Two Antique blog posts.

On Gaarder’s “Vita brevis” and the first draft of my Greek thing.

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+Greek Church & Orthodoxy
+########################
+
+:date: 1970-01-01T00:00:00
+:status: draft
+:category: faith
+:tags: ecumenism, utUnumSint, theology, ecclesiology, greek, orthoschesi̱
+
+.. zotero-setup::
+   :style: chicago-author-date
+
+.. default-role:: xcite
+
+With the end of the Jewish Church (early second century) the
+Church as whole was more or less dominated by the Greek culture
+until the Roman Church started to dominate the West. It seems to
+me that we still carry the inheritance of that era more than we
+generally recognize, and that perhaps the Greek tradition in the
+Church was the bigger break from the original Christianity
+(whatever this term means) than for example many times blamed
+Constantine taking over of the Church by the state.
+
+I agree with Paul (1Co 1:22) that the dominant feature of this
+Greek Church was search for wisdom based on the tradition of the
+Greek philosophy. Importance of the Greek Church and its
+inheritance lies in my opinion in the stress on the link between
+the true faith and correct theology. The biggest fruit of these
+early centuries of the Christian history is in my opinion a deep
+dive into the understanding of God, development of the
+Trinitarianism, and starting a huge tradition of the Christian
+theology. Unfortunately, the flip side of this love for study and
+understanding was in my opinion too much stress on orthodoxy as
+the most important characteristics of Christian and less stress
+on other aspects of the Christian life. The flower of this
+understanding is for example the Athanasian Creed claiming that
+“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary
+that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do
+keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish
+everlastingly. … This is the catholic faith; which except a man
+believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.” Suddenly the
+salvation is not based solely on the true relationship with the
+living Jesus Christ [#]_ and it is now more concerned with
+exactly correct intellectual understanding of the God [#]_.
+Suddenly having wrong understanding of some minutiae of theology
+makes oneself a heretic and excludes you from the salvation.
+
+There seems to be now an emerging agreement from many sides that
+the extreme stress on the theological unity was crippling the
+Church in the war of the fifth and sixth century, but also that
+the exact minutiae of this fight are now mostly irrelevant
+`[@JenkinsJesusWars2011]`. This idea was (kind of surprisingly)
+partially supported by `@cantalamessa:2015serving`:
+
+    The situation in the beginning of the third millennium is not
+    same as the one in the beginning of the second millennium,
+    when the Eastern and Western Church separated. It is not the
+    same either as the one in the middle of the second
+    millennium, when the separation between Catholics and
+    Protestants. Are the mean by which the Holy Spirit proceeds
+    from the Father (the *Filioque* controversy), or the exact
+    description how the godless is justified, are these questions
+    something which makes the blood of our contemporaries
+    boiling, or are they the questions which makes the Christian
+    faith stand or fail? The world goes on and we got stuck with
+    the problems and formulations which are completely alien to
+    the contemporary people.
+
+Later fights about the true definition and nature of God and
+Jesus seems to be a clear reflection of the Greek nature of the
+Eastern Church [#]_. Do we consider these “Greek issues”
+really SO important? How many especially Western Christians
+actually care about the distinction between dyophysitism and
+monophysitism? Do most current Christians even know what’s the
+difference? Or to return to the Athanasian Creed, do we still
+really believe that all Arians and Nestorians are in The Hell,
+just because of incorrect understanding of the nature of Trinity,
+when we all accept that nobody actually really understands the
+Mystery of Trinity?
+
+That is not to say that I consider these discussions to be
+useless, or that I would like to doubt the Trinitarianism. I
+believe that the Trinitarianism and the ability to maintain (more
+or less successfully) balance between the two Natures of Christ
+are two most important distinctions between the Christianity as a
+religion and other religions of the world. So, I don’t think
+the theology is the problem, but the too high stress on the
+correct theology as a qualification for the membership in the
+Church or even for the salvation itself.
+
+My claiming that the current Church puts too much stress on the
+Greek inheritance may seem too theoretical and abstract. Let me
+present here as an example what I am thinking, the discussion
+around `[@RatzingerFaith2006]`. It is obvious that this speech
+was completely misunderstood equally both by the religious
+fanatics and secular journalists. While everybody was excited
+about the citation taken out of context, we missed what the whole
+speach was all about. I more or less agree with `[@Jenkins2009]`
+that “Benedict insisted that authentic Christianity had to be
+based on the Greek philosophical tradition, establishing the
+European intellectual model as the inevitable norm for all future
+ages.”
+
+See for example this rather surprising statement
+
+    “[…] it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its
+    origins and some significant developments in the East,
+    finally took on its historically decisive character in
+    Europe.”
+
+Squeezing fourteen centuries of the Church of the East into
+“some significant development in the East” (and ignoring the
+Church in Africa completely) is a rather strange statement. Or,
+see the following passage proposing an intriguing idea:
+
+    The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought
+    did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw
+    the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man
+    plead with him: ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us!’
+    (cf. Acts 16:6-10) — this vision can be interpreted as a
+    ‘distillation’ of the intrinsic necessity of a
+    rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.
+
+Getting from this Biblical story to the God’s ordinance of
+linking the faith with the Greek philosophy seems to me tortuous
+at best. Yes, anything can be interpreted to mean anything, but
+the path here truly seems complicated. Suddenly in the
+Ratzinger’s view it seems that the Greek philosophy (I suppose
+in its transformed Thomistic version) is an integral part of the
+Gospel message?
+
+Also, it doesn’t seem to me surprising that the Orthodox church
+as the most pure heir of this Greek Church is the strongest
+opponent of the ecumenical movement. I know that documents like
+`[@mount_athos:2007memorandum]` are not 100% faithful
+representation of the stance of all Orthodox Christians, but
+certainly it presents a strong and authoritative voice and it
+seems to present the absolute rejection of any ecumenical process
+other than return of all non-Orthodox back to the Orthodox
+church.
+
+.. [#] Could we call it ορθοσχέση [orthoschési̱], right relationship?
+    `@haykin:2005orthopathy` suggests the term “orthopaty”, right
+    affection, for something possibly similar.
+
+.. [#] This stress was then made even more salient by the
+    Protestant tendency to *sola scriptura*. See
+    `[@schmelzer:2015why]` for comment on this Protestant trend.
+
+.. [#] The Western church was mostly not present in these discussions
+    because it steadfastly kept its party line, true to its
+    quasi-military(?) character; or perhaps because of most of
+    the time it was struggling for the mere survival during the
+    Fall of Rome era.
+
+----
+
+.. bibliography::