Robert,

Im curious. What does comparatively crickets

mean?

Are you serious? Do you not know what it means to

say nothing but crickets? As in there is only silence
which is magnified by the sound of crickets chirping.
Maybe this definition will be helpful:l
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?
term=*crickets%20chirp*

This blog only and always seeks to condemn the

Protestants but never once condemns the Romans.
And why should it? The doctrine of justification by
faith alone through Christ alone is anathema to both
parties. Roman and Orthodox both seek to be
justified and divinised through their devotions to
icons or statues of the second person of the Trinity,
prayers to the saints and their rotted corpses, eating
and digesting of the actual flesh and blood of Jesus
Christ, and various other religious doodads and
gewgaws.

Oh sure you are quick to condemn Calvin for not

prostrating himself before an image of Jesus but
where is your condemnation of Tetzel? Where is your
condemnation of selling indulgences? Of purgatory?
Of divine simplicity? Of Aquinas analogical
knowledge? Of cataphatic knowledge? Of blood
atonement? Of the entire Western Christian
tradition? (Admittedly I have not read every single
one of your blog posts so maybe you have articles on
all these.)

Dont come off and say that the focus of this blog is
primarily Reformed Christians interested in learning
more about Orthodoxy. For that reason, we do not
give as much attention to Roman Catholicism.

It makes me wonder how Reformed you really were.

You are aware the the Reformers did not reject the
Western Christian tradition right? As much as they
rejected Aristotle and the Scholastic transformation
of Christian doctrine into a lot of Aristotelian logic
they did not reject Aquinas in toto. Nor did they
reject the Fathers. We all know they stood on the
shoulders of Augustine but they also stood the
shoulders of all the other Fathers as well. How much
Reformed theology, specifically 17th century
scholastic Reformed theology, have you read? Is your
Reformed background ONLY in Calvins Institutes?
Have you read Richard Muller?

Take a look at the bibliography of Turretins Elenctic

Theology. 26 pages of works listed from Classics to
the Fathers to the Scholastics and everything in
between. (Sorry I cant find a pdf online.) The
Reformed Protestant tradition is not separate at all
from the Western Christian tradition. It is very much
wrapped up in it.

We are saying its time to let go of sola scriptura

and to go a different way

Yes let us throw away our Bibles and go some other

way that not even the Fathers went! Origen sure did
not spend his entire life digesting and interpreting
the Scriptures. Nor did Jerome agonise over reading
anything that was not the Scriptures. Chrysostom
preached only on the creed and didnt think much of
scripture either. All the philosophising of Maximus
was on Plato and not on the scriptures. Do you see
how ridiculous your statement is by how ridiculous I
am being?

Certainly we do not want to be imitators of Irenaus

who in Proof of the Apostolic Preaching uses ONLY
the scriptures to declare his doctrine.

Certainly we dont want to give heed to Irenaus who

writes: We have learned from none others the plan
of our salvation, than from those through whom the
Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one
time proclaim in public, and at a later period, by the
will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to
be the ground and pillar of our faith. Adv. Her. 3.1.1

(Note he says the scriptures are the ground and

pillar of our faith and not the church or even the
churchs interpretation. Again I ask how Reformed
were you? Do you know what the meaning of
principium cognoscendi is? It seems as if you are
defining sola scriptura in the most shallow and
unreformed way possible. The Reformers did not
reject tradition. They are faithful upholders of both
Nicene and Chalcedonian Christianity.)

They do so while spurning the Unity which held

together the Church through the major controversies
in the first millennium until the tragic Great Schism
of 1054.

That is simply a ridiculous statement on its face.

East and West split a long time before 1054. Pelikan
in Vol 1 of The Christian Tradition indicates as
much. Frend in his Rise of Christianity indicates as
much. The differences between East and West have
always been there and have only been exacerbated
as time has passed. THERE HAS NEVR BEEN UNITY
IN THE CHURCH! EVER! Not even during the
Apostles time. See the bickering at Corinth and the
contention between Peter and Paul.

Lets hear you talk about the unscrupulousness of

Cyril at the counsel of Ephesus or how many signed
confessions they did not necessarily agree with.
Lets hear about Christians anathematising and
killing Christians over the two natures, the two wills,
and icons! Unitywhat a joke!
Any unity within the Church has been at a bare
minimum meaning a belief in Christ as the way to
salvation. Beyond that there has only been disunity.

So to sum up I hope you realise that Protestantism

was not born in a vacuum but is intrinsically
enmeshed in the Western Christian tradition and to
confront it you must confront the other. I hope to
read your refutations of Reformed Scholasticism and
Aquinas and Lombard and Hugh of St Victor and the
entire sub-apostolic and Mediveal Western tradition
in the near future. I highly anticipate your discussion
of the false Western dichotomy between church and
state or the Two Kingdoms which Frend discusses
at length and which manifests itself in the doctrine
of the visible and invisible church.