EO or RC. How can a Protestant decide?

[pocohombre]

I hate to say, but there’s a grain of truth to pocohombre’s objections. Just think back to several weeks ago when I gave fellow Catholics an opportunity to convince me that Ineffabilis Deus was an ex cathedra statement – the response wasn’t a logical argument, just a claim that there must be something wrong with my brain (that’s not an exact quote ) if I don’t agree that it was ex cathedra.

The thread about the fact that we Melkites believe there have been 7 ecumenical councils (not 21 like the majority of LC believe) wasn’t much better.

Thank you .Wasn’t gonna respond to his reply and hoped others would see my point ( and possibly his evasion) . Thanks. Your post is encouraging.

 

[pocohombre]

The unity should be with what the early Church believed.

Amen, and so long as it was correct.

And the writings of the early Church fathers frequently say things that only a Catholic would ever say

.Depends on what you consider “early” . I find the first hundred years of their writings to be more than just Catholic", and certainly not “only”, but Universal, befitting to most denominations.

 

[pocohombre]

If we start at the beginning, i.e., scripture, then we do indeed have evidence for the papacy (the first three centuries also attest that the papacy in Rome held a primacy, to what degree is what Catholics and Orthodox quibble about). And as Catholics we believe in development of doctrine, so there’s no issue with, "most scholars would say the papacy developed ".

p.s. We have a high petrine view of the primacy while the Orthodox view of primacy varies, i.e., it could be a primacy of honour and for some a primacy with real privileges.

Yes, agreed that you have evidences, just that there are contrary evidences also. Yes, there is a primacy of “honor”, first amongst equals. That is not a minor matter to go from that to supreme head and infallible bishop .

 

[livingwordunity]

Yes, the words “Catholic” and “Orthodox” were used to describe the faith, but the Church itself did have a name, i.e., I can hardly imagine a Church as large and universal as she was without some name by which we could identify her.

In around 107AD, St. Ignatius of Antioch said, “there is the Catholic Church”. So, my question is can someone of the Eastern Orthodox faith produce a quote of an early Church father (it can’t be near or after the time of the schism) saying “there is the Orthodox Church”? Also, in the Creed, the four marks of the Church are “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic”. The creed doesn’t describe the four marks of the Church as “one, holy, orthodox, and apostolic”.

 

[dzheremi]

Seeing as you just produced it yourself, that’s not much of a challenge.

 

[livingwordunity]

In around 107AD, St. Ignatius of Antioch said, “there is the Catholic Church”. So, my question is can someone of the Eastern Orthodox faith produce a quote of an early Church father (it can’t be near or after the time of the schism) saying “there is the Orthodox Church”? Also, in the Creed, the four marks of the Church are “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic”. The creed doesn’t describe the four marks of the Church as “one, holy, orthodox, and apostolic”.

Seeing as you just produced it yourself, that’s not much of a challenge.

Seeing as you just produced it yourself, that’s not much of a challenge.

Where is the quote?

 

[dzheremi]

“There is the Catholic church.” In concert with my previous posts on this matter, my point is that you cannot argue from a saint’s use of a particular word that he or she is supporting your ecclesiology. Or, rather, you can, but so can everyone else, so it’s not a very good argument to make. For Orthodox Christians, since we retain the use of words such as “Catholic” and “Orthodox” to be first and foremost adjectives (and indeed amongst ourselves that’s how we use them; cf. the litany of peace from the liturgy of St. Cyril that I posted earlier; that’s our church that we’re talking about when we say “Your one only catholic and apostolic church”), we read the early church fathers with this understanding, and not the understanding that developed in the medieval west wherein everything “Catholic” referred back to Rome specifically.

Furthermore, the context from which you have taken the quote lends itself to this kind of understanding:

See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.

Even the Catholic Encyclopedia’s reproduction of this text places the relevant context under the heading “Let nothing be done without the bishop”, so unless you want to claim that the Roman bishop is the only real bishop in the whole church, there is no way to tie this mention of the “Catholic church” to modern Roman ecclesiology to the exclusion of others’ and their own bishops. We certainly are gathered in the COC around our bishops. For me that is HG Bishop Youssef (who regularly presides before the altar of God at St. Pishoy COC; we are blessed by God to have such a bishop), whereas for others it is another bishop, depending.

So we have no problem reading St. Ignatius and seeing in his writings our ecclesiology, as that’s still how we behave.

