Eastern Orthodoxy - question about infallibilityDo the Do the

[MacroConnectome]

Most Christians believe that God is responsible for the preservation and transmission of truth via the aforementioned ecumenical councils, comprised of all fallible men. Of course, an atheist would never believe that, speaking as a former agnostic…

This I can understand, and it also resonates well with my experience of the beliefs of the various Catholics and Orthodox I’ve met in my life. Constantine on the other hand seems to be saying that the Ecumenical Councils can err (i.e. are not infallible).

If he doesn’t intend to make this distinction, then I’m afraid I don’t understand his point in quibbling with you over the choice of the word ‘infallible’.

 

[joe370]

I find that quite strange. Every Orthodox person I’ve ever met has considered the Ecumenical Councils infallible. The only question that arises is which councils can properly be considered infallible.

Even OrthodoxWiki seems to disagree with you
orthodoxwiki.org/Ecumenical_Councils

Fallible people discerning infallibly within Jesus’ church, due to God’s ineffable guidance. It’s science…Just kidding…LOL…As far as which councils* c*an be trusted in terms of doctrinal truth, I would imagine church affiliation plays a big role. I am a catholic so I embrace 21.

 

[joe370]

This I can understand, and it also resonates well with my experience of the beliefs of the various Catholics and Orthodox I’ve met in my life. Constantine on the other hand seems to be saying that the Ecumenical Councils can err (i.e. are not infallible).

If he doesn’t intend to make this distinction, then I’m afraid I don’t understand his point in quibbling with you over the choice of the word ‘infallible’.

Yeah, that confuses me too…One of the reasons I started this thread…

 

[ConstantineTG]

I find that quite strange. Every Orthodox person I’ve ever met has considered the Ecumenical Councils infallible. The only question that arises is which councils can properly be considered infallible.

Even OrthodoxWiki seems to disagree with you
orthodoxwiki.org/Ecumenical_Councils

Again, how do you consider those councils that were initially called Ecumenical, only later on be condemned as heretical? If Ecumenical Councils are infallible, we cannot condemn them later on. And we should be stuck with heretical doctrine today.

I would say those Orthodox Christians you have spoken about the matter is wrong. One beauty of Orthodoxy I found is that we can disagree about these non-essential things.

 

[joe370]

Again, how do you consider those councils that were initially called Ecumenical, only later on be condemned as heretical? If Ecumenical Councils are infallible, we cannot condemn them later on. And we should be stuck with heretical doctrine today.

I would say those Orthodox Christians you have spoken about the matter is wrong. One beauty of Orthodoxy I found is that we can disagree about these non-essential things.

I respect that brother…

 

[MacroConnectome]

Fallible people discerning infallibly within Jesus’ church, due to God’s ineffable guidance.

Understood, yet both churches I believe still consider their respective church “infallible”, and both regard the dogmatic decrees of their Ecumenical Councils as “infallible”, no matter how fallible the individual people who constitute said councils may be, correct?

As far as which councils* c*an be trusted in terms of doctrinal truth, I would imagine church affiliation plays a big role. I am a catholic so I embrace 21.

Well that’s a more descriptive than prescriptive statement. Of course it’s true that people accept as Ecumenical the councils their churches tell them to accept. How do the respective churches determine Ecumenicity? As I understand it the Roman Catholic Church recognizes only councils that are ratified by the Pope (I may be wrong). I have no idea how the Eastern Orthodox Church recognizes councils as Ecumenical.

 

[MacroConnectome]

Again, how do you consider those councils that were initially called Ecumenical, only later on be condemned as heretical? If Ecumenical Councils are infallible, we cannot condemn them later on. And we should be stuck with heretical doctrine today.

Fair enough. I admittedly know very little about the history of Ecumenical Councils. The OrthodoxWiki page I linked to seems to say that true Ecumenical Councils are indeed infallible and those that are later on rescinded were “Robber Councils”. This of course takes a bit of hindsight bias, so how does the Orthodox Church determine which are legitimate councils and which aren’t? The opening sentences of the Wiki page state that a rather popular opinion in Orthodoxy is that this will depend on how the Council is received by the Orthodox faithful. Do you agree with this?

