www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Joint Declaration - JPII and Bartholomew I about the Filioque?

To try and bring the conversation back:

One might more truly say by analogy that man's soul really and truly enters into the eternal stream of the divine and remains there, as long as it is called to be there by grace.

But something that is created may not be uncreated and the universal church has always said that the soul is NOT eternal. So the soul is created.

Now the soul is the spirit of the body, its animator, and the soul as the body, comes into being or is created, and the soul continues to animate and sustain the body by grace. We have no power of our own to exist. We exist by grace. With a beginning to both our soul and our body

If we take ALL of Todd's assertions at face value, then we are truly uncreated beings by animation of the spirit.

Taken too far this whole discussion on grace expressed as "energies" without distinction winds up distorting our understanding of person, and body, and soul...of all creation itself, not to mention the divine and the incarnate.

One does not have to deny the teachings of St. Maximus and St. Gregory in order to see the flaws in it as it is translated to us by Todd.

It is not the teachings of essence and energies that I take issue with here, even though I have been accused of that to try to deflect the discussion. It is not true. I do not reject essence and energies.

It is to the lengths to which they are interpreted by Todd that I take exception to. I reject the interpretations that are left unchallenged, or left uninterpreted in a retreat to cutting and pasting and typing in, without explanation or analysis, as if the ancient texts require no explanation, or without subjecting the text to analysis that can be corroborated as universal Orthodox teaching. In fact I do not see Todd's elaborations at all being adopted as central to the Orthodox understanding of essence and energies. At least not the idea that we become "uncreated" as though we had never been created body and spirit.

I don't see the heart of this discussion as something that belongs in an east vs. west context at all.

Todd's secondary and somewhat non-specific claims for the meaning of "uncreated" can very well be challenged from within the eastern tradition itself.

Mary

Let me amend that because it sounds wrong. I don't see why one must be directly under the Roman Pontiff to understand the said charism. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with what the charism entails. I think that is an erroneous statement.

Also


If one accepts this viewpoint, it seems to me one would be free to take the same view of any other piece of church teaching. In other words, if this view is correct, someone in the Melkite Church could very well simply reject Humanae Vitae if they disagreed with it.

Actually, it is not accidental that it was the Melkite patriarch and Archbishop Zoghby who introduced the idea of changing Church teaching on birth control. I know for a fact that many Melkite hierarchs, including Archbishop Zoghby, have stated that they disagree with the Roman Church's views on divorce/remarriage and birth control. This you can easily see by reading the Melkite interventions at Vatican II and by reading Archbishop Zoghby's books.

Joe

OK--fair enough. I should have said that it appears that many Orthodox and Eastern Catholics have difficulty in actually believing that the Pope has in fact been given a charism to lead the Church without erring in faith and morals. This, I think, is consistent with your statement below.

Joe,


I am going to start a new thread, on Vatican II's, "Declaration on Religious Freedom" It's worth a discussion all by itself.

Roman Catholics seem to have as much trouble, if not more IMHO.

---

Joe, that was interesting about Bishop Zoghby. Do you have some links about what he has said?

If a man is divinized and has entered into the divine eternity, it follows that he becomes eternal and uncreated.

Notice the use of the word "becomes" by St. Palamas and St. Maximos in the documents that I have quoted earlier in this thread, this word is very important, because it indicates that man is not by nature eternal and uncreated, but that he is eternal and uncreated by his participation in the uncreated and eternal divine energies. To deny that this existential change occurs is to deny the reality of divinization. Theosis brings about an existential change in man's life, not an essential one. In other words, the only way to understand this doctrine is to make a distinction between essence and energy in both God and man (cf. St. Basil, Letters 234 and 235].

Mary,

You are right about one thing, because the Western Church (particularly as exemplified in the philosophical theology of the Scholastics) rejects this doctrine, but all that this rejection proves is that East and West really do disagree on the meaning and nature of the doctrine of theosis.

