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Questions about the Orthodox and Catholic Church

outlawState

Deism is dead
I think you try to twist the meaning of some very simple words, because the Creed does use very simple words.

γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα,= it means Jesus had to be fed by Mary's blood..so he was delivered (gennao) by Her. He was not created through magic.(poieo)

σαρκωθέντα, ἐνανθρωπήσαντα,: it means he was made flesh through Mary's body....it doesn't imply a separation from God.

Jesus wasn't sent...
You say "Jesus wasn't sent..."

Jesus says "He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me." Luk 10:16

So we see how it is that the creeds make even Christians deny the very words of Christ. I do honestly believe that creedalism is a separate religion from Christianity. As I once heard from some wiser person, the creeds are primarily politically based compromises, not necessarily optimal statements of theology. if you take your theology from the creeds rather than from the bible, it is a mistake, even a fatal one. Jesus said "believe in me." He did not say "believe in the creeds."
 

outlawState

Deism is dead
I think you're misrepresenting St. Irenaeus. He explicitly argues against those who would espouse a non-eternal begetting of the Son from the Father.
My objection is entirely with the word "beget" being applied to "God in heaven." God is not begotten, by definition, eternally or non-eternally. The Word was not begotten. The Word was God. So the Word was not begotten.

Indeed I believe that the Nicene creed and its notion of an "eternally begotten" Logos is Arian in conception, far more so than those who believe in the mere subordination of the Son to the Father in an eternal divinity.

When the word "son" is used in the bible, it is not principally referring to what is in heaven before the incarnation (and seated on the throne of God), but to Jesus the son of Mary. Jesus continues to be called the Son by convention, even after his ascension, but now is a novated "son" as seated on the throne of God. "Son" denotes the history of and the humanity of Christ, not his being "eternally begotten" before his incarnation, which concept is ludicrous, as God does not "beget" God.


It's my understanding that Apollinarius claimed Christ to not have a human mind, soul or will at all, but rather that these things were replaced by Christ's divine Nous.
I am not an Apollinarian and I agree with his critics. The soul of Christ was clearly a human soul, but a soul that originated in heaven, so that although it was in the "form" of a human soul, it retained the identity of God. Only thus could Jesus say "Before Abraham was born I am."

Not true. Semi-Arianism says that Christ is of a different nature from the Father--similar, but still definitely different.
I think that the biblically accepted subordination of Christ to the Father renders him with a different "something" to the Father, although what that "something" is I am none too sure. The real problem here is that adherents of the homoousious can't seem to grasp any proper notion of the subordination of Christ to his Father, and attribute Arianism to anyone who articulates it. That is quite wrong, as both Jesus and Paul believed in subordination.

Again, I'm certain you're misinterpreting Irenaeus, but feel free to post further citations from him if you'd like to suss out what he's getting at. I will admit that Against Heresies is not monkey barrels of fun to read.
I agree I misunderstood him. Yet I don't rate him highly as a theologian. He may have identified a few heresies, but as as theologian he is full of waffle, and strange ideas, as is all too common with those who write many words. Meaning in the words is often inversely proportional to length of book. If you can't write succinctly, it shows you don't understand the subject.
 
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Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
You say "Jesus wasn't sent..."

Jesus says "He that heareth you hearetth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me." Luk 10:16

So we see how it is that the creeds make even Christians deny the very words of Christ. I do honestly believe that creedalism is a separate religion from Christianity. As I once heard from some wiser person, the creeds are primarily politically based compromises, not necessarily optimal statements of theology. if you take your theology from the creeds rather than from the bible, it is a mistake, even a fatal one. Jesus said "believe in me." He did not say "believe in the creeds."
You won't admit you're an Arian...so, I think it's useless to discuss Christology with you.

Even in the Creed, Father and Son are symbolical concepts... because the concept of homousìa implies no subordination .
 
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outlawState

Deism is dead
You won't admit you're an Arian...so, I think it's useless to discuss Christology with you.

Even in the Creed, Father and Son are symbolical concepts... because the concept of homousìa implies no subordination .
"If they persecuted me, they will persecte you" said Christ. I am happy to be "Arian" (i.e. persecuted) by "you" because Christ himself would have been labelled as Arian (i.e. persecuted) by "you".

