Since we have our first Orthodox person joining this forum, I am wondering how much others know about these Christians, who are generally less well-known in the West. Here is a quote from the Anglican Divine, John Bramhall, Archbishop of Armagh, in his treatise addressed to the titular bishop of Chalcedon. To any Orthodox posters: is this an accurate description of Orthodoxy from an Englishman of 1654?
An interesting read is that of the Non-jurors' approach to the Orthodox in the 18th century and subsequent responses from the Orthodox Bishops.
I am not Orthodox, but the quotation stated does not seem to describe Orthodoxy as mush as to say that many of the critical faults found in Rome are not found in the Orthodox. This is certainly true. I might note that TEC and the Orthodox Church in the US had excellent relations, especially near the turn of the 20th century. IMHO, we came very close to being the Anglican Orthodox Church. BTW, I would note that Orthodox consider that Calvinism and its key components as heretical. If we wish to consider how different we are, we certainly can. I would suggest starting with key dogma. Gurney might give us a reference that we might us for such discussion. There are many. In any case, this is not an easy discussion, especially for those who consider many of there fellow Anglicans to be heretics, or mistaken enough to want to break away in schism. My guess is that if we start with Original Sin and an explanation of what the Cross and Resurrection were all about, we wouldn't end up going much further. I hope that I am wrong. Many Anglicans and Episcopalians have been very close to our Orthodox brothers and sisters through the centuries.
My understanding is that the filioque is no longer required within the Communion. It was clearly added in violation of Council.
Pope Leo III seems to have been against it in the A.D. 800s. Sometimes I wish they hadn't added the bit about the Holy Spirit's procession at all. "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the prophets." Does this sound all that bad to you? No doubt Gurney or some Eastern enthusiast will tell us how crucial the bit about Procession is.
It would be easier for me to answer a direct question about what Orthodox believe as opposed go giving an interpretation of what this person wrote. Because there may be subtleties i am nit picking up on.
Yes, I'm just waiting for Gurney or someone knowledgeable about the Eastern Churches to come in. At least we know they adhere to the Nicene & Apostles' Creeds. I don't know if they're very enthusiastic about the Athanasian, since it understands that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father & the Son.
Lol. I was unaware that Gurney was more knowledgeable than me (though it is possible ) . I was under the impression he was new to Orthodoxy while I am new to Anglicanism from Orthodoxy.
Oh! Sorry, I didn't even think about that. Do you recall the attitudes you encountered toward Anglicanism specifically, while Orthodox? Did you convert to Anglicanism because it seemed similar to Orthodoxy in its episcopacy? I've always wondered how the Orthodox view Anglican bishops, since we have practically the same system.
Well the Orthodox Church is really 15 autocephalous Churches. I guess they are pretty much tha same as Provinces in the Anglican Communion. So it is possible for there to be some discontinuity between them ( usually small stuff pastoral in nature). I can only speak for my experience in the parishes here in the USA as I am sure that the experience is probably unique to the locale. I was formed in the OCA which is part of the Russian Tradition. However, over the years I have been a member of OCA, Antiochian, Greek, and Serbian parishes. I have had various views expressed by other Orthodox. The negative views usually came from converts that came to Orthodoxy from the Anglican Communion. The OCA and the Antiochians have a large number of converts. In my experience many of the converts in the OCA are former RCs while the Antiochian have many converts from the Evangelicals. I think that the relationship between the AC and the OC was good at one time but obviously strained when women priests were introduced and now with newer controversies the estrangement continues. Orthodoxy is very resistant to define things especially the validity of other Churches' sacraments or apostolic succession. So there isn't an official position to point you to, the Orthodox do believe that Bishops are necessary. I would say that the Orthodox Church sees itself as the One, Holy, Catholic , and Apostolic Church spoken of in the Creed. Why I converted? At times I feel that there is a strain of anti-intellectualism in the Orthodox Church which I do not agree with. There were other problems I could identify but no church is perfect and much of it boils down to Church politics. I do hold the Orthodox Church in the highest opinion. However, when I moved to my current location there was only one out of the three Orthodox Churches that we felt comfortable at and it closed down. We tried the other two and it wasn't working. We then contemplated becoming RC and went there for a few months but we couldn't accept what was going on in the diocese and internationally in terms of scandals. SO we tried the TEC parish and we loved it. We have been going back ever since.
