Too many things are held as inviolable by both East and West. It would require standing apart from any and all of those positions for there to be reconciliation. That would thus disannul many things that have stood for a very long time as orthodoxy for either side.
“How can two walk together except they agree?” It would have to be a fascade placing alleged unity above doctrinal integrity. That’s not even unity.
And that's what I mean. I mean agreement. I do not mean valuing "unity above doctrinal integrity," but a uniting around authentic Christian doctrine.
This your reponse does explain your resistance to the notion, perhaps that's what other Christians who feel similarly are thinking is meant by the prospect of Christian reunification also. I definitely mean, full voluntary agreement around only true Christian theology.
I’m referring to something quite specific, and I can outline it briefly. Post-Nicea, the Cappadocians quite literally rescued the Faith from fracturing beyond recovery over the disparate use of Greek terms in Theology Proper. Basil came to the understanding that East and West were talking past each other because of their respective usage of terminology and the applied functional definitions of the key words used to explicate the Trinity.
By installing the appropriate implementation of hypostasis/es and ousia (per the Eastern formulaic), the accusations from both side were abated. But the West functionally retained their conceptual understanding, resulting in the necessity of the Filioque for the West and the continued necessity of its omission by the East.
The West contends that the ousia “has” the three hypostases, which is a diversion from the purity of the Cappadocian resolution to early pending and averted schism. The East rightly contends that the hypostasis/es underlie the ousia, and thus it is the hypostasis/es that “have” the ousia.
I'm getting what you're driving at, but it all just seems like squabbling over what we all believe: The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God; God is the Father, Son, and Spirit; and the Father is not the Son, or the Spirit, and the Son is not the Spirit.
God is, and there are three distinctions (the Orthodox reject one of them): The Father generates the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and from the Son ('filioque'). Hypostases /prosopons /ousia are all attempts at restating the above so far as I can tell, in my little non-Catholic brain. Instead of just stating and teaching and contemplating the distinctions with God, we want to talk about "Persons." But this is above my paygrade; my view on the matter is more a question than anything else.
For this reason, the Filioque is an added component necessary in the West for all the reasons regarding the core debate that historically surrounded the schism relative to this contributing topic. But the Filioque is not only unnecessary in the East, it is abhorrent (again for all the reasons in contention for centuries leading up to 1024AD).
Because of the Papacy, the Filioque was “bullied” through
This depends upon the Orthodox story being the truth, which has yet to be definitively shown.
, and the East ultimately initiated the ultimatum to the West to recant or be in schism. (The West, of course, would never see it in this light.)
No, that's exactly how "the West" sees it, because that's exactly what happened.
So I rightly consider the West to have become schismatized in 1024 from the One Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church, which is the East. It wasn’t a split of equals that can be reunited. Rome would have to openly repent of its corruption of heterodoxy and heteropraxy, and denounce the antichrist Papacy as sin and pride.
Rome will never do that, and that’s why any attempts at reunification will be a severe compromise of Ecumenism and Syncretism. So any alleged “unity” will be invalidated as merely a band-aid on a bullet hole, so to speak.
As I said earlier, it's just above our paygrade anyway. The bishops themselves have to work this out.
But a hypothetical for you. I know you don't accept this possibility, but bear with me if you would. What would you think if all the Orthodox bishops, sometime in the future, maybe not even in our lifetimes, but say that all of them (with vanishingly few exceptions, so that it can be justifiably considered a completely Orthodox thing) uniformly drop their arms and receive Catholicism? In practicality, such an event would be administrated presumably the way similar smaller reunifications have occurred, where the previously Orthodox churches /dioceses are authorized to continue their own ancient and traditional (and valid) liturgies, and are not forced to celebrate the Roman rite. All that would change would be among the bishops, who would arrange just as Catholic bishops already arrange themselves, in just submission to the papacy in all matters of faith and morals, so yes, it would necessitate a repentance for the protest against 'filioque,' but that is part of the hypothetical.
What would you do? What would you think? Would you reject this and maintain your own view of the matter, or would you conclude that it's significant for all the world's validly created bishops (based on Catholicism's and on Orthodoxy's Apostolic succession teaching /belief /practice) to once again be teaching uniformly in all matters of faith and morals?
I've said I'm Catholic in my theology, and yes that does mean that I consider the Catholic bishops to be holding the precisely the same office of Bishop mentioned and described and alluded to throughout the New Testament (also "overseer" and "elder," if not also "presbyter"). So that's where I'm coming from, just stating it again for the record. Because of my belief in the Catholic bishops, notwithstanding that I also hold to Catholicism's own teaching that validly consecrated Orthodox bishops are still valid, even while not being in union with Catholic bishops, it is a reconciliation between bishops where they are all once again in union with one another, and that union will be the Catholic episcopacy /the Body of Christ's magisterium.
