# Catholic or Orthodox, which is worse?



## Bill The Baptist (May 20, 2016)

While the issues with Catholicism are well known and catalogued, the more I look into Eastern Orthodoxy the more I can see serious errors in their doctrines as well. While the Orthodox tend to venerate Mary to a lesser degree and would reject the concept of papal infallibility, they also have a much more mystical view of the incarnation, the atonement, and even salvation itself than would Catholics. I know that the reformers addressed Catholicism much more than they did Orthodoxy, but that was most likely due to their greater familiarity. I honestly am not sure which one is worse, and I wanted to get some additional input.


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## Lux (May 20, 2016)

I don't really know which one is worse but I think the fact there are so many similarities and almost a kinship between the two says enough by itself.


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## SeanPatrickCornell (May 20, 2016)

It's amazing how similar they are even today, considering that they formally split in the 11th century.

One thing that's interesting to me is that the Orthodox Church baptizes by full immersion, and claims that the church has always done that, going back to the Apostles.

It's simply a curiosity to me, nothing else.


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## Philip (May 20, 2016)

Bill The Baptist said:


> While the Orthodox tend to venerate Mary to a lesser degree and would reject the concept of papal infallibility, they also have a much more mystical view of the incarnation, the atonement, and even salvation itself than would Catholics.



It's better to say that they tend (as did the early fathers) to emphasize the ontological dimensions of salvation as opposed to the legal-familial dimensions with which we are familiar in the West. True, the essence-engergies distinction, which Palamas made, muddies the waters quite a bit, but you'll find most of the same points in Gregory of Nazianzus.

_Theosis_ as a concept, can be found in Calvin and (arguably) John Owen.



> Therefore this consideration alone ought to be abundantly sufficient to make us to renounce the world and to carry us aloft to heaven. Let us then mark, that the end of the gospel is, to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us. ~Calvin's commentary on 2 Peter 1:4



It's probably best to say, in this regard, that the lack of Calvin's careful distinctions (which he goes on to make) is what makes the EO understanding of salvation problematic with regard to the creator-creature distinction. In addition, the ontological side of things, while Scriptural, is not the only or even the main focus of Scriptural teaching on Salvation.


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## Justified (May 20, 2016)

The problem for both, as already noted, is that salvation becomes an ascent up the chain-of-being; salvation becomes all about metaphysics. The gospel says, "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners," not, "Jesus Christ came into the world to save metaphysics."


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## arapahoepark (May 20, 2016)

I have wondered this for awhile as well. Even from those inside the Orthodox church after conversion feel as if they are second class citizens in a cultural and ethnic club.


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## Bill The Baptist (May 20, 2016)

One of the things that I learned in dealing with Mormons out in Utah was that you can often best see the errors in false religion by considering their overall worldview. The Biblical worldview consists of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. When examined in this light, the Orthodox worldview is significantly different from this.


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (May 20, 2016)

Orthodoxy also has a "Folk" and/or "Nationalistic" component that RC'ism lacks.


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## Doulos McKenzie (May 20, 2016)

I wouldn't say one is worse than the other. They both preach a false gospel so they are accursed by God and are both deserving of His righteous judgment.


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## Philip (May 20, 2016)

Bill The Baptist said:


> The Biblical worldview consists of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. When examined in this light, the Orthodox worldview is significantly different from this.



What are you basing this on? I've read a number of works by contemporary EO theologians and most would concur that the narrative you describe is the Biblical one and the one to which they adhere.



Backwoods Presbyterian said:


> Orthodoxy also has a "Folk" and/or "Nationalistic" component that RC'ism lacks.



That depends on the sector of the RC. In Eastern Europe, Catholicism is just as tied up with ethnicity as the Eastern Church is.


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (May 21, 2016)

True, but that is more related to Eastern Europe than Catholicism itself. In other words it is endemic to EO in a way that it is not to RC.


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## yeutter (May 21, 2016)

My grievous concerns about Eastern Orthodoxy are:
1. She does not share our understanding of original sin. I am not saying that she is Pelagian, just that she has a deficient understanding of the sinfulness of man.
2. She does not share our understanding of substitutionary blood atonement.


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## yeutter (May 21, 2016)

My grievous concerns with the Church of Rome are:
1. She tolerates the teaching that the Blessed Virgin Mary is a co-redemptrix.
2. She officially denies the truth of sola fides.
3. She officially teaches the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
4. She officially denies sola scriptura. She teaches that the Church is the author of Scripture.
5. She believes that the official doctrinal teachings of the Archbishop of Rome are infallible.
6. She officially teaches that their is a purgatory. 

