www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West A New Ecclesiology?

I did want to repeat and highlight the one from The Holy Office.


as the most clear and the most compatible with the classical Western and Eastern mystical theology and with the words of Christ himself.

It assumes that within the church is the truth and grace of God and his will is done ... and if any individual knows that and fully understood that ... they would be responsible in conscience to join the church formally.

But the essential of salvation rests with the intention of doing the will of God... be that individual within the church or without the church.

Those within the church who do not have full intention and desire to do the will of God are lost despite having received the sacraments. Those who do not have access to the sacraments because they either do not have access to the church or simply do not fully recognize nor understand that His truth and grace are in the church ... if they have the intention and desire to do the will of God (come to us in conscience and in the Logos that we call Providence) they have salvation.

This is entirely compatible with the words of Jesus "He who does the will of my father .. I and my father will come and live with him."

On a related subject ... the excommunication of the Orthodox church via the Roman Catholic church ... we have the conflict of an excommunication having the effect of 'no salvation outside the church' meaning their sacraments are not valid - yet we also have the pronouncement that their sacraments are valid due to legitimate succession of their Patriarch and priesthood - therefore since that succession had always been legitimate their sacraments have always been valid.

That contradiction was thankfully ended with the lifting of excommunications.

This is all very difficult to sort out.

But it seems to boil down to this ...

We, in the church can know with certainly that IF we intend to do the will of God with wish and desire - we can KNOW that the sacraments are effective.

For those outside the church .. if they intend and wish and desire to do the will of God - we must assume that they have salvation but that salvation dos not come through Catholic sacraments (we don't know how it comes - God does not tell us).

-ray

-ray

Which finally boils down to ...

Salvation (inside the church or outside it) is had through doing the will of God.

Now THAT does agree with the words of Christ, and the mystical theology of both East and West.

-ray

The dictum is Exta Ecclesiam, nulla salus, Outside the Church, no salvation; both Ortodox and Catholic are in agreement on that link [en.wikipedia.org]. That dictum is the "hard saying," the Truth that must be firmly understood and appreciated before the nuances, as given within the quoted "statements," are considered.


Your continuing to proclaim the gospel according to Ray makes attempts at dialog (for me) impossible. The Church and the churches do understand and proclaim the words of Christ and His Gospel. They understandand and proclaim the words of Jesus

Mark 16:16 The one who has believed and the one who has been baptized shall be saved, the one who has not believed shall be condemned

and what those words mean and what they don't mean.

Dn. Anthony

There are, however, some distinctions for a word (1)being in the bible, (2)being a biblical tem, and even something like (3)being-in-the-bible-and-being-and-not-being a biblical term.

(1) hu(/y)postesis Forms of hypostesis occur in the NT and LXX. There they mean confidence, conviction, some tangible form of something that is. In the philosophy of the time it meant being as did ousia. The Latin sub-stantia, which becomes English's substance, is a calque of the Greek. The word was transformed later under the influence of Cappadocian Church Father to mean what we understand as person. This dogmatic meaning is not derivable from the biblical usage.

(2)Christos Christ, The Anointed, Messiah etc. Although having a non-biblical meaning, when used has (often if not always) a very specific intended meaning.

(3)ekporeuetai in relation to the Creed's "to ek tou Patros ekporeuomenon," (from the Father proceeding )

from

John 15:16 the Spirit of truth who proceeds (ekporeuetai) from the Father

but also

Mark 7:19-20 "since it enters not his heart but the stomach, and so passes out (ekporeuetai) into the sewer... What comes out from (ekporeuomenon) the Man defiles the Man."

Dn. Anthony

Ray,

Deacon Anthony is correct, both Orthodox and Catholic Churches are in agreement on the dictum, Extra Ecclesiam, nulla salus. I would hasten to add, however, that the sources you've been providing (great sources, BTW! ) are normally regarded as examples of people who are included within the Church (i.e. the body of those who are saved), albeit in an extraordinary way, not people who are saved outside the Church.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

I disagree, because the Cappadocian use of the term "hypostasis" is quite conformable to the use of the word in the letter to the Hebrews. The Cappadocians did not radically alter the meaning of the word; instead, they simply restricted its usage in order to avoid Sabellian Modalism.

