Posted on 06/11/2005 7:27:43 AM PDT by sionnsar
Ten years ago or so I dreamed that I was an Orthodox priest. If you had asked me even three years ago what if I would become if I ever decided to leave the Episcopal Church, I would have replied “Eastern Orthodox.” Yet today I find myself becoming what I truly never seriously considered until the past two years.
Why did I not choose to become Orthodox? Who but God can answer? All such matters are a mystery, a mystery between the mystery of the human heart and the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Rational analysis takes one only so far. All I really know is that during the past two years, as I intently studied both Orthodoxy and Catholicism, I found myself increasingly drawn, against my will and desire, and certainly to my amazement, to Catholicism.
I love the liturgy and sacramental life of the Orthodox Church. It speaks to the depths of my heart. I long to pray the Divine Liturgy and be formed by its music, poetry, beaity, and ritual.
I love the integration of theology, dogma, spirituality, and asceticism within Orthodoxy. There is a wholeness to Orthodox experience that is compelling, powerful, and attractive on many different levels. This wholeness refuses any bifurcation between mind and heart and invites the believer into deeper reconciliation in Christ by the Spirit. This wholeness is something that Western Christians particularly need, as we confront and battle the corrosive powers of Western modernity and secularism.
I love the reverence and devotion Orthodoxy gives to the saints and church fathers, who are experienced in the Church as living witnesses to the gospel of Christ Jesus. I love the icons.
And I love the theological writings of many Orthodox writers, especially Alexander Schmemann and Georges Florovsky. For all these reasons and for many more, it would have been oh so very easy for me to become Orthodox.
But two features in particular gave me pause.
First, I am troubled by Orthodoxy’s “Easternness.” The coherence and power of Orthodoxy is partially achieved by excluding the Western tradition from its spiritual and theological life. One is hard-pressed to find an Orthodox writer who speaks highly of the Western Church, of her saints, ascetics, and theologians, of her manifold contributions to Christian religion and Western civilization. According to Orthodox consensus, Western Christianity went off the tracks somewhere along the way and must now be judged as a heresy. Understandably, Eastern Christianity considers itself the touchstone and standard by which the Western tradition is to be judged.
To put it simply, Orthodoxy has no real place for St Augustine. He is commemorated as a saint, but the bulk of his theological work is rejected. The noted scholar, Fr John Romanides, has been particularly extreme. I raised my concern about Orthodoxy and the West a year ago in my blog article Bad, bad Augustine. In that article I cited one of the few Orthodox scholars, David B. Hart, who has been willing to address Orthodox caricature of Western theologians:
The most damaging consequence, however, of Orthodoxy’s twentieth-century pilgrimage ad fontes—and this is no small irony, given the ecumenical possibilities that opened up all along the way—has been an increase in the intensity of Eastern theology’s anti-Western polemic. Or, rather, an increase in the confidence with which such polemic is uttered. Nor is this only a problem for ecumenism: the anti-Western passion (or, frankly, paranoia) of Lossky and his followers has on occasion led to rather severe distortions of Eastern theology. More to the point here, though, it has made intelligent interpretations of Western Christian theology (which are so very necessary) apparently almost impossible for Orthodox thinkers. Neo-patristic Orthodox scholarship has usually gone hand in hand with some of the most excruciatingly inaccurate treatments of Western theologians that one could imagine—which, quite apart form the harm they do to the collective acuity of Orthodox Christians, can become a source of considerable embarrassment when they fall into the hands of Western scholars who actually know something of the figures that Orthodox scholars choose to caluminiate. When one repairs to modern Orthodox texts, one is almost certain to encounter some wild mischaracterization of one or another Western author; and four figures enjoy a special eminence in Orthodox polemics: Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and John of the Cross.
Ironically, the various contributions by Perry Robinson and Daniel Jones, here on Pontifications and elsewhere, have heightened my concern. Both have sought, in various ways, to demonstrate that Western theology is incompatible with the catholic faith. While I have neither the training nor wit to follow many of their arguments, I am convinced that their project is wrong. Both presume that one can know the catholic faith independent of ecclesial commitment and formation. If one insists, for example, that St Maximos the Confessor, read through a post-schism Eastern lens, is our authoritative guide to a proper reading of the sixth Ecumenical Council, then of course Augustinian Catholicism will come off looking badly, despite the fact that Maximos was himself a great supporter of the prerogatives of Rome and despite the fact that Rome was instrumental in the defeat of monotheletism. Yet Catholicism embraces both Augustine and Maximos as saints, even though it is clear that Maximos has had minimal influence upon Western reflection, at least until very recently. Clearly Rome did not, and does not, understand the dogmatic decrees of III Constantinople as contradicting Western christological and trinitarian commitments. As much as I respect Perry and Daniel and am grateful for both their erudition and civility and their stimulating articles on these matters, it seems to me that their conclusions are more determined by their theological and ecclesial starting points than by “neutral” scholarship. And one thing I do know: there is always a brighter guy somewhere who will contest one’s favorite thesis.
