jgress wrote:I got this from a conversation with Anastasios, and also some things Fr Maximos Marretta told me have given me some context with which to think of these issues. Anastasios told me that the question of whether or not ecumenists have grace was not the issue which divided the Cyprianites and ourselves, but that the Cyprianites taught that heretics remained in the Church until condemned by a "unifying" Pan-Orthodox synod, and that local synods, like that of the GOC, did not have authority to anathematize heresy. Our church, on the contrary, teaches that heretics are outside the Church and that local synods may anathematize heresy.
Fr Maximos told me that our church has never adopted a formal position on when heretics lose grace, this being a separate question from whether a local synod may anathematize heresy. While we believe heretics eventually are completely deprived of grace, there is disagreement on when this precisely occurs. Vladimir Moss, for example, believes that heretics do not have grace at the time they are condemned by a valid local council, but the opinion that only the decision of a Pan-Orthodox (or "Major") council can definitely mark the cut-off also has had many adherents in our church.
Thank you for clarifying, Jonathan. Perhaps it is not possible to determine a precise time that heretics lose grace. My own Synod has written about this before, and about how arguing over exact dates is potentially harmful and in any case largely unproductive. Here is a quote you might be interested in, from our 2008 Sobor:
"Our Sobor of Bishops considers it futile to attempt to fix a concrete date for the final fall of one or another community from the Church. Instead, our Sobor makes the case that at the present time, neither the Moscow Patriarchate nor ‘world Orthodoxy’ as a whole has any relationship to the Church of Christ. This means that there can be no genuine sacraments of the Church being performed there."
So you see that our bishops consider it unnecessary to "fix a concrete date," yet for them the "grace question" is solved: to be outside the Church of Christ means "that there can be no genuine sacraments."
jgress wrote:So it depends on whether you want to make it a matter of faith that the ecumenist churches are graceless on the basis of local condemnations, or whether it is a permissible theologoumenon to say that there might still be grace present there, but that this cannot be guaranteed since those churches are in heresy. To argue the former, you need to show that the Church has a definite teaching on when grace is finally lost among heretics, but from my knowledge of the issue, the Church does not have a definitive teaching.
I do not know what you would qualify as "a definitive teaching." However, there is this interesting episode from the life of St. Maximus, which seems to touch this question directly:
"When the saint was asked in the Emperor’s palace why he was not in communion with the Throne of Constantinople, he replied: '…They have been deposed and deprived of the priesthood at the local council which took place recently in Rome. What Mysteries, then, can they perform? Or what spirit will descend upon those who are ordained by them?'"
It seems to me that the logic of St. Maximus's statement is very straightforward. If the Church is the place where grace, the Uncreated Energy of God, is communicated to and deifies the faithful, then how can we deny that to leave the Church is to abandon grace? If heretics leave the Church, then what business does grace have with them, if I may speak that way about it?
Of course, I am not making any kind of accusations against you or your people. But I am genuinely concerned about this issue, and I cannot see the logic behind the alternative, namely that the grace of God is somehow in the sacraments of communities outside the boundaries of the Church. Is this really the opinion that people are trying to put forward?