That’s also true. It’s such a tragedy that he later in life rejected Theopaschitism and instead embraced the very unusual concept of apthartodocetism, which many consider to be heterodox, and also went from making progress on a peaceful reconciliation with the Oriental Orthodox to violently persecuting them, initiating a period of such severe persecution that when the Ummayid Caliphate conquered the Southeastern provinces of the Empire, the Oriental Orthodox initially were better off, before the horrors of the Fatimid Caliphate and the genocidal destruction of the Numidian Orthodox Church, which was Oriental Orthodox, and the Albanian Orthodox Church in Caucasian Albania, as opposed to the country Albania on the Adriatic (as if Georgia also being called Iberia wasn’t confusing enough), which may have been Oriental Orthodox or it may have been Chalcedonian, but when the Azeris took over Caucasian Albania, that church disappeared, and also the Chalcedonian Christians of North Africa to the West of Egypt, from the provinces of Libya to Mauretania, were entirely exterminated by Vandals who had been Arians but converted to Islam. Many regard the persecution of the Oriental Orthodox as causing the disunity that resulted in the Eastern Roman Empire losing so much of its territory, but I think it probably could have survived had it not been for the Fourth Crusade. My understanding is that Venice promised to retake the Holy Land after the Crusader States had been conquered by Saladin, but this was merely a pretense to raise a large army, which their navy then delivered to the Byzantine Empire, which Venice assumed was a weaker target (although the three previous crusades were also horrible for Eastern Christians, the sole exception being the Maronites, who entered into communion with the Roman Church and formed a military alliance, and who were able to keep themselves safe, much like the Druze, another religious minority which otherwise would likely have been purged, in the mountains of Lebanon.
I must admit that what happened with the persecution of the Syriac Orthodox bishops under Emperor Justinian makes me not inclined to venerate him to the same extent that I venerate Emperors Constantine and Theodosius I. And it is a real tragedy, because earlier in his life he did so much good, and the situation with the Oriental Orthodox was very close to reaching a point where the schism could have been rectified.
I do realize my love of the Oriental Orthodox might be controversial among some Eastern Orthodox, but my theological position towards them is based on the ecumenical agreement entered into by the Antiochians and the Syriac Orthodox in 1991, and also careful study, and a deep appreciation of their liturgy and the contribution that the hymn Ho Monogenes made to Eastern Orthodoxy, since it is the hymn that keeps crypto-Nestorians who plague some of the Western churches, especially the Calvinists, out of our church. There are some other remarkable liturgical similiarities, for example, the Canon is extremely popular among the Syriac Orthodox and presumably the Maronites despite being of Byzantine province, and they have authored several of their own, and the Coptic Liturgy for Holy Unction, which is served on the last Friday in Lent, before Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, which is also a very popular day for Holy Unction in ROCOR, is identical to the Byznainte liturgy in all respects aside from the fact that they do not sing the Canon we sing before the seven sets of Scripture lessons and prayers one of which is occurs before the lighting each lamp in a cruciform pattern or each wick into a common bowl of oil. Also I believe some Eastern Orthodox churches don’t bother with lighting the wicks or oil lamps and drawing from the bowl or the lamps the crucified oil. The Copts also bottle the Holy Oil and distribute it to the faithful and also administer previously consecrated oil as needed, rather than doing the entire liturgy each time, although I expect they would do the whole liturgy if someone were very seriously ill, I just don’t know.
Also fortunately within Oriental Orthodoxy there are not at present, to my knowledge, any active Universalists like DBH. This is probably because, as noted by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, until recently there was a shortage of Oriental Orthodox theologians which made dialogue difficult (also Pope Shenouda misunderstood the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas and rejected them although many Coptic hegumens are pro-Palamist, one of whom was on the shortlist of three from whom, by chance, Pope Tawadros II was selected, who has not made, as far as I am aware, any anti-Palamist statements but he also hasn’t made any pro-Palamist statements, but his main focus was eradicating the massive Protestant conspiracy to take over large parts of the Coptic Orthodox Church, which was active in all of the extra-diocesan areas which had only “General Bishops” but were under the control of the Pope, and as it turns out that system did not provide effective oversight, so there were Coptic churches with praise and worship music and Coptic bookstores selling books like The Purpose Driven Life, and most Coptic clergy tended to have degrees in engineering or finance rather than divinity or theology.
This has been corrected, but the Coptic cathedral in the Diocese of Muqattam, which is an extremely poor suburb of Cairo where the laity eke out an existence by liviving off of pigs who feed in the adjacent main garbage dumps of the city, and experienced near starvation when in response to swine flue, Mubarak ordered all of their pigs killed (fortunately they managed to get new ones), looked like a megachurch. So the problem was not limited to the US, but was happening in Egypt itself, which is frightening, as frightening as the pro-Charismatic movement that existed in some Eastern Orthodox churches starting in the 1970s, but fortunately Fr. Seraphim Rose in
Orthodoxy and The Religion of the Future provided us a compelling warning about the Charismatic movement.
I do recognize my love for the Oriental Orthodox is a controversial position, and I don’t wish to cause controversy, so I don’t intend to mention them again in this thread, but they seemed topical because of the fifth ecumenical council being mentioned, in advance of which Justinian published the Three Chapters which anathematized not just Oriegen but Theodore of Mopsuestia, who was anathematized specifically in an attempt to help improve relations with the Oriental Orthodox. This however caused a schism in Spain, the Three Chapters Controversy, which fortunately was resolved. Also from my conversations with the Oriental Orthodox, they tend to regard Apokatastasis as more of a heretical concept, for example, Origen is not popular among them despite his association with Alexandrian exegesis. That said, there is a first century father who they recognize as a saint and apparently we do not, at least not across all juridictions, it might be Clement of Alexandria.
