do you think that we should not behave as a Orthodox personality ?
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Raised in a Greek migrant family in Melbourne, I had a fairly conventional Orthodox upbringing, including the mandatory infant baptism, observance of the major feasts and customs of the Christian calendar, such as the forty day fast leading up to Easter, the occasional communion and confession, and so on.
Most members of the Greek community in Australia would be content to leave matters there, regarding the Orthodox Church primarily as a custodian of ethnicity, tradition and morality. But no thinking person could be satisfied with that, and I soon began to delve deeper, in the hope of discovering if there was any truth to the grand claims made by the church.
So I embarked upon a course of study in philosophy and theology, including a four year stint at St. Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College in Sydney. There I was introduced to some wonderful scholars, including the eloquent, softly-spoken and Oxford-trained John Chryssavgis (who connects spirituality with ecology, and currently serves as advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch on environmental issues) and the comparatively tempestuous American-educated Themistocles Adamopoulo (a specialist on the apostle Paul, now in Pauline fashion undertaking missionary work in Sierra Leone). But my attention was initially caught by the fiery and much maligned leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia, Archbishop Stylianos (Harkianakis), with whom I shared a love of poetry and of our fellow Cretan, Nikos Kazantzakis. I well remember how he shocked us in our very first class when he warned that the study of theology will either turn us to God or turn us into atheists. He was not entirely mistaken.
Strangely, however, the archbishop's words proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it was the very attitudes and teachings imbibed by us that led me and some of my fellow students (and even teachers) to suspect that something was deeply amiss in Orthodoxy. There was, for example, little freedom to genuinely question or to express doubts, at least without being deemed a "heretic."
By the time I completed my theological studies I could no longer fail to acknowledge the serious problems crippling the Orthodox faith in the modern world, though I often wavered as to whether and how these problems could be resolved. In what follows, I will outline some of these challenges faced by the Orthodox Church in the modern era (I am very much indebted to Vrasidas Karalis's withering critique of contemporary Greek Orthodoxy in The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity ).
Exclusivism
To begin with, there are challenges arising from the prevalence of exclusivism among Orthodox leaders, where this involves an attitude of triumphalism and a sense of superiority towards other religious faiths, and even other Christians.
The Orthodox Church, to be sure, has been a significant member of the Ecumenical Movement. Representatives from the Ecumenical Patriarchate have attended meetings of the World Council of Churches since its establishment in 1948, and at present almost all Orthodox Churches are full members of the World Council of Churches. Nevertheless, Orthodoxy tends to be highly exclusivist, adopting a stance towards people of other faiths that ranges from missionary to polemical and apologetic.
Even if it has not always thought that only if one is Orthodox can one be saved (though there are many Orthodox who accept this), it is standard to think that the fullness of divine revelation is to be found only in the Orthodox Church. And then a conflict between dogmatism and dialogue ensues. Is genuine dialogue possible if I (as one partner in the dialogue) am already convinced that I possess the fullness of truth, and so the other does not have something to tell me which I could not in principle discover from my own tradition? Wouldn't dialogue, in such circumstances, be nothing more than a thinly disguised apologetics?
Timothy Ware, a prominent Orthodox convert, has stated: "We Orthodox are [in the World Council of Churches], not simply to bear witness to what we ourselves believe, but also to listen to what others have to say." But isn't this disingenuous? If the Orthodox already possess the truth, then in what sense could they (genuinely) listen and learn from others? Ware's response is that, by listening to (non-Orthodox) others, the Orthodox stand to better understand the truth they have been entrusted with. This is a very selective form of listening: the others enable us to better see how we are right, rather than being humbly open to correction by others.
Compare this to the words of the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: "We have to appreciate that truth can be received from outside of - not only within - our own group. If we do not believe that, then entering into dialogue would be a waste of time."
Most members of the Greek community in Australia would be content to leave matters there, regarding the Orthodox Church primarily as a custodian of ethnicity, tradition and morality. But no thinking person could be satisfied with that, and I soon began to delve deeper, in the hope of discovering if there was any truth to the grand claims made by the church.
So I embarked upon a course of study in philosophy and theology, including a four year stint at St. Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College in Sydney. There I was introduced to some wonderful scholars, including the eloquent, softly-spoken and Oxford-trained John Chryssavgis (who connects spirituality with ecology, and currently serves as advisor to the Ecumenical Patriarch on environmental issues) and the comparatively tempestuous American-educated Themistocles Adamopoulo (a specialist on the apostle Paul, now in Pauline fashion undertaking missionary work in Sierra Leone). But my attention was initially caught by the fiery and much maligned leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in Australia, Archbishop Stylianos (Harkianakis), with whom I shared a love of poetry and of our fellow Cretan, Nikos Kazantzakis. I well remember how he shocked us in our very first class when he warned that the study of theology will either turn us to God or turn us into atheists. He was not entirely mistaken.
Strangely, however, the archbishop's words proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as it was the very attitudes and teachings imbibed by us that led me and some of my fellow students (and even teachers) to suspect that something was deeply amiss in Orthodoxy. There was, for example, little freedom to genuinely question or to express doubts, at least without being deemed a "heretic."
By the time I completed my theological studies I could no longer fail to acknowledge the serious problems crippling the Orthodox faith in the modern world, though I often wavered as to whether and how these problems could be resolved. In what follows, I will outline some of these challenges faced by the Orthodox Church in the modern era (I am very much indebted to Vrasidas Karalis's withering critique of contemporary Greek Orthodoxy in The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity ).
Exclusivism
To begin with, there are challenges arising from the prevalence of exclusivism among Orthodox leaders, where this involves an attitude of triumphalism and a sense of superiority towards other religious faiths, and even other Christians.
The Orthodox Church, to be sure, has been a significant member of the Ecumenical Movement. Representatives from the Ecumenical Patriarchate have attended meetings of the World Council of Churches since its establishment in 1948, and at present almost all Orthodox Churches are full members of the World Council of Churches. Nevertheless, Orthodoxy tends to be highly exclusivist, adopting a stance towards people of other faiths that ranges from missionary to polemical and apologetic.
Even if it has not always thought that only if one is Orthodox can one be saved (though there are many Orthodox who accept this), it is standard to think that the fullness of divine revelation is to be found only in the Orthodox Church. And then a conflict between dogmatism and dialogue ensues. Is genuine dialogue possible if I (as one partner in the dialogue) am already convinced that I possess the fullness of truth, and so the other does not have something to tell me which I could not in principle discover from my own tradition? Wouldn't dialogue, in such circumstances, be nothing more than a thinly disguised apologetics?
Timothy Ware, a prominent Orthodox convert, has stated: "We Orthodox are [in the World Council of Churches], not simply to bear witness to what we ourselves believe, but also to listen to what others have to say." But isn't this disingenuous? If the Orthodox already possess the truth, then in what sense could they (genuinely) listen and learn from others? Ware's response is that, by listening to (non-Orthodox) others, the Orthodox stand to better understand the truth they have been entrusted with. This is a very selective form of listening: the others enable us to better see how we are right, rather than being humbly open to correction by others.
Compare this to the words of the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: "We have to appreciate that truth can be received from outside of - not only within - our own group. If we do not believe that, then entering into dialogue would be a waste of time."
princess8239:
no you have copied this answer from Google
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yes we could not behave like an Orthodox
we should change ourselves with time for not only our own development but also for the development of society and country
hope it helps
pls mark as brainilist
we should change ourselves with time for not only our own development but also for the development of society and country
hope it helps
pls mark as brainilist
i think in the place of could there is should
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