Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- All Categories 13.8K
- General Category 10.9K
- General Announcements 184
- Faith Issues 3.4K
- Coptic Orthodox Church 2.5K
- Personal Issues 1.4K
- Prayer Requests 423
- Random Issues 1.8K
- Introductions 294
- Non-Orthodox Inquiries 232
- Youth Corner 606
- Hymns 2.5K
- Hymns Discussion 2.5K
- Technicial Difficulties 368
- Technical Topics 368
Coptic eccumenical councils?
Some guy told me the Coptics rejected the 4th Ecumenical Council and the 3 after that, i dont know where he got this info but is this true?
Comments
Some guy told me the Coptics rejected the 4th Ecumenical Council and the 3 after that, i dont know where he got this info but is this true?
Of course it is true. That is what makes us a member of the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
[quote author=Meena_Ameen link=topic=7200.msg95430#msg95430 date=1223787416]
Some guy told me the Coptics rejected the 4th Ecumenical Council and the 3 after that, i dont know where he got this info but is this true?
Of course it is true. That is what makes us a member of the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
why did we reject them though, isnt that wrong??? I mean, the eccumenical councils were gatherings of ALL christians, why wouldnt we go?
[quote author=Severus link=topic=7200.msg95432#msg95432 date=1223787570]
[quote author=Meena_Ameen link=topic=7200.msg95430#msg95430 date=1223787416]
Some guy told me the Coptics rejected the 4th Ecumenical Council and the 3 after that, i dont know where he got this info but is this true?
Of course it is true. That is what makes us a member of the Oriental Orthodox Churches.
why did we reject them though, isnt that wrong??? I mean, the eccumenical councils were gatherings of ALL christians, why wouldnt we go?
We went. It was when the great St. Dioscorus decided to adhere to the terminology of St. Cyril when all of the others decided to deviate from it is when we broke off to maintain our genuine Orthodox faith.
Am I the only person who thinks the Chalcedon and the split was more a political situation than a theological one? I seriously think it was a one of the biggest mistakes the Churches ever made.
Am I the only person who thinks the Chalcedon and the split was more a political situation than a theological one? I seriously think it was a one of the biggest mistakes the Churches ever made.
You are correct, it was over semantics, BUT we are still none the less, not in communion with each other yet unfortunately
The Eastern Orthodox adhere to the 'dyophysite' theory, which means that Christ is in two separate natures - a component of divinity and a component of humanity.
We are rapidly making progress towards uniting and sharing in one communion, and God willing, we will see the unification of the One Holy Orthodox Church in our lifetime.
The Eastern Orthodox adhere to the 'dyophysite' theory, which means that Christ is in two separate natures - a component of divinity and a component of humanity.
Wasn't this just a big misunderstanding though? I thought that when this issue was looked into recently, they realized that we are the same and that they are really miaphysite not dyophysite as we thought. I have no source for that really, just based on what I heard.
PK
By the way, does anyone know exactly what happened in 451? The Catholics are taught that St Dioscorus brought some men with clubs with him to hit anyone who disagreed, but is there any evidence for this? I am a bit worried about this because obviously we all commemorate him in the liturgy and i want to check out he is ok!
Any historians out there who know where they got these rumours from? were they all just a bit uncivilised?
May God help them to resolve their differences.
But apparently there are too many political differences (and maybe not enough humility) for this to have happened yet. (according to a metropolitan in UK, he was a bit annoyed with them all when i asked him about it!)
That's really really sad. The world is not a great place right now, and we as Christians really need to stick together.
[quote author=mabsoota link=topic=7200.msg95484#msg95484 date=1223875525]
By the way, does anyone know exactly what happened in 451? The Catholics are taught that St Dioscorus brought some men with clubs with him to hit anyone who disagreed, but is there any evidence for this? I am a bit worried about this because obviously we all commemorate him in the liturgy and i want to check out he is ok!
Any historians out there who know where they got these rumours from? were they all just a bit uncivilised?
I've heard, (from a pretty good source) that the way the counsel worked, they would call an accused person's name three times to come and defend themsleves and if they didn't show up, they were presumed guilty. So what they did, was put Anba Dioscorous under house arrest and force him to stay inside so that they could call his name three times and of course, he didn't show up. That's pretty shifty! Obviously the motives of those involved were not really about defending the Christian faith...
[quote author=epchois_nai_nan link=topic=7200.msg95442#msg95442 date=1223794164]
Am I the only person who thinks the Chalcedon and the split was more a political situation than a theological one? I seriously think it was a one of the biggest mistakes the Churches ever made.
You are correct, it was over semantics, BUT we are still none the less, not in communion with each other yet unfortunately
Romanian Orthodox Church, and Antioch Orthodox Church, are strip undeserved ANATHEMA with the holy Bishop Dioskor.
And us becomes clearer that it is primarily a schism was due to misunderstanding.
Lord Jesus give, to be again in the visible unity to the joy, in Liturgy, we see as true brothers and sisters in Christ.
In the Serbian Orthodox church 90% of members respect and love Oriental Orthodox,
and all the more those who understand that we have the same Christian Orthodox religion and experience (!)
just different EXPRESSION same Orthodox religion.
