True or False Unity

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ASimpleSinner said:
it is patently ironic that you would be feeling compelled to chime in with one of your patented one-word rejoinders in response to the comment:
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Thank you. I am famous for rejoinders. As are you. Hence my comment. :tiphat:
ASimpleSinner said:
Ironic to me because as often as not you seem to unconditionally present your understandings of Orthodoxy as definative.
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Nah. Nothing I say is definitive. My words carry no weight. I am but a lowly worm on an internet forum. 😃
ASimpleSinner said:
Voicing support for someone who seems to be calling Mardukm out on this matter…
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I happen to agree quite often with that particular forum member. I am permitted to agree with him/her…am I not? Or are you the forum thought-police? :hmmm:

Chill out dear friend. 😉
 
.I mean, let’s face it… among us in the West in a diaspora, we really don’t have an awareness of what many protestants are doing to us. We come from areas were the fact that the church was ours, meant that we were going there. But we live in these areas now, where we try to hold on to our culture, and that alienates the second and third generation kids who don’t understand the language and culture and allows them to be exposed to and be taken away by protestant polemical attacks. The ones who have priests and other ministers who are aware of this, and try to cater to the younger ones and protect them… those ones you can call lucky and blessed, because most of the families and people don’t understand that threat.

Honestly, that is why I think you see many more people on here who want to protect the Catholic faith from the protestant and atheist diatribes against it. And these people are facing a local issue that doesn’t necessarily need to be more complicated by trying to understand the Eastern mentality/approach. That is our job. Too pitch in with our Eastern language and show the universality of the Catholic faith, across borders… national, language, theological expressions, otherwise.

Good to hear of these common , shared concerns ; thank God, He has left us examples of groups (jewish and Islamic cultures come to mind ) who take enough care and time to teach the children the language and customs with the expectation that they would adhere to same and many do !

Many of the young persons of the second /third generation possibly have a yearning to belong to the root cultures yet could feel a subtle fear of being considered as too westernised by the primary group.

Trying to look at the strenghts of both groups and helping out where it is needed - would these be not areas of unity !

The children who grow up here often have a better aptitude and interest in volunteer activites that benefit the whole community -such as helping out in homeless ministries or even evangelisation ; the language barriers between the cultures can be helped out if enough persons from the native group could volunteer even 1hour or so in a week , in 15 min.slots to do telephone tutoring , to help the younger set to grasp the liturgical language enough ( telephone tutoring on all topics by the profit minded secualr forces have become practical and prevalent enough !)

This can become an enjoyable and bonding time , even for the many elderly and mostly home bound in these cultures yet make the young feel included, wanted and accepted !

Shared outings and ministries that include members of old and young and across generational lines , with respect and appreciation of our Catholic faith and traditions of East and West - let us hope and pray that we are all agents of the spring time , of unity in The Church and of its profound, promised fruits !

St.Thomas, pray for us !

Peace !
 
Mickey said:
Thank you. I am famous for rejoinders. As are you. Hence my comment. :tiphat:

Nah. Nothing I say is definitive. My words carry no weight. I am but a lowly worm on an internet forum. 😃
I happen to agree quite often with that particular forum member. I am permitted to agree with him/her…am I not? Or are you the forum thought-police? :hmmm:

Chill out dear friend. 😉
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Give me a break and don’t patronize me with the “Chill out”.

You know darned well that your sarcastic question about with whom you are permitted to agree or am I the “forum thought police” is a ridiculous non sequitur.

In pulling the quote you clipped and paste out of context for response an end was served for this non sequitur. But all the same, the irony of your enthusiastic agreement for someone calling another out for presenting his views as too authoratative…
 
Our division is our greatest sin. so unity is not divisive when approached in the proper manner, which is love. Jesus said ‘‘May they be one’’ not ‘‘May they be 30,000’’ in order for us all to be one, we must return to Peter, the house which is made on rock and not sand.

Matthew 12:25 25 And Jesus knowing their thoughts, said to them: Every kingdom divided against itself shall be made desolate: and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.

26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself: how then shall his kingdom stand?
drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=47&ch=12&l=25&f=s#x

Matthew 7:26
24 Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, **for it was founded on a rock. **
26 And every one that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof. 28
drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=47&ch=7&l=26&f=s#x

Satan divides, he does not unite. he does not want unity, he wants division. a call to unity is the complete opposite to division.

God bless you
Stephen<3
 
ASimpleSinner said:
Give me a break and don’t patronize me with the “Chill out”.
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Okay. Settle down. Is that better?
ASimpleSinner said:
You know darned well that your sarcastic question about with whom you are permitted to agree or am I the “forum thought police” is a ridiculous non sequitur.
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I was completely serious. Please try to control yourself.
ASimpleSinner said:
In pulling the quote you clipped and paste out of context for response an end was served for this non sequitur. But all the same, the irony of your enthusiastic agreement for someone calling another out for presenting his views as too authoratative.
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Wha??? :confused:
 
marymol said:
Shared outings and ministries that include members of old and young and across generational lines , with respect and appreciation of our Catholic faith and traditions of East and West - let us hope and pray that we are all agents of the spring time , of unity in The Church and of its profound, promised fruits !