Neither Orthodoxy nor Catholicism, in my judgment, can be conclusively identified as the one and true Church by these kinds of rational arguments, as interesting and important as they may be in themselves. Arguments and reasons must be presented and considered as we seek to make the necessary choice between Rome and Constantinople, yet ultimately we are still confronted by mystery and the decision and risk of faith.
If the catholicity of Orthodoxy can only be purchased by the practical expulsion of Augustine and Aquinas, then, at least in my own mind, Orthodoxy’s claim to be the one and true Church is seriously undermined. A truly catholic Church will and must include St Augustine and St Maximos the Confessor, St Gregory Palamas and St Thomas Aquinas. A truly catholic Church will keep these great theologians in conversation with each other, and their differences and disagreements will invite the Church to a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the divine mysteries. To set one against the other is not catholic, but partisan.
Second, I am troubled by the absence of a final court of appeal in controversies of faith and morals. We Anglicans are now witnessing first-hand the disintegration of a world-wide communion partially because of the absence of a divinely instituted organ of central authority. In the first millenium the Church employed the Ecumenical Council to serve as this final authority; but for the past thirteen centuries Orthodoxy has been unable to convene such a council. Is it a matter of logistics, or is the matter perhaps more serious, a question of constitutional impotence? Or has God simply protected the Orthodox from serious church-dividing heresies during this time, thereby temporarily obviating the need for such a council? Regardless, it seems to me that if Orthodoxy truly is the one Church of Jesus Christ in the exclusive sense it claims to be, then not only would it be confident in its power and authority to convene an Ecumenical Council, but it would have done so by now.
Yet as Orthodoxy begins to seriously engage the worldview and values of modernity (and post-modernity), the need for a final tribunal will perhaps become more evident. Consider just one example—contraception. It used to be the case that all Orthodox theologians would have roundly denounced most (all?) forms of contraception. But over the past twenty years or so, we have seen a growing diversity on this issue amongst Orthodox thinkers. Some state that this is really a private matter that needs to be decided between the believer and his parish priest. Clearly this privatization of the issue accords with modern sensibilities; but I am fearful of the consequences. Given the absence of a final court of appeal, does Orthodoxy have any choice but to simply accept diversity on many of the burning ethical questions now confronting us? Can Orthodoxy speak authoritatively to any of them?
For the past two years I have struggled to discern whether to remain an Anglican (in some form or another) or to embrace either Orthodoxy or Catholicism. Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism make mutually exclusive claims to be the one and true Church of Jesus Christ. We are confronted by a stark either/or choice. An Anglican is tempted to retreat to a branch theory of the Church, and on that basis make a decision on which tradition appeals to him most; but both Orthodoxy and Catholicism emphatically reject all such branch theories. There is only one visible Church. To become either Orthodox or Catholic means accepting the claim of the respective communion to ecclesial exclusivity. How do we rightly judge between them?
One thing we cannot do. We cannot pretend that we can assume a neutral vantage point. Oh how much easier things would be for all of us if God would call us on our telephones right now and tell us what to do!
The Pope convenes the College of Cardinals in emergency session. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” he says. “The good news is this: I just received a phone call from God!” Everyone cheers. “But here’s the bad news: God lives in Salt Lake City.”
I cannot see the Church from God’s perspective. I am faced with a choice. Good arguments can be presented for both Orthodoxy and Catholicism; none appear to be absolutely decisive and coercive. Moreoever, considerations that seem important to me are probably irrelevant to the large majority of people. “The Church is a house with a hundred gates,” wrote Chesterton; “and no two men enter at exactly the same angle.” Finally, I can only rely upon my reason, my intuitions, my feelings, my faith, under the grace and mercy of God. May God forgive me if I have chosen wrongly.
(cont)
Individually, Holy Fathers are not infallible.
Can you find any father, though, who denies the necessity of baptism for salvation? Of course not.
