Just looked at this. I am laying down in bed right now. I will send you over some quick links on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin...ki/Coptic_Catholic_Patriarchate_of_Alexandria Interestingly enough the Catholic Church ran dual Patriarches of Alexandria. https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Patriarch_of_Alexandria As you will see the EO, the OO, and the Roman's all claim Alexandria. When the split happened in the 400's under Pope Dioscuros fighting to the death broke out between the Copts and the EO's but dual bishops were set up. The same thing basically happened in Antioch. A Byzantine Emperor had a duly elected Patriarch deposed. The two sides then basically proceeded to set up dual hierarchies. I think the OO's elected a successor about 6 years earlier than the EO's. They did not for sure go to church together and they killed each other. I would have to check again on the Arians but I know there were dual churches set up but now the more I think on it the Arians would have been the one's to impose new bishops and priests on teh conquered territory and be setting up dual hierarchies but both sides did not go to church together. I know John Julias Norwiches books on. Byzantium actually deal with this issue a bit. I have not read them in a long time but they do deal with the setting up of dual bishop and priests at least in Syria in passing or in detail I can't remember. Tomorrow will be a hard traveling day for me. I doubt I look for any of this information or even at this website tomorrow.
Yes. The G3 had been G4. The Diocese of the Holy Cross integrated into the G3 and shares with the Anglican Catholic Church its jurisdictions and practices. Our current Parish Priest in Gainesville GA was a Canon within the DHC. He was appointed to our parish by the Archbishop/Metropolitan, as he is approaching the age of retirement and now pastors our mission-parish. We are truly blessed to have him.
Really you don't get more schismatic than heresy. All were schismatic and all were condemned as heresies. The Nestorians at least formed their own church in the region controlled by Persia. Arianism was denounced as a heresy by the Council of Nicaea (325). https://www.britannica.com/topic/Arianism Nestorianism was condemned as heresy at the Council of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). https://www.christianity.com/wiki/christian-terms/the-nestorian-controversy-11629695.html Monophysitism was condemned as heresy at the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 680-681. Monothelitism (n outgrowth of the Monophysitism) was condemned at the Third Council of Constantinople (the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681), which also declared Honorius I to be a heretic. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Monothelite and https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Monothelitism
7 The term ‘monophysite’, which has been falsely used to describe the Christology of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, is both misleading and offensive as it implies Eutychianism. Anglicans, together with the wider oikumene, use the accurate term ‘miaphysite’ to refer to the Cyrilline teaching of the family of Oriental Orthodox Churches, and furthermore call each of these Churches by their official title of ‘Oriental Orthodox’. The teaching of this family confesses not a single nature but one incarnate united divine-human nature of the Word of God. To say ‘a single nature’ would be to imply that the human nature was absorbed in his divinity, as was taught by Eutyches. https://www.anglicancommunion.org/m...greed-statement-on-christology-cairo-2014.pdf
From Rico Tice: the CofE balks at teaching wrath and repentance. (This is a Twitter post; I'm trying to find the original video in the livestreams.) To be fair, the failure to teach the "two R's" is a common failing among all western Christian churches these days. Liberals and the orthodox alike don't like to hear about God's wrath. Liberals hate the actual concept of God's wrath: to them, God is only love and to suggest he even has wrath is offensive. To the orthodox, God's wrath is hidden behind layers of happy clappy songs and upbeat sermons and festive gatherings -- God ends up being the "nice dad" who won't actually punish you for your misbheavior no matter how badly you act. Modern ministers focus so much on God's mercy and immense grace that they tend to leave out the part where people actually have to repent of their sins to receive this grace. As Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans: "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" Few these days read Jonathan Edwards' classic "sinners in the hands of an angry God" sermon, and those who do find it a bit over the top even for a Puritan. Modern preachers of the Word shy away from the old-school hellfire sermons like this because moderns don't want to hear it (however much they need to). No one sitting in the pews these days thinks they are in danger of hell; God's wrath is reserved for other people, the bad people who do bad things. Hellfire preaching tends to make modern congregations resentful and put out. Why not preach love and acceptance rather than wrath and anger and judgement? It makes the service so much nicer, after all! The problem with this attitude is that without God's wrath there is no drive to repentance, and repentance is something every human being on this earth must bring in humility to their Lord and King. For we all sin and have fallen short. As we read in our Book of Common Prayer in the Eucharistic "Confession and Absolution of Sin": Our own liturgy is thick with God's wrath and our own repentance, and yet few Anglican ministers feel comfortable preaching God's wrath from the pulpit. It's a problem because it leaves the Gospel in an unbalanced state. God is indeed love and benevolence, and Christians must be glad of his grace. But! God is also equally wrath and judgement against sin, and to leave that aspect of God's nature unspoken is to do him dishonor. For repentance of sin is the pathway to God's grace -- if there is no repentance of sin, the sinner is subject to judgement and the consequences of God's wrath against sin.
