Eric Ybarra on the Challenge of Eastern Orthodoxy

welcome to native the 15th of February 2017 and we're joined today by Eric Baum to talk about a Greek orthodoxy Eric how are you today doing well I thank you for having me glad to have you didn't recognize more lessons and weigh expert on questions pertaining to the papacy in the first century and work notes so first off how did you come study these particular issues well when I had first left the evangelical church movement that was actually in a Reformed Baptist Church which now hindsight of effect is not really reformed we called ourselves reformed we helped the deductions of Calvin and you know the five points to it but we really you know considered ourselves descendants of Charles Spurgeon Joseph Gill that type of sociology when I first left the Protestant church I was kind of in a daze as to what Christianity was and if it was anything that it had to be something rooted in history so that's when I began to read the scriptures together with historical interpretation and so that led me into discovering the Lutheran Church so I began visiting Lutheran churches so I sit down with the loose Lutheran priest reading all the books that I was given to to read as recommendation and over time that led me as most people and your listeners would know that would led me back to the the Church of the first millennium of the Church of the sacraments the Church of the ecumenical councils and so I began to look into high church conservative and local policies this is the Anglican Communion or communions today that are broken from the mother church in England and who consider themselves to be apostolic churches so I was able to sit well and happy as an Anglican while professing my belief in the sacraments my belief in the church my belief in faith and works and tradition with the scriptures but over time I began to realize it was a problem and that is the issue of government church government and the unity of structure I realized that the Anglican Communion that I was in was just a break off of a break off of a break off as good as the intentions were I realized that this did not match what the early church fathers considered to be the church or the the Holy Church as Cyprian said it's the the unity that cannot be broken and consists of the agreement of the bishops the glue that keeps it United so that led me obviously to look into the claims of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy now as an Anglican we we consider ourselves the Orthodox of the West and so it would not all be odd for you to see me or somebody else at our Anglican Church walking around with the book written by st. Maximus the Confessor or st. Seraphim of Rosa it we could we could easily battle into the eastern orthodox ethos and so I started visiting Eastern Orthodox services befriended a priest and I was initially more inclined to go east uh but with further study I was more convinced that the Roman Catholic Church had a better a better claim to the Genuity just because of the the evidence that was there to be seen that this was an institutional reality that Christ created when he formed the Twelve Apostles so you know I I wasn't he wasn't an easy process for me because I as an Anglican I did have a lot of arguments against the papacy and against other Roman Catholic doctrines so I wasn't one of these persons that first came to Roman Catholicism at the first sight of a quote from st. here enhance as Anglican as we knew all that we knew all those what the father said here and there but we had our rationalizations and we had our objections so I knew that Roman Catholicism required more interpretation and more more nuance in the history than just a quote here and there but comparing Catholicism with you know the problems and objections that the Russians had and the Greeks had in it and then the English had I was able to see that Roman Catholicism is the good the true church and so that's when I made my that's when I came back actually because I was born Roman Catholic I left when I was in my teenage years but ultimately what it came down to is I had enough time putting the papacy under historical criticism and so I began to put Eastern Orthodoxy and anglicanism under historic criticism and I realized that they did figure out too well either but with more studying I came to realize that the Catholic Church can actually be vindicated from a lot of clutches that have had gotten into over the last 30 or 40 years in the ecumenical dialogues thank you for a very detailed explanation and so I guess we should get into it especially please listen Airy might be wrong the elements in Eastern Church there's the Greeks what are the differences between the work of us and okay well Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism both share the claim that they are the one single Bride of Christ that Jesus made when he was on this earth with the Apostles and that to this very day the Orthodox claim they are that one church the continuation of that church and they exist as the Embassy of Christ on this earth to make disciples of all nations until the second coming of Christ so we share a lot of things as Catholics and Orthodox we share that that the the church itself is essentially structured with bishops and so the the Eastern Orthodox are a church of Bishops that's their that's that they're governed by bishops and when you look at the term Eastern Orthodoxy it kind of comes off as strange because we don't really have a with globalization we don't have a point of reference so much when we say Eastern or Western unless you're familiar with the dish so Eastern it means that it's it's more or less having to do with the eastern empire and what came out of that during the first millennium ad so today Eastern Orthodox that's the church that's coming from that spillover from Byzantium forward so you could have a church way out in the West like in California that's Eastern Orthodox it's Eastern because it has that identity this church did not remain in communion with the Catholics which we all reference these and simple as the West so if that's where they get their you know the distinction East versus West now the Eastern Orthodox are nationally identified so you of the churches of Bulgaria the churches of Georgia or the churches of Antioch and so they take that that that point of reference with the nation the Eastern Orthodox churches consist of 16 generally recognized anyway that there are 16 self-governing churches and they call that autocephalous churches thought of sepals meaning self-governing now from the Greek your own head right right exactly they have their own down head whether you know depending on which area you're talking about in metroburg metropolitan or the patriarch now the the Eastern Orthodox claim to believe in the sacraments just like Catholics they hold to the seventh ecumenical councils of the first millennium there have been other councils that have been held since then that are usually given universal recognition but there are still some some conditions that have to be fulfilled before they can officially say so but they they continue with that the identity of the doctrines that we shared in the first millennium now they don't have the Eastern Orthodox don't have any supreme governing body other than this other than an equal Episcopalian ism so even though there are patriarchs and there are metropolitans and bishops there's definitely a governmental structure there are distinctions to be made but the bishop is the supreme supreme layer in the government of the church but anything above that in the form of a council or a synod is is you regulated by consensus and mutual agreement so no bishop has authority over the territory of another bishop each Bishop is is is independent and answers to a metropolitan and perhaps the Metropolitan would answer to the patriarch but the Metropolitan doesn't have any central authority that's different than a bishop only on canonical lines and even those have clear conditions that wouldn't suggest that the bishop doesn't have what the the Metropolitan has essential now like I said because because they don't have a supreme governing body other than the Episcopalian ISM these the Orthodox have faced a number of structural problems over the years and it because they don't have that centralization they've been subject to fragmentation along the lines of the socio-political climate so for instance I mean example since the Council of Florence the Eastern Orthodox have been really divided between two to mega churches and that that's Constantinople and Russia and the reason why that happened was because Russia grew in power over time and the the tsardom of Russia was able to allow the Church of Russia the Moscow Patriarchate to have power over all of the churches in Russia and same thing with the Church of Constantinople you have the Ottoman Empire that gave it assistance to have power over the other four patriarchs now with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire you had churches that were formally being governed by Constantinople that were able to gain their independence again and the same thing in Russia you would after the Bolshevik Revolution you had churches that were regaining their independence that were formerly under the Moscow Patriarchate but then with the rise of the Soviet Union some of that independence was taken back so the socio-political changes have coincided with the structural changes in Orthodox and with the immigration that took place in the later 1920 centuries there was a melting pot of Eastern Orthodox migrants to the confidence of north and north america which eventually led to the formation of what's today the OCA the Orthodox Church of America which is recognized as an autocephalous church but not everyone recognizes it as a self-governing body and in for many years and certain intervals the OCA existed without formal communion with other bodies that were equally in communion with other Orthodox bodies so you had that kind of structure going on now it would almost seem like a negative thing but the Orthodox don't see it that way they see that these divisions is not breaking the essential unity of the church which consists of one faith one sacramental economy so that they would see that this feature of fragmentation is not really so much a testimony against their essential unity but almost an argument for it because they retain same faith and the same sacraments through and through a lot of these divisions can heal over time now the doctrine the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox I'm the longer in perfect unity and it's due to its doctrinal differences mainly today there were support there were a lot of political reasons in the beginning which I'm sure we'll get to somewhere in this podcast but today the Eastern Orthodox don't