"I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I" John 14;28

has no meaning for you as it is "Arian." You do not appear to have any proper conception of what Christ taught. You deny he was sent from the Father. You deny he went back to the Father. I agree that your Christology is alien to anything written in the bible, and I am not even sure that it ranks as "orthodox" as it is so extreme,
 

Shiranui117

Pronounced Shee-ra-noo-ee
Premium Member
I stand corrected on that point. I see elsewhere he uses the term "His offspring, the First-begotten Word," in CHAP. XXXVI of the same book.

Where in the bible does it ever refer to the "first begotten word"?
At least you're no longer touting the Apostolic Fathers as examples of non-Trinitarian thought, I guess?

My answer to this would be the question, "what Bible"? There was a variety of opinions for the first 400 years or so of Christianity about what constituted the New Testament, and I'm not even talking about the Gnostics. Just compare the Pe****ta to the Codex Sinaiticus to the Ethiopian Orthodox New Testament, for example. Scripture was not the sole basis of Christian thought, but merely one support for it out of a multitude that included the body of liturgical prayer, oral traditions that for the most part didn't get added into the New Testament (except for the story of the adulterous woman which was added into the Gospel of John around the 180's or somewhere around there), and a line of teaching from Apostles to bishops, and bishops to students.

One issue with homoousios was that it appeared to deny any possibility of subordination, or hierarchy, as between the Father and the Logos, quite irrespective of the issue of eternality. As Jesus said "the Father is greater than I." The formulations God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (also non-biblical) spring directly from the adoption of homoousious. It is worrying that one non-biblical word can engender more non-biblical phrases, and on account of which, people have been put to death as heretics by Nicene creedalists.
Oh, one point I forgot to make here: We Trinitarians do believe there is a hierarchy between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's not a hierarchy of divinity, but of relations. The Father is the arche (source) of the Trinity, and it is from Him that the Godhead flows. The Son is begotten of the Father, and though He is completely equal to the Father in power and divinity, nonetheless the Father is still greater than the Son in terms of the relationship between the two because of the Father's being the origin of the Divine Essence. The Son is begotten of the Father and distinct (but not separate) from Him, and therefore the Father is greater than the Son.

This is one difference between the East and the West on this issue. Whereas the West believes in Divine Simplicity and makes the Divine Essence the source of the three Persons of the Trinity, therefore saying "There is one God because there is one Divine Essence", the East has not historically held to this view, instead choosing to say "There is one God because there is one Father."

I believe he is a propagandist with limited intelligence. It is also a reason why heresies arise i.e. due to the inability of the elect to repudiate them.
If anything, heresies arose because some people were too smart for their own good and started trying to fit the divine mystery into neatly compartmentalized boxes. If you look at Christian history, most heresies from the first thousand years of Christianity came out of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, which is where all the intellectual centers were. Rome (more or less) stayed orthodox for the first 700 years or so because they were far enough removed from those discourses to not immediately get caught up in any of it.

When the church gets given over to people of limited intelligence then heresies arise.
So was Christ incompetent, the Apostles, the Holy Spirit, or yes?

What was the reason for so many centuries of vainglorious debate on the composition of Christ when Islam and Goths, Vandals and Huns etc was knocking at the door, destroying and devouring every nation in which such "debate" had ever arisen?
I'm quite sure you and I both agree that knowing exactly Who it is that we follow is a very important question to ask.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" says that he was separated from the Father.
That's the Arian interpretation (and oddly enough the Calvinist interpretation as well), yes. This isn't a debate thread, so I'll let this point go.

"As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world." Sent = separation.
The Holy Spirit is sent from the Father. Is the Spirit separate from Him as well?

I think it is obvious that Jesus "separated from God" as an implicit feature of the incarnation.
Discussing the Incarnation gets into quite the involved conversation, but for the reader of this thread, I would heartily recommend St. Athanasius the Great's "On the Incarnation" for an excellent embodiment of Orthodox thought on the matter.
 

Shiranui117

Pronounced Shee-ra-noo-ee
Premium Member
You won't admit you're an Arian...so, I think it's useless to discuss Christology with you.

Even in the Creed, Father and Son are symbolical concepts... because the concept of homousìa implies no subordination .
They are not at all symbolic concepts. What you espouse is Sabellianism, which is a condemned heresy in most traditional churches. Aquinas' and Augustine's view of Divine Simplicity necessarily leads to Modalism as its logical conclusion, but those two theologians were wrong to adopt the Platonic/Aristotelian doctrine of Divine Simplicity. They embraced that over and above the theological tradition of the Church.