While I was searching for the Rico Tice clip, I stumbled across the Pastor's Heart YouTube page, and it's got a ton of really good interviews with GAFCON 2023 attendees. I'm currently watching the interview with Dr. Stephen Noll on what a united orthodox Anglican Communion might look like.
My apologies. It was not my intention to cause any offense. It has become clear over the past century or so that the majority of the groups descended from those who dissented from Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) were not and are not heterodox. (Some of them have even restored communion with Rome.) My intent was to give a sense of the polemical situation as it existed at the time. Although, as @bwallac2335 notes above, rival episcopal Sees did eventually emerge in places like Syria, this was not the case in Constantinople, or in Alexandria during the Arian Controversy, to the best of my knowledge. In those cases, the situation was one of various 'parties' vying for control of a singular See, rather than multiple Sees claiming the right to the undivided allegiance of the same population. During the 4th century, pro-Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians - whether the latter were Arian, 'semi-Arian', or simply 'pre-Nicene' traditionalists - attended the same churches and shared a common hierarchy. The pro-Nicenes didn't separate and form their own churches even when a large proportion of the clergy (including the bishops) were pro-Arian.
No merger of GSFA and GAFCON...yet. I was always skeptical that a formal merger would be the outcome of this conference, honestly -- there's a lot of organizational politics involved along with points of theology to be ironed out. However, I do expect a de facto union if not a de jure one; the ejection of Canterbury from organizational primacy will leave a vacuum that must be filled. Extra-provincial oversight of some kind will need to be established. I have a feeling that discussions will intensify in the aftermath of the conference regarding what the Global Anglican Communion will be in terms of organizational structure, leadership, and mission. Global Anglicans have separated themselves from the oversight of Canterbury; now they need to figure out how to run this machine they have taken ownership of. Kigali 2023 will give the Bishops a baseline to focus the discussions going forward. There is at least now a common theological framework and a confessional bedrock to provide clarity. Outgoing GAFCON Chairman Abp. Foley Beach has said that in his view GAFCON and GSFA have some overlap but in essence are different creatures: GAFCON being a parachurch organization, and GSFA being a more formalized church oversight body. The problems of a marger -- mainly the harmonization of overlapping bishoprics and the like -- should be fairly straightforward to work out as time goes by.
From an outside perspective, the Anglican Communion seems to be undergoing a schism like the East-West Schism in 1054 which irrevocably divided Christianity into its Catholic and Orthodox branches. On one side of the schism, you have the Anglicans who believe that to be an Anglican is to be in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and whose only doctrinal beliefs are encapsulated in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. On the other side of the schism, you have the Anglicans who believe that to be an Anglican is to believe in the doctrines espoused by the Anglican formularies, including the 39 articles, the Book of Homilies, and the Book of Common Prayer. In 20 years I would not surprised if we see two Anglican Communions each calling themselves the true Anglican Communion and the other one heretical schismatics who have departed from Anglicanism, one descended from the institutions of historical Anglicanism and the other from the doctrinal tradition of historical Anglicanism.
Already, the GSFA and GAFCON bishops are calling the other side of the schism the "Canterbury Communion".
