Protestants reject the Eastern Orthodox Church as, just another man made religion teaching the false man centered gospel. So there's no way any Protestant would every consider embracing the teaching of the Orthodox Church.
No they don’t. Relations between the Orthodox and traditional Protestants such as Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Moravians, and even many Reformed Christians are very good. Indeed, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 1900s entered into advanced discussions with the Russian Orthodox Church about joining the Eastern Orthodox Communion, but these were disrupted, chiefly by the Revolution, since the Archbishop of New York, St. Tikhon of Moscow, was recalled to Moscow and elected Patriarch, and he would die of severe maltreatment in a Soviet prison in the 1920s. Which is part of the glory of Orthodoxy, that being our continued martyrs; Protestants and Catholics also have martyrs, and because of our shared experience of dying for Christ, we are able to have ecumenical relations and understanding.
Now, when I spoke of spreading Orthodoxy into Protestantism, in which I have been personally successful, this is also happening on a larger scale, with increasing numbers of Protestant churches using Orthodox icons, and learning to write icons in the Orthodox style (the technique of painting icons is called writing them, for various reasons, but one reason is because their reproduction is much like the reproduction of the sacred manuscripts of the Church, such as our Evangelions, which were traditionally illuminated with beautiful iconography, in both East and West (see the Book of Kells as an example of Celtic illuminaion, or on the other side of the Christian world at the time, the Syriac Rabbula Gospel as an example of Syriac iconography). Additionally many Protestants have found solace in the scripturally sound practices of reciting the Psalter (the book of Psalms), which some Protestant churches were already doing, and in the Jesus Prayer. And some Protestant churches have celebrated liturgies from the Byzantine Rite, and there are some, such as the Ukrainian Lutheran Church, which have always used Byzantine Rite liturgies.
Now it is clear from your post you are unaware of the distinction between Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, but there is such a thing, not that it matters much, but it is somewhat relevant, and there is also the Church of the East, which at present does not use icons in a visibly extensive manner, but this was due to repeated Islamic depradation. On the other hand, it was in the Eastern Orthodox church that the iconoclast error you adhere to in falsely accusing us of idolatry was first manifested, as a result of superstitious generals and religious leaders encountering Islam, and falsely attributing the military success of Islam to its extreme iconoclasm, rather than to their own military incompetence and the decadence of the Byzantine Empire at that time. In the following century, iconoclasm was prohibited at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 AD, but the Emperors remained iconoclastic until the Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843 AD, when an iconodule Empress took to the throne, and after that occurred, the Byzantine Empire experienced a renewal of its Christian faith and began to successfully stop the Islamic advance, and if this had not happened at that time, and if Charlemagne’s cousin St. Guilliame had not defeated the Moors in the Pyrennes and successfully kept them out of France, all of Europe would have fallen under Islamic dominance. St. Guillame, horrified by the conflict, decided to become a monk, and used his personal fortune to build a Benedictine monastery which he retired to. The Oriental Orthodox, on the other hand, never had iconoclasm of any kind and have always maintained and venerated the holy icons, although the manner of this veneration varies between these churches.
But here is an interesting fact: there exists an Oriental Orthodox church, one of the three Syriac Orthodox jurisdictions in India, the Malankara Independent Syrian Church, which is in full communion with the Protestant Mar Thoma Syrian Church. If Orthodoxy was as opposed by Protestants as you seem to claim, then the largest Protestant church among the Mar Thoma Christians of Kerala and the Malabar Coast would not have entered into communion with one of them.
What is more, most Protestants are not iconoclasts like yourself. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism as we know it, as my friend
@MarkRohfrietsch will attest, believed it appropriate that there should be crucifixes and iconographic depictions of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ and of the saints, and he also actively venerated Our most glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, praying a version of the Hail Mary Prayer, without the petition (as Luther did not believe in intercessory prayer to the saints, but he did believe in venerating them, particularly St. Mary, for she is the Mother of God, and in this respect Martin Luther fully accepted the findings of the Third Ecumenical Council).
Although initially iconoclastic, Anglicanism had ceased to become Iconoclastic following the Elizabethan Settlement and especially in the 17th century under Archbishop Laud, which prompted a schism with the Puritans, but this was better for both groups, as the Puritans were unstable in their faith, and a large number of formerly Puritan churches including the majority in Boston, as well as the oldest surviving church in North America, the Old Ship Church in Boston, as well as Harvard University, which was originally built as a Puritan seminary, converted from Christianity to Unitarianism in the 1780s, which was rather disappointing, but many remained, as Congregationalists. Unfortunately most Congregationalists became a part of the ultra-liberal United Church of Christ, which does not have relations with the Eastern Orthodox (and presumably the Oriental Orthodox and the Church of the East), other than occasionally renting sanctuaries to us, as they regard us as homophobic and misogynistic, because we oppose to their performance of same-sex marriages and do not ordain women. But we do ordain married men to the priesthood, unlike the Roman Catholic Church.
