www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Hi, I'm Orthodox, and I believe in the IC.

Are we on the same planet, Stuart? :-) Consider the 33 Articles of the Union of Brest signed by the Pope. Then consider how it played out.

I don't expect you to give much credence to what I say but perhaps someone like Apotheoun or Aramis could comment.

To be brutally honest, Rev. Father Ambrose, Both you ans Stuart seem to do a good bit of flopping about on whether it's the documentary or the canonical texts that are primary...

The truth is, we don't know WHAT His Holiness Leo thought. We can only infer from what he wrote and what he is recorded as having said and done.

He did a lot, and yet, very little. He condemned the errors of both socialism and capitalism. He did a number of things good for the dignity of the Unia.

But he also seldom minced words. Your quote of him is in english, and probably isn't getting the nuances of the original, and I'm not capable of extracting them myself.

I do believe he held the hardline position that, as Christ's Vicar, he spoke on God's behalf to mortal men. Vatican I confirms that belief. But I'd need to see the Latin explicated carefully to make sense of it in detail.

Likewise, I still am not certain who the signatory bishops were for the 1895 synod... were they patriarchal suffragans? Patriarchal Metropolitans? Or heads of autocephalous churches?

Neither documentary nor canonical texts are primary without their proper context. As for exalted language in papal documents, it was a style of the time, no longer used even though a number of people have noted that there has been no formal step back from the claims of the First Vatican Council. Whether anyone took such language seriously within Church circles (such oratorical flourishes being meant mainly to overawe the faithful) is dubious. Similar language was used by Gregory VII, Boniface VIII and others, but the actions of both the Church and the secular authorities would indicate they were taken at considerably less than face value. To put it in the theological terminology of our day, such claims were "not received" even within the Latin Church.

Apparently you have not read my many posts on that subject here (and elsewhere), or you would not bring it up. I know the Treaty of Brest and its history quite well, and I have been quite pointed in exposing areas in which the Treaty was not honored by the Latin Church (which, of course, was not an original signatory). In effect, the Bull Magnus Dominus nullified the critical thrust of the agreement, which was the right of the Uniates to continue to exist as a discrete ecclesial entity, on terms similar to those proposed in the Union of Florence. Unfortunately, as I noted before, the world had changed since Florence--specifically, the emergence of the Reformation caused Rome to adopt a exclusionary ecclesiology in which the boundaries of the Church of God and the Church of Rome were co-terminous.

But the world has moved on--it is no longer 1596, or 1646, or 1701, or 1724. The ecclesiology of Trent was repudiated by both Lumen gentium and Unitatis redintegratio of the Second Vatican Council, and many other decrees, encyclicals and constitutions are now interpreted in light of those conciliar documents--which is why you cannot go back to such documents to make your case unless you (a) put them into the context in which they were written; (b) understand how they were interpreted at the time they were written; and (c) consider how they are interpreted and understood today. The best way to do that is to look at how the Church--any Church--behaves, and not strictly what it says.

Heck, HH Leo XIII, and both his immediate successors, acted against the terms of Magnus Dominus, at least in small ways.

Thanks to these men, we have overlapping EC Jurisdictions.

I do agree about the flourishes being "unreceived" at the time of issue; I disagree that they remained so. Such fourishes have been used by the councils to justify, in Marduk's terms, the absolute petrine view.

Dear DoxRox,

I don't know if you are still reading this thread but I thought I would bring the thread back on track. The answer to your question is given in the last official Orthodox statement on the Immaculate Conception in 1895.

In their 1895 letter to Pope Leo XIII the Patriarch and Synod of Bishops of the Church of Constantinople term the Immaculate Conception an "heretical innovation" because it is only Christ who is conceived pure and immaculate.

"XIII. The one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils teaches that the supernatural incarnation of the only-begotten Son and Word of God, of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, is alone pure and immaculate; but the Papal Church scarcely forty years ago again made an innovation by laying down a novel dogma concerning the immaculate conception of the Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary, which was unknown to the ancient Church (and strongly opposed at different times even by the more distinguished among the papal theologians)."

