THE MAIN THEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

THE MAIN THEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

A Great Abba and Holy Father of our times, Blessed Anthony Khrapovitsky, Metropolitan of Kiev, First-Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (reposed in 1936), wrote that there is a clear division between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity.

Eastern Christianity has hesychastic mysticism (prayer of the heart) as its process of theology, and theosis (becoming God by grace) as the objective. This process and objective is found in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and the historic Church of the East, exemplified most elegantly in the writings of St. Isaac the Syrian. Western Christianity, on the other hand, due to the Frankish-Germanic barbarian takeover of Western Europe beginning in the 5th century and continuing until the 11th century, has replaced hesychastic mysticism with speculative scholasticism, and replaced theosis with pagan ideas of heaven and hell. These replacements occurred when the Franks adopted the garbled writings of Augustine of Hippo as their fundamental theology, instead of the consensus patrum of the Ecumenical Councils, Local Councils and Holy Fathers. The Protestants, in their attempts to eliminate the innovations of the Franks, nevertheless retained the Frankish method of speculative theology, having no idea about the empirical theology preserved only in the East.For this reason Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky wrote that Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East are three confessions that have retained the ancient purpose and method of theology, and thus have a lot more in common with each other, whereas the West stands aloof, containing a purpose, methodology and system that is foreign to Ancient Christianity.