It is generally affirmed by tradition that, in the Old Testament, the first five Books —Genesis, Exodus, Levitikon, Numbers, Deuteronomion— were written by Moses himself, who was granted the authority to do so by God. Following Moses’ passing, the rest of the books in the Old Testament were written to describe that acts and words of people chosen by God; the Judges, the Kings, and the Prophets. Finally, in Christianity, the Old Testament is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, the Christ, who established the New Testament.

authority and tradition #

After His passing, the first couple of centuries, the religion struggled to survive, being persecuted against by the Jews initially, and then the Romans. In 313, Constantine the Great proclaimed the Edict of Milan, ending Christian persecution, and in 325 he convened the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea, which centralised the faith, and decreed the Dogma, the Nicean Creed. This centralised, unified Church is called “Chalcedonian Christianity”, after the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon, which reaffirmed the Nicean Creed. This Christianity was maintained until the 11th century AD, when the Great Schism happened, and the two Churches (the Orthodox and Catholic Churches) started to diverge in tradition and theology.

During the first centuries before the First Council, the Church might be thought of as being in a state of flux, however Christ, after His death, imparted the Holy Spirit to His disciples, whom He appointed His successors, through the laying of the hands, and commanded them to go into the world to proclaim His message. His disciples, having been anointed by the Holy Spirit, did go into the world, and they had disciples of their own, to whom they also imparted the Holy Spirit, by the laying of the hands, and then these disciples of the disciples were again sent into the world, and so on. This is called the Apostolic Succession; effectively there is a continuous, unbroken line of succession, from Jesus Christ to today. the current day. This means that there has always been a source of divine authority in Church matters, in the persons who have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, through the laying of the hands. These are the origins of the Christian Church tradition.

The two branches of Christianity, Orthodoxy and Catholicism, both claim to be part of this unbroken line of succession, and so both claim that final theological authority rests with them; Saint Peter, being one of the Twelve Disciples, founded the Church in Rome, and was its first bishop; through him the Pope, as the Bishop of Rome and Pontifex Maximus, claims his authority. However humans are fallible, and so true authority does not rest solely with the individual but with Church Tradition. It is Tradition that validates both the dogma, as well as the theology, and it is only through the laying of the hands, i.e. of the fact that the Church and the Tradition is tied to Christ in a direct, continuous, and unbroken line of succession, that the Church can claim its authority^{1 2}.

the Creed and free will #

The Nicean Creed, the dogma of the Orthodox Church (and it’s equivalent version in Catholicism) begins with the phrase “I believe” (“Πιστέυω” in Greek, “Credo” in Latin). It is therefore a confession of faith, not a factual statement, and by this alone, there is an affirmation that humans are endowed with free will; the ability to choose independent of physical processes or chance. This admission of faith also leads us to what the “consequences” are for abandoning the faith.

The theological consequence of abandoning God, is that you abandon God.

Initially this might not seem like a big issue, but because God loves us, He would never impose His will, and therefore would let us suffer the consequences of our own choices, not out of spite, or hate, but because we were the ones that made such choice in the first place.

This notion of free will is, in Christianity, irrevocably tied with the belief in God. Free will, and by extention you as a person, need a cause in order to exist; one can claim that consciousness is a matter of computational complexity in biological processes, but then you as a person don’t exist, it is a fake “free will”, where you can’t believe, you can’t choose, and there is only the illusion of choice. The statement therefore becomes “I exist if and only if free will exists.”; in this way, both free will is acknowledged, and exercised in the first word of the Nicean Creed; “I believe”³.

So due to the admittance that free will is real, and given by God so we may exist as persons, it makes sense that He would never force one to act or to make a move that would be against one’s will, and so He would never force one to stay with Him. In fact, there are precedents that God would let us drift so far away from Him that we lost him entirely; this is what happened to the Lost Tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. After the Twelve Tribes moved into, and took over, the land of the Canaanites, first led by Moses, and then by Jesus of Navi, the land was split for the twelve tribes; the tribe of Levi, being ordained as priests, were not allowed land but had dedicated cities⁴. Ten of these tribes however, Reuben, Simeon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Manasseh, and Ephraim, turned against God, and chose to abandon Him, and chose to follow the gods of the Canaanites, and chose the idols, and so they made their choice, such that when the Assyrians came, God respected their choice to worship the idols, and let them become lost. And so they got lost; the tribes ontologically ceased to exist.⁵

So this is the consequence of abandoning God. You abandon God, and so God lets you go.

