Calibacy For Priests - Vatican Secretary Of State

[Era Might]

Ah, so you subscribe to the Lutheran view of a visible Church and an invisible Church. In Orthodoxy the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church exists only in and through the many local Churches, and there is no human Church as opposed to a divine Church. In fact, such a notion betrays a Nestorian Christology. The Church is - like Christ - divine and human at the same time, and so its historical existence cannot be separated from its divine subsistence. And so your perspective does sound pretty formless to me. To be honest I would call it a Protestant understanding of the Church, and I say that as a former Protestant.

 

Your divorce of Orthodoxy from its marriage to the historical Greco-Roman world and empire is also a type of formlessness, basically turning the church into a shapeshifter, and renouncing the historical form that was not just symbolic for the Byzantines but was part and parcel with their religion. Your adoption of modern civilization and political forms is an historical departure from Byzantine civilization. IOW, your modern worldview has deep Protestant roots.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Era Might

[Apotheoun]

Your divorce of Orthodoxy from its marriage to the historical Greco-Roman world and empire is also a type of formlessness, basically turning the church into a shapeshifter, and renouncing the historical form that was not just symbolic for the Byzantines but was part and parcel with their religion. Your adoption of modern civilization and political forms is an historical departure from Byzantine civilization. IOW, your modern worldview has deep Protestant roots.

I do not share your peculiar views on history. The Byzantine Empire has been gone for 500 years but Orthodoxy is still alive and kicking. If the Byzantine Empire were essential to the Orthodox faith the two things would have died together. That said, I probably would have agreed with you when I was a Protestant, but alas I gave up Protestantism (and its modernist worldview) more than twenty years ago.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

IOW, your modern worldview has deep Protestant roots.

Actually, my worldview has its roots in Orthodoxy. While you do sound a lot like a Protestant.

 

On that issue, weren't you a Protestant for a while? I thought you stepped down as a moderator because you briefly left the Catholic Church (or questioned its legitimacy). Have I remembered that correctly or am I confusing you with someone else?

[Era Might]

I do not share your peculiar views on history. The Byzantine Empire has been gone for 500 years but Orthodoxy is still alive and kicking. If the Byzantine Empire were essential to the Orthodox faith the two things would have died together. That said, I probably would have agreed with you when I was a Protestant, but alas I gave up Protestantism (and its modernist worldview) more than twenty years ago.

 

You have not given up a modernist worldview, your worldview is entirely modern, with Eastern flavoring. You are basically saying that because Orthodoxy survived under a different form that it had previously defined itself, that therefore form is not essential to Orthodoxy. That is formlessness, shapeshifting, and a view of history that denies what the Byzantine world was based on, that the Roman empire was part of a God-directed ordering, or "form," through history. It's the equivalent of people who set a date for the end of the world, then have to explain away why it didn't happen. You are trying to explain away the actual historic form of Byzantine civilization.

[Apotheoun]

You have not given up a modernist worldview, your worldview is entirely modern, with Eastern flavoring. You are basically saying that because Orthodoxy survived under a different form that it had previously defined itself, that therefore form is not essential to Orthodoxy. That is formlessness, shapeshifting, and a view of history that denies what the Byzantine world was based on, that the Roman empire was part of a God-directed ordering, or "form," through history. It's the equivalent of people who set a date for the end of the world, then have to explain away why it didn't happen. You are trying to explain away the actual historic form of Byzantine civilization.

My worldview is Orthodox, I do not care one wit about political structures. I do not care if a country is ruled by a monarchy, or if it is a republic, or anything else. As a Christian I believe that the one Catholic Church exists, whole and entire, in each local instantiation of the Church. With the Orthodox (and Eastern Catholic) Tradition I hold that there is no universal Church over and above the local Churches, but that the local Churches make the one Church fully manifest in this world. In other words, the one is many and the many are one, and the Church mirrors both the Incarnation and the Trinity. You - on the other hand - appear to either be a Protestant in your view of the Church or a modernist focused upon the social sciences instead of theology and the Tradition of the Holy Fathers. Either way, for me, your views are heretical, and I cannot as a Christian subscribe to them.

[Apotheoun]

 You are trying to explain away the actual historic form of Byzantine civilization.

I do not need to explain away a civilization that is gone. Your historicism is perhaps why you cannot understand the real nature of the Church. The Church is made manifest in space and time, but its life is actually beyond those created realities. The Church is an eternal (or - as the Fathers would say - pre-eternal) eschatological reality, for in the creating the world God made man male and female and - as the ancient Clementine homily makes clear - these two signified the eternal Christ and His body.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Era Might]

My worldview is Orthodox, I do not care one wit about political structures. I do not care if a country is ruled by a monarchy, or if it is a republic, or anything else. As a Christian I believe that the one Catholic Church exists, whole and entire, in each local instantiation of the Church. With the Orthodox (and Eastern Catholic) Tradition I hold that there is no universal Church over and above the local Churches, but that the local Churches make the one Church fully manifest in this world. In other words, the one is many and the many are one, and the Church mirrors both the Incarnation and the Trinity. You - on the other hand - appear to either be a Protestant in your view of the Church or a modernist focused upon the social sciences instead of theology and the Tradition of the Holy Fathers. Either way, for me, your views are heretical, and I cannot as a Christian subscribe to them.

 

My views are heretical? You're the one who is claiming that you don't care about political form. You are subscribing to a formlessness that would not have been recognized in the Byzantine Orthodox world as it actually existed. You have accomodated your worldview to a modern worldview where religion exists in its own sphere in a world of religious pluralism. As I said, this is a worldview with deep Protestant roots, as it is essentially a Western worldview that emerged after (and in large part because of) the Protestant Reformation.