accept the papal doctrine that was dogmatically defined at certain Western ecumenical councils like the Council of Lyon the fourth Lateran Council the Council of Florence and the first and second council Vatican now the Orthodox have over the last 20 years have looked into the subject of primacy and have come a long way from where they were I would say back in the 18th 19th century in admitting that there there is a place for a universal primate now it's taken some some time to get there and not every single Church in the Orthodox Network agrees with that but we do have some sort of a front face that's willing to say that there is a place where a universal primary they disagree on the prerogatives and the authority that that primate has the Orthodox also do not believe in the in the addition to the Crete that became Universal for Roman Catholics which is that Filioque clause that was added to the creek many in the Orthodox Church today still argue that not only the addition to the Creed was wrong but also the Filioque theology is wrong and is in fact heretical and a point of contention and a real barrier to Union other issues that came up in the history but which we don't see a lot of today on front is the disagreement over the the form of bread used in poly community whether that of unleavened bread versus leavened bread that was a big issue now in the 10th 11th or 12th century it became was still an issue of contention even at the reunion councils that came later but we don't hear much of that today too much which is just as well as it is because it means to call the Roman Catholic convenience matter to sub-options name to actually really having to do with my and other things and can find stone that medieval Greek treatises and other for other things right yeah they I mean you know the the historic criticisms were that it was almost like we we didn't view the body of Christ as having any life in it and which is why they would sometimes call the Latins of pollen Aryans and in that they used unleavened bread because fallen Aryans they denied the soul of the human body Christ they saw that the resurrection from the dead the newness of life the administration of the Holy Spirit and the future hope of Resurrection all these things were feel obsolete tied to the form of leavened bread and they often associated the use of unleavened bread would be the old the old Jewish Passover celebration which was part of the old Miss anyway moving forward they also have not admitted a complete agreement on the doctrine of purgatory even though there has been a detailed you know books written on their on their belief of post-mortem purification otherwise known as the co-host doctrine but in my my dialogue with Orthodox there have been some that have rejected that altogether as well and I've continued to say that the purgatory doctrine is a point of barrier to you and then another smaller issue which again for some Orthodox would be a huge issue is the epiclesis and the and the liturgy and divine liturgy the epiclesis is the the prayer to the holy spirit to consecrate the elements of bread wine whereas the Catholics have always believed that the words of consecration from the priests are what transformed the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ so that that issue came up at the Council of Florence so that pretty much takes up the main differences in the May night the identity and structure of we the Eastern Orthodox Church thank you for that excellent really encompassing review as we go through this will finding a few more things but in the meantime so amongst all the issues you numerated then it tends to be especially if you encounter Greek regression or just general Eastern Orthodox apologist online or if you come to their website here is one of the first things I'm list of the papacy so I guess what you're probably start there the orthodontic's claim that the papacy in the first millennium only had a primacy of honor you know pray listen to potters that but it did not have one power let alone supreme jurisdiction power all over the whole world so doesn't just witness early Christianity bear out this particular contention well let me just say that I agree with you that on many Eastern Orthodox blogs websites and books today when it comes to looking at the Roman Catholic claims the papacy is the number one issue I disagree with the idea that the authority of the Bishop of Rome in the first millennium was simply a primacy honor and the reason why I say that is because we have the witness of holy scripture and we have the witness of the Church Fathers and the witness of the ecumenical councils which give us a much different picture so let me first start off by responding to a common orthodox objection that the existence of council itself would testify against the belief in papal primacy according to the Vatican 1 which is a primacy of jurisdiction or primacy of authority well there's two assumptions that I think a lot of what ducks bring to the table the first one is that the Pope will always know the right answer to every theological question we could put this in shorter as papal omniscience even though I know nobody would find that out explicitly but it almost comes up as a reactive presumption because when we look at certain historical events you'll see an Orthodox you know it dawns on them okay well if the Pope was infallible or if the Pope had more than authority of honor then why wouldn't he just write a letter and have it sent out to the mail system and settle the question and that's one of the assumptions that I think comes to the table and which is erroneous because Catholics don't believe that you can in fact have a very still caught pope and he still retains the authority that we say he does whether the Catholic Church says that he would the other assumption is a papal automation which kind of flows from papal omniscience so this this other assumption people Maish is is the idea that the pope if he has the authority that Catholics claim he has it should be automatic his answer should come forth immediately based on his omniscience and there should be unity in the church right away and these are two things that we obviously don't see in first one in history and it's obviously not entailed by what we believe as Catholics things with regard to papal primacy so what what do we teach about the Pope and what does the first century what does the first millennium say well you have in the beginning of the Holy Scripture you have Jesus Christ singling Peter out amongst the Twelve Apostles and giving him a place of primacy almost all the fourth atok scholars who look at this today at least admit that Peter was given a distinctive place of leadership and the Apostles but for Catholics we go beyond that because when Christ spoke to Peter and said you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church we understand this to mean that Christ intends to build the visible structure of his church on Peter and so the Orthodox will immediately begin by saying well it's it's not Peter the man it's Peter it's his faith now a lot of one's locks will admit that it's Peter the man but for us Catholics we can take on their either view the gaming well the reason why you can take other views because you can't separate Peter the man from Peters faith so oftentimes they'll read in the you'll read the literature and the second third fourth fifth even going on to the ninth century even literature from the Pope's who will say that the rock of the church is the faith of Peter so you know typically they think that this this idea of Peters faith being the rock is it is an argument against when it's actually the argument used because what is it about Peter that gives him this essential role of being the rock under which the church atop is built it is fidelity to the Christian message so we definitely absorb that we don't have to deny that we can confess that gladly so there is that scripture version from Jesus word you know Christ says to Peter you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church he goes on to say and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven so what we get from this verse is that there's this governmental role that Christ is bestowing upon Peter and if it's a governmental role it's got to be a visible Church because you can't be binding and loosing invisibly there has to be a visible Constitution that is being set up here and by the imagery of the keys of the kingdom the keys the keys have Old Testament symbolism we could get them into that on another occasion but basically the symbol and keys is a position of authority to open and close doors and so you open and close doors when you're allowing people in or you are making people like or not allowing them to come in so this is a distinctive place of authority over the visible Church it's not it can't be just an honorific idea because think about this if I if I were to give you the keys to my house I'm not just giving you hey you know you have a nice place of honor next to my house no you you have jurisdiction over the doors and if I leave you here to take care of my house for a week or so only you have that because if I gave it to everybody else there's no sense of having keys the first place because that's why the door is there there's a lock there for that reason there's a secure building so the Christ envisions the church to be a secure visible society and with with that visible society comes the need for protection and authority and this is why Christ gave Peter the keys and a different gospel the Gospel of Luke this is towards the end of Jesus ministry where the Apostles are about to be scented with the the scandal of their master being betrayed and taken by the the the Romans at the accusation of the Jews to be crucified and Jesus knew that they were going to stumble and the end Peters saying that Jesus singled out Peter and prayed for him and his faith to strengthen the Brethren when they would be restored to the vigilance of Christian witness that verse and one other in the Gospel of John where after Jesus rose from the dead Jesus looks to Peter and asks him three times Peter do you love me obviously harkening back to the threefold denial of knowing Christ which took place during the night of his trial and to which Peter says yes Lord you know that I love you in each instance the indication he is saying is that since you come back to the faith and since your faith and strengthen the Brethren continue to feed the sheep and the church fathers have viewed this as the place of pasture over the universal Church even the Greek father's I would say there's more Greek witness to this idea of Christ investing in Peter this this pastoral Commission to oversee the entire universal Church of course if Christ makes you a pastor over the universal Church that can't be an