this direct contact with God? Like, can the Orthodox do better than other Christianities, on anything Jesus valued, because of this good stuff?
> NanoRancor: I mean, there are plenty of miracles happening all over. For example, every year in Jerusalem there is the miracle of the Holy fire, which only happens on the Orthodox date for Pascha. Mt Athos has all kinds of miraculous stories. Also, hesychasm heals the soul immensely, which I have experienced myself. No other kind of meditation or therapy or prayer has ever helped me like it. We also had the byzantine empire for hundreds of years, which was one of the best Christian nations in history. Also, it is true and a continuation of the beliefs of the early Church, and is the body of christ with the true eucharist. We also have real spiritual unity, unlike other Christian churches.
That is an impressive list, although my wife's recounting of the history of Byzantium casts that one in doubt. I do wonder if this list is commensurate with what God wants to do with humans, though.
> NanoRancor: Adam willed to sin and not repent and so god consented to Adam using his will to reject him, and through Adam all of human nature became tainted.
⋮
> NanoRancor: The guilt of sin is not inherited. Our nature is not "tainted".
You previously used the word 'tainted'. What we can investigate is the difference between 'guilt' and 'sickness' with respect to the argument you're making:
> When Orthodox speak of the fall of man, we see it like a sickness that spreads to all of creation. Humans are not born inherently evil. Children do not go to limbo. Ancestral sin is a sickness which Christ healed, not a guilt debt of our fathers that he paid.
Are you saying that before God healed that sickness, annihilationism was a possibility, but not after?
> I meant that he isn't constrained by the limitations of our personal understanding of human reason, but that human reason is analogous to the divine reason.
Just how corrupted can human reason become, and how do you detect such corruption? For example, how would you know whether your ideas about a universal human nature which forces God to uphold people experiencing eternal conscious torment, are actually compatible with the divine intellect?
> I don't see your point exactly. I don't believe in all-capable God. I don't believe God could make a rock he couldn't lift, that falls into absurdity.
That's an obvious self-contradiction. It's not obvious that God couldn't create humans such that those who ultimately reject God are annihilated, rather than forced to experience eternal conscious torment.
> Someone could deny the life they were given. I mean, that's what all sinners do necessarily in some sense.
Sinners are "dead in their trespasses", not "made alive". When it comes to those who reject life, like Hebrews&nbsp;6:4–8 describes, the result seems to be annihilationism. Thorns and thistles, after all, cease to exist after they are burned. If life cannot actually be rejected so that death results, then how on earth did humans transition from life to death before Jesus?
> labreuer: I think nominalism is the nuclear weapon God permits to be used to destroy toxic, oppressive uniformities. A philosophical version of Habakkuk, if you will.
> NanoRancor: I'm sorry, I have no idea what you mean by this. And I can't read a whole book to respond to one phrase of a reddit comment. Does this mean you are a nominalist? If so, I don't see how nominalism isn't just materialism in opposition to Christianity.
Can you imagine having erroneous beliefs about universals, or is that somehow impossible? Nominalism, in being a rejection of all universals, would have the effect of rejecting the erroneous beliefs. But it would also reject any good ones, making it function rather like nuclear weapons. The connection to Habakkuk is that the prophet was shocked that God would deal with the evil Israelites via even more evil people. Anyone who believes that God won't do that again has, I believe, false confidence.
Humanity loves its oppressive dichotomies which pretend to understand all of reality thereby. Like universals of a particular kind versus particulars of a particular kind. My favorite example is the "determinism vs. randomness" dichotomy, which surreptitiously pretends that the only possible source of determination is mathematical/​mechanical in form. With universals, two examples of constraining them is (i) contending that humans cannot be terribly mistaken about them; (ii) contending that universals do not change. You have rejected (ii), but have not said anything yet about (i).
Gunton proposes what he calls 'open transcendentals', which breaks with how transcendentals/​universals had theretofore been understood. My intuition is that the best stance lies in this direction, but as I've already said "I find [the problem of the one and the many] both interesting and yet exceedingly abstract." I'm probably not going to give you the kind of answer you want, unless perhaps you help me understand that problem better than I currently do. As I think I've demonstrated, I am not entirely ignorant about the problem.
> labreuer: I definitely don't find it automatically intuitive to assert that humans are billions of ὑποστάσεις and one οὐσία~~, with that in turn entailing that God cannot cease to uphold the existence of those who choose to forever "deny their nature".~~
> NanoRancor: To clarify, every human does have their own individually instantiated human nature, as well as being one of a general human nature; my body and soul are not your body and soul, but they are still both human bodies and human souls.