Most of the liberal western churches will be entirely moribund in 20 years. Even the orthodox remnant in America and England will be but a tiny fragment of the whole. The future of Anglicanism lies in the African churches, which are overwhelmingly orthodox and confessional. This is not even a debatable point at this juncture -- given demographic trends, TEC will cease to exist in a decade or two. (I haven't seen the numbers on post-COVID baptisms and marriages within TEC, but I'm sure they're gruesome.) The Church of Canada won't be far behind. The CofE may linger as a ceremonial appendage of the English Crown but will not exist as a living church for much longer. The trajectory of the Western Anglican provinces has been obvious for a long time now. Africa and the rest of the Global South is where Anglicanism will develop and grow for the forseeable future. It's not a "liberal vs orthodox" story so much as it is the story of Anglicanism separating from its English roots and becoming a confessional global Communion. The "gender wars" are only the precipitating event -- it was bound to happen sooner or later. Further to that, Anglicans are not the only church undergoing this transition. The Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists are all undergoing the exact same transition and for the exact same reasons as the Anglicans. This is much less a "schism" than a new Reformation (or a new phase in the original Protestant Reformation). Only instead of casting off Roman Catholic false teaching, this Reformation is casting off secular Western socio-cultural false teaching. There is an understanding among Global Anglicans that they cannot continue to be led by the Established Church of a secular western nation that no longer holds to a Biblical worldview. The center of world Christianity has shifted decisively to the south and east.
People were making projections like this all the way back in the 90s. This scenario is highly unlikely for a number of reasons. For one thing, America doesn't have the education base today to sustain secularism, and even if it did, the religious families are the ones having the bulk of the children. Also, just because Christianity is growing in Africa now doesn't mean it will be in 20 years. It has Islam to contend with, along with traditional African religions, and the secularism of its own youth, the latter of whom as a whole may be even less interested in Christianity in 10 or 20 years than their Western counterparts are now. There are other issues as well which make the prospect of a 'grand realignment' appear improbable.
From The Pastor's Heart Justin Welby may be regretting hanging on for the King’s coronation. This has become clear in the comments made by the Primate of the Indian Ocean James Wong, in the video above, as Archbishop Wong openly questioned Archbishop Welby's credibility. Archbishop Welby’s game of saying one thing to the global south and another thing to liberals in England is over. The mood of this conference is to move on from regarding Archbishop Welby as an Anglican Leader. This has become clearer as guests on our Heart of Gafcon livestream have vented their displeasure at Welby’s leadership and treatment of the non white provinces. See interviews with: Archbishop James Wong, Indian Ocean Archbishop Justin Badi Arama, South Sudan - Chair Global South Archbishop Rennis Ponniah, Singapore - General Secretary Global South Archbishop Foley Beach, North America - Chair Gafcon
Welby was chosen less as for his skills as a clergyman (which are frankly negligible) than for his skills as a senior bureaucrat. He came out of the business world, and he was chosen to be a numbers guy, an organization guy. But being a religious leader, like being a diplomat (which he in essence was in his international role), requires having formidable people skills, and this skill Welby lacks almost entirely. He is a fairly cold fish, peevish, jealous of his own authority, and oozes an upper-crust British disdain for those he feels are socially below him. This superciliousness towards what he saw as the rude African colonials was obvious from the start, and it made Bishop Peter Akinola among others unwilling to work with him. It's strange that a person like Welby would be anybody's first (or third, or tenth) choice as the spiritual leader of an international church, but thinking about the kind of institution the English monarchy is, Welby's tenure looks more and more inevitable. The Crown did not want a reformer or a revivalist sitting in Canterbury. They wanted stability, continuity, and above all, no drama. No scandal. To most of the modern Royals (even Elizabeth II to a certain extent), the national church is meant to serve roughly the same purpose as an ornamental suit of medieval armor at the palace: the CofE exists to provide a certain ambience, a certain link to the past. Its function as a spiritual home to English Christians comes into play only as a secondary or tertiary concern. Justin Welby is the perfect Archbishop for this kind of church. Given the realities of modern England (and the western world as a whole), the "peace and quiet" mandate required accomodating the homosexual lobby in his own church (and in due course the transsexual/transgender lobby). The emerging abuse scandals at CofE schools and churches sharpened the need for Welby (and Williams before him) to don the multicultural, post-modernist hairshirt and declare that the CofE would now bend to the public zeitgeist. Anything to quiet the racket and let the CofE get on with the business of being a quaint relic of English history. As England goes, so goes the CofE...but the Africans wanted no part of that and have unshackled themselves from Canterbury. A stronger clergyman might have been able to retrieve the situation -- I posted elsewhere about St. Ambrose's rebuke of Emperor Theodosius. A Bishop strong in his faith and stout of purpose may bring even a King to repentance. But Welby is not that man any more than Rowan Williams was that man. They are both, to use C. S. Lewis' description, "men without chests"; they leave a shameful legacy behind them. History will not be kind.