In any case, the Ecumenical Synod of Ephesus confirmed the decrees of the Roman Church against Pelagianism, which, as Hermann has reminded us, include that infants who die without baptism cannot enter into the kingdom.
When there had been read in the holy Synod what had been done touching the deposition of the most irreligious Pelagians and Cœlestines, of Cœlestius, and Pelagius, and Julian, and Præsidius, and Florus, and Marcellian, and Orontius, and those inclined to like errors, we also deemed it right that the determinations of your holiness concerning them should stand strong and firm. And we all were of the same mind, holding them deposed.
This is what I understand by the denial of the guilt of original sin.
"As you say, your belief is that all men are conceived in union with Christ and thus able to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven if they die before actually sinning
This is what I understand by the denial of the guilt of original sin."
This is also one of the central tenets of Pelagianism. It may be informative that Pelagius was a Welsh monk and some modern Orthodox claim his Celtic brand of Christianity for Orthodoxy! How representative they are though, I wouldn't like to guess.
It is my understanding that in fact the "official version" of the decrees was written in Latin since its purpose was to bash, quite appropriately I might add, Protestants in France. That is why this Synod was called at the urging of the French Ambassador and his Jesuits despite the fact that two previous Synods had condemned Pat. Cyril's writings quite clearly for Eastern purposes. It was attended only by one Patriarch, of Jerusalem. You will note that only 6 metropolitans attended this Synod and a few archmandrites. This Synod at best was a very local one. The French insisted on it (having recently burned the Maronite Syriac liturgy books and theological writings in a brutal program of Latinization of the Maronites, something which the Maronite Church is only now recovering from) for their own Roman Catholic purposes. Rather like it is being used now. One cannot be surprised that these decrees have in them various Latin errors.
As you point out, by 1721 Peter the Great was well into his Westernizing of Russia and his enthrallment with German culture may have lead someone in one or more of the Patriarchates to send this on to the Russian Church, but given the dangers faced by the Church under Peter, it probably was the right thing to do.
I have been waiting for around two years now for evidence from you that anyone at all believed this prior to 150 years ago.
By this position, St. Athanasius was quite mistaken in his defense of Nicaea against the overwhelming majority of the Church in the East and West. While he spoke of "the word of the Lord" given the Church through the Fathers at Nicaea, the rest of the world was Arian. The Church was certainly not affirming Nicaea.
Similarly, it is difficult to understand how the Council of Chalcedon (rejected by the nearly the entire patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch, as well as all of Armenia and Ethiopia, but accepted by Nestorius) has any authority whatsoever even to this day, since the schism persists, with much of the East Christian world rejecting it still.
It is extraordinarily painful to read such tenditious misrepresentations or outright ignorance of Catholicism. It is even more painful to see Orthodoxy unable to define itself without resorting to deprecating comparisons with Catholicism to create negative contrasts. Such as these:
"The Orthodox Church is primarily the Church of tradition, in contrast to the Catholic Church, which is the Church of authority"
"The Orthodox Liturgy begins with the words: "Blessed is the Kingdom, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." Everything begins from above, from the Divine Triad, from the heights of the Essence, and not from the person and his soul. In Orthodox understanding it is the Divine Triad which descends and not the person who ascends. There is less of this Trinitarian expression in Western Christianity, it is more Christocentric and anthropocentric."
"The feast of the Resurrection has an immeasurably greater significance in the Orthodox liturgy than in Catholicism where the apex is the feast of the Birth of Christ. In Catholicism we primarily meet the crucified Christ and in Orthodoxy - the Resurrected Christ."
"Neither Catholicism nor Protestantism sufficiently expresses the cosmic nature of the Church, as the Body of Christ. Western Christianity is primarily anthropological."
"Such words of Thomas Aquinas could not have emanated from Orthodoxy's bosom, who said that the righteous person in paradise will delight himself with the suffering of sinners in hell." (Could he misread the Summa, Supplement, Q. 94, Art. 3 any further?)
The article linked also claims that any new ecumenical council should simply be called a "great and holy Synod", since ecumenicity is impossible before 'reception' (the article frankly confesses that it is utterly impossible to prove the reception of Chalcedon). However, the official decrees of Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople III and Nicaea II all claim to come from a "great and holy and ecumenical Synod" or a "holy and ecumenical synod".
