Καλὴ Ἀνάστασις to everyone at Euphrosynos Cafe!
Everything I write is in support of the settled teachings of the Orthodox Church, without deviating to the right or the left. I believe, personally, that Bishop Matthew Karpathakes of Vresthena deviated a little to the right and that Father Seraphim Rose of Platina and Archimandrite/Metropolitan Cyprian Koutsoumpas of Phyle deviated to the left. I venerate Saints Tikhon Belavin of Moscow, Joseph Petrovykh of Petrograd, Cyril Smirnov of Kazan, Ilarion Troitskii of Vereia, Nicholas Planas of Athens, Nikolaj Velimirovich of Zhicha, Chrysostom Kavourides of Florina, John Maximovitch of San Francisco, Justin Popovich of Chelije, and Philaret Voznesenskii of New York. They all witnessed to Orthodoxy (and some people accused them of being too right wing) and they all exercised oikonomia (and some people accused them of being too left wing). It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of genuine Orthodox Christians worldwide agree with the “middle ground” that I am defending. It is important to have at least one person on Euphrosynos Cafe who defends the majority-approach among genuine Orthodox.
The phronema (mind) of the Orthodox Church has always been to expose the errors in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, either by condemning them but speculating on interpolations, or by condemning them and simply admitting he wrote the errors. No one is ridiculing him. Rather, the Church has consistently warned people about his errors. The mind of the Church has not reached a consensus on the veneration or not of Augustine the man. The people who knew his writings the best, the saints of Gaul, condemned them. Those who praised him in the East, such as Saints Photius and Mark of Ephesus, knew very little of Augustine’s voluminous writings. One of the reasons Augustine is mentioned in the Latin records of the proceedings of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (along with the non-saint Theophilus of Alexandria) is in support of the view that a theologian who dies at peace with the Church can be posthumously condemned if a heresy is later found in this writings. We should all be able to agree with this principle. Theophilus of Alexandria’s reputation in the Church went way down after it was realized how he opposed Saint John Chrysostom, even though the Church accepted Theophilus’s canons. Why did the Eastern Church not preserve the records of the proceedings of the Fifth Council? Because the proceedings/debates do not have the same authority as the actual consensus decree of the Council, which the mind of the Church does cherish and has preserved.
It is also in the proceedings (not the decree) of the Seventh Council where we find a prohibition of icons of God the Father. I believe these icons largely entered the Church after that Council and were a mistake. This view also appears to be the consensus of experts who have studied the issue objectively.
Orthodox Christians are supposed to believe the consensus of the saints on doctrine. This means that (1) individual saints do not have the same authority as the consensus; and (2) non-doctrinal opinions (e.g., on astronomy) of saints (even if there is a lot of repetition of the non-doctrinal opinion) does not have the same authority as the doctrinal consensus. Bishop Augustine of Hippo is one of the most well-known bishops in world history. But the Eastern Orthodox Church has never come to a consensus that he is a saint that should be venerated liturgically. The first time he was added to an official Eastern Orthodox Calendar appears to be the 1950s. (I meant to type “Eastern Orthodox,” not just “Orthodox,” when I made that claim in the earlier post.) The Orthodox Church (definitely the Eastern Church and to a degree the ancient Western Church) does have a consensus that Augustine made serious errors. Saint Vincent of Lerins, Saint John Cassian and the Church in Gaul, as well as at least two major councils in the West condemned some of the errors found in the writings of Bishop Augustine of Hippo. Liturgical veneration of Augustine in the West seems to have been delayed and the anti-Orthodox Carolingians played a distorting role in the West concerning Augustine. His writings were virtually ignored in the Eastern Churches for many centuries, and then only one work was translated into Greek by the 1200s. People such as Saint Photius and Saint Mark of Ephesus were shocked at what was attributed to him by the Latins, and these saints resorted to the speculation that Augustine’s writings had been interpolated with Latin errors. There is not one expert on Augustine’s writings who has found evidence of such interpolations.
