Posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:03 PM PST by HarleyD
"What makes something "concensus patrum"? "
I don't know about kosta, but I pretty much just ask Kolokotronis -- if he says it's the consensus patrum, it probably is. (Deferral to elders and all that sort of thing.) :-)
"The king, then, is angered with a burning anger against the unmerciful servant, and delivers him to the tormentors -- the evil spirits (for the evil spirits are the real tormentors of mankind). To whom would he who had, from lack of compassion, fallen away from God, and whom God had called evil, otherwise be able to turn -- to whom if not the greatest bringer of evil, the devil? Why does it say: "till he should pay all that was due to him"? In order to show that he was given over to eternal torment.
First and foremost, it is unthinkable that a man with such a debt can ever pay it off; and secondly, because God does not pronounce such a final condemnation on a man in this life, but only after death, when there is no more repentance nor any possibility of paying off the sins committed on earth... If we do not forgive our brother, and we do not do this from our hearts, with compassion and love, then God, the Creator of both us and our brother, will act with us as the king did with the unmerciful servant. We shall be given over to the tormentors, the evil spirits, who will torment us eternally in the kingdom of darkness, where there is ceaseless wailing and gnashing of teeth. Were it not so, would the Lord Jesus have told us? He said this not only in the context of this parable of the unmerciful servant but also on a number of other occasions. "With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."
Is this not the same teaching, without ambiguity or reserve? Did the Lord not place this selfsame teaching in the greatest prayer that he gave us, the Lord's Prayer: "And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.""
Now St. Gregory of Nyssa does say this: "...the indebted man was delivered to the tormentors until he should pay the whole debt; and that means nothing else than paying in the coin of torment the inevitable recompense, the recompense, I mean, that consists in taking the share of pain incurred during his lifetime, when he inconsiderately chose mere pleasure, undiluted with its opposite; so that having put off from him all that foreign growth which sin is, and discarded the shame of any debts, he might stand in liberty and fearlessness.
But this seems to be in one of his passages where he speculates on the ultimate destruction of all evil -- "But He that becomes "all" things will be "in all" things too; and herein it appears to me that Scripture teaches the complete annihilation of evil. If, that is, God will be "in all" existing things, evil; plainly, will not then be amongst them; for if any one was to assume that it did exist then, how will the belief that God will be "in all" be kept intact? The excepting of that one thing, evil, mars the comprehensiveness of the term "all." But He that will be "in all" will never be in that which does not exist."
If I'm reading that passage correctly, and I'd like to think I am, then St. Gregory's ideas on this score are tied to his ideas about all being eventually saved -- even Satan and his angels. This is a speculation of St. Gregory that was firmly rejected by the Orthodox Church.
"I have the feeling that you probably don't care for Alexander Schmemann, but when I read his For the Life of the World twenty-five years ago, I was struck how familiar his writing seemed to me."
Now *where* would you have gotten the idea that old Fr. Alex is someone that guys like K and me don't care for? :-)
Part of his familiarity to you probably came from the fact that Fr. Alexander hung out with Anglicans a lot -- unfortunately, it was not always with the good kind...
That said, the passage you quote is Fr. S in one of his more lucid moments...
There is no redemption for the fallen angels. The nature of their creation and fall is distinctly different from ours.
LOL!
"Your Saint Gregory's exposition appears to have fallen into the Roman doctrine of purgatory."
Not really. The waters with St. Gregory on the afterlife run very deep, and taken in context of his entire body of writing are not anything at all like purgatory. He was so convinced by the extremely merciful nature of God that he couldn't imagine that an all-powerful and all-merciful God wouldn't have it in his plan and power to convert, save, and forgive all men and even the very demons and Lucifer himself at some point in the afterlife.
He asked, in essence, how can God "be all in all" (I Cor), if evil still exists? Ergo, there must eventually come a time when evil will no longer exist -- for God cannot be in evil. The mainstream Orthodox view is that God *will* be all in all -- that the fires of hell are, in reality the unshielded, so to speak, love of God. For those whose hearts have been conformed to him, it will be received as love and bliss. For those whose hearts are set against him, the love of God will be "like burning coals heaped on their heads." The Prophet David writes "If I go up into heaven, Thou art there; if I go down into hades, Thou art present there."
