Sunday, February 14, 2010

Bill on Orthodoxy and Christology

"There's something about being in the presence of Eastern Orthodoxy that gets the Christological juices flowing."

--Bill

Abu Daoud says: Ok, he was sorta making a joke, but is there not something true in the statement? I mean, does E Orthodoxy in its life and liturgy not challenge us to think carefully about our doctrine of Christ? Indeed, in a way that Western Christianities do not? What do you think?

3 comments:

Don said...

Historically, the main Christological battles were fought in Eastern (Greek) Christianity. Latin Christianity never argued about Christology the way their Eastern counterparts did.

Jeff said...

Hmm. I'm puzzled about what you might mean. Can you give an example or two from your own experience?

And who is "us"? Us Protestants?

I am a Catholic, some of the things that might really get Protestants thinking don't make the same kind of impression on me.

We see 90-99% of Eastern tradition and thought as belonging to us too.

My feeling, though, is kind of the reverse. I think the second millennium of the Church is the Age of the West, in which the West led the deepening of Christian thought and practice and the East was in a period of relative stagnation.

I tend to find myself betwixt and between. I love the East--until people get all starry-eyed about it and start using it as a stick to beat the West. Then I feel very proud of auricular confession and stained glass windows and the Jesuits and the Little Sisters of the Poor and St. Terese of Lisieux and daily Mass and communion under one kind and Counterreformation painting and the rise of the Pastoral Papacy and think:

Three cheers for the Latin Church! I'm glad I'm a Westerner. :D

But maybe you mean something very different that I would agree with.

Jeff said...

Don, that's an interesting comment.

I find the present state of the whole Christology controversy fascinating.

Back in the day, to be a Nestorian or a Monophysite was to be non-Christian from the Catholic/Orthodox point of view.

Now it seems that no one seriously treats the Copts or the Assyrians or the Armenians as if they are non-Christians...

It's an odd phenomenon.