Qestion to EC re.: possible future UNION between EO & RC

[Apotheoun]

Exactly, my friend. It seems counter intuitive, but I have found in my own discussions with Muslims in real life (and for the most part online, too), as well as Jews and other non-Christians, that they don’t generally respond all that well to this “your God is our God” business. If you tell someone they’re not in the right religion, they want to know why, not that they’re somehow right (but still to accept Christ, for some reason). That’s a confusing, muddled message. Christianity is neither.

I agree.

 

[dvdjs]

There is a matter of discernment. Sometimes you are talking to people who - even as some say here - are just interested in talking. They have no interest in learning anything, are open to nothing, and just wish to try out their rehearsed polemics. Does it matter what you say to them.

Sometimes you are talking to people who wish to learn, with some openess. Differentiation to the point of scolding are poor ways to proceed. The right measure of assimilation, followed with" in addition we say … can be very powerful. This is what I heard (in over three hours) from Fr Daniel. And his presentation had an effect on my Muslim co-workers.

 

[Cecilianus]

Might I suggest that the approach taken by our brother Dzheremi is inadvertantly actually guilty of Apotheoun’s charge of substituting abstract qualities for God?

Everyone here acknowledges that the Muslims have some properties of God right, others not right. Dzheremi however is saying that the failure of the Muslims to recognize the Trinity means that they are applying of their properties to the wrong referent. In other words, the Trinity is an “essential” property of God the recognition of which means that your referent is in fact God - or, better yet, the Trinity IS God while everything else (goodness, clemency, Creator, etc.) are just properties of Him.

By contrast, I hold that God’s simplicity and perfection requires that all properties of Him are equally essential - God is not a Trinity who happens to be good, or a Trinity who happens to be one, but rather God is Goodness, God is Being, God is Unity, God is Trinity.

(I went to a Catholic college and took Catholic metaphysics. Some of it drove me crazy and helped push me over the edge into Byzantium, but some of it stuck with me.)

One can experience and know God without passing a test on the Summa Contra Gentiles (though I got an A- in the class on that book, so does that mean I’m half a letter grade away from perfect sanctity?). One can experience and know God without being intellectually aware of things like the Trinity, or even if someone, out of crass ignorance, rejects such intellectual formulae. The Old Testament Jews knew God and experienced the Trinity, but did not understand what they experienced. The same may be true of Muslims.

Our experience of God is not determined by “abstract qualities”, whether they be the Trinity, or God’s unity, or God’s simplicity, or whathaveyou. Our experience of God is determined by God. None of these are really abstract qualities, because they are all nothing other than God. God has no accidents, as St. Thomas says. God IS His properties - His unity and simplicity and creatorhood and energies no less than His Trinity.

 

[LoyalViews]

Abuses in the Liturgy meant to imitate Roman Catholic praxis rather than our own Eastern tradition.

For example, tearing down iconostases so you can see the priest and the altar, putting statues in churches, pews, shortening the Liturgy to an hour or an hour and a half, praying the Rosary or other Latin devotions before Liturgy rather than Orthros, putting the Stations of the Cross on the inside of a church, omitting Eastern customs like the antidoron, speaking the Liturgy rather than chanting it, kneeling during Communion, omitting the Sign of the Cross (Roman Catholics make it once or twice during Mass, while Eastern Christians make it dozens or hundreds of times), having Liturgy on the night before the feast or multiple times a day, confessionals rather than having the sacrament administered before the iconostasis, using the Latin formula for absolution, the watering down or abolition of fasting, the extra-liturgical adoption of Latin devotions like to Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, the adoption of Latin theological language and canon law, etc.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with an Eastern Catholic praying the Rosary, I don’t see it much as a Latinisation. But, even Blessed Pope John Paul II urged the bishops of the Eastern Catholic Church to de-latinise.

 

[dzheremi]

Dzheremi however is saying that the failure of the Muslims to recognize the Trinity means that they are applying of their properties to the wrong referent.

Hmm. I listed some properties of their god that are different from ours, yes. And the Trinity is NOT an optional belief, so, yes to that too.

