Posted on 07/22/2005 6:58:08 PM PDT by jec1ny
A Catholic View of Eastern Orthodoxy (1 of 4) by Aidan Nichols OP
In this article I attempt an overview in four parts.
First, I shall discuss why Catholics should not only show some ecumenical concern for Orthodoxy but also treat the Orthodox as their privileged or primary ecumenical partner.
Secondly, I shall ask why the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches occurred, focussing as it finally did on four historic 'dividing issues'.
Thirdly, I shall evaluate the present state of Catholic-Orthodox relations, with particular reference to the problem of the 'Uniate' or Eastern Catholic churches.
Fourthly and finally, having been highly sympathetic and complimentary to the Orthodox throughout, I shall end by saying what, in my judgment, is wrong with the Orthodox Church and why it needs Catholicism for (humanly speaking) its own salvation.
Part 1 First, then, why should Catholics take the Orthodox as not only an ecumenical partner but the ecumenical partner par excellence? There are three kinds of reasons: historical, theological and practical - of which in most discussion only the historical and theological are mentioned since the third sort - what I term the 'practical' - takes us into areas of potential controversy among Western Catholics themselves.
The historical reasons for giving preference to Orthodoxy over all other separated communions turn on the fact that the schism between the Roman church and the ancient Chalcedonian churches of the East is the most tragic and burdensome of the splits in historic Christendom if we take up a universal rather than merely regional, perspective. Though segments of the Church of the Fathers were lost to the Great Church through the departure from Catholic unity of the Assyrian (Nestorian) and Oriental Orthodox (Monophysite) churches after the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) respectively, Christians representing the two principal cultures of the Mediterranean basin where the Gospel had its greatest flowering - the Greek and the Latin - lived in peace and unity with each other, despite occasional stirrings and some local difficulties right up until the end of the patristic epoch.
That epoch came to its climax with the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea II, in 787, the last Council Catholics and Orthodox have in common, and the Council which, in its teaching on the icon, and notably on the icon of Christ, brought to a triumphant close the series of conciliar clarifications of the Christological faith of the Church which had opened with Nicaea I in 325.
The iconography, liturgical life, Creeds and dogmatic believing of the ancient Church come down to us in forms at once Eastern and Western; and it was this rich unity of patristic culture, expressing as it did the faith of the apostolic community, which was shattered by the schism between Catholics and Orthodox, never (so far) to be repaired. And let me say at this point that Church history provides exceedingly few examples of historic schisms overcome, so if history is to be our teacher we have no grounds for confidence or optimism that this most catastrophic of all schisms will be undone. 'Catastrophic' because, historically, as the present pope has pointed out, taking up a metaphor suggested by a French ecclesiologist, the late Cardinal Yves Congar: each Church, West and East, henceforth could only breathe with one lung.
No Church could now lay claim to the total cultural patrimony of both Eastern and Western Chalcedonianism - that is, the christologically and therefore triadologically and soteriologically correct understanding of the Gospel. The result of the consequent rivalry and conflict was the creation of an invisible line down the middle of Europe. And what the historic consequences of that were we know well enough from the situation of the former Yugoslavia today.
After the historical, the theological. The second reason for giving priority to ecumenical relations with the Orthodox is theological. If the main point of ecumenism, or work for the restoration of the Church's full unity, were simply to redress historic wrongs and defuse historically generated causes of conflict, then we might suppose that we should be equally - or perhaps even more - nterested in addressing the Catholic-Protestant divide. After all, there have been no actual wars of religion - simply as such - between Catholics and Orthodox, unlike those between Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth century France or the seventeenth century Holy Roman Empire.
But theologically there cannot be any doubt that the Catholic Church must accord greater importance to dialogue with the Orthodox than to conversations with any Protestant body. For the Orthodox churches are churches in the apostolic succession; they are bearers of the apostolic Tradition, witnesses to apostolic faith, worship and order - even though they are also, and at the same time, unhappily undered from the prima sedes, the first see. Their Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers, their liturgical texts and practices, their iconographic tradition, these remain loci theologici - authoritative sources - to which the Catholic theologian can and must turn in his or her intellectual construal of Catholic Christianity. And that cannot possibly be said of the monuments of Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed or any other kind of Protestantism.
