The difficulty I have with your understanding of church is finding out which church is the right one after a schism. Both churches claim that the other side schismed from them. Especially between EO and OO there are practically no differences and they have nearly the same traditions and it seems to me that nowadays they even have a similar Christology. To me it always seemed that I can find out which church is right by looking at their rootedness in the apostolic faith. But in this case that is very hard to decide as they both pretty much stayed the same over time.
I totally understand where you're coming from, and felt similarly conflicted in my own journey when examining the claims of the two faith traditions—and when I figured out that the Copts and other non-Chalcedonians still existed, it really threw me for a loop. That said, I came down on one side of the question, and not another, because I think it is indeed possible to see that the Catholics have left the reservation—and the Oriental Orthodox should have affirmed Chalcedon.
So while I deeply respect our Catholic friends, I must kindly disagree with your assessment that both churches "stayed the same." After 1054, Rome continued making significant unilateral changes without consulting the East: adding the Filioque to the Creed, enforcing mandatory clerical celibacy, developing new doctrines like papal infallibility and the immaculate conception, and shifting from mystical theology toward scholastic rationalism.
The Orthodox Church, in contrast, has maintained continuity with the practices and theology of the ancient undivided Church—keeping the original Creed unchanged, preserving the married priesthood, maintaining all ancient liturgical practices, and staying rooted in the patristic understanding of theology through direct mystical experience (theoria) rather than philosophical speculation.
This isn't simply about change versus stability—it's about preserving the fullness of the Apostolic faith as it was received and practiced by the early Church. I would also argue that infant baptism without infant communion is a serious error, and Rome let that ship sail long, long ago.
Thank you for your detailed reply. I came to a similar conclusion about catholicism.
It just seems to me that the same argument can't be made about the Orientals. They basically stayed the same and have very similar practices and beliefs to the EO church.
It also seems like their Christology is compatible with statements of the fathers.
For me that just makes it very hard to believe either is the one true church, while the other is completely left by the holy spirit.
I appreciate your thoughts on the Oriental Orthodox churches. Having Armenian connections through my son's godfather, and my son's and my own patron saints, I appreciate the beauty of their tradition. The similarities between our churches are truly remarkable—icons, fasting, theology are all so close. In fact, I once attended a seminar on their Liturgy taught by a scholar, and it was awesome.
While I agree it's hard to think either church as lacking the Holy Spirit's presence, I've found I must ultimately stand with Chalcedon's teaching and therefore fall down on the side of the OHCAC being properly understood as the "Eastern Orthodox" Church. This doesn't lessen my respect for Oriental Orthodox Christians—I simply believe both sides must be honest about our differences while remaining hopeful about future unity—but for us, Chalcedon is not negotiable.
Struggling through the differences was part of my journey, too, but in the final analysis, staying outside Orthodoxy was worse than making a decision and commitment to join it.
Thank you for your honesty. It's great to hear someone else's honest thoughts on it, without all the unnecessary polemics.
Ultimately you're right, it's better to make a decision for one or the other, and trusting that God will have grace if we tried our best to be obedient, than staying outside completely.
The older I get, the less interested I am in inter-Christian polemics, and I rejoice any time I see commonalities between the Eastern Orthodox and other Christian traditions. Not long back I was on a baptist podcast and was thrilled to learn that the host's church was using the Apostles Creed. But you're absolutely right about the steadfast nature of the Oriental Orthodox, and they are certainly closer to us than baptists!
I appreciate your kind words and wish you all good things in this season of Pascha and beyond!
The Catholic Church is the Orthodox Church and the Protestant denominations all in one. The Protestants split off into groups each highlighting singular aspects of Christianity. The Orthodox Church highlights tradition. The Catholics are the whole package. 😊
This characterization is fundamentally incorrect. The Orthodox Church is not some "tradition-focused subset" of Roman Catholicism—it is the fullness of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church founded by Christ himself.
Rome departed from us by introducing numerous innovations: papal supremacy (and much, much later claimed "infallibility"), the filioque clause, purgatory, indulgences, and the immaculate conception—none of which was the teaching of the Church in the first millennium of Christianity.
The Orthodox Church maintains the exact same faith, without addition or subtraction, that was believed "everywhere, always, and by all" in the ancient Church. We don't need to be "contained" within Roman Catholicism because we are already the complete Church that Christ established.
Unity can only come through return to the original Orthodox faith, not through some artificial synthesis of different Christian denominations. ☦️
God works in mysterious ways. Perhaps it is the Orthodox Church that will turn things around with Russia as its leader. I don’t know. However Jesus came to expose the workings of the devil and bring them to light. Something big is happening, that’s for sure. At Fatima , Our Lady focused mainly on Russia as the object of consecration to her. Miraculously Russia has moved from atheism to a return to Orthodoxy, all within 30 years … watch this space.
