How would you compare the Orthodox Church to the other Christian Churches of the West?

Question

The Orthodox Church is an Eastern Church in the sense that, at least humanly speaking, it is the product of Middle Eastern, Hellenic and Slavic history and culture. In a word, the Orthodox Church has a historical and spiritual development worked out in almost total isolation from the Christian Churches of Western Europe and America, namely the Roman Catholics and the Reformed Protestant Churches

The formal break between the Christian East and West cannot be easily pinpointed. It may be put formally in the 11th or 12th centuries. However from as early as the 4th century the Christians of the East were already living with very little contact with the Christians of the West.

The liturgy of the Orthodox Church as celebrated today developed within those centuries when the East was already in a certain isolation from the West. The liturgy stands at the center of the church's life and bears witness to the central experience of the Orthodox Faith, namely that man is created for communion with God in the everlasting life of His Kingdom.

Answer 1

This is one among many difference between the East and the West that I think is interesting. If someone in the West was going to learn about a tree how would they do it? They would cut down the tree, the would count the rings, they would dissect leaves and put them under a microscope, they would study the bark and so on and so forth. If someone in the East wanted to learn about a tree, they would plant a tree and watch it grow, they would water it, and watch it through the years grow into a mature tree, their children would want a swing and so they would put a swing on the tree. They would use the tree for shade and look at the beautiful leaves. One day when the man who planted the tree dies, he would be buried under that very tree.

The Western culture has to have things right away, "born again" emotional experience, once saved always saved. The Eastern culture teaches us to grow into being like God, it is a process. We fall down we get back up.

Answer 2

You seem to answer your own question. So why ask?

My opinion: they are authentic, apostolic Churches whos dogmas are the same as those of the earliest Christian Churches.

Compared with, for example, the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches maintain strict and stubborn attachment to incidentals that make them seem odd and foolish in the eyes of many. For instance, what difference is it if the Communion bread is leavened or unleavened? What difference if you cross yourself from right to left instread of left to right? Yet just such trivia have helped block communion with other faith groups.

Answer 3

Catholic Crusader, correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the Eastern Orthodox Church is now in full communion with the Catholic Church.

God Bless
Robin

Answer 4

you cant "compare" Churches they are all houses of The Most High God of Israel. what is important for Christians is to believe in Jesus Christ that He died for our sins and we must take the holy communion at lest one a week.

i keep on seeing you ask questions about Orthodox, do you have a problem with them?

Answer 5

Jesus promised, "I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). This means that his Church will never be destroyed and will never fall away from him. His Church will survive until his return.

Among the Christian churches, only the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Jesus. Every other Christian church is an offshoot of the Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox churches broke away from unity with the pope in 1054. The Protestant churches were established during the Reformation, which began in 1517. (Most of today’s Protestant churches are actually offshoots of the original Protestant offshoots.) Only the Catholic Church existed in the tenth century, in the fifth century, and in the first century, faithfully teaching the doctrines given by Christ to the apostles, omitting nothing.

Jesus’ Church is called catholic ("universal" in Greek) because it is his gift to all people. He told his apostles to go throughout the world and make disciples of "all nations" (Matt. 28:19–20). For 2,000 years the Catholic Church has carried out this mission, preaching the good news that Christ died for all men and that he wants all of us to be members of his universal family (Gal. 3:28). Nowadays the Catholic Church is found in every country of the world and is still sending out missionaries to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19). The Church Jesus established was known by its most common title, "the Catholic Church," at least as early as the year 107, when Ignatius of Antioch used that title to describe the one Church Jesus founded. The title apparently was old in Ignatius’s time, which means it went all the way back to the time of the apostles.

http://www.catholic.com/library/Pillar.asp

Answer 6

The Eastern Church also had a good riot over the whole "Iconoclast/ Iconodoule" thing...