Posted on 07/01/2005 2:22:18 AM PDT by kosta50
Can there be any doubt as to how the Eastern bishops at such a council would vote regarding Vatican 1 & 2?
And no doubt some western bishops too! But in any case, in a united Church we should not look at how any particular block votes but at the consensus of the Church as a whole. We either trust in the Holy Spirit or we don't. But as I have said earlier, I do not think now is a time for such a council. Best to postpone it until after some time in which we again start thinking of ourselves as one united Church. It took centuries for the teaching of the Church to be developed and proclaim at the councils, we should have a little patience here.
My dear fellow, the councils of the church, whether regional or ecumenical(universal or worldwide), do not meet to decide what doctrine is to be or not to be. The councils meet to affirm the Tradition in the face of heresy. No church council will ever affirm the filioque heresy as being Orthodox and then be accepted as authoritative by Orthodox Christians. Ever. Nestorians tried that trick when they took control of the "Robber" Council of Ephesus. To this day, nobody accepts its authority except the Nestorians (Assyrian Church of the East).
The filioque question was decided once and for all time at the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 380. The fathers there decided that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, period.
Give it up bubb, it's over. It was over centuries before you were even born. There is nothing left to discuss. Repent!
Kudos to you for recognizing the sanctity of St. Mark of Ephesus. Had his teaching not been 100% Orthodox, he would never have been glorified as a saint. It is on account of his courageous defense of Orthodoxy at the Council of Florence and his forthright condemnation of the Pope of Rome and all his followers(you included), as heretics that he has been glorified and is venerated by all orthodox Christians.
Councils do not meet to decide doctrine. As to doctrine, it is what the Church received once (Jude3). There is nothing to add to it, nothing to subtract. When a doctrinal issue comes up, i.e. a heresy, councils meet to affirm Orthodoxy and condemn the heresy. As the Latin heresies do not threaten the Church (they being not a part of it anymore anyway), there is no need for a council to confront them. To the extent they ever did threaten the Church centuries ago, they have already been condemned by the appropriate regional and/or ecumenical councils. The Orthodox teaching as to the procession of the Holy Spirit, for example, was affirmed for all time by the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 380.
In short Petrosius, there is nothing to discuss. There is no reason to meet with you Latins, other than to welcome you back into the Church by receiving your repentances.
"Why would that be prejudice when it comes to us, but not when it comes to Roman Catholics?"
If we are all honest about this we must recognise that we all come to these questions with our own prejudices - Catholics included. This is why all these grand ecumenical projects are doomed to failure before they even start. None of us can dissociate ourselves from our respective phronemas, much though the ecumenists on either side would like us to do so.
I admire gbcdoj for his(her?) intellectual skills and seemingly endless capacity to bring forth reems of quotations from the Fathers to support the Catholic Faith, however, I know that they will count for nothing with you simply because you are not Catholic. The converse also applies with us of course.
When you speak of the Catholic Church needing to return to the Church of the first millenium, or the Church of the 7 Councils, it counts for nothing with us because we already know that we are that same Church. Original sin, the Immaculate Conception, the Pope as successor of Peter with universal jurisdiction - all these are doctrines which the Church has always held and we have our Scriptures and Tradition and the teachings of the Fathers and the saints as proof of this.
Similarly our ecclesiology with the priority of the universal Church over the local Church is also attested in both Scripture and Tradition and we simply see the Orthodox deviations from these doctrines as being novelties that were incorporated after the schism. We have had long enough experience with the Protestants (and many of our own people!) to detect the anti-Roman "frisson" when it appears, and understand how this can become a powerful driving force in the development of doctrine in communities that have become separated from Rome.
However, I am sure Jesus the Rock knew all this would come to pass when He named Peter as His chip off the old block, as it were. Just as He was the stone who would become a stumbling stone, Peter and his successors were always destined to replicate this on a minor scale - typology works forwards from the Cross as well as forwards to the Cross.
