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Comments
When it comes to matter of faith, the Fathers, accepted to in the Church, are to be quoted. We cannot use theologians after the Schism and quote them as an authoritative resource.
Ironic. This is coming from the same person who quoted Vladimir Moss, who is considered controversial among the Eastern Orthodox. Now you're intentionally mixing things up. If two theologians bear the same Truth, then they bear the same fruit, regardless of their personal way of living. Obviously, if one doesn't believe in Christ, then he will not have Truth and will not end up with the same theology. Your rebuttal is irrelevant since it adds a condition of personal righteousness. We are talking about theologians. Both Anslem and Aquinas were monks, most pious in their way of life. But this is irrelevant to the conversation. Really? Which of the Orthodox fathers handed you down instructions to quote only certain Orthodox fathers? Whose really cherry-picking here? Another example of your inability to read past the first sentence or comprehend the argument. I didn't say one should go to a foreign teacher who doesn't have the same faith. I said two fathers who teach the same faith can be quoted equally and any attempt to favor one over the other is nothing more than politics or ethnic racism. Again, inability to comprehend the argument. They are heretics. You are repeating your rebuttal of oranges when I only spoke of apples.
It has to come from the top. It heavily depends on the next patriarch, his views, and what he is willing to do with many of the Bishops today who follow this sort of theology.
ReturnOrthodoxy
The Holy Synod, by the Grace of God, will choose the three holy bishops or monks who will uphold the faith and dogma of the Coptic Orthodox Church. They would share exactly the faith and dogma of the Thrice blessed HH Pope Shenouda III, who was the keeper of the true faith of the only Orthodox Church for forty glorious years. They would be against the teaching of the neo-theologians who filled the internet lately with their heretic teaching which took place immediately after His Holiness’ repose.
[quote author=ReturnOrthodoxy link=topic=13615.msg159516#msg159516 date=1346459537]
It has to come from the top. It heavily depends on the next patriarch, his views, and what he is willing to do with many of the Bishops today who follow this sort of theology.
ReturnOrthodoxy
The Holy Synod, by the Grace of God, will choose the three holy bishops or monks who will uphold the faith and dogma of the Coptic Orthodox Church. They would share exactly the faith and dogma of the Thrice blessed HH Pope Shenouda III, who was the keeper of the true faith of the only Orthodox Church for forty glorious years. They would be against the teaching of the neo-theologians who filled the internet lately with their heretic teaching which took place immediately after His Holiness’ repose.
Our Church is not the only Orthodox Church. There are also the Orthodox Eritreans, Ethiopians, Armenians, Syriacs, Indians, etc.
Also, what do you think about the controversy surrounding Pope Shenouda and the Patristic doctrine of Theopoesis/Theosis?
And who are these heretical Theologians you speak of? Fr. Peter Farrington? Fr. Athanasius Iskander? H.E. Met. Abba Seraphim? Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty? HG Bishop Youssef? IOW, the most educated and most Orthodox Theologians of our Church?
Also, why do you dislike the Chalcedonians so much? I understand why Stavro is against joint commission (it is based on a very traditional view, which I admire)? But, why are you against the union?
Just curious...
With deep sadness that such foolish views infiltrate the church,
ReturnOrthodoxy
Its just a plane shame that there are people who believe this is true out there.
R.O.
Depending on how things play out these next few weeks, I may permanently leave Tasbeha.
Sherene_Maria, do you want Met. Bishoy to be the new Patriarch?
[quote author=ReturnOrthodoxy link=topic=13615.msg159516#msg159516 date=1346459537]
It has to come from the top. It heavily depends on the next patriarch, his views, and what he is willing to do with many of the Bishops today who follow this sort of theology.
ReturnOrthodoxy
The Holy Synod, by the Grace of God, will choose the three holy bishops or monks who will uphold the faith and dogma of the Coptic Orthodox Church. They would share exactly the faith and dogma of the Thrice blessed HH Pope Shenouda III, who was the keeper of the true faith of the only Orthodox Church for forty glorious years. They would be against the teaching of the neo-theologians who filled the internet lately with their heretic teaching which took place immediately after His Holiness’ repose.
SAY WHAT?
Who ever said that neo-theologians only started filling the internet with their teachings after Pope Shenouda died?
I've been writing many years before he died.
Take it back.
And, the COC is not the only Orthodox church. In fact, it's drowning in Evangelical heresies and Pharisaical spirituality because of the failures of the previous papacy.
Ironic. This is coming from the same person who quoted Vladimir Moss
You are not being honest in this statement. You are proof texting your argument trying a cheap attack on me.
You are the one who quoted Kallistos, Romanides, and Meindorff and wanted to pass their wrong teaching as if they were Orthodox.
You also made the claim that St Ambrose teaching on Original Sin is rejected from both Orthodox families.