To put the same point in another way: the separated Western communities have Christian traditions - in the plural, with a small 't' - which may well be worthy of the Catholic theologian's interest and respect. But only the Orthodox are, along with the Catholic Church, bearers of Holy Tradition - in the singular, with a capital 'T', that is, of the Gospel in its plenary organic transmission through the entirety of the life - credal, doxological, ethical - of Christ's Church.
There is for Catholics, therefore, a theological imperative to restore unity with the Orthodox which is lacking in our attitude to Protestantism - though I should not be misinterpreted as saying that there is no theological basis for the impulse to Catholic-Protestant rapprochement for we have it in the prayer of our Lord himself at the Great Supper, 'that they all may be one'. I am emphasising the greater priority we should give to relations with the Orthodox because I do not believe the optimistic statement of many professional ecumenists to the effect that all bilateral dialogues - all negotiations with individual separated communions - feed into each other in a positive and unproblematic way.
It would be nice to think that a step towards one separated group of Christians never meant a step away from another one, but such a pious claim does not become more credible with the frequency of its repeating. The issue of the ordination of women, to take but one particularly clear example, is evidently a topic where to move closer to world Protestantism is to move further from global Orthodoxy - and vice versa.
This brings me to my third reason for advocating ecumenical rapport with Orthodoxy: its practical advantages. At the present time, the Catholic Church, in many parts of the world, is undergoing one of the most serious crises in its history, a crisis resulting from a disorienting encounter with secular culture and compounded by a failure of Christian discernment on the part of many people over the last quarter century - from the highest office holders - to the ordinary faithful. This crisis touches many aspects of Church life but notably theology and catechesis, liturgy and spirituality, Religious life and Christian ethics at large. Orthodoxy is well placed to stabilise Catholicism in most if not all of these areas.
Were we to ask in a simply empirical or phenomenological frame of mind just what the Orthodox Church is like, we could describe it as a dogmatic Church, a liturgical Church, a contemplative Church, and a monastic Church - and in all these respects it furnishes a helpful counter-balance to certain features of much western Catholicism today.
Firstly, then, Orthodoxy is a dogmatic Church. It lives from out of the fullness of the truth impressed by the Spirit on the minds of the apostles at the first Pentecost, a fullness which transformed their awareness and made possible that specifically Christian kind of thinking we call dogmatic thought.
The Holy Trinity, the God-man, the Mother of God and the saints, the Church as the mystery of the Kingdom expressed in a common life on earth, the sacraments as means to humanity's deification - our participation in the uncreated life of God himself: these are the truths among which the Orthodox live, move and have their being.
Orthodox theology in all its forms is a call to the renewal of our minds in Christ, something which finds its measure not in pure reason or secular culture but in the apostolic preaching attested to by the holy Fathers, in accord with the principal dogmata of faith as summed up in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church.
Secondly, Orthodoxy is a liturgical Church. It is a Church for which the Liturgy provides a total ambience expressed in poetry, music and iconography, text and gesture, and where the touchstone of the liturgical life is not the capacity of liturgy to express contemporary concerns legitimate though these may be in their own context), but, rather, the ability of the Liturgy to act as a vehicle of the Kingdom, our anticipated entry, even here and now, into the divine life.
Thirdly, Orthodoxy is a contemplative Church. Though certainly not ignoring the calls of missionary activity and practical charity, essential to the Gospel and the Gospel community as these are, the Orthodox lay their primary emphasis on the life of prayer as the absolutely necessary condition of all Christianity worth the name.
