Most of what I know about Catholicism I learned after becoming Orthodox. I've been seeing more Catholics here, which makes sense, as the history of Western thought is rooted in post-schism scholasticism, which eventually birthed rationalism and the Enlightenment and our modern presuppositions. So there is a sense that modern people will feel at home in the ancient expressions of the ideals we already have.
One worry I havr about the Catholic faith is that I see a lot of emphasis on miracles, which I think would astonish a lot of atheists and agnostics if they had the interest to look at it, and trust in the sources for those evidence. Hinduism is also known for this, and obviously occult practices and witchcraft is also real. But once you're past the point of incredulity, which I am, I would be interested in learning more about the framework that is used to discern between genuine holiness and deception.
Orthodoxy has a word for deception, "prelest", for example, and there are guidelines to not communicate with or pay attention to apparitions when they appear or to be skeptical of them, and to be mindful of whether the encounter is producing the fruit of repetance and humility, or if it produces pride— as a way of discerning if it is from God or something else. I have an orthodox friend who says thr miracle of Guadalupe which converted Mexico over night was genuine, but recent (relative to the age of the Church) saints displaying stigmata or the eucharist blossoming hear tissue in a test tube are treated with less eagerness. I'm not sure how this compares to the Holy Fire in Jerusalem, which is probably our most famous miracle.
I am also interested in the relationship between reason and trust, which I haven't figured out yet, since in the Christian worldview, reason is fallen, which I think denotes the danger of over-rationalizing the faith at least, but I am astonished by things like thr Christology unearthed by the Ecumenical Councils, which is only really motivated when the Church is forced to answer heresies with the Grace of correct explanations, so I don't quite understand the impulse to proactively crank the engines of reason, so to speak, to systemize things in the way the Latins have done.
This is the Orthodox perspective I've picked up in the past few years, but I am in awe of the feeling of irreducible belief that I think this touches on.
Just imagine, one little planet and so many gods to choose from. And coincidentally the 'right' god always happens to be the one associated with the dominant religion in the region where you were born.
I suspect that at some point in the distant future religion and the search for god as some conscious entity will be classed as a mental illness.
I think debates are interesting because it’s obvious that people are temporarily imprisoning any devastating arguments within their higher sense that something about it is wrong.
The attempt to “rationalize” and discover what this higher intuition is saying might look like rejecting reason, even if temporarily. But I think it underscores what is really meant by “rejecting reason”— that understanding the true meaning of a logical argument requires a vigilant process directed by a higher moral directive, to ensure nothing “evil” is laundered through it.
Maybe a “heresy” is simply that which is valid but not sound.
The ecumenical councils were in some ways the means by which they imprisoned and cut away what is valid (according to some presuppositions) to leave only what is sound (according to the presuppositions of the apostles).
It is the opposite of enlighenment carte-blanche thinking, to take a multivariate attack on delusion through reason anchored in a legacy of wisdom. Too bad the schism broke our understanding of this, but it is still preserved in Eastern Orthodoxy.
The differences between East and Rome are very substantive in my mind. The Holy Spirit operates in the Church differently (decentralized vs centralized), and they experience God differently (directly vs indirectly), and they even shape the Trinity differently, not to mention preservation vs development of doctrine.
To me, this means they differ on major categories: corporate, individual, divine, and temporal.
Lay members of these various churches certainly seem to believe there are huge theological differences, which they infer from the differences in day-to-day practices. But if you read the views of most of the high-level clergy and theologians in all these churches (and not the fringe, e.g. not the monks on Mt. Athos, or bishops trying to score political points), the differences are incredibly thin and not at all significant when comparing Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, and Syrian churches to other Christian denominations. The patriarchs of all these churches in particular have been remarkably careful across the centuries, and especially today, to avoid formally committing their churches to views that necessarily prevent union. To be sure there have been many exceptions, but invariably succeeding patriarchs walk them back, it just takes centuries. I get the sense that at any particular time most patriarchs have been amenable to union and willing to make the necessary compromises demanded of the day, but fear conservative factions splitting away, which would be particularly painful for Orthodox and Syrian churches already beset by fragmentation nominally justified by much more minor issues (e.g. Julian calendar).
