Few questions to my Orthodox friends.

[TheBreak]

English is not my native language, I’m sorry for any misspellings.

First article of mine about if the gays allowed in the orthodox church went kind of bad, with some people think that it is okay to discriminate…etc

This article is about few question I have but the Orthodox church faith, to be honest with you, I’v heard of the Orthodox church and they are a lot here where I live, but I didn’t thought of it as a serious option of me, because the Orthodox church seemed to me to be kind of church that you find in the east, Greece, Romanian, Russia, Middle East…etc, but you don’t find it everywhere in the world like the Catholic church or the Protestant. and one of the most important things for me to belong to a church, that is will not belong to one country or one culture, I want a universal church that I can find where ever I go. Because of what I said, I didn’t read much about the Orthodox church, I like their art and the churches’s looks but I don’t know that much about its faith, and that is why I’m making this article.

Q1 - Why do the Orthodox church belong into particular countries but not all over the world like the Catholic church for example ?

Q2 - Do you believe that your church belong to the saint Peter ? If yes, why? and if no, why, and how do you explain what the lord Jesus Christ said about saint Peter and his church ?

Q3 - Why you don’t believe that the holy spirit is from the Son ?

Q4 - Do you call saint Mary, The Mother of God, or The Mother of The God ? because in my native language, Orthodox churches call Mary the Mother of The God (in my native language that means mother of God but not fully like the Catholics when they say "The Mother of God ". I don’t know if you have this in English ?

Q5 - Do you believe that your Pope can’t made mistake when it comes to spiritual teaching ?

Q6 - Why you don’t believe in the place where dead people go, again, I can’t recall the name but I guess you all know what I mean, so you don’t believe in it but yet, you pray to God for the dead people? why do you pray for them, sense when we die we directly go to hell or heaven, there is no place in the middle ?

Q7 - Do you believe that who don’t belong to the Orthodox Church is going to hell?

Thank you

 

[dzheremi]

Q1 - Why do the Orthodox church belong into particular countries but not all over the world like the Catholic church for example ?

The Eastern churches have always been much less culturally homogenous than the Roman/Latin Church. This goes back to the fact that Rome is the only indisputably apostolic see in all of the West, while in the East national churches grew in places where the apostles themselves lived and first visited after being sent out into the world following the “great commission” (Christ’s command to baptize all nations in the name of the Holy Trinity). It’s in a similar way that if you want to share any news with people, you go first to the people in your immediate environment, then to areas farther than that. So people like St. Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus; Tarsus corresponds to modern Turkey) spent a lot of time in Asia minor. St. Peter was from Bethsaida, in the environs of the Holy Land, and went around there and Antioch, establishing churches. St. Mark, who was a Libyan, traveled back home to North Africa after being taught Christian doctrine by Peter, eventually establishing the Church in Egypt. This is how the East ended up with all of these national churches: Because the people in these places have been Christians for so long, that the Church came to be identified with their national character. It’s really no different than in the Latin/Western Church, which also had correspondents in North Africa prior to the coming of Islam. It just seems different to Western Christians because the Latin Church was culturally homogenous (not ethnically so, however; many of the most famous North African “Latin” Christians were actually native Berbers), with everyone existing within the Latin cultural/linguistic sphere. By contrast, in the East there are major strains of Christianity that developed among people of different, but interrelated cultures, all of which retained their cultural heritage (or more accurately, eventually came to express their Christianity through that cultural heritage, after generally having received the scriptures in Greek, the same as the West did). So in the East we have Greek/Hellenic Christianity, Syriac Christianity, Coptic Christianity, Ethiopian/Axumite Christianity, Persian Christianity, etc. The East had many more distinct cultures in it than the West, so it has many more distinct culturally-marked forms of Christianity in it (historically).

But you will also find, even within the “Latin” Christian world, that the Christianity of Mexicans is not the same as Irish or Germans or Maltese, culturally-speaking. They are related but not the same, just like the various Christian cultures of the East. So we are not so different. We just didn’t have only one apostolic see that gathered us under one language, giving the illusion of “unity”. And by ‘illusion’, I don’t mean any kind of insult. It’s just a fact that, for instance, Mozarabic chant has much more in common with the Eastern/Byzantine chant than Gregorian chant. Latin Christianity has never been one thing, but because it is much less obviously varied than in the East (it is all in one language, under the influence of the one apostolic see that is native to the West), it seems like it is to people who want to make the non-point that Catholicism is “universal” while Orthodoxy apparently is not.