I would underline your final comment. You tried a local TEC parish and loved it. Sometimes we underestimate the importance of the local parish. IMHO, for most, the differences that cause a choice of church are NOT doctrinal, no matter how much we fuss about doctrinal differences. For most who love their local parish, the sign on the front door matters little: Anglican, Episcopal, Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist. For some, the sign and the doctrines and rules signified are critical in their choice.
Just a resource, to compare an Eastern Catholic (Orthodox joined to Rome) Byzantine consecration of the Eucharist to the Anglican consecration: Clearly there's no competition between the priests here; the Eastern Catholic is just a better chanter. Regardless, it gives us a good idea of a sung Eucharist at a similar point in the service, in both traditions.
I never forget the story about Cyril Lucaris, Patriarch of Constantinople, who had a long correspondence with English bishops and who leaned towards Calvinism. Imagine how the Eastern Church could have changed since then if Lucaris had managed a successful reform.
Guilty as charged! though I will say I don't think it's a solely Eastern concern... The first point about procession is that establishes the Holy Spirit as part of the relationship of the Godhead- if you look at your sentence again it can very easily be read that there is a Diarchy of the Father and his begotten Son (a relationship) and then also this Spirit- potentially a separate entity- Christianity Would be Ditheistic! So procession makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is related to the Father and the Son and is also the one God. The other important thing about procession specifically is that it establishes the key distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Father and the Son. The talk of 'persons' both in Latin and English tends to be misleading because it suggests the notion of discreet centres of consciousness, individuals, in a word. But this is not how we understand the persons of the Trinity, The Father is distinguished by being unbegotten, the Son by being begotten, and the Spirit by Procession- thus the Son cannot be the Spirit, or the Father the Son etc. etc. but in will and action and substance and glory and so on they remain a unity- however we actually experience the economy of grace. There is nothing else that really separates them apart from these three terms- anything more would risk making God look like a compound which implies changeability and imperils God's eternal perfection. so yes vital, VITAL I say!! Hope you agree though; whatever the difficulties of how the procession of the Spirit is understood, we probably can't afford to get rid of the language altogether.
Patrick, I completely understand your concerns. I used to be a fairly zealous Thomist, after all. Today, however, I find the complex web of contrived theological terms such as "unbegotten" to be extremely tedious and, honestly, quite a conceit for us human beings to make up. When it comes to the Most Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity, it seems perfectly fine to say that God's Spirit is "Lord (as we call the Son), Giver of Life (as the Father created all life), Worshiped & Glorified with the Father & Son". If He is worshiped WITH the Father and WITH the Son, then He is the same in deity and power, right? Either way, Easterners say that "From the Father" alone is most wholesome and true, preserving the unity of the Godhead. Westerns say that "And from the Son" implies and cements the divinity of the Son. Both sides find fault with the other, either in degrading the Trinity or the Son, respectively. Regardless of how nice these conceited human philosophical terms sound, the fact is that we are not united on them and have not been united on them for 1200 years or so. All this rhetoric about how essential the phraseology is, then, honestly doesn't seem to make any difference or sense.
