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To: MarMema
In the long run, as an Orthodox priest told me recently, it is best to stay with Holy Scripture. The church canons and Holy Fathers are part of our Tradition in the church, but they are not laws.

This seems to me an abandonment of Holy Tradition, of which Scripture is a part. What all the Fathers taught in their works on a given subject and in the Ecumenical and Local Councils is what our received Holy Orthodox Catholic Faith is.

Homoousion, as a famous example, is not in the Scriptures, and some objected to it on that account. The Church decided otherwise.

One of the great problems facing the Church is the growth of doctrine which was not part of the revealed faith of the Church.

What is the "revealed faith of the Church", and who determines it in Eastern Orthodoxy? Roman Catholicism would say the Bible and Holy Tradition, and it is determined by unaninmous support among the Fathers, and the teaching of the Church.

95 posted on 07/07/2003 8:42:08 PM PDT by Hermann the Cherusker (Holy Mother of God, save us.)
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
canons

"Taken by themselves, the canon laws of the Church can be misleading and frustrating, and therefore superficial people will say "either enforce them all or discard them completely." But taken as a whole within the wholeness of Orthodox life -- theological, historical, canonical, and spiritual --- these canons do assume their proper place and purpose and show themselves to be a rich source for discovering the living Truth of God in the Church. In viewing the canons of the Church, the key factors are Christian knowledge and wisdom which are borne from technical study and spiritual depth. There is no other "key" to their usage; and any other way would be according to the Orthodox faith both unorthodox and unchristian."

97 posted on 07/07/2003 8:46:16 PM PDT by MarMema
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To: Hermann the Cherusker
"A theology that is based on intellectual constructs and not on direct experience of God is philosophy and not theology. It is a human creation that offers neither real knowledge of God nor peace to the heart."
Saint Gregory Palamas

"The really important implication of this attitude concerns the very important notion of Truth, which is conceived, by the Byzantines, not as a concept which can be expressed adequately in words or developed rationally, but as God Himself--personally present and met in the Church in His very personal identity. Not Scripture, not conciliar definition, not theology can express Him fully; each can only point to some aspects of His existence, or exclude wrong interpretations of His beings or acts. No human language, however, is fully adequate to Truth itself, nor can it exhaust it ... This is the authentic message maintained most explicitly by the Byzantine "mystical" tradition of Maximus the Confessor, Symeon the New Theologian, and Gregory Palamas."
John Meyendorff

"Doctrine is not grasped by the mind alone, but a mind and a heart in communion with God. In this union, one is changed not primarily by what one knows, but by Who one knows. Theology was never intended to answer the unbeliever's questions. It was meant to lead the one with an open spirit into a meeting with God."

"The Orthodox understanding of authority through freedom and love takes shape in the concept of reception. A council is not authoritative in and of itself, but only as it is received. A council is the supreme authority in faith, not because it has juridical power, but because it has charismatic authority which has withstood the test of reception over time. Councils do not have automatic infallibility. It is the church which affirms the council. “Truth in the church does not depend upon any infallible institution but is an experience always available in the communion of the Church..."

All of these quotes are from my fr webpage/links found there, on which you can find more reading material. We are not western Christians, we are eastern.

You can learn much during the liturgy that cannot be expressed in words, but it is a type of knowledge that is far more important than the types you are discussing here. Eastern Christianity is experiential.

99 posted on 07/07/2003 8:54:54 PM PDT by MarMema
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