I appreciate what you’re saying. I love the Orthodox Church. I am actually reading the Philokalia at the moment. I just believe that the Catholic Church has been called to encounter modernity and its heresies, challenge them and destroy them eventually
Thanks for being a friendly conversation partner. Now, let’s hope your church starts by destroying the modernism and heresy within its pale. Hope you get a better Pope next time. 😅
There’s a big difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. The more I read of the Reformers and them themselves, the more it comes clear to me that sola scriptura is vastly misconstrued - by adherents and opponents alike.
It was never meant to be an individualistic interpretation, but always within the context of community and the Church catholic.
Looking at Anglican traditional teachings on this, I would have to say that it seems vastly different to how you’ve outlined it here - and how I know many evangelicals do.
Think also of Wesley’s quadrilateral. Protestantism was never a movement towards personal interpretation, but a movement towards seeing scripture as a final authority. It was a move against individual interpretation, actually, which it felt the Catholic Church was actually engaging in at the time - and making such interpretation by popes etc. binding on consciences.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate the distinction you’ve drawn between sola and solo scriptura. I attempted to maintain such a distinction when I ran in Anglican and Presbyterian circles myself.
That said, even sola scriptura—understood communally—faces significant challenges.
Take Luther’s famous “Here I stand” speech, where he elevated individual conscience over councils and creeds, rejecting Church tradition as the framework for interpretation. This led him to dismiss the Epistle of James, question other New Testament books, and remove the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament. While claiming Scripture as the “final authority,” his approach set a precedent for subjective interpretation that fragmented Protestantism into countless competing denominations—all appealing to the same Bible.
The early Church, however, embraced Scripture within Apostolic Tradition. St. Irenaeus, for example, affirmed that the Church, through its succession of bishops, preserved the truth entrusted to it by the Apostles (Against Heresies 3.2). Without this tradition, even the biblical canon would not exist. As Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura suggests, *before we come to the Word of God at Genesis 1 we come to the word of the Church at the table of contents.*
Orthodoxy offers a vision of unity: Scripture interpreted within the living body of the Church, which the Apostle Paul called the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Rather than fragmenting the faith, this approach safeguards the fullness of truth entrusted to the Church by Christ Himself.
Thank you again for engaging this important topic.
Thank you for this article!
The difficulty I have with your understanding of church is finding out which church is the right one after a schism. Both churches claim that the other side schismed from them. Especially between EO and OO there are practically no differences and they have nearly the same traditions and it seems to me that nowadays they even have a similar Christology. To me it always seemed that I can find out which church is right by looking at their rootedness in the apostolic faith. But in this case that is very hard to decide as they both pretty much stayed the same over time.
Hi David,
I totally understand where you're coming from, and felt similarly conflicted in my own journey when examining the claims of the two faith traditions—and when I figured out that the Copts and other non-Chalcedonians still existed, it really threw me for a loop. That said, I came down on one side of the question, and not another, because I think it is indeed possible to see that the Catholics have left the reservation—and the Oriental Orthodox should have affirmed Chalcedon.
So while I deeply respect our Catholic friends, I must kindly disagree with your assessment that both churches "stayed the same." After 1054, Rome continued making significant unilateral changes without consulting the East: adding the Filioque to the Creed, enforcing mandatory clerical celibacy, developing new doctrines like papal infallibility and the immaculate conception, and shifting from mystical theology toward scholastic rationalism.
The Orthodox Church, in contrast, has maintained continuity with the practices and theology of the ancient undivided Church—keeping the original Creed unchanged, preserving the married priesthood, maintaining all ancient liturgical practices, and staying rooted in the patristic understanding of theology through direct mystical experience (theoria) rather than philosophical speculation.
This isn't simply about change versus stability—it's about preserving the fullness of the Apostolic faith as it was received and practiced by the early Church. I would also argue that infant baptism without infant communion is a serious error, and Rome let that ship sail long, long ago.
All the best to you on your journey!
Jamey
Hello Jamey,
Thank you for your detailed reply. I came to a similar conclusion about catholicism.
It just seems to me that the same argument can't be made about the Orientals. They basically stayed the same and have very similar practices and beliefs to the EO church.
It also seems like their Christology is compatible with statements of the fathers.
For me that just makes it very hard to believe either is the one true church, while the other is completely left by the holy spirit.
Hi David,
I appreciate your thoughts on the Oriental Orthodox churches. Having Armenian connections through my son's godfather, and my son's and my own patron saints, I appreciate the beauty of their tradition. The similarities between our churches are truly remarkable—icons, fasting, theology are all so close. In fact, I once attended a seminar on their Liturgy taught by a scholar, and it was awesome.
