Topic: Archbishop Lazar Puhalo

[ialmisry]

ROCOR was established by Ukase of Patriarch St. Tikhon of Mosocw. ROCOR never broke communion with anyone, except for the Moscow Patriarchate and her daughter Church, the OCA. The re unification that occurred a few years ago was between two local parts of the ONE Russian Orthodox Church.

Not quite, one was the autocephalous Patriarchate of Russia, within its canonical boundaries and the other was, by the definition of its self-proclaimed title and own founding documents, a dependency outside its canonical boundaries.  I've been wondering what the EA's, if they get off the ground, will mean for ROCOR.

ROCOR was always fully canonical,

Not being in communion with your Mother Church is not a small thing.

and co celebrations occurred frequently between ROCOR and other Orthodox jurisdictions, up until the reign of Metropolitan Philaret. When Vladyka Metropolitan Philaret published his "sorrowful" epistles to Patriarch Athinagoras, communion between ROCOR and other Orthodox jurisdictions began to occur less frequently.

I communed with ROCOR in Jerusalem, but wouldn't in America. Until the Act of Canonical Communion was signed. I communed with the Syriac and Armenian Orthodox in Syria under similar circumstances, but not the Copts in Egypt of the US.

At this point in time, ROCOR began to ordain bishops for the Greek "Genuine" Orthodox Church.

Getting involved in someone else's schism is also not a small thing.

When Vladyka Metropolitan Vitaly became First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, he began to give a definite no cocelebration / intercommunion line, but through insinuations in his epistles. However, not even Metropolitan Vitaly went out - in written form via Synodal declaration - to say we are in communion with no one, we will celebrate with no one, we are isolated and on our own.

That's all water under the bridge.  What's not, evidently, is the status of the man of the OP: is he canonically defrocked/deposed or not.  Per the terms of Pat. St. Tikhon's ukaze, ROCOR's actions against him are sujbect to confirmation.  Did Moscow confirm them?  Has Moscow issued any blanket statement on such matters? Has Moscow defered to the OCA (who I am still not quite sure how and why it got involved) on this?

[augustin717]

 

I communed with the Syriac and Armenian Orthodox in Syria under similar circumstances, but not the Copts in Egypt of the US.

I do not see how that is Orthodox. We are still divided, so you might as well commune with the Catholics or the Assyrian. The same thing.
I only received communion-not very often, true-in an Orthodox church, never in my life elsewhere.

[ialmisry]

I would say that ROCOR could have broken communion with the MP (as kind of instructed by +Tikhon) and remained in communion with all other Orthodox Churches. However, she unfortunately began to associate herself with non-canonical, schismatic groups.

However, thankfully ROCOR was returned to full communion and has broke communion with the schismatic groups.

Coming from a member of a church recognized legitimate by nobody other than the Godless Communist regime at the time.

Not exactly, they were all in communion with the OCA, including those under the Islamic and Zionist regimes, then and now.  The Church of Finland, when the Phanar questioned its friendly relations with the OCA, the Finnish Archbishop brought up the issue of rethinking the relationship between Helsinki and Constantinople, and the EP dropped the issue.

Also, from what I understand, ROCOR did not break communion with the OC Greeks, they broke communion with ROCOR.  A canonical Church is one that follows the canons of the Church, not one that needs to call itself canonical because there is no other evidence to support the claim.  I am sure that the Churches that Maximos and Athanasius railed against considered themselves canonical.  History has shown otherwise, and these "schismatics" are now considered Saints.  If the world is here another 1000 years and Christ does not come soon, I predict that history will shine far more kindly on ROCOR than the modernist babble that calls itself SCOBA. 

I don't think we have to wait that long for the jury to come back.

I would say that there is nothing unfortunate about ROCOR's association with these other groups.  What is somewhat unfortunate is that ROCOR's amends with the MP are viewed by some (who do not know better) as meaning that ROCOR somehow has changed its relationship with the other jurisdictions.  I have not found this to be the case at all.  While ROCOR did not deny the Grace of the other jurisdiction's Sacraments, its members were told that it was better not to attend some of these Churches as they were on a path that would eventually lead to separation from the Church.  I have not heard any of this change.  In fact, I heard a clergyman from one of the Slavic Churches ask why we should even take the EP seriously, and afford any authority to him at all to convene a council.  Moscow is the third Rome, and Constantinople no longer exists. 