With all kindness, no no no no no no no and million times over NO! The easiest way I can show the problem with this is if I replace 'the Spirit' with 'Baal'. If Baal is worshipped with the Father and Son- would he be the same in deity and power? Well I'm sure the idolatrous generations of Israel thought so. Ah, you say, but Baal, unlike the Holy Spirit, isn't God! To which I would reply well he isn't, and the use of the term procession makes explicit what you are still saying implicitly. By establishing the relationship with the other two members of the trinity (and really, whether it is from the Father or from the Father and Son is perfectly irrelevant to the topic, you seem to ignore the more important thing, that all churches that subscribe to the creeds agree that the Spirit proceeds) you can call the Holy Spirit Divine. Do you remember how words like begotten and proceeds came about? They were not words dreamt up in an idle moment by theologians to fit some kind of theoretical system to pin God down, no they emerged in the fraught and fractious ferment when thinkers were trying to defend the reality of God who is one and yet as Scripture proclaims and as we experienced is also three- creating, redeeming and sanctifying. When St. Basil coined the phrase 'proceeds' he was arguing that the Holy Spirit is at the same level of divinity as the Father and the Son (that he was homoousios) in the face of those who would make it a lesser thing, potentially a creature. But he did not by any means think he was accurately 'capturing' God by doing this- he pointed out that God's nature is unknowable, a mystery, and the word proceeding, like unbegotten lacks a lot of commonly meaningful content- because it didn't happen in time, and God didn't change in the process, and it didn't involve spatial movement- in fact the Son was begotten in a manner that resembles nothing like human begetting (but establishes the Son shares the Father's nature) and the Spirit, similarly proceeds in a manner that bears little relation to how humans might proceed. Rather than being conceited, these words are a humble acknowledgement of the inadequacy of words in expressing God. What they mount, sincerely, is what Rowan Williams calls 'the least stupid things we could think to say about God'. What they're kind of like is a regulatory grammar that safeguards the experienced truth of God in his threeness with the simple unity that infinite divinity entails, because they tried other words and they were too ambiguous, and usually ended up wrecking soteriology (did you think your formulation was potentially imperilling salvation? It really was that serious a matter for the Fathers)! The main problem I see with your formulation is that unless the Spirit is subordinate in its origin to the Father (at the least), by means of having its origin in him/and the Son, then all three members of the Trinity lose their divinity- the truly divine, the 'real' God becomes the 'nature/divinity' that they have in common: Somehow the Spirit is able to exist apart from the Will of the Father yet they are equal. They become brothers, and that begs the question- if the Father was not the ultimate causa sui (because the Spirit did not proceed from him but was there) then what was? Do you see? By procession and begetting we acknowledge that all finds its source in the sovereign and eternal will of the Father, and that it is in that and not some higher meta-substantial reality that true divinity lies (entirely coincidentally, this is a common criticism of the West's 'Father and the Son' two creative poles gives too much weight to their shared substance since the Father is no longer the sole creator- though I don't think this holds too much water seeing as the Son still has to be begotten). The thing is, I know you agree with all this, how could you not? You clearly don't want to affirm anything other than the Trinity! But the doctrine of the Trinity itself does hang on these words- they're not attempts to explain God at all really, they don't say anything positive...rather they are markers which draw a line as to what can and cannot be predicated of God in ordinary human discourse. Far from being human conceit they are the tool of ultimate humility, for as we contemplate how little we understand by them the more our sense of the wonder of the mystery of God can grow. the contentious filioque debate is hardly the be all and end all in this, it can, I think be resolved, it's more a matter of will than intellect, to disparage procession on the grounds that is causes disagreement is pointless- what sort of conceit is it to say that understanding God as he reveals himself doesn't really matter? Especially since, as I say, the issue of procession is not in itself disputed.
Patrick, your long, detailed post is appreciated. Since the bloated Platonic and Aristotelian terminology that we use in order to combat heresy is a necessity, I'll just rescind my earlier complaint. There's no way around having to use these words for clarity's sake. What a shame that Christianity has become a philosophical system. It hurts the ability of many people to have an unscrupulous, simple, childlike faith in Christ because they're not sure which Platonic form or Aristotelian category they're supposed to believe. Just one small question: if we are only describing God as He revealed Himself, and not engaging in human conceit, why do we not just say "The Holy Spirit ... Who proceeds from the Father", since the Lord Jesus said only that? The addition of "and the Son" surely goes against the verbatim revelation of Christ, and yet here we are: numerically, more Christians affirm filioque than not. Where is the "Catholic" universal affirmation of a truth revealed by God? What do you think of the resolution: "Who proceeds from the Father through the Son"?
It conveys the same meaning as the Filioque. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father through the Son in one single spiration.
In this topic I'll post some news, articles, web links, comments... about Orthodox and Anglicans. What can we learn from each other? Do we know each other at all? What are similarities and what are differences between us? Are they irrelevant or essential?...