honorific position because how can you fulfill your responsibilities as a pastor if you can't intervene and engage and dispute when issues come up that require pending so that that would be the spiritual front that roma coppa to go to to say that it must be beyond Honor has to be born of authority because that's what matches what the Scriptures teach then you can go we can go into other witnesses throughout the first millennium but I think it would take too long to do that so I'm just going to pick out a couple of instances do you think that would work shortly sounds green okay well it ended in the second millennium you had a Greek Church fathered by the name of Saint Irenaeus of Lyon he was the Bishop of Lyon which today is in France and he he was debating a lot of heretics in his day who were basing their beliefs on traditions that came from the Apostles secret secret messages that got continued after the apostles gave their their primary witness and so Irenaeus was focused looking at the foundations of Christianity and where where where are those pillars that people can go to whether they're theologically astute by natural Enquirer or a bishop you go to the Apostolic churches which were founded on the Apostles for those who were associated with the Apostles and you look at the succession of these churches which all carried the same faith now st. Irenaeus singles out the Church of Rome has the greatest church of in terms of a Polock witness and that it was that church I actually have a statement that he he he says here he says for every church that is the faithful in each place it is reported as necessary for them to be in agreement with this church because of its superior origin so in his origin he gives elsewhere in the same book is that it was founded upon the witness of st. Peter and st. Paul and so in the very early church you see that this this place of superiority now don't get me wrong this does not tell us anything about the primacy of jurisdiction or papal infallibility but what it does tell us is that from the very early from the from the earliest centuries the the Roman Church was seen as a bastion of Orthodoxy based upon its foundation and that because of that it it would it would put an obligation on the whole world to be in agreement with it out the significance of that is that Rome began to teach certain things about herself about her foundation about her authority that would reveal to us more and more its sense of papal ism but we have to look and see how credible witness she is and I point st. urinates of Lulu Lyon because here he is singling Rome out as the credible witness at the very least well he said necessary for all churches of the world to agree with this one church that's high right respectively other issues and exactly how they play out but the entire world at this time also and within probably a generation of your names in a kind of secret you have Cyprien sending me gates to Rome to find out what's going on in Rome to wash burg papal elections why would you lunch in position across the sea matter it's different if everyone's equal nobody has any particular power but regardless of the particular issues later the Cyprian Stephen get into still at the same time separate another brick beginning with the position of Rome he is sending Wingate's to find out who's elected and make sure he's communicating with them he doesn't do that Browns he doesn't do that for an answer that he doesn't do that for anywhere else and the entire world in fact is it has to be in community embassy from the effective ovation when Novation sets himself up as an n-type dopant using the catholic which is a counter division to Rome well Cornelius is still alive she sent letters and to all the bishoprics in the world demanding they communicate with him so it seems clear that when hearing is talking about at the very least reviews particularly canonical facts the rest of the churches in some way carrying out yeah yeah I agree in fact in fact that very February time well in the third century where you have Cyprian writing the Novation is growing large that's another point of reference where we can see that there is something essential to the Roman sea that was created by Christ for for the propagation of person of the Christian faith and like you said Cyprian Cyprian wrote a treatise on the unity of the church and any reader even you know Anglican Orthodox Protestant or Catholic when they read this thing they can at least see that at the very foundations of the church at the very foundation foundations of the the apostolic commission Cyprian understood that Peter was singled out for divine purpose and that purpose was for the unification of the Apostles and the church no matter what you see no matter what somebody sees impaled by that whether they think it has relevance to itself alone or it has relevance to the to the government of the church as a whole there is still a Trinity at the root of the Christian Church and so you know this is one of the debates that you know we we engage in today is just exactly what is that the Trinity well for the Orthodox they they extract from Cyprian a sense of equal Episcopalian is imported say equal cut trying Episcopalian ISM where they see that every bishop is a successor of Peter and no one bishop has a certain authority over another to coerce the other to believe or do list in any which way now in Cypriot cases is complex in the history is nuanced and we could sit here and talk for hours and hours about it but in one letter that Cyprian wrote to the Pope he he calls the Church of Rome the chair of Peter which many scholars and readers could recognize that it could be attributed to all bishops but he follows it by saying that the Roman Church is the chair of Peter the principle Church or the head Church depending on how you want to translate this into the latter it's really principal for the principle Church the Church of Principality which you know at this point it means it has some sense of superiority in some way the principal Church the place from which Sasser total unity has its source and these are all attributes that he gave st. Peter in relation to the Apostles and here Cyprien is describing the Roman Church along to trying attributes in relation to the universal Church because when you say the principal church you're relating that church to all other churches you're not relating the roman bishop to the roman church you're relating the roman church to all the churches and then obviously at the end the place where satyr don't Sasser total unity has its rise that's definitely a patron image now the question should come up for the Orthodox what do you mean by the place where Sasser total unity has its source Jerusalem was the first church and there were many of the churches prior to Rome that could be considered the first place that the the Episcopal ministry began well that I think it could be answered because it's not an issue of which church was first founded we could all agree with a Pentecostal Church of Jerusalem the issue here is that at the Roman Church you have the full ministry that was given to Peter to be the source of unity ongoingly for all the other bishops now you know citrine did enter into somewhat of a contest with Stephen now the Orthodox like to focus on that side and men and Protestants interpreters do the same but it's interesting we don't have a lot of writings from Pope Steven that have been historically inducting it preserved in documents documentary evidence but we do have evidence that Pope Steven himself when it came down to a disagreement over r-e Baptist between the some churches in Africa and Rome post even wrote an edict wherein he cites the authority appear in his that et represents the authority of Peter and on that basis that he had the right to coerce other churches to conform their sacramental practice to that of the Roman tradition that goes beyond an honorific practice that that is one of doctrinal coercion doctrinal Authority at least as claimed so you know just from an observatory point of view who you have a witness at least right there in the Roman Church and you have the the credible testimony the testimony of credibility that we got from st. Irenaeus who is just you know a little bit less than a century before so you have this Roman the Roman Bishop claiming that he has this inheritance from Pierre that grants him the right to oversee the church at large and another point to bring out from this is that Stephen psychologically he's not an innovator his desire was to bring the African churches into conformity with antiquity that was the contention then so it's very clear you know just just on a you know on a psychological level Stephen is not an innovator he's claiming this inheritance from here the Church of Lyon was able to give Rome this this superior ultimately the supreme superiority of apostolic credibility and we have all this together right there in third century and this goes beyond honors finally now I've in my in my discourse with Eastern Orthodox they have often admitted that the heresy of papal ISM may just have begun with Pope Steve which is interesting is that right now III do find all these little hat significant because then there's many ways many people that I ain't even seen or customs to that will claim that oh whoa keep going phone people claims didn't work begins on Constantine or Constantine created the papacy cause of T long discontinuities that starts with John Milton unless I'm mistaken or maybe here will be right into the Reformation but nevertheless the you know that's a constant day you'll get the Protestants innocent work it's only the Constantine's honestly that the quotes give this kind of claim you're claiming or that it didn't but we see these early witnesses but that's clearly not your case yeah I agree now the Orthodox will say you know yeah Stephen may have said that but you have other churches that were willing to that they were willing to thumb their thumb their nose that Rome in all of her edicts and that's another objection that the Orthodox give that it doesn't always work for this reason alone just because authority is rejected does not invalidate the authority that is claim you have you have ecumenical councils that were rejected and mass by many many regions in early Christianity but the Orthodox are not quick or the Anglicans for the Protestants are not as quick to point to that to invalidate the authority of councils secondly you can extend this to any region of life if we were to follow with this principle that when authority is rejected it shows the invalidity of that authority but what about the authority of God we have many in our world today sadly who don't follow the Lord don't keep his Commandments does that invalidate the authority of God No so we have to be careful you know when we say well yeah but