Perspective on East-West 1054 Great Schism

  • Thread starter Thread starter sirach2v4
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
We can point out our differences as is always pointed out but in the end it all comes down to whether the Pope is who he claims to be.
 
IgnatianPhilo said:
We can point out our differences as is always pointed out but in the end it all comes down to whether the Pope is who he claims to be.
Click to expand...
👍

It’s tiresome reading the same recycled arguments on this topic. Some charity and goodwill from both sides would not go astray.

On the other hand, those who are new to either faith, of no faith or new to studying the Schism these debates come in handy.

Please…continue ladies and gentlemen.
🍿
 
Nine Two, thanks for the charitable responses. I appreciate the perspective from your side of the split.
 
Abu said:
As noted, not only does ecumenical mean universal but the fact that the Orthodox choose to limit themselves to 7 Ecumenical Councils merely defines the limitations of their own choosing which extend to Papal primacy and infallibility. Further regressions from doctrine are expressed in the Orthodox rejecting the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and permitting divorce and remarriage.

As Dr Warren Carroll has pointed out in The Building of Christendom, 1987, (Vol. 2 of A History of Christendom), p 365, note 80: “There can be no reasonable doubt that St Athanasius as Patriarch of Alexandria and St John Chrysostom as Patriarch of Constantinople fully recognised and accepted Papal primacy (Chapters 1 & 3).”
Click to expand...
Gabriel is right,

The word ecumenical is specifically associated with the empire. So Constantinople was called the ecumenical city. The patriarch of Constantinople was called the ecumenical patriarch. The Ecumenical councils were universal according to the empire, meaning they were enforced by the empire, and where the borders of the empire ended so did the authority of the council. The emperor saw them as a way to strengthen the empire, and to keep peace. There was often dispute between the Roman emperor and various groups over the councils and their authority and truth. So in the fifth and sixth century some emperors enforced Chalcedon strictly, and consequently removed bishops from various see’s that were held by monophysite bishops. Other emperors thought that the best way to find peace between the two sides was to downplay the council. Consequently, you have the henoticon of Zeno, which ignored Chalcedon.

In the second millenium the pope took on the functions of the emperor in the west. He became the enforcer of the councils.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Second, the authority to change the Creed was agreed upon by all (including Rome) in the Second Ecumenical Council. It is not a notion out of thin air that the East believed, it is a canon set in stone by the entire Church.
Click to expand...
Can you explain to me what this means?
 
manualman said:
So the entire church would have been better off had we simply been satisfied with the gospel revelations that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit? All the subsequent talk whereby we ruled out false understandings of what that meant and defined the Trinity as being three “persons”, but one God was all just dangerous speculation that we should never have bothered with?

I don’t think you really think that. But surely you must admit that we’d not have ruled out false understandings of the Trinity had we not had those arguments, fights and battles against heretical understandings? Even the Arians believed in Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a sense. I doubt you’re suggesting that the church would have been better off leaving the issue vague to avoid the fighting.

So why apply that policy to OTHER issues of revelation? It seems like a break with our shared history. That’s what I don’t get about the EO approach to theology.
Click to expand...
The developments aren’t good. They are necessary, but not something to praise or be proud of. They were necessary to conquer errors that had infiltrated the Church, but in reality they don’t offer us anything new or explain anything. No one understands God better because of Nicaea and Constantinople. They just safe gaurd against particular errors, that had affected the Church. Is the Church better with the creed and definitions from the councils? No, it is the same. But definitions have a tendency to explain things that are unexplainable, and to concretize that which isn’t concrete. Everyone should be wary of new councils and developments and definitions of the faith. Sometimes we need them, but we shouldn’t be enthusiastic about them.
 
In And On This Rock, Fr Stanley Jaki, OSB, 1987, Trinity Communications, p 117, Fr Jaki shows that the reality of the infallibility of the Bishop of Rome was expressed even by Protestant theologian Adolph von Harnack, with reference to the first century!

Those who know nothing of history can now learn from history. The infallibility of the Vicar of Christ has never been disputed in Christ’s Church, from the beginning.

About Pope Victor I’s declaration by edict, about the year 200, that any local Church that failed to conform with Rome was excluded from the union with the one Church by heresy, none other than Adolph von Harnack admitted that Victor I was “recognised, in his capacity of bishop of Rome, as the special guardian of the ‘common unity’… " (See And On This Rock, p 118, 1987, Trinity Communications, Fr Stanley L Jaki).