And your whole tact, whether you realize it or not, is from the perspective of Papal power-mongering.
Tomato-tomahto. The question I'm more interested in is, is it historical? And the papacy has been perceived and received from very early on to hold a position of authority in some sense wrt all other sees, Apostolic or otherwise.
You’re passively demanding and expecting reconciliation without the repentance of the West (which would then violate the Magisterium, so it’s impossible).
The Catholic Church has certainly repented of all sins done by her clergy, and done by others with any approval by her clergy, and that continues to this day. I know that you're talking about repentance in a different sense, but I wanted to put it out there. Catholicism acknowledges and repents of all the sins of the Catholic Church, and there have been many.
It’s not that I don’t want the entire Church in unity, but “the poor you have with you always”. Those without the wealth of their existence (their ousia) qualitatively determined by their foundational individual reality (hypostasis) will always be poor. The Filioque, and its heinous leveraged means of installation in the creed/s, is an anathema. The West shrugs this off as you have done. This should not be.
It's mischaracterization to call it 'shrugging it off.' You, in being apparently theologically Orthodox (practicing confessional Lutheran or not), have no choice but to hold to 'filioque' being inauthentic and made up, because if you agreed with 'filioque' being authentically Apostolic, as the papacy teaches, then you'd have to change your whole theology. You can't really be open to 'filioque' being Apostolic if you're unable to move the needle in your theology. And it very simply looks as if it is the case with you as it is with all the Orthodox, that your main bone of contention is authority. You don't accept the papacy's authority, which in Catholicism (and not in Orthodoxy, it is understood), is tantamount to bishops defying Peter himself in any matters of faith and morals, while Peter still walked the earth. This is anathema, and never happened, not in such a way that it imbued the Church's whole episcopacy with an irreversible error.
And it's still important to note that we know and all Orthodox accept also, that both Peter and Paul lived in Rome for years, and we also can safely presume that they both taught not just un ordained faithful, but bishops also, burying their Apostolic oral traditions deep in the tissue of Rome, and in all visiting bishops who came to see them, presumably, during this precious and formative time in the history of the Church. They lived for years in Rome, and they both ended their lives there. We know they were neither of them mute. They taught presumably, as Paul instructed Timothy to do, "faithful men" (bishops) who could teach also (2Ti2:2KJV).
It is from this presumed very Petrine and Pauline Apostolic oral tradition that 'filioque' comes. The Orthodox reject that it's Apostolic, and so must therefore accuse the papacy of 'power mongering.'
The alternative is that the Orthodox bishops should do as we are all called to do, and faithfully submit to our bishops in all matters of faith and morals. This does require a repentance of sorts on the part of the Orthodox, although all Orthodox bishops today are under the protection provided for by the fact that they have all merely faithfully received their own Apostolic oral traditions from their own elders, and from their elders before that, going all the way back to whenever the first seeds of the formal Schism were sown; it is not their fault entirely for their status as rebels and insurrectionists, since they were born into it.
It is parallel to Catholicism's position on Protestants also, us all having ourselves been born into it.
Catholics could omit it, so long as it doesn't mean rebelling against the magisterium. It appears that it must however mean that, but if so, it is because of it necessarily implying rebellion, and not due to some theological boundary. And it would be rebellion against authentic, Apostolically authorized teaching authority, not rebellion against some wicked civil leader, emperor, or fuhrer.
and theologically/doctrinally/historicaly-literate Lutherans and Protestants of every ilk.
So you say you're a confessional Lutheran, but you reject 'filioque' as made up, and not authentically Apostolic, so how could you do anything but omit 'filioque' from your own personal confession?
Does your congregation (parish? idk how Lutherans talk) confess the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed during worship (mass?)? If so, do you just omit 'filioque' and resume right after?
You do not understand the significance of the Filioque
As far as I can tell, and I know you disagree with my conclusion, I do understand the significance of 'filioque' sufficiently enough, if it weren't for the present Schism between Catholic and Orthodox bishops.
and its inclusion or exclusion; nor the reasons for its spurious existence in the creed/s.
It's 'spurious' according to you. What I've given you is a reasonable explanation for it. Even if it's wrong, you must at least agree that it's reasonable. Although as I write that, of course you have to conclude that it is unreasonable, due to your theological understanding of 'filioque,' but I do nonetheless maintain that your view of 'filioque' is conflated with your rejection of the teaching authority of the papacy. I don't know how you could prove that it's not inextricably tied up all together as two sides of the same coin, but I do encourage you to try, because if you can convince me that it'd be apart from the rejection of the papacy as the Body of Christ's supreme pastorate, then you might be able to persuade me. But for now, I can't help but see your disagreement with the papacy's teaching on 'filioque' as another form of your disagreement that the papacy is the authoritative pastorate wrt all matters of faith and morals.
