Posts Tagged religion
Christian Traditions: Western Latin and Eastern Orthodox
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts on March 2, 2013
I speak alot about the two different Christian Traditions: The Western Latin tradition and the Eastern Orthodox tradition. I thought I might devote a post to explaining what these are, so that I don’t confuse anybody into thinking that the former is some New Age philosophy or the latter is some Eastern Oriental religion (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism). The Western Latin tradition and Eastern Orthodox tradition come from the same root: Pentecost ca. AD 33. The early Christian Church was united and had five traditional centers or co-equal Patriarchies; Jerusalem, Alexandria (Egypt), Antioch (Syria), Constantinople (Byzantium), and Rome (Rome laid claim as “first among equals”). So, there was really one Christian Church for more than 1,000 years, half of its history.
The Church split into two parts in the Great Schism of 1054; the Western Latin Church controlled by Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church loosely led by Constantinople (with Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria). Because the Western Church used Latin as its liturgical language and the Eastern Church used Greek, the two traditions are sometimes still referred to as the Latin and Greek churches, respectively.
A little on the Great Schism: The Western Latin Church started to develop its own theology under the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo (in North Africa) at the beginning of the 5th century, just as the Western Roman Empire fell to the Visigoths (AD 410) and, later, to the Franks and Lombards. Remember, the Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople, did not fall for another 1,000 years (1453). The Western Latin Church and its Roman Papacy were significantly influenced by the occupying Germanic tribes who enthusiastically embraced Augustinian theology. That drove a wedge in the Church, as the Eastern Orthodox never took Augustine’s theology very seriously. Turn the clock forward through 500 years of political and theological acrimony and disagreement and you have the Great Schism of 1054.
So, when I use the term Western Latin Christianity or tradition, I mean the Roman Catholic Church and later spin-off (1500’s) Protestantism (geographically roughly Western/Northern Europe and North America).
When I use the term Eastern Orthodox Christianity or tradition, I mean the Eastern Christian church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church (geographically roughly Eastern Europe/Russia, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East). These are the churches of St. Paul.
It’s important to keep in mind that for more than half its history, the Christian Church was one and undivided. We in the Western Latin tradtion tend to forget or overlook this fact.
Greek Experience vs. Latin Concept in Theology
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, New Nuggets, Patristic Pearls, Theology on February 4, 2013
I support the notion that Christianity is about experiencing an intimate personal relationship with God. Proper theology is about how we experience that relationship from God to us. Classically, Greek Eastern (Orthodox) theology has been largely based on the experience of God’ relationship to man. The theology of the Latin West (Roman Catholic and Protestant), at least since the days of St. Augustine, has been largely based on philosophical speculation of man’s relationship to God.
For example, let’s contrast these two different approaches as they apply to Trinitarian doctrine. According to Orthodox theologian Fr. John Meyendorff, in the Eastern Greek tradition, “the incarnate Logos and the Holy Spirit are met and experienced first as divine agents of salvation, and only then are they discovered to be essentially one God.” In contrast, 19th century Jesuit theologian Fr. Theodore de Regnon stated, “Latin philosophy considers the nature in itself first and proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy considers the agent first and passes through it to find the nature. The Latins think of personality as a mode of nature; the Greeks think of nature as the content of the person”.
The Latin approach is based on philosophical concept from man’s view of God. The Greek approach is based on how we experience God’s Biblical relationship to man.
Proper Christian Theology is always Top-down and Relational
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Theology on December 30, 2012
Everything in proper Christianity is experiential; it is based on relationship. Take some examples: The immanent presence of spermatikos logos, the Son, within us, giving our minds the reason and order to recognize the existence of God and his moral will; the Incarnation of the Logos, God becoming flesh and dwelling among us in the person of Jesus was so that we would have a concrete living person that we could relate to and love as the human exemplar of God; the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was so that each of us could have a direct personal relationship with God in the Church Age, after Jesus’ resurrection.
Proper theology is always, always top-down; about God’s relationship to man. That is so our theology is always based on how man, the creation, experiences relationship with his loving Creator, God. When theology is done backwards, bottom-up, based on man’s ideas of God, you end up with a God that is an extrapolation of man, an anthropomorphized super-human God; and that is the error of Western Latin theology.
Union with God, theosis, is the goal of all proper theology and religion. In Eastern Orthodox theology, deification (theosis) is both a transformative process as well as the goal of that process; the attainment of likeness to or union with a loving God. Likeness and union are terms that inherently imply close personal realtionship. Any dogma or doctrine that does not reflect this experience of man’s love relationship with God is most likely in error and bad theology; an afterthought of man.
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