Harnack asked: “How would Victor have ventured on such an edict – though indeed he had not the power of enforcing it in every case – unless the special prerogative of Rome to determine the conditions of the ‘common unity’ in the vital questions of faith had been an acknowledged and well-established fact?”

Precisely.

The apostles were a collegial community, under Peter. “By the end of the apostolic age, the bishops of the Catholic Church began meeting together on a regional basis, and with the first ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325, this co-operative activity reached worldwide proportions.” (Fr John A Hardon, S.J., The Catholic Catechism, Doubleday, 1975, p 320-321). The teaching of Ecumenical Councils has to be approved by Christ’s Supreme Vicar.
 
Nine_Two said:
Why don’t you try reading the canons of your churches many councils rather than throwing insults (I’m assuming you were calling me selfish). Immaculate Conception has an athema attached to it. As does denying the infallibility of the Pope and his universal jurisdiction. Little things that have nothing to do with Christ.

I’m not even going to touch on your other accusation, out of respect for other posters here.
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t listen to a word Abu says. He is a jerk who likes to fling insults at people. He doesn’t know anything about the subject, and has nothing positive to add.
 
**The Wanderer June 5, 2008
by James Likoudis **
'Pope Benedict XVI declared in his homily for Pentecost (May 11, 2008) that “the Catholic Church is not a federation of Churches, but a single reality: The Universal Church has ontological priority.”

'Here the Pope emphasized an essential aspect of Catholic teaching on “communio,” namely, that the Church Christ founded is not a mere plurality or aggregate of particular Churches each of which can be considered self-sufficient and does not need to be in organic unity with the Church’s living and visible center of unity. The Catholic Church with its living and visible center constitutes “a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual particular Church . . . and gives birth to particular Churches as her daughters. She expresses herself in them. She is the mother and not the offspring of the particular Churches” (See the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops on the Church as Communion,” May 28, 1992).

'Eastern Orthodox theologians (Russians, Serbs, and Greeks) who now reject the infallibility of the visible Church’s hierarchy, and, following the lead of the 19th-century Russian Orthodox lay theologian Alexei Khomiakov, declare the Church’s infallibility as diffused equally through the entire membership of the Church. This position amounts to a real denial of the Church’s infallibility long upheld by the more traditionally minded theologians.

'This modern insistence by some Orthodox that the consent of the faithful is an absolute requirement for the Unity and Infallibility of the Church must be said to be in direct contradiction to the tradition of the “undivided Church” which saw in Peter’s See at Rome its visible head and center of Unity and the voice of its Infallibility (with or without Ecumenical Councils). No repeated denials of the Roman primacy across the centuries of the Byzantine Greco-Slav Schism can overcome the commonsense judgment that a visible Church demands a visible head — a visible head that can speak with the authority of the God-man Himself on questions of disputed faith and morals.

‘Patriarchs and bishops separated from the visible head of the Church have no guarantee from the Holy Spirit of infallibility in teaching. Theologically and historically, that visible head of the Church Militant with the charism of infallibility can only be the Bishop of Rome who sits on the Cathedra of the Prince of the Apostles as the very Rock of the teaching Episcopate.’
catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=8297&repos=1&subrepos=0&searchid=1058219

As Fr John A Hardon, S.J., explains: “In historical sequence the defense of sacred images and relics came earlier and was occasioned by the rise of iconoclasm in The Byzantine Empire. With the spread of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries, the Christian Eastern rulers were pressured to conform to the Moslem exclusion of icons from religious worship as a form of idolatry. At that time the ecumenical Council Nicea II [787] defined the Catholic doctrine by stating that the veneration of images of ‘our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our unstained Lady the holy Mother of God, of the honorable angels, of all the saints and saintly persons’ is not only pleasing to God but highly commendable to the practice of the faithful….Nevertheless, the respect and honour people pay to them is not the absolute adoration that according to faith may be given only to the divine nature.” The Catholic Catechism, 1975, p 298-9].
 
Bballer32 said:
Can you explain to me what this means?
Click to expand...
It is an Eastern Orthodox misunderstanding of the Council ruling. The Oriental Orthodox added more to the Creed than the Catholic Filioque.