Now, certainly the term can be used in a variety of ways, but it is a dogmatic truth that there can be no substantial changes in the Church's faith. That said, as an Eastern Christian I hold firmly to the patristic idea that revelation is not a form of intellectual knowledge, but is experiential in nature. God is beyond any linguistic concept, even biblical ones (cf., St. Gregory of Nyssa's Seventh Homily on Ecclesiastes).

Also, to be more precise, the Cappadocian Fathers did not use the word hypostasis to mean person; instead, they used it in the sense of subsistence, i.e., of a subsistent / existent being, a concrete thing. The Greek word prosopon is closer to the Latin word persona, from which we get the English word person.

Ekporeusis simply concerns the procession of something out of another thing that is its source or cause, and in this sense it is distinguished from the term proienai, which concerns the progression of movement of an already existent reality (cf., A. Edward Siecienski. The Use of Maximus the Confessor's Writing on the Filioque at the Council of Ferrara-Florence 1438�1439. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 2005).

Informative, but what is the relevance to the illustration of a biblical word that has significant creedal and also mundane usages?

Dn. Anthony

Words are polyvalent.

The creedal usage of specific words is meant to simply protect the ineffable mystery of divine encounter, but the words used do not define either God or the experience itself which remains transcendent.

Zizioulas calls the change in meaning of hypostasis an "historic(al) revolution," twice in the same paragraph.

John D.Zizioulas, �The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution,� Chapter 2 in Christoph Schw�bel, ed., Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995. p 47. [3] references the original edition of John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood: St. Vladimir�s Seminary Press, 1993, p 36f.



God is beyond us for sure but the whole point of revelation is to communicate to us by appropriate means, including words, truths we are capable of comprehending.



See the above quote at "the identification of the idea of person with that of hypostasis" and "The Cappadocians changed this by dissociating hypostasis from ousia and attaching it to prosopon."

Earlier Zizioulas explicitly notes the concern about prosopon:

Ref. [2] "See Basil, Ep. 236, 6."


Dn. Anthony

Dear Deacon...

Ouch.

I think I said I am not a teacher.

I think everyone knows that a discussion area on the internet where anyone can post is not anywhere to go to learn Offcial Church doctrine as all it contains is opinions which may be somewhat right and somewhat wrong. It is like sitting around the kitchen table and kicking things around.

Doesn't everyone give thier opinion in words as if they were right? Isn't that how discussions go?

I need to tack a disclaimer on my posts .. "I am not a teacher. These are only my personal opinions and I may not nessesarily fully believe in them myself."

-ray
((These are only my personal opinions and I may not nessesarily fully believe in them myself. Your own experince may vary. Check all facts with your own priest, minister, rabbi or guru.))

If you will allow me .. let me get back to you on this .. I would like to exmine it futher but not tonight.

If you were with a church near me .. I would actually go to listen to you. You are a credit to your church. Very capable.

Peace to all churches.
-ray

With all due respect to Metr. Zizioulas, he often makes hyperbolic statements that go beyond actual historical fact. Nevertheless, it is true that the words hypostasis and ousia tended to be used � at least in pagan Greek philosophy � in a synonymous fashion, and that the Cappadocians saw fit to make a distinction between the two words in order to guard against Sabellian Modalism, but this distinction is based upon the etymology of the words themselves, and can hardly be described as a "revolution," for the former term always stood for that which is more concrete, while the latter word stood for that which is more abstract. So this can hardly be called a "revolution," especially if one is talking about the faith of the Church (or even if one is only referring to the Greek language), because divine faith stands immutably beyond linguistic definition. That said, the focus of our discussion should not be upon the words per se, for new applications can always be found for a word, but should be centered instead upon content of the Christian faith, which is ultimately beyond the grasp of created human reason.

Sadly, the real issue has not even been addressed in this thread by the majority of posters, i.e., the fact that the Orthodox faith is unalterable and is ultimately beyond discursive definition. In fact the Church Fathers were always reluctant to make dogmatic statements, because they held that the faith should be kept in reverent silence, and when they did speak on issues of a doctrinal nature, it was not to define the indefinable, but simply to defend truth against the attacks of heretics and blasphemers. Thus, when the faith was endangered they would attempt ". . . to deal with unlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speak unutterable words, to trespass on forbidden ground," even though it would have been better for faith to remain in silence ". . . worshipping the Father, reverencing with Him the Son, abounding in the Holy Spirit"; yet at times, in order to defend truth from error, they accepted the fact that one ". . . must strain the poor resources of our language to express thoughts too great for words. The error of others compels us to err in daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart" [St. Hilary, On the Trinity, Book II, no. 2].

