A couple days ago we visited a town called Meteora which is known for its
Monastery on Rocks of Meteora
collection of Greek Orthodox monasteries and nunneries situated on top of towering rocks. If you wanted to call one place in the whole world spiritual, I would call it this place. From atop the rocks there is a beautiful view of the lush Greek country side, small villages and majestic mountains. It is such different scenery from Waco, where flat is an overstatement!
There is nothing like having a good tour guide. I had visited a Roman Catholic Cathedral with a religion/philosophy professor and an Orthodox Church by myself and had gleaned enough information about the differences between these two faith traditions in order to write two blogs, and yet I felt that the information that I had so far gleaned was just one grain among the field of facts that I got from our guide, Athenasia, that day as well as yesterday when we visited the St. Demetrius orthodox church in Thessaloniki.
We learned that the orthodox believe that the Holy Spirit emanates directly from God, the father, rather than from both the Father and the Son as the Catholics believe. In addition, we learned that the Orthodox view the pope as equal to other Christians and even the patriarchs, whereas Catholics view the Pope with more authority than ordinary humans. Finally, another major difference is that the Orthodox believe that the Virgin Mary was born sinful and not conceived without sin as the Catholics believe. Among other things, Orthodox don’t believe in infant baptism by sprinkling, but like the Catholics, they do pray to saints, so that they can pray on behalf of us to God. Some ask, whether these issues are important to distinguish. And I believe that they are. While they might not be primary theological issues like the death and resurrection of Christ which is central to Christianity, I believe that these topics do affect the way that we live as Christians and the way that we view God. So, I will address three of the above topics with my own opinion.
(1) If the Virgin Mary was without sin, that takes away the miraculous nature of Jesus’ birth and the fact that it was God’s work, not her work that conceived Jesus. The Virgin Mary was a sinful, normal human being just like you or me. She was used by God to bring His son into the world, just as God uses us to accomplish His purposes on work now. That doesn’t make us any more special though. It is by grace that God can use imperfect, normal people to accomplish His work, through His omnipotence.
(2) If the HS doesn’t emanate from both God and Jesus, than the three facets of the holy trinity are not equal and it takes away from God’s nature and from the unity of the trinity. The unity of the trinity is foundational I think to our need for relationship and love.
(3) If the saints pray to God for us the relationship between Christ and man weakens. Yes, they may be helping us out, but they have no more clout than we do. We are commanded in the Bible in Matthew 5:6: “when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.†We know that “the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God†(Romans 8:26-7). But nowhere in the Bible do we see that we should pray to saints or the Virgin Mary. If we had to pray through a mediator every time we wanted to communicate with God, then our relationship with him wouldn’t be as intimate.