The above contradict the legalistic opinion that Catholics tend to hold; they rather support the notion that God is a judge, and that he passes down divine punishment. It is however self-contradictory to assume this; why would He, having given you free will, punish you for exercising it?⁶

rationalism and legalism #

Theologically, Catholicism evolved from Chalcedonian Christianity, under the influence of a very strict, disciplined, and militaristic language, Latin. This, in combination with the extremely unstable political situation in Rome, before and at the time of the Schism, resulted in a theology that has no room for the mysteries, or for any metaphysical explanations, but rather necessitates a rationalistic and legalistic approach to all theological manners.

In this process, they also shifted the burden of judgement; rather than the person judging themselves, it is God that judges, and punishes or rewards, based on the person’s behaviour, however this doesn’t make sense in the context of God having given us free will; in the legalistic view, where God is a judge, free will is a detriment, and an obstacle we need to overcome; this contradicts the Orthodox view that free will is a gift, so that we may choose to be with Him, and in His light. In Catholicism the “natural” state of the world must be to be sinless, since it was made by God, and only through free will do we choose to stray away and corrupt this world with sin; free will therefore must be overcome, lest God judges us unfavourably.

This also contradicts the Creed; if you confess that “I believe […]”, and therefore set “free will is the only way that I may be with God” as the entire foundation of the faith, than how can you say that God will punish you for your choices? The Creed seems to present free will as a gift; God gave us free will so that we may choose to join Him. Catholicism seems to present free will as the opposite; God gave us free will to see if we would still stay with Him, or else…

the afterlife #

This notion of external, rather than internal, judgement is exacerbated by the Catholic notions of Heaven and Hell. In Catholicism, it appears that Heaven and Hell are distinct, seperate locations, where people are sent based on the judgement of God. Worse, it seems that there are seperate levels of Heaven and Hell, and the specific levels correspond with something like a point system, or a “deeds” system, where if you commited “mostly good things”, combined with “some bad things”, they cancel out, so that you end up in a low level in either place, depending on which of the two outweighted the other; for context, in Orthodoxy, Heaven and Hell are the same “location”, where God’s full glory and magnificence is visible to all, and it is the personal reaction of the individual that dictates “where” they are. If, upon seeing God’s glory, they rejoice, then they are in Heaven and the eternal sight of God’s light fills them. If however, upon seeing God’s perfection, they are filled with jealousy and anger, they might try to run away, but God’s light is everywhere and it will burn anywhere they go, and thus they are in Hell⁷.

inheritance of the Original Sin #

Another example of the loss of mystery in Catholicism is the interpretation of the Original Sin.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve are created by God in the Garden of Eden, and are instructed by God not to eat from the Tree of All Knowledge, lest they die. The devil, in the form of a snake, approaches Eve and convinces her that God doesn’t want them to eat from the tree, because they shall become like Him, and so she eats from the tree, and convinces Adam to do so too. By eating from the tree, they gain the knowledge of all good and evil, they realise they are naked, and decide to cover themselves. Then, once God apporaches them, He asks them why they hide from Him, at which point they respond that they hide because they are ashamed to be naked in front of Him. God then asks them about their action, at which point Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the snake; the snake is punished by being made to crawl on the Earth forever by its stomach, and Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden⁸.

In Catholic theology, it is understood that you are born “in sin”; you inherit the guilt of the Original Sin. Just as Adam and Eve were sinners, so are you, and you need to be cleansed, and be made “tabula rasa”, a blank slate, and this is one of the purposes that baptism plays within the Catholic Church^{9 10}. However, this does not make any intuitive sense; to explain why, imagine a baby being born in a prison cell, due to it’s parents committing some crime. It is obvious that, although the parents are guilty of murder, the baby itself is not guilty, nor did it inherit any such guilt. What it did inherit however is the consequence of the actions of it’s parents. It is with this world like that too. Adam and Eve sinned, and were expelled from Eden, so now we are born into a mortal world; we didn’t inherit anything except for the consequence.¹¹

the vessel of Immaculate Conception #

The notion that humans inherit the guilt rather the consequences of the original sin, inevitably leads to what is, one of the greatest contradictions in Catholicism, and it has to do with Mary, the Theotokos. Because of the fact that all humans are sinners by birth, it poses a theological challenge to justify how Mary, being born of humans, was free of sin, in order to give birth to Jesus Christ. In order to overcome this in a legalistic and rationalistic way, the Catholic theologicians proposed the idea of “Immaculate Conception”, where Mary was designed, by God, to be free from sin, so that she would be a vessel for Christ to be born from. This detracts from her Holiness rather than adds to it; in this framework, she didn’t choose to be free of sin, nor did she choose to accept the lillies; she was conceived for the explicit purpose of doing so, completely removing her free will and agency; in Catholic theology she cannot be a person.