Originally posted by duecer
For 1600-1800 years there were no Biblical literalists.----I hardley think that's true, and would be very hard to prove on your part.
As for the rest of your arguments, correct Luthers reformation had nothing to do with Eastern Orthodoxy, but that does not mean that they havn't been affected by it.
Secondly correct (sort of), the church(catholic[means u ...[text shortened]... th open minds. It would be foolish to ignore the mistakes of history, or worse to repeat them.
For 1600-1800 years there were no Biblical literalists.----I hardley think that's true, and would be very hard to prove on your part.
Well, yes: that was a far too sweeping a statement on my part. If you read in the history of church doctrine, though, it’s pretty clear that—
(1) Biblical literalism as a doctrinal position did not develop until after Luther’s
sola scriptura, perhaps not being fully-formed until the late 18th/early 19th century (I don’t think there are any “smoking gun” dates; Jaroslav Pelikan seems to have it developing from the 17th to the early 19th centuries). As such, it really is a Protestant phenomenon.
(2) Although various early church writers understood various differing portions of the Biblical texts as literal/historical, more allegorical interpretation was the norm. And taking some things historically/literally does not a wholesale literalist make.
(3) On the “flip-side” of all that are the various critical approaches to exegesis (form criticism, historical criticism, literary criticism) that also seem to have developed mostly from “Protestant soil.”
As for the rest of your arguments, correct Luther’s reformation had nothing to do with Eastern Orthodoxy, but that does not mean that they haven’t been affected by it.
I don’t think they have been doctrinally affected much at all. It’s hard to say because Orthodoxy was kind of the “forgotten Christianity” (I forget whose phrase that is) in much of the West until the 20th century. Now, however, it’s a different story. Also, having recently read some Orthodox writers on exegesis/hermeneutics, it’s apparent they are now being affected by the “critical exegesis” mentioned above, grappling with how that fits into the tradition.
While Paul et al were not afraid to use reason, the church for 1700 years suppressed scientific thought based on reason, so reason is a fairly new phenomenon in the church. I hardly think the Inquisition had anything to do with reason, or perhaps Galileo might be a better example.
Again, while I don’t necessarily disagree with what you’re saying, if you take the Patristic age to go until circa 600 CE, then the use of reason is certainly a strong feature of the Greek influence on Christianity. And again, I’m not sure how different things after that were in the East versus the West. I would say that reason was a “recovered” phenomenon. (I have to add that I grew up Lutheran—ELCA—and never heard reason mentioned as a “pillar of faith” until I became an Episcopalian.)
Experience has taught us to approach new subjects, and new social paradigms with open minds. It would be foolish to ignore the mistakes of history, or worse to repeat them.
No doubt.
BTW, I wasn’t intending to dis Wesley in any way with my “lateral” comment; I certainly agree with the addition of experience.
EDIT: I don't mean to harp on this, but the Latin Vulgate was--well, Latin. What has really been lost is the Greek (by the Great Schism of 1054, few Western theologians read Greek any more and few Greeks read any Latin). Similarly for Hebrew, at least in the East, where the LXX was/is used pretty exclusively. The languages make a difference.