Posted on 11/22/2002 10:22:39 PM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at romanitas.ru ...
Because the link deals with the Orthodoxy in the English i.e. Anglo-Saxon tradition.
With that said - it is not suprising that the Anglo - Orthodox/Catholics would not quote much from the Celts as per this article: How separate was the Celtic church?
It is easy to exaggerate the cohesiveness of the Celtic Christian communities. Their members never saw themselves in opposition to the Catholic establishment based on Rome as did the Arians, Priscillianists or the Donatists in North Africa. Even at the height of the conflict between these communities and other Christian groups, they acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope and acquiesced to his specific commands.
On the other hand, these communities did see themselves as separate from their competitors, the Anglo-Saxons. An early Welsh ecclesiastical rule levied penalties for interacting with the English, and for sharing communion with them. When St Augustine attempted to meet with a delegation of seven British bishops on the borders of the domains of Ethelbert of Kent, these bishops refused to talk or even dine with his party; and when Aethelfrith of Northumbria went to battle with Solomon, son of Cynan, king of Powys, hundreds of British Christian monks are said to have assembled to pray for the Venedotian king. It is noteworthy that the British failed to attempt to convert the Anglo-Saxons, and that the successful Celtic missions had come from further away, from the Dalradian Scots.
Well, I really can agree to disagree, so long as I'm not accused of "twisting history" for simply posting direct Patristic Quotations.
Personally, my own sense that when Church Fathers say "Ye are saved by grace through faith, not through works.... that is, by faith alone, as owing nothing to the law" or "Man, by making an ill use of his Free-will, lost both himself and it" or "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood", one may safely assume that they're expressing their genuine beliefs; but, to each his own.
On the other hand, these communities did see themselves as separate from their competitors, the Anglo-Saxons. An early Welsh ecclesiastical rule levied penalties for interacting with the English, and for sharing communion with them. When St Augustine attempted to meet with a delegation of seven British bishops on the borders of the domains of Ethelbert of Kent, these bishops refused to talk or even dine with his party; and when Aethelfrith of Northumbria went to battle with Solomon, son of Cynan, king of Powys, hundreds of British Christian monks are said to have assembled to pray for the Venedotian king. It is noteworthy that the British failed to attempt to convert the Anglo-Saxons, and that the successful Celtic missions had come from further away, from the Dalradian Scots.
That, I do recognize... the Link I posted in #26 dwells at some length on the Anglo-Saxon invasion as the cause by which Bede says the Celtic Orthodox were shut away "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."
It is easy to exaggerate the cohesiveness of the Celtic Christian communities. Their members never saw themselves in opposition to the Catholic establishment based on Rome as did the Arians, Priscillianists or the Donatists in North Africa. Even at the height of the conflict between these communities and other Christian groups, they acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope and acquiesced to his specific commands.
Perhaps... but Columbanus' letter to Boniface does not suggest any unreserved subservience, either -- as just one important example of the Celtic's Church's essential independence of action.
The true mark of a Soviet Truth-Hater would be one who attempts to pretend that a Father didn't say, what he quite obviously did say -- and then accuses anyone who simply quotes the Father's express beliefs, of having Lied about that Father's express beliefs.
Marmema -- In my post #26, I began by acknowledging:
I happily acknowledged all of this up front, because it's all true. I wasn't looking to pick a fight with anyone.
I went on to post some Patristic quotations from the Celtic Orthodox Fathers on their Theology. Nothing was asserted without complementary Patristic citations from the greatest of Celtic Fathers. No quotations were hacked together with ellipses, every single quotation was referenced to the original source.
I simply quoted what they wrote to their own followers.
For this -- for quoting Patristic Fathers -- in #27 and #29, my honesty and my integrity was immediately attacked, accused of "twisting history" and misrepresenting the Fathers.
This baseless attack has continued ever since, throughout this thread.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never treated ANYONE quoting a Calvinist Theologian in this manner. If the citation is mis-quoted or mis-attributed in any way, I will pull the original citation and show the error in the citation. NO attempt has ever been made to show that I mis-quoted or mis-attributed ANY of my citations in ANY way -- yet still the baseless accusations against my honesty continue (I honestly suspect that my attackers know that I haven't mis-quoted or mis-attributed my citations in any way -- and just don't care).