As long as there is a Papacy, there cannot and should not be reconciliation. The Papacy would simply absorb all else by its power-mongering. Papists and anti-Papists cannot co-exist in “unity”.
Then again the question of historicity arises. What is the historical witness? How far back does it go, where we see evidence for the Church's recognition of Peter's Roman pastorate being first among equals, in authority and not just in honor? Although I do see that the interpretation of history is going to get clouded by theological persuasions, so perhaps analysis of history is just another dead end wrt the present Schism between Catholics and Orthodox.
Of course Rome want “reconciliation” in this manner. It means ruling the world. And that’s always been the Emperor-driven mindset of the West and her progeny. It’s Magisterial rather than Ministerial. The supplantation of all the Bishops in favor of one. Judas Syndrome.
That's just made up. Catholicism teaches, and all of us believe in, the inalienable human right to religious liberty. What occurred in the past, with the Church having the power to meddle in affairs of civil law and government, will never recur. It will never again be against any civil law to not go to Mass on Sunday. It will never be against civil law to practice validly consensual fornication. That's history. The reunification of the one Church will definitely not mean anything like what you're talking about here. It will be one thing and one thing only; a return to the beginning, when the whole entire Church once again all roundly and uniformly receive and believe the authentic "Apostles' doctrine" (Ac2:42KJV). The papacy's charism of infallibility lights the way into the void (of any living Apostles). And of course this excludes as being authentically Apostolic anything that any Protestant thinks they've authoritatively derived or concluded from their own personal reading of the Scripture. Protestants don't even use the whole Scripture, which is the Septuagint plus the New Testament, since as you know, the Old Testament was in the beginning of the Church, the Septuagint, which includes the seven books that Protestants, like Thomas Jefferson did with the miracles of Christ, tore out of the Book.
The Papacy is a corruption that must be dissolved, and that means the West could never be in actual unity, instead demanding that the East concede to having been in schism rather than the truth that it has been vice versa. Reconciliation would wrongly absolve Rome of her sins without authentic repentance. This should not be.
Orthodoxy doesn't believe in the dissolution of the papacy, but that it returns to a previous status, one that the Orthodox patriarchs authorize. It's Catholics vs. the Orthodox, and this comment of yours is just a fan's "rah rah rah" from the stands. What the bishops do is up to the bishops, neither you nor I are directly a part of it. Which is part of why I asked earlier about what you would think if the Orthodox bishops all decide together to convert to Catholicism. And wrt any "demanding," there is no such thing in authentic Catholicism. There is prayer for reunification, not demanding. There is the Spirit's gift of desiring reunification, not demanding. There is recognition of all non-Catholic Christians as authentically Christian, not demanding. There is respect, not demanding.
It’s not “flipping the bird to Peter’s pastorate the papacy and to the Pope”. There is no such thing.
There's no such thing as Peter's pastorate? There are two of them that I know of; Rome and Antioch.
The Roman See is the first among equals IN HONOR, not IN AUTHORITY. The authority rests with the Bishops as a whole, with due honor given to Rome in this regard.
In what particular way or ways, does that look different from with due submission to the Holy See in matters of faith and morals? Is it just titular? Or is there something more than just giving the current Pope the first place in the episcopal buffet line?
There can be no Christ Vicar and a usurpation of all Bishops together as the dissemination of all that Rome pretends to hoard for itself in that one vocation/calling.
The Pope is thus anathema to itself as a usurpation of position. A violation of all other Bishops for the sake of seizing power that does not exist. The Papacy must be dissolved for there to be authentic unity. Without such, Rome is doing lip service to reconciliation in impenitence.
That, is a demand, fyi. I believe that your view on this is similar to the view of most if not all Orthodox bishops also.
And certainly to their detrient, and thus to the Church at large. And you really can’t validly claim to adhere to Catholicism without being internal to the Church in totality, which you say you are not. This is beyond paradox.
You made that up. It belies your wrong understanding of Catholicism to utter such a thing. It is Catholicism that defines the conditions for being a Christian, and notably not Orthodoxy, anywhere, apart from being Orthodox, in body as much as in spirit /theology /belief /understanding /confession. It is Catholicism that teaches and believes that being an individual member of the one Body of Christ depends upon just one thing, ironically enough, in the light of the Reformation, it is belief "in Christ," full stop. There is not one other thing. And Catholicism goes so far as to leave it to us non-Catholics to interpret precisely what is meant by belief in Christ, Catholicism doesn't even define that for everyone. In studying authorized Catholicism it can be shown that my reading of 1st Corinthians 15:14 KJV as Paul Apostolically pronouncing Christ's Resurrection the 'sine qua non,' and /or one thing needful for authentic Christian faith is fully valid, based on Catholicism's teaching that His Resurrection is both the "central" and "crowning" fact concerning the one Christian faith (Eph4:5KJV).
