www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Should unity realistically return to first millenium standard?

Perhaps I am misreading the quote of Pope Benedict, but it seems to imply to me that the Eastern churches somehow stifled the living tradition to reaching where it did in the West.

But I would assume that the Eastern Churches (here I also include my Oriental - Coptic - tradition) would vehemently argue that we did have a full living tradition that did not lead to to the same place as the Latin Church in the second millennium.

It seems to me, therefore, that we are stuck in the same position. Both East and West arguing that where they are today is the work of the Holy Spirit in their respective living traditions and to change that would be to go against that very living tradition.

I would then ask, is it not feasible that the Holy Spirit would inspire both East and West, through the work of unity, by the breath of the Holy Spirit and the authority of the Church to loose and bind, to come to a new ecclesiology that can somehow respect the living traditions of both East and West without requiring an abandonment of those principles held dear, and yet be something new for a unified church?

In Christ,
Fr. Kyrillos

Cardinal Ratzinger seems to identify life with movement and change, and yet the true life of all men, i.e., God, is immutable. Tradition is living not because it is in constant flux, but because its source and foundation is the living Spirit of God.

That's why God made Jesuits. The more important question is whether the Orthodox will accept an agreement that gives them what they want in substance while allowing the Latin Church to save face, or whether they will settle for nothing less than total, absolute, and complete recantation of all Rome's errors.

In other words, is unity more important to them than humiliating the despised Romans? The ball is in their court, and they have to decide for themselves.

Stuart, I think the question you asked was already asked and answered over 600 years ago by that pillar of Orthodoxy St. Mark of Ephesus when he stood up for Orthodoxy at the Council of Florence. In my view,such as it, the issues remain the same and, I guess, if Orthodoxy means anything, Mark, if he were alive today, would respond in the same way if he were asked his opinion on reunion.

Perhaps we should learn to accept things the way they are! I noted elsewhere on this blog, "Let me raise an issue that will offend a number of people here. Perhaps disunity of the the various sects that make up Christianity (RCC, EOC, Mormon) should be accepted as the norm! Before Constantine I there were myriad of sects that claimed to be Christian. Unity only occurred when the emperor dragged the various sects to Nicaea and imposed unity of belief on them (the church calls it the inspiration of the Hagion Pnevma!). Remember 250 bishops (yes I know tradition says 318) in a Hall where the emperor is on this throne and Soldiers on both sides of the room in full battle regalia; that can really make an impression. The emperor also knocked heads. Unity was, at least from the historical perspective, imposed on squabbling sects (Arian, Orthodox, etc.). I should note that the moment Constantius II, with his Arian leanings, ascended the throne, unity went to hell."

I think that unity as envisioned in the most recent papers of the North American Consultation mirrors what you have described.

That is the line of the month! The Jesuits I know would take it as a compliment! lol

DMD, I liked Stuart's comments also, although the issues raised above may be even too much of a nut for even the Jesuits to crack. let me see, there are some issues that still need resolving before unity talks can be begin. There are those bronze horses that used to be on top of St. Mark's in Venice. If Rome would return them (they would look really nice in the Phanar where they belong now), then we could sit down...

Well, he speaks very specifically, and you have to read very closely in order to see what he is saying, in my opinion. It's much more than a "never mind what I said before." To wit:

"I myself have already taken part in attempts to work out things like this (citation of the "Ratzinger solution"), but meanwhile they have grown out of hand to the point at which councils and the dogmatic decisions of the second millennium are supposed not to be regarded as ecumenical but as particular developments in the Latin Church, constituting its private property in the sense of "our two traditions". But this distorts the first attempt to think things out into a completely new thesis with far-reaching consequences."

So far, what he has said is that his intention with his "Ratzinger Proposal" was not intended to be broadened into the idea that all dogmas and councils since the split are to be placed in the "Latin bucket". This is certainly a fair thing to say, as his original Proposal deals with the primacy of the See of Rome - it does not address directly dogmas and councils. But, you might object, the two cannot be separated, as the See of Rome has been defined dogmatically in later councils. But don't jump too far ahead.

