www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Purgatory & Orthodoxy

There is no historical evidence that Petro Mohyla's personal views on purgatory had any impact on the Ukranian Orthodox. Those of us who are Ukrainian Orthodox do not use you favoured term of "Kyivan"

As I have read your posts, my impression is that you are trying to make the Ukranian Orthodox church appear like your church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Sorry, our Ukranian Orthodox Church is united in faith and communion with the rest of the Orthodox world.

Danman, Fr. Ambrose, et al.,

Fine - don't call it Final Theosis! I sure don't. I was just trying not to be exclusive with my terminology.

Alexis

It is unfortunate that the word "indulgence" is attached to the English translation of this lamentable Greek practice which, thank God, was short-lived. In point of fact what was being sold was not indulgences but absolution for sins.


Here are the words from Peter Mohila's Catechism which, as we can see, are simply not the same as the Catholic purgatory. There is, he says, no purgatorial suffering and no fire. These things are, he says, something fanciful.

Question 64: "Many are freed from the prison of hell ... through the good works of the living and the Church's prayers for them, most of all through the unbloody sacrifice, which is offered on certain days for all the living and the dead"

Question 66: "How must one consider the purgatorial fire?
"The Church rightly performs for them the unbloody sacrifice and prayers, but they do not cleanse themselves by suffering something.

"But, the Church never maintained that which pertains to the fanciful stories of some concerning the souls of their dead, who have not done penance and are punished, as it were, in streams, springs and swamps."

It's a pet peeve of mine that theosis is misrepresented as finishing when a soul escapes from Purgatory. The journey has hardly begun.

I pray these prayers myself to the Mother of God. As you say, they are wonderful prayers.

BUT... because of the Promises supposed to be attached to them by Christ Himself, they have unfortunately become a superstitious means of mechanical salvation for many people. I cannot recall how many of the new arrivals from the CIS have asked me for copies of these prayers. They have been told by friends that they guarantee salvation!

There really isn't one. In this post a page or two back, that is what I was trying to highlight. I don't believe the Byzantines had a systematic or codified view of the middle state of the soul. The article is one of the best I have run across, and is written from a scholarly and not a religious perspective.

The central questions remain to me, is it only the elect that are purified and how can the soul disconnected from the body undergo temporal punishment? Those seem to me to be the central questions of purgatory and indulgences.

I did run across this interview with Archbishop Hepworth of the TAC which kind of surprised me


http://www.challengeonline.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=214

Hieromonk Ambrose, bless.

Thank you for your reply; these statements are helpful, which I fully agree with.

Perhaps the major difference is the degree of importance which is attached to the pious and/or mysterious "revelations" or "visions" to the saints, both Eastern and Western regarding the souls blessed with "purification."

Is this a fair statement?

Fr. Deacon Paul

Dear Halia,

In fact, and with all due respect, I sincerely think you are over-reacting to my discussion on purgatory here (and also to the use of "Kyivan Church").

I would recommend that you consult the publications of the Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan (and scholar) Ilarion Ohienko who not only used the term "Kyivan Church" very widely (which is where I first learned about it) but also spent a lot of time in his writings delineating the characteristics of the Kyivan Church as the national Orthodox church of the Ukrainian people. Don't take my word for it, please consult his works and any Ukrainian Orthodox priest (especially one trained at the Winnipeg Seminary) will be only too pleased to direct you and discuss this with you.

With respect to Purgatory, the fact that the Kyivan Baroque was enamored with it is an historical fact. It is definitely not something one would hear about in any Orthodox parish today. Latinizations existed and exist in Orthodoxy either through the Baroque influence or through, for example, the influence of former Eastern Catholics who become Orthodox (especially in groups of sometimes millions of people) who bring with them their Latin practices that become the norm in their local parishes.

Eastern Catholics who are conscious of Latinizations do not use the term "purgatory" and we don't require this admittedly Latin teaching to somehow "fill out" our understanding of Eschatology and prayer for the dead today.

The Ukrainian Orthodox in North America are truly one with world Orthodoxy - but that doesn't mean they don't have their own Latinizations and, in some cases, they are more Latinized than many Ukrainian Catholic parishes I know. This is because of the fact that the vast majority of converts to Ukrainian Orthodoxy are former Ukrainian Catholics who brought their Latinizations with them e.g. kneeling twice during the Sunday Divine Liturgy et al.

