Fr Peter Deschamps

Fr Peter Deschamps: The most important points of Orthodox theology that differentiates theology from the West and is necessary in the modern world.

4072012

 

Interview with a French Orthodox Priest

An orthodox witness IN FRANCE

We are pleased to publish the interview gave us the Fr Peter Deschamps , who is vicar of the Orthodox Parish of the Holy Covert and St. George Besancon France, Metropolitan of Western and Southern Europe that belongs to the Romanian Orthodox Church, and translators of books Ven. Metropolitan Ierotheou, Mr. French.

What do you think is the most important points of Orthodox theology that differentiates theology from the West and is necessary in the modern world?

In the Orthodox Church revealed the doctrines of the Trinity in the heart of the holy Fathers who was deified. Safeguarded by the Ecumenical Councils and also from the people, the guardian of the faith. In the West, from the time of the schism, they were the work of intellect and logic . So the sight of God, which simultaneously revealed and concealed inside the Uncreated Light , the West was replaced by the created action logic and intelligence . Cut off from any personal experience, the faith taught by the priests. TheGod-man synergy , in the image of Jesus Christ, founder of the Church, it disappears from the life of the Church. For example, in the West the priest does not work behind the screen, but in front of it, in front of believers and through the words of the priest honestly gifts "transformed." The Holy Spirit is not at all divinity . The Day the next day of Pentecost is unknown in the West.

The theology ON THE Virgin equally corrupted by doctrines known as the " immaculate conception "(1854) and"Ascension "(1950). This dogma of the Assumption of Mary, he has WITHOUT preceded the Assumption, was in fact the only thing delivered ex cathedra by Pope Pius the 11th, by the time the doctrine of infallibility of the Pope in 1870.Specifically, this removes Mary from our human nature, although born of ancestors who fought for many centuries to holiness, and our depriving the lines of "our race" an excellent model of exercise and obedience, and intimate relationships with God.

It should also be emphasized that ignorance of the uncreated energies remained voluntarily . While the East emphasized the view that the uncreated energies "attached" to humans in their fight for clearance to apply, to prayer and the holy sacraments in order not odigitai towards a kind of moral perfection and performance, but in the deification .

Unfortunately, sometimes the reaction, Western theology, when they have distorted the true repentance a moral guilt and even through a past Inquisition , stripping more and more sense of the ascetical struggle and repentance.This attitude was encouraged not only from the godless world, but also by " therapists ", some of whom, however, relieved many souls with frustration and depression.

Thus, the ascetic struggle and repentance were excluded from Protestant backgrounds. I think that especially young evangelicals, whom I know well and who are struggling to remain in a constant state of delight , as is "saved," and only thanks to the fact that they belong to their church. But forgiveness, forgiveness of God, the mysterious and the secret of the heart, the transformation of the passions and the struggle against the passionate performances, software (especially software that selfishness that one is better because it is Christian) not fertilize the life of the Church. And even the taste of the experience of grace was replaced by an external humanitarian behavior, another very commendable. The ascetic life of the heart, delivered the grace of the Holy Spirit, was replaced byan external ethics which has been consolidated under the weight of law.