Parts of Christian Tradition that the West lost.

The West likes to think that they got it all. But the truth is it was severely depleted of Christian Tradition after the Schism of 1054 AD.

Let's show a few of these important parts of the Tradition.

Iconography

The Second Council of Nicea, in 787 AD declared that the icons are as important as the written word in propagating the Faith. Hence the art of the icon already mature by that time begin to improve and systematize the Faith, codifying the images so that they can help propagating the Holy Spirit to so many people that did not know how to read.

The East begin to enhance the status of the Icons as a promoter of the religious truths and continues today to use this critical part of Tradition specifically after realizing that the written word, although self-contained in its power to deliver the message of God and to open the channels of the heart to the Holy Spirit, could be helped tremendously by the iconography as a whole, working in synergy with it. God already built the entire Creation in a visible way (He gave us eyes, didn't He?) but now the Icons will sacralize it for us and at the same time open our spiritual eyes towards the spiritual world.

The West under the Catholic Church demoted the icons from being equal in power to the word of the Scripture in the sense that they consider them more like expressions of art than of Faith. This was so much so that in fact they become expression of Art and were being appreciated more because of their artistic value than for their spiritual value. A whole industry related to who is the best painter and what style "looks" better has emerged and then of course the artist went from painting towards sculpture to give "another" dimension to this religious object. However, sculpture was not validated as Icon by the Second Council of Nicea.

The West under the Protestant Churches removed all the iconography and became essentially and for all purposes iconoclasts. The same thing that the Second Council of Nicea fought against. That is why they had to fill the Churches with music (not a bad thing in itself) but this music being freely composed and interpreted took various expressions with mixed degrees of success.

Today Iconography is still in high regard in the Orthodox Church, much less in the Catholic Church and non existent in the Protestant Church.

Fasting

Fasting is clearly defined in the Bible: The prophets fast, the King fast, the people fast and even Jesus that went for 40 days (and nights) in a defiant fast that had the devil scratched his horns. So why this important part of the Tradition disappeared in the West?

Even the Catholic Church does not fast like the Ancient Church.

The Orthodox Church has 4 large fasting periods with mostly vegan style of fasting and every week of the year there is assigned one day or two with various levels of "difficulty".

I am not aware of fasting being of any importance in the Protestant Churches.

The institution of Monasticism

In the East from where this practice came as it was expressed by the Fathers of the Desert it is still flourishing and is considered a great part of Tradition in the mystical and practical way of expressing Faith and creating examples for the regular people still engage with the World. The Christian is not of the World as Jesus said but was bought from the World through Jesus sacrifice and it is now of God. However most of the Christians still live in the World but that is exactly the main reason they need live spiritual examples that resonate more with the message of Christ of renunciation than with the World. So monasteries and monks are something that is common in the Orthodox world. However, they are relatively free and do not have an "Order" or many "Orders" that have distinctive diverse rules or some kind of special brotherhood split from other "Orders".

In the West we see the introduction of the monasticism by Saint John Cassian in Marseilia and then in other places. However, after the Great Schism we see that the various Catholic Orders of Monks or Nuns start to split and fight with each other for attention from the Pontifical Chair vying resources and even power from each other. This is NOT the spirit of World renunciation but the opposite of it. In time things stabilized somewhat but already with the Split of the English Church and Protestant Churches we see a repudiation of the entire concept. Hence the amazing spiritual resources of monasticism are mostly lost in the Protestant World.

Monasticism of course is the institution that gave us so many beautiful and insightful writings that make our Faith so rich and protected at the same time from the spirit of the World.

These are just 3 parts of Tradition but there are others that I will discuss if I have time to show them.

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Parts of Christian Tradition that the West lost.