The Fathers have always taught that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are truly three distinct Persons Who cannot be conflated. They are distinct, not just in thought only, but in reality and in operation.

I'd recommend giving this guy's podcast a listen: Eastern & Latin Theology & The Essence - Energy Distinction - Jay Dyer
 

Shiranui117

Pronounced Shee-ra-noo-ee
Premium Member
Very sad.
It's just being honest, really. We hold that Apostolic Succession isn't simply a mechanical process of power being passed down from bishop to bishop regardless of beliefs (case in point, Catholics still consider Anglicans, Old Catholics and Swedish Lutherans to have Apostolic Succession), but rather Apostolic Succession also is dependent on right teaching being present as well.

Also, apparently I might have misspoken about the Orthodox regard for Catholic sacraments, because it seems that in some Orthodox churches like the Russian Church, Catholic priests who convert to Orthodoxy don't go through Holy Orders but instead are vested. Even still, all converts from Catholicism to Orthodoxy are chrismated at the very least.
 

Shiranui117

Pronounced Shee-ra-noo-ee
Premium Member
For the Old Catholics: The Validity of Old Catholic Church Sacraments | Catholic Answers
For the Anglicans: Apostolicae curae - Wikipedia

Since 1: the Union of Utrecht (Old Catholics) are in full communion with the Anglican Communion, 2: the original rite of episcopal ordination was restored in Anglicanism in 1662, and 3: all Anglican episcopal ordinations have Old Catholic bishops as co-consecrators, it thus follows that all male Anglican bishops are in the line of Apostolic Succession of the Old Catholics.

For the Swedes I couldn't find anything more substantial, but the Roman Catholic bishops of Sweden did all convert to Lutheranism back in the 1500's.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
For the Swedes I couldn't find anything more substantial, but the Roman Catholic bishops of Sweden did all convert to Lutheranism back in the 1500's.
Which is why Catholicism has it that those Scandinavian Lutherans are a continuation from the original church, thus a part of apostolic succession. However, this is not true of American Lutherans in any synod here in the States, including the Swedish-inspired Lutheran church in that I grew up in.
 

Shiranui117

Pronounced Shee-ra-noo-ee
Premium Member
Which is why Catholicism has it that those Scandinavian Lutherans are a continuation from the original church, thus a part of apostolic succession. However, this is not true of American Lutherans in any synod here in the States, including the Swedish-inspired Lutheran church in that I grew up in.
Yes, I should have specified further to make that clear. The Lutherans that came from Germany are universally without Apostolic Succession because no bishop in the Holy Roman Empire ever signed onto Luther's ideas, and the immigrants coming from the Scandinavian Lutheran countries came over without bishops, as far as I know.
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
They are not at all symbolic concepts. What you espouse is Sabellianism, which .

Lol...I don't think Pelagius agreed with Sabellius...

btw...may I ask you a question in the meantime?
Is it true that Theodosius I is venerated as saint by the Greek Orthodox Church?

We are speaking of an emperor who destroyed temples, persecuted pagans and killed people.
 
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outlawState

Deism is dead
At least you're no longer touting the Apostolic Fathers as examples of non-Trinitarian thought, I guess?
That's a loaded question. I wasn't even aware that the apostolic fathers were into "Trinitarianism." Rather Trinitarianism (with a capital 'T') derived from the errors of the apostolic fathers, particularly the idea of a "God the Son" begotten from "God the Father" in heaven.

The motto of the most reliable apostolic fathers was this: "For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an anti-Christ" per John, per Polycarp.

Trintarianism says that Jesus Christ came as "God the Son." I am not sure that "God the Son" equates to "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh." In fact I don't think that it does. "God the Son" is the same whether in heaven or on earth. A union with the flesh is not "coming in the flesh" but "coming in a union with the flesh." So you add to the what the apostolic fathers say. They did not say "God the Son came in a union with the flesh." They say "Jesus Christ came in the flesh."

As for the stuff about God the Son being begotten of God the Father, where do I find it in John or Polycarp? Why has "God the Son" replaced "the Lord Jesus Christ?" in the vocabulary of Trinitarians? What are you trying to prove? Do you really think you would have got John or Polycarp to refer to Jesus as "God the Son"? Somehow, I think not.


