www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Orthodox Christian in Communion with Rome

Etnick, please excuse my error.

Glad you liked my quote from JPII. With my own ears I heard him say this in Rome in 1990; it was not the only time.

Whether this is what "Rome" wants from the Greek-Catholics is open to question.

Who invented the Immaculate Conception? Good question - might I suggest a careful reading of the services of 6-9 December in the Menaion edition published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery?

Who invented the Filioque? Well, I'm not sure who first came up with the idea, but it was first "dogmatized", so to speak, in Spain, not in Rome. Rome in fact resisted the interpolation to the Creed.

Fr. Serge

Oh, yes.

That leaves the real issue, the scope of the Pope: man-made rank of the episcopate like the patriarchate of Moscow or divinely instituted (on top of being a bishop) with universal jurisdiction?

Слава Ісусу Христу!

Father bless…

Is not Papal intervention upon request, when a Church cannot agree with in itself “Peter has spoken”?

On the Immaculate Conception:

who would dare say that Mary had sinned?

Regards,

Orthodox Catholic Evangelical Charismatic Iconodule Chalcedonian Pseudo-Athanasius.

(All words used to describe myself mean only what I mean them to mean, and nothing else.)

Dear P-A,

Are you naive, or trying to bait others? Ancestral/Original Sin obviously has nothing to do with whether or not the Mother of God ever sinned. Orthodox Christians believe the Theotokos to be without personal sin.

The issue is whether or not All-Pure came into existence suffering the effects of all the descendants of our first parents, Adam and Eve. The Orthodox understand these to be mortality, being subject to sickness and suffering, and a bent of the will toward sin. They understand the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God as implying that she would not be subject to death, sickness, or suffering. They see the doctrine as lessening the significance of her personal sinlessness. If she was born with the same bent toward sin that all of us have and yet overcame it and remained without personal sin her whole life, her spiritual accomplishment is greater than if she had the unfallen human will that Eve had in Eden before the fall.

Try not to set up straw men to knock down with silly and irrelevant statements like "who would dare say that Mary had sinned?"

Fr David Straut

P.S. I like all your self-descriptive words except the very appellation you have chosen for yourself: Pseudo-Athanasius.

Funnily enough, one rather well-known theologian of the past taught that on at least one occasion the Holy Theotokos comitted a sin - his name is Saint John Chrysostom.

However, one teaching by one Father doth not a dogma make. It's significance in this case is, perhaps, that the Church can and does tolerate some theological pluralism.

On the other side of the theological pendulum, it is not impossible to find those among the Holy Fathers who teach that the Holy Theotokos was indeed not subject to death, sickness or suffering (in particular, the pain of childbirth).

It would certainly seem, however, that she was sharing to some degree in the suffering of her Son on the Holy Cross. I suppose that this was noetic and therefore does not count, or something like that.

Fr. Serge

What Fr Serge said.

The simplest explanation (also with the least risk of falling into heresy) is all catholics (a small c to be clear here) believe Mary is sinless; to quote Orthodox Michael Astley the IC answers a question Byzantine theology doesn't ask.

Fr David's take is interesting but: 1) Prevenient grace. Rome doesn't teach that Mary is in herself perfect! Of course she's not; she's a creature. (Which is why the Orthodox celebrate her conception on the 9th/22nd December, not perfectly nine months away from the feast of her birthday.) Only God is. (Which is why only the Annunciation is perfectly nine months away from a nativity feast.) She is redeemed just like everybody else only God can transcend time and space to retroactively redeem in the womb. 2) If our first parents had said no to sin would they not have been heroic? So it is with Mary.

But this thread has drifted as they often do.

There are OicwR (again a species most often found online) who like many Orthodox deny the IC to show how un-Roman they are; OTOH Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) doesn't put the IC beyond the pale of Orthodoxy.

Again what Mr Astley said.

AFAIK Rome as a court of final appeal is acceptable in the Orthodox understanding of the papacy but it falls short of what Rome claims about the papacy. Again, man-made rank (of the divinely instituted episcopate) with limited jurisdiction and sharing only generally in the church's infallibility or divinely instituted rank with universal jurisdiction and a specific application of the church's infallibility?

So there's the stalemate in this ecumenical relationship, partly because the two sides are so alike both claim to be the one true church. On the papacy one or the other side has got to give. And neither will.

Noted OicwR the late Met. Elias (Zoghby) meant well (nicer than the filth thrown by people on both sides) but his position ('we are all schismatics' or the Anglican-style branch theory revisited = 'we're both the one true church' = there is no one true church; 'I'm under Rome but don't hold to what Rome taught in the second millennium') was really relativistic and didn't really represent either side.

