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 ...
The other reference is a well known fact that Maronites came into communion with Rome by the 12th century, but not all. Some either reverted or continued to follow the teachings of Macarius until after the Council of Florence (ended 1445). That Council's documents attest to that. The last remaining Cyprian Maronites accepted union with Rome in 1448. However, Pope Pius II's letter of 1451 suggests that even then there were some remnants who did not. Is that in dispute?
Now, raising objections as to whether a source is legitimate is valid and meaningful if the source is used to make claims that are either false, or outdated. Based on what I read up on the issue, the Catholic Encyclopedia did not say anything that is historically in dispute, as outlined above. If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide references.
Again, the issue was an often made claim that Maronite Christians were in an "unbroken" communion with Rome "from the beginning." This is the claim made by the Maronite Church. Most historians disagree. So does the Roman Catholic Church, based on its own documents.
The Fathers at Chalcedon must not have thought so, because they specifically reaffirmed the Creed without making reference to any Spirations by the Son on level of Divine Essence or else they would have included it.
The Fathers of Chalcedon did not discuss the real presence, prayers for the dead, the intercession of the Saints, and many other things we hold as truths. Apparently, by your standards, that means they didn't accept these things.
Perhaps then you think them Calvinists?
RE: The Maronites and the Antiochian tradition
The period after Chalcedon was a time of challenge and sadness for Antioch. In the West the Goths laid waste to Rome and Western lands. In the Middle East, the Patriarchs of Antioch embraced Monophysitism and were referred to as Jacobite. Antioch had formally rejected Chalcedon. A tiny Greek community remained. In time, those that accepted Chalcedon and their leaders were driven out of Syria and into the mountains of Lebanon. This community became known as the Maronite Church.
The Byzantine emperors made Rome a vassal, initiating the Byzantine Captivity of the Papacy. Political power was much more fragile in the Middle East, however. The Persians having driven a wedge between Constantinople and Jerusalem, finally overtook the entire Middle East in the early 6th century. Shortly thereafter, the Muslims conquered the entire region. The Muslim leaders successfully repressed any remaining Chalcedonian Christians, who at the time were seen as allies of Constantinople. The only Chalcedonians that remained of the Antiochian tradition were the Maronites, who lived in geographic isolation.
During the Roman reunion councils, East-Antiochian and West-Antiochian traditions affirmed Chalcedonian faith and Roman communion, among whom were the Maronites. Because the Maronites were under the Antiochian Jacobite and Nestorian (those of the East-Antiochian tradition) cloud, they were made to profess the Chalcedonian faith. There is no internal evidence that the Maronites had ever rejected Chalcedon or Roman communion during their centuries of Lebanese isolation prior to reunion. Rather, because they had descended from a tradition that became overwhelmingly non-Chalcedonian, to remove any doubt, they professed the faith of the Church.
Because they were not challenged by heresies, directly or indirectly, and/or because they are not the essence of the Faith -- whereas the Godhead is. The early Councils were held in response to specific issues of heresies.
Apparently, Pope Pius II was convinced that maronites were "heretics" in 1451.
Roman clergy arriving in Lebanon with the Crusaders burned Maronite books and reported to the Pope that they teach strange things.
You are telling me fairytales as far as I am concerned because there is no doucment, no independent verification of the claims, and historical evidence that does exist points to the contrary of what the Maronite Church claims.
So, if we don't have verifyable evidence we don't know. If we don't know we can't make a claim. So, the best you can say is that what happened before the 12th century is unknown, and that some maronite established or re-established communion with Rome by the 11th century, but not all. We can also say that until the Council of Trent, that is -- the 16th century, the Maronite Church was not considered fully a part of the Roman communion by the Roman Catholic Church. That much we know and can say for certain. Everything else is a fairtytale.
I asked you if specific historical facts were in dispute and to please provide references if there are any facts to the contrary, and you provide me with a narrative without a single date, without a single refrenced document. Is this how you establish facts? By narratives?
Because they were not challenged by heresies, directly or indirectly, and/or because they are not the essence of the Faith -- whereas the Godhead is. The early Councils were held in response to specific issues of heresies.
If the Fathers of Chalcedon had wanted to condemn Filioque I think that they were quite competent to say so bluntly. (These were men who debated the difference between homoousia and homoiousia.) The fact is that they DID NOT!
RE: Maronites union with Rome
You are quite right concerning my lack of citations.
The Maronites have been in union with the See of Rome since the time of St. Maron. There is unanimity on that fact as far as historians are concerned. Additionally, there is no evidence for any heterodoxy among the Maronites of Lebanon.
The Patriarch of the Maronites Jeremias II Al-Amshitti (and interestingly a legate of the Patriarch of Alexandria) were present and fully participated in the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 AD. No profession of union or faith was required by the Maronites. The Maronites worked closely with Rome in the administration of the Latin Principality of Antioch, established in the late 11th century and later destroyed by the Kurdish Saladin in an Islamic Jihad.
The Maronites of Lebanon continued to enjoy full and close union with Rome during this period.
During the Council of Florence, session 14, 7 August 1445, a single Maronite bishop (Elias) and a single Chaldean bishop (Timothy) on the Island of Cyprus were reunited with Rome, as they had become followers of Macarius and Nestorius. The union profession applied only to these 2 bishops, their clergy and faithful in Cyprus.
The Maronite community in Lebanon in the intervening years, grew and matured with its contact with the West.
After a massacre of Maronites in 1860, France intervened and was given protectorate powers over Catholic subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The Maronites, under French protection, were a singular thriving community during this period in the Middle East. France granted Lebanon full independence in 1944. The beginning of Islamic Jihad in 1975 brought war to Lebanon, which fell after the US fled, in 1981.
