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

[mardukm]

There was nothing in the pool related fo ‘first millenium’. It’s related to 'now" (that could be traced back to 1590) and 'future.

But EO often claim they are more faithful to the first millenium standard than Catholics. I do not see that to be the case, and I believe the EO can learn a thing or three from EC’s. That would relate to the first option. That’s all I meant, regardless of your own views about your Church. Of course, the canonical reality of the EC’s is not perfect either. That is why neither option perfectly fits my viewpoint on the matter.

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[mardukm]

Dear brother Todd,

‘The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.’" (CCC 841, which references Vatican II’s LG 16; cf. NA 3)

I just recently read a thread that indicated that ecumenical Muslims are more likely than their Christian counterparts to claim that we both believe in the same God without qualification. In light of that, as I read that statement from the CCC, it dawned on me that the portion highlighted in red above is referring to what the MUSLIMS “profess to hold.”

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[milidrag]

But EO often claim they are more faithful to the first millenium standard than Catholics. I do not see that to be the case, and I believe the EO can learn a thing or three from EC’s. That would relate to the first option. That’s all I meant, regardless of your own views about your Church. Of course, the canonical reality of the EC’s is not perfect either. That is why neither option perfectly fits my viewpoint on the matter.

Non sequitur. You don’t vote, nobody cares. There is no need to flood the thread with flawed reasoning about unrelated subject.

I’d like to see just how much you know about the Catholic teaching on filioque.

Since you claimed that Orthodox ‘often’ misunderstand filioque, It would be more appropriate if you start the thread about that misunderstanding yourself. I may be participating, and may be not.

 

[milidrag]

I used to believe that the EO teach that the laity can judge their God-ordained bishops. I was often told that EO do not believe this, so, despite evidence to the contrary, I relented in that belief. But reading you compare a commission of bishops to “you and me” seriously gives me second thoughts.

I don’t judge them.

I’m just pronouncing the diagnose of the Church - a gathering of a few bishop, with ‘a key’ particpant on the orthodox side being a receng angilcan convert made a titular bishop of a non-existing see of a nearly defunct Patriarchate, contradicting the dogmas of the Ecumenical Councils is nothing more than that.

 

[milidrag]

Non sequitur. You don’t vote, nobody cares. There is no need to flood the thread with flawed reasoning about unrelated subject.

…

More specifically, there are possibilities:

-EO aren’t like they were in 1st mill, but EC are; (-/+)
-EO are like they were in 1st mill, but ER aren’t;(+/-)
-EO aren,t like they were in 1st mil, but neither EC are;(-/-)
-both EO and EC are like they wre in 1st mil; (+/+)

However, it is completely unrelated to the question of the pool. While nobody forces you to vote, you brought non relevant arguments into the thread. That is called troll. Are you eager for people paying attention to you? I can’t make it up for you if they don’t in your real life, or if you carry some psychological baggage from your childhood. You will have to seek for the compensation somewhere else. Frankly, nothing you brought, and you intensively keep brining into the discussions I am participating is of any particular interest to me, and I usually see it as a troll technique.

 

[theistgal]

Ahem … getting back to the OP’s question …

It’s my opinion, based on knowing them, that IF the EO’s were ever to agree to any sort of reunion with Rome, it would be with all sorts of strings attached, and any attempt by Rome to ever use its authority over them for any reason would be met with “See, we told you so!” and a massive defection. I just don’t see it ever happening - definitely not in MY lifetime!

 

[Seamus_L]

Good catch Marduk. I never noticed that, though admittedly I don’t read the catechism very often. It almost sounds as if Nostra Aetate (The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth) has been subtily corrected.

 

[dvdjs]

As a Catholic and an Oriental, I do believe that God punishes His children when they sin. This is part of the Oriental phronema that we share with the Latins. I also believe that in the afterlife, purification or perfection of the soul can occur through suffering (obviously not in a physical way).

Bravo. It seems to take so much courage to say thin in these modernistic times. We’ve seemed to have slipped into the sloppiness of thinking that punishment is ipso facto cruel or vindictive or unloving. When did that happen? When did we lose the idea that punishment is responsible, therapeutic, and loving?