My answer to you was from the EO family for a simple reason.
I wanted to show you that your readings of the EO is lacking and the view you want to pass from the EO as the correct teaching is a one-sided biased view.
Then, instead of reading my reference, you attacked blindly, without research, of what Vladimir Moss actually said. You went to a Catholic forum, copied some phrase and used it to again prove your twisted understanding of Original Sin. You did so by claiming that Vladimir Moss advocates Immaculate Conception; discrediting without researching and understanding.
For honesty, I had to quote him to show you that you were attacking him without cause and that he does not advocate this heresy of Immaculate Conception.
Using an EO theologian like Vladimir Moss was for the purpose of making you understand that the EO neo theologians that you used are just one side of the story within the EO family.
Another example of your inability to read past the first sentence or comprehend the argument. I didn't say one should go to a foreign teacher who doesn't have the same faith. I said two fathers who teach the same faith can be quoted equally and any attempt to favor one over the other is nothing more than politics or ethnic racism.
I guess the inability here is for you to recognize who is the father of the Church and who is not.
Aquinas and Anselm on whom you used to base all your arguments are not fathers of the Church, that is the Orthodox Church.
So, let me try again to pass through the veil of your liberalism.
In matters of faith, we cannot rely on theologians who are not considered Orthodox.
Orthodox fathers are Orthodox because of their faith, their holy life, and their pronouncements as fathers by the Church.
Aquinas and Anselm do not fit the criteria as being Orthodox. Thus we cannot rely on them for matters of faith.
Hope this clears the issue.
The only requirement that qualifies a person into God's family is the desire to do God's will. "Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” Mark 3:35
This is absolutely incorrect.
Who has the authority to define what God's will is? In other words who has the authority to interpret the Bible? It is the CHURCH.
In the context of this discussion, we rely on the fathers of the Church to define the faith, dogma, spiritual life, ...
It cannot be up to you or me to say this is the correct teaching of the Bible. Faith is delivered not determined and there are specific people whom we call the Fathers who handed down this faith. In turn, the Church continues to preserve their teachings from one generation to the next.
This is contrary to your argument that anyone who desire to do God's will is part of the God's family. God's family is the Church and it is her that interprets the Bible.
Bringing this to what we are discussing, we cannot consider foreign teachers like Aquinas to be a father of the Church who has delivered us the Orthodox faith.
Christianity is founded on discipleship. When we choose our teachers, we chose them based on their Orthodox faith and Orthodox life. As Orthodox, I cannot choose to be a disciple of someone who has a foreign faith; who is outside the Church. That is why I cannot choose Aquinas to be my teacher of faith, he does not a trusted teacher.
Your way of thinking is dangerous because I may consider heretics to be Orthodox just because they believe in a certain belief which happens to be Orthodox.
Orthodoxy is not cherry picking. It is a way of life, not a moment of life, and a way of Orthodox thinking, not a single Orthodox thought. The Church does not categorize her fathers in terms of dogmas but to the entire faith. This has nothing to do with being Coptic. This has to do with being Orthodox. There is nothing called Coptic faith but there is something called the Orthodox faith. This is what we are discussing. This thread is about the Orthodox faith and the foreign teachings that crept into the Coptic Orthodox church.
When we defend the Orthodox teaching and the sources we use to learn the Orthodox faith is not, as you wrongly call Coptic ethnocentrism and Coptic racism. Rather it is preserving our Orthodox faith pure as it was handed down by our Orthodox fathers.
Your arguments seem you want to consider anyone with any kind of partial Orthodox teaching to be part of God's family. Well, this is not Orthodoxy and if you want to call it racism, then so be it.
^Imikahil, specifically, what heresies do you think has crept into the Church?
Read Pope Shenouda's book on New Heresies.
[quote author=Severian link=topic=13615.msg159539#msg159539 date=1346571330]
^Imikahil, specifically, what heresies do you think has crept into the Church?
Read Pope Shenouda's book on New Heresies.
I do not have the access to the book or the time to read it. Could you please just give a concise list?
[quote author=imikhail link=topic=13615.msg159540#msg159540 date=1346571448]
[quote author=Severian link=topic=13615.msg159539#msg159539 date=1346571330]
^Imikahil, specifically, what heresies do you think has crept into the Church?
Read Pope Shenouda's book on New Heresies.
I do not have the access to the book or the time to read it. Could you please just give a concise list?
1 - God does not avenge against the evildoer.
2 - God does not punish
3 - The curse is not of God but of man; God did not curse anyone.
4 - Forgiveness is without a price; no price was paid for our forgiveness.
5 - Sin is not attributed to God for He is above any sin man could commit.
6 - We accompany Christ in His redemptive sufferings
7 - Wrong understanding of Theosis
Others that are not specifically addressed in the book:
1 - Universal Salvation
2 - Denial of the Original Sin; that we are born sinners.