people rejected the judgments of Rome here and there this is something to keep our finger on but it's not a drop-dead argument against the papacy because if we were to take it that way it would have to be just as much of a reputation of conciliar authority which I know that our Eastern Orthodox friends is not willing to do so let me mention the next thing here during the fourth century you had the Arian controversy and the you know Constantine the Great came into a very spectacular vision in his vocation as the Emperor and he he wanted to preside over a Christian Empire and having the bishops united was essential to that because you couldn't have a single Empire with that is Christian when you have the leaders of the Christian Church fragmented and divided over what the Christian faith is so you had the Council of Nicaea which many of your listeners will already know condemned the heresy of arianism but the following years was no song-and-dance you you had many bishops who were willing to undo their their allegiance to that council on some theological basis that they came to find that was more precise and this is why you know some historians will we'll call it the semi airing the semi Aryan movement where they weren't going back to what area said they were but they were rejecting the Nicene dogma of the homo Luciana homos yes this you know one the equal in substance with God the Father and so you had bishops East who were not going out they were not following the Council of Nicaea and who were even opting for the rehabilitation of areas who had been condemned by the council one of the stars of the East we defended the Nicene dogma was st. Athanasius the great he is he is held up by the Orthodox as a hero as we Catholics hold him up he ran into some conflicts with his contemporaries in East and the story is rather complex and long very interesting now if anybody wants to read up on the history of death and ACS please do so it is marvelous but a long story short here he was deposed and excommunicated by no less than two provincial that were held in the East one and taken tear and another where it was confirming that feared judgment in Jerusalem athenais she is found in Rome the place where he could go to have those decisions overturned the Bishop of Rome at the time was Pope st. Julia's the first he had through an exchange of letters with those who condemned that Vinicius which we can call was a big party that was led by Eusebius and he he offered all of them to come to the Roman Church for a final size over the situation of fna shoes the assyrian party was not willing to cooperate because pope julius would not recognize the reformable nature of the provincial synod in the east and so because Pope Julius was was willing to exonerate a tenacious the you cbons were very hardened to cooperate but Pope Julius claimed to have the authority to undo those decisions and least to write a letter to give Athanasius and send him back to Alexandria with letters of exoneration and restoration to his episcopate okay this is missus this is 15 yeah this is 15 years before the Council of serdika might be off on that what 18 years made up in anyway so we have here two years before the Council of serdika the Pope claiming that he has the authority to overturn the decisions of councils held in the east now this exceeds honorific primacy because he wasn't offering suggestions and he wasn't offering recommendations now when when Athanasius returned to his XI they were unwilling to receive him so we could say yes maybe there were so there were Easterners who did not accept that Authority but what follows I think validates the tradition that julius was representing now my view when Pope Julius wrote to the heir to the semi Aryan party or the you see bein party notifying them that Athanasius should be exonerated he refers to a custom of the Church Fathers before him all the way back to Peter and Paul that when situations as grand as the deposition of the patriarch of Alexandria they should be referred to the Roman see for a just judgment what do you mean by that is not just you know that there's some intellectual superiority and they can get the right answer over other people no it means that there's a judicial process that from where the Roman see has the legitimate position to offer that judgment and this is a few years before Sarika but anyway anyhow going back to the issue where the Easterners did not accept this there's an ecumenical council that is eventually called by both the eastern and western efforts and they meet in Sarika this is near modern-day Bulgaria Sofia and they meet at this council and this council there they are there to address the issue of a tenacious and many other Eastern bishops who had lost their episcopate due to the depositions of the seminarians at the Council of Sarika it was put into law that a bishop could appeal from his metropolitan or from a synod that condemned him to the Roman Church for a retrial now here's the thing this is what they use to justify this canon they said let us honor the memory of Peter now a lot of work ducks Protestant and you know Anglican publications on this this almost sounds kind of dull let us let us honor the memory of Peter it almost seems like the word honor is right there so this is almost a confirmation of this onerous primacy but again we have to look at this in context in context what is what is being addressed here what's being addressed here is the loosing of bishops from depositions and condemnation that took place in foreign lands so when they say let us honor the memory of Peter what they're saying is let us remember Peter in his primacy the power of the keys to bind and loose and to loose judgments anywhere in the world or bind them because if the roman bishop agreed to the first judgment that was to be solidified where no appeals could be had over that so this admissions that this is definitely not a sign of a primacy of pure honor where he gets to offer suggestions and recommendations and he gets to write a really nice theological book that Wow's everybody in the world know this is a institutional judiciary process that is claimed to go right back to the very roots that Cyprian calls the patron identity and so I think that goes far beyond you know the primacy of honor issue did you want to say something no I'm not a good say these things to work at us today what you tend to get is well I mean they said this that doesn't mean what you think it means that doesn't mean the leader stuff of the jurisdictional desk developed by Jesuits in the 16th century blah blah so often you get met with this kind of well that's that's not what means so I thought why don't we turn to some of the Greek witnesses that you mentioned that that witness the authority of the papacy maybe it's right in his jurisdiction and the apostle units of the council's as well yeah yes definitely so you'll recall some objections that come from those who are not convinced of the papacy that the Pope can't act alone see this is one of the issues and gets to the very heart of the matter you know they're willing to accept papal primacy some of them are even willing to say that it comes from st. Peter but what it comes down to is can he act xsa can he can he act individually and by the church well if there's a historical scenario that I think helps us see the answer to this question and it's the history just after the Council of Chalcedon okay so the council of chalcedon is concluded Leo's tome is ratified Christ has two natures one person the Eastern Churches begin to Waffle on this initially the Patriarchate of Constantinople wants to remain faithful Chalcedon but the whole sea of Alexandria drops out and they follow the Yuka Qian and the BS Goren doctrine and they were called the mono physics the one one nature that they believe in one nature in Christ they in Alexandria it was agreed so that all the other patriarchs Constantinople Antioch and Jerusalem all fell under this this force of monophysitism now granted there was a lot of imperial intervention that took place not many of the bishops there were free to deliberate but when the when the Emperor's were able to get hold of the patriarch ins they were able to claim the whole regions over to an anti chalcedonian movement so you had one Emperor that was a usurper name was Beth Julius he's he wrote an imperial encyclical asking all the bishops in the east to reject Chalcedon and to ratify Nicaea constantinople one ephesus and emphasis - which is lecherous inium that's the robber council of four four nine ratifying those councils and dropping Chavez off of the ecumenical list now this wasn't easy but eventually they got to the point where all the patriarchs for mana physics and the only Church the only see at the time that was holding strong to the Council of Chalcedon was referral and the Western Church is under so here you have a situation where the other four patriarchs are in heresy and the Pope is forced to act alone and of course you know the post at the time simplicity is Phillips the third they take action and they deposed acacias of Constantinople and this is brought on the occasion schism which was you know precipitated prior by the Emperor Zeno who decided because Alexander it was mono physics and Chalcedon was a dice I to come up with this document to try and reconcile the two views the head Nautica long story short let's get to the to the meat here these churches did not find their way back into the mystery of the church except for an intervention from Rome that was invited under Emperor Justin in his nephew Justinian and this is you know widely known as the history of the formula of hormuz das where the Pope at the time v is v 1880 is asked to reconcile the Eastern Churches now before this I mentioned that there was a lot of Greek bishops and monks and priests who witnessed to the the invested the investiture of primacy in Peter by Jesus Christ at the johanan gospel where it says feet feed my sheep feed my lambs there were appeals throughout this but when the eastern patriarchs went under one under the clips of Orthodoxy into monophysitism you had appeals from the Greeks who were forced under submission you had appeals being written to the Pope and in these appeals it was new unanimous and explicit that the successor of Peter is the roman bishop the roman bishop because of his succession from peter is the universal shepherd and calling on the universal shepherd to bring healing to the flock so this is this is a huge witness i think to to the to the primacy of rome along the lines of vatican 1 which is that there is a patron reality that continues in a very specific and individualistic way for the roman bishop so when when Emperor Justinian has the Pope come to give the terms of reunion so that the eastern patriarchs can find their way back into the church this formula