Is Apostolic Canon 85 an Argument against Eastern Orthodoxy?

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RoutineGreen

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Apostolic Canon 85 lists a canon which differs significantly from what is used by every denomination today that I know of, especially in its listing of First and Second Clement as part of the New Testament. Canon 2 of The Council of Trullo, which is approved by the Eastern Orthodox Church as ecumenical, says that the 85 Apostolic Canons should “from this time forth remain firm and unshaken”.

I see only three options here: 1) Eastern Orthodoxy is true, but not all canons which have been ratified or received through history are infallible. 2) Eastern Orthodoxy is true, and the canon contains at least the books listed in Apostolic Canon 85, even if this is somehow ignored by (almost) everyone, even within Eastern Orthodoxy. 3) Eastern Orthodoxy is false.

I wonder if someone can enlighten me on whether the view that canons may contain errors has been held by a significant group of people especially in the first millennium. (A quick search gave me an article (which I am at present not allowed to link to) by an Eastern Orthodox, which says canons may be fallible, but it may be written by a liberal scholar, whom I know nothing about, anyway.) If the answer is no, is there anywhere I have gone wrong in the above reasoning, or is it really the case that the above is an argument against Eastern Orthodoxy?

Used as an apologetic argument I have not seen it used anywhere; the reason my attention was brought to it was that it came up in the beginning of an early Reason & Theology episode without it there being made the challenge for the legitimacy it appears to me that it is, that is, given the premise that all canons of ecumenical councils are infallible (and I have not seen any Eastern Orthodox dispute the ecumenicity of the Council of Trullo), which I have verified is an opinion held at least among some Orthodox, I suspect most.
 
Not sure why you would need arguments against Eastern Orthodoxy.

There’s dialogue through a Pontifical Council between the Catholic and Orthodox churches with the aim of restoring communion.

Also interesting is paragraph 838 from the Catholic Catechism.

Why not look at ways to find commonality and work towards restoration of communion between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches?
 
Figuring out which Church–the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Churches–is the one Church we profess in the Creed is a good endeavor. Despite what the poster above says, it is not contrary to the search for corporate unity or a denial of the many things we share in common for an individual to decide which one to enter into full communion with. As the Vatican II decree on ecumenism (that is, the search for corporate unity) says, whether individuals or particular Churches enter into full communion with the Catholic Church, “both proceed from the marvelous ways of God.”

There are plenty of arguments why one should chose to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church, rather than an Eastern Orthodox Church, but I don’t really see the issue in the OP as one. The EO’s themselves aren’t universally in agreement on the authority today of the canons of this Council or its ecumenicity and the canon itself says it is rejecting the spurious documents ascribed to Clement. I don’t think either the Apostolic Canons intended nor the Council on Trullo received the list as a strictly defined canon of divinely inspire Scripture.
 
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Thank you for your replies. I might have specified that I am at present not a Roman Catholic myself (but considering mainly Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy), so the above argument was merely meant as a means of finding the true Church, in this case by the method of elimination. I realise that the argument might not be sufficient to disprove Eastern Orthodoxy, but at face value, given certain premises, it actually seems to do so.

Genesis315: When you say that the canon rejects the spurious documents ascribed to Clement, I assume you refer to the sentences “And in these canons we are bidden to receive the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles [written] by Clement. But formerly through the agency of those who erred from the faith certain adulterous matter was introduced, clean contrary to piety, for the polluting of the Church, which obscures the elegance and beauty of the divine decrees in their present form. We therefore reject these Constitutions so as the better to make sure of the edification and security of the most Christian flock;” of canon 2 of Trullo, but I read them as referring to the something else than the First and Second Epistle of Clement, of which I understand only the latter is probably not written by Clement, by the way. Nothing seems to indicate a rejection of the First Epistle of Clement, which is described by Apostolic Canon 85 as being “of the New Testament”.

Regarding the Council of Trullo, as I said, I have yet to see an Orthodox argue against its being ecumenical. E.g., the seemingly fairly “mainstream” source “The Orthodox Faith” (from the website of OCA) says “This council is probably more often called the Quinisext Council (meaning “fifth-sixth”), because its canonical legislation is understood as having completed the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, neither of which had passed any canons. So its rulings are held by the Orthodox Church to be at the same level of authority as the canons passed by the first four Ecumenical Councils.”.
 
There’s an essay by Nicon Patrinacos that is reproduced on various EO websites that says of its canons that “many were not completely observed in the East” and of course Rome itself didn’t receive much of it. It seems ecumenical in name only according to the usual EO criteria for identifying such a thing.
 
Apparently, and I wish I could dig up the source, but in the Orthodox Church if a canon is disregarded and forgotten by the Church or otherwise ignored, it is considered no longer in force.

Also, although I am in the minority, I would argue against the Quinisext Council being Ecumenical because it was explicitly rejected by the Pope and the Western Church at a time when we were still in full communion. Therefore the axiom of St. Vincent of Lerins is violated because it does not bear universality, antiquity, or consent of the whole Church.

Also, the 101st canon is superseded by the organic development of Eastern Liturgy. If Canon 101 was still in force, the Orthodox way of distributing Holy Communion would be uncanonical according to our own canons. Plus, as a side note, in Orthodoxy the canons are understood to be guidelines under which the Bishops specifically decide in their own diocese how they interpret, implement and pastorally direct their flocks.

The Canons are not Laws that must be strictly adhered to–if we adhered to them as laws and to our Bishops as secular Judges, we would be crushed under their weight–no one would be eligible to be clergy, nor would the laity ever commune, nor would we be able to bear such strictures forged in the times of the martyrs. We are weak in these days and therefore need medicine diluted to an acceptable measure, otherwise too much medicine will kill us poor patients.
 
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