Bishop's canon calls for the excommunication of prominent layman

VirtueOnline-News ^ | 7/16/2005 | David Virtue

[Polycarp1]

I presume you are being tounge in cheek about Augustine, but there is something to what you say. The healing of the Church comes with a rediscovery of the Fathers and even we Orthodox who claim many of these folks for our own need to rediscover them as well.

[FormerLib]

To an outsider such as myself, that a member of the Episcopal Church would be threatened with excommunication for challenging the idea that the Diocese should sponsor a founder of the "Jesus Seminar" is a perfectly representative action of the modern Episcopal Church.

[FormerLib]

"How did we get to a state in the Episcopal Church were orthodoxy as set forth in the Nicene Creed is out, and heresy is taught to our clergy by Marcus Borg at the request of the officials of this diocese?"

By a series of tiny steps, just as most journeys begin.

[Zack Nguyen]

"How did we get to a state in the Episcopal Church were orthodoxy as set forth in the Nicene Creed is out, and heresy is taught to our clergy by Marcus Borg at the request of the officials of this diocese?"

This is a sad question, because the answer is obvious. It has happened over a period of many decades, and while it occurred no one did anything to stop it. The same happened with some Presbyterians, Evangelical Lutherans, United Church of Christ. Methodists are int he midst oft he battle.

[Graves]

Make " It has happened over a period of many decades" a period of many centuries Zack.
One can start with the De Trinitate of Augustine of Hippo and one can trace the steps from there.
They become easier to trace the closer we get to the present. Remember Vatican II, the Spirit of Vatican II? We are not talking here about just what has been going on within mainline Protestantism, or even just within the West.
What gets really scary is leaving the West to see what's been going on in the East. Here again, Augustinian thought threatens to take control. We see it in Russia with the overthrow of the Czar and the Bolshevik Revolution, in Greece with the Freemasonry of EP Meletios Metaxakis and the changes he introduced.

[The_Reader_David]

Egads! We've got an even more anti-Augustinian poster among the Orthodox on FR than me.

Come now, the problem is not Blessed Augustine, per se, but the elevation of him to the status of 'Father among Fathers' first evidenced in the Carolingian court, and acceptance of his speculations as superior to the consensus patrum which has at times seemed to dominate Western thought (Latin, protestant or Anglican).

Balance: a wise Orthodox priest was once asked by a Latin what the biggest difference between the two churches was. The priest replied, "Ah, the biggest difference is that where as you have St. Augustine and Blessed John Cassian, we have St. John Cassian and Blessed Augustine."

[Graves]

Right on! "Egads! We've got an even more anti-Augustinian poster among the Orthodox on FR than me."

As I am not in the ROC, I am not required to call Augustine "Bd" and I don't.

[Claud]

Your assessment is much more balanced, and thus greatly appreciated.

By contrast, St. Augustine, some of whose writings are far more suspect than any of those of St. Gregory, was made the Father of Fathers in the West.

True to a point about the "Father of Fathers" but we tend not to draw as bright a line as you do between the Fathers and the later theologians. Aquinas is every bit a lodestar in the West as Augustine is--maybe even more so. Then throw in Molina and the Jesuits for some real fun. Fact is, Catholic theology is not the Augustinian monolith that some make it out to be.

[Graves]

"Catholic theology is not the Augustinian monolith that some make it out to be."
True enough. Fr. Azkoul does a good job of tracing its various lines in his ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS.

[Grampa Dave]

"How did we get to a state in the Episcopal Church were orthodoxy as set forth in the Nicene Creed is out, and heresy is taught to our clergy by Marcus Borg at the request of the officials of this diocese?"

'This is a sad question, because the answer is obvious. It has happened over a period of many decades, and while it occurred no one did anything to stop it. The same happened with some Presbyterians, Evangelical Lutherans, United Church of Christ. Methodists are int he midst oft he battle.'

That is how it happened and in the last 1.5 to 2 decades.

[Grampa Dave]

"By a series of tiny steps, just as most journeys begin."

In the 1980's my wife and I like going to the conventions even if most of the decisions were pre set. In the late 1980's the homosexual agenda pushes took more and more time from other issues.

If you dared to say anything thing, you were labled a bigot.

[Agrarian]

No less a modern and great ascetic saint of the Orthodox Church than St. John the Wonderworker of Shanghai and SF considered St. Augustine to be a saint.

The Slavonic service to St. Augustine (which can be obtained in English language translation from the St. John of Kronstadt Press) was commissioned and approved by him. He particularly recommended that the Russian parish in Tunis serve this service yearly, since St. Augustine was a local saint for them.

There is a royal path of moderation with regard to St. Augustine's memory that should be followed by all. He is a constant reminder of the need for discerning the consensus patrum, testing each Father against the writings and teachings of the others.