I would say that the Church of Rome is the more apostate of the two.


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## earl40 (May 21, 2016)

yeutter said:


> My grievous concerns with the Church of Rome are:
> 1. She tolerates the teaching that the Blessed Virgin Mary is a co-redemptrix.
> 2. She officially denies the truth of sola fides.
> 3. She officially teaches the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
> ...



I would seriously consider what (East or West) The Reformation grew out of.


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## yeutter (May 21, 2016)

earl40 said:


> yeutter said:
> 
> 
> > My grievous concerns with the Church of Rome are:
> ...



It may be that the Church of Rome became so hostile to the Gospel that they forced reformers into the Reformation.
In the Eastern Church Gospel preaching has been inconsistently tolerated


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## earl40 (May 21, 2016)

yeutter said:


> It may be that the Church of Rome became so hostile to the Gospel that they forced reformers into the Reformation.
> In the Eastern Church Gospel preaching has been inconsistently tolerated



Not sure what you mean by the above.  Are you saying the EO church is a valid church?


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## yeutter (May 21, 2016)

*Church of Rome is formally Apostate.*

The Church of Rome formally apostatized from the Church Catholic. She doubled down on her error at Vatican I.

The Eastern Orthodox Churches adhere to many errors but have not formally apostatized from the Church Catholic.


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## Bill The Baptist (May 22, 2016)

Philip said:


> The Biblical worldview consists of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. When examined in this light, the Orthodox worldview is significantly different from this.
> 
> 
> 
> What are you basing this on? I've read a number of works by contemporary EO theologians and most would concur that the narrative you describe is the Biblical one and the one to which they adhere.



Its not that they don't believe in these things, its just that they have a seriously deficient and distorted understanding of those things. In my estimation, the Roman Catholic church is very wrong about many things, but also fairly correct on some other things, while the Eastern Orthodox church seems to be not nearly as wrong as the Catholics, but wrong on almost every point of doctrine.


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## Philip (May 22, 2016)

Bill The Baptist said:


> Its not that they don't believe in these things, its just that they have a seriously deficient and distorted understanding of those things.



In what specific ways? My estimation is that most Eastern distinctives are incomplete or one-sided, but that it's usually due to the fact that the issues in question (atonement, _sola fide_, etc) are usually the product of debates that simply didn't happen in the East.


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## arapahoepark (May 22, 2016)

Philip said:


> Bill The Baptist said:
> 
> 
> > Its not that they don't believe in these things, its just that they have a seriously deficient and distorted understanding of those things.
> ...



Thus they haven't considered the whole counsel of God.


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## TheOldCourse (May 22, 2016)

arapahoepark said:


> Philip said:
> 
> 
> > Bill The Baptist said:
> ...



I recall a well known EO theologian admitted at one point that the EO tradition has never really interacted with Paul's theology of justification as presented in his epistles. Wish I could find the quote, perhaps someone else recalls, but he was acknowledging that the doctrine is there in Scripture but that it has had little relevance to the development of EO thought. I have some good friends that are EO, one the son of a priest, and it's such a different mindset. It's almost like a theology of the esthetic--they don't deny forensic categories outright but they just don't ever cross their mind. 

I think in some ways many of the EO churches are like pre-Tridentine Rome. The errors are widespread and serious but are not formalized or institutionalized in such a way as to represent clear apostasy.


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## Mason (May 22, 2016)

yeutter said:


> My grievous concerns about Eastern Orthodoxy are:
> 1. She does not share our understanding of original sin. I am not saying that she is Pelagian, just that she has a deficient understanding of the sinfulness of man.
> 2. She does not share our understanding of substitutionary blood atonement.



In my discussions with the EO in Israel, and in particular the Russian Orthodox, I came to understand that they view the sinfulness of man and his native estrangement from God to be based upon ignorance, and thereby an implicit vestige and capacity for goodness and righteousness, rather than the legal/covenantal concept that we developed in the West (and what is clearly taught in scripture- in Adam, _all_ are covenantally bound to sin, rebellion, and eternal punishment save those who are joined to Christ's covenant). The notion of an inherent goodness to man is at least semi-pelagian in nature- to say that the Orthodox have a "deficient understanding" is a bit of an understatement. 