At least you're no
My answer to this would be the question, "what Bible"? There was a variety of opinions for the first 400 years or so of Christianity about what constituted the New Testament, and I'm not even talking about the Gnostics. Just compare the Pe****ta to the Codex Sinaiticus to the Ethiopian Orthodox New Testament, for example. Scripture was not the sole basis of Christian thought, but merely one support for it out of a multitude that included the body of liturgical prayer, oral traditions that for the most part didn't get added into the New Testament (except for the story of the adulterous woman which was added into the Gospel of John around the 180's or somewhere around there), and a line of teaching from Apostles to bishops, and bishops to students.
Ok

At least you're no
Oh, one point I forgot to make here: We Trinitarians do believe there is a hierarchy between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's not a hierarchy of divinity, but of relations. The Father is the arche (source) of the Trinity, and it is from Him that the Godhead flows. The Son is begotten of the Father, and though He is completely equal to the Father in power and divinity, nonetheless the Father is still greater than the Son in terms of the relationship between the two because of the Father's being the origin of the Divine Essence. The Son is begotten of the Father and distinct (but not separate) from Him, and therefore the Father is greater than the Son.
In the sense that the fullness of the Father dwells in the Son, and not vice versa I concur with your notion of hierarchical relations, but not as to your usage of the term begotten, for it is axiomatic to my way of thinking that "God does not beget God." If you mean a formal statement of hierarchy between the Father and the Son, "beget" is a very strange word to employ, Jesus said "The Father is greater than I" as to that. And for the "divine essence" I would merely employ "fullness of God," Ephesians 3:19, Colossians 1:19.

At least you're no
This is one difference between the East and the West on this issue. Whereas the West believes in Divine Simplicity and makes the Divine Essence the source of the three Persons of the Trinity, therefore saying "There is one God because there is one Divine Essence", the East has not historically held to this view, instead choosing to say "There is one God because there is one Father."
The East is preferable.

At least you're no
If anything, heresies arose because some people were too smart for their own good and started trying to fit the divine mystery into neatly compartmentalized boxes. If you look at Christian history, most heresies from the first thousand years of Christianity came out of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, which is where all the intellectual centers were. Rome (more or less) stayed orthodox for the first 700 years or so because they were far enough removed from those discourses to not immediately get caught up in any of it.
I think the church became corrupted from a very early stage when it formed into hierarchies of priests and lay people who abandoned the simple notion of "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh." It was almost always the case that heresies started with the learned, and with the educated. The priests engaged in endless speculation and introduced novelties such as homoousious to satisfy their penchant for philosophy, which turned religion into a gnosis. They developed theories about God begetting God. This was concomitant with the veneration of Mary. Does it ever say in the bible that "God begets God?" Does it ever say that Mary was perpetually a virgin? Quite the contrary cf. gospel of Matthew Ch 1. It is also axiomatic that God does not beget God. Strange and wierd and very little to do with apostolic Christianity, which never mentions Mary.

At least you're no
So was Christ incompetent, the Apostles, the Holy Spirit, or yes?
I defer to James 3:1 "Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly."

I think Christianity had suffered tremendously from those who exalt themselves. Their aim may be noble, but they lack the means of fulfilling their aims. I know from personal experience that some over reach themselves beyond their capacities and end up teaching that which is not scriptural. It is so easy to do. cf Simon Magus, the original heretic who sought to buy the gift of God.

At least you're no
I'm quite sure you and I both agree that knowing exactly Who it is that we follow is a very important question to ask.
Our "Lord Jesus Christ?"

At least you're no
The Holy Spirit is sent from the Father. Is the Spirit separate from Him as well?
II think Revelation says that the Spirit is before the throne. Difficult concept to grasp but I regard separation not in terms of disunity but in terms of descent from the throne. The son descended lower than the angels. The Holy Spirit does not descend lower than the angels but it still descends from before the throne to the earthly or lower heavenly regions. There are multiple heavens anyway, so separation need only imply descending from one heaven to another.

At least you're no
Discussing the Incarnation gets into quite the involved conversation, but for the reader of this thread, I would heartily recommend St. Athanasius the Great's "On the Incarnation" for an excellent embodiment of Orthodox thought on the matter.
OK, but I do not disbelieve in the trinity of revelation. i object to the human constructs put on such a trinity, and the priority afforded to philosophy at the expense of the apostolic references to the human Jesus. Don't forget that the first evangelists in Acts always spoke about "the man Jesus."
 
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