Filioque Debate

[Gabriel_of_12]

Randy Carson;12508342]The filioque is not the issue. Nor is the type of bread we use at mass nor any of the other commonly cited differences between Catholics and Orthodox.

The issue was, is and always will be the papacy - specifically the authority of the papacy in the Church.

Hi Randy Carson; Your post has much merit.

In respect to the OP; The filioque is not truly the issue of the schism. But the debate which ensues is not a debate at all. What it truly is; is that the Orthodox refuse to accept a Latin expression of the Apostolic faith. And when we find common ground on the filioque with a true ecumenical spirit, they resort to the issue you raise authority.

And I will conclude my postings here with this, which the opposition of the filioque give no answer;

The debate over the filioque deals with the Latin expression of the Apostolic faith as professed within the Nicene Creed of the Son consubstantial with the Father the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. We are expressing to all heretics Jesus is God eternally at all times because the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son in presence of the Trinity proceeding divine revelation.

The opposition calls foul, because they attempt to force a theological Greek expression of the Essence of God into the filioque which they falsely claim, “diminishes” one of the persons (Holy Spirit) of the Trinity? When as St. Augustine put’s it, we Latins relate to the presence of God, while the Greeks relate to the Essence of God.

So I asked the Orthodox or the “ecumenical” Lutherans; How can God’s presence be diminished in any way, when the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son???When we all profess the blessed Trinity of persons is One God?

For the Orthodox to answer this; is to respect the things Latin expressed in the 2000 years of Apostolic Catholic faith living, as we respect the Greek expression of their Apostolic faith so long as it remains Orthodox.

I think the beards and the funny hats are cool:thumbsup:

Peace be with you

 

[benjohnson]

ox.

As far as the reconciliation with the Latin side of the Church, the filioque would still be professed in our Liturgy, there is no ecumenical discussion with the filioque professed in the Latin Mass.

We have that in common - the only reason for us to even contemplate removing at times it is born out of ecumenical relationship with the Orthodox.

 

[Seraphim73]

As far as the reconciliation with the Latin side of the Church, the filioque would still be professed in our Liturgy, there is no ecumenical discussion with the filioque professed in the Latin Mass.

Then there will never be unity. There cannot be between groups who profess a different faith.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I have really never entered into any discussions with EO before now. If the attitude expressed by the EO on this forum is a true indicator of the level of interest in unification with the Catholic Church I doubt it will even get that far.

In marriage counseling, both sides have to *want *things to work out.

The Orthodox members of this forum are the only Orthodox I have ever spoken with.

Based on what I hear here everyday, I am not optimistic at all. :nope:

 

[benjohnson]

So I asked the Orthodox or the “ecumenical” Lutherans; How can God’s presence be diminished in any way, when the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son???When we all profess the blessed Trinity of persons is One God?

I can’t really give a good counter to this example (I’d make a mess of it) - I will say that can Lutherans tend to get grumpy when philosophy is pushed into the Mysteries of God. Even when they are substantially correct as in Transubstantiation.

For example:

Lutherans are rather famous for listening to all manor of reasonable arguments about the Body and Blood, and at the end of it, we conclude and reply that we profess what we were given - “This is my Body.”

 

[SteveVH]

Many Catholics think the way you do.

Why do you suppose that is? I had no feelings one way or the other until I started dialoging with you guys. In fact, I came here with a great deal of respect for your Church in that we have a common origin and common beliefs with different view points.

What I have learned is that you search for any difference (in practice and discipline) and give these differences the same weight as you would doctrine. It appears that you are looking for reasons to remain divided rather than searching for ways to overcome such division.

The attitude I have taken away is that the EO basically could care less about unification. In fact, it seems you could care less about the Catholic Church altogether and would not be affected in the least if it just went away. I hope I am wrong, but that is the impression I am under at present and it is the EO posters here that have given me this impression.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

We have that in common - the only reason for us to even contemplate removing at times it is born out of ecumenical relationship with the Orthodox.