of Union stated that the Roman Church because because the the promise of Christ your Peter and on this rock I will build my church is proven by the infallibility of the Roman Church as was proven throughout history I recommend anybody who's listening to look up the formula of horn is nuts if you put it in Google it comes up now the patriarch of Constantinople signs it and every other eastern patriarchs signed it except for the bishop and patriarch of alexandria it is recorded by a forgotten name Rufus or roof of Rufus Nova Julius isn't that ravine as yet there you go it's recorded that 2500 bishops signed this formula of reunion so here's an instance where the very objection of the papal exclusivity you know we will work set we're able to accept the papal primacy but we don't believe he could act to bind the churches by himself well the history forces us to look at a situation where this people isolation you could if you want to call it is it comes on the Roman Church apart from her will she never wanted the churches in the East to go mono physic and the Roman Church was forced to act alone and being the instrument of bringing the eastern patriarchs back into the church and in the process the very instrument has one of the most explicit papal ISM that you could find in the early documents of the first millennium and that document itself was actually used at the first Vatican Council when it was framing its doctrine of infallibility and then there's also the testimony of various councils that received letters in the protocol dies because is probably one of her better examples where probably the great her to the council and the things that he commanded were done and they declared the breath that the more or less then he was in charge of the council from the farm and said that Peter has broken through Lia like we should see that the same thing in the six council leader Peter is spoken through Agatha and his letters to that council and he's hit again earlier in Ephesus where st. Cyril allows no very precise of the council Ephesus which condemn notorious in the name of the probe so much so that important of wide range of witnesses that's where he receives the main purpose is from standing in place of the program tells it oh yes absolutely yeah I and I'm speaking of Chalcedon you know there's this several books written on the debate over the 20th Canon of childhood on and the third canon of constantinople one but put simply when when those cannons of kalsa don were were pending ratification the very patriarchal concept the very patriarch of Constantinople at the time Anatole as' he wrote a letter to the Pope almost kind of giving an apology for the 28 cannon and admits that Pope Leo had the authority to keep those cannons standing or to drop them and that the whole matter was left in his hands it was not as if it was not as if the Pope of Rome was the last link in a series of equals that was needed to complete the series no no Anatolia says that the force the whole force of the canons lie in his approval or disapproval and I think you know that's two years after Chalcedon this layer is coming from 454 53 from constantinople from Anatolia to Leo so that that can was officially dropped at least inwards at least inward some years later about 25 years later you have a case years of Constantinople when he was in conflict with the Patriarchate of Alexandria he actually wrote to Pope simplicious to think or fulfill a third but other one of those two writing asking him to canonize the 28 cannon so that he could have further strength and facing the disputes that were going on in Alexandria because Alexandria was claiming to have more of an influence in the east of the time so right there I mean having the veto power over the cannons that is more more on more than honorific and it's definitely different than what we hear from from some interpreters I have one friend of mine who says that the Pope only had one his his vote at a council was worth one person we could see that the history shows up otherwise when the entire Second Council you mentioned earlier episodes the macho Cheney of them the Roberts Council was invalidated funny cochlea now it was not invalid with the common consent of the church there wasn't another counselor this was an ecumenical council attended by bishops from all over the world was there her travel expenses were paid on the material done and then then again trading on the same for first council members declared democracy for subversion area method they have tokens for the letter of god and so now they they come in and you have instead they kick out the papal legates and declare from an opposite ism which was which the people we need to condemn and then the folk did too in today he can damage the whole council and the Orthodox still follow that action today and not recognizing a second councilmember suspend deep recognizing Calzada they themselves seem to push as an effect you know they want a bit too many issues before they foretell ability by accepting with the cope and validating the next medical calendar and I'll establish the call of the summation say some of another one confirm that later ones proceedings yeah I agree you know this and what's interesting is that you know there's there's all this hype about the power of an ecumenical council and yet like you said from all appearances Ephesus 449 look at chemical you had Emperor Theodosius ii who called it you had a eastern and western representation and you had an exercise of imperial authority with a considerable authority he had you know you turkeys who himself was not a bishop he was in our commands right but you had the oscars and you see a dos seus ii of he recognized the validity of the council and would not I would not bend to that even at the protests of polio as far as we could tell from the letter exchange it wasn't until the the emperor after Theodosius ii came that we had the ability to hold child so not but you know like I said this big hype about councils Chalcedon was short-lived in the East it was it was just only a matter of 20-30 years that they were able to hold on to it strong enough so you know I really do think that at the end of the day you there is a divine commission that was given to you know the Roman Pope to unify the churches and I think that's the very character of his power is to bring the churches into unity and which requires some assignment of authority because when you have a rivalry between wills there has to be one rule that comes in and rectifies the rivalry well the only way to do that and bring unity is through a divine assignment for that very responsibility and I think like we've been talking about the the witness of the fathers definitely does cater to that but you know and you also mentioned the Council of the the six council with Pope Agathe at that council Papa gato whose venerated in the East as the same both then and now because then they were they held up his letter to the council as supreme witness of Orthodoxy in that very letter he says that the commission of Christ to Peter effectually entails a papal infallibility and he says it quite explicitly in his letter on I think two or three different occasions I'll have that linked in the episode there so people can go and read that and we've done tremendous not on the coop and so I wanted try there's a lot more assignment of course obviously the quickly connect the six council depression ignoring this is another big one another can write I think at the moment it's probably good to kind of segue way because the East obviously station communing with the West at this time and that would come up into the end of the first millennium in the telecom medieval dated 10:54 according to the popular history the Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other let's even work on Wikipedia where the Wikipedia entry for cochineal denied was probe at that time it says quote the other ninth is widely considered the most historically significant German code for the Middle Ages his sighting of the donation of Constantine in the letter to the patriarch of Constantinople brought about the great schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches now that's an interesting went to because theatres of Boston line is a famous medieval Byzantine Canada's actually himself categorized in catalogues and approves the donation of Constantine and on the basis that the privileges of old Rome worked for new Rome - I mean that wasn't talking to this little everybody except that's not so but nevertheless so let's kind of hit some of these issues then what happens in 1054 how often was the East and communion with Rome in this period and in following the Towson was just a clean break white people for this popular history likes to maintain and then further what what is you get this from Greek Orthodox apologist - what's the donation of Constantine false appraisals in some of these other issues okay well what happens in 1054 is you have a a mutual excommunication between a a cardinal Cardinal Humbert he was one of the Cardinals under Pope Leo the ninth and the patriarch of Constantinople michael cera larious now first before explains back honor that at the time this was a in excommunication of the patriarch of constantinople home Bart did not intend in his excommunication to write off the Church of Antioch or the Church of Jerusalem or the Church of Alexandria from the Holy diptych in the in the Liturgy of the West this was humbug versus Michael Cyril arias and likewise Michael Cyril arias he didn't really think that calm Bart's excommunication was a representation of the Pope at the time Pope Leo the night so he even interpreted it as a n excommunication coming from the Cardinal himself so now I don't you know there's a tendency to overplay 1054 this also is also a tendency to downplay 1054 so what I mean by that is that the differences between Rome and Constantinople at this time were long de facto they were already long in practice it wasn't until many years later that some of these differences caused a willful separation but 1054 definitely March time when the the Western churches start to get ideas about the East there is no huge schism between the churches at this point in time it was constantinople michael cera larry's and Cardinal on their Pope Leo 9:20 Mac Chua Lee was dead they had died at the time and he wasn't even alive to withstand the legitimacy of Cardinal Humberts action as representative of Rome he does despite the fact that michael cera larious didn't even accept it as an authentic roman judgment so what what precipitated this event well you had you had situations going on in Constantinople that led the patriarch to write several criticisms of a certain practice that had mentioned before we design the the use of unleavened bread the Armenians in the East actually even at the time they