3 - Resurrection of St Mary and her inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom.
This list is partial by all means.
6 - [Against the heresy that] We accompany Christ in His redemptive sufferings
What does this mean exactly? Brackets mine.
[quote author=imikhail link=topic=13615.msg159542#msg159542 date=1346573856]7 - Wrong understanding of TheosisWould you say H.H.'s view concerning Theosis is consistent with that of Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty and Fr. Athanasius Iskander? I know that this has caused quite a stir in the Church.
And none of the points you mentioned had anything to do with Western Scholastic Theology, AFAIK.
Also, random question... Would you agree that the Holy Spirit Himself personally dwells within us, and not just His grace?
+Thank you for your time and forgive me if I offended you earlier. I only meant the best.
6 - [Against the heresy that] We accompany Christ in His redemptive sufferings
What does this mean exactly? Brackets mine.
Dear Severian,
I just stated the titles and I do understand that this is not at all suffice to get a grasp of a certain heresy. If you really need to know more, I urge you to read the book, because HH goes in great detail with regards to the thought process of the heresy advocates and shows their erroneous arguments.
[quote author=imikhail link=topic=13615.msg159542#msg159542 date=1346573856]7 - Wrong understanding of Theosis. Would you say H.H.'s view concerning Theosis is consistent with that of Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty and Fr. Athanasius Iskander? I know that this has caused quite a stir in the Church.
Yes. Which points?
Universal Salvation is a Latin innovation decreed in Vatican 1967 and has to do with all the heresies mentioned above. Not sure what you mean by "personally dwells within us". The Holy Spirit as a person "oknoom" is not united
with us. He merely dwells in us through His energies. No worries at all.
"For it is the sole and peculiar property of the Substance that Transcends all, to be able to bestow on men the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and make those that draw near unto It partakers of the divine nature. But this exists in Christ, not as a thing received, nor by communication from another, but as His own, and as belonging to His substance, for He baptizes with the Holy Spirit." - St. Cyril of Alexandria, Homily 10 on St. Luke
Would you also agree with Dr. Bebawi's statement that "whoever denies the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, upon the believers, and teaches the lie that this is a descent of grace only; then he has divided his participation with the Trinity and has lost his eternal inheritance, and even his resurrection from the dead (Rom. 8:11)."
IOW, the Spirit Himself descends upon us. He is not just granting us a torch illumination or a ministerial service like He did with the OT Prophets.
^Thanks for the reply. I agree that the there is no "hypostatic union" of the human hypostasis to the hypostasis of the Spirit (this idea is blasphemous and absurd). Because a hypostatic union is union where two elements combine to form a compound hypostasis. But, would you say our relationship to the Holy Spirit is a relationship of "partak[ing] of the Divine nature?"
"For it is the sole and peculiar property of the Substance that Transcends all, to be able to bestow on men the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and make those that draw near unto It partakers of the divine nature. But this exists in Christ, not as a thing received, nor by communication from another, but as His own, and as belonging to His substance, for He baptizes with the Holy Spirit." - St. Cyril of Alexandria, Homily 10 on St. Luke
Partaking of the Divine nature through having our will submit to His will (the Holy Spirit) not through uniting to His substance.
In the quote you provided, St Cyril is very clear that only the Son is united by substance to the Holy Spirit. We, on the other hand, receive, are communicated to. I am not sure I follow Bebbawi's argument. We all believe that the Holy Spirit, the Third person, descended on the apostles on the Penticost and He descended upon them earlier when they were baptized. He still descends on the believers through baptism and the Holy Myron.
But what is the effect of this descent? Is it the descent of His person to be united to us? In other words, is His descent is in the same manner as the descent of the Son into the Virgin's womb?
Of course not. This is heresy.
Thank you, imikhail and JG, for uncompromisingly defending the right true orthodox faith and its always struggling Coptic and OO Churches.
Sadly, dialectical ecumenism advocates will use every deceptive and disingenuous argument that is imaginatively, culturally and intellectually available in their attempts to dilute, compromise and confuse this true faith and churches.