In other words, the Trinity is an “essential” property of God

Not sure if that’s correct (is the Trinity a “property”? I don’t know), but sure it is essential to believe in the Trinity. How is it not essential? This is how God has revealed Himself to us, hundreds of years before Muhammad was glimmer in his daddy’s eye.

the recognition of which means that your referent is in fact God

No. Just as all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares, belief in the Trinity is not necessarily a guarantee of orthodox belief. The many, many heresies that prodded into the nature of the Holy Trinity are evidence enough of that.

or, better yet, the Trinity IS God while everything else (goodness, clemency, Creator, etc.) are just properties of Him.

I’m confused as to what you mean by this.

By contrast, I hold that God’s simplicity and perfection requires that all properties of Him are equally essential - God is not a Trinity who happens to be good, or a Trinity who happens to be one, but rather God is Goodness, God is Being, God is Unity, God is Trinity.

Okay.

One can experience and know God without being intellectually aware of things like the Trinity

I should certainly hope so! I don’t know where I have ever advocated any other position.

Our experience of God is determined by God.

I agree, though I would be very cautious in explaining this correctly, lest you end up in a situation where the Muslims’ experience of “god” requires them to deny Christ and you have no recourse but to agree because, after all, “god” told them so. That would be insanity. God does not guide people to deny Him; rather, He gives us free will and sometimes we use it to follow things that are not from God (like Islam).

His unity and simplicity and creatorhood and energies no less than His Trinity.

Yes, sure, but as this is so, it is NECESSARY to believe in the Triune nature of God, no? God is not some smorgasbord wherein we can load up on what we like and leave the rest. Why give Muslims an out that literally NO ONE gets (according to Christ, not me; cf. Matt. 10:23, John 14:6)? How does that help them?

 

[Apotheoun]

By contrast, I hold that God’s simplicity and perfection requires that all properties of Him are equally essential - God is not a Trinity who happens to be good, or a Trinity who happens to be one, but rather God is Goodness, God is Being, God is Unity, God is Trinity.

I do not agree. You are confusing essence and energy. When we say that “God is good,” we are actually saying - as St. Gregory of Nyssa indicated - the “God that is is good,” and it is the hidden or invisible “is” that bears the weight of essentiality. It is impossible to know, or even speak about, the divine essence.

 

[Apotheoun]

Everyone here acknowledges that the Muslims have some properties of God right, others not right.

I do not acknowledge that to be true. For example, Islamic monotheism is not true, but is instead false, because it involves an explicit denial of the tri-hypostatic existence of God.

Dzheremi however is saying that the failure of the Muslims to recognize the Trinity means that they are applying of their properties to the wrong referent.

I am in basic agreement with this viewpoint. Muslims do not know or worship the true God.

In other words, the Trinity is an “essential” property of God the recognition of which means that your referent is in fact God - or, better yet, the Trinity IS God while everything else (goodness, clemency, Creator, etc.) are just properties of Him.

I would not speak about the “Trinity” as an essential property of God, any more than I would refer to the three divine hypostaseis as divine “properties.” The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are real and distinct subsistences, who are one in nature.

 

[Apotheoun]

It is impossible to adore God without Christ.

 

[Apotheoun]

One can experience and know God without passing a test on the Summa Contra Gentiles (though I got an A- in the class on that book, so does that mean I’m half a letter grade away from perfect sanctity?). One can experience and know God without being intellectually aware of things like the Trinity, or even if someone, out of crass ignorance, rejects such intellectual formulae.

Biblical Judaism, which should not be confused with Rabbinic Judaism, involved a real living experience and worship of the Triune God, and so even if this experience was not intellectually formulated in a triadological creedal affirmation it remained Trinitarian nonetheless, but Islam - unlike Biblical Judaism - was founded upon an explicit denial of the idea that God would ever beget a Son. Thus, Islam is a false religion that believes in a false “god.”

The Old Testament Jews knew God and experienced the Trinity, but did not understand what they experienced. The same may be true of Muslims.

I agree with the former proposition, while I reject the latter. After all, Biblical Judaism - of which Christianity is the continuation - was not predicated upon and explicit denial of God’s Triune existence. While Islam - on the other hand - is founded upon a denial of the divinity of Christ and the dogma of the Holy Trinity. There can be no comparison between Biblical Judaism / Christianity and Islam.