Moscow could have made that argument in 1589. It didn't, and has to live with that outcome, and the submission it made to Constantinople at that time.

The EP is nothing but a small group allowed to exist by the grace of their Muslim masters (which can be said about Alexandria and Antioch as well).

 

Were the pagan Caesars more magnanimous in their grace?

The EP is the head of the Greek Church, the big boys at present outside of the Local Churches and even inside one (the OCA). Of course, that can change, and still rests on millions in the "New Lands." Alexandria has a whole continent to itself (and now has more members in Egypt alone than it has had since the Council of Constantinople II).  Antioch's biggest problem has been the Vatican: much of its infrastructure has been in Lebanon, until recently a majority Christian country.

Shouldn't the "first among equals" of the Church at least come from an Orthodox country?

Like Rome under the Caesars?

So, while there may be high hopes for "unity" in the United States (a decidedly NON-Orthodox country), and by a few jurisdiction within the United States and their enslaved home churches (a minority of Orthodox Christians),

Not quite sure who you are alluding to.

I am not so sure that this 8th council is being looked at in quite the same manner by all Orthodox Christians.  Or for that matter, even the majority.  I don't think the Slavic Orthodox are going to go along with things any more in two years from now than they did at Florence or Brest, or put up with innovations any more than they did with Pat. Meletius and his antics.

I don't think we need an 8th (or 9th or 10th, depending on your numbering) Ecumenical Council, when a Pan Orthodox Council will suffice.

[ialmisry]

I communed with the Syriac and Armenian Orthodox in Syria under similar circumstances, but not the Copts in Egypt of the US.

I do not see how that is Orthodox.

Read up on the Meletian schism. Then we will talk.

We are still divided, so you might as well commune with the Catholics or the Assyrian. The same thing.

You know of any Patriarch or Holy Synod approving communion with the Vatican or the Nestorians?

I only received communion-not very often, true

Of course.

[Rufus]

As for his assertions that the belief in literal toll-houses is an ancient gnostic myth--it is. Anyone ever read the Nag Hammadi library?

Where did he call saints heretics? Where? Show me the documents. Where did he call St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, St. John the Wonderworker, St. Nikolai of Zica, St. Justin Popovic, Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, and Elder Ephraim in Arizona heretics? I want to see it. If it's not true, it's slander. I heard him say that despite his teaching, Fr. Seraphim may be a saint!

Which Fathers? Which prayers?
 

On the front page of his own website, featured prominently on the left hand menu, the first words one notices are “DISCUSSION OF THE TOLL-HOUSE HERESY”.  Would you suggest that a person can teach a heresy and not be a heretic?  In addition to his own faulty writings on the subject, he also publishes many articles and books by Fr. Michael Azkoul, a member of the HOCNA schism, including “The Toll-House Myth: The Neo-Gnosticism of Fr. Seraphim Rose” wherein the toll-house teaching as presented in The Soul After Death is spoken of as a “Neo-Gnostic heresy”.  Those who teach heresy are heretics.  If anyone reads Fr. Seraphim’s book, they will see that his teaching is not by any means his own, but rather he quotes at great length from St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, and St. John the Wonderworker.  So, in saying the toll-house teaching is heretical, and Fr. Seraphim’s book on the subject is heretical, he is also saying that these saints are heretical.  St. Nikolai of Zica refers to the toll-houses in many places in the Prologue of Ohrid.  St. Justin (Popovic), in his work on Dogmatic Theology (not yet translated into English) has a whole chapter which presents the toll-house teaching as the teaching of the Church and he illustrates this teaching using the Life of St. Basil the New.  Elder Ephraim in Arizona also mentions the toll-houses in his book Counsels from the Holy Mountain.  If you read the Lives of the Optina Elders, you will likely find reference to the toll-house teaching in every one (I have read a few but not all of their lives).  Met Hierotheos of Nafpaktos in his book Life After Death has a whole section in Chapter 2 on the “Taxing of Souls” which affirms the toll-house teaching of the Church.  I have never heard anyone oppose the toll-house teaching of the Church except for members and associates of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston – the monastery which left ROCOR in 1986 in the midst of very serious moral accusations in order to create a new false “Church” of their own making, where the only bishops of their “Church” could come from this one monastery.  The person we are discussing here was formed by this monastery and absorbed its whole sectarian and heretical, renovationist and pseudo-scholarly outlook.  He now promotes their ideologies to a wider audience now that he has made it into a “legitimate” jurisdiction with the title of an Archbishop.  Fr. Michael Azkoul, the other person who has been so outspoken against the toll-houses, is a member of the same “Church” created by this monastery which formed the person we are discussing.  If one wants to believe these people, or the erroneous notion that the toll-house teaching is an “opinion” or “debatable”, such a person should prove this with examples from other saints who were the contemporaries of St. John the Wonderworkder, St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, the Optina Elders, St. Justin Popovic, St. Nikolai of Zica, etc. Show me that any saints contemporary with the saints that spoke about the toll-houses rejected the toll-houses or spoke out against it, and then I will consider that perhaps it is “debatable”, but without such (and nobody has provided such) then there is no reason to reject the clear teachings of the saints and Fathers based on the objection of some very questionable contemporary people. 