The bottom line is that while I consider "ecumenism" to be well-intentioned, in that it seeks to bring about the unity for which our Lord prayed, it is destined never to succeed because it is a lazy way of evangelizing. No matter how many ecumenical talks are held, or how many agreements are signed, none of them can bring a single person into the unity of our Lord's Church, because only the grace of conversion can do that. And, generally speaking, conversion does not happen for the right reasons when it takes place en masse, but happens one soul at a time as the Holy Spirit moves them.
For these reasons and others, I fully agree with you that unity between Catholic and Orthodox is most unlikely to happen and one has to wonder what re-establishment of the theological dialogues will actually achieve?
There was more than a difference of opinion. The Franks were accusing Greeks of having "omitted" [!] Filioque, and the Pope, backed by the same uneducated semi-iconoclast Franks, was pushing for unprescedented jurisdiction.
I am not asking you to accept the filioque or any other of the matter in dispute but rather to withhold judgment
Which part of the Creed don't you understand, dear friend? Let say simply: there is no Filioque in it! Not in the way we say it, not in the way St Photius, St Chyrsostom, St Maximos the Confessor said it, not in the way the Orthodox, east or west, ever said it; not even in the way it is inscribed on the silver plates in the Vatican, or the way it is recited in Greek in Rome to this day.
So what is there to debate? On what authority did the Church of the West insert it, clearly disobeying their own Patriarch's, Pope Leo III's, direct order to the contrary?
The division was caused by the actions of the Greeks, not the Latins
I see that the Franks are alive and well. What did the Greeks do to cause "division?" First, the Latins dropped Greek as the language of the Church of the first 300 years of Christianity, and went as far as to make Latin the "universal" language of the Church [!?!] Second, in the 5th century, Pope Leo I discovered Petrine supremacy.
Third, in the 6th century, the Church of the West inserted Filioque into the Creed, and the popes allowed but not publicly. Fourth, the Frankish sponsors of Rome were teaching errors in the East (Bulgaria), and were never censured by Rome.
They taught that married clergy is wrong, that the Greeks omitted Filioque, and so on. Then there were other innovations -- like denying the cup to the laity, unleavened bread instead of real bread, using fasting as punishment (penance), as evidenced in the local synod of Elvira as early as the 4th century, and so on.
What have the Greeks done to cause the "division" except that they refused papal intrusions into their jurisdiction? The Greeks dealt with their own heresies, and sought refuge with Orthodox Popes in Old Rome (i.e. +Maximos the Confessor), or condemned and excommunicated their own heretics.
Is it the fact that the Fourth Ecumenical Council ignored Pope Leo I's "annulment" of canon xxviii and subsequent Popes accepted it?
What is it that the Greeks did to cause division? They used the language of the Gospels, which the Latins exchanged for their own and then made their own "universal" at the first opportunity. It took them a thousand years to recognize what the Greeks knew all along, that the language of the Church need not be Greek or Latin.
Even when the Pope approved Slavonic liturgy in Greater Moravia, the Frankish storm trooper bishops there couldn't rest. They harassed and imprisoned St. Cyrill for his magnum opus and evangelizing of Eastern Slavs, because it wasn't in Latin!
The "division" the Greeks caused in your eyes is their refusal to submit to the whims of the Pope and all the innovations and additions he allowed. They did so, knowing that no man is infallible and that the faith of St. Peter was no more protected from error than that of any other Apsotle, because all were inspired. They successors are not. They are ordinary men.
They knew that Pope Honorius was proven to be a heretic and that if such a man possessed "ex-cathedra" powers the Church might as well be Monothelite today. So, they treated the Pope as the elder, but not as the ruler. Yet at Chalcedon, the papal legate called the Bishop of Rome the "ruler of the Church."
The Catholic Church is as much the Church of the Seven Councils as the Orthodox
You wouldn't recognize the Church of the West if you could travel back in time.
