Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
The problem of losing the past is that we create our own narrative. Surely the EO narrative is warped.
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I was not suggesting that the EO is warped or inferior. I might have issues with its doctrine and orthopraxy, but I do not deny it as being church.
And I was not suggesting that the connection to the past is irrelevant. In fact, I think that I at least hinted that the Protestant tradition has been somewhat lacking due to its almost wholesale jettison of anything that smacks of EO or RCC. There is a serious loss in that position.
What would you think of a church that had no serious hierarchy (maybe some hierarchy, but no Pope or magisterium), no worship of saints or Mary, no bread that turns into the actual body of Christ and has to be locked away at the end of communion to keep people from stealing some and taking it home to heal people. But in all other ways it looked like the RCC with a twist — it believed in justification by faith, open communion, and a few of our evangelical fundamentals (without the funnymentalism and dogma that too often comes along with it). That sang ancients hymns, more recent hymns, and modern songs of worship. That still had a lot of liturgy.
Quite a mixed-up thing. Right? But might this be what we could have had if the RCC had not simply fought Luther?
Could you worship in that? Or is the need to jettison forms and traditions the new tradition? Or do we need to do it the way we think that the earliest churches did it?
You misunderstand my points. I am not dissing the EO. I am dissing the ideas in it that make it think of itself as superior to all others. To relinquish the hollow claim of being first. There is no first. There is only now. There is no right assembly of believers, only assembly of believers.
I am not suggesting that we simply ignore our thoughts of what is the better way and refrain from choosing on that basis. But how we view those who disagree needs to change. We need to see Christ and not EO, RCC, Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed/Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, CofC, AOG, Bible churches, Acts 29, or whatever free groups or associations there are.