[Era Might]

I do not need to explain away a civilization that is gone. Your historicism is perhaps why you cannot understand the real nature of the Church. The Church is made manifest in space and time, but its life is actually beyond those created realities. The Church is an eternal (or - as the Fathers would say - pre-eternal) eschatological reality, for in the creating the world God made man male and female and - as the ancient Clementine homily makes clear - these two signified the eternal Christ and His body.

 

IOW, the church for you is something different from what it was in the Byzantine world, it is an a-political spiritual entity that has no connection to the historical world which (as the Byzantines believed) God had guided into the Roman empire of Rome and later Constantinople.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Era Might

[Apotheoun]

My views are heretical? You're the one who is claiming that you don't care about political form. You are subscribing to a formlessness that would not have been recognized in the Byzantine Orthodox world as it actually existed. You have accomodated your worldview to a modern worldview where religion exists in its own sphere in a world of religious pluralism. As I said, this is a worldview with deep Protestant roots, as it is essentially a Western worldview that emerged after (and in large part because of) the Protestant Reformation.

Era, you are either a Protestant or a gnostic. It is hard to tell from your convoluted reasoning. But your constant focus on history makes me think that you favor a Protestant view of the Church. 

 

Please specify from my previous post on the doctrine of the Church where precisely I am subscribing to a formless Church. I specifically indicated how the Church exists in time and space, while simultaneously transcending those created realities, while you on the other hand seem to espouse a view that the Church is trapped in history, that it requires empires to exist, an idea that is manifestly false since both the Eastern and the Western Church have survived multiple civilizational collapses.

[Era Might]

Era, you are either a Protestant or a gnostic. It is hard to tell from your convoluted reasoning. But your constant focus on history makes me think that you favor a Protestant view of the Church. 

 

Please specify from my previous post on the doctrine of the Church where precisely I am subscribing to a formless Church. I specifically indicated how the Church exists in time and space, while simultaneously transcending those created realities, while you on the other hand seem to espouse a view that the Church is trapped in history, that it requires empires to exist, an idea that is manifestly false since both the Eastern and the Western Church have survived multiple civilizational collapses.

 

Forgive me, I happen to believe in living in reality as it actually existed (and exists), not a theologically-constructed fantasy that never actually existed and does not exist. If that makes me a Protestant or a Gnostic, so be it.

 

In either case, Orthodoxy has actually existed in a real, historical circumstance, and your fantasies for a new Orthodox world are just that, fantasy, unless you come to grips with the fact that such a world already existed, and its understanding of itself cannot be written off in the name of a spiritual formless church that has no actual historical reality.

[Apotheoun]

IOW, the church for you is something different from what it was in the Byzantine world, it is an a-political spiritual entity that has no connection to the historical world which (as the Byzantines believed) God had guided into the Roman empire of Rome and later Constantinople.

The Church was not trapped in the "Byzantine world," in fact actually it is the Church that caused that world - at least to the degree that that worldview espoused Christian values. But when the Byzantine civilization died the Church continued on, just as the Western Church continued on after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in A.D. 476.

 

Postscript: Believing that God created fortuitous circumstances that would favor the Church's existence at a given time is not the same as identifying the Church, which is the Body of Christ, with a particular historical empire. Again, if the Orthodox Church required the existence of the Byzantine Empire for its own continuation in being it would have disappeared 500 years ago. You seem to want to historicize the Church in a way that has no foundation in the Patristic tradition. 

[Apotheoun]

Forgive me, I happen to believe in living in reality as it actually existed (and exists), not a theologically-constructed fantasy that never actually existed and does not exist. If that makes me a Protestant or a Gnostic, so be it.

 

In either case, Orthodoxy has actually existed in a real, historical circumstance, and your fantasies for a new Orthodox world are just that, fantasy, unless you come to grips with the fact that such a world already existed, and its understanding of itself cannot be written off in the name of a spiritual formless church that has no actual historical reality.

I have not denied that the Church has existed in historical times, and even been influenced by what has happened in those times, after all the Church is the perpetual extension of the Incarnation through space and time. What I deny is your Protestant notion that the Church is somehow bound by history, and that there is no visible Church (or that the visible Church is distinct from the eschatological Church). Those ideas are quite simply false, but perhaps you absorbed them into your own thinking while you were a Protestant, I really don't know. But - I do know this - as a former Protestant I can smell Protestantism a mile away. 

Edited September 14, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Apotheoun]

Forgive me, I happen to believe in living in reality as it actually existed (and exists), not a theologically-constructed fantasy that never actually existed and does not exist. If that makes me a Protestant or a Gnostic, so be it.

 

By the way, theology is reality. In fact, it is more real than anything created, because it is the experience of the divine being that transcends creation.

[Apotheoun]

History, and I say this as a person who got a BA in history, is a fallible human attempt to reconstruct the past - usually a past that none of us experienced - with a lot of interpretation thrown in for fun; while theology is a revealed doctrine that does not require human reconstruction because it involves a living experience of God in worship. As I said in an earlier post, history as theology is a Protestant idea, while memory (i.e., the living memory of God) made manifest in the Church's liturgy, which transcends time, allows one to experience God directly. It is a revelation of the divine in human form.

Edited September 14, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Era Might]

History, and I say this as a person who got a BA in history, is a fallible human attempt to reconstruct the past - usually a past that none of us experienced - with a lot of interpretation thrown in for fun; while theology is a revealed doctrine that does not require human reconstruction because it involves a living experience of God in worship. As I said in an earlier post, history as theology is a Protestant idea, while memory (i.e., the living memory of God) made manifest in the Church's liturgy, which transcends time, allows one to experience God directly. It is a revelation of the divine in human form.

 

Well your memory is infallible, so no need to argue about anything.