Claud, I would also add that I think you are mistaken if you think that we Orthodox draw a historical line beyond which there are no Fathers. St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas, St. Seraphim of Sarov in the 18th c., the Holy Fathers of Optina going right up to the Russian revolution, etc... are all considered to be a part of the seamless Orthodox patristic tradition. In our own century, St. John of Shanghai and SF (mentioned above) and St. Justin Popovich of the Serbian Church are in this tradition as well.

The particular importance of the Fathers of the ages of the Ecumenical Councils is that their writings give insight into what the Fathers of those councils were thinking when they made decisions on how to articulate the catholic faith about the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity. Thus we pay particular attention to St. Maximus the Confessor when considering the decisions of the 6th Council, and of St. Gregory Palamas when considering the decisions of the so-called "Palamite" councils. .

We do not of course consider Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, or the Jesuit theologians to be a part of this tradition -- their distinctness from the Orthodox patristic modes of thought and spiritual life are examples of the gap between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. We certainly understand why they are revered in the Catholic tradition, since their developments are reflected in subsequent Catholic theology, with which we differ.

Aquinas in particular has always been of interest to me, since as I recall, some of those who opposed him most vociferously in the Catholic world were avowed Augustinians. I have always been tempted to view this, though, as a dispute between Catholics who preferred Augustinian Platonic theological speculation and those who preferred Aristotelian modes of theological speculation.

It is inescapable, though, that the writings of St. Augustine contained the germs of ideas that led to several of the key theological incompatibilities between later Latin theology and Orthodox theology. The fact that later Catholic theologians differed from Augustine on this point or that doesn't really change the fact that it was the dominance of St. Augustine's writings in the West and the fact that they were not balanced by writings from other Fathers that set the stage for the collision that happened in the 9th century.

To again use St. Gregory of Nyssa as an example, if the East had taken St. Gregory's speculations on universal salvation and developed those ideas in a vacuum without any correctives from the overall teaching of the Fathers, Christianity in the East would have gone seriously wrong. And the fault would not have lay with St. Gregory nearly so much as with those who uncritically championed his more speculative ideas. Would we find Christians today refusing to call St. Gregory of Nyssa a saint or a Father of the Church had this hypothetical situation happened? Perhaps, but they would be misguided to do so.

The important thing is not how judgment is passed on St. Augustine as a whole -- it is how his individual writings and teachings are evaluated.

I was just reading today in the letters of St. Gregory the Theologian about how he had compiled a collection of the good and useful writings of Origen, entitling the work the "Philokalia." Everyone knew that Origen taught heresy on certain points, but everyone also knew that he was still, in a sense, one of the most influential Fathers of the Church, and could and should be read (with discretion and in the context of Orthodox belief) to great profit. St. Gregory certainly did.

[Graves]

"No less a modern and great ascetic saint of the Orthodox Agrarian,
"St. John the Wonderworker of Shanghai and SF considered St. Augustine to be a saint."

I will only say this once for you and all the rest at FR, just as kosta50 has said once and for all for the everyone at FR what the teaching of the Church is as to the hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit and the hypostatic generation of God the Son.

"St. Augustine of Hippo" is not, never was, and never will be found on the calendar of the Orthodox Church.

[Graves]

I posted that badly. Try again.
"St. John the Wonderworker of Shanghai and SF considered St. Augustine to be a saint."

I will only say this once for you and all the rest at FR, just as kosta50 has said once and for all for the everyone at FR what the teaching of the Church is as to the hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit and the hypostatic generation of God the Son.

"St. Augustine of Hippo" is not, never was, and never will be found on the calendar of the Orthodox Church.

[Claud]

It is inescapable, though, that the writings of St. Augustine contained the germs of ideas that led to several of the key theological incompatibilities between later Latin theology and Orthodox theology

Absolutely. The way you said it makes transparent sense, particularly with regard with the consensus patrum. Augustine is bound to have had a greater influence on the West because he was *of* the West--he is part of our Apostolic inheritance and helped define who we are. But again, we're not uncritical about him. Just to give an example from the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Limbo which touches on the hot button issue of Augustine's idea of original sin. (I apologize for throwing quotes out here; I'm trying to do it in an illustrative rather than polemical way.)

There is no evidence to prove that any Greek or Latin Father before St. Augustine ever taught that original sin of itself involved any severer penalty after death than exclusion from the beatific vision, and this, by the Greek Fathers at least, was always regarded as being strictly supernatural....But this Augustinian teaching was an innovation in its day, and the history of subsequent Catholic speculation on this subject is taken up chiefly with the reaction which has ended in a return to the pre-Augustinian tradition...

