Synod of Laodicea on Invocation of Angels

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CampionTheChampion

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Cannon 35 of the Synod of Laodicea says:
Christians must not forsake the Church of God, and go away and invoke angels and gather assemblies, which things are forbidden. If, therefore, any one shall be found engaged in this covert idolatry, let him be anathema; for he has forsaken our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and has gone over to idolatry.
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http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm

Hopefully, there is a good explanation for what the Synod was trying to say here. Anyone know?
 
I don’t know enough about the council to know. What was the council in response to?
 
Not sure. I’ve just been trying to get myself to get comfortable with praying to saints and found this.
 
Well, I just looked up something about it, and it said that it was the first Council to condemn astrology and the like. I can see how it could be related to that.
 
That would make sense. It’s hard to understand what this cannon was condemning though. Maybe people were “gathering assemblies” which were devoted only to certain angels?
 
Heres the pertinient Canon:
Canon 35
Christians must not forsake the Church of God, and go away and invoke angels and gather assemblies, which things are forbidden. If, therefore, any one shall be found engaged in this covert idolatry, let him be anathema; for he has forsaken our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and has gone over to idolatry.

It should be noted that some Latin versions of great authority and antiquity read angulos for angelos. This would refer to doing these idolatrous rites in corners, hiddenly, secretly, occulte as in the Latin. But this reading, though so respectable in the Latin, has no Greek authority for it.

This canon has often been used in controversy as condemning the cultus which the Catholic Church has always given to the angels, but those who would make such a use of this canon should explain how these interpretations can be consistent with the cultus of the Martyrs so evidently approved by the same council; and how this canon came to be accepted by the Fathers of the Second Council of Nicaea, if it

It seems to have started over a typo, and then moved forward to not confusing Maryutrs with Angels.
The entire document deals with what you can and can’t do in a church and being over the top about this that or the other, such as who can and cannot sing from the ambo, not setting up couches in Churches, etc.
 
It’s generally understood as forbidding going away from the Church and establishing some group outside the Church or some occult group that prays to angels.

You can pray to angels and saints all you want as long as it’s done within the auspices of the Church and you understand you aren’t worshiping the angel or saint, you are just asking for their intercession or help and the power is coming from God.

I know there have been a few times in Church history where the Church fathers felt “angel devotions” were getting out of control and put a restriction on them.
 
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“It should be noted that some Latin versions of great authority and antiquity read angulos for angelos. This would refer to doing these idolatrous rites in corners, hiddenly, secretly, occulte as in the Latin. But this reading, though so respectable in the Latin, has no Greek authority for it.”
 
Which is why I said “OR some occult group”. Some commentators take the occult meaning and some don’t. However, the plain wording of the passage refers to leaving the Church and doing such things, whether they’re done in secret or in occult ways or right out in public, you’re still doing them “extra-ecclesiastically”.
 
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