3.

 What distinctive characteristics did two Orthodox scholars attribute to the Orthodox Church?

            Protopresbyter Georges Vasilievich Florovsky and Panagiotis Bratsiotis gave as the Church's distinctive characteristics its changelessness, its determination to remain loyal to the past, and its sense of living continuity with the Church of ancient times. These characteristics do not pass unnoticed by outsiders. In fact, they are generally the first things about Orthodoxy that strike Western Christians. As an English Roman Catholic wrote to a newspaper:

We are all sick to death of socialists and progressives alike with their reforming [in the Latin Church]. It is indeed something to thank God that the Eastern Orthodox Churches have refused to change anything and have stuck to the old Liturgies [Quoted in Archpriest Alexey Young, Christianity or the Papacy?, p. 19].