Metropolitan Kallistos, David Bentley Hart, Universalism, and the Church of the East

[Light of the East]

and what if I want the wood, hay, and stubble and desire to cling to that and I don’t want the gold image to be brought to glory? what happens then?

A person who would experience the horrors of separation from God would not desire to cling to that which is intrinsically a horror. Thomas Talbot addresses this in his paper on "Free Will Theodicies of Hell."

And similarly, for those who deceive themselves into thinking that separation from every implicit experience of God would be more desirable than union with him: until such persons actually experience a true separation from God, they may have no idea what they are really choosing. For as Lewis himself once put it, “union with” the divine “Nature is bliss and separation from it [an objective] horror” and this is also, he rightly declared, precisely where “Heaven and Hell come in.” Now Walls argues persuasively, I believe, for the possibility that someone who consistently chooses the wrong path—someone so mired in sin as to become totally self-absorbed—may simply be in no position to appreciate fully, or even at all, the bliss of union with God. So if we agree on that, just where does our “hair’s breadth of difference” finally come to rest? Right here, perhaps. Whereas I hold it to be logically impossible that someone who is rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent should both experience the horror of separation from God—in the outer darkness, say, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth—and continue to regard such a state as more desirable than finally submitting to God, Walls disagrees; he thinks it at least possible that some would continue forever to prefer such a state, however horrific it may be, as more desirable than finally submitting to God.

I doubt that anyone has expressed my side of this disagreement more forcefully than George MacDonald did when he wrote:

For let a man think and care ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him—making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though he knows it not. But when God withdraws from a man [or the person withdraws from God] as far as that can be without the man’s ceasing to be; when the man feels himself abandoned, hanging in a ceaseless vertigo of existence upon the verge of the gulf of his being, without support, without refuge, without aim, without end . . . with no inbreathing of joy, with nothing [including the faintest experience of love] to make life good, then will he listen in agony for the faintest sound of life from the closed door; then . . . he will be ready to rush into the very heart of the Consuming Fire to know life once more, to change this terror of sick negation, of unspeakable death, for that region of hopeful pain. Imagination cannot mislead us into too much horror of being without God—that one living death.

Note the expression “that region of hopeful pain.” MacDonald would have agreed with Walls that, on account of their many delusions and self-deceptions, those cast into the outer darkness are in no position to appreciate the bliss of union with God. He would clearly have accepted, in other words, the picture that Lewis painted in The Great Divorce, where the unrepentant who take a bus into the foothills of heaven find it an excruciatingly painful experience; indeed, Lewis probably got this very idea from MacDonald, whom he regarded as his own mentor. But there is also the following hair’s breadth of difference between Lewis and MacDonald, which mirrors the hair’s breadth of difference between Walls and me. Whereas MacDonald and I view a life apart from any implicit experience of God as so horrific that no one could continue freely choosing such a life forever, Lewis and Walls in effect view it as not quite that horrific. For insofar as God continues to shield sinners from the full horror of such separation and does so in order to safeguard their freedom to continue opting for it, the net result could only be a condition not quite as horrific as the tradition implies.

Observe also that, unlike a free will theodicy of hell, universalism requires no watering down of the New Testament imagery associated with Gehenna, the lake of fire, and the outer darkness. If the outer darkness, for example, represents the logical limit, short of annihilation, of possible separation from God; and if such separation is indeed an objective horror, as Lewis insisted, then that already explains why no one could both experience this objective horror and continue freely to embrace it forever. It also explains how God could shatter all of the illusions and self-deceptions that might make a life apart from God seem desirable and how he could do so without in any way interfering with our freedom to separate ourselves from him. For it is precisely when we exercise that very freedom and when God permits us to experience the very life we have confusedly chosen for ourselves that we begin to experience, and finally to discover, its horrific nature. Just as no one (with a normal nervous system) who is rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent could both shove an unprotected arm into a hot fire and retain the illusion that it causes sensations of intense pleasure, neither could such a person both experience the outer darkness and retain the illusion that some other imagined condition, such as submission to God, would be even worse than this.

Father Matt, your supposition appears to be based on the idea that somehow men could find solace or refuge in their rebellion against God, when in fact, they (along with you and I) have no idea of the experience of separation from God and the horror that it entails. I have encountered this argument numerous times and still find it unconvincing. Every single one of us acts in accord with that which is in our own best interest. That is what sinners do here on earth, even though it means hurting others. The best interest of the greedy is the power and security money brings. The best interest of the fornicator is unrestrained pleasure. Take the man who is so often cited as the worst possible sinner - Adolf Hitler. All his actions were in his own best self-interest. Yet you say that there might be those who would not act in their own self-interest and choose hell over heaven? I find that hard to believe.

 

[The Liturgist]

A person who would experience the horrors of separation from God would not desire to cling to that which is intrinsically a horror. Thomas Talbot addresses this in his paper on "Free Will Theodicies of Hell."

And similarly, for those who deceive themselves into thinking that separation from every implicit experience of God would be more desirable than union with him: until such persons actually experience a true separation from God, they may have no idea what they are really choosing. For as Lewis himself once put it, “union with” the divine “Nature is bliss and separation from it [an objective] horror” and this is also, he rightly declared, precisely where “Heaven and Hell come in.” Now Walls argues persuasively, I believe, for the possibility that someone who consistently chooses the wrong path—someone so mired in sin as to become totally self-absorbed—may simply be in no position to appreciate fully, or even at all, the bliss of union with God. So if we agree on that, just where does our “hair’s breadth of difference” finally come to rest? Right here, perhaps. Whereas I hold it to be logically impossible that someone who is rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent should both experience the horror of separation from God—in the outer darkness, say, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth—and continue to regard such a state as more desirable than finally submitting to God, Walls disagrees; he thinks it at least possible that some would continue forever to prefer such a state, however horrific it may be, as more desirable than finally submitting to God.