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/encyc_1895.aspx

Who else signed this statement, and does it bind Orthodox Churches that did not even exist at the time it was written? Also, it seems to me a case of two Churches talking past one another, since they are not using the terms "pure and immaculate" in quite the same way.

Beyond that, Father, as I pointed out, there is an inherent contradiction in Orthodox liturgical texts (which, I hope you will agree, must be the font and touchstone of or theology) that mirrors the inherent contradiction to which the Synod pointed in the 1895 letter; i.e., we commemorate the Theotokos as "all-pure", "all holy", "without stain" (a nice circumlocution of the word "immaculate"), sinless, etc., while at the same time our Paschal hymn, tells us "Let us adore the holy Lord Jesus, who alone is without sin".

As Father Kimel and I discussed at length, two different types of sinlessness must be present here, for if Christ alone is all pure and sinless, how can we call the Theotokos all pure and sinless? Could it be that what we are discussing here is the difference between sinless by nature (Christ) and sinless by grace (Mary)? And if that is the case, then both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches teach the same thing--that Mary was preserved without sin all her life through the divine grace of her Son.

Of course, the Latins have a different mode of theological expression, and have a different conception of the nature and effect of Adam's fall, but neither of those was an issue in the undivided Church: both East and West were aware of these different understandings, and decided that there was room for both. It has always been a principle of my ecumenical approach that issues which did not bother the undivided Church (e.g., different understandings of original sin, different theologies and disciplines of marriage, different understandings of holy images, etc.) should not be made issues today, no matter what. So, unless you want to say that the entire Latin conception of original sin (which can be traced back at least to the Council of Carthage in 245), you cannot say that, within the Latin system of theology, that the doctrine of immaculate conception is any different from what the Orthodox Church teaches, save that the Latins push back the moment at which Mary came under divine protection from her birth (and I really am amazed at all the blather about Mary not becoming all-pure until the Annunciation--talk about heretical theologumena!) to her conception.

As long as they don't insist that I have to do so (and they don't, no matter what you say--an example of distinguishing between what a Church says and what it does) and do not attempt to impose their specific understanding on other Churches, they're free in this area to do as they like.

This was signed by the Patriarch as well as 12 other bishops including Dorotheos of Belgrade.

It is the last official Orthodox statement on the Immaculate Conception.

The encyclical has universal authority throughout the Orthodox world and is viewed as one of the "Symbolical Books" of Orthodoxy.

I'm not a scholar by any means...however, does it matter who else signed the statement??? This is the Orthodox view...anyone who would deny it is simply Not Orthodox....I only know non-Orthodox, more specifically Roman Catholics and Eastern Catholics (in union with Rome) who begin with the Latin (IMHO Heretical) position and work backwards to justify it... who accept it...I know the Orthodox view is what I always held even as a cradle EC...The IC always "seemed heretical" to me...the IC was a "major" reason for me returning to Orthodoxy when the time came to remain EC or become EOC.

Also, your question about "binding"...at least to me, seems very legalistic, and doesn't make sense unless looked at "thru a Latin lens".

XIII. The one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the seven Ecumenical Councils teaches that the supernatural incarnation of the only-begotten Son and Word of God, of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, is alone pure and immaculate; but the Papal Church scarcely forty years ago again made an innovation by laying down a novel dogma concerning the immaculate conception of the Mother of God and ever-Virgin Mary, which was unknown to the ancient Church (and strongly opposed at different times even by the more distinguished among the papal theologians)."

I have realised that there is very little an Orthodox Christian can say meaningfully about the Catholic teaching on original sin. I have watched the exploration of the Catholic teaching on original sin for many years on Catholic forums. I have seen the inter-Catholic disagreement on this. The doctrine is in a state of transition and trying to get a handle on it, especially for an Orthodox outsider, is impossible and it is not a topic in which I involve myself.

"Current Roman Catholic theology of original sin is undergoing a radical transition and is marked by considerable pluralism..."