THE NICENE CREED WITH THE CONSTANTINOPOLITAN ADDITIONS IN BRACKETS

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker [of heaven and earth, and] of all things visible and invisible;

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made:

Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate [of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,] and was made man;

[And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate,] and suffered [and was buried];

And the third day He rose again, [according to the Scriptures;] And ascended into heaven, [and sitteth at the right hand of the Father;]

And He shall come [again with glory] to judge the quick and the dead, [Whose kingdom shall have no end.]

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, [the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the Prophets; And I believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the Resurrection of the dead. And the Life of the world to come. Amen.]

But those who say: ‘There was a time when he was not;’ and ‘He was not before he was made;’ and ‘He was made out of nothing,’ or ‘He is of another substance’ or ‘essence,’ or ‘The Son of God is created,’ or ‘changeable,’ or ‘alterable’—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.
When these things had been read, the holy Synod decreed that it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different (ἑτέραν) Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicæa.
But those who shall dare to compose a different faith, or to introduce or offer it to persons desiring to turn to the acknowledgment of the truth, whether from Heathenism or from Judaism, or from any heresy whatsoever, shall be deposed, if they be bishops or clergymen; bishops from the episcopate and clergymen from the clergy; and if they be laymen, they shall be anathematized.
And in like manner, if any, whether bishops, clergymen, or laymen, should be discovered to hold or teach the doctrines contained in the Exposition introduced by the Presbyter Charisius concerning the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten Son of God, or the abominable and profane doctrines of Nestorius, which are subjoined, they shall be subjected to the sentence of this holy and ecumenical Synod. So that, if it be a bishop, he shall be removed from his bishopric and degraded; if it be a clergyman, he shall likewise be stricken from the clergy; and if it be a layman, he shall be anathematized, as has been afore said.
We prohibit any change whatsoever in the Creed of Faith drawn up by the holy Nicene fathers. We do not allow ourselves or anyone else to change or omit one word or syllable in that Creed.
  • Council of Ephesus, St Cyril of Alexandria
First of all, please notice how, in the quotes from Canon VII of Ephesus and St. Cyril of Alexandria above, the prohibition is not against adding to the Creed of Constantinople I (A.D. 381), but rather adding to the Creed “defined by the holy fathers who convened in the city of Nicaea” (A.D. 325); and, as we already observed, the Creed of Nicaea makes no mention of the Spirit’s procession, but merely reads: “[We believe] in the Holy Spirit… (followed by a direct anathema against Arianism.)” St Cyril never acknowledged the Council of Constantinople which attempted to place Constantinople above Alexandria.
 
Zekariya said:
Here, Augustine uses ‘begotten’ as a synonym for ‘spirates’ – a reference to the Spirit’s one spiration (from the Father). And this is what Augustine says just before the quote presented by Mr. Quattrone, thus establishing the context of what Augustine means when he says that the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son “at the same time”. The reference is to the eternal, consubstantial communion between Father and Son (the context of a collective procession – “proienai”), not to the procession from the Father alone (“ekporeusis”) as the Spirit’s ultimate Cause or Source. Augustine’s statement that the Spirit “does not proceed from the Father into the Son” is clearly not a denial of “the Father giving the procession” but is intended to dispute the Arian error that the Son is merely a temporal recipient of the Spirit – the same error that the 11th Council of Toledo condemns above. For, when viewed in context, what Augustine is referring to is how the Spirit does not proceed from Father and Son in the sense that a child proceeds from a human father and mother. His full quote reads:

…the Holy Spirit is not said to be begotten, but rather to proceed; since if He, too, was called a Son, He would certainly be called the Son of both, which is most absurd, since no one is son of two, save of father and mother. But far be it from us to surmise any such thing as this between God the Father and God the Son. Because not even a son of men proceeds at the same time from both father and mother; but when he proceeds from the father into the mother, he does not at that time proceed from the mother; and when he proceeds from the mother into this present light, he does not at that time proceed from the father. But the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father into the Son, and from the Son proceed to sanctify the creature, but proceeds at once from both; although the Father has given this to the Son, that He should proceed, as from Himself, so also from Him. (On the Trinity, xv; 27)

Full article: catholic-legate.com/apologetics/thechurch/articles/filioque.aspx
Click to expand...
That is an amazing article I’ve used it myself (every Catholic should read it in order to understand the filioque).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top