This is what it comes down to. Albeit with a Greek-derived origin, ecclesiology, liturgical worship, clerical practice, monastic tradition, and so forth -- all of which I happily admit -- when it comes to Theology, this is what the Celtic Fathers said:
"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."
"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."
OF BAPTISM: "But if one first, 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."
OF 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."
And much more besides, all properly sourced and referenced above. If that's what they said, that's what they said!! If I have dishonestly quoted them in any way, just show me the mis-quotation... just show me the mis-attribution... if there are ANY, just show me, and I'll acknowledge the error!!
But if not... then for my honesty to be *immediately*, and *continually* attacked, when NOT ONE of the Patristics I've cited above has been shown to be mis-quoted in ANY way -- that is just downright vicious, from start to finish.
(sigh)... you're probably right.
:-( Look, I'm sorry.
I just posted a bunch of Patristic quotations from the Celtic Fathers. That's it -- that's what I did. If I mis-quoted them in ANY way, I just want to be shown where I did so before my honesty is labelled as twisted and people start calling me "Satan".
That really, really doesn't seem like so much to ask.
Well, yeah, since you put it that way, no debate here. I acknowledged from Post #26 that the Celtic Church's ecclesiology was Greek Orthodox in character; I've never claimed it was closer to Presbyterianism by any means. My discussion of the Celtic Fathers' published beliefs has focused on their salvific theology and sacramentology, not their ecclesiology -- which was demonstrably Greek-derived.
If you check out Wylie's "History of the Scottish Nation" at the ElectronicScotland links, you'll find that he goes into the Scottish Church's ecclesial structure in a lot of depth -- now, you'll find that their episcopal structure was "lower church" than modern Orthodoxy, bishops way down and the village level and some presbyterian-esque federal structures in organization...
My discussion of the Celtic Fathers' published Theology, as I said, has focused on their soteriology and sacramentology -- and on that I have simply argued, that "They Said exactly what They Said."
Johannis Scotus Erigena argues in De divina praedestinatione that God, being perfectly good, wants all humans to be saved, and does not predestine souls to damnation. God's being is His willing and ‘no necessity binds the will of God’. On the contrary, humans damn themselves through their own free choices: ‘Sin, death, unhappiness are not from God’. Since God is outside time, He cannot be said to fore-know or to pre-destine, terms that involve temporal predicates. Furthermore, if God's being is His wisdom, God can be said to have but a single knowledge and hence a ‘double’ predestination cannot be ascribed to Him. Human nature, on the other hand, was created rational, and rationality requires freedom. Human nature is therefore essentially free: ‘For God did not create in man a captive will but a free one, and that freedom remained after sin’.
Eriugena had a justified reputation among his contemporaries as a man of considerable learning. Florus calls him scholasticus et eruditus (PL CXIX 103a) and Anastasius, the Vatican librarian of the day, marveled at the fact that this ‘barbarian’ (vir barbarus) from a remote land knew Greek.
Nothing is known about Eriugena's place or date of birth or of the circumstances of his early life, but, on the basis of circumstantial evidence and some surviving testimonia (helpfully gathered in Brennan, 1986), it is conjectured that he was born in Ireland around 800 or possibly slightly earlier (c. 790). His Irish provenance is confirmed by the fact that he self-consciously signed his translation of Pseudo-Dionysius’ works with the neologism ‘Eriugena’ (Patrologia Latina, hereafter PL, CXXII 1236a) meaning ‘Irish born’, a word possibly modelled on the Virgilian ‘Graiugena’ found in one of his poems and also in Columbanus’ Ad Filiolum 119..
Eriugena's uniqueness lies in the fact that, quite remarkably for a scholar in Western Europe in the Carolingian era, he had considerable familiarity with the Greek language, affording him access to the Greek Christian theological tradition, from the Cappadocians to Gregory of Nyssa, hitherto almost entirely unknown in the Latin West. He also produced a complete, if somewhat imperfect, Latin translation of the Corpus Dionysii, the works of the obscure, possibly Syrian, Christian Neoplatonist, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a follower of Proclus. In addition, Eriugena translated Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio and Maximus Confessor's Ambigua ad Iohannem, and possibly other works, such as Epiphanius' Anchoratus.