Fogey, your comments are interesting. Archbishop Ware's comments are very interesting on some of these issues. Take the RCC concept of the Assumption of the of the BVM. He points out that the EOC does not accept it as dogma, though there are some members of the EOC who accept it. I believes he says the same thing about the IC, although i may be wrong.

I am puzzled by your assertion that "some" members of the Orthodox Church accept the assumption of the Mother of God. This is a universally held Orthodox belief. I think that some Orthodox questioned the appropriateness of elevating that belief to the status of a "dogma." Were I to encounter an Orthodox Christian in my parish who openly denied that the Theotokos was assumed body and soul into heaven, I would probably refuse him Communion until he repented and accepted the Faith of the Church.

Fr David Straut

An excellent book on this for reference for those interested:

On the Dormition of Mary
http://www.svspress.com/product_info.php?products_id=185&osCsid=30d178db974ef4b032d1fd83b5f1349f

I enjoyed it a lot. The gathering of the apostles, the speeches given about her and Christ, and the events as described are quite beautiful.

Father David,

I have not looked at Timothy Ware's Orthodox Church since 1975. I found the following excerpt on the web and I emphasize the two sentences in Italics; these were the basis of my statement.

Ware notes, "But Orthodoxy, while for the most part denying the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, firmly believes in her Bodily Assumption (Immediately after the Pope proclaimed the Assumption as a dogma in 1950, a few Orthodox (by way of reaction against the Roman Catholic Church) began to express doubts about the Bodily Assumption and even explicitly to deny it; but they are certainly not representative of the Orthodox Church as a whole). Like the rest of mankind, Our Lady underwent physical death, but in her case the Resurrection of the Body has been anticipated: after death her body was taken up or ‘assumed’ into heaven and her tomb was found to be empty. She has passed beyond death and judgment, and lives already in the Age to Come. Yet she is not thereby utterly separated from the rest of humanity, for that same bodily glory which Mary enjoys now, all of us hope one day to share.

Belief in the Assumption of the Mother of God is clearly and unambiguously affirmed in the hymns sung by the Church on 15 August, the Feast of the ‘Dormition’ or ‘Falling Asleep.’ But Orthodoxy, unlike Rome, has never proclaimed the Assumption as a dogma, nor would it ever wish to do so." (http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/history_timothy_ware_2.htm)


If I could find my hard copy of the book, I would have given the exact page number. Subsequent to your comments, I talked to my spiritual father, a Greek priest in the diocese of Pittsburgh who chrismated me 30 years ago. He said that, because the Assumption of the BVM has no scriptural basis, in his judgment, the Assumption falls into the area of theolegoumena (he admits that the word might be a bit strong) and hence belief in the concept, though very common among most Orthodox, is not required for salvation. My original statement was perhaps too strong, but I was remembering text which I had not looked at in 32 years. I would, if I had to rewrite my original comments, redraft them along the lines of Archbishop Ware's comments. Res ipsa loquitur.

Zonaras

I rather think that the quote you give from The Orthodox Church (for which I require no page reference because I remember it well) supports exactly what I said. The assumption of the Mother of God is the universally held Orthodox Christian belief. Those few Orthodox who challenged its dogmatic definition in 1950 by the Pope "by way of reaction against the Roman Catholic Church." And further: "Belief in the Assumption of the Mother of God is clearly and unambiguously affirmed in the hymns sung by the Church on 15 August, the Feast of the ‘Dormition’ or ‘Falling Asleep.’ But Orthodoxy, unlike Rome, has never proclaimed the Assumption as a dogma, nor would it ever wish to do so."

I cannot account for what your spiritual father told you. The fact that the Dormition of the Theotokos is not found in Holy Scripture has absolutely no bearing on whether it is the Tradition of the Church or not. Traditions like these are definately not optional, not theologeumena. As a priest who serves the beautiful services on 15 August, he should know that. His position sounds more Protestant than an Orthodox to me.

Fr David

I would agree with your conclusions of the passage backing your view. I was only explaining where and how i had obtained my information. I hope I have not misrepresented my spiritual father's position. I simplified it and his views were obviously more nuanced. I took a phone conversation that ran almost 30 minutes and reduced it to one sentence.

Слава Ісусу Христу!

Discussing perspectives is a vibrant way of keeping the avenues of communication open between East and West, but are these differences heretical? Is the real problem with the filioque the procession or the insertion into the Creed? The problem with the “IC” is not the All Holy’s relationship with the conception of XC but ours with a presumption of predestine sin as St. John Cassian exposed in Augustinian rationalization. We discuss the body of Mary as if we was defending the true presence, question instead if this assumption of dogmatic status is more relevant than Ezekiel’s.

These debates only prove we believe the same thing. One Trinitarian God. Christ’s undefiled incarnation. Souvenirs of either Mother or Son’s bones are not necessary. So what really separate our communing with each other, the vanity of control?