Hi Seraphim: I agree with you on the points you made. it is the lack of trust that sometimes leads us to wrong conclusions and understandings.
To what, Lutheranism?
Hi PeterJ: I know you are kidding. Seriously, I do not know what needs changing but both sides need to understand each other and see the good. I was thinking more of Orthodox and Catholic Churches. The reason being imo is the Eastern Rites in union with Rome seem to me to run their Churches just fine without interference from Rom and the do have their own canons apart from the canon of Rome. Unity will not come easy but with hard work and the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
True. And let’s not forget that in the Orthodox Churches there are some who are Western-Rite Orthodox.
Hi Peter J Agreed! and understood.True. And let’s not forget that in the Orthodox Churches there are some who are Western-Rite Orthodox.
And the amount of Orthodox who suffered at the hands of Catholics, wasn’t??
I would beg to differ, I think that many Latin Catholics have suffered systematic oppression at the hands of governments and ideologies, however, we were referencing past Catholic attempts to suppress/oppress Orthodoxy as an impediment to unity, i.e., the systematic oppression of which you refer to above was not at the hands of Catholics per se, but rather other groups.
Nor that of Latin Catholics, because there are many who suffered and died for keeping the faith.
Now, what do you think, Cav? Really?
Why, yes. Yes it does. And that is what makes the passage SO devastating for those who deny the Catholic premise.
Ephraim does not explicitly state that, but the office of steward is self-evident from the reference to keys, the symbol of that office. Since there are about a billion references to good stewards and bad stewards in the NT, I think it would be pretty clear to Jesus’ audience in Mt 16:19 what He was talking about.
)Surely you’re not suggesting that the rites run the churches, e.g. that the Byzantine Rite runs the Melkite Church?
The Melkite Church uses (celebrates) the Byzantine Rite, we’re not run by it.)Hi Peter J: I am not suggesting anything. Each rite in communion with Rome runs their own Church’s not interfering with the other rites in union with Rome.(Although incidentally I think you mixed your words up a little bit here:
Surely you’re not suggesting that the rites run the churches, e.g. that the Byzantine Rite runs the Melkite Church?
I would suggest clinging to the fathers in all things.
You found one!
Well the fathers didn’t miss anything. And I will continue to ask for patristic sources as should you.
I agree that the Church has to discern the truth but the Church does not consist in the fathers alone, or the councils alone, or in the patriarchs and bishops alone.
No not really, not in comparison. But the point is not to compare but rather to give some reasons why some Orthodox, particularly those in tradition Orthodox lands, feel the way they do.
Some have, but nothing on the scale of the Ottomans and Communist. And in this case I wasn’t referring to Catholic oppression per se. Compared to what these two groups did what Catholics did was extremely mild. The point I was making was this massive, systematic oppression by the Communists and Ottomans had an effect on how things are viewed by some Orthodox. What the Catholics did was viewed as preying on an already oppressed and afflicted people. I’m simply trying to impress that these things are not some distant history to many people. I mean there are people alive today who were around at the time the American Carpatho-Russian Archdiocese was formed. This group was formed by Eastern Catholics in response to their treatment by the Latin hierarchy. People look at that today and think that’s what Catholics really mean by unity. How true that is I don’t know. As I said I don’t have those feelings personally.
Of course there are. And may all their memories be eternal.
Generally, sure. The unanimous consent, properly understood, and all that…
Well, technically, it was YADA. And it’s one so far.You found one!
The fathers didn’t see everything because doctrines develop over time. Today, we see further because we are standing on the shoulders of those giants.
Sounds reasonable to me.
(I’m looking forward to the gymnastics display which is about to begin.
Well it took you several weeks to come up with one rather obscure quote. Which Ephraim was it anyway? Asking for patristic quotes against what was an unknown position is not logical, one obscure quote not withstanding. Do you not see the illogic of that?
That you seem not to have not thought about the passage very much.
Except that St. Ephraim did not actually make that connection. You are imagining such a connection into the passage by way of petitio principii, namely by assuming that Christ handing the keys to Peter signals his intention to make him into the sole recipient of them and the sole recipient of the office of royal steward (which is that which you had set out to prove in the first place). St. Ephraim connects the steward, like all of the authority figures of the Old Testament, to Christ, but the connection to Peter as the sole inheritor of these keys is simply not explicit. Firstly, St. Ephraim only mentions Peter insofar as he is making a point that Christ could not have given Peter the keys, if Christ himself were not the embodiment of the authority of the Royal Steward, but he does not mention. Secondly, it should be clear from the context that since the keys mentioned are the keys of priesthood and prophecy, that these keys were not passed uniquely to Peter, for all bishops are highpriests, and other Apostles were prophets. Thirdly, your pet theory is at odds with the many Latin fathers who believed that Peter in Matthew 16:18 was accepting the keys on behalf of all of the apostles, all of whom have use of the keys when they bind and loose.