Those of the Queen of cities (Constantinople) have attacked the synodic letter of the present very holy Pope, not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to the theology (of the Trinity) and, according to them, says: 'The Holy Spirit also has his ekporeusis (ekporeuesthai) from the Son'. The other deals with the divine incarnation. With regard to the first matter, they (the Romans) have produced unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of the gospel of St. John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause (aitian) of the Spirit - they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by ekporeusis (procession) - but that they have manifested the procession through him (to dia autou proienai) and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence... They (the Romans) have therefore been accused of precisely those things which it would be wrong to accuse them, whereas the former (the Byzantines) have been accused of those things of which it has been quite correct to accuse them (Monothelitism). They have up till now produced no defence, although they have not yet rejected the things that they have themselves so wrongly introduced. In accordance with your request, I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them [the 'also from the son'] in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. But since the practice of writing and sending [the synodic letter] has been observed, I wonder whether they will possibly agree to do this. It is true, of course, that they cannot reproduce their idea in a language and in words that are foreign to them as they can in their mother-tongue, just as we too cannot. In any case, having been accused, they will certainly take some care about this.
"unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria"
Even without the defense of St. Maximus it is clear that the teaching of the early Church was not unanimous and unambiguous. If we were to take the same hard line that you do, could we not claim that it is the Greeks who have departed from the teaching of the Church?
I also recommend the statement by Metropolitan John of Pergamen. Although he has not completely accept the Vatican clarification of the issue it is clear that he recognizes that a major cause of the dispute is the difference between the Latin and Greek languages. If we admit that we do not completely understand each other because of language problems, is it not then rash judgment to jump to the claim of heresy?
It's a stalemate. However, we are under commandment to be united and brotherly. Perhaps we do not understand what that means. It doesn't necessarily mean we have to be "married." Brothers often compete and even antagonize each other, even though their parents plead for them to be "as brothers." They are inevitably connected to their parents and can never disown each other but it doesn't mean they have to act as one or live together.
But borthers don't have to fight. Christian thing to do would be for the brothers to support and help each other, and stand united against common adversaries, and mutually respect each other's households rather than trying to make each other a clone of the other. That would unite us in Christ without ecclesiological re-union and bureaucratic and legalistic niceties.
And one more thing: keep in mind that the frustration you feel with the Orthodox is because the Orthodox are not asking for reconciliation or re-union. We are not making the overtures. We leave it up to God. On the other hand, when someone makes overtures to us, we take it that they desire to join us.
What are we arguing about here, the doctrine behind filioque or its uncanonical insertion in the Creed. If the former I refer you to my post to Graves above. If the latter I will grant that this was uncanonical but that is a far cry from heretical.
What did the Greeks do to cause "division?"
The action I was referring to was the act of anathematizing the entire West. We could both make a litany of complaints one against the other. I will freely admit that there were injustices committed by our side but do not presume to think that the Greeks were without fault. Whatever the crimes committed a thousand years ago (and let us not get started with battle of who was at greater fault) does not our Lord call on us to "forgive those who have trespassed against us?" If we cannot practice this among ourselves how can we presume to preach it to the world?
First, the Latins dropped Greek as the language of the Church of the first 300 years of Christianity, and went as far as to make Latin the "universal" language of the Church
Of course we dropped Greek, we could not speak it any longer! In a similar way the liturgy in Moscow is not celebrated in Greek but in Russian. As for it being a "universal" language, this is I admit a western concept. You must understand that despite the various local vernaculars in the West, Latin was still the language of university instruction until as late as the 18th cent. Latin is still used ceremonially in Oxford University, hardly a friend the Church of Rome.
The "division" the Greeks caused in your eyes is their refusal to submit to the whims of the Pope and all the innovations and additions he allowed.
No, the division was, and is, caused by the Greeks refusing to seek redress within the Church and presuming that they alone were the guardians of orthodoxy.
Well put.
The final authority on what the Church teaches are Ecumenical Councils. The EC composed and finalized the Christian Symbol of Faith (the Creed) and prohibited anyone from adding or substracting from it (unless another EC needs to clarify it -- as was the case with the Holy Ghost of the Nicene Creed).
The bottom line is this: the Creed was approved in its finalized form (without the Filioque) in all subsequent councils. If the Latin Church found it necessary to describe the "mechanics" of Trinitarian economy for whatever reason, it had no authority to unilaterally insert the Filioque into the Creed, which was done in the 11th century before the Great Schism as a concession to the semi-heretical (semi-iconoclastic) Frankish kings, who were also the guardians of the Pope.
