Posted on 04/09/2015 5:11:32 PM PDT by NRx
As Greek-Orthodox Christians prepare to celebrate Easter on Sunday,April 12th, we would like to shed some light on the reasons why the Orthodox Christian Church celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ later than the Catholic one. While the issue is somewhat complicated, it may be summarized in the two factors at work that cause this conflict in dates:
1) The issue of the calendar; and 2) the adherence by the Orthodox to the early practices of the Christian Church.
The first factor, the calendar, has to do with the fact that the Christian Orthodox Church continues to follow the Julian calendar when calculating the date of Pascha (Easter). The rest of Christianity uses the Gregorian calendar. There is a thirteen-day difference between the two calendars, the Julian calendar being thirteen (13) days behind the Gregorian.
The other factor at work is that the Orthodox Church continues to adhere to the rule set forth by the First Ecumenical Council, held in Nicea in 325 AD, that requires that Pascha must take place after the Jewish Passover in order to maintain the Biblical sequence of Christ’s Passion. The rest of Christianity ignores this requirement, which means that on occasion Western Easter takes place either before or during the Jewish Passover.
(Excerpt) Read more at usa.greekreporter.com ...
It’s because the Church is the whore of Babylon. Just ask any protestant.
Really? Is it absolutely necessary to reduce every post in the Religion Forum to a Prot/Cath food fight? Your comment is inappropriate, to put it mildly.
Accurate nonetheless.
No it’s not. It is ignorant. Almost without exception Protestants follow the Roman Catholic system for dating Easter. Which fact you might have deduced if you had paused to think for just two seconds before attempting to hijack a completely unrelated thread and turn it into a Prot/Cath flame war.
Any Christian in any church who observes Easter is acknowledging and obeying the authority of the Roman Emperor Constantine to establish an observance that is NOT in the Bible.
But that doesn’t stop people from thinking it is in the Bible and that they must observe it today.
If Obama moved Xmas to Kwanzaa and imposed the death penalty for still observing Xmas would you start observing Kwanzaa?
Gratuitously insulting. Knock it off.
I don’t usually pay attention to these things, but is it by chance a full moon tonight?
Shhh...
Protestants don’t want to know they set their work and worship ( so do Jews, Muslims, secular humanists, atheists, etc) with Roman calendars named either after Julius Caesar or Pope Gregory..
Almost like the fact that Daniel predicted something out of the 4th Kingdom. (1. Babylon, 2. Medes/Persia, 3. Greece, 4! ROME)
Would think to change TIMES and laws..
If I didn’t study His Creation and calendar He placed in His sky, confirmed in His Word, I would call today Thor’s day like all the Roman slaves..
Praise God , I know today is His 4th work day, a day He made those signs in the heavens for signs and appointed times and days and years so we would could count and not rely on Babylon to tell us what day it is..
Imagine the shock if people saw Jews observed passover a day earlier (13th day) then they did last year because it would have conflicted with their pope appointed sabbath day..
The folks who observed a Monday Resurrection this year were right on the money..
And in 2014, they were off because ‘easter Sunday’ would have been a Wednesday with the Jews Passover on a Monday.
That is if one accepts the death, burial and resurrection third day gospel that Paul taught with Passover, unleavened bread and first fruits..
That is completely different than good Friday, holy satuns day and Easter Suns day..
But Catholics and Protestants share the same Roman gospel story that is according to the catholic catechism and not according to scripture..
What a punch in the gut it was for this protestant to have that revealed.. kind of like my faith was in Rome, not His Word..
Ouch!
Sorry, but the observation of Easter is much older than you seem to suggest and you have flipped the roles of those who affected how we celebrate it. At the First Council of Nicaea the fathers discussed the feast and disagreements regarding its dating clearly demonstrating it was already ancient at that time. Constantine had nothing to do with it, the Church did.
Very good explanation is at the followoing (sorry, but I am html challenged): http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/roadsfromemmaus/2015/03/31/no-pascha-does-not-have-to-be-after-passover-and-other-orthodox-urban-legends/
Happy Pascha, everyone!
You appear to be making a compelling argument for why a handful of local churches should not have arbitrarily taken it upon themselves to tinker with the calendar back in 1923.
Looking to “fathers” who lived over 200 years after Jesus conveyed the faith in pure form to the Apostles is like looking to the writings of Justice Ginsburg for guidance on the Constitution.
The Apostle Paul did not warn about the “faith once delivered” for nothing. I and many like me, follow that faith, not some different faith that came centuries later by the hand of secular authority.
Speaking of which, what you omit in with the claim that Constantine had nothing to do with their decision was that the Council’s decision was enforced upon pain of death, and the secular authorities were more than happy to enforce it for the Church. Without that assistance, the Church would have been powerless to impose Easter on Christians (like myself) who found that the Apostles observed Passover. “Easter” not even being in the Scriptures was a totally foreign concept. Where that word appears in the King James, the Greek word is properly “Passover”.
Of the major features on the Christian “liturgical” calendar, Xmas and Easter are by far so well documented and easy to understand as both pagan and syncretic that even a junior high school student can find the truth.
Since there wasn’t even a general consensus on what books were properly to be considered as scriptural until the 3rd century (unless you want to throw your support to Marcion’s canon) I think you are treading on theologically thin ice.
You are correct. Jesus and the Apostles observed Passover. They also observed the Hebrew Sabbath. And the pre-trib rapture theory started around 1830 (John Nelson Darby).
“Any Christian in any church who observes Easter is acknowledging and obeying the authority of the Roman Emperor Constantine to establish an observance that is NOT in the Bible.”
Not even a little. Nobody has the exact date. People are observing the deeper meaning of what happened. NOt paying homage to whoever chose what date each year we use to remember it.
“Protestants don’t want to know they set their work and worship ( so do Jews, Muslims, secular humanists, atheists, etc) with Roman calendars named either after Julius Caesar or Pope Gregory..”
Play your silly games all you want. No protestant claims that every word ever spoken by a catholic or pope is wrong. That’s just a straw man.
The thread had an interesting question, why does the east celebrate it differently that the west?
A second question is,,, why do you think the date chosen matters?
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