HOLY ORTHODOXY IS NOT ABOUT 
ASSIMILATING OR BEING 
PAPALISM LITE  

©  2004 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 20040924]

     Holy Orthodox Christianity is not about lacking pope, Filioque,* purgatory, "seven sacraments," married priests, unleavened bread, etc.  Nor are the other differences as effective in separating Eastern and Western Christians as our greatly differing thought worlds—paradigms.  By thought world (or, if the reader prefers, outlook, worldview, cognitive framework), one refers to a mindset formed by the set of assumptions and premises that mould how we think.  Because of the conflicting outlooks, words we use in common have conflicting senses.  Many Orthodox are as unknowing about the difference 

between Orthodoxy and Papal Christianity (and the origins of their respective thought worlds) as are Latins and Protestants.  

     One need not repeat what is said on the pages of this website aimed at demythologizing the history of the Western Christian thought world and making clear the history of its divagating from the original Greek-language thought world of the Apostles and the Bible.  There can be no doubt  that when we speak of the Trinity, Eucharist, Baptism, continuity of belief, the canons, many observances in the calendar, and so on, we have conflicting things in mind.  It is of little help when publications by either side list how holy Orthodoxy in unlike, say, Latin Christianity.  Why?  Aside from concentrating on negatives rather than positives, it fails to see the differences in the systems of belief.  In saying this, one means a failure to understand how given tenets are derived from and justified by premises that give meaning to them—premises that differ considerably in East and West.  It doesn't take long to feel that the aura of Western Christianity is quite different from that of a form of Eastern Christianity that has not assimilated to Western ways and the beliefs of the "Latin captivity" of Eastern Christian doctrine (on which, see below).   The ultimate differences in belief can only be systematically understood by understanding the historical origins of the paradigms of three established forms of Christianity--Orthodoxy, Papal Christianity, and Reformation and other kinds of Protestantism, which, despite large differences in specific beliefs and practices, share the same paradigm.  The shapes of the three paradigms are summed up in the following tabulation, reproduced from R299:

     Three of the above paradigms existed during the Apostolic Age and prior to the establishment of the Roman Empire in Constantinople--viz. those in the left-hand column of the foregoing table.  Those is the right column were invented in the Middle Ages, which transformation was in some ways anticipated by the influential Punic-Latin theologian Augustine and his latter-day disciple Anselm.

     Those who have read the Fathers and an unbiased version of Church history will be aware that the West began re-inventing Christianity in a more Semitic (juridical) form from the time of the Punic theologians in the Carthaginian Province in North Africa--Tertullian, Cyprian, and above all Augustine.  They know that, as the seven centuries of barbaric and illiterate Dark Ages (during much of which time Rome was a village) were drawing to an end, the Augustine-influenced Anselm invented a juridicalized theory of Salvation.  Such readers know that a radical paradigm-shift occurred during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries after the end of the Dark Ages--which were in fact ended by what was called "the Muslim Aristotle."  It originated with Muslim and Arabic-speaking Jewish thinkers in Córdova (Spain), for a moment the largest and most modern city in the world up to its time,  There existed at Córdova the most advanced civilization that had ever existed; the Arabs invented algebra and other disciplines.  This civilization was based on ninth-century translations of Greek learning into Arabic by non-Orthodox Christians in Baghdad at the House of Wisdom and subsequently on Arabic-language commentaries (heavily juridicalized because permeated with the Shari'a and Torah) on that learning.  The Muslim Aristotle ended the Teutonic Dark Ages in Western Europe.  If readers know a modicum about the history of human knowledge, they will also recognize that this new paradigm
--imposed a (Semitic) juridical form on (in the Latins' in case) the traditional

Hebraic sacramentalism (the source of Orthodox mystericism from the beginning till now)
--and that an intellect-oriented focus developed among the Thomists, who came to

prevail in the Papal Faith, while the Scotist-Ockhamists (Luther spoke of himself as a "modernist," i.e. an Ockhamist) were focused (like Semitic religions) on the will:  Will was held to be superior to the intellect, something that still prevails in popular Protestantism.  (Love was part of volition for both Western outlooks!)  Even though nearly all popes from 1100 to 1300 were lawyers, the Reformers' theology was even more juridical (Protestants replace juridical with forensic) than the Latins, especial in teachings about Grace and Salvation.

     These innovations created something vastly different from traditional Orthodoxy, whose matter and form remain what they were in the Apostolic Age (read Justin Martyr's Apology to Trypho!).

