[Matajic]

Angelos: you seem to have missed a point made earlier. When God intervened in the Arian debate, He did not ensure 'the continued dominance of Orthodoxy'. He ensured that the true light was not lost in the darkness; but Arians were (numerically) in the majority for quite some time.

I must admit I find your latest post baffling, purely in its attempted details. Despite your statement, I would characterise the US as a country in which secularism has a radical hold on almost every dimension of life, particularly religious ideals and practices.

The Fathers of the Church, for their part, would never allow for a moment the idea that God purposefully allows heresies to thrive 'because that was in the best, though imperfect, interest of Christianity'. The existence of heresy is always the chaos of sin. In her encounter with it, the Church may helpfully create new terms, new modes of articulation or speech; but heresy itself is always darkness, always against the Church. She struggles in this context; she bears the marks and scars of her Master; and like Him she defeats the darkness and is purified through the struggle -- but sin is always sin, and God always works against sin, never as one permissive of it.

INXC, Fr Irenei