St. Maximos the Confessor, just as St. Chrysostom, was one of those eastern Bishops very close to Rome and very fond of the Pope. After all, it was a Pope, in whom St. Maximos sought refuge, who saved the Church from iconoclastic heresy in the East, but it was also a Pope who embraced Monothelism which St. Maximos denied, and was proven wrong by the Sixth Ecumenical Council, and subsequent Popes.
The so-called Photian synod, which re-instated St. Photius and agreed with him, was ratified by a Pope and this settled the Filioque controversy, although it was not an ecumnical synod (which would have been the 8th). It also annuled the so-called 8th Ecumenical Synod 10 years prior, which the Roman Catholic Church counts as the "8th" although it was condemned by the Photian Synod, the condemnation having been approved by Pope himself.
The bottom line is this: individual fathers make opinions; Ecumenical Councils decide what is orthodoxy and what is heresy. The ECs are infallible because they represent the entire Church; individual fathers are not.
If any Ftaher says anything that is contrary to the proclamations of Ecumenical Synods, the Ftaher is wrong. Plain and simple.
I will say amen to this. This was my point in saying it is too early for a council to harmonize our differences. But we could stop calling each other heretics (and mean it) and recognize that we are both orthodox according to our own theological languages. With that then there would be no reason we could not once again celebrate the liturgy together. Let another generation, and God in his own time, resolve the theological disputes. As for the "bureaucratic and legal niceties", let each patriarchate run its own house.
But you misunderstood my reasoning for quoting St. Maximus. I was not trying to prove that the Catholics were correct but only that in the early Church there was disagreement as to whether the Filioque was considered contrary to the teaching of the Councils.
If the Latin Church found it necessary to describe the "mechanics" of Trinitarian economy for whatever reason, it had no authority to unilaterally insert the Filioque into the Creed
I have already conceded that this action was uncanonical but, again, that is not the same as heretical and does not justify the anathemas proclaimed by the Orthodox.
The bottom line is this: individual fathers make opinions; Ecumenical Councils decide what is orthodoxy and what is heresy.
Agreed (did I actually say that word?) ;-) But as of yet no ecumenical council has that the Latin theology of Filioque is heretical and contrary to the councils of the past. Why is it so hard to leave the question at that?
Agreed (did I actually say that word?) ;-) But as of yet no ecumenical council has declared that the Latin theology of Filioque is heretical and contrary to the councils of the past. Why is it so hard to leave the question at that?
I saw nothing in your quote from St. Maximus the Confessor as to a hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son.
The Latin teaching is that the Holy Spirit proceeds in the hypostatic sense from the Father and the Son.
I have no desire to argue. We all worship in imperfect knowledge and with imperfect ability to describe the Divine. That's why the wise orthodox Fathers of the Unidivided Church left the Mystery of God to remain a Mystery, but at the same time to proclaim a universal truth: that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father and the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father, the manner and the "mechanisms" of this being unknown to us.
The Filioque was inserted to combat Arianism, but also because some Fathers specualted as to "how" the Trinity "operates". That in itsef is not heresy but speculation. We can still speculate on it and are nowehere nearer to knowing it, and Arianism is no longer an issue, so why bother? It's the indsertion of it into the Creed in the 11th century, contrary to everything the Unidivided Church established as Orthodox prior to that that, that remains the unrepenetent offense.
The Church spoke in one voice and said: this is the Creed, this is what we believe; nothing can be added or subtracted to it unless it is done by another Ecumenical Council. Amen. Your Church decided otherwise and now we are supposed to "debate" this? If you steal something, it is wrong even if your motives were noble. Just do what Graves said: Repent and you will be forgiven.
Of course we dropped Greek, we could not speak it any longer!
And how many Germans understood Latin in Luther's time? But the Roman Church insisted, as it does to this day that Latin is the universal language of the Church and should be favored. There is a whole group of "trads" who insist on it. How many Roman Catholics speak or even understand Latin today? You don't see double standards here? Apparently not.
