THE FALL OF ORTHODOX ENGLAND

romanitas.ru ^ | Second Edition, 2000 | Vladimir Moss

[Destro]

THE FALL OF ORTHODOX ENGLAND

Vladimir Moss

It is true what I say: should the Christian faith weaken, the kingship will immediately totter.
Archbishop Wulfstan of York, The Institutes of Polity, 4 (1023).

INTRODUCTION: ENGLAND, ROME, CONSTANTINOPLE, NORMANDY

On October 14, 1066, at Hastings in southern England, the last Orthodox king of England, Harold II, died in battle against Duke William of Normandy. William had been blessed to invade England by the Roman Pope Alexander in order to bring the English Church into full communion with the “reformed Papacy”; for since 1052 the English archbishop had been banned and denounced as schismatic by Rome. The result of the Norman Conquest was that the English Church and people were integrated into the heretical “Church” of Western, Papist Christendom, which had just, in 1054, fallen away from communion with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, represented by the Eastern Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Thus ended the nearly five-hundred-year history of the Anglo-Saxon Orthodox Church, which was followed by the demise of the still older Celtic Orthodox Churches in Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

This small book is an account of how this came to pass.

The Beginning of the End

Now the English had been perhaps the most fervent “Romanists” of all the peoples of Western Europe. This devotion sprang from the fact that it was to Rome, and specifically to Pope St. Gregory the Great and his disciples, that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes owed their conversion to the Faith in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. From that time English men and women of all classes and conditions poured across the Channel in a well-beaten path to the tombs of the Apostles in Rome, and a whole quarter of the city was called “Il Borgo Saxono” because of the large number of English pilgrims it accomodated. English missionaries such as St. Boniface of Germany carried out their work as the legates of the Roman Popes. And the voluntary tax known as “Peter’s Pence” which the English offered to the Roman see was paid even in the difficult times of the Viking invasions, when it was the English themselves who were in need of alms.

However, the “Romanity” to which the English were so devoted was not the Franco-Latin, Roman Catholicism of the later Middle Ages. Rather, it was the Greco-Roman Romanitas or Romiosini of Orthodox Catholicism. And the spiritual and political capital of Romanitas until the middle of the fifteenth century was not Old Rome in Italy, but the New Rome of Constantinople. Thus when King Ethelbert of Kent was baptized by St. Augustine in 597, “he had entered,” as Fr. Andrew Phillips writes, “‘Romanitas’, Romanity, the universe of Roman Christendom, becoming one of those numerous kings who owed allegiance, albeit formal, to the Emperor in New Rome…” Indeed, as late as the tenth century the cultural links between England and Constantinople remained strong, as we see, for example, in King Athelstan’s calling himself basileus and curagulus, titles ascribed to the Byzantine emperor.

We may tentatively point to the murder of King Edward the Martyr in 979 as the beginning of the end of Orthodox England. Only six years before, his father, King Edgar the Peaceable, had been anointed and crowned as head of the Anglo-Saxon “empire” in Bath Abbey, next to the still considerable remains of Imperial Rome. And in the same year he had been rowed on the River Dee at Chester by six or eight sub-kings, including five Welsh and Scottish rulers and one ruler of the Western Isles. But then the anti-monastic reaction of King Edward’s reign was followed by the murder of the Lord’s anointed. “No worse deed for the English was ever done that this,” said the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; and while it was said that there was “great rejoicing” at the coronation of St. Edward’s half-brother, Ethelred “the Unready”, St. Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, sorrowfully prophesied great woes for the nation in the coming reign.

He was right; for not only were the English successively defeated by Danish pagan invaders and forced to pay ever larger sums in “Danegeld”, but the king himself, betrayed by his leading men and weighed down by his own personal failures, was forced to flee abroad in 1013. The next year he was recalled by the English leaders, both spiritual and lay, who declared that “no lord was dearer to them than their rightful lord, if only he would govern his kingdom more justly than he had done in the past.” But the revival was illusory; further defeats followed, and in 1017, after the deaths both of King Ethelred and of his son Edmund Ironside, the Danish Canute was made king of all the English. Canute converted to the faith of his new Christian subjects; and the period of the Danish kings (1017-1042) created less of a disruption in the nation’s spiritual life than might have been expected. Nevertheless, it must have seemed that God’s mercy had at last returned to His people when, in 1043, the Old English dynasty of Alfred the Great was restored in the person of King Ethelred’s son Edward, known to later generations as “the Confessor”.

