www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West "East vs. West" is Inaccurate

When entering into communion with Rome the Kyivan Church professed a much different statement in Brest:

Since Florence was rejected by the Eastern Churches, and Rome herself accepted the formula of Brest, quite different than Florence, professing the accepted Eastern tradition, where does that leave Florence? A local council of no relevance?

I don't end up with the same conclusion of Apotheun to a condemnation of Florence, explicit or implicit, from the Blachernae council (which was certainly not Ecumenical).

Regarding Blachernae, even amongst the Greeks there was great difference of opinion on this that we still discuss today - one can see that quite readily from the discourse between John Beccos and Gregory of Cyprus.

I am quite dissatisfied with the statements of Florence, and the outcome speaks for itself. But I can't really find a complete rejection of the first seven Councils within it. Questionable language, to be sure, but again I am not convinced that it is de facto heterodox. A perhaps distorted or confused theologumenic view, but contradictory dogmatically - I am still not sure it goes that far.
DD

wow...what a thread!

I think that Florence is a local council that tried to bring about the restoration of communion between East and West, but which failed in that task. Sadly, the council failed because the theology reflected in its decrees could not be conformed to the teaching of the first millennium on the hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit, as found in the authoritative and definitive Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed.

I believe that my assessment of Florence has been confirmed by one of the more recent ecumenical agreements between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches in North America, which proposed as one of its many recommendations, ". . . that Orthodox and Catholic theologians distinguish more clearly between the divinity and hypostatic identity of the Holy Spirit, which is a received dogma of our Churches, and the manner of the Spirit�s origin, which still awaits full and final ecumenical resolution." If the decree of Florence is truly ecumenical, which I do not believe that it is, there would be no need for a future resolution of the theological question about the Holy Spirit's origin. The Catholic Church over the last forty years has finally realized that the Orthodox Churches will never accept the Florentine decree, because to accept it would involve a repudiation of the Byzantine doctrine of the monarchy of the Father, and the proper understanding of the hypostatic processions in the Trinity.

Click the link below to the USCCB's website for the full text of the North American Orthodox / Catholic Theological Consultation's agreed statement:

The Filioque: A Church Dividing Issue? [usccb.org]

Although the document is not perfect, it is a step in the right direction. Interestingly, some of the recommendations in the document may be shocking to Western Christians, especially the one that calls on the Western Church to remove the filioque from the creed.

I believe you have confused me with JohnNightWatcher. I have not seen the movie you mentioned, but Robert Duvall is a great actor, so it probably is a good film.

In my opinion, speaking as a former Evangelical, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Evangelical Churches is Western in nature (e.g., accepting things like the filioque, and often reducing the Spirit to the love that is shared between the Father and the Son, and reducing the persons of the Trinity to mere relations of opposition within the divine essence, etc.), which is quite logical since Evangelical Christians are descendants of Roman Catholics.

Blessings to you,
Todd

First let me say that the Council of Blachernae has the same binding doctrinal authority in the Eastern Churches as the series of Palamite Councils held in the 14th century. That being said, I do not see how a Byzantine can hold to the doctrine set forth in the Florentine decree and remain Byzantine. The Florentine decree is not compatible with the Cappadocian / Maximian / Damascene / Palamite understanding of the Trinity.

I recommend reading the book Crisis in Byzantium because it covers the issues quite well, and even provides an English translation of the council's Tomus, which shows quite clearly that John Beccus had been heavily influence by Scholasticism and that he no longer held the Orthodox faith as it touches on the procession of the Holy Spirit. At that council Beccus was declared a heretic and that decision held firm, because he refused to recant his heresy and died as an excommunicate in A.D. 1298. It is important to note that Beccus' theological position was novel in the East, and so his writings after his conversion to the Latin position in the mid 1270s no longer reflects the Byzantine tradition on the topic of the procession of the Holy Spirit.

I don't think a misread of St. Basil really gets us there ("likewise natural goodness, inherent holiness and royal dignity reaches from the Father through the Only-Begotten to the Spirit") but certainly I would say at a minimum Florence represents a failed attempt at a subordination, not a true union; an attempt at "comnmunion" without full ecclesiastical respect of the East from Rome; and flawed formulations which never were fully embraced by either the Eastern Churches and even Rome when the latter accepted the terms of Brest a little over a century later.

Regarding the monarchia of the Father (the monarchia of pure and total love) - while certainly this is an important distinction in Eastern Christian theology, St Basil urges great caution when speaking of this: "If someone assigns a higher place to the Father as his due, and says the Only-Begotten Son sits below, he will have discovered himself to have imagined God to possess physical properties. These fantasies and delusions come from drunkenness and insanity".
DD

Generation and spiration are hypostatic properties of the Father alone, because to hold -- as Florence taught -- that the Father and the Son can form a single principle in the spiration of the Holy Spirit is contrary to the teaching of St. Basil in his treatise On the Holy Spirit, where he points out that "the Spirit shares titles held in common by the Father and the Son; He receives these title due to His natural and intimate relationship with them" [St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, no. 48] In other words, anything common to the triad of divine hypostases within the Trinity is common because of the communion of essence existing among the them; and so, if the Father and the Son share the property of spirating the Holy Spirit, it follows that the Holy Spirit must also have this property, and as a consequence He becomes the "cause" (aitia) of His own spiration, which is clearly non-sensical. The Florentine teaching involves a confusion of essence and hypostasis in God, and St. Basil's theology can never be held to support that type of confusion; and in fact St. Basil would no doubt have criticised the Florentine teaching that the Father and the Son are a single principle in the spiration of the Spirit as a type of Sabellianism. He condemned any position in his letters (see Letter 236 in particular) which confused essence and hypostasis in God. Generation and spiration are hypostatic properties of the Father alone, and He has these properties because He is the sole cause, principle and origin of Godhead. Thus it is clear that the Florentine decree can never form the foundation for the restoration of communion between the East and the West, because it teaches a doctrine of the hypostatic procession of the Spirit that would require the Churches of the East to abandon the Cappadocian understanding of the Trinity.