Fortunately, over the course of the 19th century, most of the Protestant churches which were iconoclastic relaxed in this respect, which is why Protestant churches whether Presbyterian, or Lutheran, or Methodist, or Anglican tend to be decorated with beautiful stained glass windows which depict the life of our Lord. And this was a beautiful and good thing that happened, and was a major step towards reconciliation with us. Of course the Episcopalians of Northern England first contacted the Orthodox about union in the 18th century, and over the 19th century Anglican-Orthodox relations became particularly close. And it is worth noting that worldwide, Anglicanism represents the largest Protestant Communion, being about half the size of the Eastern Orthodox Communion, and just over twice the size of the Oriental Orthodox Communion, followed by Lutheranism, and then the various Reformed, Calvinist and Presbyterian churches.
And while the latter group is not uniformly happy with the Orthodox, we nonetheless get plenty of converts from them, including one of our leading moral theologians in the US, Fr. Josiah Trenham, who attended Westminster Theological Seminary, and after graduating and a short period of discernment, Fr. Josiah was ordained into the Antiochian Orthodox Church of North America, which is one of the jurisdictions recently to experience so many martyrdoms at the hands of ISIS, along with the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, and the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. And then the Armenian lands of Ngorno-Karabakh were invaded last year and conquered illegally by Azerbaijan, and another 20,000 Armenians were killed, in the continuing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Armenian and Georgian Christians by their Islamic neighbors.
Now, lest you accuse those Protestants who have embraced aspects of Orthodoxy of not being true Protestants, I would point out in advance that such an argument is fallacious, a literal example of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy, also known as an appeal to purity. This argument is fallacious because in your prior post, you spoke of Protestantism in general, and made an assertion that all Protestants reject the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is demonstrably false, and in particular the increasing presence of Orthodox icons and also of Protestant icons painted in the Orthodox style, both of Orthodox subjects and of Protestant leaders such as John and Charles Wesley (I have an icon of them, as I regard them as worthy of veneration), runs contrary to your assertion that all Protestants reject Eastern Orthodoxy because of its alleged idolatry.
But of course we are not idolatrous. Nor do we teach the same things as the Roman Catholic Church. Both the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox church reject Papal Infallibility, Papal Supremacy, Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception, and numerous other Roman Catholic doctrines and scholastic innovations, for example, the Scholastic idea that grace is created (Eastern Orthodox and many Oriental Orthodox regard Grace as an uncreated energy of God), and many other things. We also reject the idea that priests should be celibate; while we do have monastic priests who are voluntarily celibate on account of their being monks, this is also true of Protestantism, for there have been Anglican and Lutheran monasteries for at least the past 200 years or so.
Now if you had presented your argument more narrowly, by, for example, arguing from the position of your own denomination, or from the perspective of say, Fundamentalist Protestants, your argument would not be in error, but as it stands, you made an argument against Orthodoxy that is contained in material falsehoods, and there is no way, without modifying your original argument, of stepping back from these erroneous assertions without engaging in an Appeal to Purity or “No True Scotsman” fallacy.
Thus I would respectfully suggest that you modify your argument so that it only applies to Fundamentalist Protestants or Protestants of your particular denomination (but even this would have to be narrowly defined, because there are some Baptist churches that have positive relations with the Orthodox despite their fundamental disagreement with us about the baptism of infants), and like-minded denominations, rather than all Protestants, and if you do that, I will have nothing negative to say about your post, because it is true that among Fundamentalists and certain Restorationist denominations, iconoclasm remains the doctrine of those churches, along with, in many cases, Nestorianism, and these beliefs are fundamentally incompatible with Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy. Likewise, the Orthodox also reject liberal postmodern theologies, such as feminist theology, queer theology and liberation theology, and we also reject Pentecostal and Charismatic and Sabbatarian beleifs.
However, the majority of Protestants, including the Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists and even a great many Reformed, are not iconoclastic, and I have positive relations with Protestants from these churches every single day, including a great many clergy. Indeed, my best friends on these forums include a great many Protestants, such as my friends
@MarkRohfrietsch ,
@Jipsah ,
@ViaCrucis ,
@Ain't Zwinglian and many others, and I love them very much and ask for their prayers for me, and I pray for them.
Indeed i would even readily serve as a clergyman in some Protestant churches, as I did in the past, for the difference in beliefs between, for example, high church Anglicanism or confessional Lutheranism and Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy is so subtle.
Of course, I would not serve in an iconoclastic denomination, or a denomination that practices credobaptism, or Sabbatarianism, or has a Zwinglian or Memorialist interpretation of the Eucharist, or a denomination that has capitulated to secular pressure regarding issues of human sexuality and abortion, as I regard these as severe doctrinal differences. I am more concerned about churches that are not pro-life or that profane the sacrament of Holy Matrimony through the marriage of persons engaged in acts clearly defined in both the Old and New Testament as sexually perverse, but what would be very undesirable would be a situation where there were no traditional liturgical Protestant churches, so that one had a choice between traditional worship and liberal theology, or conservative theology and aliturgical worship without holy icons, or solemn and decorous services, or with the assault to the ear that is praise and worship music. That so many Protestant churches have discarded their organs and replaced them with electric guitars and drumkits and discarded their hymnals and the beautiful chorales written by Martin Luther, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, Arthur Sullivan and others in favor of what is basically rock music, is a tragedy to me. I would also not serve in a Protestant church that was a part of the Charismatic or Pentecostal movements.
lol...
