Faking History

Good points.
I don't think it's an amount of effort, but a quality of effort. Seek the Lord with all your heart. "How much" faith does a mustard seed have? No, it simply is going to become a mustard plant.

"However, there comes a point of internalization, when one realizes, aha!, God has specific intentions concerning my life and I have an individual call to respond from the heart."

We call this "metanoia", when we become totally changed such that our focus shifts from ourselves to God. This may be the conscious beginning of the process of theosis. As you may know, Orthodoxy does not accept Blessed Augustine's concept of Original Sin nor its Protestant expression of the utter depravity of the unbaptized soul. Thus, Orthodoxy holds that there subsists in the soul of every fallen human ever so much of a "spark" of our pre Fall state that yearns for God. It is that "spark" which responds, cooperates, very individually, to the first call of God's grace in baptism.

"Catholics and Orthodox disagree about the way in which the Father, the Son, the Liturgy, etc. interact, as well"

We have thought for about 1000 years that we disagree on the "internal dynamics" of the Trinity and indeed we might, but its beginning to appear that the filioque controversy may have its origins in a failure of Latin to speak clearly about a concept which was defined in Greek. I am unaware of any differences between Rome and the East on what is going on in the Liturgy, but I will say that transubstantiation seems to be a particularly inadequate, because it is human thought, way to describe or explain the great Mystery of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Tell me, do you believe that the average person, you, me, the rest of us here on FR and not spiritual super athletes like holy hermits, can be saved, or attain theosis, outside the boundaries of the visible Church on earth. When I use the term Church here, I am meaning, for the purposes of this question, any organized collection of Trinitarian Christians?

" I don't think it's an amount of effort, but a quality of effort. Seek the Lord with all your heart."

...with ALL your heart. You see, that's the part that takes such effort. Imagine really being able to die to the self, to lose all human passions and focus your entire being on God. In the 6th century, a holy monastic by the name of John Moschos wrote a book about his travels around the Mediterranean littoral to various monasteries and hermitages of the Middle East. In it he tells of meeting hermits or hearing about hermits who had so died to the self that they appeared almost wraith-like. Now I have no idea if these stories are true (he says they are) but I certainly have no reason to doubt their veracity since it seems to me reasonable that this is precisely what someone in a very advanced state of theosis would look like. Moschos always remarks how long these people had been alone in their with God and demons and themselves and what ascetical practices they had engaged in to arrive at this point. I seems to me that the effort is very great and becomes greater, the higher up the Ladder we go. But none of this can be accomplished, not the tiniest first step, without grace. I wish I knew what this means for all the rest of us.

I don't know quite how to phase a single, general answer but, I sense a dynamic among a few half-answers:
It cannot be sought after in any other body.
God seeks unity in the Church.
An aversion to brotherly communion is ... a bad sign.
We are predestined to "be conformed to the likeness of the Son" and no geographical separation can thwart God's will. (Oops, we just lost any Calvinist lurkers;)

" An aversion to brotherly communion is ... a bad sign."

This response is why I phrased the question the way I did, purposely staying away from a definition of the Church which would make any distinctions among Christians in the sense of who is in communion with whom. But in fairness, and recognizing that both Rome and Orthodoxy hold to the position that there is no salvation outside the Church (by the way, that may not mean what it appears to mean), it must be said that this particular concept of communion is very important to determining who is Orthodox, who is Roman Catholic and who is not. Intercommunion, sharing the communion cup at the Divine Liturgy, for the Orthodox at least, is the ultimate expression of unity of Faith and praxis. In part this arises out of our understanding of the nature of the Eucharist (Real Presence), but also because it is in fact the Eucharist around which our communities exist. because it is a symbol of unity of the community, intercommunion with anyone who is not Orthodox, including the Romans, for us would be hypocrisy, because it would pretend to a unity of Faith and praxis which in fact does not exist. The Romans, as I understand it and dsc please correct me if I am wrong, take a rather broader view and would, for example, allow me to receive communion from one of their priests. This is because Rome focuses more on the validity of the sacraments and less on the symbolism of them in this regard than we do. This difference in mindset is indicative of the different ways by which Rome and the Orthodox East approach the Faith. None of what I have said, however, should be taken to mean that Orthodoxy does not believe that there is grace in other confessions of Christianity. Absolutely Orthodoxy does. Indeed, because all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, Orthodoxy believes that at some level, God's grace exists in all people. Christian or otherwise. What that means in terms of salvation is a matter for God.

Jesus says "Take and eat. This is my body." The command is given to the recipient. So, those who eat and believe confirm their common belief (that the breaking of Jesus' body is "for us") and benefit. I hope you don't think this flippant. For me, the simplicity of the meal indicates the straightforwardness of the Gospel. Whatever we may think of ourselves, God sees us as in need of one, single thing - Him.

P. S. I don't think dsc is back online yet.

Oh, I don't think what you have written is in the least bit flippant. Christ said exactly what you have posted. But to the extent that a Christian does not believe in the Real Presence in the Eucharist, that is to say that the bread and wine are truly the Body and Blood of Christ, then that Christian does not hold the same Faith that Romans and Orthodox hold.

