There is a danger when one buys into the modern and post-modern versions of history. First western historical perspective had a general bias against the \\"Greek East\\". This led to the hardening and withering of Western theology through incorrect emphases, leading up to the Great schism. The next metamorphosis which the western view of history underwent was the way Western Christian history itself was re-interpreted by the Reformation, which is the full flowering of these incorrect theological emphases and a human attempt to correct them. The third wave of historical re-interpretation is the one born of anti-christian sentiments during the years of enlighenment and scientific revolution to this very day. So one wonders if Western versions of history can be trusted at all, since they underwent various mutations motivated by differing agendas.
It is also easy to forget that Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy share the seven ecumenical councils and 1000 years of shared heritage, and that whatever good found in the West, and yes there are many good things, owe its raison d\'etre to the wisdom of the Christian faith.
Without Christianity, there could have never been Western civilization. It wasn\'t the writings of the ancients which made the West, because Islam had these writings as well, but could not produce anything comparable to what we see today in the West. All this talk about the glory of Islamic civilization is inflationary claims made by biased scholars and media personnels with anti-christian agenda.
But the question is : Why didn\'t the Eastern Christians produce anything comparable to the West ? They would have if they had the same level of political decentralization which the West enjoyed. It wasn\'t Christianity which brought Byzantium down, it was its Romanity: The centralization of power in the person of the Emperor. This suffocated the growth of the East and rendered its people vulnerable to Islam and communism.
So to summarize, the culture and ideas of the first 1000 years of Christianity, that shared heritage, is indeed the fountain head of all the wisdom that showed its fruits later on. It\'s those 1000 years of Christian Hellenism, that new culture forged by the Word of God and transfigured by His Light, which made it happen. Yet the West added to this heritage ,by wrong emphases due to isolation, and revived along with it elements of pagan hellenism, that specie which was rejected by the Apostles and Fathers, and was born again in the bosom of the Church. This pagan input, the revival of the obsolete, the progressive rejection of the True and Orthodox, is responsible for the destructive elements of Western culture in Academia and modern life in general.
So my friend, you\'re not being drawn to the East, you\'re drawn to Christianity, to Christ, which is blurredly found in the West, and clearly seen in the Mystical Life of Orthodoxy. It\'s not either East or West, or the East and the West, but rather Christ the King of All, the True knowledge and the Only way for life now and ever, both in East and West. He is the Logos, through whom the world was made, and through whom we are saved.
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