It is with the life of King Edward that our narrative begins.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

In Holy Communion, the Holy Spirit infuses the bread and wine, changing them mystically into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Well -- that is an express, declarative statement of Eastern Orthodox belief.

By comparison, here is an express, declarative statement of Celtic Orthodox belief:

"The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood." -- Johannis Scotus Erigena

Three Choices. Pick as many you believe are true:

• A.) Erigena's statement is theologically acceptable to Eastern Orthodox.
• B.) Erigena's statement is theologically acceptable to Roman Catholics.
• C.) Erigena's statement is theologically acceptable to Calvinist Presbyterians.

Well? To WHICH group or groups would the above Erigena statement be theologically acceptable?

Hmm?

[Destro]

http://www.le.ac.uk/elh/grj1/asw.html

Anglo-Saxon England and the wider world

Culture

Evidence

Language (Runes give way to Roman script; Latin continues as linqua franca).

Literature (Libraries. The gift of books.)

Dream of the Rood: poem inspired by a devotional current which originated in Byzantium, but written in the idiom of insular heroic poetry with Christ as a courageous and victorious king and all created things his liegemen. Elene: Helen’s discovery of the True Cross.

The Acts of the Apostles, Andrew, Matthew, Bartholomew, etc.

Beowulf, Christianised version of Scandinavian epic.

Visual arts (Influence of the eastern Mediterranean).

Inhabited vine-scroll motif found on the Ruthwell cross and on a panel in the monastery at Jarrow has been traced to Armenian prototypes.

Standing Annunciation on the Ruthwell cross paralleled only in Syria.

Durham Gospel fragment, mid- to later-seventh century. Interlace patterns are from Egyptian Coptic and/or Byzantine-Italian exemplars.

Book of Durrow, c. 675. Carpet pages: either Oriental, or perhaps inspired by Roman mosaic pavements. Page portraits of the Evangelists echo a Persian manuscript of the Diatessaron of Tatian, perhaps brought to Iona by Arculf, a pilgrim who had visited Jerusalem. These are then copied in the Gospel Book of St Willibrord. Also Pictish influence, as in Lion of St John, with its voluted design.

Lindisfarne Gospels, said made by Eadfrith of Lindisfarne, bishop, c.690. Feasts include St Januarius, a saint of Naples, so suggestive of a southern Italian origin. Text in two columns, suggestive of late antique Italian examplar. Late antique model for portrait of St Matthew at his writing desk - relates to a picture of the prophet Ezra in the Codex Ammantianus. Details in carpet page: geometric design from Persia, interlace from Egypt, and at the same time, Celtic features such as the spiral motifs and hanging bowls like those found at Tara in Ireland. The colours include kermes, a red obtained from an insect that lives in kermes oaks in the Mediterranean, and ultramarine blue, or lapis lazuli, obtained only from a single mine in Afghanistan.

Codex Aureus of Canterbury: Late Antique, Mediterranean models. Much use of gold and, in St Boniface’s Gospel Book, chrysography, gold lettering on a purple background. The height of sumptuousness, and use of imperial colours.

Architecture (Basilican churches, at first on the Roman model, later on the Ottonian, that is the style in Germany under the emperor Otto and his successors). (Destro's note: The Ottonians were half "Byzantine" by marriage and birth)

Using Frankish masons and glaziers, Benedict Biscop built his church at Monkwearmouth in a distinctly Mediterranean style, plastered in and out, with a cement floor finished in pounded red brick. He made no less than five journeys to Rome to amass books and relics to enrich his monasteries.

Church music

Chant is generally ascribed to Gregory the Great, though this may not be strictly accurate. Music at the monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow had been taught by ‘the chief cantor of St Peter’s’.

Belief (saints’ cults, pilgrimage)

Monastic ideals had come from Egypt, via Marmoutier and Lerins, the early monasteries in Gaul. After the renewal of Frankish monasticism through the agency of Irish monks, Anglo-Saxon noblewomen in particular were sent to study at Frankish houses such as Luxeuil.

