www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Infallibility and Primate of Jurisdicion - acceptable by EC?

Yes there is simply Orthodoxy and simply Catholicism - but the "schools" are variations in emphasis. How could there not be various "schools" of emphasis when we clearly see the distinction between the Byzantine theology in the Eastern Greek and Slav Churches, emphasizing slightly different aspects, in different language, through various cultures of the same faith as the Coptic Churches, both of which emphasize slightly different aspects than the Syriac or Armenian Churches - all of which are simply Orthodox/Catholic.

Beyond that, we would have to say that were it not for the distinctiveness of the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools of theology, the divisions which began to afflict the Churches in the East would not have occurred. On the other hand, the Church as a whole is much richer for those differences. Since God is a mystery, which we perceive only indirectly and through reflection, one can consider the different theological traditions as facets on a diamond that refract light in different ways, illuminating different aspects of the object we are examining through it depending on the facet through which we look.

St. Thomas Aquinas states the exact same thing, in Latin terminology:

STI,Q12,a4:

"Therefore the created intellect cannot see the essence of God, unless God by His grace unites Himself to the created intellect, as an object made intelligible to it."

Here's a Coptic Orthodox faithful's answer to that statement:

Cyril – That which engraves in us the divine image and imprints there the transcendent beauty like with a stamp, isn’t that the Spirit?
Hemias – But not as a God, they say, as a minister of grace.
Cyril – Is it not Him Himself who marks us, consequently, it is the grace through Him?
Hermias – Apparently
Cyril – But if the grace given by the Spirit is something separate from its substance, why didn’t the blessed Moses clearly say that after having brought the living being into existence, the Craftsman of the universe had afterwards breathed into him a grace, the one which was given through the breath of life? Why didn’t Christ, on his part, say to us: Receive a grace, the one which was given by the ministry of the Holy Spirit? But in the first case, they call this one “breath of life”. It is that the nature of the divinity is true life, since it is true that in it we have life, movement and being. In the second case it is called “Holy Spirit” by the voice of the Savior, which in truth introduces and makes the Spirit dwell in the souls of the believers.

A beautiful text, which I would love to see in the Greek. It is quite condemnatory of the Western approach to grace as a "created habitus."

English-speaking Orthodox these days is actually just a branch of the larger Orthodox picture. Indeed, it tends sometimes to be rather sectarian.

The Orthodox Church is an ancient castle, as it were, of which only two or three rooms have been much in use since about 1920. These two or three rooms were furnished by the Russian émigrés in Paris between the two World Wars. This furniture is heavily neo-Palamite and anti-Scholastic. It relies heavily on the Cappadocians, Maximus, and Gregory Palamas (who are good folks, or course). Anything that does not fit comfortably into that model is dismissed as “Western” and even non-Orthodox.

Consequently, one will look in vain in that theology for any significant contribution from the Alexandrians, chiefly Cyril, and that major Antiochian, Chrysostom. When these are quoted, it is usually some incidental point on which they can afford to be quoted.

Now I submit that any ‘Orthodox’ theology that has so little use for the two major figures from Antioch and Alexandria is giving something less than the whole picture.

Likewise, this popular neo-Palamite brand of Orthodoxy, though it quotes Damascene when it is convenient, never really engages Damascene’s manifestly ‘Scholastic’ approach to theology.

Much less does it have any use for the other early Scholastic theologians, such as Theodore the Studite and Euthymus Zygabenus. There is no recognition that Scholasticism was born in the East, not the West, and that only the rise of the Turk kept it from flourishing in the East.

There is also no explicit recognition that the defining pattern of Orthodox Christology was formulated in the West before Chalcedon. Pope Leo’s distinctions are already very clear in Augustine decades before Chalcedon. Yet, Orthodox treatises on the history of Christology regularly ignore Augustine.

Augustine tends to be classified as a ‘Scholastic,’ which he most certainly was not.

But Western and Scholastic are bad words with these folks.

In fact, however, Augustine and the Scholastics represent only other rooms in the larger castle.

For this reason I urge you, as you can, to read in the Orthodox sources that tend to get skipped in what currently passes for ‘Orthodoxy.’ For my part, I believe the Russian émigré theology from Paris, which seems profoundly reactionary and anti-Western, is an inadequate instrument for the evangelization of this country and the world. I say this while gladly recognizing my own debt to Russian émigré theology.”