I have no comment to this, except to listen to and follow the Holy Spirit, for He is not a Spirit of confusion.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Why do you suppose that is? I had no feelings one way or the other until I started dialoging with you guys. In fact, I came here with a great deal of respect for your Church in that we have a common origin and common beliefs with different view points.

What I have learned is that you search for any difference (in practice and discipline) and give these differences the same weight as you would doctrine. It appears that you are looking for reasons to remain divided rather than searching for ways to overcome such division.

The attitude I have taken away is that the EO basically could care less about unification. In fact, it seems you could care less about the Catholic Church altogether and would not be affected in the least if it just went away. I hope I am wrong, but that is the impression I am under at present and it is the EO posters here that have given me this impression.

Steve-

This is EXACTLY my experience and impression, and I wrote something very similar to this last year in another subforum.

Maybe only a certain type of individual is attracted to posting in a Catholic forum in support of Orthodoxy, but if ALL Orthodox share the views and attitudes of those expressed here, we can tell the Pope and the Patriarchs to stop wasting their time.

BTW-You’re now on the “Black” list of a few Catholic and Eastern Catholic folks who monitor these threads. Expect comments pointing out that our behavior is no better, if all Catholics think like we do…, etc. I’ve been down this road before.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

No offense taken! That is defiantly the Catholic viewpoint and you said it with charity and concern born out of true Christian love.

The bad news is we Lutherans view ourselves as a valid continuation of the western church, so we’re a bit obstinate in this.

And Rome views you the same way as per your valid baptism. One of the hardest obstacles of our humanity is forgiving our spouse over a divorce and reconciliation with one another. But with God and God’s Love nothing is impossible with God who makes all things possible, to follow our blessed Mother’s words recorded from scripture.

Peace be with you

 

[SteveVH]

My opinion is that we can certainly learn a lot from the Othrodox even if reunification never takes place.

No disagreement here.

I know I’d tread carefully with accusing the Orthodox of pride - they have endured countless struggles, atrocities, and difficulties and they have my respect.

My only basis for forming an opinion is the EO posters on CAF. I have yet to hear a convincing argument from them against the papacy or a convincing counter-argument to what has been presented by Catholic posters. From their view point it seems that there is nothing that can be said or documented that will convince them otherwise. So when one’s view point is not grounded in historical or theological evidence, at least from my POV, I am left with looking to other motivations.

 

[SteveVH]

Steve-

This is EXACTLY my experience and impression, and I wrote something very similar to this last year in another subforum.

Maybe only a certain type of individual is attracted to posting in a Catholic forum in support of Orthodoxy, but if ALL Orthodox share the views and attitudes of those expressed here, we can tell the Pope and the Patriarchs to stop wasting their time.

BTW-You’re now on the “Black” list of a few Catholic and Eastern Catholic folks who monitor these threads. Expect comments pointing out that our behavior is no better, if all Catholics think like we do…, etc. I’ve been down this road before.

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[benjohnson]

My opinion (usually wrong):

On thing to keep in mind is that you good Catholics have finally run into a Church that is much harder to argue with than our various Protestant churches - in that with protestants you can dismiss us because our churches are suffering with all sorts of afflictions.

The various arguments that Catholic can use against various protestants to point out that our churches are miserable don’t work so well against the more cohesive Orthodox.

With protestants you can show that the Papacy is a bulwark against protestant authority problems - and while we may not agree, we can see that you provide an alternative.

Catholics can’t use that same argument with the Orthodox as easily - you not only have to prove that the modern Papacy is not only better than what they have (already good) but that it’s also not a novel addition.

So debating with the Orthodox will naturally be more frustrating if you’ve only debated Protestants.

 

[Gabriel_of_12]

I can’t really give a good counter to this example (I’d make a mess of it) - I will say that can Lutherans tend to get grumpy when philosophy is pushed into the Mysteries of God. Even when they are substantially correct as in Transubstantiation.