 

[dvdjs]

Ever since the scientific revolution no Catholic layman Latin or otherwise would ever have been so silly as to believe in purgatorial combustion - it’s an image, like hell-fire, used to describe the pain of sense and the pain of deprivation both present in the purification process.

I say “no Catholic laymen” because I can’t vouch for Latin theologians. They’re stuck up on “material fire” and all its Aristotelian implications which should have been thrown out with the advent of science three hundred years ago.

This post is very intriguing to me, but I don’t know what you are talking about. I googled “purgatorial combustion” and came up with nothing relevant apart from your post. What is this all about? Can you point me toward references - especially to contemporary thinking on “material fire” and how that is connected to “purgatorial combustion” ?

 

[Cecilianus]

Bravo. It seems to take so much courage to say thin in these modernistic times. We’ve seemed to have slipped into the sloppiness of thinking that punishment is ipso facto cruel or vindictive or unloving. When did that happen? When did we lose the idea that punishment is responsible, therapeutic, and loving?

In all honesty, it’s extremely unfair to the Latins to say that they don’t believe that Purgatorial punishment is therapeutic/medicinal and loving. What they also say, in which respect I agree with them, is that it therapeutically heals not only the interior disorder but also the objective order of justice, and achieves the former by means of the latter and also vice versa. We heal ourselves by making amends for the wrong we have done (temporal satisfication of sins), and also make amends for the wrong we have done by healing ourselves.

That’s the Latin doctrine of Purgatory. I was a Latin for nine years and very well educated in RCIA and subsequent catechesis; I’m pretty confident that a lot of Orthodox including a lot of Orthodox in communion with Rome who reject Latin theologoumena don’t really understand the spirit of those theologoumena the way the Latins do. Like Eastern Orthodoxy, the Latin teaching is something you really have to understand “from the inside” - something you have to experience.

 

[Cecilianus]

This post is very intriguing to me, but I don’t know what you are talking about. I googled “purgatorial combustion” and came up with nothing relevant apart from your post. What is this all about? Can you point me toward references - especially to contemporary thinking on “material fire” and how that is connected to “purgatorial combustion” ?

Today we know that “material fire” (physical fire) is combustion, something we need oxygen and matter for, and something that can’t burn a soul or exist on its own. The medievals didn’t know that, and thought fire was a substance in its own right. Consequently, combining a scientific knowledge of fire with the scholastic understanding of the poena sensus as consisting of “material fire”, we are forced to the conclusion that there is Purgatorial combustion. Most neo-scholastics, however, either ignore or openly deny the post-Cartesian scientific understanding of nature. It can’t be ignored, though - combustion IS what physical, material fire IS.

Here is a contemporary article on “material fire.” I’m not very familiar with Garrigou-Lagrange, but he is probably the person to look up: newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-there-fire-in-purgatory.html

I looked it up in Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, but he says very little about the doctrine, only that:

To the poena damni is added, according to the general teaching of the theologians, a poena sensus. The Latin Fathers, the Schoolmen, and many theologians of modern times, in view of 1 Cor. 3, 15, assume a physical fire. However, the biblical foundation for this is inadequate. Out of consideration for the separated Greeks, who reject the notion of a purifying fire, the official declarations of the Councils speak only of purifying punishments (poena purgatoriae), not of purifying fire. D [Denzinger] 464, 693. Cf. S. Thomas, Sent IV d. 21 2. I a. I qc. 3

(Ott, p. 485)

Adolphe Tanquerey probably has a more comprehensive treatment in his longer Manual of Dogmatic Theology, but I don’t own a copy of it to look it up in.

 

[dvdjs]

Today we know that “material fire” (physical fire) is combustion, something we need oxygen and matter for, and something that can’t burn a soul or exist on its own. The medievals didn’t know that, and thought fire was a substance in its own right. Consequently, combining a scientific knowledge of fire with the scholastic understanding of the poena sensus as consisting of “material fire”, we are forced to the conclusion that there is Purgatorial combustion. Most neo-scholastics, however, either ignore or openly deny the post-Cartesian scientific understanding of nature. It can’t be ignored, though - combustion IS what physical, material fire IS.