St. Gregory of Nyssa believed in apokatastasis, a heresy condemned by an ecumenical council. Calling a certain doctrine a heresy is simply not nthe same thing as calling a person a heretic.

I wonder exactly what you are saying about the toll-houses...Of course, the saints have frequently spoken of the demons coming as "toll-collectors" to convict the soul of its sins at its death. To say that the soul actually goes through real toll-houses after death is another matter entirely. I'm not sure which one you are advocating...with some research I can certainly refute the latter version of te teaching.

Moreover, the fact that the teaching occurrs almost exclusively in 19th century Russian writings lends it less credence, not more. Besides gnostic and pseudepigraphical writings, I am not aware of any other place where the teaching appears before that.

Since this is a discussion forum, I hope you don't take all this personally, and I promise I'm not this argmentative in real life.
Rufus

[ialmisry]

Although I strongly disagree with some of the things he says, I continue to be appalled by the opposition to evolutionary theory by many Orthodox Christians. It is shameful--it drives people away from the Church for the sake of an untruth. Learn your science.

Perhaps before you take this condescending stance, you might want to learn some of the philosophical objections some Orthodox have to modern science and its methodologies. Read Philip Sherrard's Human Image: World Image.

I am well aware of the shortcomings of the methodology of science. However, the objections people bring up against evolution are exactly what you said: they are philosophical. They are not rooted in empirical facts. I know that not everyone who objects to evolutionary theory objects to it for the same reasons, and some of those reasons are respectable; most of them are subjective.

Genuine science is naturally open to the reality that most theories will probably be falsified in some way in the future.

LOL. You don't know scientists very well, do you?

[augustin717]

I don't need to read about any Meletian schism. I know that the anti-Chalcedonians are not Orthodox, no Orthodox synod is in communion with them and communing with them is an act of disobedience. Until communion is officially re-established we are to refrain from such gestures. You have no moral authority whatsoever to condemn metropolitan Nicolae for you did the same.

[ialmisry]

As for his assertions that the belief in literal toll-houses is an ancient gnostic myth--it is. Anyone ever read the Nag Hammadi library?

Where did he call saints heretics? Where? Show me the documents. Where did he call St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, St. John the Wonderworker, St. Nikolai of Zica, St. Justin Popovic, Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos, and Elder Ephraim in Arizona heretics? I want to see it. If it's not true, it's slander. I heard him say that despite his teaching, Fr. Seraphim may be a saint!

Which Fathers? Which prayers?
 