St.Thomas, pray for us !

Peace !
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Thank you for the response and the insightful thoughts you put into it. You are completely right, our older generations are not doing enough to keep the liturgical languages. We have too many of us that see coming to Church and speaking the language as important, and yet we throw the responsibilities on the priests and the few dedicated workers who help them.

Also, there is a lot that our exiled communities can pick up from the communities we live in and have become part of. If we remain isolate and don’t espouse this mixture of cultures that second and third generations bring to the table, how will we share the richness of the Catholic faith with the communities we live in?

Oh my… it’s a long road… but we should be looking forward to the spring time you refer to… and heading up that road.
 
NoWings said:
Here is a short summary of miaphysis:

It wouldn’t make any sense to believe that about nature, but not about will.

Then again, I’m just an agnostic, so what do I know?
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As a person of the Church of the East, I can totally agree with the statement by HH Pope Shenouda… and I can almost think I’m reading one of our own liturgical books or catechisms! Very nice quote NoWings.
 
Considering HH Pope Shenouda’s statement above, would there be a possible Eucharistic theology that would correspond to this Cyrillian Christology. Would a Miaphysite view of the Eucharist be valid? Could it be said that the Eucharist remains bread but at the same time it is fully the body of Christ in the sense of Cyril’s Christology? I remember hearing an EO Christian espouse a view of the Eucharist that corresponded to the diphysite Christology so it seems that according to the EO it might be a possible perspective.
 
jimmy said:
Considering HH Pope Shenouda’s statement above, would there be a possible Eucharistic theology that would correspond to this Cyrillian Christology. Would a Miaphysite view of the Eucharist be valid? Could it be said that the Eucharist remains bread but at the same time it is fully the body of Christ in the sense of Cyril’s Christology? I remember hearing an EO Christian espouse a view of the Eucharist that corresponded to the diphysite Christology so it seems that according to the EO it might be a possible perspective.
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It does. It’s the same as the western “Accidents of Bread and wine”… and “Blood, Body, Soul and Divinity”…
 
Aramis said:
It does. It’s the same as the western “Accidents of Bread and wine”… and “Blood, Body, Soul and Divinity”…
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Are you sure it is the same as the western “Accidents of Bread and wine”? Is it not changing the meaning of the term Accidents? From my understanding, the term accidents means that it only ‘appears’ to be bread.

The reason why the Cyrillian Christology brings this to my mind is due to the reasoning against the idea of consubstantiation. Applying a Cyrillian approach of nature to the Eucharist seems to avoid the problems of consubstantiation but at the same time it recognizes the reality of bread rather than simply appearances.
 
jimmy said:
Are you sure it is the same as the western “Accidents of Bread and wine”? Is it not changing the meaning of the term Accidents? From my understanding, the term accidents means that it only ‘appears’ to be bread.
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It also, in the hands of heretics, contains the full nutritional content of bread and wine.

The aristotilian terms nature and accidents are confusion to many; the accidents are best explained using Plato’s Cave… the accidents are the shadows we perceive; the item’s nature is behind us, so not visible, and we interact with it by observation of its shadow, not by observing the nature.
 
Dear brother Jimmy,
jimmy said:
Considering HH Pope Shenouda’s statement above, would there be a possible Eucharistic theology that would correspond to this Cyrillian Christology. Would a Miaphysite view of the Eucharist be valid? Could it be said that the Eucharist remains bread but at the same time it is fully the body of Christ in the sense of Cyril’s Christology? I remember hearing an EO Christian espouse a view of the Eucharist that corresponded to the diphysite Christology so it seems that according to the EO it might be a possible perspective.
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Transubstantiation is a term that is regularly used by Copts to refer to what happens at the Eucharistic celebration. HH Pope Shenoute’s statement quoted above has nothing to do with the Eucharist per se. His reference to the mixture of wheat and barley, and water and wine, was an analogy NOT to “explain” what occurs at the Eucharist (the relationship between Christ and the elements of bread and wine), but to “explain” the Incarnation (the relationship between the human and divine natures). He is not promoting consubstantiation by his statement.

The non-mixture of the divine and human natures of Christ is the only thing he is speaking about.

There is no ontological comparison between the Eucharist (as regards the relationship between the elements and Christ) and the Incarnation (as regards the relationship between the natures). In the Incarnation, God became man; in the Eucharist, God does NOT become bread/wine.

