Hi.. How do you define the term 'Orthodox Christian' as!!!! .....?

Question

as opposed to a roman catholic or protestant? Does 'pentecostians' come under any of these..especially under the 'Orthodox christian'?..also it would be great if someone could explain in detail the orthodox christian beliefs , traditions etc..I apreciate it a lot...

Answer 1

I would define it as Christians under the Eastern rite (eg. Greek and Russian Orthodox).

Answer 2

Here is how we tell the story (please forgive over simplifications): God founded the Church in the Holy Land. There was one Church. In the fifth century there was a split over doctrine and the part that was split off is now called Oriental Orthodoxy. Around the year 1000 the main body of the Church officially split between Christianity at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea (the Holy Land, Greece, what is now Turkey, etc.) and the western end (Rome, western Europe). The eastern side is Eastern Orthodoxy, the western side was Roman Catholicism. Eastern Orthodoxy expanded into eastern Europe and Russia, then got clobbered by Islam. The Oriental Orthodox were in Egypt down to Ethiopia, all the way over into India, up into Armenia. (When Portuguese sailors arrived in India in the early 1500s they found Christians there -- Oriental Orthodox!)

In the 1500s in western Europe came what is known as the "Reformation" and the Protestants split off from Roman Catholicism and from each other. Orthodoxy did not go through the Reformation; it is neither Catholic nor Protestant. Pentecostalism is one of the Protestant denominations. According to wikipedia, "The Pentecostal movement finds its historic roots in a revival that occurred on Azusa Street in Los Angeles, California, USA from 1904 to 1906."

The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics have recently both withdrawn some centuries-old formal documents saying nasty things about each other. We'll wait a century or four to see what happens. Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox have been talking at length about official reconciliation; informally, many regular church-goers are acting as though reconciliation is already real. We'll wait a century or two and see what happens.

Eastern Orthodoxy claims to be the original church, holding steadfastly to the seven major church councils that occurred in the first millenium (before the big split around 1000). Pentecostalism is one of the Protestant offshoots of Roman Catholicism and is a little over 100 years old.

An excellent place to learn more is the Orthodox Study Bible, available from www.conciliarpress.com and other places. Conciliar Press also has an excellent set of booklets addressing issues mainly of interest to Protestants (Mary, icons, calling the priest "father," the place of written scripture, etc.) because they themselves used to be Protestants.

This answer is already too long! For more details feel free to contact me via Yahoo! Answers email. I have also put some wikipedia links below.

Let us all pray that we may all be one as the Father and the Son are one.

Answer 3

Pentecostals are a branch of Protestant beliefs.

It would take FAR too long to explain Orthodox Christian beliefs here. What I will recommend however is that you visit the website sponsored by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America where there is an extensive section devoted to Orthodox Christian beliefs (which remain the same regardless of the nationality you put in front of "Orthodox Christian")

Answer 4

See, well, Orthadoxy and Cathlicism were once the same. you know how there are bishups, well, since the Roman Bisup was the first and had a special title (the first bisup or something) he felt that he should be higher than the others, though they were all equal, and so, he seperated and called himself the pope. some other things were changed and orthadoxy kept things as they were/stuck to the original. hope this helps! ^_^for the most part though, they are the same.

Answer 5

There are dozens of Christian sects. What matters is what the individual believes. A true Christian is a person who believes that Christ is God, that he resurrected from the dead (and is alive today) and was born of a virgin (establishing his sinless nature). This thereby confirms 1 Corinthians 3:16; and Romans 8:9.

Answer 6

I tend to think of the Greek Orthodox church:
http://www.goarch.org/access/orthodoxy/

I don't know much about them, though.

Answer 7

The biggest diff's are Pope , Christmas time , and marriage for priest ,other wise basicly the same

Answer 8

http://www.orthodoxwiki.org/Main_Page

this site will tell you more than you probably want to know about orthodox christianity.

Answer 9

This is too large of a question to fully answer here. I would suggest you start researching yourself to learn what each church believes and where they tend to disagree.


http://foru.ms/f145-the-ancient-way-eastern-orthodox.html
http://www.protomartyr.org/believe.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East-West_Schism