It was neither yesterday nor the day before that the evil began, but at the time that we began to exist. As soon as Adam despised his good Master by believing the evil one and was perverted in will, his soul lost its health and well-being. From that time on his body agreed with the soul and was in accord with it, and was perverted with it like an instrument in the hand of the craftsman... Because our nature was extended and our race increased as it proceeded from the first body, so wickedness too, like any other natural characteristic, was transmitted to the bodies which proceeded from that body... It therefore followed that each man's soul inherited the wickedness of the first Adam. It spread from his soul to his body, and from his body to the bodies which derived from his, and from those bodies to the souls. ... This, then, is the old man whom we have received as a seed of evil from our ancestors as we came into existence. We have not seen even one day pure from sin, nor have we ever breathed apart from wickedness, but, as the psalmist says, 'we have gone astray from the womb, we err from our birth' [Psalm 58:3]. We did not even stand still in this unhappy lot of the sin of our ancestors, nor were we content with the evils which we had inherited. ... there was no intermission of the evil, but the disease progressed continually. ... It is from these most terrible bonds, this punishment, disease, and death, that the baptismal washing sets us free. This it does so easily that there is no need to take a long time, so perfectly that not a trace is left. nor does it merely set us free from wickedness, it also confers the opposite condition. Because of His death the Master Himself gave us the power to slay sin, and because He came to life again He made us heirs of the new life. His death, by being a death slays the evil life, by being a penalty it pays the penalty for sins to which each one of us was liable for our evil actions. In this way the baptismal washing renders us pure of every habit and action of sin in that is makes us partakers of Christ's life-giving health.
I think not. Sounds like that stuff the reformed churches like, about the actual seed of man being the cause of inheritance of original sin. I cannot remember now the name for that idea.
I found this recently and think it may give a good idea of where we are on the original sin issue.
"The question becomes, “What then is the inheritance of humanity from Adam and Eve if it is not guilt?” The Orthodox Fathers answer as one: death."
When I click on your link, I get this message -- "The requested document does not exist on this server." Can you post the rite? Thanks.
Another good one for understanding our view of sin, imo, is All dogs go to heaven
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/pc/orthodoxy/germanos1929.html
This Synod at best was a very local one. ... One cannot be surprised that these decrees have in them various Latin errors.
It is also very simple to look upon the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website under "Our Faith" and the subset "Tradition" and find:
http://www.goarch.org/en/ourfaith/articles/article7116.asp
"Other Councils and Confessions of Faith.
"There are also other means of re-affirming the universality of the Orthodox faith. ... There are the writings and Confessions of Faith written by great teachers of the Church during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Examples might include ... the council of Jerusalem (1672) and the Confession of Faith by Patriarch Dositheos of Jerusalem (1672)"
An ignorant inquirer would think that if he stumbled upon such a document, he had actually found a guide which might direct him to where he could learn some of the truths of Orthodoxy for himself.
But I suppose if 5 Orthodox Christians on FreeRepublic say otherwise, the "mind of the Orthodox Church" has actually been manifested clearly for us all, and we should count our blessings that we were not mislead by some pretentious official Church website pretending it might tell the world where Orthodox truth can be found and what it is.
You'll have to forgive my sarcastic tone as I am quite startled at the silliness of all this "mind of the Church" and "A council is not authoritative in and of itself, but only as it is received" and "Church which affirms the council" talk in light of obvious ecclesiastical history, specifically Nicaea and the Arian crisis, and the Latrocinium and Chalcedon and the Monophysites.
You can go round and round with Sobornost theologians telling us about Councils becoming infallible only from the Church accepting them, and we will keep asking you how you could possibly then accept Chalcedon when so much of the Church rejected it and still rejects it.
I just read the link in Marmema's post #209. Give it a read. It lays out the Orthodox position quite well.
"You'll have to forgive my sarcastic tone as I am quite startled at the silliness of all this "mind of the Church" and "A council is not authoritative in and of itself, but only as it is received" and "Church which affirms the council" talk in light of obvious ecclesiastical history, specifically Nicaea and the Arian crisis, and the Latrocinium and Chalcedon and the Monophysites."
Actually, I won't excuse your sarcastic tone. As I said sometime ago refering to one of your comments, its actually helpful hearing what a Roman such as yourself really believes since the initial Metropolitan discussions about The Church's response to the Pope's calls for dialogue will occur this summer. Now I will feel quite comfortable in suggesting we answer the Pope with what St Mark of Ephesus said:
"We have excised and cut them [the Papists] off from the common body of the Church, we have, therefore, rejected them as heretics, and for this reason we are separated from them; they are, therefore, heretics, and we have cut them off as heretics."
