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To: kosta50; Forest Keeper; kawaii; annalex; Quix

FK, what kosta has written at #597 is right on the money. The only thing I would add is our Orthopraxis, which is the dogma and doctrine in action. It expresses in our liturgies, devotions, prayer and daily lives the dogmas and doctrines of The Church. The actual forms of these things can, to a small degree, change, for example fasting practices have changed a number of times throughout history as have the liturgies around the edges; at one point in time there were canons which forbade Christians from going to a Jewish doctor or riding in public conveyances with Jews but these are no longer even remotely viable.

The only other thing I would say is that Orthodoxy does not define things to the extent the Latin Church, or the West in general I suppose, does. We don't have a specific corpus of canon law, for example, the way the Latin Church does. For this reason Orthodoxy often looks rather "loosey-goosey" to Western Christian eyes, but in fact we tend to be rather more firm on dogma, doctrine and praxis across all elements of The Church than even the Latin Church is.


603 posted on 03/15/2007 8:17:58 AM PDT by Kolokotronis (Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!)
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To: Kolokotronis; kosta50; Forest Keeper; kawaii; Quix
what kosta has written at #597 is right on the money

I concur with both 597 and 603. "Orthopraxis" is probably similar to the Catholic "disciplines".

One significant difference -- not a contradiction, but a difference -- between Orthodoxy and Catholicism is that on one hand, as Kolokotronis described, we Catholics tend to be very analytical in the scholastic tradition as regards theology, and that is foreign to the Orthodoxy, as scholasticism developed in the West following the separation of 1054. On the other hand, again, as Kolokotronis described, we are looser on the disciplinary side of things. On that latter point I want to elaborate:

All Catholic Churches are in full communion with Rome, which means full doctrinal agreement.

On the other hand, the Orthodox have a singificant variance as regards the calendar -- old style or new style. I also heard that some Orthodox churches have pews, hard as it is to believe such a thing.

625 posted on 03/15/2007 9:45:08 AM PDT by annalex
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To: Kolokotronis; Forest Keeper; kawaii; annalex; Quix
The only thing I would add is our Orthopraxis, which is the dogma and doctrine in action

Correct. In other words, dogma, doctrine, lirugical services and life of the Church is what was believed everywhere and always (Holy Tradition), minor disciplines nothwithstanding (as you mentioned with fasting and visavis Jews); integrated, interrelated, inseparable. One living, breathing Organism (not organization), the Body of Christ.

637 posted on 03/15/2007 10:59:33 AM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: Kolokotronis; kosta50; kawaii; annalex; Quix
... at one point in time there were canons which forbade Christians from going to a Jewish doctor or riding in public conveyances with Jews but these are no longer even remotely viable.

Thanks for the additional info. This answers a question I was going to ask Kosta about "expanding" doctrine. It would seem that being allowed to go to a Jewish doctor after being forbidden to do so is more like an opposite move than an expanding one. But, I can imagine that there was no dogma about it either way before, so it can be said that either position is not in contradiction to any dogma.

763 posted on 03/16/2007 9:13:40 AM PDT by Forest Keeper
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