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To: kosta50; sionnsar; Agrarian; Kolokotronis; gbcdoj; Hermann the Cherusker

Kosta, you ought to read this passage from the article again:

"More to the point here, though, it has made intelligent interpretations of Western Christian theology (which are so very necessary) apparently almost impossible for Orthodox thinkers. Neo-patristic Orthodox scholarship has usually gone hand in hand with some of the most excruciatingly inaccurate treatments of Western theologians that one could imagine—which, quite apart form the harm they do to the collective acuity of Orthodox Christians, can become a source of considerable embarrassment when they fall into the hands of Western scholars who actually know something of the figures that Orthodox scholars choose to caluminiate. When one repairs to modern Orthodox texts, one is almost certain to encounter some wild mischaracterization of one or another Western author; and four figures enjoy a special eminence in Orthodox polemics: Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John of the Cross."

His point is perfectly illustrated by the commentary you have posted e.g.:

"The "God" of the West is an offended and angry God, full of wrath for the disobedience of men, who desires in His destructive passion to torment all humanity unto eternity for their sins, unless He receives an infinite satisfaction for His offended pride.

What is salvation for Western theology? Is it not salvation from the wrath of God?...Do you see, then, that Western theology teaches that our real danger and our real enemy is our Creator and God? Salvation, for Westerners, is to be saved from the hands of God!"

This nonsense is so off the wall that there are probably no Protestants or Catholics that would recognize this as bearing any resemblance whatsoever to "Western theology". It is a gross misrepresentation of St. Augustine and all the Western fathers, and it comes across, from our perspective, as something at the level of a Jack Chick comic.

If this is where you guys get your information on Western theology then no wonder we are incomprehensible to you. If you really want to understand what the West believes then I recommend that you read the Fathers and the Saints in their own words and not have them filtered for you by someone who seems to be writing from a basis of ethnic bigotry rather than rational objectivity.


19 posted on 06/11/2005 5:10:41 PM PDT by Tantumergo
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To: Tantumergo
If this is where you guys get your information on Western theology then no wonder we are incomprehensible to you

Do you not believe, teach and state that God deprived humanity of His Grace? That we are born without Grace because God punished our ancestral parents?

If you do, then our theologies are reversed from the start.

Do you not believe, teach and state that our sins can be "paid off" with indulgencies, and that the departed souls in the Purgatory are subject to physical pain that lasts until God is satisfied?

Is the Immaculate Conception dogma not based on the concept of our "original sin" and God's "punishment" of death?

The entire concept of an angry God is wholly a western product that has no place in the East. This has nothing to do with "ethnic bigotry" but by opposite and incomprehensible foundations of theology that started with Saint Augustine and his rather disturbed life.

21 posted on 06/11/2005 5:38:02 PM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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