Eriugena's thought is best understood as a sustained attempt to create a consistent, systematic, Christian Neoplatonism from diverse but primarily Christian sources. Eriugena had a unique gift for identifying the underlying intellectual framework, broadly Neoplatonic but also deeply Christian, assumed by the writers of the Christian East. Drawing especially on Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus Confessor, as well as on the more familiar authorities (auctores) of the Latin West (e.g. Cicero, Martianus Capella, Augustine, Boethius), he developed a highly original cosmology, where the highest principle, the ‘the immovable self-identical one’ (unum et idipsum immobile, Periphyseon, Patrologia Latina CXXII I. 476b), engenders all things and retrieves them back into itself. Contrary to what some earlier commentators supposed, it is most unlikely that Eriugena had direct knowledge of the original texts of Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, or other pagan Neoplatonists, but he did have some direct knowledge of Plato (a portion of Timaeus in the translation of Calcidius) as well as familiarity with the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem.
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OP, The words of a giant of the Orthodox church in the West was twisted to suit others needs and his words were taken out of context. The Orthodox say the following:
For the first thousand years of Christian history, when the Church was visibly one and undivided, the holy gifts of the Body and Blood of Christ were received as just that: His Body and Blood. The Church confessed this was a mystery: The bread is truly His Body, and that which is in the cup is truly His Blood, but one cannot say how they become so.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries brought on the scholastic era, the Age of Reason in the West. The Roman Church, which had become separated from the Orthodox Church in A.D. 1054, was pressed by the rationalists to define how the transformation takes place. They answered with the word transubstantiation, meaning a change of substance. The elements are no longer bread and wine; they are physically changed into flesh and blood. The sacrament, which only faith can comprehend, was subjected to a philosophical definition. This second view of the Eucharist was unknown to the ancient Church.
Not surprisingly, one of the points of disagreement between Rome and the sixteenth-century reformers was the issue of transubstantiation. Unable to accept this explanation of the sacrament, the radical reformers, who were rationalists themselves, took up the opposite point of view: the gifts are nothing but bread and wine, period. They only represent Christ's Body and Blood; they have no spiritual reality. This third, symbol-only view helps explain the infrequency with which some Protestants partake of the Eucharist.
the Orthodox tradition does use the term "symbols" for the eucharistic gifts. It calls, the service a "mystery" and the sacrifice of the liturgy a "spiritual and bloodless sacrifice." These terms are used by the holy fathers and the liturgy itself.
The Orthodox Church uses such expressions because in Orthodoxy what is real is not opposed to what is symbolical or mystical or spiritual. On the contrary! In the Orthodox view, all of reality -- the world and man himself -- is real to the extent that it is symbolical and mystical, to the extent that reality itself must reveal and manifest God to us. Thus, the eucharist in the Orthodox Church is understood to be the genuine Body and Blood of Christ precisely because bread and wine are the mysteries and symbols of God's true and genuine presence and manifestation to us in Christ. Thus, by eating and drinking the bread and wine which are mystically consecrated by the Holy Spirit, we have genuine communion with God through Christ who is himself "the bread of life" (Jn 6:34, 41).
The mystery of the holy eucharist defies analysis and explanation in purely rational and logical terms. For the eucharist -- and Christ himself -- is indeed a mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven which, as Jesus has told us, is "not of this world." The eucharist -- because it belongs to God's Kingdom -- is truly free from the earth-born "logic" of fallen humanity.
-------------- That is what Johannis Scotus Erigena was saying in Greek and in Latin but the Protestants removed from the original tradition can no longer comprehend that what Johannis Scotus Erigena was talking about was as explained above - they took the richly textured words and made them flat.
At your scholarly service always.
Catholic, as in Roman Catholic? Are you on drugs? There was ONE CHURCH before 1054, and that ONE CHURCH had Greek-rite and Latin-rite liturgy. The Church was one, catholic (small "c") and Apostolic.
There was no such thing as "Roman Catholic Church." Talk about historical revisionism!
Who twists what?