Here is a contemporary article on “material fire.” I’m not very familiar with Garrigou-Lagrange, but he is probably the person to look up: newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-there-fire-in-purgatory.html

I looked it up in Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, but he says very little about the doctrine, only that:

(Ott, p. 485)

Adolphe Tanquerey probably has a more comprehensive treatment in his longer Manual of Dogmatic Theology, but I don’t own a copy of it to look it up in.

If I understand you correctly…
The idea is that if the fire of purgatory is physical (not dogmatized, but not dogmatized against, and considered probable in your link), then there must be combustion of something in purgatory. I suppose that is true but why is it troubling?

Are you also saying that the “sense of pain” associated with material fire, must be pain that result from combustion? I am not sure where this comes from; I would dispute it even for bodily creatures. The high temperature of a flame can injure bodies even without combustion of tissue.

Still a little confused but intrigued.

 

[Cecilianus]

If I understand you correctly…
The idea is that if the fire of purgatory is physical (not dogmatized, but not dogmatized against, and considered probable in your link), then there must be combustion of something in purgatory. I suppose that is true but why is it troubling?

Troubling because Purgatory, in both the Greek and Latin understandings, is more a state of purification than a physical place (at least the way I was taught the Catholic faith, in Roman Catholic RCIA), and because there isn’t any oxygen in a purely spiritual “place” or state of being.

If there’s oxygen, then I’d have to ask you where it is - and we are getting into anthropomorphisms as silly as those of the Soviet cosmonauts who said they had disproved the existence of God because they hadn’t found him in outer space. You can’t get to Purgatory in a rocket ship.

Many Roman Catholic saints (e.g., Padre Pio) have seen visions of soul performing their Purgatory here on earth - like the old man who was sweeping the attic of the church where Padre Pio was praying, and explained to the saint that he was doing so because of negligence and sloth during his earthly life. And there’s the older saint (I probably read this in the Golden Legend of Blessed Jacobus de Voragine, whose literal historical accuracy is called into question by secular historians due to the prevalence of miracles that he describes) who sat on a block of ice one winter and was asked to get up by a soul suffering his purgatory inside that block of ice.

Are you also saying that the “sense of pain” associated with material fire, must be pain that result from combustion? I am not sure where this comes from; I would dispute it even for bodily creatures. The high temperature of a flame can injure bodies even without combustion of tissue.

Still a little confused but intrigued.

A pure soul has no nerve endings with which to experience the pain of either high temperature or combustion.

It may feel or even look like fire when we get there - assuming that our souls experience all the same qualia that they had formerly received through the body, which is an interesting philosophical problem in its own right - but there’s no way for it to suffer through physical combustion. Same goes with souls in Hell.

Like Hell-fire, God could have either created the Purgatorial flames, or they could be nothing other than His love for us. The second is far more probable, and consistent with the teaching of the Fathers and saints (e.g., Blessed Julian of Norwich in the West, and St. Isaac of Nineveh in the East).

 

[dvdjs]

Troubling because Purgatory, in both the Greek and Latin understandings, is more a state of purification than a physical place (at least the way I was taught the Catholic faith, in Roman Catholic RCIA), and because there isn’t any oxygen in a purely spiritual “place” or state of being.

Sure, if the “place” in not physical, then neither are its contents. That would necessarily include the fire itself, leaving the issue of fuel and oxidant (not necessarily oxygen) moot.

A pure soul has no nerve endings with which to experience the pain of either high temperature or combustion.

A curious mix of the literal and metaphorical. And how does the soul have knowledge of someone sitting on a block of ice in which they are encased? I am not sure which fathers of theologians discussed “how” a soul suffers, and am sot sure there is much to gained from that discussion. In any case, while we know how the sensation of pain develops in creatures such as ourselves, I am not sure that anyone has made a suggestion that having an anatomy such as we do is necessary for a sensation of pain. How could that idea be proven?

but there’s no way for it to suffer through physical combustion. Same goes with souls in Hell

. Do we know *how *souls suffer? If not, then we there is no conclusion that can be drawn.