On the front page of his own website, featured prominently on the left hand menu, the first words one notices are “DISCUSSION OF THE TOLL-HOUSE HERESY”.  Would you suggest that a person can teach a heresy and not be a heretic?  In addition to his own faulty writings on the subject, he also publishes many articles and books by Fr. Michael Azkoul, a member of the HOCNA schism, including “The Toll-House Myth: The Neo-Gnosticism of Fr. Seraphim Rose” wherein the toll-house teaching as presented in The Soul After Death is spoken of as a “Neo-Gnostic heresy”.  Those who teach heresy are heretics.  If anyone reads Fr. Seraphim’s book, they will see that his teaching is not by any means his own, but rather he quotes at great length from St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, and St. John the Wonderworker.  So, in saying the toll-house teaching is heretical, and Fr. Seraphim’s book on the subject is heretical, he is also saying that these saints are heretical.  St. Nikolai of Zica refers to the toll-houses in many places in the Prologue of Ohrid.  St. Justin (Popovic), in his work on Dogmatic Theology (not yet translated into English) has a whole chapter which presents the toll-house teaching as the teaching of the Church and he illustrates this teaching using the Life of St. Basil the New.  Elder Ephraim in Arizona also mentions the toll-houses in his book Counsels from the Holy Mountain.  If you read the Lives of the Optina Elders, you will likely find reference to the toll-house teaching in every one (I have read a few but not all of their lives).  Met Hierotheos of Nafpaktos in his book Life After Death has a whole section in Chapter 2 on the “Taxing of Souls” which affirms the toll-house teaching of the Church.  I have never heard anyone oppose the toll-house teaching of the Church except for members and associates of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston – the monastery which left ROCOR in 1986 in the midst of very serious moral accusations in order to create a new false “Church” of their own making, where the only bishops of their “Church” could come from this one monastery.  The person we are discussing here was formed by this monastery and absorbed its whole sectarian and heretical, renovationist and pseudo-scholarly outlook.  He now promotes their ideologies to a wider audience now that he has made it into a “legitimate” jurisdiction with the title of an Archbishop.  Fr. Michael Azkoul, the other person who has been so outspoken against the toll-houses, is a member of the same “Church” created by this monastery which formed the person we are discussing.  If one wants to believe these people, or the erroneous notion that the toll-house teaching is an “opinion” or “debatable”, such a person should prove this with examples from other saints who were the contemporaries of St. John the Wonderworkder, St. Theophan the Recluse, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, the Optina Elders, St. Justin Popovic, St. Nikolai of Zica, etc. Show me that any saints contemporary with the saints that spoke about the toll-houses rejected the toll-houses or spoke out against it, and then I will consider that perhaps it is “debatable”, but without such (and nobody has provided such) then there is no reason to reject the clear teachings of the saints and Fathers based on the objection of some very questionable contemporary people. 

So, you believe Toll-Houses are Orthodox dogma?

[ialmisry]

I don't need to read about any Meletian schism.

Yes, I forgot. Ignorance is bliss.

I know that the anti-Chalcedonians are not Orthodox, no Orthodox synod is in communion with them and communing with them is an act of disobedience. Until communion is officially re-established we are to refrain from such gestures. You have no moral authority whatsoever to condemn metropolitan Nicolae for you did the same.

I don't have to condemn Met. Nicolae. His Patriarch and Holy Synod did, and I only fully agree with it.

I agree with what the Patriarch and Holy Synod of Antioch have decided, and in their jurisdiction I obeyed it, just as I did when I was in the jurisdiciton of the OCA.

[augustin717]

So, the synod of Antioch demands that you commune with the anti-Chalcedonians when you visit there, no? And you obeyed them. How nice.
Winking at something, ignoring it, for the sake of peace etc, hardly means officially restoring communion.

[Shanghaiski]

No one in their posts addressed him as a Deacon. His bare name was used. I ask to stop this offtopic.

Not to be a picker of nit, but a defrocked deacon would not be referred to as a deacon.

[Ioannes]

I don't need to read about any Meletian schism. I know that the anti-Chalcedonians are not Orthodox, no Orthodox synod is in communion with them and communing with them is an act of disobedience. Until communion is officially re-established we are to refrain from such gestures. You have no moral authority whatsoever to condemn metropolitan Nicolae for you did the same.

Why are we not Orthodox? The EO venerates Leo I, who was the first Papal Primate and supported Theodoret of Cyprus, an ardent supporter of Nestorious and wrote against St Cyril's 12 chapters. He never accepted them NOR the third council yet Leo I forced him into the 4th council. St. Dioscorous was condemned not for beliefs but for disobeying the bishop of Rome.

Funny thing is, we defined the nature of Christ the exact same way St. Cyril did in the 3rd council, and it was rejected ALTHOUGH you accept in the 3rd council. We actually accept both definitions, and did accept both definitions as is clear in St. Cyril's writings.

Not Orthodox, that claim is laughable, especially for a people who venerate two heretics, one who invented Papal Primacy, which you now reject, and one who is a nestorian.

[Rufus]

Although I strongly disagree with some of the things he says, I continue to be appalled by the opposition to evolutionary theory by many Orthodox Christians. It is shameful--it drives people away from the Church for the sake of an untruth. Learn your science.

