...with Protestantism is not so much in the predicates--its words or works--as it is in the subject doing the predicates. To use an analogy: speaking the words or doing the works of a husband does not make one a husband. One must be husband first, truly to say husbandly words or do husbandly things.
If a Protestant were able to offer quotations from hundreds of their writers on every conceivable topic, and if (impossible as it is) all of them were found to be completely Orthodox...if Protestants were able even to demonstrate Orthodox worship (whether of the Western or Eastern rite, it matters not)...none of those things would fix the root problem.
What's lacking is ecclesiality.
Whatever it is--a school of thought, a religious assembly of like-minded people--it isn't Church.
That is the tragedy of Protestantism.
"One hears that, in foreign lands, people are now learning to swim, lying on the floor, with the aid of equipment. In the same way, one can become a Catholic or Protestant without experiencing life at all--by reading books in one's study. But to become Orthodox, it is necessary to immerse oneself all at once in the very element of Orthodoxy, to begin living in an Orthodox way. There is no other way."--Fr. Pavel Florensky
4 comments:
Father Gregory,
Hey, that's what Rome says to! What's your word for them?
Arguments about ecclesiality? Or something else?
+Nathan
Hello, Nathan.
Perhaps Rome errs in what it adds, just as protestants err in what they subtract.
The filioque...the claim of jurisdictional primacy for Rome (the two big problems)...these are additions to the faith.
Thanks for the answer.
+Nathan
Father Gregory,
Haven't you written a post about Rome adding? I thought you had. If you know you have - and know where it is - would you be willing to link me to it?
Thanks,
Nathan
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