The biggest sticking points theologically today, from what I gather, arise primarily from 19th century Catholic pronouncements regarding papal infallibility and Mary, specifically the Immaculate Conception and how it relates to Original Sin. Most of the historical disputes (e.g. re miaphysitism, theotokos, unleavened bread, purgatory) have largely fallen away as misunderstandings.
In the case of papal infallibility, all ancient churches admit that the Rome pontiff held supremacy, but there was never agreement on precisely what that meant. The Catholic articulation of papal infallibility offends the synodal view of how doctrine is established, and while many Catholic theologians, including several popes throughout the 20th and 21st century, have publicly explained that popes can only legitimately pronounce what the church, synodally, has already accepted, the precise language used in the formal dogmatic pronouncement is too strictly worded. And it doesn't help that many fringe conservative Catholic theologians are more pro-pope than any pope since the the 19th century and promote this more extreme interpretation.
In the case of the Immaculate Conception, it's not so much that the Catholic view is unacceptable to Orthodox or Orientals, but that the Catholic doctrine is too specific (similar to infallibility) and excludes their alternative framing that beforehand had been understood not to be incompatible with union. Some (all?) the Syrians (Churches of the East), though, seem to accept it, despite not having a tradition rooted in the Augustinian articulation of original sin. And views of the Immaculate Conception among Orthodox and Oriental churches nominally in union with each other differ. (But to be clear, the differences are extremely technical; to most people, including Protestants and especially non-Christians, the varying views of all these churches would be indistinguishable, and theologians themselves often seem to articulate them wrongly, at least compared to how their patriarchs do.)
The Filioque also isn't a theological barrier. The way it's formally understood in Catholicism is not in conflict with accepted Orthodox or Oriental theology, but for various reasons Orthodox see it as an offense to synodality and respect for previous councils' compromises about how far to go in textually articulating the Trinity. I would think most Orthodox theologians see themselves closer theologically to the Oriental churches, but Oriental churches have changed the creed in much more significant ways--IIRC, the Armenian Church added whole new paragraphs. Not that Orthodox theologians are any more willing to overlook these changes, but they certainly don't make much hay about them.
Note that one of the ancient Syrian churches (I always get their names confused) is poised to reunite with the Catholic church. All the doctrinal stuff has long been ironed out, which took about a century, IIRC, from the beginning of earnest dialogue. The sticking point relates to the Catholic church demanding the Syrian church replace their organically evolved clerical disciplines and practices with comprehensive written canonical rules similar to the Catholic church (Latin and Eastern). In truth, the division between the Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, and Syrian churches have always been primarily cultural (lay) and political (clerical), not theological. The theological differences have tended to be exaggerated on all sides in service of political (clerical, state, and social) machinations. The 19th century Catholic dogmatic pronouncements were largely triggered by political and social revolutions in Europe which caused turmoil among Catholics, with subsequent political and cultural backlashes that resulted in the peculiar theological focus that unfolded and overwhelmed the typical ecumenical circumspection of church leaders.)
Theological differences among churches nominally in union with each other are often arguably no less significant than between churches where union is supposedly not possible. And there has often been de facto union. For example, for several periods throughout the centuries the Orthodox and Oriental churches in Egypt de facto placed their churches under the authority of the rival patriarch while they weathered political winds and suppressions, without the feared theological contamination divisive theologians claimed were inevitable, and despite the claimed differences being deemed much greater and more incompatible than they're believed to be today.
I lived with someone who was a Greek Orthodox monk (has a PhD in philosophy and masters in theology) and this is exactly what he says. The actual theological differences are 2 or 3 very specific technicalities that are basically glossed over at the lay level (overshadowed by the cultural/political as you say). Thanks for the great articulation of this stuff.
But consider how each sect defines unity and the criterion for uniting to others. In my mind, to simplify:
Evangelicals: we must agree to a common *subset* of beliefs
Catholics: we must agree to allow contradictory belief systems under the primacy of a single “politically” unifying belief
Orthodox: we must agree to unite under one belief system
The Catholics' willingness tolerating diverse beliefs under a single universal shepherd is key. A return to conciliarism (vs. a single pope), which was already the political system in the Catholic Church historically, at least for a time, could be one path to greater unity. Gets around Protestants' reticence to submit to the Pope and sidesteps the issue of papal infallibility.
