Metacrock wrote:DT1138 wrote:
I bet a lot of that goes back to Gnosticism and mystery cults.
There are even Arianesque anachronisms in Orthodoxy. There's an icon of Christ as a beardless youth with wings like an angel, for instance. Yet Orthodoxy is strongly Trinitarian (even moreso than Western Christianity), but elements of the liturgy and piety date to a time before the Christian movement rigidly defined itself
The Toll House beliefs date from a time when there was little difference between gnosticism and Orthodoxy. Many Eastern European and Russian peasants still believe in Toll Houses . Fr. Seraphim Rose, an American-Born beatified saint-to-be in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, taught this idea... but he was just teaching a common pious opinion in Orthodoxy. Many other Orthodox have beliefs more like what would be found in Anglicanism- prayers for the dead are beneficial but how this is effective is a mystery (in the Toll House belief, the prayers keep the demons away).
Also, alot of the gnostic worldview overlapped with the CHristian one in some ways. Ephesians is a good example of this, Paul talks about the spirits and powers of the air and so forth- in Eastern Orthodoxy demons are primarily thought to exist up in the air, in various heavens or planes rather than underground. Gnostics had similar beliefs, some gnostic sects focused on learning esoteric rituals to get past the toll houses on ones journey through the afterlife. Paul's out-of-body journey to the third heaven also wasn't a rare story in the ancient and medieval world and many Christian and pagan traditions have similar accounts. Eastern Orthodoxy is full of mystical visions and otherworldly encounters like that, spiritual experiences are a significant part of the tradition of that church, mirroring today's interest in near-death-experiences and psychic phenomena, things about which western Christian churches have been much more skeptical and cautious.