It also should be mentioned that a large part of the reason why you can find a Catholic Church everywhere in the world but not always an Orthodox Church is that the Roman Catholic Church was often the majority church of the European powers that colonized much of the world starting in the 15th century. Copts or Armenians or whoever did not colonize Africa, but French people did. And in places where the French or the Spanish or other Catholic powers did not penetrate, you find the churches of the Europeans that did; e.g., in Namibia, which was first colonized by the Germans, the main form of Christianity is Lutheran. This is true not just in Africa but everywhere the Europeans went. Latin Christianity is not native to India (Syriac Christianity is), but you might think it was if all you looked at is the former Portuguese colony of Goa.

Q2 - Do you believe that your church belong to the saint Peter ? If yes, why?

Yes, of course. St. Peter went not only to Rome, but also to Antioch, in modern Turkey. There are Antiochian Orthodox Patriarchs for the Arab-Greek Church (the “Antiochian Orthodox”) and for the native Syriac people (the “Syriac Orthodox Church”). So there is no Orthodox Church in the world that is not in communion with successors of St. Peter via their respective Antiochian Patriarchs.

Q3 - Why you don’t believe that the holy spirit is from the Son ?

In the temporal sense, in which we can say that the Holy Spirit is sent into the world, it is appropriate to say that the Holy Spirit comes through the Son. But the Creed (which I assume you are referring to with this question) is about the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, affirming His divinity and origin is from the Father alone. We cannot say, as the Latins say, that the Holy Spirit is eternally from Father and Son. If that were so, the three persons of the Trinity would not be of equal and the same divinity.

 

[dzheremi]

Q4 - Do you call saint Mary, The Mother of God, or The Mother of The God ? because in my native language, Orthodox churches call Mary the Mother of The God (in my native language that means mother of God but not fully like the Catholics when they say "The Mother of God ". I don’t know if you have this in English ?

It depends on what language we are speaking. Most often in the Orthodox Church you will hear the Greek term “Theotokos” (lit. birth-giver to God). In Coptic, I suppose it would be “ethmav em-efnouti” (lit. mother of the God), but you don’t really hear that very often. In practice, we just say “Theotokos” in Coptic, too. In Arabic, I’ve heard both “Um Allah” (Mother of God) and “Um al-Ilah” (Mother of the God). I think we use the second one more often in the Coptic Church, but I’m not a native Arabic speaker so I couldn’t tell you why.

Q5 - Do you believe that your Pope can’t made mistake when it comes to spiritual teaching ?

No. No individual person, even if they are Pope, is infallible in the Orthodox Church. Most Orthodox churches don’t have Popes, though. Mine does, and did before Rome ever did. Mostly we’ve got patriarchs, though (and even the Coptic Orthodox Pope is most properly referred to as “Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria”…Pope is a title for us, not really a separate office as the Latins think of their Papacy; it indicates seniority and a different set of responsibilities, but ultimately the Pope is also a bishop).

Q6 - Why you don’t believe in the place where dead people go, again, I can’t recall the name but I guess you all know what I mean, so you don’t believe in it but yet, you pray to God for the dead people? why do you pray for them, sense when we die we directly go to hell or heaven, there is no place in the middle ?

But for some there is a state in the middle (look up the Eastern Orthodox idea of toll houses). Not sure if it’d be proper to call it a “place” or not, as in my understanding it is a very quick process, not about spending hundreds of years waiting around or something like the Latins say about their purgatory. I don’t think the Coptic Orthodox Church endorses either idea, but we do affirm that no sin may exist in heaven, so there must be some process or action of cleansing. The difference between the Orthodox and the Catholics on this question seems to be that Orthodox do not dogmatize such ideas, whereas Catholics have written and taught extensively on exactly what they believe happen, and have other ideas related to those speculations that we do not agree with, since we didn’t dogmatize our ideas in the first place (e.g., we don’t believe in merits, indulgences, and the other things connected to Latin purgatory; these things are not necessary, from our view, since we don’t believe in their idea of purgatory in the first place).