As with Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception (as emphasized by the Kyivan Mohyla Academy in the 18th century especially) and other Latinizations within local Orthodox jurisdictions - I've yet to hear that Orthodoxy has condemned these as heretical since they are local practices grounded on theological views rather than convictions that they are Orthodox doctrine.

But as a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, you should investigate the whole idea of the "Kyivan Church" as it is understood by your own Orthodox jurisdiction and I strongly encourage you to do so. Feel free to ask your parish priest about it this Sunday!

Alex

Dear AMM,

Certainly, it depends on what one means by "temporal punishment." Purification could mean that. In any event, the Roman Church has always allowed for more than one interpretation and has never pronounced on any one in particular. The Greeks at Florence were not required to accept a "purgatorial fire" of any kind for purposes of union with Rome.

St Mark of Ephesus objected to purgatory at Florence mainly on the grounds that such a "state" divided the immediate afterlife into "parts" or "regions."

As I understand Orthodoxy to be teaching, following the Fathers, souls that have not died in the kind of sin that leads to eternal death can be helped by the prayer of the Church on earth and especially the Divine Liturgy to get closer to God as we await the final and Second glorious Coming of OLGS Jesus Christ when we will all return to our bodies to stand before His awesome Judgement Seat.

We must always pray for the dead, as the Orthodox Church assiduously does and sets the greatest example for us all in this regard!

There is no reason why Eastern Catholics cannot fully accept Orthodox Eschatology.

I think the acceptance of Purgatory by some Orthodox in history was based on the wider impact of scholasticism in this area.

Alex

Thanks for your suggestions. I am home for the holidays and my local parish priest is a graduate of our UOCC seminary. He thinks you have exaggerated the importance of Metr. Hilarion’s writings in the life of our church. Furthermore, he emphasized that Metr. Hilarion was a philologist by profession which explains why his translation of the Bible into Ukrainian was so important. Metr. Hilarion was a philologist not a theologian. The aim of many of Metr. Hilarion’s writings after WW2 was to stress Ukrainian nationalism. He had limited access to theological books and research when he wrote or active discussion with other scholars.
Metr. Hilarion had an important role translating the Bible and gathering materials to publish liturgical books in Ukrainian for the UOCC.



Metr. Hilarion may have chosen to use this term but my priest has stressed that we, that is our church, does not use this term. We call ourselves Ukrainian Orthodox and our church Ukrainian Orthodox. My priest said the term used for the early church was "Eastern Slavic" Orthodox Church.



My priest has confirmed that Petro Mohyla and some other writers of his period may have believed in purgatory but there is no evidence that this belief was wide spread among the laity or priests in parishes.



There was a question asked this summer at our Sobor in Saskatoon about differences between the Ukrainian Orthodox and other Othodox jurisdictions. Fr. Krawchenko, replied that our church is one in faith and dogma with all the other Orthodox churches. We don't have "Ukranian" doctrines/dogma.

Our church is over 90 years old in Canada. We don't have a large number of converts from Catholicism as you claim; right now I don't know of even one single convert in my parish. There are even families who have been in Canada for 6 generations.

The earliest immigration starting in 1891 had a magority of Ukrainians from Halychyna, but as far as our church goes the patterns changed. This goes all the way back to the inter-war period when large numbers of immigrants from Orthodox Volyn joined our church. Then after WW2 there were more numbers from Orthodox Volyn and Orthodox Eastern Ukraine.



Again you are talking about individuals. The fact that Petro Mohyla's cathecism was corrected by the Synod of Jassy is significant. My priest also mentioned that the Orthodox Church has not approved the Immaculate Conception and our church is one with the Orthodox world.

As someone who was born and brought up in the Ukranian Orthodox Church of Canada, I know that purgatory is not part of our faith and dogma.

With regard to "Final" theosis, I believe Dr. Anthony Dragani was inventing a term to explain that last highlighted portion - while not "final" in terms of eternity, it is "final" in terms of the "full measure".