I would say those Orthodox Christians you have spoken about the matter is wrong. One beauty of Orthodoxy I found is that we can disagree about these non-essential things.

No. I think I simply misunderstood your earlier posts.

 

[Anthony_V]

No. Unless you are claiming that Ecumenical Councils teach something new, rather than clarify what is already believed.

snip

If there is something the Apostles or Church Fathers didn’t know that we know today, then there is something wrong. It means we made stuff up.

I agree with the act of clarifying. That is what I am saying. But beyond that sounds somewhat sounds like a reproach to the mysteriousness of the Church. If I may go so low as to bring Aristotelian metaphysics into this, can the accidental life (theology) of the Church reveal more deeply the Faith (substance)? Can our feeble understanding of the Faith increase when we change our purview, as we progress in metanoia? If there is zero room for any sort of plurality in expression, why do we have theologians? What’s the point of contemplating these divine mysteries and finding ways to understand them as personal encounters with Christ? From an epistemological standpoint, certainly we participate in and grow into union with the Truth that is Christ, rather than possessing Him? Otherwise sounds very aggressive. I hope you understand what I’m saying. I’m having a rather hard time articulating it.

As I pointed out, St. Maximos in the 6th Council used the teachings of St. Athanasius who lived during the 1st and 2nd Councils. St. Maximos’ teaching was accepted because he proved that what he taught was what the Father believed all along. It was never because, “oh, we realize something they didn’t realize.” That is how stuff are invented, which is a no-no to True Apostolic Christian faith.

But certainly, his theology was authentic (and cosmic ). The Faith itself does not change, I agree. But our purview does, can, and should, because we are human, and our Faith can never be exhausted. In my sorry excuse for a spiritual life, God never seems to be above integrating human experience into divine purpose (and in the most odd of ways, I might add). When we advance in our spiritual life, we are held to a different standard than before. We understand things that God had placed on our hearts long ago, though perhaps we did not recognize it or even record it. This does not mean we make it up, as if some type of ex nihilo synthesis method. It means that we have changed, and have come to a new level of seeing, “clarity”.

I’m curious, do Orthodox theologians use the term "treasury of Faith? I’m curious now as to how Orthodox theologians view the nature of theology.

 

[joe370]

MacroConnectome;10728908]Understood, yet both churches I believe still consider their respective church “infallible”, and both regard the dogmatic decrees of their Ecumenical Councils as “infallible”, no matter how fallible the individual people who constitute said councils may be, correct?

Well, the church is not infallible per se, because, by definition, the church is the Body of Christ, comprised of all sinful, fallible leaders and followers, and you are right to imply (I think that was your point) that the autocephalous EOCs and the CC can’t both be right if in fact God continues to preserve and transmit doctrinal truth within His church. Logically speaking there can be only one truth regarding any one doctrine. I sound like the guy on Highlander: “there can be only one.” LOL…

 

[ConstantineTG]

Fair enough. I admittedly know very little about the history of Ecumenical Councils. The OrthodoxWiki page I linked to seems to say that true Ecumenical Councils are indeed infallible and those that are later on rescinded were “Robber Councils”. This of course takes a bit of hindsight bias, so how does the Orthodox Church determine which are legitimate councils and which aren’t? The opening sentences of the Wiki page state that a rather popular opinion in Orthodoxy is that this will depend on how the Council is received by the Orthodox faithful. Do you agree with this?

No. I think I simply misunderstood your earlier posts.

That is the thing. Early in Church History nobody convenes an Ecumenical Council. They convene a council, sometimes a big number of bishops are invited. When a council’s dogmatic statement is accepted by all Churches, it then is labeled as Ecumenical. This doesn’t happen overnight, often another council later on will have to affirm a previous council. Sometimes the definition of “everyone” means everyone who is left in the communion of Churches, so there are those who leave in schism. Their opinion doesn’t matter anymore because they left.