had used unleavened bread in the Eucharist and as did the lack of churches in Constantinople and so Michael Ferrell artists took the move to actually shut these churches down because of it and Michael Cyril arias wrote a letter to the West basically cataloging all kinds of Western errors but this this issue of the assigns was was a very important matter at the time so Pope Leo the ninth gets this letter reads it and he writes up a letter to send back to the east and he has quotations from the donation of Constantine which is a document that is claimed to have been written up by Pope by the Emperor Constantine refers to Pope Sylvester granting him authority over all the patriarchs and over a grand size of territory in the West and but let's not overplay this because even some of the the latest scholars who have looked at this let's say dr. Klaus Schatz he wrote a book called the Roman primacy its origins to present now he is more on the liberal side he's no friend to Catholic dogma Titian let's put it that way but he even admits that the donation of Constantine wasn't the full force of papal ISM at any time even especially at this time there was plenty of other evidence and patristic citations that were being authentic by both east and west that could have been equally used so it's not as if you subtracted that some of these false writings that there by there is no support for the papacy or for papal authority that's not how anybody thought of it at the time so anyway Pope Leo the 9th is writing a letter to the east and he inserts a number of patristic citations but primarily relying on the donation of Constantine and then Cardinal Harbor has that he added two different letters to hopefully on the 9th one of them contained a a criticism of the East's their practices and in particular the fact that they removed the Filioque sin creek now useful I wrong about that but by the time he reaches Constantinople he the common Cardinal Han bear is sent as a Likud to Constantinople with two others two other liggett's and they reach Hagia Sophia and the patriarch of Constantinople is not receiving the authority of these these letters and finally of because Cardinal home bear was was a man who was willing to he was he was willing to act as he did he was a straight she was a straight shooter and he was eager to get the east to come under the authority of the hot Apostolic See in response to the stubbornness of patriarch of Solaris patriarch of Constantinople it's time he goes into Hagia Sophia and puts down the bowl of excommunication and as soon as they're walking out Deacon from inside came running out begging begging the paper to be overturned the bowl to be nullified but that didn't happen so I'm bear returns to Rome and Michael Cyril arias is now you know going back in excommunication on Cardinal Harbor so at the time there were different patron there was the patriarch of Antioch Peter he was actually notified about what had happened and he actually disagreed with Michael Cyril arias on the liturgical criticisms he thought that the enzymes were wrong but he didn't think that they merited the action that Cyril arias took so this did not represents the schism between East and West at this point we have many years for that going forward from far did you did you want to say something to that to add to that it is very same time probably of the nine was fighting southern Italy was the Normans at the request of the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantinople to defend realm lands in Italy from and it didn't seem incidentally from the Normans and he died in a Norman Jail maybe we lost a significant battle he was taken prisoner by the Normans and a lot of these letters from sugar out Terraria never sees me right the thick coming back to him from you know it while he's in jail as he was fighting on behalf of his people you know it's actually interesting dynamic to add on to this particular form a guy thinking yeah I definitely think that when you look at some of these these side realities you realize that some of the darker figures that we we're so dark or hot but yeah going going forward from from that time you know we have a a gent what really caused the schism initially in the second millennium was the Crusades and here I'm an agreement with Steve Ronson who who who believes likewise that the schism between east and west was not something that was concretely realized in an official way until the sack of Constantinople where after afternoons afternoon deafening Tonopah was sacked you have a Latin occupation in Constantinople until the until of I believe it was the the Emperor at the time and I forgot his name kailia Louis which is it is a failure Louis of the Emperor was able to regain the power over Constantinople I was twelve six 180 at this point in time you had a several decades where you had Greek bishops standing next to Latin bishops in the same region I think that's the first time you start to see what we officially call schism because you can have a lot of angry letters being sent to and fro but when you when you start having the pitch gifts that are at that are at rivals within the same region now you now you have schism and that's what I think we start to see concretely these what what's called the schism between the East and the West at the time because you had yet different of Greeks who were who were saying that it's Assad if you're in communion with any of the last bishops then you are excommunicated from the church and this becomes why it's widely known in the East at the time you have a reunion attempt in 1274 at the Council of Lyon here the council is there to discuss the issue of the papacy the issue of Filioque the is Ines and but primarily the Filioque and this is this is a council a tell after Constantinople comes back under Greek Byzantine hands this is it was just interesting because after the sack of Constantinople which is 12:05 you have a Latin preoccupation you have this formalized schism inside those lands and then Byzantine control comes back into Constantinople and then about 15 years later you have a means of reunion Council there's no doubt that the Emperor and the patriarch of Constantinople who was close to him was more interested in the socio-political and the the military benefits of having the union with the West now this Council of leone's the eastern and the western bishops agree on the Filioque not only the Filioque addition to the kree but the Filioque doctrine and if you get the Dorian's we've gone into it too much up to this point explain briefly the Filioque doctrine and some of the consequences of whities to reject okay well the the Filioque it's a complex history because it's it's referred to by a lot of people in her father's and others will debate whether that was really the Filioque as the latin later thought but without getting into all the nitty-gritty details but that the latin way embrace the Filioque doctrine and we see this early in the father's life Italian Thank You Larry appears definitely st. Ambrose st. Agustin the first time we see any cradle formulation of the Filioque is and one of it is in two places first in this Creed that was spread around the West called the Athanasian Creed it was claimed to have begun with a tenacious a lot of our modern scholars today agree that it is of a sixth century origin but in this Creed it is unashamedly fully oak with that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son add interest imminently eternally and substantially inside the inside the Godhead the other place you have is in Spain Toledo the councils of toledo toledo of the third council of toledo five eight nine you have a cannon I believe it's a third cannon that states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son eternally and this was in response to as they saw the Arian heresy which many of the barbarians and the other immigrants were being commissioned by Aryans so to procure a condemnation of that doctrine they thought it was essential to to say that the son with the father equally with the father spy rates the holy spirit so you have that five eight nine going forward in in the West it was common I mean you have certain certainly historians who lived at the time who would be able to comment say was it was a common teaching of the West in 680 you have a council in in the north west under st. Theodore of Canterbury please actually a business team born Archbishop and we're weary from saying venerable saint venerable to being at the time that that council in habit has been called the Council passed a field that council confessed Filioque that's 680 AD around the same time you have the mono fella controversy that's going on between Rome and Constantinople and and the Alexandrian patriarch one of the things that the eastern patriarchs thought they could use to undermine Rome was that they said that the Spirit proceeded further from sorry the Spirit yeah the Spirit proceeds from the Sun one person who stood in between is a famous fourth of the Eastern he's venerated in the Eastern Orthodox tradition st. Maximus the Confessor he stands in between in writes and letters of these saying that the Latins are not to be accused of heresy when they say that the Spirit proceeds from the Son and the father from his time in Africa in Rome he was able to read flurry Gilliam's from the West based off of the father's particularly San Agustin and st. Cyril of Jerusalem on his commentary of st. John the gospel that this was not a heresy they appealed to the fathers forth and that they don't they did not the Latins did not say that the son has the hypostatic property of cause for in the Greek hai-yah the sole cause or originator on the Godhead but that the spirit comes forth from the father and son shows forth their Constantia ality so you have a seventh century Eastern monk same access the Confessor who's held up today is champion award philosophy who spent time in Filioque West West who did not deem me heretical now I know some of the listeners would disagree and say that the the Filioque that was then taught by Rome was not the Filioque that came thereafter and especially at Lyon and Florence but that's a matter of debate of course but the garden we there's one more argument here though that his size encounters with the Orthodox a few times that well that that particular letter of next is the confessor is only preserved in Rome and of course the Romans gave us the donation of Constantine so we really can't trust anything to faith well I mean I would say that I would say that if it's preserved in a role there would be more there would be more than there would be more more reason argumentation requires undermine install office DISA T I'm not aware of modern scholars who reject the authenticity of that letter in fact I believe one of the latest works on Filioque it's by a former