For example:

Lutherans are rather famous for listening to all manor of reasonable arguments about the Body and Blood, and at the end of it, we conclude and reply that we profess what we were given - “This is my Body.”

The Church protected by divine providence is not going to allow the body of Christ to teach fallacy from the Cross, resurrection, hell, purgatory, heaven, Eucharist, Trinity, God incarnate, filioque of divine revelation eternal proceeds in the presence of God. This is my faith and trust in God’s Word and promise.

Transubstantiation or the filioque are terms that call us to faith in God and His Son 's Works in the Holy Spirit who reveals them to our humanity.

One does not need a rocket science degree or theological doctorate in transubstantiation or the filioque to understand these, when they are calling us to faith.

Because I trust in God, gives these tools to the Church to help us reach his presence and commune with God. So that our faith is simple when Jesus teaches “This is my Body, This is my blood”, any child would have no problem believing God here. When it is the theologians who bang their heads against the wall trying to understand this.

On a side note here; I agree with you, the Eastern Church’s are suffering much and have endured much. I humble myself to the posters from the EO insults and hard hits against my character and or faith, I pray to consider these as blessings for our Lord and Savior. I always remember and think of our Orthodox posters and keep them in my thoughts and prayers before God.

They do have a lot to share on these forums with us, but the tensions many times leads to off topic discussion that have a history of closing many well informed threads . I don’t know if it’s a tactic they use when silenced in a debate, or it is a natural phenomenon?

Peace be with you

 

[benjohnson]

I have yet to hear a convincing argument from them against the papacy

The bad news is that (I think) from their standpoint, we have to prove to them that anything outside of how they currently do things isn’t novel - and that’s only to being the conversation. I make that assessment on how Lutheran / Orthodox dialog has gone.

I’m really really grasping at straws:

I can almost imagine that if you told an Orthodox member about the Papacy - they could look around themselves and say "I don’t see a pope here. Apparently we don’t need one, but thanks for asking.’ and that would be sufficient.

 

[benjohnson]

The Church protected by divine providence is not going to allow the body of Christ to teach fallacy from the Cross, resurrection, hell, purgatory, heaven, Eucharist, Trinity, God incarnate, filioque of divine revelation eternal proceeds in the presence of God. This is my faith and trust in God’s Word and promise.

Transubstantiation or the filioque are terms that call us to faith in God and His Son 's Works in the Holy Spirit who reveals them to our humanity.

If understood in those terms, you’re not going to get many Lutherans angry about them. May these teachings be a bulwark for the faith for all Catholics.

They do have a lot to share on these forums with us, but the tensions many times leads to off topic discussion that have a history of closing many well informed threads . I don’t know if it’s a tactic they use when silenced in a debate, or it is a natural phenomenon?

Perhaps we gang up on them? I’ve felt it every once in a while a thread devolves into a “Bash the Lutheran” and had to walk away and go study the 8th commandment a bit more.

Peace be with you

I appreciate it! May the grace of our Lord be with you!

 

[Randy_Carson]

My opinion (usually wrong):

On thing to keep in mind is that you good Catholics have finally run into a Church that is much harder to argue with than our various Protestant churches - in that with protestants you can dismiss us because our churches are suffering with all sorts of afflictions.

The various arguments that Catholic can use against various protestants to point out that our churches are miserable don’t work so well against the more cohesive Orthodox.

With protestants you can show that the Papacy is a bulwark against protestant authority problems - and while we may not agree, we can see that you provide an alternative.

Catholics can’t use that same argument with the Orthodox as easily - you not only have to prove that the modern Papacy is not only better than what they have (already good) but that it’s also not a novel addition.

So debating with the Orthodox will naturally be more frustrating if you’ve only debated Protestants.

Ben-

The challenge is that Orthodox don’t want to discuss scripture EVER.

I don’t know whether they never read the Bible personally or if they ONLY read verses that are found within the writings of the Fathers they choose to study, but seriously, I’ve never had an EO attempt to prove my *exegesis *or argument to be flawed based on their own *exegesis *or scriptural argument. At most, they will dismiss my posts as *eisegesis *and move on to the Councils and Patristics with which they are clearly more comfortable.

