somewhither

desultory ruminations of a febrile mind

2 Thessalonians 2:15 and 3:6

Holy Tradition is the deposit of faith given by Jesus Christ to His apostles and preserved by the Orthodox Christian Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, from one generation to the next without addition, subtraction, or alteration. The crown of Holy Tradition is Holy Scripture, which is understood by Orthodox Christianity to be those books written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit and collected, edited, and canonized by the Church. As such Holy Scripture is incomplete and inseparable from both the Church and Holy Tradition.

Holy Scripture is both the word of God and about the Word of God — Jesus Christ. Within Orthodox Christianity the books of the Holy Bible are interpreted as being fundamentally about Jesus Christ and indeed the whole of the Holy Bible is understood as presupposing the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ as well as the faith of its readers. Unlike Islam, Holy Scripture is understood within Orthodox Christianity to be unbound from any language. It is, instead, the Church in its role as the Body of Christ which provides preservation of meaning.

The apostles preached Christ’s message before the writing and collation of the New Testament and so it is understood that the New Testament is another iteration of that preaching. The Church serves as the communal context for Holy Scripture — the organizational memory which provides interpretation and meaning.

Holy Scripture is not considered the entirety of all written works inspired by the Holy Spirit nor even the entirety of everything written by the apostles or prophets. Instead it is those works selected (canonized) by the Church to provide meaning and insight within the Church while not leading readers into serious error when properly understood. This is particularly clear when one compares the Old Testament of Protestantism and Restorationism versus the Septuagint, the most common Scriptures used by the apostles.

June 19, 325

On this 1,687th anniversary of the proclamation of the Nicene Creed (the original, not the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 which is now often inaccurately called the Nicene Creed) I was thinking of a comment that a friend of mine posted to my Facebook yesterday.  What my friend wrote was, “I don’t get why folks are so concerned about the details between all of the Christian faiths.”  This is something of a remarkable statement when you think about it because the implication is that doctrine doesn’t really matter.  It certainly is the worldview of Unitarian Universalism but even to non-denominational Christianity (whatever that might mean) does doctrine and dogma really not matter?

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Conversions

There are several bloggers that I read regularly and they are all, with one exception, either Orthodox Christians or Roman Catholics.  The one exception to this was Leah Libresco an atheist blogger on Patheos who managed to maintain both a tone of civility and charity while arguing and her personal-model, for the most part, has been followed by her com box readership.   I say was because today Ms. Libresco announced on her blog Unequally Yoked that she is swimming the Tiber to embrace Roman Catholicism and while I would have preferred that Ms. Libresco look further east to explore Orthodox Christianity before reaching her decision, I am glad none-the-less that she has made the step that she has.

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