St. Thomas was the first great teacher who broke away completely from the Augustinian tradition on this subject, and relying on the principle, derived through the Pseudo-Dionysius from the Greek Fathers, that human nature as such with all its powers and rights was unaffected by the Fall (quod naturalia manent integra), maintained, at least virtually, what the great majority of later Catholic theologians have expressly taught, that the limbus infantium is a place or state of perfect natural happiness....

At the Reformation, Protestants generally, but more especially the Calvinists, in reviving Augustinian teaching, added to its original harshness, and the Jansenists followed on the same lines. This reacted in two ways on Catholic opinion, first by compelling attention to the true historical situation, which the Scholastics had understood very imperfectly, and second by stimulating an all-round opposition to Augustinian severity regarding the effects of original sin; and the immediate result was to set up two Catholic parties, one of whom either rejected St. Thomas to follow the authority of St. Augustine or vainly try to reconcile the two, while the other remained faithful to the Greek Fathers and St. Thomas. The latter party, after a fairly prolonged struggle, has certainly the balance of success on its side.

Would we find Christians today refusing to call St. Gregory of Nyssa a saint or a Father of the Church had this hypothetical situation happened? Perhaps, but they would be misguided to do so.

Precisely. The fault lies with the heretics who twist and pervert Scripture as well as the Fathers. And that's where my whole argument above hinged.

My understanding is you're right about Aquinas being more Aristotelian. And maybe you're right about Augustine's speculations setting the stage for the initial collision--in the sense that (as the article above mentions), the Scholastics and other Westerners knew the historical uniqueness of Augustine "only imperfectly." Perhaps the 500 year old swing in Catholic theology back to the Greek Fathers will aid the cause of reunion.

Oh, and correction happily accepted about the later Orthodox Fathers. I'm still learning!

[Graves]

"There is no evidence to prove that any Greek or Latin Father before St. Augustine ever taught that original sin of itself involved any severer penalty after death than exclusion from the beatific vision, and this, by the Greek Fathers at least, was always regarded as being strictly supernatural....But this Augustinian teaching was an innovation in its day, and the history of subsequent Catholic speculation on this subject is taken up chiefly with the reaction which has ended in a return to the pre-Augustinian tradition."

Now let's apply the above statement from the Catholic Encyclopedia to another problem, Ineffabilis Deus - The Immaculate Conception - Apostolic Constitution issued by Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1854. Without original sin, Ineffabilis Deus makes no sense. If Ineffabilis Deus, an ex cathedra statement, makes no sense, the Pope of Rome is not infallible and Vatican I erred.

[Graves]

FYI, Below is taken from http://www.antiochian.org/1311
What is the difference between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic understandings of "original sin?" Do we Orthodox Christians even believe in "original sin?" (Nov. '01)

In the 6th Decree of the Synod of Jerusalem (AD 1692) the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church affirm that "We believe the first man created by God (Adam) to have fallen in Paradise, when, disregarding the Divine Commandment, he yielded to the deceitful counsel of the serpent (Satan). And hence hereditary sin flowed to his posterity; so that none is born after the flesh who beareth not this burden, and experienceth not the fruits thereof in this present world. But by these fruits and this burden we do not understand (actual) sin, such as impiety, blasphemy, murder, sodomy, adultery, fornication, enmity, and whatsoever else is by our depraved choice committed contrarily to the Divine Will, not from nature; for many both of the Forefathers and of the Prophets, and vast numbers of others, as well as those under the shadow (of the Law), as under the truth (the Gospel), such as the divine Forerunner, and especially the Mother of God the Word, the ever-virgin Mary, experienced not these, or such like faults; but only what the Divine Justice inflicted upon man as punishment for the (original) transgression, such as sweats in labor, afflictions, bodily sicknesses, pains in childbearing, and while on our (earthly) pilgrimage to live a laborious life, and lastly, bodily death." What does all of this mean? Since Adam alone committed the "original sin" (or, more properly, the "ancestral sin"), he alone bears the guilt for that sin. However, the consequences of that first sin -- e.g., sickness, pain, death -- and most especially the allpowerful propensity to sin, is inherited by all of his descendants. Roman Catholics, on the other hand, believe that we are all born sinners, guilty of Adam's sin from our very conception in the womb

[Claud]

Without original sin, Ineffabilis Deus makes no sense

#1. That article I posted does not deny original sin, it just says that it never "involved any severer penalty after death than exclusion from the beatific vision". Ergo, no conflict whatsoever.

#2. And even if there *was* a conflict, that statement of the Patriarchs of the Orthodox Church (1692) you posted above also would make no sense, since it refers to "hereditary sin" *directly*.

