The Differences Between Eastern And Western Churches

By the Medieval Ages, Christianity had spread rapidly across many cultural boundaries affecting not only the way religion is practiced, but also beliefs people had about Christianity as a whole. Another aspect incorporated into people’s beliefs are ideas of salvation, supernatural beings, and saints. Each played a significant role on the lives of people from the Medieval Ages as well as shaped the life that they lived. Before diving into the beliefs people held about Christianity, it is important to understand the differences between the Eastern and Western churches. Some of the major reasons for the difference is the fact that people spoke different languages, had different church rules, and the debate between leavened versus unleavened†¦show more content†¦That meant that a pope was seen as the head of the church, influencing the lives of Christians and at times mandating various rules put in place. While these factors influenced Christian live depending on where a person lived, they did not necessarily provide or explain the beliefs or understandings of Christianity within a person’s life. Joseph Lynch, in his book The Medieval Church: A Brief History, he discusses what he essentially calls the framework of Christian life. To understand this framework, it is important to look at the medieval understandings of the creation, the Fall, Satan, the Incarnation, and Purgatory, which will be discussed later in the paper. To the people of the Medieval Ages, they interpreted the creation as literally true and that they were born with original sin stemming from Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge (Notes, October 28). This idea of being born with original sin, influenced the idea of baptism and that a person was wiped clean of original sin following the baptism. The next important idea that influenced people’s lives is the Fall. The Fall was the idea that beings in Heaven fell from there and entered Hell. This occurred as a consequence of disobedience and they belief is that the fallen were kicked out of the Garden of Eden (notes, October 28). One such fallen being is Satan. Satan is a central figure in the â€Å"Christian understanding of the moral universe† (Lynch, pages 260-261). They believed