Devotion to the Virgin (see picture in Book of Kells).

Ecclesiastics (including teachers, administrators, monks, and academics). Theodore of Tarsus, the aged monk who was sent by Pope Vitalian to be Archbishop of Canterbury, was born, as his name indicates, in what is now south-east Turkey and had studied at Edessa. He is credited with the introduction to England of the Litany, a rehearsal of the names of saints coupled with pleas for their intercession, which was a feature of the Greek liturgy. His pupil, Oftfor, bishop of Worcester, may have been particularly well travelled in an age when clerics were expected to make at least one journey to Rome: his name means ‘oft-farer’, the one who has travelled many times.

Even though the surviving Roman emperor in Constantinople (Byzantium) ceased to have direct involvement in affairs in western Europe, he was still revered and due respect and honour was accorded to him. The Gothic, Frankish and Burgundian kings vied for official positions surviving from the undivided empire: appointments such as magister militum, Master of the Military, that is Commander of the Army. The emperor in Byzantium often conferred the Consulship on them. These kings, in turn, did not address their subordinates as kings, even though powerful subordinates had as much power as they.

Final case studies

I should like to end by offering two Mercian case studies: one secular, focused on the court of King Offa, and the other ecclesiastical, focused on the court of St Wilfrid.

Offa
Breedon: Mediterranean vine-leaves and a Byzantine-influenced Mary, alongside Germanic beasts.

Offa’s coin portrait imitates the Roman emperors. His wife, Cynefryth, was the only Anglo-Saxon queen to have coins minted in her name. She may have been imitating the empress Helena, mother of Constantine. More likely, perhaps, she was imitating the Byzantine empress Irene, who had recently had coins struck in her name - and Irene may have been recalling the coins of Helena. Both women were claiming, by their coins, a special status for the royal consort.

St Andrew (Hedda Stone)

He moved in an international world. Was adopted by the archbishop of a town on his way to Rome.

He adopted Andrew as his patron perhaps in honour of Gregory the Great, who had founded the monastery of St Andrew at Rome where Augustine of Canterbury was Gregory’s prior.

Andrew, nevertheless, was attractive to the English for another reason: his extraordinary adventures in the legendary account of his missionary activities among the monstrous races beyond the Black Sea. His name means, in Greek, ‘First Man’.

[FormerLib]

Well, if you're going to accuse me of False Witness, prove your charges.

Very well then, here is one of your lies concerning what I had said. It is a clear misrepresentation of both my words and my intent.

Then, what we have here is FormerLib's admission that the Celtic Orthodox taught Calvinist-Presbyterian sacramental theology. (And Calvinist salvation theology, and Calvinist predestination theology, et cetera, et cetera)

Now that you have your proof, kindly leave me alone. Do not ping me again to this or any other thread.

Do you understand this?

[Destro]

OP, while an Anglo-Saxon of the period in question for this article would recognize a Latin, Greek and Celtic Rite Christian they would be baffled by your type of Christianity which is a later innovation. Gain legitimacy for your rite in other ways then to attempt to fit your square peg in the round hole of history.

My challenge to you is this: If the faith you now claim is the same faith of the Anglo-Saxon or Celtic church of old then I suggest you lose the modern trappings and innovations of the Presbyterians and return to the source and embrace all that they embraced.

PS: Make a new thread for the pop quiz material.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Very well then, here is one of your lies concerning what I had said. It is a clear misrepresentation of both my words and my intent. Then, what we have here is FormerLib's admission that the Celtic Orthodox taught Calvinist-Presbyterian sacramental theology. (And Calvinist salvation theology, and Calvinist predestination theology, et cetera, et cetera) Now that you have your proof, kindly leave me alone. Do not ping me again to this or any other thread. Do you understand this?

No, that doesn't cut it.

You accuse me of Lying. That's a Lie. Your Lies will not go unresponded.

"The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood." ~~ Johannis Scotus Erigena

You acknowledge that Erigena's statement was, by Eastern Orthodox standard, "heresy".
You acknowledge that Calvinist Presbyterians teach, on Eucharistic matters, the same "heresy".

