Saturday, March 27, 2010

On unity

If you are not in fellowship with a Church, any talk of theological unity is pretty meaningless.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

True.

But it's also true that some disunities are more disjoined than others. And it would be unwise to keep defending the greater evil, wouldn't it?

-- U know who.

Anonymous said...

And I wasn't refering merely to theological or ideological unity... I had *everything* in mind, including praxis, the living out of the faith.

-- Me again.

Edward Reiss said...

None the less, you are not united so talk of some ephemeral "unity" is just talk. And you keep trying to say in effect your disunites are not important, because they are not up to some level which you have decided.

I prefer an objective standard: If you are not in communion, you are divided. Everything else is just commentary.

Anonymous said...

Well... as I've said... I'm not expecting Protestantism to be one religion... but when it's as diverse as the fauna of the famous Islands Darwin visited with his ship The Beagle, then yeah, it's quite frankly disturbing...


------------------------------
OK, let me put it another way, so that you might understand me better, and see that I speak from `da gut`, and not from some vague or abstract rationalizations:

I had no idea the Monophysites exist. I knew they existED, but they were obviously nowhere to be found, so... this meant that they obviously disappeared, just like all other first-century heresies... I mean, there were Orthodox and there were Catholics. The later were found in many countries, but they didn't have any national Churches (i.e., there's no French Catholic Church, Spanish Catholic Church, etc). Oh, yeah, and until not long ago, they all spoke Latin. We, on the other hand, had this incredible richness and diversity of ... of everything! Languages, local traditions, etc. There were Romanians, Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, Copts, Ethiopians, even Indians(!), Arabs, etc. -- all Orthodox. I especially loved the Armenians who we have in our country, for their older more ancient rites, for their very weird and original alpahbet; and Ethiopians, for their very peculiar, ancient, exotic, mystical traditions, with deep connections to ancient Judaism... And the Indians for being the descendants of St. Thomas the Apostle... And the Copts for their vestments. Well, needless to say, I was more-than-beyond-SHOCKED when I found out the Orthodox Churches of Armenia, Egypt (the Copts), Ethiopia, India, etc. were NOT Orthodox!!! Heck! They dressed like us, believed like us, served like us, behaved like us, were called like us... I mean, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck AND is even called a 'duck'... -- right? Heck, they were even closer to us than the Catholics!! It seems that they were Monophysites all-along, and I had NO idea all this time!! -- "Neo, ... welcome! ... to the REAL world!!" -- seriously! I was only three other times in my life as shocked as then: when I found out that Dacia was/is Romania; when I found out the difference between boys and girls; and when I found out a hidden secret of someone I knew relatively close for a relatively long time...

Do you now better understand where I'm coming from? ... -- Or are you still not impressed? :-\


-- Lucian.

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