More on Monophysites...

[EkhristosAnesti]

P.S. I won't be able to respond for a coming 3-4 weeks until I finish my end of semester exams.

Peace.

[Sabbas]

Ekhristos Anesti the Christology you are promoting seems to me to be identical to what the Orthodox believe, if I have read you correctly, but this post by Lucian seems to show that not all Oriental Orthodox agree.

This is a very interesting thread. OOD brings up an important point that I noticed myself sometime back, when I first began to investigate these issues.

It seems to me that Monothelitism is a logical consequence of Non-Chalcedonian theology.

Here is something I quoted here once before, but it bears repeating in this context. It is a statement made by Fr. Paul Verghese, who later became Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios of the Syrian Orthodox Church of India, in a speech given in Geneva in 1970 at the third consultation of EO and Non-Chalcedonian theologians and printed in the Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XVI, nos. 1 and 2, 1971, pp. 133-143.

Here, as earlier in the decree, the Tome of Leo is expressly affirmed. The decree actually calls the Tome "the pillar of the right faith." You can perhaps understand that all this is rather difficult for us to accept. For us Leo is still a heretic. It may be possible for us to refrain from condemning him by name, in the interests of restoring communion between us. But we cannot in good conscience accept the Tome of Leo as "the pillar of the right faith" or accept a council which made such a declaration. The council approves explicitly what I clearly regard as heresy in the Tome of Leo: "Each form does in communion with the other what pertains properly to it, the Word, namely doing that which pertains to the Word, and the flesh that which pertains to the flesh." If one rightly understands the hypostatic union, it is not possible to say that the flesh does something on its own, even if it is said to be in union with the Word. The flesh does not have its own hypostasis. It is the hypostasis of the Word which acts through the flesh. It is the same hypostasis of the Word which does the actions of the Word and of his own flesh. The argument of the horos [dogmatic definition] in this Sixth Council is basically unacceptable to us (Review, p. 139; Does Chalcedon, p. 133).

We are unable to say what this council says when it affirms "two wills and two operations concurring most fitly in him"....

To summarize: Acceptance of the Sixth Council is much more difficult for us than the acceptance of Chalcedon. The following are the chief reasons:...

b) We are unable to accept the dithelete formula, attributing will and energy to the natures rather than to the hypostasis. We can only affirm the one united and unconfused divine-human nature, will and energy of Christ the incarnate Lord.

c) We find that this Sixth Council exalts as its standard mainly the teaching of Leo and Agatho, popes of Rome, paying only lip-service to the teachings of the Blessed Cyril. We regard Leo as a heretic for his teaching that the will and operation of Christ is to be attributed to the two natures of Christ rather than to the one hypostasis. The human nature is as "natural" to Christ the incarnate Word as is the divine. It is one hypostasis who now is both divine and human, and all the activities come from the one hypostasis.

A web site with the word "Orthodox" in its name recently changed the title of its Non-Chalcedonian forum, replacing the term Non-Chalcedonian with the deceptive term "Oriental Orthodox."

I object to the name "Oriental Orthodox" for Non-Chalcedonians.

It seems sinful to me for Orthodox Christians to refer to Monophysites as "Orthodox."

How can one reject any of the holy Ecumenical Councils of the Church and be Orthodox?

When one endorses a heresy and bestows upon it the otherwise honorable title "Orthodox," doesn't he become a principal in its errors and heir to the anathemas of the Fathers?

Lucian, no offense but I have to go with Ekhristos Anesti on this. I call members of the Latin heresy Roman Catholics to be polite, is that wrong? I do not think calling the Non-Chalcedonians Oriental Orthodox means you have betrayed the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon.

P.S. I won't be able to respond for a coming 3-4 weeks until I finish my end of semester exams.

Peace.

Good Luck! You argue so well I have no doubt you're intelligent enough to ace all your exams.

[Mor Ephrem]

Okay, let me reword it that the Fathers of the OEcumenical Councils #4-7 would not consider Orthodox anyone who reject those councils and the canons thereof. Would you deny that my friend?

Dear Dn. Nikolai,

XB!

I would tend to agree with you, but this is again subjective. It is the Fathers of Chalcedon and subsequent councils who believed themselves to truly be fathers protecting the truth from those who would preach heresy (again, as they believed the case to be), and it is those who believe that these fathers were right who believe in 7 (or 8 or 9) councils as guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit. Of course they would regard opponents as heterodox. So?

One problem I've always had with these discussions is how utterly subjective they are at heart, even though strident believers on either side will treat subjective declarations as objective truth. Before you have a heart attack, I don't blame them for doing so...this is the Orthodox faith we are talking about, after all, and we believe it is objectively true. There is a tension here that is hard to navigate when dealing with others. We need to be as objective as we can be if we are going to get to the truth.

Another point could be made. When there were only four councils, you would be hard pressed to find council fathers who said you needed to believe in Seven Councils and their dogmatic and disciplinary canons in order to be Orthodox. When there were five, and when there were six, the same situation held. Is seven a magical number that was pre-ordained by God for the full revelation of the faith? Obviously not, since theoretically another ecumenical council could be held. The common thread running through all these statements is the belief EO have that, whether there were zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven councils at any given time in Church history, all the councils will naturally agree with each other, because all are protected and guided by the Holy Spirit, and all are Orthodox--thus there will be no disagreement in them. When five councils were recognised by EO, the people of that time were no less Orthodox than their children in the 1800's, because the substance of the faith of the latter was the same as the substance of the faith of the former. Subsequent councils did not add anything to their faith, but confirmed it. In every case, it was the substance of the faith, its Orthodoxy or heterodoxy as is, that mattered. Whereas this seems at one time to have been taken for granted, to speak of it today is verboten, at least if you express this idea by a willingness to evaluate other Churches based on what they actually believe rather than our own pre-conceived notions of what they believe and who they are. It's sad that our faith is so fragile as to be afraid of the truth.

