One of the three major divisions in Christianity today. Perhaps the best starting point for understanding Eastern Orthodoxy is through its use of icons. Icons, to the Eastern Orthodox worshiper are a kind of window between the earthly and the celestial worlds. Through the icons the heavenly beings manifest themselves to the worshiping congregation and unite with it. In Orthodoxy the idea of image is the key to understanding the ways of God with man. Man is created "in the image of God', he carries the icon of God within himself. A great theme of Orthodox theology is the incarnation of God and the re-creation of man. When man sins he does not violate the divinely established legal relationship between God and man (as in the western theological point of view); rather, he reduces the divine likeness — he inflicts a wound in the original image of God. Salvation, therefore, consists

When Eutyches began to defend monophysitism (the intimate combination of the human and divine natures in Christ so that they are actually one nature — the human nature absorbed by the divine), he was condemned as a heretic. The "Robber Council" at Ephesus (431) rehabilitated him, and then the Council of Chalcedon (451) again set forth a new definition of the nature of Christ in response to this heresy. Soon, some Christians in the Near East rejected the work of Chalcedon and this eventually led to the breaking away of the Monophysite Churches from the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy. This led to the Coptic Church, the largest Christian body in Egypt today, with a related church in Ethiopia, and the so-called Jacobite Church of Syria, which has most of its adherents in South India.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Eastern-Orthodoxy, Eutyches, history, Monophysite-Church[/tags]

Like its predecessor, the Evangelical Movement, it was more a movement of the heart than of the head. Unlike the Clapham Sect, the Oxford men were deeply troubled by the direction of English society. They saw the reforms of the government as attacks upon the sanctity of the Church of England and they determined to resist the intrusions of the world. With the Reform Act of 1832 the balance of power in Parliament shifted away from the aristocracy and the Anglican Church into the hands of "profane politicians". The Oxford men felt that the Church of England needed to affirm that its authority did not rest on authority from the state, it came from God. Bishops of the Church were not empowered by social position but by an apostolic commission. Even if the Church were completely separated from the state, the Church of England could still claim the allegiance of

In spite of pressures from Roman Catholic Europe in the West and from Islam in the East, a narrow corridor remained open to the north for Eastern Orthodoxy. In the ninth century Boris, king of the Bulgarians, was converted and in the tenth, Vladimir, grand prince of Kiev and of all Russia was also converted. Over the years Russia made the aesthetic glories of Orthodox Christianity her own. Gradually Moscow came to see herself as the leader of the Orthodox world. Some have called Moscow the third Rome.

[tags]BlogRodent, church-history, ChurchRodent, Eastern-Orthodoxy, history, Russian-Orthodox-Church[/tags]