With respect, Destro -- your fine Philosophy Editor hasn't given us nearly enough to go on to even determine that. Most of the above quotation is what he says Erigina says. Surely we can't use that as a standard, when I've at least tried to occupy the majority of my Celtic quotations with... well, actual Celtic quotations. The above Philosophy paragraph includes only three actual snippets of Erigina -- none of which can even be shown to conclusively divide him from Gottschalk (his own debate opponent!), let alone John Calvin (whose views were far better developed than Gottschalk's -- no mere boast; Erigina thought of Gottschalk's writings as "ravings" and he was somewhat correct). To wit:
"For we know that He who is obviously eternal can by no means be predestined" – Gottschalk
"But in God’s double predestination, where His ways are contained, concerning which it is said: “All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth,” (Ps. 25:10) singularity has rightly remained and duly remains. And so since “He has spoken once, and that [is],” (cf. Ps. 62:11) which Saint Augustine explained so, that He immutably arranged all His future works, there are by no means two predestinations, but only one. That is why the psalmist just as in logical consequence says: “Twice I have heard that power belongs to God; and to you, O Lord, belongs mercy, for You render to each one according to his works,” (Ps. 62:12) and on account of these two predestination is understood as double; namely, in a general sense it is one because it was eternally set up forever and at the same time; neither of them is unjust but both just; and in a special sense it is double, because one is owed and the other is gratuitous." -- Gottschalk
"Therefore also Prosper in that same chapter says: “The Redeemer of the world gave His blood for the world, but the world did not want to be redeemed, because darkness did not accept light but [other] darkness did accept light, [that darkness,] to which the Apostle says: ‘You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord’ (Eph. 5:8).—And those will walk, who will be freed and redeemed by the Lord" –- Gottschalk
Regrettably, it seems that our Philosophy Editor friend has arbitrarily torn three snippets at random from Erigina’s library, merely to cast his own gloss upon them – for there is nothing in these three brief, vague scraps which would allow us even to conclusively divide Erigina from his own debate opponent Gottschalk, let alone from the better-refined work of John Calvin.
And at any rate, even should we suppose that Erigina were to fall on the “soft” side of Celtic Predestination (and even Calvinists have a “softer predestinarian” school in the Amyrauldians), it cannot be forgotten that there are a number of other Celtic Fathers who have spoken on Predestination also – and more clearly than this Philosophy Editor has allowed Erigina to speak for himself.
"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." -- Claudius Scotus
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.
That being kept in mind, then, let’s move on to the Eucharist.
In response to this you say:
One of the most unfortunate developments took place when men began to debate the reality of Christ's Body and Blood in the eucharist. While some said that the eucharistic gifts of bread and wine were the real Body and Blood of Christ, others said that the gifts were not real, but merely the symbolic or mystical presence of the Body and Blood. The tragedy in both of these approaches is that what is real came to be opposed to what is symbolic or mystical.
Well, if the “tragedy in both of these approaches is that what is real came to be opposed to what is symbolic or mystical”, it is a “tragedy” in which Erigina himself participated. For he said in his own words:
But if we shall suppose, that by “only the commemoration” Erigina actually meant “the symbolic or mystical presence of the Body and Blood”, then you have just made of Erigina every bit the Presbyterian which I have claimed him to be!!
For to the Calvinist Presbyterian, the importance of the matter is the denial of the carnal doctrine of gross transubstantiation – which to us, denies the particular Humanity of the unique Body of Flesh prepared from Him of Mary, which we believe is now always locally present in whole at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, without ever any fleshly dispersion whatsoever into nuggets of bread upon earthly altars.
Thus we say with our Scottish forebear, the Celtic Father Erigina, "The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood."; but our Presbyterian “Commemoration” is no mere celebration of the “Real Absence” of Zwinglian theology, but a celebration of the "Spiritual Presence" Doctrine declared by John Calvin, as set forth in the Institutes of the Christian Religion:
For if we see that the sun, in sending forth its rays upon the earth, to generate, cherish, and invigorate its offspring, in a manner transfuses its substance into it, why should the radiance of the Spirit be less in conveying to us the communion of His flesh and blood? Wherefore, the Scripture, when it speaks of our participation with Christ, refers its whole efficacy to the Spirit.
