here<\/a>.) Which date should it be? Is it worth doing?<\/p>\nThe initial East\/West split over the date of Easter happened in 154 when Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, visited Anicetus, bishop of Rome. They used different calendars for celebrating Easter. They couldn\u2019t agree but parted with good-will, each holding to his own practice.<\/p>\n
About 190 the dispute became acute. Victor, bishop of Rome, said: My way or the highway.<\/p>\n
The churches of Asia Minor, led by Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, refused to conform. The rest is history.<\/p>\n
Back to today. Why are the Eastern Orthodox so stubborn on a detail?<\/p>\n
They hold to Tradition with a capital \u201cT\u201d because they say: What the Lord has taught is unchanging. They are not convinced by all the variations and changes in the Western churches are making. They see the West as so much waffling<\/strong> and wandering.<\/p>\nConsider what has happened with the filioque<\/em>. After many years of discussion Western churches have agreed to leave out the filioque <\/em>in liturgical usage, but there is no question that it was unilaterally added by the West to the Nicene Creed.<\/p>\nAdding the filioque <\/em>was not a decision made by an ecumenical council nor is it what John 15:26 (\u201cthe Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father\u201d) says! The Eastern Orthodox have the Bible on their side.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Orthodox are not going to change on the filioque<\/em> or Easter, and they have their reasons for not changing. They hold to Tradition with a capital \u201cT\u201d and see the wandering Western churches as having a poor track record of holding to anything.<\/p>\nA common date for Easter? It\u2019s a lost cause. Time and money are better spent elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This year Western Christians and Eastern Orthodox celebrated Easter on the same date. This is unusual. It will happen in 2011, 2014, and 2017. Huge ecumenical efforts are being made to produce a common date for Easter so that Christians can have a common witness. (Read more here.) Which date should it be? Is it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crossalone.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}