Small Orthodox corner

[Caligul]

Hello, guys! It's so cool to see this topic, i was really enjoing all the videos you've posted here. I'm interested in the ortodox art and i want to study how to paint the greek icons. I thought that the bast way is to go to enroll in one of the academies in Greece to be closer to the roots of the culture I've read that the education itself and rent prices are not very high https://tranio.com/greece/education/. But i'm afraid that it's gonna be tough choise because i've never been there. Maybe somebody here at least travel in Greece? Can you give me an advice about what city to choose? Thanks!

[Bob69Joe]

I highly recommend Dionysus the Aeropagite, the Athenian guy, not the Assyrian, nor the Irish one.

Perhaps this is already posted, because it should be! This link contains Dionysus' Mystical Theology, which to put it vaguely, is the knowledge of not-knowing, which by Lao Tzu's standards could go great with not-doing.

http://www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII...lTheology.html

Hello, guys! It's so cool to see this topic, i was really enjoing all the videos you've posted here. I'm interested in the ortodox art and i want to study how to paint the greek icons. I thought that the bast way is to go to enroll in one of the academies in Greece to be closer to the roots of the culture I've read that the education itself and rent prices are not very high https://tranio.com/greece/education/. But i'm afraid that it's gonna be tough choise because i've never been there. Maybe somebody here at least travel in Greece? Can you give me an advice about what city to choose? Thanks!

The Casa del Prado in San Diego Park, has a museum with a collection of Russian icons. Are Greek icons done so differently? They were painted on wood. St. Petersburg has to have an excellent collection, and you can visit the rotting House of Soviets at ol' Königsberg while you're in the area.

[ThePianist]

News websites (often with spiritual articles)
Russian Faith
Orthodox Christianity / OrthoChristian.Com

Blogs
Fr. Ted's Blog – Meditations of an Orthodox Priest
The Morning Offering – Commentary on Orthodox Living
The Whole Counsel Blog - The Scriptures in the Orthodox Church

[Prodromos]

Russian Faith is basically a Chekist propaganda outlet. No emphasis on truth or holiness there, just ecclesial politics (sectarianism) and pro-Kremlin/anti-Western talking points.

Ancient Faith has some interesting blogs though.

[ThePianist]

On Russian Faith, you can get articles with content like these:

In eating of the fruit, Adam and Eve ceased desiring God. They ceased looking to Him for their sustenance, for their food, and instead ate a fruit, which represents the world. In eating the world, they looked to creation itself for sustenance instead of to God. So in this act, the first parents sought to exclude God from their lives and to live autonomously—independently of God.
https://russian-faith.com/explaining...g-u-turn-n1974

In Orthodoxy, sin is much more than a moral shortcoming or the failure to live up to some external code of behavior. Sin is the failure to realize life as love and communion, the failure to be whole, healthy, complete. It is the rejection of personal communion with God. Sin is restricting ourselves, isolating ourselves in order to live autonomous, independent, and self-sufficient lives. In a sense, sin is an obsessive self-love. For the Orthodox, the absolute autonomy of the individual is sin, indeed the “original sin.” Our offense against God is not that we have “offended His honor,” but rather that we have turned from life itself. Sin is the denial of God’s image in man and of God Himself. It is self-destructive. God hates sin, not because of what it does to Him, but because of what it does to us.
https://russian-faith.com/explaining...g-u-turn-n1974

[Sir Adrian]

[Sir Adrian]

The Lord's Lamentations, sung on good Friday afternoon and Holy Saturday moning

[basics]

The problem I have with these churches is all the idolatry that surrounds them. The very second commandment was that " Thou shalt have no graven images before Me." What are icons but graven images? If a man or woman is born again of the Spirit of God what need does he or she have for such things when God the Holy Spirit is supposed to dwell within them? The nearest the ancient Jews had to God was the Ark of the Covenant with no image of God to be seen at all. Why even at the transfiguration of Jesus the disciples present could not see His face yet our world is cluttered with paintings of Christ none bearing any resemblance to what is written concerning His looks and stature. All this pomp is totally quite unnecessary and certainly quite unscriptural.

[Akar]

So you follow the muslim tradition of not depicting religious figures? You think there shouldn't be any depictions of Jesus or his followers anywhere, especially in church?

[basics]

So you follow the muslim tradition of not depicting religious figures? You think there shouldn't be any depictions of Jesus or his followers anywhere, especially in church?

Akar,

I follow nothing from the Muslims, rather what Scripture tells us as it alone is the word of God and it quite clearly tells us not to make any graven images of God. Now Jesus being God comes under that category. Here's something that might be of interest and it goes all the way back into the garden with Adam and Eve. When both realised they had sinned they also discovered their nakedness. In other words and this is important they had nowhere to hide or cover their sin and so it turns out that when Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross He too was naked, stripped by the Romans, to figure why He was on that cross in the first place. He became sin, naked of any cover from the wrath of His Father which stretched all the way back to the original sin to pay for the sin of the saints declared righteous by His Father as well as saints alive and yet to be born. So, the point is that in all these depictions of Christ on the cross He is not naked never mind the likeness being out of sinc with Scripture. When God gave the second commandment He knew what man's imagination would brew up and so it is right up until this very day in churches right across the board.

[Akar]

Muslims aside, you do agree that Jesus shouldn't be depicted artistically?

[Lord Thesaurian]

So you follow the muslim tradition of not depicting religious figures? You think there shouldn't be any depictions of Jesus or his followers anywhere, especially in church?

You could compare it to that, and maybe it’s similar to what some Muslims believe about icons. But in a general sense, he’s right (Exodus 20:4, Deuteronomy 5:8) Where I would draw the line is at the veneration of icons rather than the icons themselves. Constantine V had the right idea.

[basics]

Muslims aside, you do agree that Jesus shouldn't be depicted artistically?

Akar,

God should never be depicted by visuality, why? Because we who are saved are so by Faith, a Faith written into the hearts of all believers. Put another way, Jesus' blood was what paid for our sin, given freely by Himself on that cross, so why not just have ornaments, icons and paintings of blood which doesn't need much imagination to picture. Jesus Christ lives inside every believer so they don't need false pictures or idols to fortify that. The bread and wine are sufficient to remind us of that.

[enoch]

Akar,

God should never be depicted by visuality, why? Because we who are saved are so by Faith, a Faith written into the hearts of all believers. Put another way, Jesus' blood was what paid for our sin, given freely by Himself on that cross, so why not just have ornaments, icons and paintings of blood which doesn't need much imagination to picture. Jesus Christ lives inside every believer so they don't need false pictures or idols to fortify that. The bread and wine are sufficient to remind us of that.

Jesus’ blood did not “pay for our sins” even in the make believe tradition often put forward by degenerate heretical Protestant cults.

There is but one true faith, as Jesus decreed, the Church of Peter, Catholicism. All other Abrahamic sects including the Islamic ones have strayed from the word of Christ.

[Cyclops]

Jesus’ blood did not “pay for our sins” even in the make believe tradition often put forward by degenerate heretical Protestant cults.

Pretty standard practice to re-write theology to let yourself into heaven. Luther wanted beer swilling foul mouthed Germans with high self esteem in heaven so he defied the church. Jesus wanted honest village folk like his mum and dad in heaven so he defied the Temple.

There is but one true faith, as Jesus decreed, the Church of Peter, Catholicism. All other Abrahamic sects including the Islamic ones have strayed from the word of Christ.

[laughs in Primitive Ebionite, Augustinian Gnostic, Thomist Pagan Philosophic, and bleating Papal Pedantic].

Rabbi Joshua would flip every altar in St Peters were he to return to Rome today.

[alhoon]

Akar,

God should never be depicted by visuality

Nope, that's some sophistry some heretics claimed in the 8th century. It's not true. We have fought wars (iconomachy over iconolatry) over these misguided religious opinions. Thousands of years of Holy Tradition, saints and theologians that have dedicated their whole lives to this and Holy Synods that, according to my religious beliefs, were divinely inspired, have addressed the matter.
One person in a game forum won't be enough for me to question millenia of Holy Tradition by the brightest minds and most pious saints that have spent decades to shed light to what God said with great humility and understanding the limits of our minds compared to the Will of our Creator.

If you don't agree with them, so be it. Don't use icons. But we do and we have millenia of Theology on our side. The Icons you decry as false are representations and expressions of the faith you mentioned in all believers. If I want to express my faith towards a painting of the Savior or a Saint that is permissible and not idolatry.

There is but one true faith, as Jesus decreed, the Church of Peter, Catholicism. All other Abrahamic sects including the Islamic ones have strayed from the word of Christ.

The Catholics broke away from the main dogma and that happened centuries before the Schism of 1054. To be absolutely fair, our Church also strays from the word of Christ we are all imperfect and that is not a sophistry or nice quote. You can see the imperfections in how we apply Jesus word in everyday doings of the church. All the bickering between the Patriarchs, all the wealth held by the church, bending backwards to change the "Give caesars what's caesars" to account for "the church doesn't pay tax" where that's nowhere in the bible (and yet you would see half the bible dedicated to the hypocritical practices of believers) etc etc.

But, at least to my belief (and we're talking Faith here, not rationale), the Orthodox dogma is "the least wrong".

[basics]

Jesus’ blood did not “pay for our sins” even in the make believe tradition often put forward by degenerate heretical Protestant cults.
There is but one true faith, as Jesus decreed, the Church of Peter, Catholicism. All other Abrahamic sects including the Islamic ones have strayed from the word of Christ.

enoch,

Then what did pay for our sins if it was not the blood of Jesus Christ? Down through the ages the blood of animals covered the sins of Israel but cover was never the answer. It would take the untainted blood of Jesus Christ to pay for the sins of men and so it did on that fateful day when He became sin to replace me on that cross. His blood paid for my sin because He became me on that cross taking on the full wrath of His Father to make me free from it. In the Book to the Hebrews it is written that from that point God the Father never knew me to be a sinner. In one tremendous act, never to be repeated, Jesus Christ cleared the sins of God's elect forever. Every saint from Abel on until the eve of Jesus' return, yes even them as yet unborn, were made safe on that eventful day.

So, there is but one true Faith and it is in the hearts of all them that are born again of the Spirit of God, none else. There is no church of Peter, never was and never will be, for Jesus never depicted anything of the sort. What builds the church was what Peter replied to Jesus, " We believe that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God." It is on this that Jesus builds His church. As for Peter himself he wasn't even the leader at Jerusalem as that fell to James the brother of Jesus. There is not one jot of evidence he was ever in Rome and even had he got there he would have found that Paul had established at least two Bishops to oversee the running of that church as was his custom in all the churches he established. In other words Peter was never the first Bishop of Rome. I often ponder on what that grand old man would say and think were he to see what has transpired in his name. Going by what we can read in Scripture about him my guess is that he would be furious.

[Cyclops]

Nope, that's some sophistry some heretics claimed in the 8th century. It's not true. We have fought wars (iconomachy over iconolatry) over these misguided religious opinions. Thousands of years of Holy Tradition, saints and theologians that have dedicated their whole lives to this and Holy Synods that, according to my religious beliefs, were divinely inspired, have addressed the matter.
One person in a game forum won't be enough for me to question millenia of Holy Tradition by the brightest minds and most pious saints that have spent decades to shed light to what God said with great humility and understanding the limits of our minds compared to the Will of our Creator.

If you don't agree with them, so be it. Don't use icons. But we do and we have millenia of Theology on our side. The Icons you decry as false are representations and expressions of the faith you mentioned in all believers. If I want to express my faith towards a painting of the Savior or a Saint that is permissible and not idolatry.


The Catholics broke away from the main dogma and that happened centuries before the Schism of 1054. To be absolutely fair, our Church also strays from the word of Christ we are all imperfect and that is not a sophistry or nice quote. You can see the imperfections in how we apply Jesus word in everyday doings of the church. All the bickering between the Patriarchs, all the wealth held by the church, bending backwards to change the "Give caesars what's caesars" to account for "the church doesn't pay tax" where that's nowhere in the bible (and yet you would see half the bible dedicated to the hypocritical practices of believers) etc etc.

But, at least to my belief (and we're talking Faith here, not rationale), the Orthodox dogma is "the least wrong".

Yes there's a few ways to slice this loaf, but when Catholics claim "the Orthodox broke away from us" its as silly as if the Anglicans were to claim the Papacy left the C of E (and its done as a joke but there's a serious undercurrent). I'd go further and say "opportunist factions in several churches, and especially the Bishops-Patriarchs of Rome, took advantage of certainly doctrinal divergences for political ends". That could almost be the history of the Vatican.

I believe our friends who believe in Jesus' teachings all seek God and I feel you all find God (especially when you are kind and accepting, I think the Rebbe from Galilee was a very kind chap). If God is all wise and powerful its not for humans to state the exact terms under which access can be had. Why would there be only one way? The Gospels and Pauls letter describe more than one way: Corinthians talks about faith alone, Romans talks about faith and works, in Matthew Jesus specifies repentance and righteousness (which is defined in part as discrete giving-something like the works in Romans).

People waste a lot of time trying to tie God to one doctrine, but the Bible is full of many stories, and I honestly believe the people writing these stories down did so in good faith. Paul was not lying to the Romans when he talked about works and faith (that definitely repeats some of Jesus teachings) nor was he lying when in Corinthians he talked about faith alone (that seems to reflect his own journey to Jesus, and his own good works came after he was saved). Don't try and logic chop the Creator, if you believe in God then you believe God is beyond your puny reason (certainly they are beyond mine).

[Sir Adrian]

The problem I have with these churches is all the idolatry that surrounds them. The very second commandment was that " Thou shalt have no graven images before Me." What are icons but graven images? If a man or woman is born again of the Spirit of God what need does he or she have for such things when God the Holy Spirit is supposed to dwell within them? The nearest the ancient Jews had to God was the Ark of the Covenant with no image of God to be seen at all. Why even at the transfiguration of Jesus the disciples present could not see His face yet our world is cluttered with paintings of Christ none bearing any resemblance to what is written concerning His looks and stature. All this pomp is totally quite unnecessary and certainly quite unscriptural.

We've had this conversation before basics and I have proven to you that icons are not graven images because we do not worship the icons.

I do find it ironic how you are here all day, every day saying the Bible this and Scripture that and here you are building strawmen against the church that wrote the bible in the first place.

[enoch]

Anyone who has read the Bible is familiar with the confession of Peter. Jesus directly states His church with be wherever Peter goes. Peter chose Rome. The Church of Rome is the true Christian one. End of story. All the silly arguments aside this is directly from the Bible. It is not up for debate to Real Christians.