If A = C "heresy", and B = C "heresy", then A DOES EQUAL B. Therefore:

Given that you do acknowledge the teaching of the same "heresy" by both Celtic Orthodox and Calvinist Presbyterians, you HAVE admitted that the Celtic Orthodox taught Calvinist-Presbyterian sacramental theology.

Therefore I did not Lie; and therefore, you did Bear False Witness that I had done so.

• Erigena taught that "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood."
• Calvinists teach that "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood."
• You accused me of Lying when I said both taught the same teaching.
• As can clearly be seen, they ARE exactly the same teaching.
• Therefore, YOU lied about ME.

And those are the facts of the case.

[FormerLib]

FormerLib: Do not ping me again to this or any other thread. Do you understand this?

OrthodoxPresbyterian: No, that doesn't cut it.

I will repeat myself since you have chosen to ignore my previous request, do not ping me again to this or any other thread. Do you understand this?

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

OP, while an Anglo-Saxon of the period in question for this article would recognize a Latin, Greek and Celtic Rite Christian they would be baffled by your type of Christianity which is a later innovation. Gain legitimacy for your rite in other ways then to attempt to fit your square peg in the round hole of history. My challenge to you is this: If the faith you now claim is the same faith of the Anglo-Saxon or Celtic church of old then I suggest you lose the modern trappings and innovations of the Presbyterians and return to the source and embrace all that they embraced. PS: Make a new thread for the pop quiz material.

Why attempt to re-create 1400 year old Gaelic Rites in 21st Century America? A Diversity of Rites is permissible in the Church. And of course, there's no disagreement with the Eastern Orthodox on the imvalidity of Papal Supremacy and the rightfulness of a married Clergy, so those aspects of the Celtic Orthodox Church are as Presbyterian as they are Greek, anyway.

What is impermissible is for Doctrine to Change, if that Doctrine is Right.

Well, here are the DOCTRINES of the Celtic Orthodox Church:

---

• SOLA SCRIPTURA:
  One of the more famous of the Culdee missionaries, Columbanus to wit, we find, in the famous dispute respecting Easter, confronting the authority of Rome with the simple but mightier authority of the Scripture which he calls "those true and singular canons of our Lord Jesus Christ." And after stating that the western (British) churches grounded their Pash on the Scriptures, he exclaims, "For our canons are the commands of our Lord and his apostles: these are our faith: lo! here are our arms, shield, and sword: these are our defense: in these we desire to persevere unto death, as we have seen our elders also do."

  While their brethren in the south were contending with one another for jurisdictions and precedence, the elders of Iona, gathered round the open Scriptures, were drawing water from the well, "holy and undefiled." This is, decisive as regards both the letter and the spirit of their theology. To the youth who crowded to their ocean rock in quest of instruction, we hear them say, "The Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith." In these words the presbyters of Iona in the sixth century, enunciate the great formal Principle of the Reformation, while the Reformation itself was still a thousand years distant.

  Even their enemies have borne them this testimony, that they made the Bible the fountain-head of their theology. "For dwelling far without the habitable globe," says Bede, "and consequently beyond the reach of the decrees of synods, . . . they could learn only those thing contained in the writings of the Prophets, the Evangelists, and the Apostles." And speaking of Aidan, who was sent to Lindisfarne from Iona, he says, "he took care to omit nothing of all the things in the evangelical, apostolical, and prophetical writings which he knew ought to be done." And yet the venerable man cannot refrain from mildly bewailing the lot of these benighted men who had only the light of the Bible to guide them, when he says again, "They had a zeal for God, but not altogether according to knowledge." Had Bede lived in our day he might have seen reason to acknowledge that, as with the man who attempts to serve two masters, so with him who thinks to walk by two lights: if he would keep in the straight path he must put out one of the two and guide himself by the other. It was the light of the Bible, not of the Church, that shone on the Rock of Iona; and by this light did the elders walk.

• JUSTIFICATION THROUGH FAITH ALONE:
  On the doctrine of Faith as the alone instrument of Justification, Sedulius thus expresses himself: — "Ye are saved by grace through faith, not through works — through faith, that is, not through works; and, lest any careless one should arrogate to himself salvation by his faith, the apostle has added, "and that not of yourselves, because faith is not from ourselves, but from Him who hath called us."