In the tradition of the desert fathers, and of such great theologian-mystics as the Cappadocian fathers, St Maximus and St Gregory Palamas, encapsulated as these contributions are in that anthology of Eastern Christian spirituality the Philokalia, Orthodoxy gives testimony to the primacy of what the Saviour himself called the first and greatest commandment, to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength, for it is in the light of this commandment with its appeal for a God-centred process of personal conversion and sanctification - that all our efforts to live out its companion commandment (to love our neighbour as ourself) must be guided.
And fourthly, Orthodoxy is a monastic Church, a Church with a monastic heart where the monasteries provide the spiritual fathers of the bishops, the counsellors of the laity and the example of a Christian maximalism. A Church without a flourishing monasticism, without the lived 'martyrdom' of an asceticism inspired by the Paschal Mystery of the Lord's Cross and Resurrection, could hardly be a Church according to the mind of the Christ of the Gospels, for monasticism, of all Christian life ways, is the one which most clearly and publicly leaves all things behind for the sake of the Kingdom.
Practically speaking, then, the re-entry into Catholic unity of this dogmatic, liturgical, contemplative and monastic Church could only have the effect of steadying and strengthening those aspects of Western Catholicism which today are most under threat by the corrosives of secularism and theological liberalism.
To be continued ...
But what made it questionable other than it was evidence that went against his position? The facts remain and we cannot deny them because they are inconvenient.
" But what made it questionable other than it was evidence that went against his position?"
Your asking the wrong person because this sort of thing is outside of my field of expertise. I do believe St. Mark had his reasons. And I can tell you that both the Latins and the Greeks at Florence faced the problem of interpolated( i.e. "improved"), translations of various documents and even forgeries.
But it is not an exhaustive definition. For instance, there is no definition Mary as the Theotokos, no definition of the Mass, no explanation of the nature of the Church as apostolic, etc.
St. Cyril, who was the driving force behind Ephesus, taught Filioque:
Since the Holy Spirit when He is in us effects our being conformed to God, and He actually proceeds from the Father and Son, it is abundantly clear that He is of the divine essence, in it in essence and proceeding from it.[D]id any of the Eastern Fathers continue to profess or speculate about the filioque after the Council of Chalcedon?
St. Maximus the Confessor approved of the teaching by Latin church.
The Fathers at the various councils were very careful in their wording. Show me one act of the entire Church before 1054 that explicitly condemned Filioque.
It appears that only the Western Patriarchate continued in its defiance of the Councils by insistitng on using the filioque.
You are not implying that the Western church was not the equal of the Eastern church, are you? Again, show me one canon from the councils explicitly forbidding the use of Filioque which the Western church defied.
All you can show me are private judgments that the Latin formulations are contrary to the faith.
"But it is not an exhaustive definition. For instance, there is no definition Mary as the Theotokos, no definition of the Mass, no explanation of the nature of the Church as apostolic, etc."
So what? It does not need to be. It's thorough enough for Orthodox Christians. It suffices, for example to exclude heretics such as Roman Catholics from our temples. And that is its purpose.
"Since the Holy Spirit when He is in us effects our being conformed to God, and He actually proceeds from the Father and Son," St. Cyril
This is not the filioque heresy. It is about what the Holy Spirit does, His mission in time. You obviously don't have even a clue as to what your own denomination teaches as to the hypostatic procession of Holy Spirit. And yet you try to argue theology with the Orthodox?
"The Fathers at the various councils were very careful in their wording. Show me one act of the entire Church before 1054 that explicitly condemned Filioque."
Creed issued by the Council of Constantinople A.D. 381.
"You are not implying that the Western church was not the equal of the Eastern church, are you?"
Imply? Of course not. The West never was and never will be equal.
"Again, show me one canon from the councils explicitly forbidding the use of Filioque which the Western church defied."
Asked and answered already.
HOGWASH! Filioque never even came up on their radar. If the councils Fathers had wanted to condemn it they would have said so explicitly. Your insistence that they did is akin to Martin Luther reading "alone" after Paul's statement that we are saved by faith.
This is not the filioque heresy. It is about what the Holy Spirit does, His mission in time. You obviously don't have even a clue as to what your own denomination teaches as to the hypostatic procession of Holy Spirit.