 

[Peter_J]

Thank you .Wasn’t gonna respond to his reply and hoped others would see my point ( and possibly his evasion) . Thanks. Your post is encouraging.

Oh don’t mention it. I think we Catholics owe it to ourselves to recognize the grain of truth in the positions of the other side.

 

[livingwordunity]

dzheremi,

The question is, what did the early Christians call the Church? And the point is that the early Church fathers called the Church “the Catholic Church” but never called it “the Orthodox Church”. And you also didn’t address why “orthodox” isn’t one of the four marks of the Church in the Creed but catholic is. I’ve noticed that, because the NT frequently gives evidence for the primacy of Peter, and the early Church fathers frequently say things that only a Catholic would ever say, a short answer is often possible in defending Catholicism while the Eastern Orthodox have the burden of always being on the defensive side of what the gospel writer or the early Church fathers have said, having to give a very long explanation for why they believe that we aren’t interpreting it right or why they believe that we have a bad translation.

 

[dzheremi]

I didn’t address it because the post I had written before you even asked that already deals with this way of dealing with the writings of the fathers. This is not a good way of forming an argument. We do not base our faith on what individual phrases we can find in the writings of the Fathers, particularly when ripping them from their larger context.

 

[livingwordunity]

I didn’t address it because the post I had written before you even asked that already deals with this way of dealing with the writings of the fathers. This is not a good way of forming an argument. We do not base our faith on what individual phrases we can find in the writings of the Fathers, particularly when ripping them from their larger context.

If it were that easy to rip ECF quotes out of context the EOs should be able to match Catholics with at least as many ECF quotes that appear to contradict the primacy of Peter. But they don’t. The Early Church fathers frequently say things that only a Catholic would ever say under any possible context. Can you provide an ECF quote that a Catholic would never say?

 

[House_Harkonnen]

If it were that easy to rip ECF quotes out of context the EOs should be able to match Catholics with at least as many ECF quotes that appear to contradict the primacy of Peter. But they don’t. The Early Church fathers frequently say things that only a Catholic would ever say under any possible context. Can you provide an ECF quote that a Catholic would never say?

That’s a weird challenge. Since you have determined that the ECFs will not say anything that a Catholic wouldn’t say, how is it possible to come up with something that an ECFs has said that you would judge meets the criteria that a Catholic wouldn’t say it?

Isn’t there something about Scotsman being true or something as well?

 

[Peter_J]

If it were that easy to rip ECF quotes out of context the EOs should be able to match Catholics with at least as many ECF quotes that appear to contradict the primacy of Peter.

I think the Russian ambassador, de Sadesky, explained it best when he told the then-U.S. President “We were afraid of a quote-mine gap.”

 

[dzheremi]

You’re still not getting it, livingwordunity. It’s not as though we can’t argue that way (though I myself am not EO, so maybe I’m not included in “we” in the first place; meh) .We just don’t, or at least shouldn’t. It’s not the way that Orthodox people look at the early church fathers or the scriptures in the first place. Notice how I’m not asking you to produce a quote that says this or that, because I don’t care what quotes are out there. Quotes, even a lot of them, cannot stand in for practice and belief consistent with the Orthodox Church and the early church fathers. It’s not about identifying a given passage or father with a modern ecclesiastical position – it’s about making sure our ecclesiology is consistent throughout the ages with our faith…you know “one church, one faith, one baptism” and all that. You are focusing in on the ecclesiology that would have us care for one man and his position over the ages (and reading the fathers so as to support that position), but as our father HH St. Discoros said in his defense at Chalcedon, our concern is not for one man, but for the apostolic faith. Sorry if this strikes you as a lot of writing to get out from under your presuppositions, but the faith is not fit for the modern world of soundbites and pithiness, thank God. You have to take the whole thing on in context, not just isolate what you’ve decided the key phrases are based on what strikes you as being in accord with your notions of what the fathers must’ve meant. If you wish, you can read (again) the entire passage from which you’ve isolated and extracted “the Catholic Church” from St. Ignatius’ letter to the Smyrnaeans in an earlier post of mine in this thread, which also has a link for you to read the entire epistle. Reading it in context, it becomes more and more of a stretch to say that St. Ignatius is somehow talking about Rome specifically here, rather than all bishops of the church.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

Actually, the Assyrian Church of the East went into schism more than 20 years prior to Chalcedon.

