Posted on 07/22/2007 7:40:38 PM PDT by xzins
Wednesday, 11 July 2007
Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.
The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.
It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.
One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.
First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.
The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.
The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.
All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.
Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.
How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.
Wow, that's interesting...
HELL When giving in this answer (June 14th), Bessarion explained the difference of the Greek and Latin doctrine on this subject. The Latins, he said, allow that now, and until the day of the last judgment, departed souls are purified by fire, and are thus liberated from their sins; so that, he who has sinned the most will be a longer time undergoing purification, whereas he whose sins are less will be absolved the sooner, with the aid of the Church; but in the future life they allow the eternal, and not the purgatorial fire. Thus the Latins receive both the temporal and the eternal fire, and call the first the purgatorial fire. On the other hand, the Greeks teach of one eternal fire alone, understanding that the temporal punishment of sinful souls consists in that they for a time depart into a place of darkness and sorrow, are punished by being deprived of the Divine light, and are purified—that is, liberated from this place of darkness and woe—by means of prayers, the Holy Eucharist, and deeds of charity, and not by fire. The Greeks also believe, that until the union of the souls to the bodies, as the souls of sinners do not suffer full punishment, so also those of the saints do not enjoy entire bliss. But the Latins, agreeing with the Greeks in the first point, do not allow the last one, affirming that the souls of saints have already received their full heavenly reward. The Orthodox Response to the Latin Doctrine of Purgatory
I would also call kosta attention to the Orthodox position. I believe Dr. Eckleburg stated that the Orthodox do not believe in hell. For all practical purposes, she is correct. The Orthodox look at hell as simply a place people go to be refined for heaven. Hence, presumably no one really stays in hell. This is somewhat similar to the Catholic view of purgatory but in the Catholic view, unlike the Orthodox view, there are some who never leave.
Amen. Thanks. :)
I am not theologically adroit enough to figure out the difference. All I know is that God "stooped" to our level, even below "our" level by accepting all of our trials and hardships with the exception of sin. I think this is part of our ('apostolics') idea of who God is. We analogously consider Him as acting as we would with our wives or the ones we love. We sometimes ALSO "condescend to" or "in front of" or whatever.
Those who have teenagers will know EXACTLY what I am talking about!!!
Thanks for the explanation on "apostolics". I didn't think YOU meant it pejoratively.
He doesn't inspire here with Divine inerrancy, however, where do you think the knowledge comes from anyway?
I understand your desire to point that out, but we already know that EVERY good gift comes from above. There is certainly no attempt to brag about something that was given to us. The point is that God condescends to our level of human knowledge regarding science, for example.
I guess you could compare it to "baby talk" that we conduct with a two-year old. We want to communicate with the child our love and affection, but we want to be understood. Thus, we don't overanalyze and speak philosophically.
Clearly there was first a plan, and parts of it were later recorded in scriptures. Everything was already ordained before any words ever appeared on a page.
There seems to be a "school of thought" among some Protesants that the Scriptures dictate to God what must be done. Thus, the Incarnation MUST have happened. Rather than a free-will choice to show His immense love for mankind, the Incarnation is a sterile part of the "PLAN" that is executed grudgingly. Those who think this way miss out on the "WHY" God became man.
Regards
On original or inherited sin, t’s a difference in “guilt”. The disease model is used in the West as well as the East. Both West and East teach Hell as a state rather than a “place”.
I’ll let Kosta address your Purgatory=Hell, if he wishes.
Regardless, we are one church.
Must I "council" you again on God and time? :-) You are putting God on a timeline again.
Remember, God is infinite. In infinity, there is no difference between "omnipotence" and "omniscience". Such things are immeasurable. There is no 'lesser' or 'greater' or focusing on one aspect over another in God.
Now to rattle your pickle...
Every point on an infinite line is the same point! Think about it.
I think this short lesson on "infinity" can help us to understand how God can allow Man's Free Will and His Sovereignty to co-exist without one overriding the other...
Nicholas of Cusa wrote some interesting stuff on comparing God and infinity to Geometry...
Regards
Hmmm...that's not what NewAdvent teaches.