Catholic he actually converted to orthodoxy his name is Edward chachinsky he wrote a book on the Filioque and he mentions this in his book and so I doubt that in that it's that it's considered by most scholars as unreliable there well anyway that happens in the 7th century the real kick started for all this comes in the the 8th century with the Carolingian and the Franks they they bought into the Filioque so strong that it became a dogmatic issue for them when Charlemagne what time was king of the Franks when he received the Acts of the Nicene Synod and 787 he put his finger on that point where the patriarch of Constantinople thanked her osseous said that the Spirit proceeds from the father through the son the Charlemagne read that as a rejection of Filioque so he sent a delegation to the Pope Pope Adrian at the time to say hey this this bishop in the east is teaching the heresy of anti anti Filioque heresy well the Pope responded to Charlemagne saying no this is quite perfectly patristic this is in fact the Roman tradition and it accords with their view so but the Carolingians became more and more convinced of the importance of the Filioque doctrine and eventually put it into liturgical use this ended up getting to the ears of Easterners in Jerusalem don't when some Latin monks were reciting the creek they were blamed for saying truly oak way in the creek so the Pope got involved is those Latin monks appealed hopefully over third probably over third responded with a letter to the east defending the orthodoxy of Filioque okay so it's very clear that Rome supports the doctrine of the Filioque but the stock has never at this point ratified the usage of Filioque decree this forward into the into the ninth century where you have some events that cause the patriarch of Constantinople foetus to write up some criticisms of the lapse this happened over a dispute over the territory of Bulgaria who was going to have patriarchal patriarchal rights over Bulgaria Rome formally had those lands before the iconoclastic Emperor Leo Leo the third cooked that in retaliation away from Rome by imperial force those lands were each turn events forward but Rome didn't really view that Emperor's action is valid so they had no problem sending in Frankish visionaries into Bulgaria and to set up a church for the Bulgarians who were under King Boris at the time well there was some there were some Byzantine missionary there as well but King Boris had been removed to allow for the missionaries that were coming from the West and that was just initial while those missionaries who were asked to leave reported some of the practices of the Franks back to Constantinople and and this was in 867 80 then you had the patriarch of Constantinople photius writing up his works against the Filioque its addition to the Creed its ditch theology he disagreed with the theology of the Filioque there's a famous work the mr. Gandhi of the Holy Spirit is a work that he put out to this to refute the Filioque long story short the pulse of wrong agree that this should not be put into the Creed and there's actually a council we're not going to get into 869 we'll talk about 879 Pope John agreed that the Filioque should not be in the creek there's a lot of debate well goes back and forth with historical interpretations around this council but we could all agree that the Pope at the time was not supportive of the Filioque going into decree the Carolingians that before that they continued anyway so it was it wasn't until a hundred and fifty years later give or take at the coronation of King Henry the second as the Roman Emperor that that papal mass the Filioque was recited in the crease at Rome and so from that point forward it was taken as a grant that there was papal sanction on the use of filial now the Filioque itself is a teaching it's rooted in the patristic it says that the Holy Spirit has his origin from both the father and the son is his subsystem being from both father and son equally the Greeks especially focused saw this as saying there was two causes to the Holy Spirit now this met this caused in his mind a heresy because it was conflating father and son in their hydrostatic properties and thereby removing the father from his hypostatic property as the sole source of the Godhead and the hybrid in the hypotheses of the Trinity but at the transfer of Lyon and that the Council of Florence the Latins were able to give a sufficient defense to show that this was not the case there are many other objections that proaches had we couldn't get into them all right now but the Latin responses was this that the father alone you the sole cause of the of the Godhead there was some language differences between the ladders in the Greek which undoubtedly caused some of the misunderstanding for the Latins the verb coche to Ray was not as specific as the Greek word that was used for the firm for precede pictorial side that was a definite point of origin now the Greek use of prone AEI which is a general coming forth that was that was more akin to what the lads meant by croce during the Latins taught that the father the father is the sole cause of the Godhead but that in beginning the son in beginning the son he gives to the son this spy raishin of the Holy Spirit so that from from that point with no interval of time this is an eternity the father and the son both most violate the spirit but here's difference the father has it by himself because he is the principle without principle that's how the Council of Florence put it he is the cause without cause The Sun has birth from the father that's any childbirth but it's not-it's no less a birth he is born of the father before all ages so the son does not have the spy rating of the spirit in himself the father gives him that and so and and so they both have that equally because of their perfect union in confidentiality that is so that is the that's how the lens were able to at Florence say okay we can put the Greek back dia the father the spirit comes from that from the father through dia the son we can match that by saying that the father has it in himself to proceed the spirit and he gives it to the Son and the son has it via the birth from the father so that's how they were able to reconcile this at Florence and the Greeks then agreed saved for Mark of Ephesus Dean and then we'll we could add I guess I suppose Galerius only because what he accepted it there when he got back he rejected became the head of the entire huge apartment right yeah that's after the council the council was short-lived you know looking back several good historians look back and it's a big debate on why the council Florence did not stick here you have a council bishops are there both bishops sign agree with with a consensus except you know you have the disagreements Salford that men did exist and you have the explanation of many of the Orthodox today and say that it was it was all agreed under duress so this can't be taken as a valid council I mean we have to admit that the situation at the time with the you know with with the Turks right at the gates of Constantinople practically speaking there was a lot of pressure to sign into this agreement at the same time you still have a lot of hesitancy with the Greeks at the council and of what seems like a gin some genuine agreement you know particularly pasaría who he he seems to suggest that he was won over you know to the Filioque doctrine freely based on the evidence that was provided to them through from the line fathers and even the eastern fathers well he declared to the council he says what answer shall we give to God and he comes to ask why we have separated from my brethren to him who to unite us and bring us into that one pole came down from the heaven was incarnate and was crucified what will our defense be in his eyes errors and MVIS and prosperity all venerable fathers we must not suffer this to be and later he stated we can remember the river church and remained as a as a cardinal actually four years ago so he was definitely when he did not go and join what's the terrific set up the Greek Church as an autonomous Church under their kind of quote/unquote autonomous hundred is their watch he didn't go back and join it and renamed it another Church right yeah so I'm included there is there a base on Y Florence didn't stick but ultimately in Constantinople the the anti unionists were were able to to prove that it openly was not received by the Greek a disc of it and you know eventually you know sad sad sad news came where Constantinople fell and from that point forward we don't we don't have any serious attempts at reconciling our beliefs on the Filioque until the Commission's of research beginning of the three in the 80s 1979 with the ecumenical dialogues and we've we've made significant progress but you still have the Eastern Orthodox who are mainly taking the developments that took place after Council of the Council of Leon's with Gregory of Cyprus at the Council of Lashon hang you have this got the doctrine of the from the father through the son manifesting or or energetically that really comes out more like in st. Gregory Palamas so you have that which today many many are still convinced is a substantially different doctrine so you mentioned to the success of whether it's the progress has been meaning as medical dialogue since the beginnings yet at the same time I suppose we should have an ecumenical dialogue with who for us with whom because you have another feature custom to know who will come out with various meetings with Vatican congregations whatnot and put the most amount out after is called a black part and mocking the slightest afford then you have the Russians to us Russian Orthodox bishops sermons erosions I know calling humanism heresy and at the same time you had a recent attempt in a council and the Russians walked out you know who are you constantinople your twenty five people at your mr. Luigi is going to fix this double rewrite us you know what's the doctrine here you know so I guess in a certain sense you should ask I mean the nature of how the Orthodox view the Trinity in terms of that with the Holy Spirit proceeds only through the collar with in relation to the Sun and it seems like there's a relation in their Trinitarian news to their ecclesiology also so I guess how do you describe their ecclesiology and people leave in terms of the authority of one Bishop versus another and I explore a little more as a locking ought to follows nature of each Bishop the well like I said before at the beginning of our our discussion the fact that they don't have a governing body that is higher for supreme over the the Episcopalian ISM they have run into a lot of rivalries in views and this has no doubt caused a lot of jurisdictional problems even even having whole swaths of the Episcopal not recognizing one versus the other