 

[dzheremi]

It is impossible to adore God without Christ.

Here we have it, folks. A one-sentence catechism.

AGREED!

 

[Cecilianus]

I don’t think there is anything wrong with an Eastern Catholic praying the Rosary, I don’t see it much as a Latinisation. But, even Blessed Pope John Paul II urged the bishops of the Eastern Catholic Church to de-latinise.

The problem is when people pray it in church before Liturgy, as a replacement for the service of Orthros (Matins & Lauds) which should be done publicly with the priest (who has a much bigger role in the East than he does in the West with the Hours, since the Hours include blessings and litanies and other things we like ). The biggest destructive effect of Latinizations is that they water down the intensity and fullness of liturgical life.

Most Eastern Catholics, myself included, do pray the Rosary as a strictly private devotion. I’m lazy and I usually pray the five-mystery abridgement of the Dominican Rosary. We do have our own 15-mystery Rosary, the “Rule of the Theotokos” or “Theotokos Lestovka”, which was generally said only by the hardcore Old Believers in Russia and the monks on Mount Athos, who probably got it from the Desert Fathers in Egypt (making it as old as monasticism - back to the 4th century). I do not know whether the Greek version has “mysteries”; the version of the Theotokos Lestovka prayed by the Old Believers, or at least by St. Seraphim Svezdinsky, has 15 mysteries slightly different from the Dominican mysteries: the Nativity of Mary, the Entrance of Mary into the Temple, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Christ, the Meeting (Presentation) in the Temple, the Flight into Egypt, the Finding in the Temple, the Wedding at Cana in Galilee, the Sorrow of Mary standing underneath the Foot of the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Dormition, and the Protection of the Mother of God.

The beginning and ending prayers of the Byzantine Rosary are different than in the Latin Rosaries (Dominican or Franciscan), and can be found here:

therosemarytree.blogspot.com/2009/01/rule-of-theotokos-byzantine-rosary.html

A much clearer presentation was found on the website of St. Anne’s Byzantine Catholic Church, which I saved to my computer as a Word document, but the website appears to be gone. It was linked on another thread (by a Roman Catholic, I think), in this post:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=542548

 

[LoyalViews]

The problem is when people pray it in church before Liturgy, as a replacement for the service of Orthros (Matins & Lauds) which should be done publicly with the priest (who has a much bigger role in the East than he does in the West with the Hours, since the Hours include blessings and litanies and other things we like ). The biggest destructive effect of Latinizations is that they water down the intensity and fullness of liturgical life.

Most Eastern Catholics, myself included, do pray the Rosary as a strictly private devotion. I’m lazy and I usually pray the five-mystery abridgement of the Dominican Rosary. We do have our own 15-mystery Rosary, the “Rule of the Theotokos” or “Theotokos Lestovka”, which was generally said only by the hardcore Old Believers in Russia and the monks on Mount Athos, who probably got it from the Desert Fathers in Egypt (making it as old as monasticism - back to the 4th century). I do not know whether the Greek version has “mysteries”; the version of the Theotokos Lestovka prayed by the Old Believers, or at least by St. Seraphim Svezdinsky, has 15 mysteries slightly different from the Dominican mysteries: the Nativity of Mary, the Entrance of Mary into the Temple, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Christ, the Meeting (Presentation) in the Temple, the Flight into Egypt, the Finding in the Temple, the Wedding at Cana in Galilee, the Sorrow of Mary standing underneath the Foot of the Cross, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Dormition, and the Protection of the Mother of God.

The beginning and ending prayers of the Byzantine Rosary are different than in the Latin Rosaries (Dominican or Franciscan), and can be found here:

therosemarytree.blogspot.com/2009/01/rule-of-theotokos-byzantine-rosary.html

A much clearer presentation was found on the website of St. Anne’s Byzantine Catholic Church, which I saved to my computer as a Word document, but the website appears to be gone. It was linked on another thread (by a Roman Catholic, I think), in this post:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=542548

Ahh, I agree The East is meant to be the East, and the West is meant to be the west! (It’s essential to unity) God Bless :byzsoc: