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Greek Church & Orthodoxy
########################
:date: 2015-11-02T12:13:30
:category: faith
:tags: ecumenism, utUnumSint, theology, ecclesiology, greek, orthoschesi̱
.. zotero-setup::
:style: chicago-author-date
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
:xcite:`[@JenkinsJesusWars2011]`. This idea was (kind of
surprisingly) partially supported by
:xcite:`@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 :xcite:`[@RatzingerFaith2006]`. [#]_ It is obvious that
this speech was completely misunderstood equally both by the
Moslem 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 :xcite:`[@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
:xcite:`[@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?
:xcite:`@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
:xcite:`[@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.
.. [#] What I discuss here is the speech by Benedict XVI. only.
I do not discuss here his other works or his thinking. I am
perfectly aware of his statements like
:xcite:`@ratzinger:2007st_ephrem` and
:xcite:`@ratzinger:2007aphraates` which show clearly Joseph
Ratzinger acknowledging the existence of the Church of the
East.
----
.. bibliography::
|
