Help with Frustrating Article

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From my Latin perspective, this seems a pretty standard modern Orthodox critique in its caricaturization of Roman positions, exaggerated or false assertion of differences, and exaggeration of the antiquity and normativity of Palamite essence-energies distinction.
 
I have specific questions that I wish to ask. I made this post late at night, which is why its vague. Sorry 😊

I found that most of the first half of the article was accepted by the Latin Church, and I find a lot of the article to be useless fluff. I have many questions still:
  1. is the Orthodox position really that a local church with a Bishop and Eucharist is the Eccumentical Church? Wouldn’t that mean that Arians would be members of the Church?
  2. he seems to deny that there are " hierarchies" in the Church. I’m trying to understand how this position matches with the early Church and the Councils. The Councils clearly teach that Rome is at the top, with Alexandria next, and so on. Furthermore, I don’t see Bishops then and today claiming that Bishops and layman are somehow equal, but I don’t really understand what he means by it. For me, either he is saying something trivial, that Bishops aren’t suppose to be dictators, or he’s saying that Bishops are equal to laymen, which is absurd. Is this understanding correct?
Christi pax,

Lucretius
 
I admittedly didn’t read beyond the first paragraph but he seems to base his premise on a false dichotomy: infallibility of the Church vs infallibility of the Pope. The actual Catholic understanding is that the Church is infallible and that the Pope, under extremely limited circumstances, can exercise the Church’s infallibility acting as the head of the college of bishops. The infallibility of the Church, in Catholic teaching, is exercised in three ways, and the third, papal infallibility, is the most rare of the three:
  1. Infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium: the consistent teaching of the pope and bishops in every place and time.
  2. Infallibility of the Extraordinary Magisterium exercised by the College of Bishops: all the bishops of the world assembled together with the Pope in solemn council.
  3. Infallibility of the Extraordinary Magisterium exercised by the Pope: the Pope, as head of the sacred college, exercising the infallibility of the Church to clarify a doctrinal matter.
    Even in this third case, the Pope never acts in a vacuum. He is the servant of Tradition. In every historical case the Pope exercised this authority only at the request of, or at least in consultation with, the college of bishops.
 
Lucretius said:
I have specific questions that I wish to ask. I made this post late at night, which is why its vague. Sorry 😊

I found that most of the first half of the article was accepted by the Latin Church, and I find a lot of the article to be useless fluff. I have many questions still:
  1. is the Orthodox position really that a local church with a Bishop and Eucharist is the Eccumentical Church? Wouldn’t that mean that Arians would be members of the Church?
  2. he seems to deny that there are " hierarchies" in the Church. I’m trying to understand how this position matches with the early Church and the Councils. The Councils clearly teach that Rome is at the top, with Alexandria next, and so on. Furthermore, I don’t see Bishops then and today claiming that Bishops and layman are somehow equal, but I don’t really understand what he means by it. For me, either he is saying something trivial, that Bishops aren’t suppose to be dictators, or he’s saying that Bishops are equal to laymen, which is absurd. Is this understanding correct?
Christi pax,

Lucretius
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I haven’t read the article so I can’t talk about #2, but as far as your #1 goes, yes, we see a bishop with his clergy and his flock gathered around him as a complete manifestation of the universal Church, lacking nothing and requiring no other head. We have episcopal synods and different hierarchical titles but these are a historical and organizational development, not of divine origin. For us, there’s nothing ontologically different between the bishop of some backwater rural diocese and the Patriarch of Constantinople (or Rome for that matter).
 
wynd said:
I haven’t read the article so I can’t talk about #2, but as far as your #1 goes, yes, we see a bishop with his clergy and his flock gathered around him as a complete manifestation of the universal Church, lacking nothing and requiring no other head. We have episcopal synods and different hierarchical titles but these are a historical and organizational development, not of divine origin. For us, there’s nothing ontologically different between the bishop of some backwater rural diocese and the Patriarch of Constantinople (or Rome for that matter).
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Thanks!

But here’s the deal: I don’t think the Catholic Church actually disagrees. Even the Pope is first and foremost the Bishop of Rome.

Christi pax.
 
Here’s another question regarding the Article:

The author mentions that St. Anslem claims that “God’s essence is Justice and Love,” while he claims that the Orthodox Church teaches that God’s Justice and Love are His Energies, not Essence, and that God’s Essence is unknowable.

I have my susipisions that the author is using “Essence” in a different way than St. Anselm. What do the Orthodox mean by Essence and energy? (Energy is not a term the Latin Church uses).

Christi pax.
 
My rudimentary understanding is that as you said, God is unknowable in his essence, so we can know God through his energies, i.e., how He interacts with creation. The common example given is we experience the sun (essence) through the light and heat it generates (energies). In this way, we can achieve union with God without becoming the same essence as God.
 
To me all this sounds like a “theologian’s theology”, having no practical influence on the faith of the masses whatsoever… :highprayer::byzsoc:
 
Hi Lucretious.

You said that it is “absurd” to think that bishops and laymen are equal. Can you offer any evidence that other people find it as absurd as you do?
 
Peter_J said:
Hi Lucretious.

You said that it is “absurd” to think that bishops and laymen are equal. Can you offer any evidence that other people find it as absurd as you do?
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If they are equal, then why do we even make the distinction?

Furthermore, more obviously, if Bishops and layman are equal, then layman should be able to celebrate the Liturgy. Such a doctrine is more like what Protestants believe.

Although I get the feeling we are equivocating on “equal” now 🙂

Christi pax,

Lucretius
 
Well, I’m not sure I would exactly count any of that as “evidence that other people find it as absurd as you do”, but I don’t want to split hairs or get into a back-and-forth. 🙂
 
When there were twelve bishops with equal authority, why did one of them have to rule over others?
 
Vanez said:
When there were twelve bishops with equal authority, why did one of them have to rule over others?
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If there was equal authority why did Christ ask Peter to feed the sheep?
 
SpeakInSilence said:
If there was equal authority why did Christ ask Peter to feed the sheep?
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Well, the thing you mentioned will likely be lead to the verse where Jesus mentioned about the rock. Orthodox has a different view of those verses. I’m not going to argue it with you or another Catholics because Catholic’s understanding of it has been developed for years and years that it makes me think that there is no point of arguing about it in 2015. And no matter how we discus it, in whatever manner, we will never meet at one point of agreement.
 
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