www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology St. John Cassian and Semipelagianism

Dear Alex,



The Filioque, Beatific Vision, Purgatory, Immaculate Conception, Vatican I eccesiology---if making adherence to these doctrines absolutely necessary to remain in communion with Rome isn't sufficient to constitute making Augustinianism "normative," then what would be? I want your response to this question.

Fr. Maximos (from Holy Resurrection Monastery?, wow!),


Yes, absolutely. The question isn't whether or not his teachings "should" be turned into a system; the question is are there eccesial bodies whose formal teachings and major theologians are heavily dependent upon various interpretations of his doctrinal conclusions and theological methodology. Augustine was the bedrock of Medieval theology and the most often-quoted and respected Father of the Reformation movements. To be Roman Catholic or Protestant is to be of the Augustinian tradition.



This only reinforces the point I was attempting to make earlier. Since the post-Schism dogmatic definitions and formal teaching of the Latin Church (Filioque, Beatific Vision, Purgatory, Immaculate Conception, Vatican I eccesiology) commits anyone in communion with her to Augustinian theology, the question of whether or not Eastern Catholics in particular are bound to it is a non-question. Eastern Catholics may not need to use the same terminology, but the theological content of those conciliar definitions must be affirmed and whatever the Eastern Fathers teach that isn't compatible with it must be rejected.

I must say I don't see it this way. I would say that there are certain doctrinal teachings of the Roman Church that are mined from the bedrock of Augustine's writings. (As you say, for much of its history that material has been the principal resource for the entire Western Church.) But lifting those particular nuggets from the seam does not commit anyone to regard the latter as the only source of theological treasure. Eastern Catholics are merely required to accept that these teachings are compatible with those drawn from our own theological ore.

You seem to think we are entitled to our own theological wrapping, as long as we remember that its real content is supplied by the Roman Church! This would empty the Eastern tradition of much of its own validity and authenticity--something Catholics are not permitted to do thanks to the declarations of Vatican II and numerous popes. We Eastern Catholics are required to disagree with our Orthodox brethren only to the extent that they consider post-schism RCC doctrine heretical. We are quite at liberty to agree with them that these doctrines are more or less irrelevant to our own experience of the Life in Christ.

Let's take a simple example. Augustine framed the question of after-death purgation for the West. Based on that, Florence and Trent formulated a doctrine of Purgatory. That much is true. I, as an Eastern Catholic, accept that these doctrines are compatible with those of my own tradition. The Western formulation emphasises divine justice. My own, based in particular on the notion of 'epektasis' in St. Gregory of Nyssa and other fathers, emphasises divine love. Is it really necessary to set these two emphases against one another and demand that one be set up as "normative"?

Theology is essentially a process of questions and answers. The answers you give are, obviously, determined in large part by the way the question is formulated. But it would be a grave error to mistake this dialectic about truth for the Truth Himself. St. Augustine asked his own questions about God. St. Gregory asked others. It is not surprising that each found different answers. The question is: can Truth be found in either? Both?

Most emphatically yes!

Seems to me that NeoChalcedonian has effectively and conceptually grasped the traditional "mind" of the Catholic Church on these issues. Augustinianism has been the defacto position of Rome since the middle ages...long enough to give the impression that Augustinianism is divinely mandated and approved...even if that is not the dogmatically formulated position of the Church. It certainly does seem logical.

This "mindset", imo, received an overhaul at Vatican II in an attempt to let in some fresh air. The results were disastrous. One can only hope that with such men as JP II and Benedict XVI the "liberation" of Vat II can be maintained while steering the Church back to an authentic Catholic cult and culture.

Jason

Fr. Maximos,

I honestly don't see how the Orthodox Patristic Tradition is "compatible" with the teaching that departed Christians pay satisfaction for venial sins in preparation for the Beatific Vision. My mind draws a blank. I've never seen such compatibility "demonstrated" without either watering down doctrines or looking at them in isolation from their theological underpinnings. To say that the East "emphasizes divine love" and the West emphasizes "divine justice" is certainly an easy claim to make but not to back up without oversimplification and question-begging. Even with respect to Augustine and St. Gregory of Nyssa, the first (and many of his most influential followers) explicitly denied the salvific will of God and the latter explicitly affirmed it.

From my perspective, "compatibility" is being misapplied within this context; it is simply too (metaphysically) "thin" a relation amongst the teachings of Churches that are supposed have the same faith, there needs to be some identity, not just the absence of contradiction.