At any rate, I feel all of this adds weight to my argument that the Universalism of DBH which our friend
@Light of the East appears to be advocating is inconsistent with not only our faith but also that of any of the churches which survived the First Millenium and are still extant, with the sole exception of the Church of the East, which also had a problem with Nestorianism historically, and to this day venerates Nestorius, which I find really annoying, and that is probably the biggest obstacle to ecumenical relations with them, although they do have a very good relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate. But I do have an allergy to Nestorianism. However even in their case, they do not appear to adhere to a definite belief in Apokatastasis at present. That said the Copts blocked them joining the Middle Eastern Council of Churches; the Coptic Orthodox Church vehemently objects to the Assyrian church and believes they have not adequetely distanced themselves from Nestorianism. However, the Syriac Orthodox seem to have had a good relationship with them at least as far bach as the Maphrianate of Mar Gregorius bar Hebraeus, who compiled an anthology called the Amusing Tales, which juxtaposed the Sayings of the Desert Fathers with the worldly wisdom of the Greek Philosophers, Persian sages, Jewish rabbinical figures, Indian religious leaders, and then for a dose of humor included some interesting ancient stories such as a collection of stories involving talking animals. I like the book because it illustrates that the Wisdom of God is foolishness to the World.
Mar Gregorios was a convert from Judaism, one of many in the Syriac and Antiochian churches, hence his name bar Hebraeus, who held the rank of Maphrian, which is equivalent to the historic meaning of Catholicos during the time when the Churches of Georgia, Armenia and the East were not yet autocephalous but were under the Omophorion of the Patriarch of Antioch, basically meaning vice-Patriarch, with responsibility for the Eastern half of the church, mainly located in what is now Iraq, and he was also good friends with the Catholicos of the Church of the East, and when he reposed in an Assyrian town while returning to the Monastery of St. Matthew in the hills above Mosul (which miraculously survived the ISIS occupation of the city and is as far as I am aware still intact) from the Syriac Orthodox population center in Tikrit, the Catholicos of the East organized a funeral for him with 4,000 Assyrian members of the Church of the East in attendance. This was before the genocide of Tamerlane and the beginning of the uncanonical hereditary patriarchate in the Church of the East which lasted until the dreadful assasination of Mar Shimun XXIII in the early 1970s, after he had announced his intention to marry, and violate the tradition of that church that bishops should be celibate (as they had been monks, when the Assyrians still had monasteries, pre-Tamerlane). There were so many horrible assasinations in the 1960s and 70s, it is truly shocking in retrospect.
So at any rate
@the light of the East I would ask you read some of the books I mentioned, specifically Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Fount of Knowledge, which includes An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, by St. John of Damascus, The Arena by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Fr. Seraphim Rose, and also I think everyone who hasn’t done so should read his book on Nihilism, which is brilliant, and also the prayers of the Lenten Triodion, a contemporary language translation of which is freely available online, and I can link you to that, and also the Philokalia, much of which would make no sense in a universalist context.
There is also the Blackpool Guide to Eastern Christianity, which is a collection of essays on each of the major Eastern churches and its traditions, for example, the different Eastern Orthodox churches have articles about them, which provides additional historical information about it. There is a work by Fr. M. Azkoul called The Teachings of The Holy Orthodox Church, which in the midst of a polemic against St. Augustine, makes clear the Synergistic nature of the Orthodox faith, although the idea that St. Augustine is not a saint I was pleased to note is not widely held by members of this forum; I think it is largely a “distinctive” as Protestants like to say, that is, a point of doctrinal divergence, associated with the Old Calendarists. Since the narrative that St. Augustine was not historically venerated by us, but rather only recently has been subject to veneration as part of some sort of ecumenical bid to appeal to Roman Catholics and facilitate a reunion at the expense of Orthodox doctrinal purity, is the sort of narrative that one encounters from Old Calendarists and particularly on their websites, like the Orthodox Info site, which is either Old Calendarist or run by someone extremely sympathetic to them. I have had some unpleasant experiences with Old Calendarists even when I have not brought up my support of ecumenical reconciliation but instead have mentioned only those things which they agree with, which I happen to also agree with (for example, I do prefer the Julian Calendar because using it ensures that feasts are celebrated at the same time as the largest Orthodox Church, that of Russia, and also the extremely important Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the Serbian, Georgian and Ukrainian Orthodox, and Mount Athos, which is also on the Old Calendar, and the Revised Julian Calendar has a severe defect wherein some years have too many Sundays before Lent, and as a result of the combination of the Julian Paschalion with the Gregorian dates for fixed feasts, what can happen is that the Apostles Fast gets squished, so to speak, and also a Kyriopascha becomes impossible. I was very disappointed a few years ago when on the Gregorian Calendar there was a Kyriopascha, but the Finnish Orthodox Church and the Estonian Orthodox Church, despite being on the Gregorian Calendar, did not celebrate it in any special manner as far as I am aware (if I am mistaken on this, please let me know, especially if there is a YouTube video showing what the Kyriopascha celebrations looked like, as that would be amazing to see, since obviously I might never get a chance to see one in person, since in 1991 I was not aware of them and missed the one chance in my life to see one.