Taken from: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, VI, N. Tanner; The Eastern Christian Churches, R. Roberson; The Middle East, B. Lewis.
The Fathers did not include the Filioque because it was not an issue for which the Council was called. That does not mean that one can just add it.
Speculations as to the nature of Divinity have always been part of the Church, but it is one thing to speculate and another to claim that it is what the Church officially holds to be dogma.
The problem with the Filioque did not usrface until it became the dogma of the Franks, who wanted to impose it on everyone, and even called the Greeks heretics for having "omitted" Filioque from the Creed.
The Filioque was treated more-or-less the way one treats Limbo or the way the RCC treated the Immaculate Conception until the 19th century -- some believed it and some didn't, and no one was penalized for not believing it until it became dogma. Last time I checked, Chalcedonian Creed is dogma. Just as you can't add something to the dogmas of Immaculate Conception, by the same token you can't add Filioque to the Creed simply because you believe it.
The Popes up to the 11th century understood that and, even if they personally agreed with the theology of Filioque, refused to add it to the Creed for the same very reason.
The Maronites were never heterodox?
A summary of the Council of Florence, and its extension, specifies:
"Finally the council was transferred to Rome on 24 February 1443. There other decrees of union with the Bosnians, the Syrians and finally with the Chaldeans and Maronites of Cyprus, were approved. The last session of the council was held on 7 August 1445."
The Maronites did not have to make a profession of faith?
How about an actual trascript of conversion of some of the Maronites? The Bull of Union, Session 14—7 August 1445:
"After that, the Chaldeans sent to us the aforesaid metropolitan Timothy, and Bishop Elias of the Maronites sent an envoy, to make to us a solemn profession of the faith of the Roman church."
The Maronites were not Nestorian?
"...and Elias, bishop of the Maronites, who with his nation in the same realm was infected with the teachings of Macarius, together with a whole multitude of peoples and clerics subject to him in the island of Cyprus."
This is from the Council of Florence, the official documentation of the Roman Catholic Church. This is historically accurate and factually verifiable.
Your quotes are someone's narrative, telling a fairytale that is as misleading as much as it is void of fact.
The fact is that the West does not need the approval of an Ecumenical Council to compose prayers for its liturgy.
The Fathers did not include the Filioque because it was not an issue for which the Council was called.
Exactly! Thus it is imposible to say that it is contrary to the faith of Nicea or ever condemned by any Church council.
The Filioque was treated more-or-less the way one treats Limbo or the way the RCC treated the Immaculate Conception until the 19th century -- some believed it and some didn't, and no one was penalized for not believing it until it became dogma.
Thus to profess it (as did St. John Chrysostom who presided over Ephesus) cannot be heresy!
Last time I checked, Chalcedonian Creed is dogma.
The last time I checked the Catholic Church has never denied the teaching of Chalcedon.
RE: Maronites of Cyprus
Cyprus was ruled by Western powers beginning with Richard I Lionheart in 1191.
254 years after Richard I, on 7 August 1445, one Maronite bishop (who was not a Metropolitan) in Cyprus (not the entire Maronite Church or even all the Maronites of Cyprus), through his legate Isaac made a solemn profession rejecting the Monothelite (not Nestorian) heresy of Macarius. Without reading the session in context, it might be easy to confuse the matter.
The fact that Maronite clergy had full participated in Great Roman councils for more than 200 years prior to this event without needing to profess their faith is quite telling.
This singular profession by 1 Maronite bishop on an island in the Mediterrenean rejecting his Monotheletism (the idea that the person of Jesus had only 1 will and principle of action) is quite different from the much wider implication that has been suggested. I would enjoy reading a primary or secondary historical reference that demonstrates any wider heterodoxy on the part of the larger Maronite community of the Middle Ages.
But a Church which supposedly holds Ecumenical Council decision to be infallible and binding to the "t" is expected to keep the Creed as it was finalized by those Councils.
Exactly! Thus it is imposible to say that it is contrary to the faith of Nicea or ever condemned by any Church council
You are obfuscating the issue in a Jesuit manner. Speculation is one thing, altering the Creed is another. The Church condemns the addition to the Creed of the words "and from the Son."
Thus to profess it (as did St. John Chrysostom who presided over Ephesus) cannot be heresy!
But did St. John Crysostomos add it to his Divine Litrugy? Speculatuion is one thing; altering dogma and a Creed finalized by the Church is heresy.
"A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject." (Titus 3:10)
The fact that there were Maronites in the 15th century who professed other than what Rome professed means that there were heterodox among them, contrary to your sweeping generalization hat there were no heterodox among Maronites.
The fact that some of their bishops, or even one bishop, had to profess the faith professed by Rome is contrary to your sweeping generalization that Maronites did not have to profess the faith of Rome in order to be in communion with Rome.
The fact that there are no documents showing the Maronites were in communion with Rome before the 12th century means that we don't know and the fact that the Roman clergy burned Maronite books because they found Maronites to be "teaching errors" puts a serious doubt that what they professed at that time was what Rome professed.
The fact that Pope Pius II calls Maronites "heretics" in a letter as late as 1451 makes one wonder if there were more heterodox Maronite communities even after Maronites of Cyprus converted to Roman faith. Or maybe you are saying that the Pope is not telling the truth?
Nestorian and Monothelite heresies are distinct but very similar, and one is an offshoot of the other. The fact that some Maronites asked for union with a Nestorian bishop at one time really makes your academic argument distinguishing the two heresies a pedantic exercise in futility.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.