"Systematic theology: Roman Catholic perspectives"
By Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, John P. Galvin

http://tinyurl.com/26vkexv

One might say that the theology of original sin has followed a parabolic trajectory in the Western Church, which at its apogee did at least appear to the majority of Latin Christians to infer a stain of guilt, a complicity in Adam's sin, which utterly corrupted human nature, and which was, moreover, conveyed through sexual procreation. As is often the case, there was a dichotomy between what is taught officially, and what is believed by the faithful. Much theological and catechetical effort has been expended both to clarify what the Latin Church "officially" believes and to bring what the faithful believe into line with that understanding.

Today, the Latin position has moves significantly closer to the Eastern position, but I doubt it will ever go so far as to abandon the belief that original sin is conveyed from generation to generation in a manner that ontologically separates man from God. Augustine looms too large in the Latin past to be ignored, even if Augustine's followers took his speculations far beyond anywhere he did himself.

That the Latin Church does not seek (any longer) to impose this perspective on the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome and makes no such demands of the Orthodox Churches in ecumenical discussions would suggest that this is now seen as a culturally and historically conditioned "expression of doctrine", rather than an underlying truth of that doctrine.

Read what I wrote, Job: it is not at all clear from our own liturgical texts that Para. XIII above is true. Christ is extolled as the only sinless one, but Mary is also extolled as sinless, all-pure, without stain, etc., etc. This apparent contradiction exists in Orthodox theology is mirrored in the Latin doctrine of the immaculate conception, and as far as I can tell, once the Latin vocabulary and underlying assumptions are stripped away, both Churches agree in the fundamentals: (1) Christ is pure and sinless by nature; (2) Mary is pure and sinless by grace.

The only differences relate to mechanics, which in my mind are not something about which we should speculate in any case. But here, the main difference is when: we in the Orthodox Tradition would say "from birth", while the Latins would say "from conception", because our understanding of the nature and effects of Adam's sin differ from those held in the West. But since the West has always held that view of original sin, and since it was not considered heterodox in the first millennium, there is no reason to consider it heterodox today--it's just a different way of explaining a mystery not revealed to us.

We who are Orthodox in our traditon would not say "from birth."

There simply is no settled doctrine.

Have the words of the current Ecumenical Patriarch been placed in this thread? He says "from the annunciation."

Other much more eminent Church Fathers, St John Chrysostom and Saint Basil the Great, say that she committed personal sin.

While the Tradition is generally agreed though on her sinlessness and the teachings of the dissenting Holy Fathers are gently laid aside, the Orthodox have no teaching of "from birth."

Is the "from birth" the teaching of the Eastern Catholics?

One would not think that the bishops were telling untruths in their reply to the Pope. I would rather say that the dichotomy you see is not something perceived by the Orthodox.

Could you take the liturgical texts from the Feast of the Conception of the Mother of God and show us where they teach the Immaculate Conception? I am familiar with the texts and have never had any such impression, neither overt nor subliminal.

So, you want to eat your cake and have it, too? If there is no settled doctrine, it would seem that immaculate conception would be acceptable as long as not put forward as definitive--and we're back to the manner in which the Latin Church promulgated the doctrine, not the doctrine itself.


Yeah, while we're on the subject of theological innovations, that one's a doozy! So, what was Mary doing for the first fifteen years of her life? I assume you know your Panahida, Father: there is not a man who lives who does not sin, by thought or word or deed. But the Church--the Orthodox Church--does teach us that Mary Theotokos was preserved from sin her entire life. So whence does His Beatitude derive this particular theologumenon, which would appear to contradict the Tradition?


That is true, but the Church rejects these patristic opinions (it is the consensus of the Fathers, and not any particular Father that counts). The Church teaches that Mary was protected from all sin, all of her life. No conditions are attached, even if there is no explanation of how this was accomplished. I'm sure you believe this, too--don't you, Father?


If you are to preserve the Tradition that Mary was preserved from sin her entire life, you are left with two choices: birth, or before birth. Take you choice, but there is no third way, unless you reject the liturgical texts.


Our Tradition says Mary Theotokos was preserved form all sin. Last I looked, that's what the Orthodox Church teaches, too. We really don't care that much how it was done, only recognize that it was done, through the saving grace of our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Why should I be telling a priest his theological ABCs?