Thank you Halia12 for an eastern perspective that has not been influenced by Latinizations. I have wondered what is the authentic Orthodox view on these subjects.

Dear Halia,

A blessed upcoming feast of the Nativity of OLGS Jesus Christ.

I believe you are imputing to me motives and conclusions that I have never drawn here or anywhere else about the issues under discussion here.

We do not know what impact the Mohyla view on purgatory had on Orthodox people during the Kyivan Baroque era, to be sure. There is no evidence to suggest that it was wide-spread. But St Peter Mohyla did go even beyond what Rome itself demanded from the Greeks of Florence with respect to the Latin doctrine of purgatory. These are simply observations on the historical views on purgatory and have nothing to do with the actual Church practice among Orthodox today (or among Eastern Catholics today who do not accept the "fire of purgatory").

If, somehow, I've come across as trying to impose an RC view on Orthodox - that was not my intention, at any time.

As for the Kyivan Church and Kyivan Christianity - I'm rather surprised that your parish priest would say that. I'm even more surprised about his estimation of the writings of Metropolitan Ilarion Ohienko.

Let me just focus on that point here. To reduce the significance of the writings of Ohienko to that of "translator" and "language specialist" including that of "promoter of nationalism" is to really misunderstand his place in our history.

If St Andrew's in Winnipeg has reduced studies on Ohienko's works - that is their prerogative. It is not so in Ukraine itself where his writings are not only studied afresh but where he is himself celebrated for his scholarship.

A theologian he may not have been, but a great pastor of his Church he most certainly was and he wrote, not translated, books and articles galore about everything from the meaning behind the Three-Bar Orthodox Cross, historical subjects aplenty and otherwise explained Orthodox faith and tradition to his people in North America in the minutest detail.

He is not the only one who talked about the "Kyivan Church" and our Church is one in Orthodox faith with all Orthodoxy (although the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada has only been recognized as truly canonical in the last few decades), it has its own identity and history based on the unique and particular traditions of the Kyivan Church.

We do not, nor ever have, called ourselves by that name i.e. "Kyivan Orthodox" or "Kyivan Catholics" (there are those who would like to use those terms, however) but "Ukrainian Orthodox" and other names previously.

In a situation where I am not involved in a discussion with a third party to represent my own views, I would appreciate being put in direct contact with that third party.

I do not agree with your understanding of what I have said and therefore your pastor's response is one that does not "fit" my points.

If your pastor is someone in southern Ontario, I would be pleased to contact him directly to discuss these matters.

Again, that Latinization affected both Orthodox and Eastern Catholics is an historical fact and St Peter Mohyla's original Trebnyk and writings demonstrate this.

There is no reason to assume that the priests and bishops under him in the Kyivan Metropolia would not have used the liturgical books he published and instructed for usage. St Peter Mohyla also created numerous prayer services - a number based on Western models - for popular devotional use.

Two of them have become popular even in Russia - the Passia service and that of the Sorrowful Mother of God (Sostradanniy Bohoroditse).

But if, for the sake of argument, the Ukrainian Orthodox do not have their own historic identity, as both you and your pastor SEEM to suggest, then what is the problem with being in union with the Moscow Patriarchate today? What difference does it ultimately make then and why the movement toward autocephaly on various (canonical and non-canonical) planes?

On what basis is such autocephaly based then and why would one want it, given these arguments?

Alex

Gee Alex I did what you requested. Now you are upset! You just don't get it.



You were the one who told me to contact my parish priest and no I never said I lived in Southern Ontario. Toronto is not the centre of the universe.
My priest has no desire to discuss anything with you. He is Ukrainian orthodox and has his own church

The discussion was about doctrine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church like the rest of the Orthodox world does not accept purgatory. There is no evidence of that.
Again I will repeat the confession of Petro Mohyla was corrected by the Synod of Jassy.
Printed books were extremely rare and precious in the era of Petro Mohyla. There is no supprting evidence to suggest that his reforms were widely spread throughout Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has the same doctrine and dogma as the rest of the Orthodox world. I am Orthodox and can go to communion in any Orthodox Church. You are not Orthodox and cannot go to communion in my church. You do not speak for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada.