On Orthodoxy East and West

Notes

¹ From the “Basis of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church” a document issued in 2000 by the council of Russian Bishops. Accessed at http://incommunion.org/articles/the-orthodox-church-andsociety/ iii on November 13, 2007.

² Dn. Andrey Kuraev, Protestantam o Pravoslavii (Moskva: Svato- Tritzkoï Sergievoï Lavry, 1997), 60.

³ Donald Fairbairn, Eastern Orthodoxy Through Western Eyes (Westminster John Knox, 2002). See the introductory chapter.

⁴ Filioque, literally, “and the Son,” refers to the Trinitarian source of the sending of the Holy Spirit. The Nicene Creed left the matter of the Spirit’s sending to the Father. The Spirit’s sending from the Father “and the Son” first was added to the Creed in 589 in the Spanish city of Toledo. Although Scripture clearly speaks of Jesus’ sending of the Spirit (John 15:26), the Orthodox qualify the Son’s role to one of agency. The Spirit is from the Father through the Son. Saying the Spirit is from the Father and the Son robs the Father of his uniqueness in the Trinitarian relationship.

⁵ Grant Osborne’s assessment in his massive commentary, Revelation (Baker, 2002), 12.

⁶ John Breck, Scripture in Tradition: The Bible and Its Interpretation in the Orthodox Church (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 15.

⁷ Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988), 116. Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, says that prior to the fifth century there is no written evidence that believers prayed to Mary or believed in her capacity to defend or help Christians (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. [HarperCollins, 1989], 491).

⁸ For expressions of the Orthodox views of the material and formal insufficiency of Scripture, see, for example, John Whiteford, “Sola Scriptura: In the Vanity of Their Minds,” (www.fatheralexander.org/ booklets/english/sola_scriptura_john_whiteford.htm), accessed November 9, 2007.

⁹ Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (University of Chicago Press, 1971), 26.

¹⁰ Donald Fairbairn has a good discussion of the significance of the past tense in an unpublished paper, “A Summary of Eastern Orthodox Thought,” March 1993, pp. 6-8.

¹¹ N. T. Wright, “Justification: The Biblical Basis and Its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism,” in The Great Acquittal: Justification by Faith and Current Christian Thought, ed. G. Reid (Collins, 1982), 31.