Lacking a legal/covenantal understanding for anthropology, and when challenged with clear passages about man's native inability to be righteous before God, the Orthodox tend towards throwing their hands in the air and saying "It's a mystery!" That the EO would fall back upon the _mystery_ of doctrines rather than rely upon what is clearly stated in the text of scripture, and that they reject substitutionary blood atonement, is to further drive the point.


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## TheOldCourse (May 23, 2016)

Mason said:


> yeutter said:
> 
> 
> > My grievous concerns about Eastern Orthodoxy are:
> ...



Mystery is actually an important aspect of their theology, not merely a fallback defense. They expect paradoxes and aspects of theology to be somewhat illogical (or, perhaps, "metalogical"). It can make it difficult to have a meaningful debate with them over doctrine if that's what you're trying to do.


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## Philip (May 23, 2016)

TheOldCourse said:


> I recall a well known EO theologian admitted at one point that the EO tradition has never really interacted with Paul's theology of justification as presented in his epistles.



And a lot of this is due to the fact that most of their interactions with Western Christianity are in dialogue with Catholicism, with which they have very longstanding and specific disagreements on other points (ecclesiology, Pneumatology, and sacramentology, mostly). In their own seminaries (of which there are two in the States), I am informed, most of the instruction is in Eastern Theology, with very little attention given to Western Christianity at all, much less Protestant distinctives. Theologically, apart from Gregory Palamas, very little has occured since the 8th century.


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## Irish Presbyterian (May 23, 2016)

A helpful resource on this might be:

Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective by Robert Letham



> One thing that's interesting to me is that the Orthodox Church baptizes by full immersion, and claims that the church has always done that, going back to the Apostles.
> 
> It's simply a curiosity to me, nothing else.



It's also worth noting that they baptise infants by full immersion!


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## Philip (May 23, 2016)

Irish Presbyterian said:


> A helpful resource on this might be:
> 
> Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective by Robert Letham



I would concur with this and add _Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism_ (one of the better books in the series--Michael Horton writes one of the "no" answers) as well as _For the Life of the World_ by Alexander Schmemann as an introduction to modern Orthodox theology (note: the book is a polemic against neoliberal theology).


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## Pilgrim (May 24, 2016)

Irish Presbyterian said:


> A helpful resource on this might be:
> 
> Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective by Robert Letham
> 
> ...




My understanding is their "full immersion" often, if not always, falls short of what most Baptists would consider to be full immersion. I've seen depictions of a baby being seated in some water with water poured over its head, with the baby never completely going under the water at any time. (Perhaps it is different with adult baptism.) Baptists tend to say baptism is invalid if any part of the body is out of the water.


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## Pilgrim (May 24, 2016)

Could it be said that Rome more often gets the questions or issues right (i.e. original sin) but gets the answers wrong? 

As for _sola scriptura_, EO certainly denies it, and also raises the same questions about the canon, even including some books that Rome does not accept. 

On the atonement, etc., EO is not dissimilar to mainline Protestants in rejecting the idea that penal substitution is necessary for God to forgive sins. In other words, the loving God can forgive sin without it being punished.


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## Philip (May 24, 2016)

Pilgrim said:


> On the atonement, etc., EO is not dissimilar to mainline Protestants in rejecting the idea that penal substitution is necessary for God to forgive sins. In other words, the loving God can forgive sin without it being punished.



They would say that this way of framing things primarily in terms of individuals, sin as offense, and forgiveness is a very Western approach to things. The East looks at it as Christ coming to restore the image of God through the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. No, this isn't the way Paul frames things, but it's not wrong, just incomplete.

It's not accurate to say that EO denies penal substitution, given that it has never given a statement on the subject. Rather, they would see it as an innovation which would need to be affirmed or rejected at a council. And there hasn't been one since the 8th century.


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## Mason (May 25, 2016)

TheOldCourse said:


> Mystery is actually an important aspect of their theology, not merely a fallback defense. They expect paradoxes and aspects of theology to be somewhat illogical (or, perhaps, "metalogical"). It can make it difficult to have a meaningful debate with them over doctrine if that's what you're trying to do.



All quite anecdotal on my part, but it seems to me that with regard to those areas of doctrine that they haven't really ever examined or interacted with (such as justification/atonement) they are quick to do exactly that- fallback on the _mystery_. The Russian Orthodox I spent some time with in the Church of the Sepulcher in Jerusalem were just as happy to argue with me that Protestantism was _too rational_ and _too dependent_ upon clear-cut points of doctrine derived from scripture (because this removed the emotional component, I believe?). In particular they criticized Protestantism for ignoring the Church fathers and for putting our own tradition (The Reformation) over the more ancient forms of Christianity.