I have in the past shown how the Latin procedere is used for two different words in Greek. It is you who insists that only the heretical interpretation can be allowed. I do believe that the Latin authors have a better understanding of what they are saying in their own language than the Greeks who are working with translations of the Latin.
Petrosius: The Fathers at the various councils were very careful in their wording. Show me one act of the entire Church before 1054 that explicitly condemned Filioque.
Graves: Creed issued by the Council of Constantinople A.D. 381.
Please give me a quote that explicitly condemns Filioque, I could not find it. The word does not even occur in the council.
The West never was and never will be equal.
Here you are showing your true colors! So much for the "all bishops are equal" line. The idea that all truth must come from the East is arrogant beyond belief. Perhaps you do not count pride as one of the Capital Sins.
Petrosius: Again, show me one canon from the councils explicitly forbidding the use of Filioque which the Western church defied.
Graves: Asked and answered already.
Not so! Give me a quote.
"If the councils Fathers had wanted to condemn [filioque] they would have said so explicitly."
It is explicitly excluded by the Creed. That's why you cannot worship in my temple. If, as an announced Roman Catholic, you attempt to enter, the doorkeeper will be instructed to have you removed.
"I do believe that the Latin authors have a better understanding..."
Believe as you like. It's a free country. But we will still bar the door if you attempt, as an announced Roman Catholic, to enter my temple. And if you resist, I guess we'll just have to call on the civil authorities for assistance in your removal.
"Please give me a quote that explicitly condemns Filioque, I could not find it. The word does not even occur in the council."
Asked and answered.
RE: Early Church liturgical sources
Justin, the philosopher and martyr, wrote the 1st full account of Christian worship about 150 AD. The picture he painted is valid only for Rome, although the features he included hold true from East to West, which Justin had recently traveled. He did not know of any fixed text for the Eucharistic prayer. We must remember that until the 4th century, Christian worship was still banned in the Empire.
The next important document that describes Christian worship is The Apostolic Tradition. The Greek cleric in Rome, Hippolytus, wrote The Apostolic Tradition which describes ecclesiastical life in Rome in the 3rd century.
When in 154 Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna visited Pope Anicetus at Rome, the latter invited him to celebrate the Eucharist, an honor that the Syrian Didascalia of the 3rd century makes compulsory in similar instances. There was no fear, therefore, of any deviation because of strange liturgies. The same is indicated by the transfer of the formulary of Hippolytus from Rome to distant Egypt and Ethiopia where it remains even today as the Eucharistic Anaphora of the Apostles. We can therefore speak of a unified liturgy of the first centuries, characterized by the universality of Roman practice (though certainly not a uniformity).
In the 4th century an important differentiation makes its appearance. In Greek territory, especially in Alexandria and Antioch there grew up, bit by bit episcopal centers and their provincial synods that radiated special legislation that in time gave a particular stamp to worship. With the rapid spread of congregations as a result of the legalization of Christian worship, circumstances required a greater carefulness about the text of prayers in worship. Therefore, it became the rule that the text should be set down in writing and texts should be carefully passed down by episcopal office.
From the turn of the 4th century, there survive 2 collections of liturgical texts. From the sphere of Alexandria, the Euchologion of Bishop Serapion of Thmuis, first discovered on Mt. Athos in 1894. From the sphere of Antioch/Syria, the liturgy in the 8th book of the Apostolic Constitutions, also called the Clementine liturgy as it pretends to be the work of Pope Clement I, a pupil of the apostles. Actually, it is a product of the late 4th century.
Although the 2 works diverge, each shows the common structure already described in the earlier Roman works. This basic structure would be the foundation that Basil would enlarge and enrich with Scriptural quotations and symbolism in the late 4th century. The Liturgy ascribed to John Chrysostom claims 4th century authorship, it did not, however, become popular in the East until the 11th century and it did not become firmly associated with the entire liturgy until the 8th century.