Your point here still eludes me. Is it this: assuming that suffering by fire involves combustion, and given that souls are incorporeal and therefore cannot serve as a fuel in combustion, then there can be no literal suffering by fire? If so, I would just say that: 1) one can suffer from fire without being its fuel; 2) we have no idea how a soul suffers and therefore should not include speculations about it in a chain of logic; and 3) for whom is the idea of a material fire an issue anyway?

Like Hell-fire, God could have either created the Purgatorial flames, or they could be nothing other than His love for us. The second is far more probable, and consistent with the teaching of the Fathers and saints (e.g., Blessed Julian of Norwich in the West, and St. Isaac of Nineveh in the East).

Nothing objectionable, but what problem does it solve? And given that it is not dogmatic, what problem could it eliminate?

 

[Cecilianus]

Do we know *how *souls suffer? If not, then we there is no conclusion that can be drawn.

I assume that the soul suffers through the body.

Your point here still eludes me. Is it this: assuming that suffering by fire involves combustion, and given that souls are incorporeal and therefore cannot serve as a fuel in combustion, then there can be no literal suffering by fire? If so, I would just say that: 1) one can suffer from fire without being its fuel; 2) we have no idea how a soul suffers and therefore should not include speculations about it in a chain of logic; and 3) for whom is the idea of a material fire an issue anyway?

Nothing objectionable, but what problem does it solve? And given that it is not dogmatic, what problem could it eliminate?

No, my point is that as incorporeal beings the souls have no way of interacting with the physical world and therefore of suffering by fire, since they experience the physical world through bodily means. We feel pain when in the presence of fire because of our nervous system. If your nerve endings die, then if you get burned you may not feel any pain (a condition I’m rather familiar with, as my mother has lived with this for a while and hurt herself several times accidentally, without feeling any pain from it).

It’s an issue mainly for Roman Catholics like Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange who believe in “material fire”, and for Orthodox who say they don’t believe in Purgatory and that it is a difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

 

[dvdjs]

I assume that the soul suffers through the body.

No, my point is that as incorporeal beings the souls have no way of interacting with the physical world and therefore of suffering by fire, since they experience the physical world through bodily means. We feel pain when in the presence of fire because of our nervous system. If your nerve endings die, then if you get burned you may not feel any pain (a condition I’m rather familiar with, as my mother has lived with this for a while and hurt herself several times accidentally, without feeling any pain from it).

It’s an issue mainly for Roman Catholics like Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange who believe in “material fire”, and for Orthodox who say they don’t believe in Purgatory and that it is a difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

Got it. I would just say that we do not know how that soul suffers. One cannot say that since we know how a body suffers, and that a disembodied soul cannot suffer in the same way, that it cannot suffer.

I read your link as indicating that the materiality of the fire was considered probable, but not certain, and certainly to binding. The lack of dogma about a physical fire or a physical place was part of the agreement at Florence. I ma not sure that that solved anything, but also find it hard to get a clear answer on what the EP find objectionable to the Western dogma on purgatory.

 

[Apotheoun]

Sorry to butt in, but this is a great example. It seems simple enough, and illustrates the same kind of problems that makes discussions on other threads mushy.

1. The Muslims worship one merciful God, the Creator, the God Abraham. The quote from the CCC (841) says: “those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God” . At this level, there is literally nothing to disagree with.
2. "How can Muslims adore the one true God when they explicitly reject the fact that God is a Trinity of persons? "
   Now you switch from the attributes: one, merciful, Creator, to include the attribute “true”. This is a *huge * change. I think that because of their rejection of the Trinity, it must be said that that have incomplete ideas of the true attributes of the God whom they worship, and that they also erroneously reject true, revealed ideas. In humility, we too by the way, must also acknowledge that our ideas are not complete. Human lack of knowledge or even misconception does not change God. He is the same no matter however limited we are in understanding him. The key point is that the attributes listed by the CCC are in fact held in common by Muslims, Jews, and Christians. But other attributes are not, hence the CC cannot and does not talk about “‘true’ God”. There is no suggestion that it does.