But you did not really satisfy my request. I asked you to find a passage showing that Christ explicitly intended to reestablish the office of royal steward (which as you will notice, this passage does not). I said that a passage making a typological connection would be a good starting point for a discussion, but based on your bizarre bout here of prematurely self-congratulatory pomp, I can only assume sadly that no discussion shall ensue. However, if you are ever looking to cease congratulating yourself and to engage us in dialogue rather than conceited soliloquy, we shall be waiting.Challenge issued. Challenge met. Props to YADA who brought this to my attention.
On that matter, I am afraid that I must disappoint, for my own mediocrity in making such displays would be overshadowed by your own excellence therein.(I’m looking forward to the gymnastics display which is about to begin.
Read the review I posted. Much of the scholarship before Grumel and Dvornik took it for granted that the anti-Photianist collections appended to the synod of 869-870 were true. Nobody is lying per se, as much as using unreliable sources. Several claims therein are most certainly false, and others are irrelevant. The most prominent falsehood is that St. Ignatius was deposed. According to his own partisans, St. Ignatius resigned. It is true, as far as we can tell, that St. Photius was ordained by Gregory Asbestas, but it seems that St. Ignatius’ partisans considered Gregory Asbestas to be excommunicate, while the ‘moderates’ probably did not. Having Gregory Asbestas ordain Photius was, in other words, an outward sign of the defeat of the Ignatian party and of the reinstatement of Gregory Asbestas. Gregory Asbestas seems to have died at peace with the Church in 880 as the metropolitan of Nicaea, so while it is true that he was excommunicated by Patriarch Ignatius, there was likely a political component to the excommunication, such that he was not deemed unworthy of being reinstated (which would not be true of a bishop who had been justly deposed). That Photius was ordained over the course of several days is true, and this was rather unusual, but St. Ambrose of Milan also was elevated from the rank of layman to bishop, so that does not happen to be something which is absolutely forbidden.
Does the cadaver synod speak volumes about the political intrigue swirling around the city of Rome in the 10th century? Of course it does. But then God can produce saints even in such politically unstable circumstances.
And what of the Borgias, the Saeculum Obscurum, the Tusculan Papacy, etc?
I think you are misinterpreting what St. Photius meant. He meant that in the same way St. Vincent of Lerins meant it. Sometimes the fathers can contradict, because individual fathers can err, but both St. Photius and St. Vincent believed that there was an inner unity of the fathers in general (because they all believed in the same faith, this property of the faith being same everywhere and at all times being known as catholicity), and that this should always be preferred to the teaching of just a handful of fathers who might have erred on some small matter.
Nobody treats the fathers are infallible sources. That is why we are supposed to seek after a consensus patrem. But this has nothing to do with the development of doctrine. Your argument is actually quite the non sequitur. That individual fathers could err does not logically lead to the idea that doctrines develop in the sense you are using the word develop.
Randy, I enjoy your posts, and even where I disagree with you I think you ask interesting questions. I’m sure others feel likewise; we wouldn’t be reading otherwise. But statements like this spoil such threads. It’s not scholarly or gentlemanly to wind up or poke fun at one’s interlocutors like this. If your arguments have merit, then they don’t need jibes; if they don’t have merit, then jibes will be of no use to you anyway.(I’m looking forward to the gymnastics display which is about to begin.
First, since Ephraim of Syria wrote about this in the fourth century, it is reasonable to assume that lots of people who have read the fathers through the centuries were familiar with his work and his argument.
And he sticks the landing. Outstanding. I expected no less. :clapping:That you seem not to have not thought about the passage very much.
Except that St. Ephraim did not actually make that connection. You are imagining such a connection into the passage by way of petitio principii, namely by assuming that Christ handing the keys to Peter signals his intention to make him into the sole recipient of them and the sole recipient of the office of royal steward (which is that which you had set out to prove in the first place). St. Ephraim connects the steward, like all of the authority figures of the Old Testament, to Christ, but the connection to Peter as the sole inheritor of these keys is simply not explicit. Firstly, St. Ephraim only mentions Peter insofar as he is making a point that Christ could not have given Peter the keys, if Christ himself were not the embodiment of the authority of the Royal Steward, but he does not mention. Secondly, it should be clear from the context that since the keys mentioned are the keys of priesthood and prophecy, that these keys were not passed uniquely to Peter, for all bishops are highpriests, and other Apostles were prophets. Thirdly, your pet theory is at odds with the many Latin fathers who believed that Peter in Matthew 16:18 was accepting the keys on behalf of all of the apostles, all of whom have use of the keys when they bind and loose.
But you did not really satisfy my request. I asked you to find a passage showing that Christ explicitly intended to reestablish the office of royal steward (which as you will notice, this passage does not). I said that a passage making a typological connection would be a good starting point for a discussion, but based on your bizarre bout here of prematurely self-congratulatory pomp, I can only assume sadly that no discussion shall ensue. However, if you are ever looking to cease congratulating yourself and to engage us in dialogue rather than conceited soliloquy, we shall be waiting.
On that matter, I am afraid that I must disappoint, for my own mediocrity in making such displays would be overshadowed by your own excellence therein.