[Blogger]

To you comments, I only ask a question - recognizing you come at this from the Orthodox point of view and not the Protestant point of view. Since the Sacraments appear to be prime in what you espouse, how faithful is one being to the sacraments when one denies by nearly ever action and proclamation the Lord that those Sacraments supposedly represent? I mean, I could go to a Muslim and baptize him in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit, but because his worldview is against the Biblical Christ that baptism has no validity.

The church leadership from the Popes through the cardinals and bishops under the cardinals was loaded with anti-Christian Aristocrats. Christ was a means to power rather than the true God to be obeyed. The formalities of a sacrament didn't make them any less anti-Christian when their entire worldview was centered upon hedonism.

There were some pious devotees to Christianity. They were the "pockets" I spoke of. But when Luther could go to Rome and find brothels just for the clergy - uh, Houston, there is a problem.

Though I personally do not believe in sacramentalism (I believe Baptism and Lord's Supper were ordinances not sacraments), trying to look at it from an Orthodox and Catholic point of view, I would think a "faith that works" in the Lord of the Sacrament would be of great importance in the validity of the Sacrament. I am aware of what the Donatists argued and that is not exactly what I am arguing. I am not arguing about the efficacy of the sacrament on the church member based upon the worldliness of the priest; rather, I am wondering if one has a church hierarchy which is largely hedonistic in practice and a people who really don't know the difference other than that they don't like the corruption but really have no epistemological basis by which to confront the hedonism - how can that still be considered to be a church? How can the sacraments administered be considered to have efficacy? How can the apostolic succession be considered unbroken?

The only way it can is through the priesthood of all believers and a spiritual succession in the hearts and lives of those individuals based upon the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the faithfulness to God's Word.

Men's institutional hierarchy may fail. But the institution is not the church. The church is the people who are the sheep of the shepherd be they from Roman, Orthodox, or Protestant streams.

[Quix]

Men's institutional hierarchy may fail. But the institution is not the church. The church is the people who are the sheep of the shepherd be they from Roman, Orthodox, or Protestant streams.
= = =

INDEED.

There are many great points made above . . . maybe I shall get back to them.

Am trying to lay low more today--in the hopes of getting better again. Am better now than was last night, PTL.

But I may have more energy for pontificating later.

Many good reads above. Thanks, all.

[Mad Dawg]

If I understand what you are saying, your argument puts the survival or continuation of the Church qua Church on the works and faithfulness of men.

We think the Church depends on the works and faithfulness of God. That might be an important difference.

[Kolokotronis]

"How can the sacraments administered be considered to have efficacy?"

Its really simple. It is the Holy Spirit Who consecrates the bread and the wine, not the priest. Indeed that is so in all the sacraments of The Church. The priest, whether he be a virtual devil or the greatest of saints, is never more than the "minister" of the service, though he stands "in the place of Christ", ex opere operato as the Latins say. The sinfulness of the priest is taken as a given, Blogger, in both the Latin and the Orthodox Churches. +John Chrysostomos, a very, very great saint and compared to the likes of me, a very holy man who ultimately died for The Faith in exile, said this:

"I believe and confess, Lord, that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.

And a bit later, this:

"How shall I, who am unworthy, enter into the splendor of Your saints? If I dare to enter into the bridal chamber, my clothing will accuse me, since it is not a wedding garment; and being bound up, I shall be cast out by the angels. In Your love, Lord, cleanse my soul and save me." The worthiness of priests and hierarchs has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any sacrament or with the apostolic succession. Are such men a scandal to the faithful? Yes. Do they and did they deserve to be removed? Yes. Are some of them likely damned? Absolutely! Remember what +John Chrysostomos reminded his brother hierarchs about the pavement of hell! But in fact, none of these evil men are The Church, though the ecclesiology of the Latin Church at that time certainly made it look that way. The remedy though was not to reject The Church and the sacraments which we to this day and most of the original reformers in the beginning, believe are established for our theosis. In so doing, the reformers fell to the same curse that those evil hierarchs had, pride.