Like the rain falling on the just and the unjust, the love of God shines on all -- as in a glass darkly now, but directly and "face to face" in the next life. We must be ready...
The general principle -- that God is not the author of evil and that he is pure love and desires only good -- is Orthodox. The extremity to which he took it in a couple of his speculative writings is not Orthodox at all and was condemned by the Church -- for there is simply no way around the teachings of the Scripture that indicate that some men will go (according to us -- by their own choice -- and this story from Scripture is an example of that) to hell and remain there for eternity.
We cannot go beyond that teaching of Scripture and speculate otherwise as to what might happen in the next life. Purgatory is different. The only people in purgatory are people headed for heaven who need to be purified by "the torturers" -- i.e. the flames of purgatory -- before they enter heaven. Catholic doctrine agrees with Orthodox doctrine that a man's ultimate eternal destination is fixed at the time of death -- heaven or hell. St. Gregory seems to have speculated that the fires of hell were going to be temporary.
One of those Anglicans he hung out with was Robert Morse who broke with the Episcopal Church in the 1970s to start a continuing Anglican church. Just before he died, Schmemann encouraged Morse to stabalize what he was doing and then grow. Morse took the advice. The Anglican Province of Christ the King is doing quite well these days.
I only encountered Schmemann's work shortly after he died. The familiarity is with the words he writes, not who he hung out with. Archbishop Morse is very Eastern Orthodox in much of his theology. That isn't Schmemanns' influence but a shared vision.
The one of the major things that separates Anglicans from Catholics and Orthodox is the view of the church. Both Roman Catholics and Orthodox claim to be the true church. The catholic position in Anglicanism is that we are not the true church, only a part of it.
"There is no redemption for the fallen angels. The nature of their creation and fall is distinctly different from ours."
Yes. We are given this one life for repentance -- but in eternity there is no more repentance possible, just as there is no repentance possible in that eternity in which the demons exist.
Not because God has cruelly said "sorry, boys, it's too late -- had your chance," but rather because we will have shaped our souls in this life in such a way that *we* will be incapable of repentance -- not that God will be incapable of love and forgiveness.
I wasn't aware of the Schmemann - Morse connection. My Orthodox godfather was, for a time in the DCK, and even attended their seminary for a time before finding himself drawn to Orthodoxy. He always spoke highly of Abp. Morse.
To make it more simple and explicit, it seems that St. Gregory of Nyssa was not talking about any kind of purifying fires or experience of an intermediate state such as purgatory. He is talking about the actual fires of hell itself -- that in hell man will be cleansed of his sins eventually.
Again, the Orthodox Church soundly rejected this aspect of St. Gregory's writings -- but still considers him to be a saint because of his great holiness of life and general soundness of orthodoxy of belief. Just as we reject certain writings or emphases of St. Augustine, St. Cyprian of Carthage, and St. Jerome -- but still consider them to be saints. Just because a father departs from the consensus patrum on a point -- even a serious point -- does not mean that he did not achieve theosis/salvation.
Amen.
From the following link:
"The Holy Spirit has taught us nothing but what it behooves us to know...Let this then be our sacred rule, to seek to know nothing concerning it, except what Scripture teaches us; when the Lord closes his holy mouth, let us also stop the way, that we may go no further."
He also said -- "Election, indeed, is prior to faith, but it is learned by faith."
Isn't that a great sentence?
"Doctrinal development" is nothing more than a majority of old guys sitting around concurring on a tiny snippet of uninspired text. Majority wins. It becomes unchanging doctrine until the next bunch of old guys come alone and see something else. Then they have to say that the first bunch of old guys "...weren't really wrong but what they meant to say was...".