While I agree it's hard to think either church as lacking the Holy Spirit's presence, I've found I must ultimately stand with Chalcedon's teaching and therefore fall down on the side of the OHCAC being properly understood as the "Eastern Orthodox" Church. This doesn't lessen my respect for Oriental Orthodox Christians—I simply believe both sides must be honest about our differences while remaining hopeful about future unity—but for us, Chalcedon is not negotiable.
Struggling through the differences was part of my journey, too, but in the final analysis, staying outside Orthodoxy was worse than making a decision and commitment to join it.
With kind regards,
Jamey
Hello Jamey,
Thank you for your honesty. It's great to hear someone else's honest thoughts on it, without all the unnecessary polemics.
Ultimately you're right, it's better to make a decision for one or the other, and trusting that God will have grace if we tried our best to be obedient, than staying outside completely.
Kind regards,
David
The older I get, the less interested I am in inter-Christian polemics, and I rejoice any time I see commonalities between the Eastern Orthodox and other Christian traditions. Not long back I was on a baptist podcast and was thrilled to learn that the host's church was using the Apostles Creed. But you're absolutely right about the steadfast nature of the Oriental Orthodox, and they are certainly closer to us than baptists!
I appreciate your kind words and wish you all good things in this season of Pascha and beyond!
The Catholic Church is the Orthodox Church and the Protestant denominations all in one. The Protestants split off into groups each highlighting singular aspects of Christianity. The Orthodox Church highlights tradition. The Catholics are the whole package. 😊
This characterization is fundamentally incorrect. The Orthodox Church is not some "tradition-focused subset" of Roman Catholicism—it is the fullness of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church founded by Christ himself.
Rome departed from us by introducing numerous innovations: papal supremacy (and much, much later claimed "infallibility"), the filioque clause, purgatory, indulgences, and the immaculate conception—none of which was the teaching of the Church in the first millennium of Christianity.
The Orthodox Church maintains the exact same faith, without addition or subtraction, that was believed "everywhere, always, and by all" in the ancient Church. We don't need to be "contained" within Roman Catholicism because we are already the complete Church that Christ established.
Unity can only come through return to the original Orthodox faith, not through some artificial synthesis of different Christian denominations. ☦️
God works in mysterious ways. Perhaps it is the Orthodox Church that will turn things around with Russia as its leader. I don’t know. However Jesus came to expose the workings of the devil and bring them to light. Something big is happening, that’s for sure. At Fatima , Our Lady focused mainly on Russia as the object of consecration to her. Miraculously Russia has moved from atheism to a return to Orthodoxy, all within 30 years … watch this space.
We don’t need to worry too much, Christ is risen
I appreciate what you’re saying. I love the Orthodox Church. I am actually reading the Philokalia at the moment. I just believe that the Catholic Church has been called to encounter modernity and its heresies, challenge them and destroy them eventually
Thanks for being a friendly conversation partner. Now, let’s hope your church starts by destroying the modernism and heresy within its pale. Hope you get a better Pope next time. 😅
There’s a big difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. The more I read of the Reformers and them themselves, the more it comes clear to me that sola scriptura is vastly misconstrued - by adherents and opponents alike.
It was never meant to be an individualistic interpretation, but always within the context of community and the Church catholic.
Looking at Anglican traditional teachings on this, I would have to say that it seems vastly different to how you’ve outlined it here - and how I know many evangelicals do.
Think also of Wesley’s quadrilateral. Protestantism was never a movement towards personal interpretation, but a movement towards seeing scripture as a final authority. It was a move against individual interpretation, actually, which it felt the Catholic Church was actually engaging in at the time - and making such interpretation by popes etc. binding on consciences.
Hey Ryan,
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate the distinction you’ve drawn between sola and solo scriptura. I attempted to maintain such a distinction when I ran in Anglican and Presbyterian circles myself.
That said, even sola scriptura—understood communally—faces significant challenges.
Take Luther’s famous “Here I stand” speech, where he elevated individual conscience over councils and creeds, rejecting Church tradition as the framework for interpretation. This led him to dismiss the Epistle of James, question other New Testament books, and remove the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament. While claiming Scripture as the “final authority,” his approach set a precedent for subjective interpretation that fragmented Protestantism into countless competing denominations—all appealing to the same Bible.
The early Church, however, embraced Scripture within Apostolic Tradition. St. Irenaeus, for example, affirmed that the Church, through its succession of bishops, preserved the truth entrusted to it by the Apostles (Against Heresies 3.2). Without this tradition, even the biblical canon would not exist. As Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura suggests, *before we come to the Word of God at Genesis 1 we come to the word of the Church at the table of contents.*
Orthodoxy offers a vision of unity: Scripture interpreted within the living body of the Church, which the Apostle Paul called the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Rather than fragmenting the faith, this approach safeguards the fullness of truth entrusted to the Church by Christ Himself.
Thank you again for engaging this important topic.
All the best,
Jamey