And this is ironic given that Jerome said, “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.”

While they admire the Fathers and hold them up as the end-all and be-all of the Church, they do not *do *what the Fathers did which was to meditate day and night upon the Word of God.

And finally, I think the shoe is actually on the other foot; the Orthodox avoid scripture precisely because the verses supporting Peter and the papacy are so breathtakingly clear that it is uncomfortable for them to twist them in ways that enable them to justify their schism.

For Protestants, this is actually much easier…you simply made up a new doctrine - sola scriptura - and tied everything else to that. The EO don’t even have that novelty to fall back on.

 

[Randy_Carson]

I have read that one proposed solution for the filioque controversy is simply to allow the Orthodox to omit the filioque while Catholics would retain it.

Easy, right?

And we can be re-united shortly after the ink dries on this?

 

[Seraphim73]

Why do you suppose that is? I had no feelings one way or the other until I started dialoging with you guys. In fact, I came here with a great deal of respect for your Church in that we have a common origin and common beliefs with different view points.

What I have learned is that you search for any difference (in practice and discipline) and give these differences the same weight as you would doctrine. It appears that you are looking for reasons to remain divided rather than searching for ways to overcome such division.

The attitude I have taken away is that the EO basically could care less about unification. In fact, it seems you could care less about the Catholic Church altogether and would not be affected in the least if it just went away. I hope I am wrong, but that is the impression I am under at present and it is the EO posters here that have given me this impression.

We don’t have to “search” for differences. Every difference we point out is a change in the Catholic Church. You used to profess the exact same Creed we do today, you used to follow the same Apostolic patterns of worship we do today, you used to profess the same dogmas we still profess today. In all of these cases the Catholic Church has changed and Orthodoxy has remained the same. I understand that can be frustrating. It’s not easy when someone points out that the institution you thought was an immovable bulwark of consistency is not what you thought it was. So it’s a lot easier just to say, “well they are just prideful”, or “there are no real differences, they just don’t want unity.” That way you can just dismiss the cognitive dissonance without actually dealing with it. So rest assured we want unity but that unity has to be based on a shared faith, not just submission to one hierarch.

 

[Seraphim73]

So here’s what we’ve learned so far. We Orthodox…

Are Ignorant of Scripture

Are Prideful

Intentionally misdirect topics

Are not truthful about our differences

Don’t want unity

I think we can safely say once the thread descends into name calling it’s obvious the debate is lost.

 

[SteveVH]

We don’t have to “search” for differences. Every difference we point out is a change in the Catholic Church.

I don’t know if this is worth arguing as it has been asked and answered more than a few times already. All living organisms change as they grow. This doesn’t mean that the organism becomes a different organism, it means that it grows and matures until it reaches its ultimate potential. In the case of doctrine it means a more profound understanding of the truth it has held since the beginning as it grows, guided by the Holy Spirit into greater insight into the apostolic faith.

You used to profess the exact same Creed we do today

And we still believe every single word of it.

you used to follow the same Apostolic patterns of worship we do today

I don’t know about that, off hand, but when have we said that your pattern of worship is wrong?

you used to profess the same dogmas we still profess today.

And what dogmas did we profess then that we do not profess now?

In all of these cases the Catholic Church has changed and Orthodoxy has remained the same.

When the Nicene Creed was formulated (your version), was it a “change” from the Apostle’s Creed?

I understand that can be frustrating. It’s not easy when someone points out that the institution you thought was an immovable bulwark of consistency is not what you thought it was. So it’s a lot easier just to say, “well they are just prideful”, or “there are no real differences, they just don’t want unity.” That way you can just dismiss the cognitive dissonance without actually dealing with it. So rest assured we want unity but that unity has to be based on a shared faith, not just submission to one hierarch.

You have a good day as well.

Steve