It's always good to hear from you, John. Hope you're doing well.

Indeed, I've been hearing this about Eastern Christianity for some time, that it's more philosophical, mystical, and even Gnostic than the Western kind.

One question for me would be how literalistic average Christian belief is in the Eastern Church. Do average Christians there take their scriptures literally? Do they think Jesus rose physically from the grave? Or in contemplating the gospel, do they take the stories to be allegories, symbols for philosophical and psychological concepts and processes? If the latter, I'd suspect that Eastern Christianity is more esoteric than the Western kind, on average, which would be a good thing.