PROGRESSIVE TRADITIONAL ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY

As always, the Orthodox Church faces problems from without and within. Today, if the truth be told, the largest problem the Church faces is the attempted pseudo-metamorphosis of her mystical phronema into a western, juridical way of thinking. This pseudo-transformation has unfortunately been going on for the past couple of centuries... it is the "Western Captivity" of the Orthodox Church referred to by Fr. Georges Florovsky. (Though even he was subject to it in his early years - eg his Augustinian and erroneous work "On the Limits of the Church.")

The influence of Gnosticism and the Western Captivity are manifest in several ways, among them:
-The belief in the Myth of the Aerial Toll-Houses.
-A misunderstanding of the Ancient of Days Icon. (This prophetic image from the OT Book of Daniel is sadly misunderstood in many places in the Church today. It is erroneously described as an icon of the Trinity. The Church, however, has ecumenically forbidden "icons of the Father.")
-Substitution of the "satisfaction theory of atonement" for the Orthodox Dogma of Redemption.