Also the Fathers, from the very earliest times, are unanimous in teaching that the wicked will be punished after death. And in proof of their doctrine they appeal both to Scripture and to reason (cf. Ignatius, "Ad Eph.", v, 16; "Martyrium s. Polycarpi", ii, n, 3; xi, n.2; Justin, "Apol.", II, n. 8 in P.G., VI, 458; Athenagoras, "De resurr. mort.", c. xix, in P.G., VI, 1011; Irenaeus, "Adv. haer.", V, xxvii, n. 2 in P.G. VII, 1196; Tertullian, "Adv. Marc.", I, c. xxvi, in P.L., IV, 277). For citations from this patristic teaching see Atzberger, "Gesh. der christl. Eschatologie innerhalb der vornicanischen Zeit" (Freiburg, 1896); Petavius, "De Angelis", III, iv sqq.
The Church professes her faith in the Athanasian Creed: "They that have done good shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil into everlasting fire" (Denzinger, "Enchiridion", 10th ed., 1908, n.40). The Church has repeatedly defined this truth, e.g. in the profession of faith made in the Second Council of Lyons (Denx., n. 464) and in the Decree of Union in the Council of Florence (Denz., N. 693): "the souls of those who depart in mortal sin, or only in original sin, go down immediately into hell, to be visited, however, with unequal punishments" (poenis disparibus). New Advent-Hell
Are you suggesting that "Man's Free Will" (notice the Capital letters) is on a par equal to "His Sovereignty"? (also in Capital letters)
The idea of “place” connotes corporeal, specific location in time and space. I don’t think even Protestants theologians would agree with this attributes for Hell. So any use of “place” in describing Hell would have involve differences.
As far back as St. Acquinas:
“Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us.” [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1]
And as recent as Pope John Paul II:
“In a theological sense however, hell is something else: it is the ultimate consequence of sin itself, which turns against the person who committed it. It is the state of those who definitively reject the Father’s mercy, even at the last moment of their life...
“Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’”
Sorry, you should have been pinged to 8,008 and above which was continuation off a post of yours.
Apologies...
***Which Calvinist on this forum do you think is not preaching loudly enough? 8~)***
Must be me. I’ll try to use all caps from now on.
IS THIS BETTER? :>)
It is a hard concept.
FWIW, I have promised myself to be nicer to Protestants as it pains me that we are so far apart.
Second,
I believe Dr. Eckleburg stated that the Orthodox do not believe in hell. For all practical purposes, she is correct
Regrettably, she is not.
The Orthodox look at hell as simply a place people go to be refined for heaven. Hence, presumably no one really stays in hell
That is not correct either. The Orthodox position is very clear: when a person dies, his soul is separated from his body. At that point, the soul is judged, for it is "appointed for man to die once and then the judgment." [Heb 9:27] At that point, also the soul knows if it is destined to hell or heaven. But the souls will not be in either until it is reunited with the body at the Second Coming.
The Greeks also believe, that until the union of the souls to the bodies, as the souls of sinners do not suffer full punishment, so also those of the saints do not enjoy entire bliss
That is strange, but coming from Bessarion, perhaps not so. A little historical background explains why:
As his return to Greece, he found himself bitterly resented for his attachment to the minority party that saw no difficulty in a reconciliation of the two churches. At the Council of Florence, held in Ferrarra and then Florence, Bessarion supported the Roman church and gained the favour of Pope Eugene IV, who invested him with the rank of cardinal at a consistory of 18 December 1439. (Wikipedia)
The truth is the Orthodox very much believe that the saints (Mary, and others) are in heaven. We do not believe that all saved are yet, because they have died with some unrepentant sin. And neither are the unrepentant in hell yet.
It was St. Gregory of Nyssa, a student of Origen, who for a while taught false doctrine of universal salvation. But the Orthodox Church never accepted such a doctrine and +Gregory of Nyssa stopped teaching it at some point.
Other than that, it's good that you are consulting Orthodoxinfo.com, just be careful not to jump to any conclusions based on the writings of any isolated bishop.
The word infinity comes from the Latin infinitas or "unboundedness."
And in mathematics, infinity is an unbounded quantity that is greater than every real number.
Eternity – or infinite time – is time without end, without boundary. Time counts, but without end.
Time is geometric. In our perceptible universe, there are four dimensions, three of space and one of time. But there may likely be additional dimensions, either spatial or temporal.