Q7 - Do you believe that who don’t belong to the Orthodox Church is going to hell?

Certainly not. The Orthodox Church is the true Church of God, expressing and living and embodying the faith of the apostles, but we cannot say categorically that those outside of us will go here or there. That is up to God, and we are not God. We pray for mercy for ourselves, and all the world. From the Orthodox perspective, it is certainly best to be in the Orthodox Church, but it is not a “go to heaven immediately” ticket, and so it follows that not being in visible union with the Orthodox church means that people will go to hell, either. It is better to pray for forgiveness and mercy and to trust in God than to feel self-satisified and assured and be unpleasantly surprised.

 

[andy92]

Im interested in these answers also.

ps i did have the opportunity to talk with some Orthodox Catholics (which were unorthodox in their faith as they weren’t practicing.) They said about the pope’s infallibility that he is just a man and all men fall. So therefor, everything he says is fallible.

 

[andy92]

delete

 

[aemcpa]

If that were so, the three persons of the Trinity would not be of equal and the same divinity.

This makes no sense to me. Please elaborate.

 

[dzheremi]

Okay. One of the major expansions of the Creed at Constantinople (381) was to the section on the Holy Spirit, adding that He “proceeds from the Father”. One of the major issues at Constantinople was the formal definition of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, against the disbelief of the heretical Pneumatomachoi. In that context, it was necessary to affirm the same divinity that is shared by the Son by virtue of His being of the Father is also shared by the Holy Spirit by virtue of His being of the Father. The Father is the source/origin of the other two.

If it is the case that somehow the Holy Spirit is the product of both the Father and the Son, then either He is not entirely of the same divinity as the Father (or else why is the Son involved in the generation of the Holy Spirit in the first place? And what sort of divinity has the Son that He should have to play such a role? None, right? His divinity is entirely from the Father; He does not have His own divinity separate from the Father from Whom He is begotten, as He is not separate from the Father; this is why the Trinity is monotheistic and not polytheistic), or the divinity of the Father is somehow suddenly not enough to send forth the Holy Spirit. Again, this is to be separated from the temporal sending or mission of the Spirit in the world, as the Creed as it was affirmed in 381 does not address this. It addresses only the procession from the Father, as this is what the heretics denied (saying that the Holy Spirit is not God). It is other, non-Creedal theories, from Augustine and the like, that make the Holy Spirit somehow a product of love between the Father and the Son. This is nowhere to be found in Creed itself, and the Creed is what we affirm, not Augustine’s flights of theological fancy.

 

[aemcpa]

Okay. One of the major expansions of the Creed at Constantinople (381) was to the section on the Holy Spirit, adding that He “proceeds from the Father”. One of the major issues at Constantinople was the formal definition of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, against the disbelief of the heretical Pneumatomachoi. In that context, it was necessary to affirm the same divinity that is shared by the Son by virtue of His being of the Father is also shared by the Holy Spirit by virtue of His being of the Father. The Father is the source/origin of the other two.

If it is the case that somehow the Holy Spirit is the product of both the Father and the Son, then either He is not entirely of the same divinity as the Father (or else why is the Son involved in the generation of the Holy Spirit in the first place? And what sort of divinity has the Son that He should have to play such a role? None, right? His divinity is entirely from the Father; He does not have His own divinity separate from the Father from Whom He is begotten, as He is not separate from the Father; this is why the Trinity is monotheistic and not polytheistic), or the divinity of the Father is somehow suddenly not enough to send forth the Holy Spirit. Again, this is to be separated from the temporal sending or mission of the Spirit in the world, as the Creed as it was affirmed in 381 does not address this. It addresses only the procession from the Father, as this is what the heretics denied (saying that the Holy Spirit is not God). It is other, non-Creedal theories, from Augustine and the like, that make the Holy Spirit somehow a product of love between the Father and the Son. This is nowhere to be found in Creed itself, and the Creed is what we affirm, not Augustine’s flights of theological fancy.

