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To: The_Reader_David
I discussed the schism for two purposes: first to make clear the view of the Orthodox that the "Roman Church" (or Latin Church, as I prefer to call it, following the example of our Fathers who had dealings with the Roman Papacy after the schism) did not begin with Constantine as you seemed to be arguing, but with the schism of the Patriarchate of Rome from the Church.

How can I make it any clearer? I believe the RCC began on the road to corruption with the power and wealth inherited (even invented) from the time of Constantine. That is not to say the RCC began with Constantine.
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I honestly believe that you overestimate the changes brought on by the temporally and secularly more favorable circumstances for the Church after the Peace of Constantine. I already enumerated features commonly ascribed to the Church's good relations with the Empire (and condemned) by protestants who regard a hypothesized "pure" early Church as their model for reform, features which in fact predated the Peace of Constantine.

You are, I believe, making an overstatement. There is no Protestant position. Maybe you could use the word "some" when speaking of Protestant positions.
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The only two changes of any ecclesiological or soteriological import resulting from the Peace of Constantine were first the fact that the Emperors, desiring peace in the Church, from time to time called councils to settle disputes. The councils in which imperial meddling carried the day (e.g. the "Robber Council" in which the heresiarch Dioscorus had detachments of troops a his disposal, and the iconoclastic synods) were invariable rejected by the Church.

Not necessarily so. When do you suppose the various Emporers lost there position as the de facto ruler of the "Church"?
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31,154 posted on 02/28/2002 5:24:47 PM PST by OLD REGGIE
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To: OLD REGGIE
You must take into account the process by which the Church, lead by the Holy Spirit sorts out the various councils. The noted Russian lay theologian Khomiakov wrote about "reception" by the Church. The Councils which were not in accord with the faith once delivered to the saints eventually came to be ignored or anathematized by later councils. This process very much involves the entire Church, not just the hierarchy. For instance, the opposition to both the iconoclasts and the False Union Councils (Lyons and Florence/Ferrar)--also examples of councils where the Emperor had a predetermined outcome beyond preserving the peace of the Church by having the hierarchs clearly state the Faith in the face of an heretical challenge--came mostly from the laity and the monastics. It is not that the Emperor ever ceased to have a role--the role of sitting outside both factions in ecclesiastical controversies and calling for a decision--until there cease to be Emperors. Rather the Church has always had a mechanism given by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for correcting conciliar decisions which are not in accord with the faith.

This mechanism was completely lost in the Roman Patriachate where the Popes assumed the ecclesiatical roles of the Emperor and of a Patriarch, and to some extent of an entire Ecumenical Council. This accretion of power may be linked to the name Constantine, but only by way of forged documents, the so called Donation of Constantine which purported that St. Constantine bequeathed imperial temporal power to the Popes of Rome. This, of course, never actually happened: St. Constantine set his own son on the throne of the Empire.

31,177 posted on 02/28/2002 10:12:41 PM PST by The_Reader_David
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