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There is no purely Byzantine theology, and even if there was, it wouldn't be Orthodox.

I'm sure you know best on this.

I know that Orthodoxy ≠ Byzantium.

Name an Eastern Orthodox Church that is not Byzantine in rite.

The faith that existed on the day of Pentecost was both fully Catholic and Orthodox, though probably not recognizable at least outwardly if judged by any of the present rites in use. That is the fundamental underlying reality. The Orthodox faith isn’t and couldn’t be limited by one geographic time and place, it is the same that it was on that day. If by some strange happenstance my own parish abandoned its present liturgical rite and adopted another, my faith would not change.

Fr. Georges Florovsky I think coined the term “Pseudomorphosis” in his description of the period before Peter back to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and running in to at least the 19th century. I think his chief criticism was not about the purity of “Byzantine” theology, but the obscuring of the Patristic heritage of the church. Certainly he recognized influences have always entered the church from various places, and what is critical is not guarding the purity of the church but incorporating the changes that do enter and making sure they conform with theology that is Orthodox. I can see many things in my own parish that are not Byzantine in origin, but they are Orthodox.

Many churches, rites, theologians, etc. through time have been Orthodox and have not been Byzantine in origin, existence or expression.

The Western Rite Orthodox.

IMHO the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian, Indian. Btw, the Churches of Alexandria and Antioch still for most of their history did not use the rite of Constantinople.

Why do you ask?

That's exactly the same thing that Latin Rite Catholics understand under the terms development of doctrine.

Not a Church, merely a ritual adjunct of a particular jurisdiction of a Church. And one viewed with suspicion by a large number of Orthodox, at that.


And the Eastern Orthodox are not in communion with them, are they?

As I said, after the Islamic conquest of the Near East and much of Anatolia, the Church of Constantinople turned inward, and what had been a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-ritual and doctrinally diverse communion of Eastern Churches became an introspective and exclusively Greek Church. In the meanwhile, freed from the oppression of Constantinople, and actively encouraged by their new Muslim overlords, the Churches of Alexandria, Ethiopia, Syria and Armenia went their own way, preserving their traditional liturgies and their modes of doctrinal expression. Those communities that remained loyal to Byzantium, now known as Melkites, switched to the Byzantine rite, and became nothing more than rump Churches entirely dependent upon Constantinople for their survival. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were little more than suffragans of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

just to be a contrarian, I have a bumper sticker that i bought at teh Orthodox education Center in West brookfield, Mass. It reads the Orthodox Church, founded AD 33.

I love the anachronistic mindset of the naively self-satisfied laity. So do the folks at the various Orthodox publishing houses that sell those things.

I'm currently trying to market a bumper sticker that says "The Catholic Church, founded AD 32."

For me personally, I varies depending on the situation. Sometimes amusing, sometimes just annoying. Like when Catholics talk about the "hypocrisy of non-Catholics trying to disprove Catholicism using the bible that was written by Catholics".

To say the Bible was written by Catholics is itself naive and anachronistic.

I didn't think it was necessary to spell that out ... but I have to admit that I have a history of thinking I've made something clear when I really hadn't.

Like one time on catholic.com when I quoted Fr. Philip Neri Powell's statement: "Telling Catholics that they aren't perfect makes as much sense as telling fish they're wet. We know already. Move on." I forget the exact conversation, but the important point is that I thought I had made it clear that I was quoting it to illustrate that Catholics are capable of being arrogant (just like anyone else); but apparently that wasn't very clear at all, because more than one person wrote to me to say how much they agree with me and Fr. Powell.

:hmm:

Sorry for going off topic.

Does a fish actually have a concept of wet (assuming that fish were sentient)? We know we are wet because we can compare it to the normal condition of "dry", but the fish knows nothing other than wet, and so may not even be aware of it.