On the question of the calendar

[GOCPriestMark]

It's a given, any baptised Orthodox can baptise another into the Church. The women Apostles both wives of the Apostles and single, travelled, taught, and baptised. The Church didn't arrive fully formed in the organisation it has today..

It is not a given. Again I ask you to show us from Orthodox sources.
Yes it is true, any baptised Orthodox can baptise, but also any baptised Orthodox knows it is only to be done in emergency cases.
Did the women apostles also lay thier hands on the baptised for them to receive the Holy+Spirit?
Did they consecrate bishops and priests to serve the Divine Liturgy? (Something they themselves would not have dared.) Show us from Orthodox sources.

There have been many developments in the Church since the early days and not all changes have remained true to the understanding of the early Church. This is particularly noticeable in the West which seems to have accumulated rather a lot of these changes and made them doctrine, . .

Please show us something that has 'developed' in the Orthodox+Church which has changed its doctrine.

Please also tell us the source for the story of Sarah which you posted.

[Frelias]

From his own text ----

"An Orthodox must not simply know and quote the Fathers, he must enter into the spirit of the Fathers and acquire a ‘Patristic mind.’ He must treat the Fathers not merely as relics from the past, but as living witnesses and contemporaries."
Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, London, 1992, p.212.

Clearly Bishop Kallistos Ware would not advocate acquiring a ‘Patristic mind’ if he believed that was in opposition to the mind of Christ.

Priest Elias

[Myrrh]

It's a given, any baptised Orthodox can baptise another into the Church. The women Apostles both wives of the Apostles and single, travelled, taught, and baptised. The Church didn't arrive fully formed in the organisation it has today..

It is not a given. Again I ask you to show us from Orthodox sources.
Yes it is true, any baptised Orthodox can baptise, but also any baptised Orthodox knows it is only to be done in emergency cases.

It is true because it is a given. Who put the restriction on this to "only emergency"?

History of the Church shows that more and more restrictions were put on women, by the men who ended up with control. We need to appreciate here that Christ took women out of the patriarchal societies of the day, Jewish, Greek and Roman, where women were considered property - one notable exception was Britain and Ireland and other Celtic societies in Europe - but of course, when Rome finally took over the Church in Britain the equality the Celtic women had was destroyed too. In fact, you'd have to work very hard to convince me that 'patriarchal' didn't carry the intrinsic meaning of 'half-baked' when compared with the Celts.

Did the women apostles also lay thier hands on the baptised for them to receive the Holy+Spirit?
Did they consecrate bishops and priests to serve the Divine Liturgy? (Something they themselves would not have dared.) Show us from Orthodox sources.

There wasn't a Divine Liturgy quite in the form we know it until St James the Just, Brother of our Lord wrote it in anticipation of the destruction of the Temple.
Our link to that is through the Mother of God who entered the Holy of Holies, we remember this every year. If you don't understand what the Holy of Holies meant to the Jews there's plenty available on the net, but in brief, it was the most holy place because God dwelt there. It was only entered on one day of the year by the High Priest on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. On the tunnel tour of the Western Wall when we had reached the closest place to where the Holy of Holies used to be our guide told us that on the this day the High Priest became one, of one mind with all the people and this was an extremely dangerous thing to do on this special day when God forgave all their sins.

Sigh, I think you'll need to bear in mind here that the winners get to write the history... I can only suggest that you do your own research on something that doesn't upset you so much, our defence of the married priesthood for example against those who wanted to impose celibacy. The canons of the various councils are a good source to track change of emphasis, restrictions and so on.

Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple
http://home.it.net.au/~jgrapsas/pages/presentn.htm

St Mary Magdalene Equal-to-the-Apostles
http://home.it.net.au/~jgrapsas/pages/Magdalene.htm

St Photini Equal-to-the-Apostles (Samaritan Woman at the Well)
http://home.it.net.au/~jgrapsas/pages/photini.htm

St Thecla Equal-to-the-Apostles
http://home.it.net.au/~jgrapsas/pages/St_Thekla.htm

Women and the Church, Dr Marianne Dorman
http://mariannedorman.homestead.com/Women.html

There have been many developments in the Church since the early days and not all changes have remained true to the understanding of the early Church. This is particularly noticeable in the West which seems to have accumulated rather a lot of these changes and made them doctrine, . .

Please show us something that has 'developed' in the Orthodox+Church which has changed its doctrine.

This really is going into a different discussion, and one I've no interest in pursuing in this way. I suggest you do your own research since I've no idea what you consider Orthodox doctrine.

But, as above re celibacy - the rule against married bishops and since we're still on the Calendar page, as we've been discussing, the rule "not with the Jews". Several contributing factors to this, but specifically the separation of Christianity from Judaism. Christ is still a Jew. The same yesterday, today and tomorrow. We no longer remember 14th Nissan as was the tradition in Jerusalem and of St John, of the East and Britain.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/3 ... -jews.html

Please also tell us the source for the story of Sarah which you posted.