like the Russian church in exile did not recognize the Orthodox Church of America and so that you had that taking place where there's there's not even Eucharistic communion between two equally supposedly equally Orthodox bodies of you know the same the same church the Russian Church in exile since 1921 was out of communion with Moscow until 2006 there was there was a breach in communion and there were these these breaks in communion however the Orthodox don't view them as consequentially proving them for their governmental structure as false they it almost seems as though they have decided to live with it as a feature that you know in a man where you have men in the church you will have mistakes you will have flaws you will have visions but they see in this that there is the same belief held by both so it's almost so it's not tolerated but it's almost as if there's a there's some sort of conciliation in mind that you know we all have the same faith kind of you know so that's that's that suffice is to keep us from having any anxiety of over whether this is the true church or not in like you said Russia has not always been on board constantinople but we talk about them as though they are the two representatives sometimes and that's not true either you know the Church of Constantinople i I'm told by many of my port sucks interlocutors represents the Church of Constantinople and so Constantinople wanted to go into Union Rome or to agree to the Latin formulation the Filioque Constantinople can do it and be happy while the rest of the Orthodox body will sever communion basically and same thing with Russia Russia doesn't claim to have any kind of voice of representation for the other Orthodox churches outside of the Russian great racket which is the biggest you know despite what we're saying so the Orthodox and and you do have you know what do they look for as a criterion of truth now they they do look at the council's but their theory of councils has I think significantly undergone development which was ironic because this is what they tend to say about the papacy in order to undermine her for instance the christological heresies of the first millennium none of them would have worked if if they thought that the council decrees were only binding once the whole church had time to receive it like we were talking about with the romano cell-like controversy that would invalidate Chalcedon because childe Hassam was not received and ultimately digested by the faithful in these by many anyway so today you have this this idea it really comes from a Escamilla he's uh more of a lay orthodox theologian who many years ago wrote on this issue of sabor nas ecclesiology and the idea of consoles now you know rejecting outright that there is no visible machinery that that decides what's true or false in the church but that there is this you know calm penetration between clergy lady over time through time outside of time that that serves to be the witness of what is true and so this causes problems for you know formal councils who stand up and pronounce judgments on doctrine faith and morals so the Orthodox today it's difficult to know exactly what they believe about councils say if you listen to the Metropolitan Police Plaza where who's one of the the front voices in the Orthodox dialogue again with the few who even see it as a legitimate function who espouses this view of reception that's what it's called the reception theory of ecumenism for councils so it's a matter of dispute as to what they would see as acting super supreme authority then they recently had the council and greet um but there again you have what many are calling the a new surfing authority of the patriarch of Constantinople now I'm not saying that's not coming from me that's coming from many of the Orthodox who see the counsel of Crete as in uncanonical then I have other friends you see it as a legitimate active Authority and that not only is the council not only is it right but that it's actually it actually has official authority to bind the consciousness of the church of the churches that at least agree who at least agreed initially to attend so you have differences on the well on the authority of councils because you don't have anything concretely above the the episcopate to really sort this out for for the Orthodox and they don't see it as a wound so they don't see it as something which cripples them it's they have they have taken it as a feature and as something that is part of the growing process in the church so that's what I would say now on the issue of the authority of the Orthodox each Bishop is is has that's that's the full supreme power of the priesthood is the bishop no bishop has the authority to intervene in the internal affairs of another you have patriarchal rights which is they often cite apostolic Canon 34 in the early centuries which says that every every territory should recognize its its head and that that the body should do nothing without the head but that the head should do nothing without the body so you have that that Suvarna ecclesiology kind of in there and so you have you have a canonical premise for Metropole yeah and you know for you have economic Primus for the patriarchy patriarchy it the growth of patriarchs with you know the way they see it was Rome constantinople Alexandria Antioch and Jerusalem and they have their oversight but all of it is limited it's not a course of primacy of authority unless there is some sort of a consumer move you know and and then even then it can be overturned and unrecognized by other parts of the church well we're gone to a course here so Eric with everything you've said what would you say the Amana Catholic was struggling because of some little bit addictive Pope Francis or some other thing or this whole question of course the teaching to different sites holding their interpretations the authentic one and you know if there's a Catholic it's struggling then saying hey weren't actually see you got it together what would you say to me Kappa contemplating that are converting to use ah well I would say that you don't really have to compare orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism along the lines of how successful they're doing nowadays I think that you have enough Eastern Orthodox who are honest enough to admit to many many different problems that are internal to be to be to the Eastern Orthodox Church obviously you have a lot of Catholics for more than has been willing to admit that we have talked today in in the Catholic Church many many many problems but when you want to look at the veracity of the claims one has to to look and see whether the evidence supports what the Orthodox are saying or what the Catholics are saying on the way Christ instigated the church's government so when we look into the first millennium I argue and I continue to argue unless any of my Orthodox or Anglican friends can show me otherwise that the the Lord Jesus Christ established a government to the church which is people centered you have the episcopate but you also have the head of the episcopate which is the Pope and the the truth of that the veracity of that doesn't really depend on a perfect success rate we have many times in church history where there was a failure in the papacy as there was in the Episcopal in the East they will also admit that the there were failures in the Episcopal and they don't have anything higher than the episcopate in terms of a government sacramental government anyway they have the belief in SU knots and councils which are an expression of the sacramental order of Bishops but you even have councils that fail so there isn't a drop-dead falsification argument against the Catholic Church because of what we're going for you today you have to look and see the what the scripture says what the Church Fathers say on how Christ instituted the church's government and pray for it to work this is what we're this is going back to what I was saying before many assume there's this papal automation or papal omniscience as if there's this perfect machinery in the papal office and that it's there to always work like an energizer bunny and we would love it to be that way but it's not that way Christ has relegated the mission of the church into the hands of sinners real men and women who have natural eleven and natural operations of human life which include the propensity sent to to deprive to to failure even theological so that doesn't undermine what the Catholic Church says about the visible Church as a guarantor of the propagation and transmission of the apostolic tradition it just means that if we're going to invalidate the Catholic Church based off of a papal failure we would also have to invalidate the Eastern Orthodox on an Episcopal failure but none of them are none of them rightly and they do they do so rightly none of them would say that that follows so you know here we are we're dealing with the time and the expenses in the in the church right now where there is great difficulty and there is a failure at the very top of the church and even those very close to the top and we have to pray because we know what the scripture says we know what the Church Fathers say we know what the councils say we know that many glorious Saints such as st. Thomas Aquinas st. Bonaventure st. Catherine of Siena san agustin st. Thomas Fisher st. Thomas More all these trophies of holiness were created from the Catholic Church from the institution which has the divine life with the failure in mind we pray that Christ would bring a rescue to the situation but we don't turn our backs on what we know to be divinely instituted well think that's all the time we have today so hear it thank you for joining us and sharing with this always really great information on the subject Thank You Ryan I appreciate you having me I'm sorry if I took too much time there's just so much to talk about and sometimes yeah with all the with all the facts and scenarios you can kind of lose sight of what you're referring to but hopefully whatever was said that could offer somewhat of a start for somebody who's looking into this and so they'll definitely have to have you back all right if you've been browsing the Internet here's Facebook and various Catholic circles you may have seen media to express what is metrics for sweetness personal Mediatrix press is 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Channel: Sensus Fidelium

Views: 17,917

Rating: 4.7112298 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, christianity, God, Jesus Christ, russian orthodox, greek orthodox, council of crete, bible, gospel, grace, tradition, history, schism, council, church, patriarch, constantinople, lyons, ephesus, ewtn, papacy, pope, Rome, vatican, lord, lamb, truth

Id: -tLjKvgJBTY

Length: 133min 56sec (8036 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2017