Dear Father DIAKon,
It would appear that I am wrong again about Incognitus' identity - each time, though, I'm told why it has taken me so long to find it out, and that really adds insult to injury!
But who cares who he is anyway? What's the big deal? :p
You know I would always raise two fingers up for you!
Incognitus (and I don't care who he is, really . . .) makes eminent sense when he says that the two fingered Sign of the Cross would have been used for all kinds of blessings, including on oneself.
However, this is just not what mainstream Orthodoxy affirms.
His division of Orthodoxy into "Nikonian" and "Old Rite" camps is ONLY appropriate for Russia where, as it would seem, the development of the two fingered Sign of the Cross became, as Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko often wrote, the "Russian national rite of crossing oneself."
The Old Rite schism really only affected the Russian Church in a big way - down to our times as well, involving "biritual" Russian parishes and the like.
Metropolitan Ohienko also wrote that the reason the Russians divided over the Old Rite traditions has more to do with Russian spirituality than anything else.
He affirmed, and I know many have agreed with him, that Russian spirituality places an emphasis on the external rite even OVER the theology that it expresses as if the external rite is written in stone and ensures the Orthodoxy of the theology - to change the external rite would be to introduce heresy etc.
The Old Believers (apart from the Edinovertsy, of course) certainly do affirm that Orthodox Christians who cross themselves with three fingers are expressing an heretical concept - that the entire Holy Trinity suffered and died on the Cross!
They also believe that there is a directive from Christ Himself to sign oneself in this manner - something about a dream one of the bezpopovtsy leaders had.
They also believe that the liturgical books they have, grammatical errors and all, cannot even be corrected since this would be to tamper with the Orthodox theology expressed therein (!).
Even the change to the way the Name of our Lord is written iconography is considered heretical.
They are absolutely convinced that these external rites are not only "their traditions" or "one among others," but that they are "THE traditions" that alone guarantee the Orthodox "lex orandi, lex credendi" process inviolate.
This is why they don't like "uniatism" among their ranks - Old Rite Orthodox who join the ROCOR or the MP as "Edinovertsy" seem to affirm that they are "one among other" rites etc.
I've no problem with the Old Rite as an Orthodox tradition, rite and Particular Church.
But to affirm, as they are serious about doing, that their ways are the only Orthodox ways raises some serious problems, no?
Likewise, the discourse in the Orthodox Psalter from the Kyiv Caves Lavra is quite serious about countering their claims regarding the historicity and "oldness" of their Sign of the Cross and traditions.
The Old Rite Orthodox themselves ONLY point to Bl. Theodoret's quote and to St Meletius - both of which have dubious origins, as Fr. Dr. Paul Meyendorff also discusses in his published doctoral dissertation on the Old Rite.
The only real argument they have (and it is one that is rejected not only by "Nikonians" but also by Orthodox who have not had anything to do with Patriarch Nikon - whom they are thinking of advancing as a saint, as I understand . . .), the only real argument they have is what Incognitus has advanced, namely, that because icons always portray the hieratic blessing with two fingers, then this means that the laity also must have blessed themselves with two fingers.
Mainstream Orthodoxy, Nikonian and otherwise, simply rejects that argument and one may ask any Orthodox priest or bishop about it (I have, several times, and my question has all but been laughed off each time).
Moreover, that the "IC XC" form of the hieratic blessing was reserved to the upper clergy alone is also seen, one might argue, in the fact that in the West, the Pope of Rome, over time, reserved this form of blessing to HIMSELF ALONE.
The argument that Roman Senators also used this form of shaping one's hand is NO proof that Christian laity must have used this - Bishops also imitated the Senatorial traditions, as we know, and both groups had no reason to see these traditions as something that the laity or, in the senators' case, the plebeians, could or should imitate.
I, for one, do hope Incognitus gets an avatar and I'm happy to have inspired him in this respect.
I respect and use the Old Rite traditions, the Prayer of the Publican before and after services etc.
I also respect and use the Ethiopian traditions.
Each time Incognitus responds to me, he sounds as if I'm somehow the stick in the mud that won't change what is my personal view on this matter.
It is not my personal view, it is the view of the mainstream of Orthodoxy and also ECism. That there are Edinovertsy in both camps changes nothing either.
Incognitus is wrong to think that way and he is also unable to provide any real proof that the laity ever used the two-finger Sign of the Cross in any Orthodox context outside that of Old Rite/Pre-Nikonian Muscovite Rus'.
It doesn't matter that there is none. It is a beautiful Rite and tradition nevertheless.
I just wish Incognitus would stop pretending that I represent a dissident minority view on this (I'm not representing anything) and that the Orthodox Church agrees with his take on history here.
It clearly does not and if Incognitus doesn't believe me, he should ask any Orthodox bishop or priest here or elsewhere, if he cares to hear an authoritative view that is not his own.
Alex