This kingdom is not limited by any intervals of space, nor circumscribed by any dimensions. Christ can exert His energy wherever he pleases, in earth and heaven, can manifest His presence by the exercise of His power, can always be present with His people, breathing into them His own life, can live in them, sustain, confirm, and invigorate them, and preserve them safe, just as if he were with them in the body; in fine, can feed them with His own body, communion with which he transfuses into them.
After this manner, the body and blood of Christ are exhibited to us in the sacrament.... The covenant, ratified by the sacrifice of death, would not avail us without the addition of that secret communication, by which we are made one with Christ.
And if THIS is the Righteous and Mystical and Spiritually-communicative and Symbolic Celebration of which Erigina speaks, when he says ”The Sacraments of the Altar are not the real Body and Blood of Christ, but only the commemoration of his Body and Blood” – then this is the very same Supper which is Celebrated among the Calvinists….
…and Geneva shakes hand with Iona across the gulf of a thousand years.
Best, OP
Rightly or wrongly, that pretty well expresses our disagreement.
As always, the EOC treats things we cannot fully understand as inspired knowledge that remain a mystery and Eucharist is certainly one of those mysteries.
Not much has been written about it, but even St. Paul hints that it might be the real thing. After Paul, and quite some time after the Gospels were written, Irenaeus was hinting at the nature of "change" in the Eucharist as earl at 106 AD
But the whole idea of eating human flesh and drnking wine was abhorrant to the Jews as it is to us. Yet the Christian world sees the whole issue differentlyw when it comes to Eucharist.
The custom is certainly not in the Jewish tradition, but the Gospels leave no doubt that (1) we are to celbrate the Supper in memory of Him and that the bread "is" His body and the wine "is" His blood. Whether that constitutes cannibalism, as some have accused Christians of, or not is altogether unclear, but I would like to err on the divine side and say that the spirit of His gifts is present (and I am blaspheming here), until I am shown any different.
Actually we don't. There are differences. It is a Roman Catholic doctrine, formulated at a council which we don't recognize.
""Transubstantiation" is a term coined by the scholastic theological tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. Owing to the contacts with the West, Orthodoxy sometimes picked up on such terminology and used it to express the Orthodox understanding of what the Holy Trinity does during the DIvine LIturgy to change the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. This was especially true of the Kyivan Baroque period where St Peter Mohyla, Metropolitan of Kyiv, tended to use borrowed western phraseology in his Catechism and elsewhere. This is why Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko used the term "Transubstantiation." Ohienko was a great scholar of Orthodox history and antiquity and was well acquainted with the theological terminology of the Baroque period.
Transubstantiation is weak terminology because of its rationalist underpinnings. Transustantiation says that the "substance" of the bread and wine are changed, but that the "accidents" i.e. the physical appearance of the bread and wine remain. There is already a problem here with separating, in theoria, the substance and the accidents, or, to put it another way, to began talking about the two as separate entities. There is a real pit-fall in that when we talk about the accidents, the physical qualities of bread that remain after the Eucharistic Change occurs, there is the seemingly unavoidable suggestion made that the bread itself remains. How else can we identify the bread if not through its qualities? And if the qualities remain unchanged, then the substance of bread must somehow also remain -- now we are really in deep trouble and have fallen into the heresy of "consubstantiation" the idea that the Body and Blood of Christ "co-exist" with the bread and the wine. Martin Luther believed in consubstantiation as a possible explanation, but he didn't condemn transubstantiation either which is why either position is acceptable in Lutheranism today. I think that there is a sense in which transubstantiation leads one into consubstantiation which is why "transmutation" is a better term, as Fr. Brygidyr, speaking from within the best traditions of Orthodoxy, states.
Transmutation doesn't get us into the unnecessary and rationalistic positions of neatly defined categories etc. such as accidents and substance. It simply posits that the reality of the bread and wine is changed after the last "Amen" is said following the Epiclesis and the Eucharistic Canon. It doesn't get into the "how" of the change. It is, unfortunately, very typical of the Western scholastic tradition to want to know "how" such as, for example, "how does the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and remain distinct from the Son who is Only-Begotten?" The "Filioque" was therefore a rationalistic - and unscriptural - way of responding to this rationalistic question. This has led to all kinds of problems in the Roman Catholic church which it has yet to overcome, even with the Second Vatican Council (some would say "especially with").
Dr. Alexander Roman alex@unicorne.org
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