Ecumenical Patriarch Gennadius George Scholarius had been a fervent disciple of the writings of Thomas Aquinas and fervent advocate of the heretical union of Florence. Saint Mark Eugenicus of Ephesus, on his death bead, appealed to Gennadius to switch positions, and he did, at least towards the false unia. It is debated if Gennadius still followed Thomist theology in his later years. Gennadius in not widely venerated as a saint. Gennadius’s anathema against opponents of Augustine’s errors has not been accepted by the Orthodox Church and is not authoritative in the Orthodox Church.
Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, whom I venerate, was highly influenced by Latin and Italian theological works. He translated Lorenzo Scupoli’s works from Italian into Modern Greek and the last words printed in his Philokalia of 1782 were the Latin words for “nothing contrary to the Holy Catholic faith” added by the Roman Catholic censor in Florence, Italy. That is environment in which Saint Nicodemus published his works. Saint Nicodemus’s emphasis on Augustine was highly unusual and it is simply a historical fact that his emphasis on Augustine has not been accepted by a consensus of the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox consensus counts, individual opinions not so much. The great achievements of Saint Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain in an environment that was saturated with Latin and Italian influences deserve an objective Orthodox examination.
Saint Vincent of Lerins, writing under the pseudonym Peregrinus, wrote eloquently about the consensus of the saints, and about the error of Augustine. He wrote: “Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith that has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” His words are referred to as the “Vincentian Canon.” Several of Augustine’s opinions fail on that standard. He was very wrong to claim that heretical baptism is “valid.” But we know why he claimed this: He was influenced by Platonic mysticism about the validity of “signs.” All of that (Saint Vincent’s Orthodox canon versus Augustine’s Platonic-influenced and Manichean-influenced errors) deserves an objective Orthodox examination.
Father John Romanides made several huge errors, including being in favor of the heretical Monophysite Christology of Severus of Antioch and in favor of an unbalanced form of extreme apophaticism that denigrated Orthodox cataphatic theology. I can post more about his errors in the future. Please do not slander me as a follower of Romanides.
The Orthodox Church has not anathematized the scientific theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun, even though a few Orthodox condemned the theory when they first heard about it.
Clearly, some kind of human evolution has occurred: for example, my Zulu friend looks different from my Ethiopian friend who looks different from my Norwegian friend. And they all look different from Australian aborigines and Aleuts. That is different human evolution on different continents or parts of continents. Those are observable facts. Even during our own lifetime, we can see that blue eyes are evolving to be less common among people in North America today than when we were born.
I believe without doubt that man was created in the image and likeness of God and that the likeness to God was tarnished by a misuse of human free will, which is responsible for sin and death and the fallen world around us. Christ is the only consubstantial image of God the Father, whereas we humans are created images of God.
I do not know what to make of Homo habilis, Homo erectus, and the current scientific consensus that human beings today have DNA from interbreeding with the Neanderthal and Denisovan races roughly 40,000 years ago. I know God created man. We do not know everything about how man was created and how he evolved into different races. I stick with Orthodox dogma without question, but I do not fear scientific speculations and debates. The Holy Fathers expressed many contradictory personal opinions in their commentaries on Genesis and also expressed a unity in basic God-given dogmatic teaching. I accept all of that dogmatic consensus without question.
I am aware that in the Orthodox Church is was at certain times customary to date the world as less than 7,000 years old. That custom was not dogmatized and largely abandoned. In the Nativity service today, it mentions this calculation, but it also lists the dating from the supposed founding of the City of Rome and even, I recall, the date according to the Olympiad! If you choose to argue that these dating schemes are God-given infallible dogma, then I will read your argument. I do not believe in a Protestant-style pick-and-choose at all. I believe in the God-given dogmatic consensus of the Orthodox Church, and I oppose elevating personal opinions into dogmas. That only divides Christians.
I seek consensus today based on the ancient dogmatic consensus of the Scriptures, councils, saints, and liturgical books. What could be a more worthy, more Orthodox goal than that?
