www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West What Will It Take to Reunite the Churches?

Good to see you, Alex. Hope that you are well, despite your 'old age'!! LOL!

You might make Fr. J. think that you are 80, when we know that you are atleast thirty years younger than that! Remember, we moderators KNOW the truth!

Take care---

Regards,
Alice

I don't think he was being that specific. I think what Joe was saying is that when you take out all the emotion, church politics, rocky history, pride, negative feelings, over-emphasizing, de-emphasizing, etc. You're left with a fundamental theological problem (or set of them), and humans on both sides who are sinful and prideful who are discussing them. I hope I did not misrepresent his opinion.

Good food for thought Alex, I wish you would post more!

Alice - only if we are daft enough to put details like date of birth on Byzcath

That is true, and our friend Alex had publically posted his year of birth a long time ago, and, in his case, I haven't forgotten because we are the same age!

Suffice it to say, he is not an 'old man'!

Regards,
Alice

Thank you Andrew. That is my opinion.

Joe

Alex,

Let me begin by saying that you have been missed here! I too am glad to see you posting.

Now to business...

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware in his The Orthodox Church seems to disagree with you on this point.

Could one legitimately say that it is a weak, imperfect or limited explanation?

I think so...

But heretical?

I think that is an extreme position, even if presented in your own pleasant way.

I am proud to profess the creed of Nicea-Constantinople every Sunday in its original form. I disagree with the unilateral insertion of the filoque by the Latins. I also believe it should be removed.

But I refuse to take the position that my Latin brothers and sisters are heretics. To hold to that position and yet remain in communion with the Catholic Church borders on absurdity. If I believed it to be heretical, I could not take any other position except to LEAVE (flee) this communion for Orthodoxy.

To my mind, if I TRULY believed it to be heretical, to tolerate such a heresy for the sake of unity would be the height of uncharity. Heresy is a spiritual toxin - a poison to the body. I would not give food to my children or brothers and sisters with just a little bit of poison. I could not say that I am a Catholic and partake of communion with Catholics if I held to the belief that Catholics (on the Latin side) were heretics.

So your position, while appearing conciliatory, actually makes little sense to me.

Personally, I take the position that it is possible to reconcile many of the differences or disputed questions between the various Churches of the East and the Latin Church. Perhaps it is simply a matter of faith. I may not always see the right way to reconcile the two positions, but I attribute that more to my own weakness, lack of understanding and sin and not to some defect in the Church or in her teaching.

And I have learned over the years of studying and practicing Eastern theology that there is no virtue in moving from insight to exaggeration. I think it is an exaggeration to say that the Latins are heretics because of any possible limitations associated with the filioque clause or dogma. One can find limitations in all temporal expressions (East and West) of eternal realities. That does not somehow justify accusing the Latin Church of being in heresy.

In ICXC,

Gordo

Thank you. I agree. I think heresy requires a strong degree of volition to disobey and not just theological disagreement. It's a sin more of pride than the wrong answer, in my opinion.

As for the filioque, I think St. Maximos the Confessor came up with a good view (in a letter). Namely, the filioque is aceptable if one regards it as (1) a function of the difference in language and (2) an attempt to express God's presence and operations in the world.

-- John

Welcome back, Alex !

Yes, but: What is theology? I would suggest that it is the total human response to God's revelation.

And therein is the issue: people are different. Religion isn't science; it can't be reduced to empirical evidence and controlled experimentation. It is the infinity of God being reflected by our very dim, very imperfect and very dusty mirrors that are our minds, hearts and soul. So the theological differences are deep and real, but they don't revert to intellection alone. It's also part and parcel of all the other things in human life.

Joe and Andrew are right, but I'm just trying to expand on their ideas. St. Maximos the Confessor gave a fine way to reconcile Eastern and Western views of the filioque over 1300 years ago. But it doesn't matter because there is something deeper here than how (we dare to think) the Holy Spirit proceeds, or the scope of authority of the papacy.

It gets to how people are different and how and people like being different. There will be no unity in the sense of uniformity; and there will only be unity in spirit and communion when the people want to that -- and they don't want that. If they did, we would be reunited by now. Instead, Catholics want their pope and the Orthodox don't. Orthodox want their Tradition and the Catholics don't. Etc. And then there's the history . . . 1204 . . . the Eastern Catholic Churches (and how they were treated, badly, by both sides), and so on. But, in these happy days, this division is not only about different intellectual opinions. It�s not even about bad blood over bad history, so much anymore. Today, I suspect, it's mostly about good fences making good neighbors.

My two cents; you mileage may vary.

-- John

Too true, sir, too true.

Does anyone have an emoticon of a happy face holding a frothy mug o' beer ?

-- John

[Linked Image]

[Linked Image]

and there is also this

[Linked Image]

Any use ?

LOL...I like them...

I LOVE it!!! Thanks Anhelyna!

John, I'm a bit shocked. You are talking like ummmm, welllll, a Protestant! You have just explained the Protestant denomination theory. Why work for unity when it is easier to excuse division?

And Joe's point, "theological problems are real and serious" is just a re-iteration of the tendency of the Orthodox to make reunion seem virtually impossible. And this tendency is a real obstacle to the unity which is Christ's express will.

