The Catholic Church is the Orthodox Church and the Protestant denominations all in one. The Protestants split off into groups each highlighting singular aspects of Christianity. The Orthodox Church highlights tradition. The Catholics are the whole package. 😊
This characterization is fundamentally incorrect. The Orthodox Church is not some "tradition-focused subset" of Roman Catholicism—it is the fullness of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church founded by Christ himself.
Rome departed from us by introducing numerous innovations: papal supremacy (and much, much later claimed "infallibility"), the filioque clause, purgatory, indulgences, and the immaculate conception—none of which was the teaching of the Church in the first millennium of Christianity.
The Orthodox Church maintains the exact same faith, without addition or subtraction, that was believed "everywhere, always, and by all" in the ancient Church. We don't need to be "contained" within Roman Catholicism because we are already the complete Church that Christ established.
Unity can only come through return to the original Orthodox faith, not through some artificial synthesis of different Christian denominations. ☦️
God works in mysterious ways. Perhaps it is the Orthodox Church that will turn things around with Russia as its leader. I don’t know. However Jesus came to expose the workings of the devil and bring them to light. Something big is happening, that’s for sure. At Fatima , Our Lady focused mainly on Russia as the object of consecration to her. Miraculously Russia has moved from atheism to a return to Orthodoxy, all within 30 years … watch this space.
I appreciate what you’re saying. I love the Orthodox Church. I am actually reading the Philokalia at the moment. I just believe that the Catholic Church has been called to encounter modernity and its heresies, challenge them and destroy them eventually
Thanks for being a friendly conversation partner. Now, let’s hope your church starts by destroying the modernism and heresy within its pale. Hope you get a better Pope next time. 😅
There’s a big difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. The more I read of the Reformers and them themselves, the more it comes clear to me that sola scriptura is vastly misconstrued - by adherents and opponents alike.
It was never meant to be an individualistic interpretation, but always within the context of community and the Church catholic.
Looking at Anglican traditional teachings on this, I would have to say that it seems vastly different to how you’ve outlined it here - and how I know many evangelicals do.
Think also of Wesley’s quadrilateral. Protestantism was never a movement towards personal interpretation, but a movement towards seeing scripture as a final authority. It was a move against individual interpretation, actually, which it felt the Catholic Church was actually engaging in at the time - and making such interpretation by popes etc. binding on consciences.
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate the distinction you’ve drawn between sola and solo scriptura. I attempted to maintain such a distinction when I ran in Anglican and Presbyterian circles myself.
That said, even sola scriptura—understood communally—faces significant challenges.
Take Luther’s famous “Here I stand” speech, where he elevated individual conscience over councils and creeds, rejecting Church tradition as the framework for interpretation. This led him to dismiss the Epistle of James, question other New Testament books, and remove the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament. While claiming Scripture as the “final authority,” his approach set a precedent for subjective interpretation that fragmented Protestantism into countless competing denominations—all appealing to the same Bible.
The early Church, however, embraced Scripture within Apostolic Tradition. St. Irenaeus, for example, affirmed that the Church, through its succession of bishops, preserved the truth entrusted to it by the Apostles (Against Heresies 3.2). Without this tradition, even the biblical canon would not exist. As Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura suggests, *before we come to the Word of God at Genesis 1 we come to the word of the Church at the table of contents.*
Orthodoxy offers a vision of unity: Scripture interpreted within the living body of the Church, which the Apostle Paul called the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Rather than fragmenting the faith, this approach safeguards the fullness of truth entrusted to the Church by Christ Himself.
Thank you again for engaging this important topic.
Thank you for this article!
The Catholic Church is the Orthodox Church and the Protestant denominations all in one. The Protestants split off into groups each highlighting singular aspects of Christianity. The Orthodox Church highlights tradition. The Catholics are the whole package. 😊
This characterization is fundamentally incorrect. The Orthodox Church is not some "tradition-focused subset" of Roman Catholicism—it is the fullness of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church founded by Christ himself.
Rome departed from us by introducing numerous innovations: papal supremacy (and much, much later claimed "infallibility"), the filioque clause, purgatory, indulgences, and the immaculate conception—none of which was the teaching of the Church in the first millennium of Christianity.
The Orthodox Church maintains the exact same faith, without addition or subtraction, that was believed "everywhere, always, and by all" in the ancient Church. We don't need to be "contained" within Roman Catholicism because we are already the complete Church that Christ established.
Unity can only come through return to the original Orthodox faith, not through some artificial synthesis of different Christian denominations. ☦️
God works in mysterious ways. Perhaps it is the Orthodox Church that will turn things around with Russia as its leader. I don’t know. However Jesus came to expose the workings of the devil and bring them to light. Something big is happening, that’s for sure. At Fatima , Our Lady focused mainly on Russia as the object of consecration to her. Miraculously Russia has moved from atheism to a return to Orthodoxy, all within 30 years … watch this space.
We don’t need to worry too much, Christ is risen
I appreciate what you’re saying. I love the Orthodox Church. I am actually reading the Philokalia at the moment. I just believe that the Catholic Church has been called to encounter modernity and its heresies, challenge them and destroy them eventually
Thanks for being a friendly conversation partner. Now, let’s hope your church starts by destroying the modernism and heresy within its pale. Hope you get a better Pope next time. 😅
There’s a big difference between solo scriptura and sola scriptura. The more I read of the Reformers and them themselves, the more it comes clear to me that sola scriptura is vastly misconstrued - by adherents and opponents alike.
It was never meant to be an individualistic interpretation, but always within the context of community and the Church catholic.
Looking at Anglican traditional teachings on this, I would have to say that it seems vastly different to how you’ve outlined it here - and how I know many evangelicals do.
Think also of Wesley’s quadrilateral. Protestantism was never a movement towards personal interpretation, but a movement towards seeing scripture as a final authority. It was a move against individual interpretation, actually, which it felt the Catholic Church was actually engaging in at the time - and making such interpretation by popes etc. binding on consciences.
Hey Ryan,
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate the distinction you’ve drawn between sola and solo scriptura. I attempted to maintain such a distinction when I ran in Anglican and Presbyterian circles myself.
That said, even sola scriptura—understood communally—faces significant challenges.
Take Luther’s famous “Here I stand” speech, where he elevated individual conscience over councils and creeds, rejecting Church tradition as the framework for interpretation. This led him to dismiss the Epistle of James, question other New Testament books, and remove the deuterocanonical books from the Old Testament. While claiming Scripture as the “final authority,” his approach set a precedent for subjective interpretation that fragmented Protestantism into countless competing denominations—all appealing to the same Bible.
The early Church, however, embraced Scripture within Apostolic Tradition. St. Irenaeus, for example, affirmed that the Church, through its succession of bishops, preserved the truth entrusted to it by the Apostles (Against Heresies 3.2). Without this tradition, even the biblical canon would not exist. As Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura suggests, *before we come to the Word of God at Genesis 1 we come to the word of the Church at the table of contents.*
Orthodoxy offers a vision of unity: Scripture interpreted within the living body of the Church, which the Apostle Paul called the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Rather than fragmenting the faith, this approach safeguards the fullness of truth entrusted to the Church by Christ Himself.
Thank you again for engaging this important topic.
All the best,
Jamey