Today it is no more,
and there were other reasons,
but this was the main,
why is bishop Dioskor replaced,
and emperor Marcian instead Dioskora of the way place of your man,
whose name was presbyter Proterie.
After the demonstrators killed Proteria,
image has become even worse,
so is the gap between us deepened ...
+mahraeel+
sryy for being unclear=/
+mahraeel+
Are you, my beloved friends, familiar what Chalcedon and later Councils are teaching?
I would be happy to respond to any questions you might have.
In Christ
Subdeacon Peter Theodore Farrington
we now have a true expert in our midst :)
i would like to ask what exactly happened in 451, did it really get violent?
(the brief version pls, u can send me the 10,000w version to my home email add!
;-)
mabsoota
I must point that I am not an scholar theologist and that my English is quite far from perfect. I am just an ordinary Orthodox believer interested in EO OO dialogue. I hope and pray to our Lord Jesus Christ to help and bless us to achieve, or lets say restore the full communion, because we believe the same and we have so ,so much in common.
I have read many of your posts at monachos.net. For instance, yesterday I was reading the thread "Beyond dialogue between EO and OO" as well as "Constantinople 553: Capitula per Capitule.
I was especially amased with this:
Dear John,
perhaps I'll post here then a brief synopsis of the positive contents of Oriental Orthodoxy as it relates to controversial issues.
i. Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate.
ii. He has taken to Himself a perfect humanity without ceasing to be what He has always been.
iii. His humanity has been united to His Divinity without confusion, mixture, division or separation.
iv. His humanity is consubstantial with our humanity, and His divinity is consubstantial with the Father.
v. His humanity is perfect and complete, the same in every way to our humanity without sin.
vi. His humanity has natural human will and energy.
vii. The natural distinction between the natures of humanity and Divinity remain, but division and separation are rejected in the ineffable union.
viii. When the phrase 'one incarnate nature of the Word' is used, it should be understood as meaning in modern EO terms 'one incarnate hypostasis of the Word'.
ix. When the phrase 'in two natures' is rejected it is when it is used in the sense of 'in two hypostases'.
x. The contents and indeed the authors of the Three Chapters are rejected as heretical and were rejected long before Constantinople 553.
xi. There is a proper use of icons as means of instruction and as a means of veneration of those saints depicted, and as a means of worshipping Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ when depicted. The Word of God incarnate may be depicted because He is truly God become man.
xii. The teaching of Nestorius which divides Christ so that His humanity and His Divinity have individual and independent existence and activity has always been rejected.
xiii. The teaching of Eutyches which is in a variety of manners a rejection of the consubstantiality of Christ with our humanity has always been rejected.
xiv. The heretical teachings of Origen and his person were rejected long before Constantinople 553.
xv. Our Orthodox Church does not believe in the 'branch theory' and has always considered itself and called itself, the 'One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church'.
xvi. With relation to the human will and energy in Christ, what is rejected is the 'gnomic will' in Christ, as described later by Maximus the Confessor. The natural human will and energy are faculties of the nature, the 'gnomic will' is the activity of a human subject, and Christ is not a human subject, He is the Word of God incarnate. When we speak of one will, we always mean a unity of the human and Divine will and energy in the one Divine subject in accordance with the teaching of the Byzantine 6th council. I have often however come across Byzantines who definitely describe a 'gnomic will' in the humanity of Christ contrary to the Orthodox Faith, and even to the Byzantine teaching of Maximus the Confessor. Such a description of two contrary wills is essentially Nestorian since it creates two contrary subjects.
This seems to cover most areas. If there are other areas I am happy to provide similar clarification.
Peter
To go a little further in respect of will. I consider this passage to sum up the OO position.
"..his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of God the Word, so also the natural will of his flesh is called and is the proper will of God the Word, as he himself says: “I came down from heaven, not that I might do mine own will but the will of the Father which sent me!” where he calls his own will the will of his flesh, inasmuch as his flesh was also his own. For as his most holy and immaculate animated flesh was not destroyed because it was deified but continued in its own state and nature, so also his human will, although deified, was not suppressed, but was rather preserved according to the saying of Gregory Theologus: “His will [i.e., the Saviour’s] is not contrary to God but altogether deified.”
Does this clarify things further?
Peter
This is very clear statement of the Faith which is (in my humble opinion) exact same as we EO believe and that we do not have and Faith issue any more.
I've noticed that you are a very educated theologian (e.g. 12 years of studying of Severus of Antioch. for instance :-)) dedicated to the dialogue with EO.
I would like to ask you for a help. If you are willing, you may join Serbian Orthodox forum verujem.org and we can open a thread about Oriental Orthodoxy. There were some discussions on that forum earlier about OO, but it showed how little our theologians are familiar with what OO actually believes.
On verujem.org we have section with discussion in English http://forum.verujem.org/index.php?board=39.0
My oppinion is that this would not take you much time (since you are spending almost 12 hour on Internet per day (According to your post on Monachos.net), and it would be very helpful for my Serbian orthodox brothers. Disccusion are not so on high leves like at monachos.net so it would be great if you could write in a similar way like in the your post i've quoted above.