Ok, but I'm not sure how this bears on the rest of my sentence, which I've put in strikethrough because you omitted it.
> labreuer: If you believe that scripture should be the ultimate source and test of all theology
> NanoRancor: I don't.
Interesting; my recollection of Timothy Ware 1963 The Orthodox Church is that unlike the Roman Catholics, who put church tradition on par with holy writ, the Orthodox make holy writ primary.
> NanoRancor: I don't believe natures are arbitrary. Meaning that human nature could not be made in a different way to how it was.
> labreuer: Which matches very well with Plato's understanding of the timeless, universal Forms.
> NanoRancor: In general, I do not believe Universals are timeless, spaceless, or unchanging.
I'm having trouble reconciling this with your contention that God could not have created human nature differently. The way I think about that is that Plato's Forms are prior to God's creative options, like items on a shelf where God can only choose from those items, and no others. If the items on the self are in fact changing over time that does mark a difference from Plato, but until I better understand how such change operates, I can't say myself how different or similar the result is to Plato's conceptualization.
> I do not believe Universals are more real than particulars, or that particulars are evil, such that we are gnostic.
Ok. For present purposes, I'm laser-locked on your contention that all humans must necessarily share one nature, and it is this which forces God to uphold some people experiencing eternal conscious torment, rather than annihilating them. This means that universals have power over God! That's a pretty epic claim in this Protestant's book. It is this primacy of universals which I strongly connect to Plato. The gods are subject to them—or at least, Euthyphro plays with that possibility.
> In fact, if we got into the nuances of my position, I don't think you'd have any doubt that my view is very different.
Ok, but are any of the different aspects in play when it comes to God being forced to uphold the existence of people experiencing eternal conscious torment?
> Just because there have been similar ideas does not at all mean that one came from the other, they influenced eachother, or that they are identical. That is a non-sequitur.
If there is absolutely zero trace of universals in the OT, or if they look fantastically different from how you have used them in this discussion, then I think it is quite right to be suspicious of importing such radically different if not utterly foreign universals to the NT (and then back to the OT). If you disagree with this hermeneutical principle, I'd like to know why.
The Orthodox Church by Kallistos Ware
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy by Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Religion of the Apostles by Fr. Stephen De Young
Those are more of "starter" books. There are loads of books that are written in English or translated into Engkish. While there are many good recommendations from others, I wouldn't recommend the Phikokalia or Seraphim Rose's books for beginners.
This one’s my favorite. Not sure you have it: https://www.amazon.com/Orthodox-Church-New-Timothy-Ware/dp/0140146563
I would type out a lot of the same stuff here, but I'm just going to link to a thread where I already said it all, in terms of how Orthodoxy is different from Catholicism.
As for Orthodoxy itself, we are the original Church, and I suggest either Metr. Kallistos's <em>The Orthodox Church</em> (amazon link) or Fr Thomas Hopko's <em>The Orthodox Faith</em> (free to read online).
I'm glad you want to approach it on its own terms first. If you want the basic historical, social and theological introduction, this book fulfills that.
And here is a site with info specifically for reformed individuals who want to learn more about the differences in the two from an Orthodox perspective, so it will likely have some of the same subject matter covered as your book.
On the Orthodox Church, for more simple, general overview type stuff, I would look into The Orthodox Church by Bishop Kallistos Ware
If you want to really get into the details, I would recommend seeking out writings by both the ancient and modern writers. For the ancient writers, particularly St. Athanasius' On the Incarnation, the writings of St. Maximus and St. Gregory of Nyssa
For modern writers, check out Philip Sherrard's The Greek East and Latin West (one of my favorite books), or Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. That should be enough to keep you busy for a while!
I've only seen excerpts from her book. The bits I've seen, and the contexts in which they get quoted, seem uniquely American in concern. In Greece or Serbia or whatever, talking about women presbyters will just get you a smack on the head from Yiayia/Babushka :-)
I've read articles by Orthodox teachers that use the same logic as Catholic writing -- priest is the icon of Christ, etc. Maybe I'm missing the point, but the rationale has never been very convincing to me. It always sounds to me like somebody just memorized a standard answer and never gave it another thought.
In the current edition of The Orthodox Church, Bishop Kallistos adds a note to his chapter on the priesthood, suggesting that the Church ought to develop a coherent dogmatic answer to why a presbyter has to be a man, because there currently isn't any. That comment has led actually some OrthoFolks to quit recommending this excellent book ("He's going all ecumenist now!"). But in the mean time, I think the best answer is "That's not how we do it."
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