[尼古拉前执事]

Okay, let me reword it that the Fathers of the OEcumenical Councils #4-7 would not consider Orthodox anyone who reject those councils and the canons thereof. Would you deny that my friend?

Dear Dn. Nikolai,

XB!

...

Subsequent councils did not add anything to their faith, but confirmed it. In every case, it was the substance of the faith, its Orthodoxy or heterodoxy as is, that mattered

BB!

Exactly! This is why I cannot those being against the 4th, 5th, 6th & 7th Councils. It confirmed the Faith as always taught. And since it did, to condemn these councils — as some do — is not in line with the Orthodox Faith then. Like you said, since your church accepts the first three councils, it would not accept as Orthodox a Nestorian that accepts only the first. I do wonder, how, if after 1,500 years of attempts at reunion, if the Faith is not different today, how could the Fathers of the Church remain ignorant to this for so long?

[Mor Ephrem]

BB!

Exactly! This is why I cannot those being against the 4th, 5th, 6th & 7th Councils. It confirmed the Faith as always taught. And since it did, to condemn these councils — as some do — is not in line with the Orthodox Faith then. Like you said, since your church accepts the first three councils, it would not accept as Orthodox a Nestorian that accepts only the first. I do wonder, how, if after 1,500 years of attempts at reunion, if the Faith is not different today, how could the Fathers of the Church remain ignorant to this for so long?

Again, this is your perspective, and a few things need to be addressed.

First, it is your position that these councils confirmed the faith as always taught. After dialogue we too realise that there is nothing heretical in them, but this was not always clear...at least, it was as clear to us as our usage of St. Cyril's theology was clear to you.

Second, the point of my post was simply that this insistence on councils when it really is all about the substance of the faith is a double edged sword. You demand seven now, but there was a time when only six, or five, or four were demanded. Orthodox of all those time periods were no less Orthodox for lack of subsequent councils, because the faith was the same across the board. I would not call a Nestorian Orthodox only because he doesn't recognise certain councils, but because he rejects the faith they taught. With the Nestorians, it seems sufficiently clear through our common dialogues that the substance of the faith differs between them and us. With us, it seems clear to people unafraid of the truth that we never were heretics, although grave misunderstandings occurred. IF the faith is the same, IN SPITE OF lack of consensus on the ecumenical status of certain councils, then I'm not sure we have so serious a problem...it is a problem, for sure, and it needs to be worked out, but the important thing is that those councils did what they set out to accomplish for the people who accepted them, and the faith of a group which did not accept them has been demonstrated to be essentially consonant with them.

The problem in this thread is that these notions do not fit the pre-conceived ideas about the faith some people take for granted, and so they "need" Non-Chalcedonians to be heretics in order for their faith to appear sound and logical. It is my conviction that it appears sound and logical even with a demonstration of the Orthodoxy of the Non-Chalcedonians.

Finally, I do not think it is accurate to say there have been 1500 years of reunion attempts and then to ask how the Church Fathers could be ignorant for so long because of this. There were reunion attempts in the beginning, but they failed because of the sinfulness of people on both sides of the divide (and Church Fathers are not immune from this, as they, while being holier than we, too are sinners...it is not Orthodox to imagine Church Fathers as some sort of posthumously recognised infallible beings akin to heavenly Popes). After a certain point, however, they stopped, and the two sides remained isolated from each other. There were no reunion attempts that I know of after perhaps the 600's; after this, both sides were on their own. Might you be thinking of your reunion attempts with the Latins over the course of the last thousand years?

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

Mor Ephrem,

You deny being a Monophysite, we say you are. Very well.

The whole issue of being or not being a Monophysite can be firmly obscured in abstract concepts so that most people could hardly even guess what you are talking about, which has the ecumenical benefit of making the issue look “silly”.

With this in mind, and as you know, I have raised the issue of another aspect of Monophysitism that can be easily talked about and understood – and one that the ecumenist haven’t yet had the chance to whitewash into more “sins” of the Holy Fathers. And that is: Monothelitism.

It is clear enough that “Orientals” are a Monothelites, which was condemned by the Sixth Oecumenical Council.

Go to this link and scroll to the last section (section 10) – the very end.
http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/theo ... christ.pdf

The Orthodox believe that "Christ had two natures with two activities: as God working miracles, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven; as Man, performing the ordinary acts of daily life. Each nature exercises its own free will". Christ's divine nature had a specific task to perform and so did His human, without being confused nor subjected to any change or working against each other. "The two distinct natures and related to them activities were mystically united in the one Divine Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ".

As I have said before on this forum, Monothelitism could only be a product of a real Monophysitism - sparrows don't lay duck eggs, they lay sparrow eggs. Either way, no matter how you slice it, you do not share the same faith as us.

Again, I have said this before on this forum and you have not addressed it AFAIK; and I can only guess that is because it is true and you have nothing to say. Yet you continue to struggle to prove that you are Orthodox, which seems disingenuous. I mean, if you believe Christ had One-Will (which is a result of his supposed One-Nature), why not just admit that you don’t have the same faith as us – why the constant struggle to prove that you believe the same as us and that everyone in history were wrong?

No offense to you, I just don't get it. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge the 800lb gorilla in the living room.

[TomS]

Nobody seems to want to acknowledge the 800lb gorilla in the living room.

Okay, I will. His name is "we are right and everyone else is wrong". I just call him Pride for short.