Western Christianity vs Eastern Christianity

it's the best known Schism in Christianity the date is set in 80 10 54 but in reality nobody thought in the year 1054 that the church would be divided for the next thousand years only in the years and then decades to follow was this reality set in stone this division was here for the long run on the one side the Catholic Church on the other the Orthodox church and the Schism is known sometimes as the great schism but other times as the East-West Schism and to some people that's all that it is the Eastern Church is the Orthodox Church AKA Eastern Orthodox and the western side that's the Catholics referred to often on the outside as the Roman Catholic church but reality is that things are not so clean cut for one there was that whole Reformation thing in the west so there's a whole bunch of Protestant churches there too and then there's the fact that neither the Catholics nor the Orthodox view themselves as simply a geographic expression of the church to the Catholic Church they're the church for the whole world east and west and it's the same way for the Orthodox so what's East and West today anyway in Christ there is no East or West in him no south or north but one Great Fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth so wrote John oxenham in 1908 in the hymn published in Presbyterian Anglican Methodist Baptist Moravian and Catholic hymnals and those of other denominations but despite the recognition that the church is not meant to be divided the terms of east and west to refer to Christianity have stuck around let's look back 600 years before the East-West Schism to the Council of calcedon at this time the churches that would one day divide work together but at the council adopted on the natures of Christ was adopted that Christ had two Natures human and divine that many of the churches rejected the Armenian churches Coptic churches and some others said that Christ had only one nature that was both human and divine this Schism too would be long lasting and today this set of churches that divided at the Council of calcedon have taken on the name of Oriental Orthodox Oriental in English which simply means Eastern these Church churches 2 though they divided from the others 600 years before the East-West Schism identify with the Eastern stream of Christianity and geographically this fits these churches are near to Eastern Orthodoxy on a map than to Catholicism but it's not just geography that puts them in the Eastern stream there are certain characteristics of Eastern churches that these churches fit with two of the major issues that resulted in the East-West Schism of 1054 were the supremacy of the bishop of Rome aka the pope over the other Patriarchs were head Bishops of the other churches and correspondingly the question of adding a Latin word to the Nicene Creed the word filioque meaning and the sun which modified the Nicene Creed to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the father only but also from the Sun after the Schism the Catholic church had a supreme Pope and they had the filioque but the Eastern Orthodox Churches did not but in both of these areas also the Oriental Orthodox Churches align on the Eastern side not doing the bishop of Rome is supreme and also having never had the filioque in the Nicene Creed the Church of the East is another church which divided even earlier at the Council of Ephesus in ad431 they too historically didn't recognize the supremacy of the Pope and have not had the filioque in the Nicene Creed but these are not the only things that distinguish eastern and western churches and even these two aren't absolutes for example all of protestantism rejects the Pope's Authority yet is Western and some Western churches don't use the filioque such as most of the Moravian Church some of the differences between eastern and western churches have developed in the centuries since the division but others were different long before then though sometimes today these are held as dogmatic distinctions in time past churches were content to be in communion with others who had different practice in the years of 87 26-730 Byzantine emperor Leo III began to issue edicts restricting veneration of icons and in areas where Christians were encountering the new religion of Islam they were more accepting of this practice ultimately most Christians would reject the abolition of icons called iconoclasm but things still look different across the Christian World Eastern Christianity came to favor icons that were painted while the western church also had statues the Church of the East which dealt with a large amount of Muslim resistance did not use icons an example of a practice developed after the split was the Catholic Church making standard practice the distribution of only one of the elements of communion the bread to the laity called communion under one kind or under one species all of the Eastern churches retain the practice of communion under both kinds this was one thing that Protestants reverted back to as well another practice which differs from the Eastern churches and the Catholic church is that of clerical celibacy this issue was quite contentious for many centuries in the church but even two centuries before the 1054 Schism the issue had reached a conclusion in the Eastern churches which most often require celibacy for Bishops but not for priests who may be married before ordination in the Catholic church in most cases priests are required to be celibate but this is one of those cases where the exceptions allow us to see the East and West distinctions more clearly you see while the Catholic church is considered a western church it has also made forays into Eastern Christianity when people think of attending a Catholic Church they normally are thinking of a church that is part of the Latin church one of 24 different sui yuris churches it's complicated but suiurus means of One's Own right and each of these churches essentially are autonomous while still recognizing the authority and supremacy of the Pope they have their own Patriarchs and structure the reason why people are often unaware of there being 24 different churches that each may have different practices and liturgies all under the umbrella of the Catholic church is that 98.5 percent of Catholics the world around are part of just one the Latin church and the other 23 which are called Eastern Catholic churches make up 1.5 percent combined but that's what they are they are the Catholic church but Eastern not Western some people get the idea that the Catholic Church forbids married men from the priesthood because