• FREE WILL UTTERLY DESTROYED BY THE FALL:
  The keenness with which the subject of free will was discussed at the period of the Reformation is well known. It is, perhaps, the deepest question in the science of supernatural theology, as both the fall and redemption hang upon it. For if the state of man's will be such that he is able to save himself, where is the need of One to redeem him? The utterances of the Columban missionaries from the sixth to the ninth century are in entire harmony with the opinions of the Reformers on this great question. Let us listen to Sedulius. "Man, by making an ill use of his Free-will, lost both himself and it. For, like a man who kills himself, is able, of course, to kill himself, because he lives, but by killing himself becomes unable to live, neither can raise himself again from the dead after he has killed himself; so when sin was committed by means of free-will, then, sin being the conqueror, free-will itself also was lost, for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage. But to a man thus brought into bondage and sold, whence can there be the liberty of doing good, unless He shall redeem him whose voice this is, 'if the Son make you free ye shall be free indeed."

  And Claudius Scotus, in the ninth century, says: "God is the author of all that is good in man; that is to say, both of good-nature and goodwill, which, unless God do work in him, man cannot do, because this good-will is prepared by the Lord in man, that, by the gift of God he may do that which by himself he could not do of his own free-will."

• ABSOLUTE DOUBLE PREDESTINATION:
  Columba speaks through his successors. Let us listen to a few of the utterances of these men. It is Gallus who speaks, the fellow-labourer of Columbanus, and the founder of the monastery of St. Gall. "The apostle says, 'God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world," that is, by his eternal predestination, his free calling, and his grace which was due to none.'' They teach the sovereignty not less than the eternity of God's purposes. "God," says Sedulius, " Hath mercy with great goodness, and hardeneth without any iniquity; so that neither can he who is saved glory of his own merits, nor he that is lost complain but of his own merits. For grace only it is that makes a difference between the redeemed and the lost, both having been framed together into one mass of perdition by a cause derived from their common original. He (God) sees all mankind condemned with so just and divine a judgment in their apostatical root."

• BAPTISM DOES NOT REGENERATE:
  On the subject of the new birth, the following exposition, among others, of Sedulius, is not a little striking. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death," quoting first the words of the apostle, and then proceeding, " Observe carefully the order and sequence of these words; for the apostle having compared the death that was by Adam, to the life which is by Christ, here answers an objection, and says, "How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein, teaching us hereby, that if any one has first died to sin, he has necessarily been buried together with Christ. But if one first (i.e., before baptism), dies not to sin, he cannot be buried with Christ, for no one is ever buried while yet living. Die thou first to sin that thou mayest be able to be buried with Christ, seeing that it is to the dead only we give sepulture.'' In this teaching, which is that of a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness, we can discover no trace of the opus operatum of a sacrament.

• THE BREAD AND WINE ARE SYMBOLIC ONLY:
  We adduce the testimony of Claudius Scotus in the ninth century. "Our Savior’s pleasure," says he, "was first to deliver to His disciples the sacrament of His body and blood, and afterwards to offer up the body itself on the altar of the cross. For as bread strengthens the body, and wine works blood in the flesh, so the one is emblematically referred to Christ’s body, the other to his blood." There is here a plain distinction between the sacrament and the body. The one is the sacrament of the body, that is, the sacred sign or instituted symbol of the body, the other is the body itself. Nor does the commentator leave us to mere inference: he tells us in express words that the one is the emblem of the other; even as Augustine had defined a sacrament to be "the sign of a sacred thing." Not less Protestant is the verse of Sedulius the poet. Celebrating the Supper in song, he asks, Who else is "present in it but its great Institutor, the true Melchizedeck, to whom are given gifts that are his own, the fruit of the corn, and the joys of the vine"?… About two hundred years after, when the doctrine of transubstantiation, strengthening as the darkness deepened, began to make way in Germany and France, Berengarius stood forth as its uncompromising opponent. To maintain himself in the storm of persecution which is bold defence of the truth drew upon him, he appealed to the work of Scotus, as showing that his own views of the sacrament were those of the Church of the ninth century. This drew the tempest upon the book of Scotus without diverting it from Berengarius. The work of our countryman had the honour of being committed to the flames by order of Pope Leo IX., A.D. 1050. But this title has been preserved in the records of the age, and remains to this day to witness to the orthodoxy of the Scoto-Irish Church, and of the Church universal, on the head of the sacrament, till towards the opening of the tenth century. That title runs thus: "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood."