Both St. Palamas and St. Maximos say that man becomes uncreated by participating in the divine energies; that said, if I must choose between what you are saying and what they are saying, I choose to follow them.

God bless,
Todd

P.S. - To deny that man becomes uncreated by his participation in the uncreated divine energies is to fall into the Barlaamite heresy, since this denial involves a rejection of the uncreated nature of the energies of God. If the divine energies are truly uncreated (which I hold that they are), it follows that they bewtow uncreatedness (along with other divine characteristics) upon man. Barlaam accepted a metaphorical or figurative divinization, and even a "created" type of divinization, but the Church Fathers held -- in opposition to the Pneumatomachian heretics -- that nothing created can deify a man.

Unless of course God Himself informs the human intellect such that He is the form by which the soul understands Him. Since the human soul is created, however, it cannot comprehend or know God as God would comprehend or know Himself, but it does allow the human soul to see "Him as He is." 1 John 3.

I can only repeat what Cardinal Ratzinger once said when asked about the state of the Church--it's just fine, but it's much smaller than people think.

Here, yet again, is what St. Palamas said:

"According to the divine Maximus, the Logos of well-being, by grace is present unto the worthy, bearing God, Who is by nature above all beginning and end, Who makes those who by nature have a beginning and an end become by grace without beginning and without end, because the Great Paul also, no longer living the life in time, but the divine and eternal life of the indwelling Logos, became by grace without beginning and without end; and Melchisedek had neither beginning of days, nor end of life, not because of his created nature [i.e., his essence], according to which he began and ceased to exist, but because of the divine and uncreated and eternal grace which is above all nature and time, being from the eternal God. Paul, therefore, was created only as long as he lived the life created from non-being by the command of God. But when he no longer lived this life, but that which is present by the indwelling of God, he became uncreated by grace, as did also Melchisedek and everyone who comes to possess the Logos of God, alone living and acting within himself." [St. Gregory Palamas, "Third Letter to Akindynos"]

God bless,
Todd

That is a Scholastic position, and I am not a Scholastic. I follow the doctrinal tradition of the Byzantine Church.

God bless,
Todd

P.S. - Salvation is not simply an informing of the human intellect with the divine; instead, salvation involves the whole man, body and soul, and through the process of theosis a man transcends his nature, i.e., by seeing the uncreated Light of glory a man becomes uncreated in that Light.

"Sensible light shows things to our senses. The intellectual light is to manifest the truth which is contained in thoughts. But those who receive the spiritual or supernatural light, perceive what is beyond all intellect. They participate in the divine energies and become themselves, in a sort, light. When they unite to the Light, they see with it in full all that is hidden from those who have not seen the grace of light. The Uncreated Light is the Light where God makes Himself manifest to those who enter into union with Him." [St. Gregory Palamas / A.D. 1296 - 1359]

P.P.S. - The divine energies are God, i.e., they are God as He manifests Himself personally in the world. To see God face (prosopon) to face (prosopon) does not involves a pantheistic "vision of the divine essence"; instead, it involves a personal (enhypostatic) communion with God through His personal energies. The eternal and uncreated Logos came to reveal His Father, and not to reveal the divine essence.

Todd,

The Scholastic position has this advantage, it comports with 1 John 3 which doesn't speak about God's energies. I too follow the doctrinal tradition of the Byzantine Church as set forth in 1 John 3.

As you probably are aware, St. Thomas himself speaks of the necessity of the Light of glory which is required for man in order to strengthen man's intellect to attain that which far exceeds his created being.

Since man is body and soul, I would expect that whatever affects his soul, will have a profound impact on his body as well.

Pax Christi,

lm

No, the Scholastic philosphical position does not conform to scripture; instead, it conforms to Aristotelian essentialist philosophy.

God bless,
Todd

Aquinas reduces the "light of glory" to a created thing.

God bless,
Todd

Here is another scriptural quote that seems to support a direct and immediate contact with God Himself:


2 Peter 1:4