Dated but definitely still relevant to the topic at hand: Should the day come when the ACNA replaces The Episcopal Church as the official Anglican body in the United States, without a common enemy the two factions [viz., Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical] will fracture the ACNA as surely as the liberal/conservative divide has torn apart The Episcopal Church. Such hasty and, frankly, weak repairs to American Anglicanism is not in the best interests of either Anglican or Christian unity. Moreover, the African and Australian bishops have committed an offense more outrageous than any by the ‘liberal’ Episcopal Church, USA. The ACNA was, for quite some time, a number of ‘missionary convocations’ under the authority of those African primates. It is an appalling act of reverse imperialism to unilaterally dismiss…the authority of the American Church (The Episcopal Church), whose Presiding Bishop have no more or less power than the African Primates. To establish an Anglican mission within the jurisdiction of a pre-existing Anglican Church is to reject the legitimacy, not of a particular leader, but of the entire province. This is an unacceptable slap in the face of one’s fellow Anglicans, especially the conservative remnant within The Episcopal Church. The ACNA’s African and Australian patrons repeatedly accuse The Episcopal Church of threatening Anglican unity, but only the African and Australian provinces have attempted to interfere with, and undermine, the ‘offending’ parties’ authority. Read the whole thing.
My Archbishop released a statement requesting that GAFCON return to catholic order. I believe they were speaking to the same point: the majority of GAFCON provinces have women's ordination to some degree. Every couple of years we see another GAFCON province move to promote women to the episcopate. Beyond that issue, sometime around GAFCON II or so it became clear that the Continuing churches were liturgically incompatible with GAFCON. It is now clear also that they are theologically a poor match since GAFCON tolerates Word of Faith teaching but is mostly put off by Anglo-Catholicism. Except Anglicanism is creedal not confessional. The Articles of Religion and Homilies were not meant to be the Anglican Book of Concord, still less the Westminster Confession or Heidelberg Catechism or whatever other Protestant tome the uber-Reformed folk want to latch onto. Anglicanism does need to consolidate into something particular but a church out of the 17th century with an episcopate has already been done. The Lutherans and Moravians beat us to the punch.
When one thinks about it, I'm sure the RCs would request that all Anglicans return to Catholic order, too. But Anglicans have good reason to remain separate from the RCC. Likewise GAFCON provinces have good reason to remain separate from those who would ignore thousands of years of precedent in 'normalizing' homosexual behavior within a faith context. Some WoF churches go too far with their teachings. That said, I have observed something from my own parish that I think shows the greatest contrast between 'us' and 'them'. My rector tends to highlight a concept of faith that, to me, seems a bit out of balance: namely, that since faith itself is a gift from God, a given human being either has faith in God or they do not, based upon God's election. In other words, one believes or one does not, but one cannot really affect the situation either way (and if this is correct, I would ask: why should we bother with sharing the faith with those around us?). WoF, in my experience, teaches that all humans are given enough faith to be able to trust in God if they so choose (based on their reading of Romans 12:3). WoF additionally postulates that, since (as the Bible clearly teaches) our belief and trust (faith) in Christ and in Christ's redemptive work are largely determinative of our eternal outcomes, therefore our faith in Him is also largely determinative of our temporal outcomes. In other words, if those who believe in Jesus for eternal life will be saved (as He promised), then those who believe in Jesus for divine providence (including healing and the meeting of temporal needs) will have their needs met (or at least are more likely to have them met). This does not seem too extreme when we consider that Jesus taught the propriety of praying, "Give us this day our daily bread" (essentially a 'shorthand' for asking God to meet our needs for good health, shelter, food, clothing, and other necessities of life). WoF considers trust in God for temporal needs to be an integral part of the Christian life; some could argue that they emphasize it too strongly, but their emphasis on faith as something one may nurture and act upon serves to drive an evangelistic effort on behalf of Christ and the Gospel which vastly surpasses the supine inertia of many Anglicans.