#3. Like I'm gonna turn to the Antiochenes of North America to tell me what I believe. I'm sure this is been hashed to death on other threads, but let me just restate as per the Catechism of the Catholic Church 404-405: "And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act. Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants". The statement on the Antiochian website is simply inaccurate.

[Graves]

"'...Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants'. The statement on the Antiochian website is simply inaccurate."

Well, if I understood you correctly, I think you had said there is a growing recognition in the RC universe that Augustine's thoughts on "original sin" were not exactly patristic.

The problem for me, and a whole lot of other Orthodox Christians, with the papal pronouncement of 1854 is that it looks to be rooted in the "original sin" idea, i.e. in Augustinianism. As you probably know, Augustinian ideas just don't fly too well with Orthodox Christians. We look at the doctrine of Immaculate Conception and we see a poor solution to a problem that never existed in the first place.

[Agrarian]

"St. Augustine of Hippo" is not, never was, and never will be found on the calendar of the Orthodox Church.

Like you, I have no desire to continue this discussion at length about whether Augustine of Hippoe is or is not a saint of the Orthodox Church, but the above statement is misleading, particularly for any non-Orthodox (and many Orthodox) who are reading this, since most people are not familiar with how Orthodox calendars "work." I am pinging the entire Orthodox list, not for polemical reasons, but because I am going to include an icon and a couple of links that I think others will find to be of general interest.

I have never examined the individual calendars of each of the local Orthodox Churches to see if St. Augustine is or is not found listed there.

Even if he is not, this is not proof or argument of any kind, since calendars have always reflected a combination of universal veneration of great early saints *and* local/regional saints.

There *is* no one Orthodox calendar and listing of saints. Each local Church's calendar differs in the names on it, the order in which they are listed, and even in some cases, the day on which a given saint is commemorated.

Certain calendars came to have wider influence -- for instance the calendars in circulation in the Church of Jerusalem had great influence in Russia because of the adoption of the Sabaaite Typikon, so one will find a lot of relatively "minor" saints from the Holy Land in the Russian commemorations that are absent in the Greek commemorations, or the ranking of these saints will be higher than would be expected.

Likewise, the calendar of the Great Church in Constantinople came to have wide influence on local calendars under the Ottomans, but after the Greek revolution, New Martyrs of the Turkish Yoke began to be added in the Church of Greece but not on the calendars of Churches still under Muslim domination. The Calendar in Serbia is again different -- look at the Prologue of Ochrid, and one will find different names listed by St. Nikolai (Velimirovich) than are in the Russian or Greek calendars in certain instances.

And throughout all of this, again, there are very few Western saints, not because they are considered not to be saints, but because they were not locally venerated and were unknown in the East. My own patron saint is a "minor" Western saint who I guarantee you is on no Orthodox calendar (although he has been added to the calendar of the ROCOR, as have many pre-Schismatic Western saints.)

If we were to pick a date of, say, 1850, and look at all the calendars of all the local Orthodox Churches at that time, one would find very few Western saints. You would find that there would be many names missing of pre-Schismatic Western saints who are unquestionably saints by any Orthodox standard.

If St. Augustine were to be found to be absent from every single one of those lists of saints (and I really don't know whether he would be or not), all this proves is that he was what every Orthodox poster on this forum already knows him to be: a minor Father (from the perspective of the Church as a whole) who was little venerated in the East. On those occasions when St. Augustine was appealed to by the Latins at Florence, there is no record that St. Mark of Ephesus or the other Orthodox bishops questioned the legitimacy of appealing to him. In the pre-revolutionary Russian treatise on the Council of Florence by Ostroumoff, (an excellent book available in English translation in a reprint by HTM), he is referred to as "St. Augustine." The Orthodox bishops at the Council merely pointed out, correctly, that St. Augustine was ignorant of the Greek language.

I frankly don't care if some Orthodox Christians don't want to venerate St. Augustine or to acknowledge him as being a saint. I don't think it's a burning issue that will affect many of our lives. But at the same time to categorically state that "The Orthodox Church" does not and will never have St. Augustine on the calendar (especially when no one Calendar exists) is very misleading, and a bit brash in the sweeping scope of the claim.

Here, for those who are interested, is a fresco at St. John Lateran dating back to the 6th century -- it is the earliest known icon of St. Augustine, and it was in the home cathedral of the Bishop of Rome. Bishops of Rome who are acknowledged as universal saints of the Orthodox Church served the liturgy under this icon...

Here is a full listing of the Orthodox Bishops of Rome, including all the names of those who would have served the Liturgy under this icon:

Holy Orthodox Popes of Rome

Here is an interesting article on the calendar question written by a priest in the ROCOR with a great love for the saints of the West, that discusses the fact that there is only a collection of local calendars in the Orthodox Church:

Toward a World Calendar