If we continually lament over the breadth of the stream, we will never get around to bridging it.

Dear Gordo,

O.K. - you're on!

I never said the Filioque was heretical, I never said Latin Catholics are heretics for holding it.

I simply said that according to Byzantine theology (meaning "Orthodox"), it is heretical. That is a fact. Don't have the wits to come up with something like that on my lonesome.

Yes, there is a Byzantine Catholic tradition that says otherwise and we hold to it. It is the tradition that keeps the Filioque out of the Nicene Creed as far as possible and tries to show how the Eastern view is the same as the Western view on the procession of the Holy Spirit etc.

If I believed the Filioque to be heretical, I would - just like you said.

As for Archbishop Kallistos Ware, he has not affirmed any belief in the Filioque for that would put him outside the Orthodox Church (am I right?). There have been other Orthodox in history who have voiced the private opinion on this and that is O.K. (in addition, Ware does not speak for Orthodoxy and he is not on every Orthodox Christian's list for flavour of the month - again, a fact).

And why are we taken to quoting him as "proof" that Orthodoxy and Catholicism do agree on things? Wouldn't be like the Orthodox quoting Todd to show that EC's really believe the Filioque is heretical? (Sorry Todd - but you really had that one coming you know! ).

On the matter of the Filioque, the real questions for Eastern Catholics have yet to be asked or answered.

Do Eastern Catholics have to accept the theology behind the Filioque as a "sine qua non" of being Catholic? In other words, whether or not the Filioque is in the Creed or not (someone once quoted a pope of Rome as saying that the Creed without the Filioque is fine since it doesn't imply that the Spirit proceeds ONLY from the Father . . .), do Eastern CAtholics have to accept the theology of the Filioque i.e. that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father (more precisely, from the Father "actively" and from the Son "passively").

And if we must accept that theology, however massaged from an "Eastern point of view," how does that impact the full range of our flexibility when it comes to studying and appropriating our Eastern heritage? Is ours an Eastern heritage that is an inherently Latinized one? Where do we draw the line between ourselves as Eastern Catholics and Orthodox theology?

One view on this that has been, from time to time, vocally espoused by some posters here is the (tendentious) view that what is truly "Orthodox" in history is not what the contemporary Orthodox Churches believe. Or else that they are making a mountain out of a mole-hill or are against full unity etc.

Perhaps what we need is to look at what Byzantine theology (Orthodox) teaches without our traditional EC habit of trying to colour it Catholic. I'm not saying "accept it" - frankly, I'm not qualified to comment on that, thank you very much. For myself, I prefer the Creed without the Filioque and I confess that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son and that the Latin understanding of the Filioque, with the "passive" procession from the Son, is the same as our Eastern Catholic understanding.

And we further believe that the Fathers, both East and West, have always believed the same.

What if they haven't? What if Todd and others are right? I don't know since I can't compare myself to the scholarship of yourself, Todd and others.

What I do know is that any fruitful ecumenical dialogue must look at the people that we want to be united with in Christ with more objective eyes than we have historically been accustomed to.

If the Orthodox believe we are heretics for believing in the Filioque or in the Easternized version of it, namely, that the Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father through the Son ( as opposed to the temporal sending, an entirely different thing), then we should try harder to understand why (while leaving Kallistos Ware out of it for now).

The worst mistake we can do is to assume that our "Orthodox in communion with Rome" approach is a kind of harmonization of everything the Orthodox Church believes with papal primacy somehow stuck on top. When Zoghby said that, he got his knuckles hit by Rome. There was a reason for that which we have yet to explore fully here.

Part of the reason why is that "Orthodox in Communion with Rome" EC's (and I fully accept the legitimacy of that title) often have to walk a theological "tight-rope" where they feel they must do two things at once: demonstrate to the Orthodox that they are in all things the same as they, save for the Pope - with a gentle reminder that the Pope was formerly acknowledged by the Orthodox too and then demonstrate to Latin Catholics that we are really "Catholic" in the full sense of the word - so don't be upset with us for being who we are, Rome said we could be that way etc. More or less . . . how I see it anyway.

But are we truly maintaining the integrity of either Church tradition when we do that? Can we be Catholics and say that the Filioque is unnecessary for our particular theological heritage? Latin Catholics feel squeamish about this which is why they will rush to remind us about our "faith obligations as Catholics." What is the status of the Filioque in the Latin Church - does it accept our view of the Filioque, that it is a tradition valid for the Latin Church alone? When has the Latin Church ever said that?

In addition, I think our Orthodox brothers and sisters have had enough of our ideas about how "Orthodox" we are in everything save the papacy. For many of them, such a stance seems to be another venue, among historical others, to try and get them to accept Rome and the like.

So to say that Byzantine theology sees the Filioque as heretical is not only a fact - it is also a shock to the way we EC's have done theological hybridization over the years.

I admit I'm a product of that hybridization and I've no problem with that. At least when we admit that, the Orthodox finally know where we are coming from and are less suspicious of us.

And if you think it is easy to write with a needle in one's arm . . . well, then that's heretical . . .

Alex