Didn’t know that, thanks.

Can you share a link, maybe? I would really like to read about it. Thanks in advance.

 

[Isaiah45_9]

Thank you .Wasn’t gonna respond to his reply and hoped others would see my point ( and possibly his evasion) . Thanks. Your post is encouraging.

No evasion at all. But it is my fault if I wasn’t clear enough in my reply.

I did not want to go into the disagreement rabbit trail, thus Cain.

 

[livingwordunity]

Edited. I’m done debating this topic for a while. May God bless everyone here.

 

[RyanBlack]

Didn’t know that, thanks.

Can you share a link, maybe? I would really like to read about it. Thanks in advance.

Try googling “Assyrian Church 424.”

 

[josie_L]

Yeah, it was “the Church at ______” (location). Read the Pauline epistles.

The Church was/is universal, i.e., all those local churches which St. Paul referenced formed the one body of Christ and that one body had a name. It was not simply “church”, i.e., Bishops gathering at an ecumenical council represented the universal Church of different local churches, and as such proclaimed they were the “Catholic Church”, Chalcedon attests to this:

“Wherefore the most holy and blessed leo, archbishop of the great and elder Rome, through us, and through this present most holy synod together with the thrice blessed and all glorious Peter the Apostle, who is the rock and foundation of the Catholic Church, and the foundation of the orthodox faith, hath stripped him Dioscorus of the episcopate, and hath alienated from him all hieratic worthiness.”

Did you notice how they referred to the Church as the Catholic Church, and it’s capitalized because it is a proper noun, i.e…, it is not simply an adjective but its proper name?

The modern apologetic point of “Catholic = Universal” is a misreading or misapplication of that, as those who apply it in a geographic sense to mean “We’re everywhere in the world, so we’re Catholic” are missing the point that “everywhere” is made up of actual, identifiable geographical locations where custom, language, hermeneutic tradition, ecclesiology, etc. differed

No, it is not a misapplication, the Church is universal/Catholic, i.e., from its inception or rather on Pentecost when the disciples received the Holy Spirit and spoke in various tongues, this signified the birth of the universal/Catholic Church. In fact, the apostolic mission was to evangelize the whole world so that all peoples could come together irrespective of their languages, customs . . .etc., into the one body/bride of Christ (there is neither Greek nor Jew . . ) St. Augustine said it best when he wrote:

**There are many other things which most properly can keep me in [the Catholic Church’s] bosom. ** The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15-17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house" (Against the Letter of Mani Called ‘The Foundation’ 4:5 [A.D. 397]).

The Church did indeed have a name - the Catholic Church - this was the name given to represent all the (Catholic) churches that make up the one body of Christ throughout the world.

So, yes, the Church did have a name. It was “The Church”, with further identifying information following as necessary – just like it is today.

No, it was not “the Church”, even St. Ignatius knew as much not to call it “the Church”. Moreover, there are significantly many more quotes from the fathers that attest that the Church was indeed called Catholic:

Irenaeus

The Catholic Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world, as we have already said (Against Heresies 1:10 [A.D. 189]).

The Martyrdom of Polycarp

When finally he concluded his prayer, after remembering all who had at any time come his way – small folk and great folk, distinguished and undistinguished, **and the whole Catholic Church throughout the world **– the time for departure came. So they placed him on an ***, and brought him into the city on a great Sabbath (The Martyrdom of Polycarp 8 [A.D. 110]).

Tertullian

Where was Marcion then, that shipmaster of Pontus, the zealous student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus then, the disciple of Platonism? For it is evident that those men lived not so long ago – in the reign of Antoninus for the most part – and that they at first were believers in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in the church of Rome under the episcopate of the blessed Eleutherus, until on account of their ever restless curiosity, with which they even infected the brethren, they were more than once expelled (On the Prescription Against Heretics 22,30 [A.D.200])

Cyprian

The spouse of Christ cannot be defiled; she is uncorrupted and chaste. She knows one home . . . Does anyone believe that this unity which comes from divine strength, which is closely connected with the divine sacraments, can be broken asunder in the Church and be separated by the divisions of colliding wills? He who does not hold this unity, does not hold the law of God, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation (On the Unity of the Catholic Church 6 [A.D. 251]).

 

[josie_L]

Edited. I’m done debating this topic for a while. May God bless everyone here.

Its ok, Ill take over where you left off. God bless you!