Perhaps before you take this condescending stance, you might want to learn some of the philosophical objections some Orthodox have to modern science and its methodologies. Read Philip Sherrard's Human Image: World Image.

I am well aware of the shortcomings of the methodology of science. However, the objections people bring up against evolution are exactly what you said: they are philosophical. They are not rooted in empirical facts. I know that not everyone who objects to evolutionary theory objects to it for the same reasons, and some of those reasons are respectable; most of them are subjective.

Genuine science is naturally open to the reality that most theories will probably be falsified in some way in the future.

LOL. You don't know scientists very well, do you?

Oh, I don't?

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

[ialmisry]

So, the synod of Antioch demands that you commune with the anti-Chalcedonians when you visit there, no? And you obeyed them. How nice.
Winking at something, ignoring it, for the sake of peace etc, hardly means officially restoring communion.

What tribe you are from is what it's all about, no?

[Shanghaiski]

I don't need to read about any Meletian schism. I know that the anti-Chalcedonians are not Orthodox, no Orthodox synod is in communion with them and communing with them is an act of disobedience. Until communion is officially re-established we are to refrain from such gestures. You have no moral authority whatsoever to condemn metropolitan Nicolae for you did the same.

Why are we not Orthodox? The EO venerates Leo I, who was the first Papal Primate and supported Theodoret of Cyprus, an ardent supporter of Nestorious and wrote against St Cyril's 12 chapters. He never accepted them NOR the third council yet Leo I forced him into the 4th council. St. Dioscorous was condemned not for beliefs but for disobeying the bishop of Rome.

Funny thing is, we defined the nature of Christ the exact same way St. Cyril did in the 3rd council, and it was rejected ALTHOUGH you accept in the 3rd council. We actually accept both definitions, and did accept both definitions as is clear in St. Cyril's writings.

Not Orthodox, that claim is laughable, especially for a people who venerate two heretics, one who invented Papal Primacy, which you now reject, and one who is a nestorian.

Ahem. Some details of the debate may escape you since they came out at Chalcedon, but Theodoret did anathematize Nestorius, and his anti-Cyrillian works were anathematized at the Fifth Council. Also, St. Leo's Tome was compared at Chalcedon with St. Cyril's works, and was accepted as Orthodox in that the Fathers at Chalcedon thought it agreed with St. Cyril. Not that I expect you or anyone else to agree with this, but this is what happened at Chalcedon and later. Bringing up only the first part of the story really does not convince us of anything except that you only have some of the facts available.

[ialmisry]

I don't need to read about any Meletian schism. I know that the anti-Chalcedonians are not Orthodox, no Orthodox synod is in communion with them and communing with them is an act of disobedience. Until communion is officially re-established we are to refrain from such gestures. You have no moral authority whatsoever to condemn metropolitan Nicolae for you did the same.

Why are we not Orthodox? The EO venerates Leo I, who was the first Papal Primate and supported Theodoret of Cyprus,

Cyrrhus.

an ardent supporter of Nestorious and wrote against St Cyril's 12 chapters. He never accepted them NOR the third council yet Leo I forced him into the 4th council. St. Dioscorous was condemned not for beliefs but for disobeying the bishop of Rome.

He was deposed for not answering the Council's summons. Pope St. Leo wasn't there.

Funny thing is, we defined the nature of Christ the exact same way St. Cyril did in the 3rd council, and it was rejected ALTHOUGH you accept in the 3rd council. We actually accept both definitions, and did accept both definitions as is clear in St. Cyril's writings.

Not Orthodox, that claim is laughable, especially for a people who venerate two heretics, one who invented Papal Primacy,

He did no more than Pope St. Victor over two centuries before, with the same results. Rome's Primacy dates from the Apostles, confirmed by Nicea canon 6.  Papap supremacy is a different matter.
 

which you now reject, and one who is a nestorian.

Who was forced at Chalcedon to anathematize Nestorians, his friends, his opinions, his writings, etc.

[ialmisry]

Although I strongly disagree with some of the things he says, I continue to be appalled by the opposition to evolutionary theory by many Orthodox Christians. It is shameful--it drives people away from the Church for the sake of an untruth. Learn your science.

Perhaps before you take this condescending stance, you might want to learn some of the philosophical objections some Orthodox have to modern science and its methodologies. Read Philip Sherrard's Human Image: World Image.

