Western Orthodoxy during the Reformation?

Delta Force

Banned
Could there have been a rise of Western Orthodoxy during the Protestant Reformation, with groups joining Orthodox churches while retaining Western practices? Essentially, it would be the reverse of Eastern Catholicism.
 
Could there have been a rise of Western Orthodoxy during the Protestant Reformation, with groups joining Orthodox churches while retaining Western practices? Essentially, it would be the reverse of Eastern Catholicism.

There were attempts at this, some of them headed by Melancthon himself. The issue was that there was such a large drift in liturgical practice between West and East already (to the extent that a small but vocal minority in the Orthodox Church don't think that Western liturgies are valid due to the lack of an explicit prayer called the epiclesis) that retaining Western practices without heavy alteration would be very difficult to achieve. Rome wasn't much better about this at the time either. Eastern Catholic Churches like the Maronites and the Ukrainians had their liturgies heavily Latinized.

This becomes especially true when you consider the rather large difference in doctrine that separates the East from Protestantism. Without getting into too much detail, it's worth pointing out that Protestantism as a historical phenomenon owes its development to the rediscovery in the West of a lot of texts (Greek New Testament, Plato and Aristotle on their own terms, etc.) that were always in circulation in the East. So Orthodoxy had already developed very different opinions on what those texts said, often interpreting them through the lens of the writings of Church Fathers which are only now being translated out of Greek and other Eastern European languages. Furthermore, although they did break with Rome, Luther and his contemporaries were still operating within a Western theological milieu, and held very strongly to doctrines like the filioque which in part motivated the Schism of 1054.

So independently, it doesn't seem likely. The Eastern influence would have to be much stronger from the get-go. There are a few ways I can see that happening.

1)A weird, drastic reform within the PLC or its dynastic Union with an Orthodox state like Russia. The trick is to get an Orthodox party to have enough influence at court without the concern that they're under Russian influence and keep Russia and the PLC from fighting.

2) Have Russia conquer Prussia and other parts of the PLC, and have some sort of reverse Union of Brest. This will be hard, but state sponsorship by the Czar might be able to get it done. However, it would take so much repression of Protestant doctrines a lot of people would understandably ask why the Czar wouldn't just convert the place to Byzantine Orthodoxy.

3) An Ottoman conquest of Greece and Byzantium that is far more devastating and produces far more refugees. A lot of them would have to be theologically learned as well as technically skilled, but given that knowing Greek was an important skill at the time I could see a lot of German princes welcoming them in. This might make sure that the Reformation has more Eastern influence at its source, but again the Western-based critiques of Catholicism would have to be suppressed brutally because they already had a long history in the region. Go back any further than this though and you won't have a Reformation as we know it.
 
We have discussed similar topics in the past. You might find some of the following of interest.


AHC. Henry VIII joins the Eastern Orthodox Church.
tallthinkev

Plausibility of an Orthodox Scandinavia
Soverihn

AHC/WI: Orthodox France
Fuego

AHC: More Orthodox Countries
ByzantineMan

Western Uniates
Johannes Parisiensis

WI Western Orthodox Church
Morty Vicar

And that list only goes back to late 2013
 
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