I do recall a certain Church Father (I forget his name at the moment) who did compare the Incarnation to the Eucharist. Lutherans and some EO have used that ECF to support consubstantiation, but that is a misreading of his view. The comparison was not actually between the idea that bread and wine exists WITH Christ (in the Eucharist) in the same way that the human and divine Natures BOTH exist in Christ, yet unconfused and not commingled (in the Incarnation). Rather, the comparison was to emphasize the process of divinization - that just as bread and wine become TRANSFORMED, so too a person becomes transformed in Christ. The bread and wine become TRULY DIVINE food, just as we will receive NEW BODIES (having discarded the old).

Blessings,
Marduk
 
Yes, I realize he is speaking about Christology but I want to apply Christology to Eucharistic theology.
 
jimmy said:
Yes, I realize he is speaking about Christology but I want to apply Christology to Eucharistic theology.
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Oh, OK. Still, it cannot be applied. As the quote from HH indicates, there is no transformation or transmutation in the Incarnation. However, in the Eucharist, there is. I think it was St. Ignatios or St. Irenaeus who stated that in the Eucharist, the bread is no longer “mere bread.” By that, he is saying that something about the bread has been changed. It has literally become divine food for immortality. Do a google search with the words “transubstantiation Coptic Orthodox.” I think you will find that the term transubstantiation is quite freely used in Coptic catechetical materials.

Blessings,
Marduk
 
mardukm said:
Oh, OK. Still, it cannot be applied. As the quote from HH indicates, there is no transformation or transmutation in the Incarnation. However, in the Eucharist, there is. I think it was St. Ignatios or St. Irenaeus who stated that in the Eucharist, the bread is no longer “mere bread.” By that, he is saying that something about the bread has been changed. It has literally become divine food for immortality. Do a google search with the words “transubstantiation Coptic Orthodox.” I think you will find that the term transubstantiation is quite freely used in Coptic catechetical materials.

Blessings,
Marduk
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Your previous post was actually very good. Christ does not become bread in the way that he became man. So it can’t be absolutely comparable to the incarnation. But at the same time we must recognize that it is bread while being the Eucharist. It is a paradox like the Incarnation. What I was trying to say is that at the same time it is bread but it has become the body of Christ. At the same time you wouldn’t dismiss the material reality of bread bur recognize the reality of Christ in the Eucharist.

I just want to say that our body is not ‘discarded’ through redemption in Christ. Our body and soul is redeemed in Christ and we essentially are a new person. I don’t know if that is what you were implying in your earlier post or not. For some reason I didn’t notice that part of your post before (it seems that has happened a somewhat often lately). Part of what inspires this idea that the Eucharist reflects Christology is Cardinal Schonborn’s book God’s Human Face which speaks of a connection between the perception of the Eucharist in the fathers and the perception of Christology and Iconography. Also I have done an in depth study of Christology which seems to be the guiding principle to all of theology.
 
Dear brother Jimmy,
jimmy said:
Your previous post was actually very good. Christ does not become bread in the way that he became man. So it can’t be absolutely comparable to the incarnation. But at the same time we must recognize that it is bread while being the Eucharist. It is a paradox like the Incarnation. What I was trying to say is that at the same time it is bread but it has become the body of Christ. At the same time you wouldn’t dismiss the material reality of bread bur recognize the reality of Christ in the Eucharist.

I just want to say that our body is not ‘discarded’ through redemption in Christ. Our body and soul is redeemed in Christ and we essentially are a new person. I don’t know if that is what you were implying in your earlier post or not. For some reason I didn’t notice that part of your post before (it seems that has happened a somewhat often lately). Part of what inspires this idea that the Eucharist reflects Christology is Cardinal Schonborn’s book God’s Human Face which speaks of a connection between the perception of the Eucharist in the fathers and the perception of Christology and Iconography. Also I have done an in depth study of Christology which seems to be the guiding principle to all of theology.
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On the surface, I think there is a difference between our respective understandings. A comparison, IMV, cannot properly be made between the Incarnation and the Eucharist. To be more succinct, the reasons already stated are: (1) there is no transformation in the Incarnation, but there is in the Eucharist; (2) the Second Person of the Godhead takes on our perishable nature in the Incarnation, but the Second Person does not take on the perishable nature of bread in the Eucharist.

The comparison lies not with the Incarnation per se, but with the PROMISE or EFFECT of Christ’s Incarnation - namely, the lifting up of our perishable nature to imperishable glory. Thus, I do not completely agree with you that “our body is not discarded.” The very thing that makes our bodies what they are (its very nature and substance) is changed/transformed, as St. Paul says. Absolutely NOTHING of our “old self” remains when we become divinized. In that sense, our bodies are indeed “discarded.” The perishable becomes IMperishable. As the nature/substance of our bodies are changed at the Final Judgment, so is the nature/substance of bread changed in the Eucharist. Just look at the glorified body of Christ. It had all the appearances of a normal body (it could be touched by the Apostles, it could eat, etc.), but yet that body could defy all the laws of physics. The Lord’s glorified body after the Resurrection was certainly a real body, but it was nothing like our natural bodies. It is a great mystery indeed.

Blessings,
Marduk
 
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