Later, after a few councils were labelled as Ecumenical, various people tried to convene a council dubbed as “Ecumenical” from the beginning. The Emperor tried it, the Pope tried it, the Patriarch of Constantinople tried it. There were cases where it didn’t work, like the Robber Council you mentioned. But that is the danger of calling a council Ecumenical even before you convene it.

As for the acceptance of the faithful, it’s been claimed but I haven’t seen or heard anything about it prior to the Council of Florence. Now I don’t claim to say that I know everything about the councils of the Church at any era, but it seems to me it wasn’t much of a big deal prior to Florence. Either that, or that the schisms produced by the other councils means that the dissenters ended up in schism anyway.

 

[joe370]

MacroConnectome

Well that’s a more descriptive than prescriptive statement. Of course it’s true that people accept as Ecumenical the councils their churches tell them to accept. How do the respective churches determine Ecumenicity? As I understand it the Roman Catholic Church recognizes only councils that are ratified by the Pope (I may be wrong). I have no idea how the Eastern Orthodox Church recognizes councils as Ecumenical.

Yeah, it’s a cooperative and collaborative effort on the part of the person occupying the chair of Peter and the Catholic Ecumenical Council, all of which is guided from up above; at least that is the faith… Fatima changed my life long ago. As a former agnostic I simply could not deny the miraculous nature of the event witnessed by thousands of people, comprised of many doubters (like myself, long ago) but I digress. Check it out if you find the time…are interested…

 

[joe370]

Fair enough. I admittedly know very little about the history of Ecumenical Councils. The OrthodoxWiki page I linked to seems to say that true Ecumenical Councils are indeed infallible and those that are later on rescinded were “Robber Councils”. This of course takes a bit of hindsight bias, so how does the Orthodox Church determine which are legitimate councils and which aren’t? The opening sentences of the Wiki page state that a rather popular opinion in Orthodoxy is that this will depend on how the Council is received by the Orthodox faithful. Do you agree with this?

I have often wondered about that…

 

[Anthony_V]

I would say those Orthodox Christians you have spoken about the matter is wrong. One beauty of Orthodoxy I found is that we can disagree about these non-essential things.

How do we know what is non-essential? How can we know the essence of the Church, as a mystical communion? Sure, one could say “Tradition” and be accurate, but that is not a strictly self-referential element. I can refer to sacred Tradition because it is orthodox. But it is orthodox, not for the sake of being handed down, but by being divinely inspired. If there is a refusal to participate or acknowledge some sort of dynamic divine inspiration, how can we claim anything as divinely inspired apart from popular sovereignty? Even then, the populous would be voting themselves as “the Church”. Rather, the people are brought into the Church as they are brought into a communion with Christ.

 

[IgnatianPhilo]

Infallible might not be the word to describe it, but when it comes to the creeds, standard universal doctrines of the church, these cannot be disputed if one wants to be in the church. The reality and effect of the Sacraments/Mysteries, the theology of the trinity, ressurection, incarnation, the authority of the presbyters, Bishops and Deacons.

 

[dzheremi]

How do we know what is non-essential?

This question seems odd. Orthodoxy is not minimalist like that to begin with. Although I will admit I am new to Orthodoxy (and probably the rest of the people in this thread would not consider my church nor communion Orthodox at all), I have not gotten the sense in my ~4 years of exploring Orthodoxy (I will already be one year old on May 27! ) that it is proper to ask “how can we know what is superfluous?” While I think it is safe to say that you will not go hell if you visit a Coptic Orthodox Church and accidentally cross yourself in the Byzantine fashion or something like that, everything we do still has meaning and it is good to find out what that is, then do it. People who are looking for easy solutions or shortcuts probably would not last long in any particular Orthodox church.

how can we claim anything as divinely inspired apart from popular sovereignty? Even then, the populous would be voting themselves as “the Church”.