I am well aware of the shortcomings of the methodology of science. However, the objections people bring up against evolution are exactly what you said: they are philosophical. They are not rooted in empirical facts. I know that not everyone who objects to evolutionary theory objects to it for the same reasons, and some of those reasons are respectable; most of them are subjective.

Genuine science is naturally open to the reality that most theories will probably be falsified in some way in the future.

LOL. You don't know scientists very well, do you?

Oh, I don't?

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

like thalidomide?

Niels Bohr was once asked when his theories on nuclear physics would be accepted. "When the old scientists die off" he replied.

[Rufus]

Although I strongly disagree with some of the things he says, I continue to be appalled by the opposition to evolutionary theory by many Orthodox Christians. It is shameful--it drives people away from the Church for the sake of an untruth. Learn your science.

Perhaps before you take this condescending stance, you might want to learn some of the philosophical objections some Orthodox have to modern science and its methodologies. Read Philip Sherrard's Human Image: World Image.

I am well aware of the shortcomings of the methodology of science. However, the objections people bring up against evolution are exactly what you said: they are philosophical. They are not rooted in empirical facts. I know that not everyone who objects to evolutionary theory objects to it for the same reasons, and some of those reasons are respectable; most of them are subjective.

Genuine science is naturally open to the reality that most theories will probably be falsified in some way in the future.

LOL. You don't know scientists very well, do you?

Oh, I don't?

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

like thalidomide?

Niels Bohr was once asked when his theories on nuclear physics would be accepted. "When the old scientists die off" he replied.

Like penicillin. It's called trial and error. In the long run, it is much more reliable than insisting on the same thing over and over and over and over again.

Of course, it took a generation of old scientists dying off for people to accept evolution, too.

[Fr. George]

No one in their posts addressed him as a Deacon. His bare name was used. I ask to stop this offtopic.

Not to be a picker of nit, but a defrocked deacon would not be referred to as a deacon.

The point is that the man who was a deacon in ROCOR, and then was defrocked by ROCOR, was received in the OCA, and became an Archbishop, and therefore should be referred to at least by his title, even if one disagrees with how he got it or if he deserves it.  Struggle against heresy where it exists, but be respectful of our decorum here, also.

No more discussion of this topic.  If you feel you have something you need to say about it, either PM me or keep it to yourself.

[Iconodule]

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

And pagan astrology is the reason we have a calendar. So?

[Rufus]

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

And pagan astrology is the reason we have a calendar. So?

OK, so medicine is the accidental byproduct of the pursuit of irrational fantasies. I'm glad you don't rule the world .

[ialmisry]

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

And pagan astrology is the reason we have a calendar. So?

OK, so medicine is the accidental byproduct of the pursuit of irrational fantasies. I'm glad you don't rule the world .

One of the main obstacles to the acceptance of Orthodoxy by many people today, especially in the US and Europe, seems to be the widespread belief that religion is a personal, private, and primarily therapeutic matter with no necessary relation to reality or ultimate truth.  I may simply have a romanticized, but I have always had the impression that the way religion is viewed today is not the way it was viewed in the past (note: I hesitate to use as broad a term as "religion" here, but the English language leaves me little choice).  Indeed, it would seem that for the majority of history religion was the absolute center of all life no matter where you were.  I was wondering if those faithful who have an understanding of history, especially the history of Western religious thought, could help with with a few questions concerning this issue. I would especially appreciate any recommended secondary sources on the topic.  Here are some questions:

Is it indeed the case that at some point in the past religion held a more central place in society and in the life of the average person and was popularly understood to be the foundation of truth?

Yes.  For instance, Sir Isaac Newton's religious writings (suppressed by subsequent generations, too embarrassing) far outnumber his scienfitif works (which were widely published).  His claim was that his physics was just a by product of his theolgical studies.

Yes, yes, yes...homo sapiens are social animals, they want to be loved and accepted because it ultimately helps form societies which are beneficial for survival and procreation from an evolutionary perspective. Religion is simply a misplaced attempt to pursue something that truly is good, social behaviour.

You are avoiding the thrust of LiveFree's comment.  Telling.

Heros? Heros are for religions, you can't have Buddhism without Buddha, you can't have Islam without Mohammed, you can't have Christianity without Jesus.