they view that as an unacceptable practice but the reality is that there are married Catholic priests one example is these Eastern Catholic churches which being part of Eastern Christianity allow married men to become priests and Eastern Catholics will recite the Nicene Creed without the filioque too something the Holy See allows them to doctrinally they affirm the filioque still but it's not included in addition leaven bread in the Eucharist is the standard practice of Eastern churches including Eastern Catholics While most in the west use unleavened there are more things like this where there are distinctions between east and west but at their core they are more traditional not theological for example do you fold your hands to pray that's quite Western raising the hands in the Orion's position is a common eastern practice prostration in prayer is also much more common in the East than the West genuflecting toward the Eucharist is a common Western practice and of course there are many other parts of liturgy such as orders of service lectionary selections of reading and such that are practiced more in one or the other and of course there's the differing Church calendars which though it is normally not viewed as a theological issue some such as the old calendarists have taken it that way if the East-West Schism was not the origin of the East-West distinction in Christianity what was the reality is that there were congregations that worshiped in the Eastern style and others in the western long before the Schism take a look at this map from world history atlas.com in the Roman Empire in 8120 areas in purple were mainly Latin speaking while those in pink spoke mainly Greek these geographical linguistic divisions would remain for centuries and the church developed into having a latinized West and helenized East theologians and thinkers from both sides would often seek to learn the language of the other but for many people they would favor reading and developing theology from things written in their own language terms and Concepts developed in Latin that had to be matched with Greek ones and sometimes things didn't always line up certain people who lived long before the East-West Schism have come to be important influences on one side more than another Augustine of Hippo for example who lived from 83 54 to 430 is one of the most important influences of Western Christianity including having a large influence on many streams of protestantism and in the East John of Damascus and Cyril of Alexandria are two influential Church fathers often still today there are arguments regarding similar but perhaps not identical theological teachings that developed in different languages sanctification versus theosis for example sometimes the differences are just linguistic and practical and not necessarily theological like saying mass or Divine Liturgy even today language can play a part in dividing East and West as people look back to the Greek or Latin sources but also in modern languages much of what is said in the East can be in Russian or Greek or even in Arabic Armenian Malayalam or Syriac in the west there's more English Spanish French German and Italian but today we live in the information age and in the age of easy travel and it's become easier and easier to learn about the other side and to join them though Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches are still the small minority in the United States they are definitely there the Orthodox World website lists over 1800 Orthodox churches and there's Lively online English-speaking Eastern Christian communities and there's these small and also controversial Western right Orthodoxy where a parish that practices it is fully Eastern Orthodox but uses the liturgical style of Western Christianity such as the Western right vicariate of the antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America as for theological differences you can't neatly cut all eastern and western Christianity into parts and say one side hold certain views that nobody holds on the other side but let's speak generally recognizing that there are exceptions Western Christianity uses the term of original sin while in the East they speak of ancestral sin original sin can often contain the meaning that the guilt of the sin of Adam is passed to all his descendants while the ancestral sin view denies that the guilt of sin is passed along though death its result is passed to all in reality some Protestants use the Western term but believe quite similarly to the Eastern View Eastern Christian theology often speaks of God's Essence as distinct from God's energies which in some cases Western Christians are unfamiliar with as a concept and in other cases they reject there are also architectural differences for Western Christianity more and more as new churches are constructed they have no standardization of architecture though there may still be the steeple and stained glass in a platform but within historic Protestant and Catholic churches there have been distinct Styles throughout the ages including particular layouts within the building itself Eastern Christianity likewise has quite distinct architectural practices such as the central Dome onion shaped domes and an ornate iconostasis but even here there is Crossover with some Catholic Church Cathedrals looking quite Eastern and some Eastern Church buildings having a western Flair finally no mention of Western versus Eastern Christianity would be complete without a reference to the unusual category of Eastern Protestants these are denominations of Christianity that often have Protestant practices such as not having Bishops or if they do not requiring them to be celibate having a 666 book Bible and such but culturally embracing the Eastern style of worship in many aspects for example the Ukrainian Lutheran Church has Byzantine architecture and Eastern calendar of saints and has an orthodox style of posture and worship the martoma Syrian Church in India uses the West Syrian liturgical tradition and claims the same malincara church origins in the ministry of Thomas the Apostle but came from a Reformation that made its theology quite Protestant within Eastern Christianity two churches not in communion are the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox to learn about what makes them different watch this video or click here to learn about the African Orthodox Church an unusual denomination in the United States

Channel: Ready to Harvest

Views: 698,991

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Id: 9Yk0slGP-rM

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 18 2022