I. The first part of my explanation
BACKGROUND & HISTORY
The topic of this thread is “Orthodoxy” and what is it about.
It is proper I think to consider it in relation to Western Christianity because most of us are dominated today, globally, but a western-like thinking and picture of the world. We take for granted today certain axioms about “our world” that have distinctive western-like features, in other words we are dominated by a certain ontology and a certain kind of metaphysics [my God, what is talking about???]. That means that most of us are trained to interpret/understand/think in a certain western-way, and to presume roughly the same things. Most of us understand the same thing when we talk about “truth”, “reality”[Latin word], “time”, “space”, etc.
These “western” presumptions and interpretations have a history of their own that starts [generally speaking and commonly acknowledged] with ancient Greek thought [mainly Plato and Aristotle]. Almost all our basic concepts come from these damn Greeks: “physics”, “metaphysics”, “philosophy”, “theology” and so on. Ancient Greek thought was very… “rich”, and the main problem [in my view] is that this “heritage” comes to us [western-thinkers that we all are] mainly through the narrow filter of its Roman-Latin interpretation, a good deal “poorer” in subtle thinking than Greek thought [my opinion].
It is also commonly acknowledged that Christianity was “infused” by Greek thinking. My first point is that Western Christianity has inherited a more Roman-Latin [I name it “legalistic”] interpretation of the Gospels whereas the Eastern [Byzantine] Orthodox Christianity has inherited a more Greek [I name it “iconic”] interpretation of the Gospels. This doesn't mean that the western interpretation is "bad" and the eastern one is "good", just that I am inclined to follow the eastern one because it seems to me more "authentic".
Notice: It is very difficult to talk in only a few lines about this complicated history! Please don’t judge my assertions too swiftly!
The second part of my explanation will follow.