---

These ancient Doctrines of the Celtic Orthodox Church have always been the Biblical and Right and True Doctrines of the Christian Church... and a Celtic Orthodox Churchman, alive today, would find his sacred and pure doctrines fully preserved in only one Christian Tradition: that of CALVINISM.

Geneva shakes hand with Iona across the gulf of a thousand years.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

FormerLib: Do not ping me again to this or any other thread. Do you understand this? OrthodoxPresbyterian: No, that doesn't cut it. I will repeat myself since you have chosen to ignore my previous request, do not ping me again to this or any other thread. Do you understand this?

You insisted on levelling one more baseless, malicious accusation of Dishonesty against me in your #63 -- as always, with no evidence whatsoever -- while insisting that I not answer your Lies.

No dice. My answer given in #65. Your latest slander being then refuted, if you'd NOW like to leave the field without Bearing False Witness against me yet again, I have no objection to that.

Go your way. If you've no further intention of throwing false accusations at me, I'll have no need to respond thereto.

[FormerLib]

What part of "Do not ping me again to this or any other thread" don't you understand?

[Destro]

Why attempt to re-create 1400 year old Gaelic Rites in 21st Century America?

That is the good thing about Orthodoxy - they have an unbroken 2K year old tradition -give or take 3 decades of-

Geneva shakes hand with Iona across the gulf of a thousand years.

A doubtful and flimsy claim.

What does Calvin have to say about Constantine?

Statue of the Emperor Constantine I -- Constantine the Great -- in York, England

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

What part of "Do not ping me again to this or any other thread" don't you understand?

The part where you keep pinging me! If you don't want me to answer you, stop pinging me!

I said, "Go your way" already. I said if you were done making Posts accusing me of Lying, I wouldn't respond to you any more. LOOK, it's right there in my #68. I could scarcely have been more plain.

So "go your way", already! If you don't want me to answer your posts, FormerLib, stop pinging me to them!!

[FormerLib]

Do not feed the Drama Queen!

[Destro]

I intended this post to be more about history, alternate history, secret history, forgotten history more so then theology which you inserted in an attempt I feel to hijack the thread. I enjoy finding connections - sometimes lost or forgotten - with the past. This is not a theology thread and was not placed in that section for that reason.

You also do not need to repost the exact same thing over and over - it slows the load time of the page and takes up bandwidth.

With that said I found your post actually very interesting. I did not know that there was an attempt to link Calvinism with the vanished Celtic Church. While I do not agree there is a link it is of interest to me that Scotsmen and others wish to make a claim to such a link.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Geneva shakes hand with Iona across the gulf of a thousand years. ~~ A doubtful and flimsy claim. What does Calvin have to say about Constantine?

Dunno... I never bothered to look up Calvin's opinion of the man, assuming he even published one.

What's important to me is Doctrine. What did the Celtic Orthodox preach about Free Will after the Fall?

"Man, by making an ill use of his Free-will, lost both himself and it. For, like a man who kills himself, is able, of course, to kill himself, because he lives, but by killing himself becomes unable to live, neither can raise himself again from the dead after he has killed himself; so when sin was committed by means of free-will, then, sin being the conqueror, free-will itself also was lost, for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage." -- Sedulius Scotus

What did the Celtic Orthodox preach about Absolute Double Predestination?

It is Gallus who speaks, the fellow-labourer of Columbanus, and the founder of the monastery of St. Gall. "The apostle says, 'God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world," that is, by his eternal predestination, his free calling, and his grace which was due to none.'' They teach the sovereignty not less than the eternity of God's purposes. "God," says Sedulius, " Hath mercy with great goodness, and hardeneth without any iniquity; so that neither can he who is saved glory of his own merits, nor he that is lost complain but of his own merits.

What did the Celtic Orthodox preach about Justification by Faith Alone?

On the doctrine of Faith as the alone instrument of Justification, Sedulius thus expresses himself: — "Ye are saved by grace through faith, not through works — through faith, that is, not through works; and, lest any careless one should arrogate to himself salvation by his faith, the apostle has added, "and that not of yourselves, because faith is not from ourselves, but from Him who hath called us."