I am of the belief that you can find some truth in virtually anything; I am also of the belief that people should own up to the implications of whatever truths they claim to affirm. I believe that much of the formal (and widely-accepted) teaching of the Latin Church is incompatible with that of the Fathers because I see substantial disagreement between their presuppositions and implications.



You're right, that's almost exactly what I'm saying. I believe that while Eastern Catholics may prefer one expression or approach to the same truth over another that as Catholics they must accept what Rome teaches, not just that what their Church teaches is somehow "compatible" with what Rome teaches. In fact, "that the real content is supplied by the Roman Church" is a nice way of summing up Vatican I ecclesiology, which also part of what Rome teaches!

While I see nothing wrong with affirming that Vatican II brought some substantial change in the praxis and canonical regulations of the Church, I believe that it is problematic to ascribe any fundamental *theological* discontinuity between VII and the Councils that preceded it. Whatever Catholics were required to hold with divine faith before VII, they are still required to hold to. VII changed nothing in that respect.

Wait, the Pope's supposed to be the Church's principle of unity and the Vicar of Christ on earth but what the Councils/Church he presides over teaches with clarity and unanimity for centuries is more or less irrelevant to our own experience of the Life in Christ? I find this reasoning quite problematic.

This thread seems to be taking on the character of "putting God in a box".

Jason

Dear NeoChalcedonian:

"Satisfaction" is a theological metaphor. It points to an analogy, not an actuality. It is entirely possible, therefore, to use other analogies than those in the conciliar definitions. It is even quite in order to prefer those analogies to the ones employed by the Council fathers.

Six was, for many ancients, the perfect number because it was the sum of 1, 2 and 3. This gave that number a mystic and contemplative character. Now, six is also the sum of 4 plus 2. Either way you get the right answer, but the process of reasoning leads to an entirely different encounter with the number. Your argument seems to be that by employing one particular system of reasoning, the Roman Church has canonized it and not just the "sum." Not only do you have to get the right answer, but you have to use exactly the same equation. If this were so, I think you would need to show where exactly that requirement has been magisterially stated. In fact, however, the opposite has been stated. And even contemporary Roman documents (notably the Catechism, paras. 1032 ff) manage to explain the notion of Purgatory without any reference to "satisfaction", without, in other words, that equation you claim is essential to the result.

I would go further and point out to you that your reasoning flies very close to the modern (or rather postmodern) error that conflates truth with its verbal expression. We are not, and never have been, bound by our language in the expression of Christian theology. Words are words and things are things, and to fail to give this due weight leads to very bad places indeed.

Finally, papal infallibility is a claim simply that the pope has the charism of knowing truth when he sees it for the sake of the Church. It doesn't mean that he has to have thought of it first, or expressed it best.

So no, I have no difficulty in accepting the truth of, say the Roman understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit or of Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception and, at the same time, hardly ever giving them a thought. Certainly I don't think of them in my prayers--the liturgy of my Church never touches on them. I have no difficulty in including these as ranged among the hierarchy of truths that point always toward the Truth that transcends all. And because these partial truths are arranged hierarchically (not linearly) I don't see any need to regard them as equally important or relevant.

Dear NeoChalcedonian,

Well, Augustine wasn't exactly the strongest possible proponent of the Filioque . . .

It is true, however, that the reason why the dogmas you cite were so defined by the Roman Church was that its Augustinian "a priori's" obliged it to . . .

As Archbishop Kallistos Ware said in his "The Orthodox Way" words to the effect that if Orthodoxy believed in a "stain of Original Sin" then "I would want to have a doctrine of an Immaculate Conception to ensure the Theotokos is exempted from it" (St Augustine, as we know, would not countenance any talk of the Theotokos being touched by ANY kind of sin, as he should have, of course).

And when the West tended to reduce the Holy Trinity to its internal relations, then, as Fr. John Meyendorff once wrote, the Filioque became a kind of logical necessity for Western Triadology.

So Western theology based on Augustine and Aquinas appeared to have "obliged" the West to define certain dogmas in response to a kind of theological "necessity" (i.e. that the Theotokos could not ever be said to have been in the shadow of any sin).

That does not mean that Augustine is an absolute necessity or that to remove Augustinian a priori's mean that the doctrines are no longer relevant - at least for the Latin theological perspective.

Alex