As I noted. Gypsies by John Hornby

Myrrh

[Myrrh]

From his own text ----

"An Orthodox must not simply know and quote the Fathers, he must enter into the spirit of the Fathers and acquire a ‘Patristic mind.’ He must treat the Fathers not merely as relics from the past, but as living witnesses and contemporaries."
Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, London, 1992, p.212.

Clearly Bishop Kallistos Ware would not advocate acquiring a ‘Patristic mind’ if he believed that was in opposition to the mind of Christ.

Priest Elias

My, hasn't he grown up! Seriously, my objection still stands, this idea of "Patristic Mind" is not wearing any clothes. Which Fathers? If some idea of "All Fathers" as the Orthodox Mind then that is plain nonsense. I don't have to take that seriously and it becomes heretical as we've seen above.

But, if he is actually saying here that the "Fathers" are not been and gone but in our present reality, then I agree, that's why I'm still arguing against them...

Myrrh

[Myrrh]

The Mission of the Orthodox Church
in North America
written in 1996 by Father Thomas Hopko,
Dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary

In order for Orthodox missionary activity to be genuine and true especially in view of the widespread interest in Orthodox spirituality, great care and responsibility must be exercised in the Church's use of the fathers and saints. Patristic theology, with the writings of the fathers and saints, which is now so popular and fashionable (and marketable!) in North America, is often presented consciously or unconsciously in ways which allow it to be used improperly. Patristic theology becomes a kind of "thing-in-itself" detached from its biblical foundation, ecclesial setting and historical context. It becomes for example, a theological or spiritual "school," or a metaphysical, mystical "worldview," disengaged from the Church and the gospel of Christ.

In such a misuse of patristic and hagiographic material, Jesus Christ may hardly be mentioned and becomes of little interest or importance. At other times the fathers are presented as mystical, perhaps even infallible, oracles who all allegedly say the same things. What can result is what Fr. John Meyendorff called a patristic "mythology," or a patristic "fundamentalism" which are radically contrary to what the fathers themselves, each in his own way, actually believed and taught.

http://www.stanneorthodoxchurch.org/Art ... church.htm

[1937 Miraculous Cross]

Dear Myrrh,

Correct me if I misunderstand you, but I'm getting the sense that in your
mind the only "true Fathers" are those that are pre-Nicene, and/or including the Celtic church fathers who maintained their pre-Synod of Whitby calendar.

what is your opinion concerning the role and involvement of the Holy Spirit in the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils? Is this just a farce in your opinion, and that all these so-called "Patristic" changes were done in the name of the Holy Spirit only, to justify their so-called changes to the Faith.

curious in Texas,
Nectarios

[Myrrh]

Dear Myrrh,

Correct me if I misunderstand you, but I'm getting the sense that in your
mind the only "true Fathers" are those that are pre-Nicene, and/or including the Celtic church fathers who maintained their pre-Synod of Whitby calendar.

Not at all, a true "father" is always one who maintains the truth of Orthodoxy, I simply don't make the mistake of attributing this carte blanche to some mythical idea of "the Fathers are the Mind of the Church", this is heretical in that the Church is the Mind of Christ who is the only Head etc. It's the Gospels we keep on the altar table not the writings of Ignatius or Chrysostom. In this, the calendar arguments, my conclusion is that neither the OC or NC has it right.

what is your opinion concerning the role and involvement of the Holy Spirit in the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils? Is this just a farce in your opinion, and that all these so-called "Patristic" changes were done in the name of the Holy Spirit only, to justify their so-called changes to the Faith.

curious in Texas,
Nectarios

Well, that's a good point. Isn't that what the Israelites did when justifying the mass slaughter of the Canaanites after being given the Law not the murder? We can all claim the "Holy Spirit" as the instigator of our decisions and actions - but we're not robots, we're created in the image and likeness of God, (male and female with free will) and have to give a personal account for our reasoning and acts. For example, if we claimed the Holy Spirit leads us to murder we'd find ourselves in a dichotomy because Christ's teaching is to keep the commandment not to murder. Christ's promise to us was that He would send the Holy Spirit from the Father to lead us to truth - if we can see that such a claim for us murdering would be un Christian, against Christ's teaching, we certainly have the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff in other areas of our lives or in the life of the Church.

To give the 'seal of approval of the Holy Spirit' to all decisions of every council isn't the Orthodox way, we're fully capable of deciding which are robber councils for example, we don't count councils "infallible" - a word not ever used of councils before the RCC began promoting it in relation to its papal claims. And a word never used of this "the Fathers" idea, and with or without that word, a concept alien to the Orthodox Mind...

..how such a concept has taken the prominence it has at this time is too complicated to go into here, in either of the two aspects ecclesiological and spiritual, but as in all our lives, if we find there is a contradiction between #changes# and Christ's teaching, then it's up to us to remember and remind that Christ's teaching is Orthodox and bishops alone or in council do not have some 'charism of inerrancy' any more than do we individually; which is not to say that in bishops or councils or individually we can't know the inerrant truth.

Myrrh