Ethan D Good > Recent Status Updates

This chapter is all about Orthodoxy in Russia, primarily during the Synodical Period (1700-1917).
It is interesting to think of Moscow as the "Third Rome", since Rome is believed by the Orthodox to have fallen to barbarians and then heresy, with the second Rome, Constantinople, falling to the Turks after that.
The schism between the Possesor and Non-Possesor theological views of monasticism was interesting as well.

This chapter focuses on Orthodoxy in Russia, primarily during the Synodical Period (1700-1917), instituted by Peter the Great. It emphasizes how the Church not only endured under the less than ideal circumstances without a Patriarchate, but thrived.
Before that, there was a schism and theological controversy between possessor and non-possessor views of monasticism, which refers to the possession of land by monks.

Read the chapter on Orthodoxy under Ottoman rule, and I am very surprised by the author's description of the conqueror of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II.
For one, he's not described as a sexual deviant with an army of animalistic mercenaries, as I have read in other books.
I am also surprised by the lack of violent persecution toward Orthodoxy under Turkish rule and the "Millet" system, albeit, still second class.

On "Conversion of the Slavs" (so far):

Its interesting to see how the Apostles to the Slavs, brothers Cyril (formerly Constantine) and Methodius, were actually hindered by the German evangelists due to Western and Eastern divisions already, on the basis of many factors including that of the Western Papacy.

Pg 74 describes nationalism as the "bane of Orthodoxy", also how the Slavs fully accepted the faith as their's

Finally made it through the chapters on the Canon of Scripture and it's reliability.

Personally, I've never been skeptical about about the Biblical Canon, so all the extra details, dates, history, Church Fathers, became a bit of a drag and information overload.

In short, history and Scripture detail the origins of the Church, the validating the Church's authority to teach Christianity and define the Canon.

Protestants will argue that Jesus rejects tradition because He rejected the Pharisees' man-made tradition of manipulating God's law by vowing to give what they had to God to avoid the command to honor their parents via provision.
The only tradition Jesus was rejecting was a man-made tradition that disobeyed the God's law, not a wholesale rejection of all tradition. Catholicism's Sacred Tradition honors God's law.