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Abu Hadi, this is a wonderful explanation, thank you!

hasanhh, I didn't come here to argue or explain Orthodox theology, that was only in response to a question from 'Guest'. I would not come here to lecture anyone, but I guess mutual understanding is good, so I would clarify. The original point of the liturgy is not just aesthetic. is to put aside your grievances with anyone in the community and confess your sins before God before affirming communion in the church. Liturgy traditionally would have been most people's only exposure to scripture, the bible wasn't traditionally well-distributed among Orthodox, but fully read out in church over

Very interesting stuff guys, thanks! i didn't know anything about ibn Arabi, I just quickly checked if there was an analogous concept of hell in Islam. I have visited the tomb of Haji Bektash Veli in Turkey. Bektashism seems interesting, but I've seen videos of them sticking spikes through their own cheeks, I'm not so sure about that kind of thing. Btw, I made a mistake. The whole 'co-equal' thing among the hypostasies of the trinity is a western christian thing based on a forged document called the athanasian creed. It's not in the Nicene creed and not accepted by orthodox. I knew someth

Thank you everyone, some very interesting stuff here, I will study carefully. So, here is what I know about the trinity. There is one god composed of three 'hypostases' which means underlying essences. Catholics translated this word into latin as 'personae' which starts to sound pagan. Of course, even in the original Greek it is a problem for Islam. God the father is unencapturable in words, the ultimate creative principle is still not enough to express it. Jesus is commonly referred to as the son and the word of God. 'Word', or Logos in Greek is a pre-Christian philosophical concept mean

Hi. I used to be some kind of staunch atheist-materialist-rationalist. Life led me to understand the importance of having God in your life, and an appreciation of how limited our powers as humans are. I went back to my ethnic roots and joined the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. As an organization it is flawed as this is a fallen world and all members and leaders of the church are flawed humans, but it's a lot better than Catholic. I spent a year in Saudi Arabia teaching English and learned a bit about Islam. One of my colleagues was an Islamic scholar who appeared to be Shia. He taught