Honestly, to propose a "revolution" in the Church's faith is ultimately to deny its immutable nature.

Revelation communicates what is communicable about God, i.e., His energies, but not His essential nature, which always remains out of our reach (cf. St. Basil, Letter 234).

The following is an excerpt from St. Gregory of Nyssa's

Seventh Homily on Ecclesiastes


[. . .]

Everything is limited by its own nature as long as it exists and stays within its own bounds. If anything created goes outside itself, it will lose its own essence just like the senses which cannot transgress their natural functions. The eye does not function like the ear nor does our sense of touch speak; hearing does not taste, but each sense is limited by the power natural to it. Thus all creation cannot transgress its natural limitations by a comprehensive insight; it always remains within its own bounds and whatever it may view, it sees itself. Should creation think it beholds anything which transcends it, this cannot be because it lacks the capacity to look beyond its own nature.

The contemplation of beings is restricted by a certain notion of temporal interval which cannot be transgressed. Indeed, for every conception which the mind gives birth an interval of time is considered along with the substance of that which had thought it; an interval of time is nothing other than creation. The good which we strongly encourage to seek, guard, to unite ourselves and cling to transcends creation and thought. Our mind functions by using intervals within time, so how can it grasp [God's] nature which is not subject to temporal extension? Through the medium of time the inquisitive [mind] always leaves behind any thought older than what it just discovered. The mind also busily searches through all kinds of knowledge yet never discovers the means to grasp eternity in order to transcend both itself and what we earlier considered, namely, the eternal existence of beings. This effort resembles a person standing on a precipice (Let a smooth, precipitous rock which abruptly falls off to a limitless distance suggest this transcendence whose prominence reaches on high while also falls to the gaping deep below). A person's foot can touch that ridge falling off to the depths below and find neither step nor support for his hand. To me, this example pertains to the soul's passage through intervals of time in its search for [God's] nature which exists before eternity and is not subject to time. His nature cannot be grasped because it lacks space, time, measure and anything else we can apprehend; instead, our mind is overcome with dizziness and stumbles all over the place because it cannot lay hold of transcendent reality. Being powerless, it returns to its connatural state. Our minds love to know only about God's transcendence of which they are persuaded because his nature differs from anything we know.

When reason confronts that which transcends reason, it is time to be silent and marvel at his unutterable power which cannot be explained since it is hidden in one's consciousness. It knows that the great prophets speak of God's works, not of God himself. "Who can tell of the Lord's power" [Ps 105.2]?; "I will tell of all your works" [Ps 9.2] and "Generation after generation will praise your deeds" [Ps 144.4]. These words explain what our human voice can utter, but silence becomes the norm with regard to him who utterly transcends any conception. We therefore say that "the glorious majesty of his holiness" [Ps 144.5] has no end. Oh, how marvelous! What reverence the text shows when contemplating the divine nature when it cannot comprehend such a transcendent wonder! The text did not say that the divine essence is boundless and claimed to be so audacious as to comprehend it; rather, it marvels at God's glorious majesty. Once again the text is unable to see the glory of God's essence but is struck dumb before the glory of his holiness. Therefore God's nature is far removed from our curious inquiries, and even the loftiest of manifestations cannot admire it. The text does not admire his sanctity nor the glory of his holiness but stresses only the glorious majesty of his holiness. We cannot grasp the object of admiration, and so the psalm says that "the glorious majesty of his holiness" has no end.

When it to comes to words about God and searching his essence there is a time for silence, but when it concerns some good operation of which we have knowledge, it is time to speak of God's power, miracles and works which necessitate words. A creature should not overstep its bounds with regard to transcendent matters but remain content with knowledge of himself. If, in my opinion, he does not know himself, he as a creature cannot comprehend the soul's essence, the body's nature, the origin of created beings, how generations spring into existence from one another, how beings come into existence from nothing, how they dissolve into nothing and the harmony created from opposing tensions which constitute this world. If a created person does not know himself, how can he speak of transcendent matters? Thus there is a time to keep silence about such matters, and this silence is better. There is also a time to speak of those things which make our lives grow in virtue in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power forever.

Amen