In the 5th century West-Syrian worship in the Liturgy of St. James, Jerusalem takes the lead in the Middle Eastern sphere. A lengthy desciption of this liturgy is recorded in the last of the conferences known as the Mystagogic Catecheses ascribed to Cyril of Jerusalem the the late 4th century. After Chalcedon most of the West-Syrians became Jacobites, named after their tireless organizer, Jacobus Baradaeus. This liturgy is noted for its numerous anaphora which were composed in the course of several centuries after the St. James Liturgy and of which the older are Greek in origin. There are over 60 but present day Syrians use only a small portion of them.
More could be said of the Liturgy of St. Mark of the Patriarchate of Alexandria after Chalcedon or of the Armenian Syro-Greek Liturgy which developed after this time, as well.
From The Mass of the Roman Rite, JA Jungmann; The Byzantine Liturgy, HJ Schulz; The Early Liturgy, JA Jungman.
Very interesting, except that the frist Pope to be called the "Papa" officially was Pope Siricius (at the end of the 4th century). His predecessors' official titles were humbly "Episcopus Romanus," the Bishop of Rome.
Wow, we are not talking deities here, Petrosius! We don't believe in HVM as part of our Faith (she is a Saint not God). Likewise, the Mass is part of eccelsiology, the tradition of the Church, not the Nature of God. You are mixing apples and oranges my friend!
On another thread I was told that the Pope is Christ on earth. There is some serious disconnect here between what is Divine and what is not.
The Creed is the very essential definition of God. Remember God is simple, indivisible, ineffable, incomprehensible. The simpler the definition, the greater the Mystery, the lesser the chance of reasoning error. The Father is the Source of everything and all. Amen. The Son and the Spirit owe their existence to the Father. Amen. How the Divine Persons interact is not ours to know, not can we ever comprehend. So, it's best to leave it at that.
Since the 5th century the two halves of Christianity knew very little what the other was doing and even if they knew they were not much concerned about them. The issue of Filioque became important when the West tried to establish authority in the East and when the teachings of the West became directly known to the East.
Consequently, the Photian Council rightfully condemned the addition to the Creed and the Pope agreed.
You bring up Maximos the Confessor? Of course he would agree with anything the Vatican said -- the Vatican was his only hope. We are talking some heavy vested interest in siding with the Pope. The same can be said of St. John Chrysostomos. He needed the the good graces of the Pope as well. And I am not saying that the Popes were not good graces when the EPs chose to wallow in heresy.
You are not implying that the Western church was not the equal of the Eastern church, are you?
You have this strange "my daddy is as big as your daddy" thing about the East. I simply stated that the West allowed, believed and continued to use filioque sub rosa while the Vatican publicly disallowed it.
All you can show me are private judgments that the Latin formulations are contrary to the faith
I can show you the finalized Creed. It has no Filioque in it. You can write a PhD (Pharisaical Doctorate) if you wish on why it should be there -- the fact remains it's not there and your side of the Church jammed it in.
Roman Catholics use it constantly on this Forum as "authoritative." In fact that's how i learned about it!
If it is not what the Roman Catholic Church approves of, please show it to us, but first of all to your fellow Roman Catholics.
It's an encyclopedia, i.e. a third level source. By third level, I mean two levels away from an original source on just about every subject that it covers. As third level sources go, I find it a very good one, in its own way on a par with Brittanica as opposed to World Book or Compton's. It is superior, I believe, to the New Catholic Encyclopedia as it tends to be more conservative and less "liberal" than the NCE. And it's a handy reference, being that it is online. But when all is said and done, it is ONLY a third level source. Some on this forum have used it as if it were more authoritative than that.
The Churches I know say "St. X Catholic Church". Roman is generally not used.
Consequently, the Photian Council rightfully condemned the addition to the Creed and the Pope agreed.
If Photian was correct in his opinion then the right thing to have been done was to call for a council as John Chrysostom did in his conflict against Nestorius.
No pope ever declared that the doctrine of Filioque was heretical, they just counseled that the word not be included in the Creed.