Indeed, directly pertinent to your question of worship, the CCC says:

The statement that they adore the one God (8401) in no way implies that the worship is orthodox. Indeed 841-2 vitiate any such immediate inference.

Worshipping abstract attributes is not the same as worshipping the Holy Trinity. Unlike many of the Roman Catholics posting in this thread, I am not a Pelagian, and so I do not believe that a man can come, by unaided reason alone, to a true knowledge and worship of God. Revelation is not merely the icing on the cake; instead, it is necessary to salvation, to worship, and to a real living knowledge of God.

That said, I have not believed in the past, and I do not believe now, nor will I believe in the future, that Muslims worship the true God. Mohammed was a false prophet and he deceived billions of people with his false revelations, and I find the recent use of indifferentist language by Catholics (and even by the last two popes) to be a reprehensible betrayal of all the Christians who have suffered for Christ’s sake at the hands of the Mohammedans.

Overall, you seem too eager to disagree. As written 841 - taken literally - is not what you object to. You object to things that are not there - the idea that their theological understanding of God is “true”, and that their worship is Orthodox. But those ideas are not in the text they are inferences of your own and are not grounds to disagree with the text.

I only disagree with what I know to be false. Do Muslims worship the true God? No, they do not, and the fact that Pope John Paul II said that they do cannot change a thing. Simply because a pope says something does not make what he said factual.

“It is a special joy for me to be able to welcome you, our guests who follow the faith of Islam, to Rome for the colloquium on Holiness in Christianity and Islam. My fraternal greetings go as well to those Christians who have been taking part in the colloquium. As I have often said in other meetings with Muslims, your God and ours is one and the same, and we are brothers and sisters in the faith of Abraham. Thus it is natural that we have much to discuss concerning true holiness in obedience and worship to God.” (Pope John Paul II, Address to the Participants in the Colloquium on Holiness in Christianity and Islam)

 

[dzheremi]

Amen. Apotheoun is on solid ground and all the Catechism quotes in the world won’t make a squishy indifference to the truth anything other than what it is.

 

[Apotheoun]

The statement that they adore the one God (8401) in no way implies that the worship is orthodox. Indeed 841-2 vitiate any such immediate inference.

So there is orthodox worship and unorthodox worship? Sorry, but I do not believe that it true. You cannot adore God in an unorthodox fashion.

It is not my fault that the bishops at Vatican II unwisely chose to use the word “adore” in connection with Islam.

 

[Apotheoun]

And also from the lips of St. Paul:

Men of Israel, and you that fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great…Brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you that fear God, to us has been sent the message of his salvation.

I can’t imagine that when St. Paul spoke of God to the Jews, he understood himself to be speaking of a different God, though the Jews had not yet believed in Jesus Christ as God. But obviously you can.:nope:

Men of Athens I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed alon,g and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, “to an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it…"

Mardukm,

We are talking about Muslims, not the Jews. I have never denied that the Jews received a valid revelation from God, and that their worship of God in the Old Testament, under the veil of shadows, was acceptable - at that time - to God. But the Old Testament shadows have been fulfilled in the New Testament, which is why the old festivals have given way to the Eucharistic memorial offered by and in the Church.

Now I should not have to tell you this, but Muslims are not Jews, and unlike the Jews they do not have a valid revelation, that is, unless you are going to argue that the Qur’an is a true holy book.

Do you believe that the Qur’an is a true revelation of God? I do not.

Mardukm, can a false prophet give true worship to God? I do not believe that he can.

Finally, I do not believe that Islam cannot be compared to the many pre-Christian religions of the ancient world, which is why I do not hold it against a Greek of the 4th century B.C. for not worshipping the true God, because he did not even have the opportunity to know Christ. No, I cannot do that to the poor pagan Greek of the pre-Christian era, but Islam was created after the time of Christ, and in direct opposition to the Triune faith of the Church, and so it cannot be looked on as benign. The politically correct attitude of some people cannot trump scripture, and scripture says that only those who have the Son have the Father also. Islam does not have the Son, and so it does not have the Father either.