He continues: "But this distorts the first attempt to think things out into a completely new thesis with far-reaching consequences. For this way of looking at it actually implies a denial of the existence of the Universal Church in the second millennium, while tradition as a living, truth-giving power is frozen at the end of the first. This strikes at the very heart of the idea of Church and tradition, because ultimately such an age test dissolves the full authority of the Church, which is then left without a voice at the present day. Moreover, one might well ask, in reply to such an assertion, with what right people's consciences, in such a particular Church as the Latin Church would then be, could be bound by such pronouncements. What once appeared as truth would have to be characterized as mere custom. The claim to truth that had hitherto been upheld would thus be disqualified as an abuse."

Here, he says that his original intention was not to simply say "This stuff will be Latin, your stuff will be Eastern, so let's have communion." He calls it "particularization". He addresses it directly in regard to the Zoghby Initiative, which we'll get to in a bit. He points out that, just as the Orthodox would claim that their church is the fullness of the Church from the time of the split, so does the Catholic Church. And he points out that for the Catholic Church to say "never mind" to its development within Tradition since the split would be to say that such development was not in the fullness of the faith, and to therefore say that the Catholic Church of today is basically a heretical lie. "The claim to truth that had hitherto been upheld would thus be disqualified as an abuse."

He does not, however, see this as the end of the discussion. He instead reiterates, as he did in his Ratzinger Proposal, that the way forward is examining the two churches within a "hermeneutics of unity".

"Unity is a fundamental hermeneutic principle of all theology, and hence we must learn to read the documents that have been handed down to us according to the hermeneutics of unity, which gives us a fresh view of many things and opens doors where only bolts were visible before. Such a hermeneutics of unity will entail reading the statements of both parties in the context of the whole tradition and with a deeper understanding of the Bible. This will include investigating how far decisions since the separation have been stamped with a certain particularization of both language and thought--something that might well be transcended without doing violence to the content of the statements. For hermeneutics is not a skillful device for escaping from burdensome authorities by a change of verbal function (though this abuse has often occurred), but rather apprehending the word with an understanding that at the same time discovers in it new possibilities."

In other words, to look for a way to understand Latin dogmas and councils as both acceptable to the Orthodox church, without "particularizing" these developments solely to the borders of the Roman Church, and to similarly look for a way to understand the Orthodox understanding of these things in a sense that does not wall such understandings off at the edge of "Orthodox territory".

He says this much in his "Ratzinger Proposal", and is really nothing new:

"Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had."

His wordsmithing is very specific about this. He never proposed the Zoghby Initiative, and he clearly sees the matter differently. What Fr. Kimel quoted is not a "retraction" or "rethinking" of his earlier statement, but rather a reminder to those who might see in it the same line of thinking as the Zoghby Initiative, or, the "particularization" of faith.

What Ratzinger proposed was much more ambitious: an acceptance from West and East that each maintain the fullness of the Faith, and an acceptance of both in the "forms" that they are, knowing no bounds in understanding. This is what he (and others) said in response to the Zogby Initiative:

"As to the Greek-Melkite Catholics declaring their complete adhesion to the teaching of Eastern Orthodoxy, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the Orthodox Churches today are not in full communion with the Church of Rome, and that this adhesion is therefore not possible as long as there is not a full correspondence in the profession and exercise of the faith by the two parties. Besides, a correct formulation of the faith necessitates a reference not only to a particular Church, but to the whole Church of Christ, which knows no frontiers, neither in space nor in time."

Ratzinger did not change or amend his earlier Proposal, he rather distinguished it from misinterpretation.

It does, indeed, seem daunting what he proposes. But he seems convinced that it is not a matter of one side "backing down" from the other, rather, within the "hermeneutics of unity" understanding the synthesis of both Churches not as a retread of earlier Tradition, but as a continued, logical, and cohesive continuation of Tradition.

EDIT: As StuartK notes, much of this depends on the Orthodox agreeing to exercise much grace and oikonomia.

I am reminded of this series of videos interviewing Fr. Abbot Nicholas of Holy Resurrection Monastery, with whom I think Ratzinger or any of us would take no issue with.



(It is entertaining to watch him very, very careful chose his words).

Yes, I'll be most interested to hear people's thoughts.

For myself, I would say that I actually agree with his objection, so far as it goes, but it is less clear what he is proposing as an alternative.

As I see it, what he is objecting to is a blanket statement that no new dogmas have been established since 1054. In other words, setting aside en masse all supposed dogmatic definitions, without examining them individually. That is something that I, too, object to.

The "universality" of faith can exist only on the level of theologia prima, that is, the most fundamental level of understanding, and applied only to the core elements of the faith. Attempts to have universality of doctrinal expression are doomed to failure, because such universality never existed. "Particularity" at the level of doctrinal expression, spirituality and worship has always existed and always shall exist because the divine mystery cannot be circumscribed by the human intellect or expressed fully in any one language or any one humanly-derived system of theology or philosophy. Attempts to impose such uniformity in the past, whether by the Alexandrian school of Cyril on the Antiochian school of Nestorius, or by the Chalcedonians upon the Orientals, or by the Byzantines upon the Armenians, or by the Latins on just about everybody else, are the proximate cause of every division within the Body of Christ.

As John Paul II said, we must look past the specific and culturally conditioned expressions of doctrine to the single truth underlying all doctrine.

Well, there were several "positions" advocated at Vatican I. What matters is the authoritative teachings that came from there which are binding on all Catholics without exception.
Pastor Aeternus need not be interpreted within an ultramontane framework (eventhough many did at the time, and some still do today). However, the fact that the teachings are binding on all Catholics, Eastern alike, is really a non-negotiable in being a Catholic.

One simply cannot reject an authoritative teaching put forth for the entire Catholic Church and remain within the unity of that Church.

Well, if we are worried about having our cake and eating it, at least there is some inspiration:

Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

Well said (assuming that everyone agrees on what is theologia prima and what is not).
Perhaps if East and West could come to a consensus as to what the single underlying truth of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was, then all would be well.

Speaking of Ratzinger's "hermeneutics of unity," Hans Urs von Balthasar says something similar in his book The Office of Peter:

How might the Latin understanding of papal primacy be integrated into a larger whole that embraces both East and West? I am looking forward to reading Adam A. J. DeVille's [i]Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy[/i] [undpress.nd.edu]. I hope members of this forum (hint, hint, Stuart) will review this book after it is released.

I only bring Fr Dvornik up again because I think he offers a light to the first millennium ecclesiology that is the original focus of this thread, and which should serve as the basis of the rapprochement between east and west that many desire. Stuart obviously has a certainty about Fr Dvornik's work that I do not share. Dvornik writes this in the chapter called, "Photius and the Primacy", page 109 in my edition of the book cited:

"In this connection the statement of the legates and the Byzantine bishops in the course of the second session of the Synod is very significant: 'We believe, Brethren, that the fundamental reason why we wish to re-examine this case is that the Fathers of the Council of Sardica decided that the Bishop of Rome had the power to reopen the case of any bishop.'" Theodore, Bishop of Laodicea, replied to them in the name of the Church of Constantinople: "This is a source of pleasure to our Church; we have no objection to it and we find it in no way offensive." These words are important because they show that in 861 the Church of Constantinople had finally accepted the canons of Sardica which, up until that time, they had declined to observe."

I am not misreading Dvornik. 861 is well-within the first millennium. An Eastern church acknowledges that Rome had the power to pass judgment in a disciplinary matter that affected another church with patriarchal rights and privileges. It takes jurisdiction to adjudicate. That Constantinople subsequently rejected Rome's authority is inconsequential. I'm sorry, but there was a time when she did accept it.