For as intelligent a woman as Frederica Matthews-Green is, she can say some amazingly stupid things sometimes. I.e.:
"The central argument between Protestants and Catholics has to do with whether “Jesus paid it all” (as Protestants would say) or whether, even though the Cross is sufficient, humans are still obligated (as Catholics would say) to add their own sacrifices as well."
No, the central arguement between Protestants and Catholics, as might be gathered by actually reading the documents of the Council of Trent (or Protestant confessions and tractates), is the sacramental system of distribution of grace, and its role in producing the justification of man.
If someone cannot figure that out, their grasp of anything else in either Catholic or Protestant theology is bound to be quite tenuous and questionable.
"We hold to the view of the early church, that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” Our sins made us captives of Death, and God in Christ went into Hades to set us free. The penalty of sin is not a debt we owe the Father; it is the soul-death that is the immediate and inevitable consequence of sin. We need healing and rescue, not someone to step in and square the bill."
Someone in need of rescuing from a captor does not need reconciliation with their savior, nor does a rescuing savior pay off the captor to accomplish a rescue.
The word reconciliation, used so frequently by St. Paul, implies the end of discord or enmity and the recommmencement of friendship and concord. If Christ needed to reconcile us to God because of sin, we certainly did need someone to come in and square things up.
More to the point, it is not as though Christ really paid something to the Father, as if there is a celesital banking establishment between them keeping book and accounts. These are our manners of speech.
When we say, "Christ paid the Father for our sins" we are also saying God is forgiving our sins gratis, out of His mercy, by taking their just deserts upon Himself in the person of the sinless Son. The purpose of Christ's horrific suffering on the Cross was not to slake the thirst of a bloodthirsty Father, but to demonstrate to us vividly what fate we truly deserve for the way we live our lives, and what God is saving us from by forgiving our sins gratis. As St. Thomas says, by the Passion, "man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation."
We deserved this fate, but God forgave us anyway.
However, what you and she term the Catholic view of the atonement is not really the original work of St. Anselm at all. St. Gregory Nazianzen had proclaimed it 700 years prior, and it is obviously present in both the Jewish system of sin-offerings and mourning on the Day of Atonement, and in the ecclesiastical system of canonical penances.
"Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth enquiring into. To whom was that Blood paid out that was shed for us, and why was it shed, the great and precious Blood of Our God, High Priest, and Victim? We were in bondage to the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. If a ransom belongs not to someone else but to him who holds in bondage, I ask you, to whom was this paid, and for what reason? If to the Evil One, O, what an outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether. If to the Father, first I ask, how can that be? For we were not being detained by Him; and second, why would He be delighted by the Blood of His Only-Begotten Son? Who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim? Surely it is evident, however, that the Father did receive, though neither asking nor demanding it, but because of His plan of redemption and so that man might be sanctified by the Humanity of God; so that He Himself might free us, that He might overcome the tyrant be force, and that He might lead us back to Himself through the mediation of His Son." (St. Gregory of Nazianz, Second Oration on Easter, 45.22, AD 383)
And still no answer to such a simple question.
How does the doctrinal value you assign to Chalcedon square with the rejection of it to this day by half the Eastern Church, and your simultaneous proclimation that Councils are only authoritative when the whole Church receives them?
There was no Monophysite schism until 100 years after Chalcedon, when they began ordaining Bishops for themselves, so up until the open break, Monophysites were officially "Orthodox Catholics" with a violent disagreement with non-heretical "Orthodox Catholics" on whether Ephesus II or Chalcedon should be followed.
By what has been spoken here, it would seem impossible to objectively determine which side was correct as an outside observer, both sides claiming truth and tradition. For universal reception to be the hallmark of Orthodoxy, there must actually be universal reception, else the reception is only partial and disputed.
I find you speak in riddles on this subject, which should be a matter of definite clarity.
Now I will feel quite comfortable in suggesting we answer the Pope with what St Mark of Ephesus said: "We have excised and cut them [the Papists] off from the common body of the Church, we have, therefore, rejected them as heretics, and for this reason we are separated from them; they are, therefore, heretics, and we have cut them off as heretics."
Ah, good old fashioned Orthodox Christian charity.
Nothing like answering a question with insults.
I happen to remember there is an Orthodox church in your neighborhood. Why not stop in and ask these questions yourself and in person?
Let us know what you find out.
Do you really expect other Christians to follow the views of a writer supporting universal salvation and claiming in all seriousness: "The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. And this is characteristic of (contemporary) Russian religious thought."
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