But there is only one divine substance. Were the filioque somehow to imply what you are claiming, then the mere fact of the procession of the Son and of the Holy Spirit would be enough to posit differences in the Divinity, because the Father proceeds from no one. The processions of the Son and of the Spirit are different because the relations between the persons of the Trinity are different, not because there is any distinction or difference in their divinity.

 

[Nine_Two]

Dzheremi did an excellent job answering, but to expand on the “Mother of God/Mother of the God” question…

As he said, the more common title is Theotokos, which doesn’t translate well into English, but is basically referring to the fact that she had God in her womb (notice that the definite article, “the”, doesn’t appear at all in the word).
The title, “Mother of God” (ματηρ θεου) is used as well - again, no articles within the phrase, although it is much rarer, mostly only appearing on icons of the Theotokos/Mary (On the left side of her head you’ll see an MP with a squiggly line over it (Ματηρ, or ‘Mother’), and on the right a ΘΥ with a squiggly line (Θεου, or ‘of God’).
If you’re local language says “Mother of the God”, that was something that was added when it was translated into your language. If I were to take a guess I’d assume it was a translation into a polytheistic (at the time) culture and the translators wanted to assert that she wasn’t just the mother of a god (many of whom existed in the myths of antiquity).

 

[Nine_Two]

But there is only one divine substance. Were the filioque somehow to imply what you are claiming, then the mere fact of the procession of the Son and of the Holy Spirit would be enough to posit differences in the Divinity, because the Father proceeds from no one. The processions of the Son and of the Spirit are different because the relations between the persons of the Trinity are different, not because there is any distinction or difference in their divinity.

The Filioque can be interpreted in an Orthodox manner. Even if the Catholic Church could convince us that it has such an interpretation of the words, we’re still going to have issues with the illegitimate way it came into the creed.

 

[dzheremi]

The Latin idea inherited from Augustine that the Holy Spirit is Himself a product of the love between the Father and the Son, rather than His own person, subjugates the Holy Spirit by making Him dependent on two persons for His existence. This is what I mean by saying that it is not of the same divinity – not that it introduces a different substance or type of divinity (in other words, we agree that there is only one divinity shared by all three), but that as a consequence of His supposed origin in two persons (or between two persons, or however you want to say it), He is made something less than the other two. The Father, as you rightly surmise, is not dependent on anyone for His divinity, as He is the source of all divinity. The Son is also of that same divinity – perfect, whole, and complete, but He does not have existence independent of the Father. The Holy Spirit, again as was confirmed within the context of standing up to the Pneumatomachoi, is also perfect, whole, and complete in His divinity, being from the same Father (alone) from whom Jesus Christ is begotten. So it is a matter of maintaining the same source for all three, by virtue of all three being the same God (against those who would say that they are not the same). It’s not that there’s no distinction in the three (cf. above, regarding the Son’s relation to the Father), but that the filioque makes a wrong distinction.

Also, we say elsewhere in the Creed that Jesus Christ was incarnate “of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary” – how could this be if the Holy Spirit is the product of love between the Father and the Son, rather than His own person? Christ incarnates Himself via His love for His Father? That does not make sense.

 

[dzheremi]

If you’re local language says “Mother of the God”, that was something that was added when it was translated into your language. If I were to take a guess I’d assume it was a translation into a polytheistic (at the time) culture and the translators wanted to assert that she wasn’t just the mother of a god (many of whom existed in the myths of antiquity).

This is a very good point. I remember reading at some point (though I cannot remember where) that this is sort of how we ended up with “al-ilahu il-wahid” (the one God) at the end of the Trinitarian formula in Arabic. If I’m remembering it properly, it was added not necessarily within a polytheistic culture, but to affirm over and against the accusations of the newly-arrived Muslim Arabs that we do in fact worship one God only (prior to the invention of Islam, Arabic had not really developed as a language for expressing Christian theology, basically because it hadn’t had to). These days, it is basically a reflex to add that, though you can also hear it without it in a context where it is clear already that this is what we do.

