@@telosboundI used to be RC and I’m Orthodox now. My understanding is that St Vincent’s conception of development isn’t like Cardinal Newman’s (the Catholic view). Maybe I’m wrong but our Orthodox conception on development, as I understand it, is more like the terms and ways we might use to describe certain doctrines may change, but it’s not that we are growing “seeds” of doctrines that over two millennia finally become an oak tree or something (RC view). But rather what we believe now is what we’ve always believed. We do not add to it but we may explain the same things differently and in that sense we “progress” and develop. Does that sound right to you?

@@telosbound that’s how my ROC priest explained the Councils to me. Councils gather and manifest the mind of Christ confirming and making clear what we already believed prior.

@@telosbound Thx

@@telosbound I‘d also like pdfs:)

This is also support for the veneration of theotokos and the purified saints who know Jesu Christos personally. As it is written according to St. John, those who are sinners cannot know the Lord. However it is so that one who knows the Lord personally is one-in-a-million-million or less but, although someone may not know the Lord personally, he may be part of the apostolic succession, and he will know the way to the Lord and be able to at least rise us to his position, as much as we are good servants and privy to grace. Therefore we must also take a spiritual father to know the lord, for he may advise us personally and give us a chance to become obedient to someone more worthy, qualified in the method of worship and service. Which the salt of is grace and love for Christ but the practice is a science nonetheless, although it is a divine science which is thereby distinct from science of matter which is gathered fully by flawed senses, and rarely accompanied by faith, if ever used for it. I pray that all I said has been right, for I am determinedly sinful at heart, and devoid of true love. Thus even the scriptures are not authorive when passed over my tongue. In sanskrit it is said *sat shastri kurvanti shastrani* and in the context of its placement, it means that scriptures are made into true scriptures, by the use of a pure devotee. And what you have not heart from the saints or the gospel I’m explaining, such comes from 6 goswamis. Although in first Corinthians 14 37-40 there’s some authorization, who among us knows enough to determine who is in full accordance with St. Paul’s holy instruction? I’ve been wrong most often before. In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit amen