I agree with all of your assessments here, but have to tell you the Muslim possibly, the Buddhist definitely, would not.  The source documents of early Isalm would contradict your Muhammad>Islam: they claim, somewhat like what you claim for science, that he taught only what was already there.  Even Mahayana Buddhism does not claim any special status, ontologically speaking, to Buddha: he did what all of us are supposed and can do (so they say).

Yes, no Jesus, no Christianity, no matter how much Liberal Protestantism teaches otherwise.

But with science, it's the idea that is significant

Yes, that's how Newton felt about Leibnitz over calculus, and used his position to cast the latter into obscurity.  Mr. Enlightenment himself, Voltaire, helped him do it.

Sooo ignoring real progress in satisfy a ideological agenda.  Nothing like spinning your wheels to advance progress.

Real progress??? Real progress is the advancement of theories and understanding, that's the work of scientists. Finding practical applications is the work of mere technicians.

LOL.  It's all technology, Greeki.  Science, no matter how theoretical, can just attempt the question "How?"  "Why?" is beyond its reach.

Part of the problem is the rarified atmosphere of the lab, where we are all just walking spare parts.

Theory is science, application is something far inferior (though, perhaps, superior to any other human endeavour). You're like a cheap whore seeking for the next popular trick to impress, may get you the spotlight for a short time, but you'll be far better if you invent the tricks.

I wonder what Freud would say about your incessant references to sex and female body parts when not on point.

LOL.  You're quite the case for Thomas Kuhn.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

The guy's a complete idiot, a perfect example why pseudo-academics who study the humanities should confine themselves to their fields of useless 'knowledge' and not interfere with the work of real academics.

LOL.  I went to the University of Chicago, you know, the place with all the Nobel Prizes, whatever you can do, we can do meta.  Where did you go?

Dr. Kuhn went to Harvard, BS through PhD in physics.  Not the University of Chicago, but still a good school.  Where's your sheepskin from again?

And he taught at Harvard, Berkley, Princeton and then MIT.  Again, not the University of Chicago, but good schools nonetheless.  What institution was it again that grabbed up that intellect of yours?

I read Kuhn as required reading.  Sorry the curriculum of the University of Chicago doesn't meet your standards, we are rather proud of it.  As a matter of fact, a university president was hounded out of office even by the undergraduates when he tried to tinker with it and dumb it down.

To suggest that the Scientific Method is cultural is to be so much of an idiot that one might as well attach their drool cup and drill a hole through their frontal lobes.

Poor Greeki!  Just a human and not an equation.

Btw, I knew many who tried to get a physics degree from the U of C.  All but one fell by the wayside (and went into math).  One who came closest (he made it through three years before switching majors) said that the more you went into it, the less human you became, the less you could interact with humans, and that is why they had to get out.  The one who made it was a devout Coptic Orthodox who went on to MIT.

As I said, you make Kuhn's case.  The pride and arrogance in the equation that Kuhn skillfully points out when showing that scientists cannot remove themselves from themselves to make an observation.  I think he quotes Bohr (maybe from his interview: he interviewed Niels the day before he died, his last recorded words) as saying that his theories will gain acceptance when his opponents die off.  And of course in your field, the explarary example of Newton and Leibnitz:

When Newton and Leibniz first published their results, there was great controversy over which mathematician (and therefore which country) deserved credit. Newton derived his results first, but Leibniz published first. Newton claimed Leibniz stole ideas from his unpublished notes, which Newton had shared with a few members of the Royal Society. This controversy divided English-speaking mathematicians from continental mathematicians for many years, to the detriment of English mathematics. A careful examination of the papers of Leibniz and Newton shows that they arrived at their results independently, with Leibniz starting first with integration and Newton with differentiation. Today, both Newton and Leibniz are given credit for developing calculus independently. It is Leibniz, however, who gave the new discipline its name. Newton called his calculus "the science of fluxions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus#Modern

Of course, for you, there's that little problem that Newton and Leibnitz spent the energies in math only to round out their theology.

We can continue on any of the above threads, though the last is edited from politics, and you would have to go the search engine route.

[Iconodule]

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

And pagan astrology is the reason we have a calendar. So?

OK, so medicine is the accidental byproduct of the pursuit of irrational fantasies.