Latin was still the language of university instruction until as late as the 18th cent
Little good did that do to the multitutes who sat in RC churches and listed to something they didn't understand. And it took the Vatican 200 years (middle of the 20th century) since the 18th c. to admit that a language other than Latin is okay? The East knew that for 2,000 years. The only reason Greek was the language of the Church is because it was the only liturgical language of the Gentiles, sufficiently developed to express litrurgical complexities, but the East never poposed that Greek was the "universal" languge of the Church, as your Church did for Latin.
No, the division was, and is, caused by the Greeks refusing to seek redress within the Church and presuming that they alone were the guardians of orthodoxy
Redress? Please specfy what did the Greeks add and or subtract form the Faith. What are our innovations and additions that need to be redressed?
We are not the only guardians of Orthodoxy. We never claimed that. There are multitudes of Greek Fathers who glorified the Pope and western Fathers. The Greeks honor many Popes, in fact and the Church of the West was condiered fully Orthodox in liturgy and everything esle. Iconoclasm was defeated thanks to the Orthodoxy of Rome at that time. How can you say that the Greeks find fault but no merit in the West? That is completely false! If you want the list of issues cited by the Greeks that needed a redress, read the Patriarchal Encyclical of the Eastern Fathers of 1895 (in fact Agrarian posted in today along with the series of previous ones).
Because to us your Filioque is not just a canonical offense; it is a theological statement that the Church did not determine to be canonical. Speculated, yes, but not celbrated. And, because it involves the very pinnacle of our Faith, and because it is a corruption of our statement of faith, it expresses something other than our Faith. And until we profess and believe in one and the same thing we cannot be in spiritual communion and concelebrate together.
Scholasticism is precisely the point, imo.
I contribute little here because of the emphasis on it. I prefer to bask in my memories of Tbilisi liturgies last month, and as I do, I recall that after all, the Orthodox church is experiential, not scholastic.
Why dig up writings from the 5th century when you could go to liturgy in a church from the 5th century? This taught me far more than anything written from those times, and in a way far more deeply ensconced.
Another important point in the Vatican document is the emphasis it lays on the distinction between ekporeusis and processio. It is historically true that in the Greek tradition a clear distinction was always made between ekporeuesthai and proeinai, the first of these two terms denoting exclusively the Spirit's derivation from the Father alone, whereas proienai was used to denote the Holy Spirit's dependence on the Son owing to the common substance or ousia which the Spirit in deriving from the Father alone as Person or hypostasis receives from the Son, too, as ousiwdws that is, with regard to the one ousia common to all three persons (Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the Confessor et al). On the basis of this distinction one might argue that there is a kind of Filioque on the level of ousia, but not of hypostasis.However, as the document points out, the distinction between ekporeuesthai and proeinai was not made in Latin theology, which used the same term, procedere, to denote both realities. Is this enough to explain the insistence of the Latin tradition on the Filioque? Saint Maximus the Confessor seems to think so. For him the Filioque was not heretical because its intention was to denote not the ekporeuesthai but the proeinai of the Spirit.
This remains a valid point, although the subsequent history seems to have ignored it. The Vatican statement underlines this by referring to the fact that in the Roman Catholic Church today the Filioque is omitted whenever the Creed is used in its Greek original which contains the word ekporeuesthai.
(Sorry, I do not know how to include the Greek characters.)
This is only one point which the Metropolitan addresses. As you can see it is anything but cut and dry. I encourage to read the whole document. But for now I will ask again: If because of language difficulties we do not know exactly what the other is saying, is it not rash judgment to accuse one another of heresy?
I have never accused the Greeks adding or subtracting from the faith, rather I deny the charge that the Latins have. Nor have I said that any innovations of the Greeks need redress. My point was that if the Greeks thought that the alleged innovations or abuses of the Latins needed redress this should have been done as it was in the past, through an ecumenical council of all the Church's bishops and not by the unilateral anathema of Patriarch Michael.
We are not the only guardians of Orthodoxy. We never claimed that.
In 1054 you did. And today you disallow the possibility of the Latin bishops joining with the Greek to resolve the issue.
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