Italian Missionary Critiques Indian Church

HT: ICON



Here is the article



The article is about the Indian Catholic Church, so take their administrative problems and multiply by 10 to get a feel for the Indian Orthodox Church. I don't need to belabor the point about being more "mission oriented" and bearing witness. I did like this exchange though:



Q: Is a lack of inculturation also affecting evangelization in India?



A: Where is the inculturation now? If at all there are some efforts in this line, who follows them? I tell you, whatever was done, has failed to reach the ordinary laypeople. Very often nuns were the only consumers of such efforts. Any inculturation coming from above will not reach the laypeople. Let it come from people and let the Church simply accept its growth and integration. Inculturation should not be enforced; it should be allowed to grow naturally from the bottom.



Letting the Church grow naturally from the grass roots? Sounds like a good idea. Should there be a trans-national Indian identity Church? No, there should simply be The Church which exists in the unity of Faith but is expressed by its members where they are, how they are.

Regarding my love for fine coffees...

I buy my coffee whole bean, grind it myself, then brew myself several hot steaming cups of coffee every morning to take to work.

Here's the take home Orthodox message:

It may not taste sweet, but it tastes authentic; the way it was meant to taste...

Think about it...

What was so new? continued...

This covenant relationship the Jews had with the God of Abraham was crystallized in the Law of Moses given on Mount Sinai. However, the Jews’ reception of that Law did not imply that God was therefore legalistic. Faith in the loving God who actively intervened in history presupposed the reception of the Law (Rom. 4:12). Christ says on the Mount, “Do not think I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). Christ’s Gospel message was primarily one of return-return to the heart and soul of that which underpinned God’s relationship with Israel for millennia, namely Faith. The direct corollary of this understanding was the reception of Christ the person as the fulfillment of that past, and consequently the foundation of the future. The Jew’s history, then, is understood as a single seamless narrative of God working Salvation for all mankind in His own time.

more later...

Steve K.

What was so new?

What was so new about the message of Jesus Christ? Was the “good news” preached by the Apostles throughout the world something utterly revolutionary? Two thousand years after the fact, we know the historical Jesus to be a particularly radical figure who preached compassion for the poor and love for one’s enemy; the figure who as a matter of Faith suffered and died on the Cross in order to rise on the third day. Christ’s ministry appears to be drastically different from that of the Jewish authorities of His day. In the Incarnation the same God who had been carrying on an exclusive relationship with the Hebrews since the dawn of Creation seems to have taken matters into a completely different direction. Assuming however, that God is both unchanging and true to His words, perhaps what is really radical in Christ’s ministry is not how vastly different His message was from that which had previously been taught. Perhaps instead, what was so innovative about the Gospel message was how perfectly Christ’s words and deeds embodied and illuminated the Hebrew tradition as handed down through thousands of years of Israel’s covenant relationship with God.

...(more forthcoming)

Steve K.

The Oldest Church on Earth has an altar??? Get outta heeeere!

"We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD," said Abdul Qader al-Hussan, the head of Jordan's Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, to The Jordan Times.
He added that the discovery was “amazing.”
The nearly 2,000-year-old church was discovered underneath Saint Georgeous Church in Rihab, Mafraq, in northern Jordan near the Syrian border. St. Georgeous dates back to 230 A.D., and is considered the oldest “proper” church in the world.
...
The underground church has been described as a cave with several stone seats believed to have been for the clergy and a circular shaped area, thought to be the apse – an area which usually contains the altar.

full article on Christian Post

Orthodox Christianity in East Africa

The Church founded by Christ, the Faith given to the Apostles, has been made truly accessible to all people to understand in their own terms. I rejoice that there can be a diversity of expressions proclaiming the Ancient Faith guided by the Holy Spirit as it was and always shall be.

-Steve

(I had heard about the Orthodox Christians of Tanzania today on Ancient Faith Radio: The Illumined Heart and I found this on youtube. Just as I can accept that the "Oriental" and "Eastern" Churches can proclaim the same Faith in a diversity of expressions I can only imagine the infinite possibilities for the Church in places yet untouched)