I’m not sure I understand this, either. I can’t help but think of the days of St. Athanasius the Apostolic, when the whole world more or less had turned Arian, and he stood against them all and proclaimed the true faith, and suffered greatly for it before being vindicated as a pillar of the faith. Clearly the people are the Church in a very real fashion, but this does not make divine inspiration subject to popular sovereignty. Everything must be tested and confirmed to be in keeping with the apostolic faith received from our fathers, or discarded. Nobody gets to vote on doctrine.

 

[chimo]

Many of the 21 Roman Catholic Councils have been ecumenical, and included members of both Protestant Traditions and Orthodox, although these groups were observers rather than decision makers. So in a way, I guess it does still happens as best as it can. I believe their were 17 Orthodox Churches represented at Vatican II.

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut. It seems the possibility will always be open and if so then the possibility of a council to be opened for all the Churches to come will become more realized. And it will be good to give to the Orthodox more than just an observers testimony. I didn’t realize that the Catholic Church had so many councils. Remarkable! I wish the Orthodox could have done this as well since many of our teachings based on those Ecumenical Councils may be of need of better clarification and if I can say up to date teachings that will lend a hand to keep ours in more in line to the present era. Here I am not referring to established teachings on Jesus or Mary but more on the use for instance on beards or the many Canons that still exist prohibiting for instance certain things we take for granted. Indeed our Canons do need to be swept afresh as Rome has done with hers.

 

[ConstantineTG]

I agree with the act of clarifying. That is what I am saying. But beyond that sounds somewhat sounds like a reproach to the mysteriousness of the Church. If I may go so low as to bring Aristotelian metaphysics into this, can the accidental life (theology) of the Church reveal more deeply the Faith (substance)? Can our feeble understanding of the Faith increase when we change our purview, as we progress in metanoia? If there is zero room for any sort of plurality in expression, why do we have theologians? What’s the point of contemplating these divine mysteries and finding ways to understand them as personal encounters with Christ? From an epistemological standpoint, certainly we participate in and grow into union with the Truth that is Christ, rather than possessing Him? Otherwise sounds very aggressive. I hope you understand what I’m saying. I’m having a rather hard time articulating it.

Of course there is room to articulate the faith better, but not in a way that a new aspect of the faith itself is added. For example, the word “Trinity” is never mentioned in Scripture. But clearly we see in Scripture that God is indeed Trinitarian. Someone from the First Century, say Saint Paul, may not understand if we are to converse with him today, what we mean by Trinitarian. But if we explain it to him, he will say that it is what he believed all along.

Also since we are discussing Saint Paul, note that he never taught on the basis of Christ’s appearance to him. He went to the desert and spent time reading Scripture (Old Testament) and taught according to Scripture. So he himself taught no new doctrine, but rather he revealed that what is in Scripture is Jesus Christ.

But certainly, his theology was authentic (and cosmic ). The Faith itself does not change, I agree. But our purview does, can, and should, because we are human, and our Faith can never be exhausted. In my sorry excuse for a spiritual life, God never seems to be above integrating human experience into divine purpose (and in the most odd of ways, I might add). When we advance in our spiritual life, we are held to a different standard than before. We understand things that God had placed on our hearts long ago, though perhaps we did not recognize it or even record it. This does not mean we make it up, as if some type of ex nihilo synthesis method. It means that we have changed, and have come to a new level of seeing, “clarity”.

No, we do not believe that there are things that was never understood in the past but is understood today. That is development of doctrine and is heretical. We may have a different understanding of the same thing, but we can never understand something that is completely not understood by our fathers. How can the faith be passed by tradition, if the one who is passing it does not even know about it? And how can the one receiving it know more than what he is taught? We are all in agreement as part of our faith that no new revelation is happening. So why would we know more today than those in the past? They have as much revelation as we do right now.

I’m curious, do Orthodox theologians use the term "treasury of Faith? I’m curious now as to how Orthodox theologians view the nature of theology.