You bring up Maximos the Confessor? Of course he would agree with anything the Vatican said -- the Vatican was his only hope. We are talking some heavy vested interest in siding with the Pope. The same can be said of St. John Chrysostomos. He needed the the good graces of the Pope as well. And I am not saying that the Popes were not good graces when the EPs chose to wallow in heresy.
Nice trick: those who supported Filioque only did so because of ulterior motives. It could not be that that was their actual belief. So all evidence contrary to the Orthodox position is a priori excluded. This is especially egregious in the case of John Chrysostom. He was the leading force behind Ephesus but somehow he did not understand what it meant?
I can show you the finalized Creed. It has no Filioque in it. You can write a PhD (Pharisaical Doctorate) if you wish on why it should be there -- the fact remains it's not there and your side of the Church jammed it in.
The Creed also does not state that God is eternal, would you also deny this truth?
No, but it contradicts the faith of Chalcedon, to which your Church and mine subscribe as infallible and complete.
Anything to the contrary is merely theological opinion and thus has no canonical effect
More rationalizations. Faith is not an opinion. Maybe in your neck of the woods rationalism is the same as faith, but not in Orthodoxy. Ecumenical Council pronouncements are not theological opinions either, Petrosius.
There was a council called with Latin legates present that condemned the so-called "Eight" Ecumenical Council your Church recognizes, and which restored +Photios and agreed with his objections to the Filioque. The Pope agreed. Conveniently, the other side will say evidence is forged. You side did just that and chooses to ignore historical facts and pretends the Photian Council never took place and the Pope never agreed with it. Moving from rationalizations to pretentions.
No pope ever declared that the doctrine of Filioque was heretical, they just counseled that the word not be included in the Creed
You are working on your "PhD" Petrosius -- your rationalizations are getting more and more Pharisaical. Now, why would the Pope do that?
Nice trick...
It's not a trick. And it's not a coincidence either. Is it not strange that the two most prominent Eastern papists were also in dire straits from heretical EPs in Constantinople?
The Creed also does not state that God is eternal, would you also deny this truth?
Time plays only a factor in our salvation. God did not create time for Himself. He begot His only Son eternally the Creed says. How can something that is not eternal beget something that is in existence eternally?
But it isn't a primary source and contains some errors that are forgiveable given its era.
It also contains some biases and interpretations of its editors that do not hold up to current scholarship of any stripe.
Encyclopedias that are not regularly updated eventually become useless. The Britannica for example is regularly updated and extraordinary in its scope and depth. This old Catholic Encyclopedia has no like method of updating, reevaluation, and addition.
The official teachings of the Catholic Church can be found in places you well know such as the Catechism and the two new Compendia. The Holy See has not authorised an Encylopedia though it would be a most worthy project.
"This old Catholic Encyclopedia has no like method of updating, reevaluation, and addition"
That is its main weakness, especially as to getting bibliographic information. There is and can be no reference to scholarly works after 1910.
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"When Stalin liquidated the Ukrainian Catholic Church, forcing its several million adherents into the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexei and his bishops received these coerced "converts" gleefully. Instead of protesting prophetically against this persecution of fellow Christians, the Moscow Patriarchate shamelessly exploited their plight, heaping religious tragedy upon political atrocity."
Chalcedon equated the Synodical Letters of St. Cyril to the Nicene Faith.
The Third Synodical Letter states quite clearly: "the Spirit was poured forth by the Son, as indeed the Son was poured forth from the God and Father".
It also contains in its 9th Anathema that states: "it was his own proper Spirit through whom he worked the divine wonders".
If the Son has no eternal relation to the Spirit, it is difficult to see how you hold the Faith of St. Cyril, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. Again and again you seem to forget the purpose of the phrase "who proceeds from the Father". This was to oppose the mad folly of Macedonius, who claimed that the Spirit was created by the Son. So it would be quite wrong to take it out of context and deny any mediation by the Son in the Spiration of the Spirit, considering the numerous testimony of so many Fathers to the contrary.
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