Orthodoxy doesn't even have a single source where we can examine the one authentic Christian faith expressed authoritatively. Each Orthodox church has their own differing details. The Orthodox churches do not work together as a unit.
How oddly non-Catholic. Doesn’t that alarm you? It’s actually impossible to wholly embrace Catholic doctrine without being Catholic.
It doesn't alarm me at all, nothing about Catholicism does, and again, you made that up. Myself aside, there are plenty of people right now who await 2019's Easter Vigil to convert to Catholicism bodily, when they can for the first time licitly receive the Eucharist. Right now, they are theologically Catholic, or will be soon, without actually being officially Catholic. So you're wrong about this on its face, and you do not understand Catholicism like you think you do. You've got straw men. You haven't given it enough thought. My hope is "yet." And just fyi, which you probably already know but just in case; all the authorized Catholic positions in matters of faith and morals, are contained in the 'Catechism of the Catholic Church,' which is written to and for primarily all the Catholic bishops. It is their 'teachers edition.'
It would seem you still have a number of things to work through if you are not converted to Catholicism and in good standing within the Catholic Church. It’s oxymoronic.
No I don't, and no it isn't.
It’s at least strongly implied. And there are other things related to various doctrines that are at least as urgently implied.
In Romans 10:9 KJV? I chose this scripture because once again (like in 1st Corinthians 15:14 KJV), Paul rather plainly is crystalizing authentic saving faith down to its most succinct summary, and here he mentions two things; one thing is the Resurrection (1Co15:14KJV), but the other thing here is that we are to confess Him with the mouth as "Lord."
I can certainly accept if Paul means here that we are to believe that He is God, but due to my submission to the magisterium, I instead believe that is too is within the bailiwick of non-Catholics to interpret for ourselves, and there just are those who believe in Christ's Resurrection, but who do not believe that believing in Christ means to also believe that He is God. I believe He is God, but I don't believe that believing that He is God is the 'sine qua non' or one thing needful to believe to be an authentic Christian, and instead receive those who believe in the Resurrection as my authentic siblings in the faith, and fellow subjects to our One King, the Lord Jesus Christ, Pantocrator. Because they believe, that they believe "in Christ;" and they don't believe that His Resurrection is fictional.
I’m quite concerned about non-Sacramentalists. I’m even more concerned about those who adamantly refuse orthodox Christology and other such crucial points of historically settled and readily available core doctrines (like soul sleep, and a whole list of other issues that cannot be included).
I'm not concerned about those things, and it's because there is just one fully authentic Apostolic witness /theology /teaching /doctrine, and any slight diversion or difference between this and our own view is according to your words below, Antichrist, and error, but I maintain that the only such error that nullifies our faith and excludes us from the Body of Christ, is the rejection of Christ's Resurrection as nonfiction historical fact.
I’m just not buying that the resurrection of our Lord is the sole criteria for salvific faith, even given your caveats.
That's cool. It's not required for me to persuade anybody of my theology, I'm just setting it out, and answering questions and challenges to it, like everybody else here is also doing.
There are other essentials, no matter where the “line” is drawn to the contrary. If not, the historical anathemas could not stand and would thus be self-disannulling.
Those historical anathemas are certainly when made targeted at all rebels, but it's important to note that all of them are made in the context of a functioning college of bishops, and they are made by bishops, and, as time unfolds, it's also just as clear that they are primarily addressed to bishops, and especially as time unfolds, they are addressed to the bishops of today and tomorrow. They are clarifying lessons for bishops primarily to receive and to understand. These anathemas are to ensure that the authentic expression of the one Christian faith is preserved forever, and not primarily to ensure that non ordained individual Christians all believe the same thing; although certainly this latter thing is greatly desired and desirable.
If a doctrine is missing, there is a vacuum that draws in false doctrine as substitue and replacement. That’s what the Greek prefix anti- means, and these things are relative to Christ. So that means such omissions with substitutes are antichrist. And that’s what the elevation of the Roman See is: Antichrist. We can’t have antichrist and unity IN Christ simulataneously.
This "vacuum" you mention has historically, from the Catholic perspective, always led to disputes that forced the magisterium to convene a council, during which, more of the Apostolic oral tradition entrusted to the bishops as a whole /body is revealed and written down, converting it from authoritative oral tradition to now authoritative, authorized, and authenticated written expression.
So when the Pope steps down and the whole of Rome admits it’s been in schism to the One Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, THEN there can be unity. It won’t and can’t happen, and your own words indicate that.
It might can't happen, sure. It might happen, too. Above my paygrade. I'll for one submit to them all, if they can see fit to reunite themselves. I say, I pray that they do it soon. I would love to see it before I die.
