G
Genesis315
Guest
It seems the opposite to me. Because they lack a principle of unity, Eastern Orthodoxy is internally incosistent and contradictory. It’s why you can have an EO Church A in communion with B, B in communion with C, but C not in communion with A (A=B=C≠A; like, for example, in the 1990s when the Moscow Patriarchate broke communion with the Constantinople Patriarchate over who had jurisdiction over the Estonian Church–yet they each remained in communion with the other patriarchates). How can a Church be one, if it cannot be in communion with it self?
They also have no fixed standard of orthodoxy–theirs is a meaningless tautology: for them, the standard of orthodoxy is the Church. The Church is defined as all orthodox believers. So the standard of orthodoxy is those who are orthodox. This doesn’t help when the question is what is orthodoxy–you have to know what the orthodox faith is first before determining who are the orthodox believers! It’s completely circular.
So when there’s a dispute with well-informed, well-meaning people on both sides, there’s no real way to settle the issue. Which side is the orthodox side?
Under the current Orthodox system, some Council may propose an answer, but it must be judged by each and every individual Christian since it is not binding until accepted by the entire Church over some undefined time period–even centuries. If this principle is actually applied, unity breaks down. In practice Orthodoxy has not broken down as much (although it is hard to pin down what their doctrines actually are across all of Orthodoxy as a result) because this principle has not actually been applied. Historically, those who chose not to accept the Councils’ definitions were excommunicated and anathematized forthwith–they were not given the choice to accept it or reject it. They were accepted by the whole Church because those who disagreed were booted. The non-Chalcedonians can easily claim Chalcedon is not authoritative because the whole Church didn’t accept it.
This novel approach of the EO was introduced much, much later to justify the Orthodox after-the-fact repudiation of the reunion Councils which ended in the Catholic favor (Lyons II and Florence) and some of their own post-schism pan-Orthodox Councils, which, for example, teach as Orthodox doctrine things like the Catholic understanding of original sin, transubstantiation–actually using the word–and purgatory–without using the word (those three at the Council of Jerusalem in 1672, whose decrees appear based on those from Trent) and indulgences (Council of Constantinople 1727)–things they now deny. These things were repudiated during a wave of anti-Latin “purging” and the rise of Neo-Palamism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
There needs to be a fixed reference point that is always in the true Church. As enunciated by St. Ireneaus, every church must agree with the Church of the city of Rome. It has always been that unshakable See.
They also have no fixed standard of orthodoxy–theirs is a meaningless tautology: for them, the standard of orthodoxy is the Church. The Church is defined as all orthodox believers. So the standard of orthodoxy is those who are orthodox. This doesn’t help when the question is what is orthodoxy–you have to know what the orthodox faith is first before determining who are the orthodox believers! It’s completely circular.
So when there’s a dispute with well-informed, well-meaning people on both sides, there’s no real way to settle the issue. Which side is the orthodox side?
Under the current Orthodox system, some Council may propose an answer, but it must be judged by each and every individual Christian since it is not binding until accepted by the entire Church over some undefined time period–even centuries. If this principle is actually applied, unity breaks down. In practice Orthodoxy has not broken down as much (although it is hard to pin down what their doctrines actually are across all of Orthodoxy as a result) because this principle has not actually been applied. Historically, those who chose not to accept the Councils’ definitions were excommunicated and anathematized forthwith–they were not given the choice to accept it or reject it. They were accepted by the whole Church because those who disagreed were booted. The non-Chalcedonians can easily claim Chalcedon is not authoritative because the whole Church didn’t accept it.
This novel approach of the EO was introduced much, much later to justify the Orthodox after-the-fact repudiation of the reunion Councils which ended in the Catholic favor (Lyons II and Florence) and some of their own post-schism pan-Orthodox Councils, which, for example, teach as Orthodox doctrine things like the Catholic understanding of original sin, transubstantiation–actually using the word–and purgatory–without using the word (those three at the Council of Jerusalem in 1672, whose decrees appear based on those from Trent) and indulgences (Council of Constantinople 1727)–things they now deny. These things were repudiated during a wave of anti-Latin “purging” and the rise of Neo-Palamism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
There needs to be a fixed reference point that is always in the true Church. As enunciated by St. Ireneaus, every church must agree with the Church of the city of Rome. It has always been that unshakable See.
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