This is what the Church has always taught. For example, St. Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of the Apostle John, writes around A.D. 106 that "the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father in His goodness raised" (Epistle to the Smyrneans 6:2); and Justin Martyr wrote in 130, "We do not receive these as common bread or common drink. But just as our Saviour Jesus Christ was made flesh through the Word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food which has been eucharistized by the word of prayer from Him . . . is the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus" (First Apology, 66:2). The Fathers consistently held this belief, as you can see, from the earliest days. +Ignatius of Antioch was appointed bishop of Antioch by St. Peter and was a disciple of St. John. The Fathers said these things and testified to the belief of the Church based upon scripture, particularly St. John: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats (literally nibbles at or munches on) my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him" (John 6:53-56. The Greek, by the way, belies any implication that he was speaking metaphorically.

All Christians hold a multitude of beliefs in common, but on some of the most fundamental, there are great differences. Intercommunion pretends otherwise in an understandable, but ultimately fallacious, effort to find or by fellowship create a Church unanimity of belief which should, but does not exist. Now of course there are Christian confessions which allow precisely this sort of latitude. There are those who argue that the Anglican Church is an example of this, but it most certainly is not the position of Orthodoxy. What spiritual profit is there to any of us in proclaiming something which simply isn't true, assuming that the proclamation itself is important to us. recognizing that we have differing theological views need not, indeed should not, be an exercise in judgmentalism. We are commanded to love one another, and that commandment is not limited to people we are in communion with.

When some group declares an "official" ecumenical Eucharist, BIG red flags go off with me. On the other hand, if the Spirit leads, I would not forbid someone of a trinitarian denomination from joining in.

"When some group declares an "official" ecumenical Eucharist, BIG red flags go off with me."

Yes. Red would be the appropriate color! :)

"On the other hand, if the Spirit leads, I would not forbid someone of a trinitarian denomination from joining in."

Thankfully, that decision would never be up to the likes of me!

Most of the Catholic doctrines I reject did not exist in the first millenium. They were inserted later, starting in ernest with Gregory.

Try actually reading the Early Church Fathers. It's a real eye-opener into what Prots think are historical Christian beliefs.

Sophie Guichard, film critic for France Soir, said: "How can one not be shocked by this portrait of the typical revolutionary? How can one forget that this period also gave birth to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, from which we still benefit? The film lacks all balance."

From Operation Parracide: Sade, Robespierre & the French Revolution (E. von Kuehnelt-Leddihn):

ANYTHING POSITIVE?

Did the French Revolution leave anything positive to posterity? Only the metric system, which admittedly grew out of the democratic predilection for eternal measuring and counting. What about then the Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen? It was a purely anthropocentric document, a typically declamatory product of the first Enlightenment, which was conceived in 1789 and finally engrafted into the constitution of the Sadist-Republic in 1793. In the schoolbooks one reads about the period of the terror, "Le Terreur était terrible mais grande!" Even with all that a good number of moderates came under the blade too. Historically they had it coming because they hadn't considered what happened when one destroyed the old order. Charlotte Corday d'Armont, an enthusiastic Girondist, murdered the bloodthirsty Marat and was executed; Andre de Chenier, the great liberal lyric poet, died on the scaffold; the Marquis de Condorcet, chief ideologue of the "moderates," committed suicide in order to escape the chére mère. Madame Roland de la Planière, also a Girondist, exclaimed from where she was to be executed, "Oh liberty, what crimes are committed in your name. (Metternich on the other hand comments in the face of such flourishing "fraternity" that if he had a brother he would now just as soon call him a cousin.) Especially tragic was the fate of Chrétien de Malesherbes, a highly enlightened Liberal who remained true to the king. He defended Louis XVI and had to stand by and watch as his daughter, his son-in-law, and his grandchildren were decapitated before the guillotine brought an end to his own despair.

One shouldn't forget that much of what may appear positive to us today - liberality, intellectuality, humanitarianism - had all been already brought to us by the liberal, courtly absolutism, while the French Revolution which used all these words in reality did nothing more than brutally extinguish them. One is reminded of the reaction of Caffinhals, who replied to the uproar created by the defenders of Lavoisier, who cried, "You are condemning a great learned man to death," by saying, "The Revolution has no need of learned men." The good man was right; since the French Revolution only quantities, ciphers and numbers, have any value. The speech of the elite is hardly tolerated anymore.

From an intellectual point of view, the French Revolution was a conglomeration of un-thought out but fanatically believed inconsistencies, but it showed clearly, as so many other revolutions have, the true character of the great majority of the Genus Humanum.

In the French Revolution the scum of France succumbed to blood lust and opened the door to evil. In our day of electronic stultification, it's a sure bet that now, 200 hundred years later, this monstrosity will be the focus of orgiastic celebrations. The average man always clings despairingly to cliches. If one takes them away from him, he has to do his own research, his own thinking and deciding and has to begin anew. One can't really expect this sort of elitist behavior from such poor folks. Those whom the gods would destroy, they first rob of their reason.

Bookmarked. Thanks. Sounds to me like the mass apostasy that Scripture warned about.

Thank you for posting the article. Looks like it's about time I paid for a subscription to Christain Order.