"I live by the faith of the Son of God, that is, by faith alone, as owing nothing to the law. Grace is abject and vain if it alone is not sufficient for me." -- Sedulius Scotus

What did the Celtic Orthodox preach about the Eucharist?

"The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood." -- Claudius Scotus

What do the Calvinists preach about these Doctrines?

Hmm.... well, exactly the same things, except that the Celtic Orthodox doctrine of the Total Death of Free Will is, if anything, even a little stronger than that of Calvin.

For a Celtic Orthodox Churchman to find the Biblical and pure Doctrines of his Celtic Orthodox Faith amongst modern Christendom... he'd have to join a Calvinist Church.

[FormerLib]

This was passed along to me:

Phillips, Andrew, Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition. Norfolk, England: The English Orthodox Trust (Anglo-Saxon Books), 1995. A wonderful collection of short essays about Orthodoxy in English history. A real delight to read. Over 450 pages. This book really opened my eyes to true Western Orthodoxy, the faith of the English people prior to the Normanization that followed the conquest in 1066. It is published in England and available through the St. John of Kronstadt Press Bookstore.

[Destro]

"Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition" is out of print and a little hard to find but is available in excerpt form free on the web.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

I intended this post to be more about history, alternate history, secret history, forgotten history more so then theology which you inserted in an attempt I feel to hijack the thread. I enjoy finding connections - sometimes lost or forgotten - with the past. This is not a theology thread and was not placed in that section for that reason. You also do not need to repost the exact same thing over and over - it slows the load time of the page and takes up bandwidth. With that said I found your post actually very interesting. I did not know that there was an attempt to link Calvinism with the vanished Celtic Church. While I do not agree there is a link it is of interest to me that Scotsmen and others wish to make a claim to such a link.

Destro, it's all the same church. It's all the same "forgotten history". Since when is posting the Patristic Teachings of a Church not a part of knowing its "history"?

To take note of the Celtic Church's Greek-origin liturgical and clerical practices, while ignoring the actual teachings which the Celtic Orthodox Fathers felt important enough to record for their flock's edification, is to have a very incomplete record of "forgotten history".

Especially since the Venerable Bede himself records that the Celtic Orthodox Church was essentially "beyond the reach of the decrees of synods, . . . they could learn only those thing contained in the writings of the Prophets, the Evangelists, and the Apostles", the preservation of Doctrine amongst the Celtic Orthodox is a key component of understanding this ancient Church.

And when one reads what the Celtic Orthodox Fathers actually wrote, one quickly realizes that there's no need to "attempt" to tie the Celtic Orthodox Church to Calvinism.... that would be like attempting to tie George W. Bush to George H. W. Bush, it can't be avoided.

Ask yourself this -- if the essentially Calvinistic nature of Celtic Orthodox doctrine on Justification "by Faith Alone" (their very own words), the Total Death of Free Will, Absolute Predestination, Symbolic Baptism, and a Symbolic Eucharist were not apparent from the numerous citations I posted, then why did FormerLib in #27 and you in #29 immediately start accusing me of Lying and "twisting history"?

"An attempt to link Calvinism with the vanished Celtic Church"? If the Calvinistic doctrinal bent of the Celtic Orthodox Church were not immediately and transparently obvious from the Celtic Patristics which I cited... then how come the normally-charitable Eastern Orthodox started hurling accusations of Dishonesty against me as soon as I posted them?

I honestly didn't expect anything like that response. I submit it wasn't because the Celtic Fathers didn't say what I claimed of them -- but rather because, it's easy enough to read the posted evidence, they quite evidently did.

[FormerLib]

It would be quite an interesting read. I suspect the true Celtic Orthodox Church would be quite different than how some would like to interpret it. ;-)

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Odd that the entirety of the Web-posted Excerpts had very few quoted Patristic Writings from any of the early Celtic Fathers.

When one reads the recorded Patristic Writings of a Church, one discovers what that Church's Fathers actually believed.

After all, they have no particular reason to lie about what they are expressly teaching their Flock.

[Destro]

They "were not apparent from the numerous citations" to me either to be either, sorry.