Moreover, space/time is part of the Creation and not a property of the Creator.
Therefore, the term “timeless” would be more appropriate in meditating on God the Creator.
Or as a physicist around here grudgingly admitted after observing that there had to be a beginning of real space and real time for there to be any causality at all - “existence exists” LOL!
In Nicholas of Cusa's day most everyone believed in a steady state universe. Indeed, the insight that there was a real beginning of space and time came from the measurement of cosmic microwave background radiation in the 1960's. It was the most theological statement ever to come out of science.
A Name of God is I AM.
His Names are also Alpha and Omega. Jesus Christ is the First Cause and the Final Cause of "all that there is."
Was anything or anyone, before Christ, a firstborn creature?
“We’ve been through the Jacob and Esau saga on this thread. My footnotes explain about how the terms is less loved (ie less gifted) rather than hate. My Bible contains all of Scripture, not just the portion that made it past the Reformationist Scriptural Visigoths’ loving attention.”
To be hated by God means you are less gifted? That’s the wonkiest biblical reinvention of scripture I have heard in a very long time.
God ‘hated’ Esau to showcase His sovereignty and His providence. To emphasize that it is His will that be done. That he is the master of salvation. To think of God as anything less would rob Him of his being God. In the fall all men were condemned. It is according to the will of God that some are called out of darkness into light. Jacob was called Esau was not; both deserved hell. Both would have willingly gone apart from the active will of God to save.
To think of God’s calling is to be humbled, as we must certainly know we are in and of ourselves not deserving of His love towards us? Do we not cling to Christ in loving thankfulness for making us clean and presentable by His work on the cross? Can there ever be doubt that no work we do is ever free of some element of self and therefor self serving? Esau served himself and his flesh when he traded his birthright, revealing his true nature as a lover of self only. As all unbelievers he was at enmity with God.
No, you know me better than that, I hope! I capitalized them so that one could see that I was comparing the two. God does not squelch one in favor of the other. Since Scriptures hold to the existence of BOTH, we should not squelch one because WE do not understand how GOD reconciles the two.
Regards
Where in the Bible does it say that man has any free will at all, much less some kind of inviolate Free Will that God refuses to interfere with?
We only understand enough to know we don't understand!
Nicholas of Cusa's writing I refered to is titled "Learned Ignorance". We reach the highest form of wisdom when we realize we don't understand God... I believe that the Eastern Christians here understand this IDEA better than us Western "rationalists".
Regards
Eternity – or infinite time – is time without end, without boundary. Time counts, but without end.
There are no "real numbers" in infinity, because every "number" has the same value. Thus, there is unity in infinity. Time, also, has little value in infinity, because time is a measure of change and there is no change in infinity. All points are the same.
That's enough thinking for the day. Thanks for giving me a headache!
Regards
I'm a little surprise if I understand you correctly. Are you saying that hell is not a real place? I think the church fathers and many Protestants, as well as the scriptures, are very clear that hell is indeed a place. Where it is located is besides the point. We certainly do not know all the mysteries of the universe. It could be at the end of a Black Hole or right beneath our feet in another dimension. However, the teachings are clear that hell is a place just as heaven is a place.
I cannot help what John Paul might have thought. If he did not believe it to be a place then he should have spent a bit more time in the scriptures and a little less time in philosophy classes. I have read where some modern theologian believe that hell is simply being separated from God. Well, the scriptures give a little bit more detail about hell and it is far from being separated from God.
Taking off a Calvinist/Protestant hat and going out on one of my HarleyD personal limbs, I would say that God is in hell just as much as He is in heaven. Hell can't be a separation from God since God, by definition, is everywhere. Some say that God is in hell but people cannot see Him as oppose to Him being seen in heaven. This would be similar to the darkness of Egypt in the Old Testament where people grope but couldn't move while there was light in Goshen. God continued to exist in both places. This might be a bit closer to the truth except add the fire, brimstone, the worms eating your flesh; well you get the picture. But wherever, and whatever, hell is, God must surely exist there just as He exists in heaven but perhaps in a different way.
I know Catholics are trying to change the definition of hell to be more consistent with the Orthodox. This is just the same as changing the meaning of the atonement, original sin, and other things. Trouble is all those pesky creeds and early writings. All one can is hope nobody takes them seriously.
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