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## MichaelNZ (May 25, 2016)

Orthodox will argue that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have more in common with each other than either does with Orthodoxy. Certainly Protestantism and Romanism favour scholasticism, while Orthodoxy doesn't try to explain certain things like the change of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood in the Eucharist. 

One problem with the Orthodox is that they deny that Christ died on the cross to pay our sin debt. They shy away from our use of a legal metaphor and instead focus on a medical one, that is, Christ came to heal humanity, and they point to the fact that the Greek word σῴζω (sozo) means both 'to save' and 'to heal'. This is from an Orthodox web site designed to introduce Orthodoxy to complete beginners: "*God became Man to heal humanity. By taking our humanity to Himself in the Incarnation he entered a process of redemption which culminated in the resurrection, death being destroyed and the reign of sin ended, (St. Irenaeus). The goal of salvation is deification, union with God*.

I would say ultimately that Roman Catholicism is worse than Orthodoxy as it specifically denies salvation by faith alone in the anathemas of the Council of Trent. The Orthodox church has never formally defined that salvation is not by faith alone, although they definitely teach and practice it. I remember listening to an Orthodox priest who was a former Protestant say that faith is a process that involves repenting and reception of the sacraments, thus redefining faith.


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## Bill The Baptist (May 25, 2016)

It seems to me that many are concluding that Catholicism is worse because it's heresies are clearly defined while the Orthodox tend to be exasperatingly vague. I am not certain, however, that the latter is preferable over the former. I would rather heretics clearly identify themselves.


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## SeanPatrickCornell (May 26, 2016)

Sounds to me like the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically a Pope-less version of the Pre-Tridentine Roman Church.

Specifically in this regard: Her Heresises are extant, but uncodified.


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## Philip (May 26, 2016)

SeanPatrickCornell said:


> Sounds to me like the Eastern Orthodox Church is basically a Pope-less version of the Pre-Tridentine Roman Church.
> 
> Specifically in this regard: Her Heresises are extant, but uncodified.



It's actually more akin to the church before Anselm. Orthodoxy never had an Abelard.


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## Contra_Mundum (May 26, 2016)

For a real recovery of biblical religion within the Eastern order of churches, something would have to "happen" within EO--a grouping which which is a loose union of autocephalic (mostly ethnic/national) churches--a happening that in some way corresponded to the Reformation in the West.

The idea seems quite impossible for me to conceive in the current context; and yet, perhaps Luther was impossible to conceive for many. Yet he "happened," and a miracle ensued. So, besides more western missionary labor to spread religion with the Bible as the final authority, we should pray for some sort of revival of faith-and-learning for Eastern Christians within that tradition that brings a desire to conform to Scripture--even when it challenges entrenched, unbiblical tradition.

The Reformation was a _preaching_ revival. Was Chrysostom (d. A.D. 407) the last time there was a tremendous, exegetical voice in the East? As long as the real need people think they have is for a sacramental treadmill, there can be no decisive turn back to a Word-based religion, ears desperate for a Promise to believe in. The idea of infusion of religious medicine-like-a-substance feeds man's innate works righteousness lust.


Personally, on the subject of the OP, it doesn't seem to me a proper sort of question. It seems on the order of (if you will pardon my opinion) "Which is a better fruit: apples or oranges?" There are real similarities; however the differences are profound as well. Then, if there is a branch-off stock related to one of them more nearly than the other, how does this affect the question when "better" is now compared to the third and preferred fruit?


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## arapahoepark (May 26, 2016)

> Personally, on the subject of the OP, it doesn't seem to me a proper sort of question. It seems on the order of (if you will pardon my opinion) "Which is a better fruit: apples or oranges?" There are real similarities; however the differences are profound as well. Then, if there is a branch-off stock related to one of them more nearly than the other, how does this affect the question when "better" is now compared to the third and preferred fruit?



This is how I have approached the issue in my mind. As awful as Catholicism is, it would be more welcoming from what I have come across. Yet they have enshrined heresy. While in Orthodoxy they think quite differently and not being Slavic or Greek, I'd be a second class citizen in the congregation.
Which would you pick if you had to convert? Thank God it does not come down to that


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