"Unserious question: If one has hesitated a year after learning of the apostasy of another ton one had declared (believed) one's self to be in communion with before declaring one's self out of communion, are you subject to the charge? A day? An minute? A millisecond? What's the allowable delay before the instantaneous transition between rigidly-defined states? (Can you tell I'm an engineer? *\;-)"
An unserious answer...a millisecond after the appropriate actions have been taken. Can you tell I'm a lawyer? :)
Seriously, here's an answer for you from +John Chrysostomos' Homily VI on Titus:
"By contentions," he [+Paul] means, with heretics, in which he would not have us labor to no purpose, where nothing is to be gained, for they end in nothing. For when a man is perverted and predetermined not to change his mind, whatever may happen, why shouldest thou labor in vain, sowing upon a rock, when thou shouldest spend thy honorable toil upon thy own people, in discoursing with them upon almsgiving and every other virtue?
How then does he elsewhere say, "If God peradventure will give them repentance" (2 Tim. ii.25); but here, "A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject, knowing that he that is such is subverted and sinneth, being condemned of himself"? In the former passage he speaks of the correction of those of whom he had hope, and who had simply made opposition. But when he is known and manifest to all, why dost thou contend in vain? why dost thou beat the air? What means, "being condemned of himself"? Because he cannot say that no one has told him, no one admonished him; since therefore after admonition he continues the same, he is self-condemned."
You know, S, there is little new under the sun and the Father's dealt with just about everything...especially heresy.
Very good and enlightening answers! Thank you very much.
ping
Your quotes of the Fathers are not in modern English (or American). Why? I am quite certain they did not write in a language that wouldn't even form for many centuries yet -- Is there a "definitive" translation here?