Do you really think the astrologers' knowledge of the stars was "accidental"? They studied the stars and celestial bodies. They gained real knowledge of them, despite their many false premises and superstitions. It's the same with modern science. There's a diference between a worldview being distorted and being completely false.

[Rufus]

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

And pagan astrology is the reason we have a calendar. So?

OK, so medicine is the accidental byproduct of the pursuit of irrational fantasies.

Do you really think the astrologers' knowledge of the stars was "accidental"? They studied the stars and celestial bodies. They gained real knowledge of them, despite their many false premises and superstitions. It's the same with modern science. There's a diference between a worldview being distorted and being completely false.

False premises prevented neither the development of the calendar, nor that of modern astronomy, or of microbiology, or of atomic theory, or of physics, or of practical fields such as medicine and engineering... modern science has a good track record.

I also wonder what false premise you have in mind when you talk about modern science. Atheism??

[ialmisry]

In case you didn't notice, the modern scientific methodology that so many people here dismiss is the reason we have all of modern medicine and technology.

And pagan astrology is the reason we have a calendar. So?

OK, so medicine is the accidental byproduct of the pursuit of irrational fantasies.

Do you really think the astrologers' knowledge of the stars was "accidental"? They studied the stars and celestial bodies. They gained real knowledge of them, despite their many false premises and superstitions. It's the same with modern science. There's a diference between a worldview being distorted and being completely false.

False premises prevented neither the development of the calendar, nor that of modern astronomy, or of microbiology, or of atomic theory, or of physics, or of practical fields such as medicine and engineering... modern science has a good track record.

So did prehistoric trepanning.

http://www.medicine.nevada.edu/ncnmlg/posters/Poster_Amy_Andres.pdf

I also wonder what false premise you have in mind when you talk about modern science. Atheism??

That, and materialism.

[Hermogenes]

I had recently got into a spat with a person who I thought was an Archbishop, Archbishop Lazar
Lev Puhalo. Some of the things he said confused me, and did not seem like something an Archbishop would say,  yet I remained silent and respected his authority. When I started to inquire about him to my Eastern Orthodox friends, many of them voiced their disgust for him, atleast those who knew him. They told me, among other things, that he believed God makes people homosexual and that evolution is true. I questioned him about this to find out if its true and exactly what about evolution he believes is true, since it is in opposition to scripture. When I questioned his response he began berating me as opposed to giving me evidence for what he said, as I had asked. He told me that Orthodoxy is living in the dark ages, and that I am simple and a host of other things I will not repeat.

Turns out he was defrocked in the ROCOR and the Serbian Orthodox church for these sort of beliefs, some of them I will not repeat. He was allowed into the OCA as a retired Bishop and now is head of All Saints Monastery. I have wrote the OCA to inform them of his past, and got quite a nasty response. So it seems they are content having an arius represent their church. Has anyone else heard of this heretic?

Post edited for the proper titles - Michał Kalina

Hie Eminence has a ... colorful past, I suppose one could say. But he is a canonically consecrated bishop, and none of the opinions you ascribe to him seem as extreme as those held by any number of Serbian bishops, to mention just one jurisdiction. Many Orthodox I know hold very far-right social and political views, take a literalist approach to scripture which seems unorthodox, and are unshakably right in whatever beliefs they hold. Archbishop Puhalo is no further out than any number of other Orthodox bishops. His monastery--All Saints of North America--looks very beautiful. anyone been there?

[Hermogenes]

Of course, and he is full of poison.  As a member of the Church that defrocked him as a deacon before he found a schismatic group that would elevate him to the priesthood and eventually the episcopacy, he is still the rightfully deposed deacon Lev to me.  It is very unfortunate that the OCA received him as a retired Archbishop because he has used this title to spew his heresies far and wide through his publications and the Internet.  With his title and his membership in the OCA, people consider that his voice is credible and authoritative.  It is best to ignore him altogether.

The fact that the OCA would take someone like this is one reason that I would never set foot in an OCA parish.  What else are they willing to call an Archbishop? If I remember correctly, he was defrocked from the ROCOR due to continued teaching of the heresy of soul sleep.

You may have noticed that the person who invited him into the OCA was forcibly retired some time back.

Do you really use things like this as the criteria for choosing which parish to join? Because you are gonna have a very tough time finding any jurisdiction that doesn't have some decidedly odd birds, much further out than this, theologically and philosophically speaking.