THE LATIN CAPTIVITY 

     Some centuries after the fall of Constantinople to the Turkish Muslims, the Turks and Turkish Albanians came to dominate the Balkan lands.  Since the Turks forbade the Greeks to publish religious books,  the Greeks sent their prayer books, books of canon law, etc., to Latin Venice for publication.  There the ecclesiastical authorities censored out things the Latins didn't like--the Eighth and Ninth Orthodox Ecumenical Synods and the Saints connected with them as well as later Saints; they even listed seven Mysteries, contrary to the Orthodox tradition; etc.  During five centuries (and in fact down till the present in many quarters), what has passed for Orthodox doctrine has really been "Papalism lite" in a more exact sense than you might think--immortal soul, original sin (and with it a special exemption for the immaculate conception of God's Mother),  Jesus (not the Old Testament YHWH), death as a divine punishment for sin (and, with it, a problem for the death of the Theotókos) and other heretical beliefs found their way into writings on Eastern belief.  Canonical icons do not show Christ suffering but only in a state of repose; there are no canonical icons portraying the most High God, the Father, or the all-holy Trinity.  After Peter the Great (Russian Tsar), Jesuit influence became so insinuated into the Slavic lands and Balkan nations like Romania that many former Orthodox groups (those of the Unia) submitted to the Papacy.  Don't believe what you read if it originated under the Latin Captivity!

CLICK R306 ON THE NECESSITY OF A PARADIGM-
SHIFT TO BECOME ORTHDOX

A paradigm (ideology, cognitive framework, outlook) is
a set of axioms about reality and (in this case) religion 
that fence in what can be accepted as right or true and
 fence out what cannot be accepted as right or true.
The axioms are usually not consciously adopted or
embraced and are therefore the more insidious.

THE NATURE OF IRRESOLUBLE CONTRADICTIONS IN WESTERN THEOLOGY
(WHOSE SOURCES ARE ABSENT IN PATRISTIC EASTERN ORTHODOXY)

     1. If essence and nature/energy are not separate (as is the case in Western thinking), and if God's uncreated Essence is imparticipable (as all theologians believe), the the only way to understand 1 Pet. 1:4 is virtually--intellectually (the Latins) or volitionally/covenantally (the Protestant Reformers).
     2. If Grace is not energy (as is the case in the West), let alone uncreated Energy (God's Life), the Grace and works can never be reconciled.  If 2 Philp. 2:12-13 is read in Greek and in an Eastern framework, there is no contradiction--only the complementarity of a prime Cause and a conditional cause.  
    3. If sinning is due to a bad intention (mind-guided volition), and if the Fall and its reversal are not ontological (as they are in Eastern Christianity), there is no way to say that an infant inherits Adam's guilt or sin or can share in Christ's merits except imputationally (by will, i.e virtually).   The whole Western idea of inherited guilt is silly and irresoluble.  'Tis no wonder that Western Christians give up on doctrine!  God would be the Cause of Evil if He imputed sin to innocent babes or if, acting unnaturally (i.e. against the natures He had created--the non-juridical definition of sin) He imposed death as a punishment on them (either while still young and sinless or even later) . . . rather than letting satan impose death so that no one would sin perpetually.
    4. If it is assumed that Jesus Christ is not the Old Testament YHWH (despite Luke 1:43 and Jesus's own words in John 8:58 echoing Exod. 3:14), then who was it that appeared in the cool of the evening in the Garden of Eden, who appeared in the burning fiery furnace that the three Youths were thrown into, etc., etc.?

The Protestants endure many additional conundrums like their "literal" interpretations of John 6:53-54 in ways that are the opposite of what is literally literal!

ASSIMILATION AND SYNCRETISM

    Assimilation (more of a Western Captivity today than simply a "Latin" Captivity) has arguably been worst in the English-speaking lands.  There is a historical reason for this.  Immigrants who were not native-speakers of English, including the first Orthodox theologians in the English-speaking world, had little choice but simply to opt for whatever Latin or Protestant term was at hand (cf. R297), even though the borrowed terminology--and the mistranslations of the energy terminology  (see e.g. R75 and, on 'omoíosis in Gen. 1:26, R297)--have distorted the import of the Orthodox terms that they have been intended to calque.  This has created a non-Orthodox phrónema ("outlook, mind set"), a watered-down Western Catholicism, instead of the intended Orthodox thought world..  Since such English terminology carries the connotations of non-Orthodox paradigms, it does violence to Orthodoxy.   The early non-native-speaking writers are not to blame; the blame falls on the native-speakers who should know better than to perpetuate distorting terminology.  Among the assimilations has been the new calendar, not the least destructive of assimilations, pretending that Santa Claus Day and all of its paganisms is the Orthodox Birthday of the LOGOS or Reason (and Wisdom) of God!

    Orthodoxy will never appeal to Western Christians looking for something different if it fails to come across as something different.  Terminology, calendar, etc. are all part of an assimilatory capitulation that is bound to prove deleterious when people of East-European and West-Asian ancestry final lose a strong attachment to ethnic origins--exactly as has happened with the Irish, Italian, and German Papalists and German and Scandanavian Lutherans. 

     Pray that the Holy Spirit will not let ill-advised assimilatings blot out Orthodoxy in English-speaking lands!
____________________________________________________

     *The Latin word that the Roman Catholics added to the Orthodox Creed; it means "and [from] the Son" and refers to the procession of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity.    See R140.

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