Here is the Orthodox view the nature of theology:

He who prays is a theologian. He who is truly a theologian, prays.

 

[ConstantineTG]

How do we know what is non-essential?

If it is not in Scripture, if it was never part of the Revelation handed down to us by Tradition, then it is not essential.

How can we know the essence of the Church, as a mystical communion? Sure, one could say “Tradition” and be accurate, but that is not a strictly self-referential element. I can refer to sacred Tradition because it is orthodox. But it is orthodox, not for the sake of being handed down, but by being divinely inspired. If there is a refusal to participate or acknowledge some sort of dynamic divine inspiration, how can we claim anything as divinely inspired apart from popular sovereignty? Even then, the populous would be voting themselves as “the Church”. Rather, the people are brought into the Church as they are brought into a communion with Christ.

This is why Christ chose 12 men rather than just one man who would then reign supreme over others whom he himself can choose and appoint by divine mandate. Conciliarity produces a consensus. If the Holy Spirit is within the Church, then everyone will profess the same truth. Evil will not profess the same lie, because the devil is about chaos. This is why it is important that no Church is ever above another except in ecclesiastical administration, that is no Church ever has the authority to push doctrine over another, because if one Church can dominate another or many others in terms of doctrine, how do we know that this one Church is always impeccable?

 

[ConstantineTG]

Infallible might not be the word to describe it, but when it comes to the creeds, standard universal doctrines of the church, these cannot be disputed if one wants to be in the church. The reality and effect of the Sacraments/Mysteries, the theology of the trinity, ressurection, incarnation, the authority of the presbyters, Bishops and Deacons.

It is doctrine. Or perhaps “truth” would be another way to describe it. Infallible comes with authority to pronounce what is truth and what isn’t. That was Christ when He taught on earth.

 

[Anthony_V]

This question seems odd. Orthodoxy is not minimalist like that to begin with.

What about dogmas? Dogmas aren’t minimalist, but they are essential. They are clarifications of the sacred mystery of the Church which passes down, but they still remain nevertheless mysteries.

I was responding to Constantine’s quote below (see italics):

Again, how do you consider those councils that were initially called Ecumenical, only later on be condemned as heretical? If Ecumenical Councils are infallible, we cannot condemn them later on. And we should be stuck with heretical doctrine today.

I would say those Orthodox Christians you have spoken about the matter is wrong. One beauty of Orthodoxy I found is that we can disagree about these non-essential things.

There is presupposition that the essentials are pre-known. And yet Tradition, as a thing dumbly passed from one person to another, is not self-referential like that. I can’t say it’s essential because it’s Tradition, and it’s Tradition because it’s essential. First of all, that’s circular logic (although it is true, I suppose technically). Second, I find that to be a reproach to the mysteriousness of the Church and our salvation.

If you replace “I can never fathom” with “It doesn’t matter”, that is no mystery. Now if we could fathom, but we can’t come to a conclusion simply on the basis that we can’t hold a darned Ecumenical Council, that makes it seem like the dynamics of the Church can be destroyed simply by the Church’s inability to communicate with herself. That cries “false” to me, because the Church feeds on her same Holy Communion every day. There can’t be a delineation between Tradition and the Church because the Church is sacred Tradition; both then, now, and in the future. Doctrinal development is her introspection, her “examination of conscience”, to use the words of Henri De Lubac.

I’m not sure I understand this, either. I can’t help but think of the days of St. Athanasius the Apostolic, when the whole world more or less had turned Arian, and he stood against them all and proclaimed the true faith, and suffered greatly for it before being vindicated as a pillar of the faith. Clearly the people are the Church in a very real fashion, but this does not make divine inspiration subject to popular sovereignty. Everything must be tested and confirmed to be in keeping with the apostolic faith received from our fathers, or discarded. Nobody gets to vote on doctrine.

Yes, these things that I was saying were to prove the point you are bringing up