Kosta: The Orthodox Church did not practice selling indulgences, and disagreed with the Latin Church on issue of theology, yet we never changed the Apostolic theology to "reform" the Church.
FK: How could you have? You were a million miles away and did not speak the language.
What I meant to say is that the Greek side did not change theology simply because it associated abuses of power/praxis with erroneous theology. Remember, we Orthodox believe that the Latins changed theology and this resulted in the Schism. The same happened with Luther & Co. They reinterpreted Paul and started teaching a different faith and left the Catholic Church.
Today we realize that Latins, coming from a different mindset, by necessity formulate theology differently from us and by necessity reach different doctrinal definitions. But when we look at those definitions from their mindset, of phronema as we like to call it, we see that what they believe is not as different as it seems.
My point then was to draw a parallel: just as the Orthodox believed that kneeling on Sundays (prohibited by the 1st Ecumenical Council), use of a wafer instead of regular bread, fasting on Sundays, etc. were abuses of praxis, the Orthodox Church did not go out of its way to reinterpret and, indeed, reject the apostolic authority and sacramental nature of the Church as the Reformers did when they created a different religion.
In fact, despite the 1,000-year-old Schism the two particular Apostolic Churches remain amazingly unchanged and in 99% of the cases in theological agreement. That's because the Church both east and West relied on patristic teachings of the earliest fathers, always reverting back to the mindset of the earliest Church, rather than venture into private and individual interpretations of the Bible.
Actually, I wasn't certain whether the view was change in theology or simple mistake. (Maybe there's no difference.) Of course, there can be no doubt that the Reformers broke away theologically. It remains a matter of great contention whether the Reformers reinterpreted Paul back to the original or invented something new.
I would agree that it is not necessarily intuitive that the Apostolics got it "so wrong" so fast, but we do have two things. First is AG's point that many documents were destroyed early on, so who can say for sure? Second, we have all the examples from the OT. It happened over and over again that immediately after God set the ship straight that the Israelites quickly steered it off course again. It is possible that the same thing happened to the Apostolic wing of the Christian Church.