 

[CharlesdeFoucld]

The Latin idea inherited from Augustine that the Holy Spirit is Himself a product of the love between the Father and the Son, rather than His own person,

In which Catholic magisterial document can I find this teaching?

 

[dzheremi]

It was first articulated in St. Augustine’s De Trinitate, completed sometime in the early-to-mid 5th century. I do not know if you would consider that a magesterial document (I’m not sure that the concept of the magisterium would’ve been developed in the time of St. Augustine or not), but it is certainly referenced in many Papal audiences, encyclicals, etc. that can be found on the Vatican website.

 

[aemcpa]

The Latin idea inherited from Augustine that the Holy Spirit is Himself a product of the love between the Father and the Son, rather than His own person, subjugates the Holy Spirit by making Him dependent on two persons for His existence.

This is illogical. If this were what the Church taught, then it would be equally true that the Son is subjugated and “not His own person” by virtue of being dependent on the Father for His existence. How does proceeding from two Persons make the Holy Spirit any less a Person than proceeding from one?

Also, we say elsewhere in the Creed that Jesus Christ was incarnate “of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary” – how could this be if the Holy Spirit is the product of love between the Father and the Son, rather than His own person? Christ incarnates Himself via His love for His Father? That does not make sense.

I don’t see how it makes any difference to the Incarnation whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or from the Father alone. In either case, the Son was incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit (who is God) and was made man.

Jesus Christ was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, by the Holy Spirit.

 

[CharlesdeFoucld]

It was first articulated in St. Augustine’s De Trinitate, completed sometime in the early-to-mid 5th century. I do not know if you would consider that a magesterial document (I’m not sure that the concept of the magisterium would’ve been developed in the time of St. Augustine or not), but it is certainly referenced in many Papal audiences, encyclicals, etc. that can be found on the Vatican website.

You haven’t provided me with a single quotation backing your assertion.

As I’m sure you know, Catholics don’t put the teaching of the Fathers on par with church councils or papal declaration of dogma.

 

[CharlesdeFoucld]

The Filioque can be interpreted in an Orthodox manner. Even if the Catholic Church could convince us that it has such an interpretation of the words, we’re still going to have issues with the illegitimate way it came into the creed.

This is a good post. And the Catholic Church (in the Council of Florence) has explicitly said that it means what St. Cyril of Alexandria and others meant by ‘from the Father through the Son’.

 

[dzheremi]

You haven’t provided me with a single quotation backing your assertion.

You didn’t ask for a quotation; you asked where you could find this assertion. I told you where. Please do not be upset that I did not provide you what you did not ask for. From De Trinitate 6, 5 (7): *“Therefore the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, is something common to the Father and the Son. But the communication itself is consubstantial and coeternal; and if it may fitly be called friendship, let it so be called; but it is more aptly called love.”
*

There are many more such quotes and a lot more background on how St. Augustine developed this idea in the excellent essay “The Holy Spirit As Mutual Love Of The Father And The Son” by David Coffey of the Catholic Institute of Sydney (published in Theological Studies 51, 1990), available as a PDF via this link.

As I’m sure you know, Catholics don’t put the teaching of the Fathers on par with church councils or papal declaration of dogma.

I never said that they did. I said that this is a Latin idea inherited from Augustine.

 

[CharlesdeFoucld]

You didn’t ask for a quotation; you asked where you could find this assertion. I told you where. Please do not be upset that I did not provide you what you did not ask for. From De Trinitate 6, 5 (7): *“Therefore the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, is something common to the Father and the Son. But the communication itself is consubstantial and coeternal; and if it may fitly be called friendship, let it so be called; but it is more aptly called love.”
*

There are many more such quotes and a lot more background on how St. Augustine developed this idea in the excellent essay “The Holy Spirit As Mutual Love Of The Father And The Son” by David Coffey of the Catholic Institute of Sydney (published in Theological Studies 51, 1990), available as a PDF via this link.

I never said that they did. I said that this is a Latin idea inherited from Augustine.

