Oh dear, sorry about that! My anger often gets the best of me. It is indeed understandable. The Eastern Orthodox were/are so far removed from most protestants. We have considerably more in common than we do with the Romans, and yet we're billions of light years apart still. Not sure how unity will ever come to Christendom again, at least before the Last Day. It's saddening.
Eastern Orthodoxy believes nearly the same things as Rome, Old Christendom, you're right it's very inconsistent of any Anglican to approach Orthodoxy as any more biblical than Rome. We have nearly nothing in common with them as a body.
True. Although they went in the same theological direction as Rome, they are mentioned less, largely because they are less kown/understood.
Ok...I mean this in complete seriousness and would appreciate a serious answer. In some posts, you criticize ecumenism as a liberal evil. In others (like this one), you want unity. In some posts, you ask others here to be charitable because we're all brothers and sisters in Christ. In others, you seem extremely angry at them, you oppose the very existence of their beliefs, and you talk about battling other churches in very militaristic terms. Which is it?
I think ecumenism is evil as it is practised today. Contemporary ecumenical dialogue is just fluff & nonsense, giving way to trivial things and avoiding the core issues that we all know won't change. It's all P.R., and just a waste of time. Wanting unity via the abdication of error is not the same as modern Ecumenism. On the other matter: yes, charity. By that I mean: don't hate others so much as to preclude them from salvation. I strive to love them as creatures made in God's image, and help them despite their being my spiritual enemies. Feeding, clothing, healing, or keeping them company are such examples of what we ought to do. Being a little calm would help, too. The military overtones merely come from my hatred of error. The very essence of charity is picking someone up from a wrong path and showing them it's wrong. The man mugged in the story of the Good Samaritan was going down from Jerusalem - he was not walking toward the holy city, but sinning. The Good Samaritan came and helped him anyway, cared for him, then left him in the care of the innkeeper. That's an analogy I might use. Just being nice/calm/relaxed/fun/happy/good-mannered/polite isn't charity, in my opinion.
Please don't bait. This isn't personal in the least, and shouldn't be. Any Christian should consider someone their spiritual enemy who denies the Trinity, the Incarnation, sin, redemption, the sufficiency of Christ's precious blood, justification by faith, salvation by love and good works, and the basics.
Why must they be treated as enemies? And how do you know if someone on this forum denies those things, if they profess to believe them?
I should've said, "A christian who willingly denies..." those things. An enemy is truly a wolf in the sheepfold. They should be treated as enemies because they're enemies of the truth. One way of discovering where their heart lies, is to say something that sounds like their beliefs, so they come out and clarify. It's an easy way of discerning who teaches and believes what. Remember, I mean an enemy in the Christian sense. We don't kill, or destroy, but love and forgive enemies. Loving and forgiving spiritual enemies can include lively rhetoric, however. Anyway, you can know who denies Doctrine X by what they affirm. For example, if someone affirms that we can contact the dead, it's a fair bet that they deny 1 Thessalonians 4, that scriptural passage about the dead being asleep. We need to be vigilant primarily, tolerant secondarily. Surely, you somewhat agree?
You're quite right, anyway. These words of a certain preacher calmly explain what I meant to say, before the bluster of anger overcame me. : "Brethren, we seek not Yours, but You. We want to have your hearts with us; that we may go hand in hand through this pilgrimage. Our desire is to win souls." That is all.
Unlike the Roman church which defined itself against protestant belief in the council of Trent, the Eastern churches haven't defined themselves against protestant theology.There have been a few Eastern orthodox who have come out in favour of "faith alone" for example. The sufficiency of scripture can be held by an orthodox believer. If it is to be believed that Rome by condemning "justification by faith alone" condemned the gospel (as traditionally protestants would say) then Constantinople has never made that condemnation. While protestants would take issue with both it's unfair to say they're basically the same I think
Be careful what you affirm, SK. The Orthodox believe in the sufficiency of scripture even less than Rome. They don't class it in a separate sphere from Holy Tradition as Rome does, but they actually subsume it under the mantle of Tradition. There was a synod in Jerusalem after the Calvinist Archbishop of Constantinople, Cyril Lucaris, was kicked out. They condemned the Reformed faith he had tried to profess there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod_of_Jerusalem
Ok thanks for that Consular. I thought they could affirm the sufficiency of scripture. Certainly I knwo several eastern saints did so.. While Rome has a catechism and offical statments of belief the difficulty in Eastern churches is that they don't have a nice neat little statment of beliefs. I always saw that as a potential positve since it means less is defined and so theoretically open to protestant ideas. Is the council of constantinople considered an authorative council for the whole orthodox communion btw? I'll look into that.
Constantinople I was 381 AD and is considered the Second Ecumenical Council by everyone who recognises any Councils at all. Constantinople II was 787 AD, and entailed the enshrining of the "Holy Icons" to be forever venerated. Modern Orthodoxy began there.
Further in the 1700s, when the Anglican Doctrine of the Church was under attack from the C.of E, Bishop of Bangor, it was the Non Jurors, led by Law, who fought the heretics off. Bangor taught that the Church was invisible and not a society of men, or to put it another way, there was no obvious Church. So much for the 39 Articles!!
It is misleading to talk about the ,'Sufficiency of Scriptures,'. The Doctrines of the Church in England have to have their base in scripture, but for Anglicans, they have to be interpreted by Tradition through the Bishops in Council.