I spent fifty years, from birth, seriously involved in the U.S. RC Church and about 10 years in major U.S. EO Churches. I was able to leave these because of what was perceived to be their serious current semi-secretive modern heterodox philosophies and theologies; and their inevitably resulting general public immoralities and disconcerns. After experiencing this sixty years of anti-monophysite propaganda (which delayed my being able to be comfortable with my “disloyal” preference for my new Coptic and Ethiopean/Eritrean communities), I finally concluded that the human and divine nature of Christ controversey among ordinary serious members of RC, EO and OO jurisdictions is now a seeming non-issue of semantics. The understanding that was received in my pre-Vatican II high school cathechism class, of this narrow theological issue, is essentially the same as I now understand from many more and far deeper studies of OO theology. Academic agreements to reasonably similar definitions of this narrow issue is far short of a current similarity of practical faith, practice, philosophy and moral life between the Coptic/OO communities and those of the EO (and especially of the disgraceful modern RCC). An appearance of acceptance of an ecumenical paradigm now would only further compromise and scandalize the increasing numbers of Coptic/OO laity, priests and bishops who are now being mislead, shamed and encouraged to slip further into errors and heresies of anti-patriarchal feminism and freudianism and away from the successful traditional precepts and order of God’s gender and family commandments, from creation. To me, personally, the Chalcedonian division has provided the blessing of a safer spiritual refuge, in faithful communities, to help protect my struggles for salvation in Christ. I have been on the other side, what are the similar experiences of these seemingly unrepentant, shameless, insulting, rabid ecumenists? I wish that they would share their personal long time EO and RCC experiences; and their reasons for now “becoming” dissatisfied OO. There are now, many and meaningful modern differences of faith, beyond the, now relatively passe, ancient Chalcedon squabble.
This endless spirit of seeming universal (ecumenical) challenge to true orthodox life, faith and worship never tires. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church now has its own challenge by this “intellectual” Protestantism/ modernism. I understand that it is called “tehadiso.”
God bless you, imikhail, JG, and other faithful true Orthodox theologians. Please stay with this public fight for the benefit of all of us who are not so well experienced, qualified, skilled and blessed to teach and defend our beseiged little remaining corner of true hope for the once catholic orthodox faith and life in Jesus Christ. I’ll keep ringing the alarm bell against the “new” anti-patriarchal feminism and freudianism related heresies that I have been blessed to experience in the RCC, EO, and now beginning in the Coptic/ OO congregations and clergy. I can only hope to better understand the big picture from your generous uncompromising teachings. Thank God first and always.
So we can only pray that God may have mercy on us and that He may repose the souls of all our living Protodox clergy and servants in the Paradise of Joy in the bosom of Calvin, Luther and Zwilling where they can continue their ecumenical dialogues and enjoy their unity worship nights.
God eliminated five metropolitans who wanted to defrock Pope Kyrillos VI and conspired to kill him, when Pope Kyrillos was about to investigate their corruption. They were inches away from realizing their conspiracy and getting rid of the greatest Pope since Dioscoros.
One of them mistakenly committed suicide by taking the poison he planned to administer to the Pope, three were killed by different bizarre accidents, and the last one, out of fear, apologized to the Pope before being taken as well a few days after. Listen to Abona Raphael memoirs about the Great Pope to know how the Lord works through his men.
So we can only pray that God may have mercy on us and that He may repose the souls of all our living Protodox clergy and servants in the Paradise of Joy in the bosom of Calvin, Luther and Zwilling where they can continue their ecumenical dialogues and enjoy their unity worship nights.
God eliminated five metropolitans who wanted to defrock Pope Kyrillos VI and conspired to kill him, when Pope Kyrillos was about to investigate their corruption. They were inches away from realizing their conspiracy and getting rid of the greatest Pope since Dioscoros.
One of them mistakenly committed suicide by taking the poison he planned to administer to the Pope, three were killed by different bizarre accidents, and the last one, out of fear, apologized to the Pope before being taken as well a few days after. Listen to Abona Raphael memoirs about the Great Pope to know how the Lord works through his men.
This is shocking. Do you know where I can read about this?
Anyway, I do not necessarily think it needs a miracle. I just think we need a good Patriarch to lead us back to our authentic heritage. We also have to let go of the unhealthy personality cult surrounding the person of HH Pope Shenouda. Many Copts fail to realize that he was not infallible and that he did make mistakes.
We have many great Theologians like Fr. Peter, Fr. Athanasius, Fr. Tadros, and others who are bringing us back slowly, but surely, to Orthodox thinking. I am rarely optimistic about anything, but I am confident in the Lord Jesus' promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail over His Church.
But can we actually pray for their deaths?
RO
we should pray for our own sinful souls first.
But can we actually pray for their deaths?
RO
No. Instead we should pray that *when* they die, their errors will die along with them.
I do not wish death upon anyone
RO
I hope you realized I was joking.
I do not wish death upon anyone
RO
I do. And I agree.
I'm sorry, I cannot even fathom the stupidity it takes to call the Coptic church the only Orthodox church. Forget the EOs here for a second. What about the Ethiopians, the Eritreans, Armenians, Syriac, Malankara... What too much for your comfort?
Its just a plane shame that there are people who believe this is true out there.
R.O.
Your claims are not a different opinion. They are nothing less than a foolish opinion that you flaunt. They are not respectable, so don't expect respect from me. You won't find it.
RO