Sometimes this is innocent error. Augustine talks about how the early church was confused by baptism. At first they thought once you were baptized, you had to live a perfect life. Ten seconds after the first baptism proved them wrong. Then they though they should wait until they were close to death to be baptized, that would guarantee living a perfect life. Trouble was with this approach was that people sometimes died before they could be baptized (not a pleasant thought and probably a reason Augustine never spoke out about purgatory). But what was worst sometimes people recovered and then that meant they had to live a perfect life!!! The Church finally concluded that baptism was meant as a sign.
However, I'm not sure if all errors introduced is innocent. The Catholic Church in the 1200s was desperate for money and people were leaving. What better way to keep people around than to decree the only way to receive God's grace is through the Eucharist given directly to you by a priest, confessions had to be directly through a priest and salvation was only through the Church? This certainly would make the superstitious people in the Middle Ages go to Church now wouldn't it? In 1400, in need of cash, a fund raiser was started through indulgence.
Error upon error.
The Pope issue a decree from the chair of Peter that if you pay for your indulgences it was automatic release from purgatory; signed and sealed by Pope Leo himself, unbreakable. About a hundred years later the Catholic Church reversed itself and said the practice was wrong and those decrees meaningless. Once again, signed and sealed from the "infallible" chair of Peter. After a decree has been issued from the chair which is suppose to be infallible and binding??? How could this be???
The inspired word of God says nothing about purgatory, indulgences, the worship of Mary, venerating saints, on and on and on. These are all fantasies dreamed up by some who had too much time on their hands-voted on and properly recorded by the majority. It doesn't matter if the majority was wrong or what the intent was for issuing a decree.
I'm not going to go back through four months of material but simply reiterate what I stated before; I doubt if any of us would believe for a moment that while John was sitting on the island of Patmos, he was asking for Mary's intercession or praying to Peter or Paul for strength. Yet this is what the Church teaches.
"I appreciate what you're trying to communicate here. But scripture does not offer much support for such practices being superior. There is no established order of worship prescribed other than the preaching and expounding of scripture and the singing of psalms and hymns."
You are of course correct. However, the Divine Liturgies of Orthodoxy, and to an extent the Latin Rite Mass, are pretty much the same form of worship used by The Church when the canon of the NT was established so it occurs to me that the fact that the NT doesn't give us the rubrics of Christian worship likely didn't concern The Church. As a matter of fact, the Liturgy is rather like what we know of Jewish Temple ceremonies. If you take a look at the order of the Liturgy online, you'll see that it is a combination of the Last Supper and precisely the psalm singing and scripture reading you refer to.
"It seems to me that our faith can be well and truly practiced in many languages and there is considerable variety allowed within the orthodox (small-O) Christian faith."
I agree at least about the language. Orthodoxy has always worshipped in the language of the people, though it may have been a "liturgical language" like Slavonic. In our Greek Orthodox parish, the majority of the Liturgy is chanted in English because that is the common language of the community.
"Believing that the angels are singing with you is a sweet notion but not supported in scripture."
If the Liturgy were simply a group of people saying prayers and singing hymns and play acting out the Last Supper (I don't know how else to put it), an event which occurs in time, I would agree with you, but The Church does not believe that. I will grant you, however, that if a Christian is cut off from the beliefs of The Church concerning what is going on in the central act of the Lturgy, namely the Eucharist, The Church's beliefs on many things will seem to be foolishness.
"After all, the New Testament was not written in Hebrew (or Latin!) and does have many indications that the apostles were flexible in adapting to varying cultures and to Greek and Roman culture."
Which of course would explain why it was written pretty much totally in Greek, though that was for practical evangelizing reasons, my own conceit that Greek is God's own language to the contrary notwithstanding! :)
"It's a constant example to us lest we become too comfortable in our own little sandboxes. I think God does not like us to be too comfortable in familiar ritual."
Sounds vaguely Episcopalian.
"I have the feeling that you probably don't care for Alexander Schmemann,...."
You've got that right. Some time ago, Schmemann was particularly favored by those Orthodox in the West, even a few hierarchs, who seemed compelled to "pass for white". I'll go out on a limb here and opine that that the overwhelming majority of Orthodox Christians, in the West and elsewhere. who have read him aren't at all taken with him anymore.
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