> mortality is fundamentally ingrained in not just the human condition, but the fabric of our universe
church fathers say that creation fell because of the fall of man
> Without the finality of death, life seems to lose its meaning. Not only do we need to die, we are compelled to die, we should die
deadlines help. the soul is eternal and there is a deadline for the body
> [Job] somehow reconciles this tragic finality with transcendent faith
he later falls into despair when things get worse, who wouldn’t, but he is made well after he is humbled. this golden moment of humility forges him into a true person, winning him heaven not death
“If you die before you die, then when you die you won’t die.“ Death to the world is the last true rebellion.[1]
> "interpretations"... which are different from what the law literally says.
We have to remember that the letter and spirit of the law can grow apart over time, and loopholes are often gamed before that naturally happens anyway. So obviously we still need judges to keep the "spiritual" aspect of intent alive, so that evil isn't laundered through technicality.
"Literal" should really be a concrete thing, but it does feel strangely connected to a problem that has existed since Sola Scriptura, up to Gödel's theorem. I think about this everytime software and law collide. That article on "what color are your bits"[1] also comes to mind.
Curiously enough, law in the US, which inherits from Common Law, is heavily focused on the interpretation (the case law) in the courts of the written law, as opposed to the written words themselves. This is in contract with civil law, napoleonic law and Japanese law, which places greater importance on the written words themselves.
Not quite; the first attack happened at approximately UNIX time 1000210380, which isn't quite as round as "1 trillion milliseconds". (It was about 2 days after 1e9).
The St Nicholas Orthodox church sat at the base of the Twin Towers, because it was there for 100 years and they wouldn't take the money to rebuild it elsewhere. They probably served their last Divine Liturgy there on Sunday 9/9/01 as a last blessing before it was destroyed that Tuesday.
I was on a break at work reading a lot about 9/11 for some reason. Went back to fix an easy bug where our timestamps were printing wrong dates (milliseconds vs seconds) so I became curious what dates would show up if I added zeros in front of 1, to get a ballpark of where dates are. I freaked out after the ninth zero, you know, being so close to the event I was just reading about.
It mean be polite. If I tell you that libfoo is super secure, accept that as true, continue to listen to the sales pitch, and then in the evening, look at the source for it so you can assert for yourself that it is secure.
Don't derail the whole thing by arguing that libfoo couldn't possibly be secure because x, y, and z, it's about getting to the vendors value proposition and not getting stuck in important but not-right-now details.
One worry I havr about the Catholic faith is that I see a lot of emphasis on miracles, which I think would astonish a lot of atheists and agnostics if they had the interest to look at it, and trust in the sources for those evidence. Hinduism is also known for this, and obviously occult practices and witchcraft is also real. But once you're past the point of incredulity, which I am, I would be interested in learning more about the framework that is used to discern between genuine holiness and deception.
Orthodoxy has a word for deception, "prelest", for example, and there are guidelines to not communicate with or pay attention to apparitions when they appear or to be skeptical of them, and to be mindful of whether the encounter is producing the fruit of repetance and humility, or if it produces pride— as a way of discerning if it is from God or something else. I have an orthodox friend who says thr miracle of Guadalupe which converted Mexico over night was genuine, but recent (relative to the age of the Church) saints displaying stigmata or the eucharist blossoming hear tissue in a test tube are treated with less eagerness. I'm not sure how this compares to the Holy Fire in Jerusalem, which is probably our most famous miracle.
I am also interested in the relationship between reason and trust, which I haven't figured out yet, since in the Christian worldview, reason is fallen, which I think denotes the danger of over-rationalizing the faith at least, but I am astonished by things like thr Christology unearthed by the Ecumenical Councils, which is only really motivated when the Church is forced to answer heresies with the Grace of correct explanations, so I don't quite understand the impulse to proactively crank the engines of reason, so to speak, to systemize things in the way the Latins have done.
This is the Orthodox perspective I've picked up in the past few years, but I am in awe of the feeling of irreducible belief that I think this touches on.