Thanks for the quotation. A few notes:

1. The Augustine quotation does not say that the Spirit is not a Person. Also from* De trinitate* comes this quotation, which does indicate that the Spirit is indeed a Person coequal with the other Persons of the Trinity: ‘the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, Himself also co-equal with the Father and the Son, and pertaining to the unity of the Trinity.’
2. I don’t have my catechism in front of me, but I’m quite sure St. Augustine’s model does not appear there; which means that,
3. The model is not official Catholic teaching. It’s a model, intended to illustrate the relationship between the Persons based on what revelation has revealed to us.
4. Similar models, wherein the Spirit plays the role of middle term between the Father and the Son, were very common in the third and fourth centuries, both in the East and the West. Notably, St. Gregory of Nyssa drifts toward an Augustinian position, for similary reasons. This is not the passage I’m looking for, but St. Gregory states:

In the case of those who are from the Cause we recognize a further difference ; one is derived immediately from the first, and the other through that which comes immediately from the first. Thus the mediating position of the Son in the Divine life guards His sole right to the name of Son, while it does not exclude the Spirit from His natural relationship to the Father^ But when we speak thus of ‘cause’ and ‘caused,’ we do not intend by the use of these words to indicate a difference of nature, but one which relates only to the manner of existence

1. St. Augustine is by no means the first to develop such models in the West. In Tertullian you can find ‘root, branch, fruit’ language, etc.
2. You know very well that Catholics do not recognize two sources. You had said ‘So it is a matter of maintaining the same source for all three’, but of course, Florence does insist that the Father is the fons or source. You also know that Florence teaches a single spiration, as from a single principle. So the Spirit is by no means composite in Catholic teaching.
3. I sometimes get the sense from some Orthodox that they’d rather not understand the Catholic position. I sense that they’d prefer to read misrepresentations from Lossky or Farrell or whoever, and try to explain why reconciliation is impossible. Happily, this is not the case for all Orthodox interlocutors. For example, Bishop Kallistos was willing to revisit his former position, saying, ‘The filioque controversy which has separated us [Eastern Orthodox and Catholics] for so many centuries is more than a mere technicality, but it is not insoluble. Qualifying the firm position taken when I wrote [my book] The Orthodox Church twenty years ago, I now believe, after further study, that the problem is more in the area of semantics and different emphases than in any basic doctrinal differences"
4. Thanks for the link to the Coffey article. I had read it before, and it is excellent.

I’ll try to back out of this conversation, as I don’t want to hijack a thread that was intended for ‘Orthodox friends’.

 

[dzheremi]

I likewise do not want to hijack this thread, but only want to point out that even as St. Augustine says various things in De Trinitate and elsewhere that speak to the coequality of the persons of the Trinity, it is important to contextualize these quotes (such as the one you provided) within his defense of the filioque, as pointed out in the Coffey article. And likewise there is something to be said for how the quote I provided is phrased “the Holy Spirit, whatever it is”. Granted, this is very early theology, relative to how later Latin theologians following Augustine would come up with all kinds of arguments and theories, so I wouldn’t begrudge the saint for phrasing things this way, but I don’t think it means all that much that he didn’t specifically say that the Holy Spirit is not a person. I wouldn’t expect such a definite statement (and particularly not that statement). I can’t think of any Latin Father (or Greek, or Syriac, or Coptic, etc.) who would say such a thing. However, that is the concern from the Orthodox side and, far from (purposely or otherwise) not understanding the Latin side, it was once the case that Greeks and Latins would read the same Fathers (for instance, St. Basil) as supporting their respective processional triadologies! See A. Edward Siecienski’s book “The Filioque: History of a Doctrinal Controversy” (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; pub. 2010) for more on this. Again, I’m not about condemning Augustine in particular as though he should have known in advance the lengths to which some of his spiritual children would go (or as though he is perfect and could not make a mistake; if I recall correctly, he references De Trinitate in his Retractions, so he probably was not entirely happy with it), but this does not exonerate him from spreading wrong ideas, whether they are taken to be “official” in your church or not. The fact is this idea that he advanced had a huge impact on the discussion of the Trinity in both West and East, and the East does not accept it, either historically or currently. So I really dislike this idea that we are somehow purposefully not understanding the Latins in favor of Lossky, et al. Who are these people to me, as an OO? I am following my own Fathers, and you will not find among them such an idea.