In Christ,
Ivan
Best regards,
Ivan
ans sorry, i should have said 'welcome back', i was not 2 surprised 2 see u were here before me!
may God bless yr work, i will go and visit the other site u r on :)
Thank you for remembering that post from Monachos. I think that I am essentially of the same opinion in all these matters. I just visited the forum you linked to. The posts there seem serious and worthwhile. I am always willing to post in places where there is a desire for open hearted dialogue, and the reason I stopped posting in some other places was because I did not want to engage in argument. If you think that I can contribute to a conversation on the Serbian forum then I would be happy to do so.
and Mabsoota, thank you for your kind words. They are not deserved as I have not made the most of all the opportunities for study which God has placed before me. But where I am able to say a little about these things I will try do so.
In Christ Jesus
Peter Theodore
My idea with verujem.org's thread about Oriental Orthodoxy is to offer an opportunity for my friends to ask a very Coptic Orthodox theologian about all matters of Coptic Orthodox Faith. Many of them are aware of the fact that we share the same Orthodox Faith (some of Serbian EO didn't even know about division between EO and OO and they are quite confused when I tell them this sad fact). On the other hand there are groups which are concerned and suspicious, considering OO in anachronistic way as Monophysites or Monothelites. This is because they did not have a chance to directly get know the essence of the Oriental Orthodoxy, but rather from indirect sources.
I will inform my friends about our contact here and then we may open the thread which could be organized in "Ask Mr. Farringtone" form, for instance. :-) Joke, of course.
I don't know what reaction will be, but we may try. I hope we will find some openhearted and open minded people will to learn and to discuss in an eirinic way.
To be honest I am amazed about the way you approach to sensitive issues of EO-OO dialogue. It shows to me that you are a true Orthodox man in the very sense of the word.
In Jesus Christ
Ivan Djunisijevic
p.s. I am apologizing again for may bad English. Maybe my previous posts sound impolite to you, but it was not my intention at all. I'm no so experienced in official and polite English language.
Your English is very good, and unless I was as fluent in Serbian as you are in English I would not dream of commenting. It is very understandable.
If you do have some Serbian friends who want to discuss things then I am happy to join in.
I am very much committed to my Oriental Orthodox theological tradition, but I do not believe that requires me to make obstacles between people that need not exist. I have believed for a long time that though in the ancient times it was necessary to separate ourselves from those who wished to destroy the unity of the Church wherever they appeared, now that the wider Christian community stands so fractured and divided it is necessary for all Orthodox people to do what they can to help bring Christians back together in love and truth. Not love only and ignoring right belief, not only thinking of doctrine and forgetting love, but with love and truth together.
In Christ Jesus
Peter Theodore
I read somewhere that most of the monks at Mt.Athos are vehemently against any form of reconciliation with the OO.
I also read elsewhere that lifting of mutual anathemas has been the stumbling block in the next step forward.
God bless,
rpm
It is always a blessing to visit Tasbeha as a guest and read the great number of serious and thoughtful posts, and now I would like to participate a little and gain an even greater blessing.
It does seem that the fathers of Mount Athos are very resistant to the efforts being made to reconcile the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox communions. Indeed the statements which they have made are very robust, and might even cause offense to Oriental Orthodox.
If we put aside any such feelings for the sake of doing God's will, then we can see that the issue appears to be a lack of understanding of our Oriental Orthodox faith. And where such animosity is due to a misunderstanding then we might hope that in God's will and in God's time such a lack of understanding can be resolved. This seems rather widespread among those Eastern Orthodox who are dead set against even talking with our own bishops and fathers. And of course where there is misunderstanding then there is a greater difficulty in having an open-hearted dialogue because these Eastern Orthodox already believe they know exactly what we ourselves believe and teach.
Though I have been in discussion with Eastern Orthodox for over 14 years now, and I found some of my earliest posts online a while ago back in 1994, I think that I have learned that arguments never achieve very much and just cause spiritual indigestion. I would rather discuss these things with those who disagree but are willing to be generous and open-hearted so that we understand each other better even while still disagreeing than hope to convert even one person to my way of thinking by the skill of my arguments.
On the negative side, many of the arguments of those Eastern Orthodox who wish to argue about these things are based on error and ignorance, and on a very limited set of phrases and texts from our tradition, taken out of context, rather than from a properly thorough understanding of our fathers. On the positive side, even the fathers of Mount Athos invited Metropolitan Bishoy to address them in 2004, and he was able to present four papers to the fathers of the Monastery of St Gregory on Mount Athos and received a detailed written reply.
I recently read a paper written by a Russian Orthodox cleric which had been presented to our Holy Synod and was highly critical of St Severus and of our Christology. Yet the paper, clearly written by a committed Christian, was full of errors of fact and understanding, and it was this failure to understand which had driven the Russian priest to write so critically. While division is based on misunderstanding there is always the possibility of coming to a right understanding and discovering agreement and unity, so we should not give up hope that the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ - 'that they may be one' - might be fulfilled even in our own times.
In Christ Jesus
Peter