Blessings to you,
Todd

P.S. - All of this has been discussed in detail in the thread:

The Filioque: Dogma, Theologoumenon or Error?

This statement does not concern the eternal hypostatic processions, but the energetic manifestation of God in the world. Anything common to two of the hypostases in the Trinity, is common to all three, because all that is common within the Trinity is founded upon the unity of the divine essence.

Oops! JohnNightWatcher are you out there?

perhaps the better thing to say was given the emphasis put on the Holy Spirit among Evangelical churches one can understand why they would be drawn to Orthodoxy? I should just find John's post to see how he worded it...(but meanwhile, so the protestant religions, even many of the newer ones are more like RCicism than Orthodoxy despite the protestations of Tobit?) (Except perhaps Mormonism. I don't know what they are even though they seem to have some type of Jesus figure in their mythos)

Dear Friends,

I think that there is one point about Florence that perhaps few of us would be willing to admit, that being that while Florence used the formula "through the Son," (as did Brest), that the precise nature of its theological meaning was not laid bare - only to say that it was the same as what was held in the West.

In other words, had Todd lived in the time of Florence and participated in it, I'm sure the theologians there would have read Todd's writings on the distinctions etc. re: the Procession of the Holy Spirit and would have stood in wonder and amazement of his erudition!

St Mark of Ephesus categorically rejected Florence, as we know. But John Meyendorff does take Mark to task with respect to WHY he rejected Florence - Meyendorff wasn't happy about his arguments at all. Mark Eugenikos was devoted to the teaching of the Church, but he was hardly a theologian who could articulate the "why's" of it all.

Theological precision was less of a concern at Florence than was the establishment of whether the Eastern and Western Fathers taught the same thing about the Holy Spirit. Both sides, apart from Mark Eugenikos and his party, believed once could establish that on the grounds that where one side used "and the Son," the other side used "through the Son" and therefore they must have meant the same thing because it is the same Holy Spirit that inspires both sets of Fathers.

Even Mark Eugenikos came to Florence as a unionist, believe it or not. He believed that as long as the Latins would remove the Filioque from their Creed, that God would heal the heresy later on in His own good time. That seemed to be key in the minds of many Greek bishops there - either the removal of the Filioque, or, failing that, getting the Latins to agree that the Greeks didn't have to include it in their version of the Creed.

The rest of the arguments seem to be a Greek rebuttal of Latin Trinitarian reasoning etc.

In short, there is leeway everywhere to come to a new and mutually inclusive agreement on all this . . .

Alex

I'm out here, today, but no, I havene't seen the "Apostle" either
Much Love,
Jonn

I'm out here, today, but no, I havene't seen the "Apostle" either
Much Love,
Jonn

Dear Rilian et al,

Great conversation.

I have a few thoughts I�d like to share concerning the �two lungs� theory and related issues.

When we speak of the "eastern lung" and the "western lung", the "eastern" and "western" are not defining characteristics but rather historical realities that also happen to make convenient handles for distinguishing between the "lungs".

I think a more precision definition would be that the "western lung" means the Latin Church, and the "eastern lung" means all other particular churches. (Thus, the OCA and the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church, despite being in western countries, are part of the "eastern lung"; and so is the Antiochian Orthodox Church, despite the fact that a few of its parishes use a western rite.)

This, to me, is why it is necessarily problematic for the Latin Church to create sui iuris churches: even in the absence of proselytism, such an act constitutes gross interference in the "eastern lung". (It is surely no coincidence that since Vatican II Rome has not officially granted sui iuris status to any new churches.)

Having said that, I want to make it clear that I believe that the Latin Church does have the ability to create sui iuris churches. Thus, for example, the UGCC and the other churches that resulted from uniatism are true sui iuris churches, since they were granted that status by Rome (notwithstanding the fact that Rome was wrong to do so without at least consulting the EP and the other eastern churches, and wrong to use coercion). Thus, the UGCC is categorically different from groups like the Old Believers, UOC-KP, and P.N.C.C, which have never been granted sui iuris status.

Finally, I'd like add on a side note that this is also why I believe that the TAC (Traditional Anglican Communion) will not be granted sui iuris status if and when it enters into full communion with Rome. Rather, I believe they will be required to join one of the existing sui iuris churches.

Many years,
Peter.

Todd, what precisely did St. Bail mean by "titles"? How valid is your transforming "shared titles" into "anything common?" As I indicated before, you must mean something more precise than "anything", because the idea, when generalized to an unqualified "anything", is readily shown to be false.

The "titles" held in common are the divine names, i.e., the epinoetic concepts that are formed from man's experience of the divine energies, and which reveal God to man. All that is common within the Trinity, i.e., all that is shared, is founded upon the unity of essence. This is a fundamental component of Cappadocian Triadology.