I doubt that anyone has expressed my side of this disagreement more forcefully than George MacDonald did when he wrote:

For let a man think and care ever so little about God, he does not therefore exist without God. God is here with him, upholding, warming, delighting, teaching him—making life a good thing to him. God gives him himself, though he knows it not. But when God withdraws from a man [or the person withdraws from God] as far as that can be without the man’s ceasing to be; when the man feels himself abandoned, hanging in a ceaseless vertigo of existence upon the verge of the gulf of his being, without support, without refuge, without aim, without end . . . with no inbreathing of joy, with nothing [including the faintest experience of love] to make life good, then will he listen in agony for the faintest sound of life from the closed door; then . . . he will be ready to rush into the very heart of the Consuming Fire to know life once more, to change this terror of sick negation, of unspeakable death, for that region of hopeful pain. Imagination cannot mislead us into too much horror of being without God—that one living death.

Note the expression “that region of hopeful pain.” MacDonald would have agreed with Walls that, on account of their many delusions and self-deceptions, those cast into the outer darkness are in no position to appreciate the bliss of union with God. He would clearly have accepted, in other words, the picture that Lewis painted in The Great Divorce, where the unrepentant who take a bus into the foothills of heaven find it an excruciatingly painful experience; indeed, Lewis probably got this very idea from MacDonald, whom he regarded as his own mentor. But there is also the following hair’s breadth of difference between Lewis and MacDonald, which mirrors the hair’s breadth of difference between Walls and me. Whereas MacDonald and I view a life apart from any implicit experience of God as so horrific that no one could continue freely choosing such a life forever, Lewis and Walls in effect view it as not quite that horrific. For insofar as God continues to shield sinners from the full horror of such separation and does so in order to safeguard their freedom to continue opting for it, the net result could only be a condition not quite as horrific as the tradition implies.

Observe also that, unlike a free will theodicy of hell, universalism requires no watering down of the New Testament imagery associated with Gehenna, the lake of fire, and the outer darkness. If the outer darkness, for example, represents the logical limit, short of annihilation, of possible separation from God; and if such separation is indeed an objective horror, as Lewis insisted, then that already explains why no one could both experience this objective horror and continue freely to embrace it forever. It also explains how God could shatter all of the illusions and self-deceptions that might make a life apart from God seem desirable and how he could do so without in any way interfering with our freedom to separate ourselves from him. For it is precisely when we exercise that very freedom and when God permits us to experience the very life we have confusedly chosen for ourselves that we begin to experience, and finally to discover, its horrific nature. Just as no one (with a normal nervous system) who is rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent could both shove an unprotected arm into a hot fire and retain the illusion that it causes sensations of intense pleasure, neither could such a person both experience the outer darkness and retain the illusion that some other imagined condition, such as submission to God, would be even worse than this.

Father Matt, your supposition appears to be based on the idea that somehow men could find solace or refuge in their rebellion against God, when in fact, they (along with you and I) have no idea of the experience of separation from God and the horror that it entails. I have encountered this argument numerous times and still find it unconvincing. Every single one of us acts in accord with that which is in our own best interest. That is what sinners do here on earth, even though it means hurting others. The best interest of the greedy is the power and security money brings. The best interest of the fornicator is unrestrained pleasure. Take the man who is so often cited as the worst possible sinner - Adolf Hitler. All his actions were in his own best self-interest. Yet you say that there might be those who would not act in their own self-interest and choose hell over heaven? I find that hard to believe.

The problem of course remains that the Orthodox Church is not Unitarian and indeed Origen was controversially anathematized partially for Unitarianism, but I suspect his speculations about transmigration were equally damaging, and it is probably those speculations on what amounted to reincarnation that caused him to be anathematized, and also heresies of the Origenist monks, while St. Gregory of Nyssa remains a Glorified saint.

 

[Light of the East]

The problem of course remains that the Orthodox Church is not Unitarian and indeed Origen was controversially anathematized partially for Unitarianism, but I suspect his speculations about transmigration were equally damaging, and it is probably those speculations on what amounted to reincarnation that caused him to be anathematized, and also heresies of the Origenist monks, while St. Gregory of Nyssa remains a Glorified saint.

I believe I read that Origen died in the peace of the Church, despite having some rather odd views. Fast forward to Constantinople II and look into what was happening at the time and you find a reason that he was anathematized some 300 years after his death. Emperor Justinian inherited an empire in deep trouble. Pagans had taken much land from the Roman Empire and the people were in great turmoil after the Council of Chalcedon. Rather than settle anything, Chalcedon caused great unrest, even to the point of people fighting in the streets over the outcome. Add to this that the Origenists in Jerusalem were also causing much trouble and turmoil and you have a real problem on your hands as emperor. Justinian realized that if he were to restore the empire to its former glory - a stated goal of his - he had to have unity and purpose in the citizenry, not uproar and commotion. A divided nation is a weak nation. This state of affairs could not be allowed to continue, hence Constantinople II.

Unfortunately, the goal desired from this council was not achieved. Historians note that some eighty years later, the fighting in the empire between the citizens was still going strong. Justinian closed the four theological schools in the empire that were teaching Apokatastasis, called the council, and set out to give a single definition of proper belief to which all citizens would be expected to believe.

He failed.

 

[ArmyMatt]

A person who would experience the horrors of separation from God would not desire to cling to that which is intrinsically a horror. Thomas Talbot addresses this in his paper on "Free Will Theodicies of Hell."

who said anything about separation from God?

Father Matt, your supposition appears to be based on the idea that somehow men could find solace or refuge in their rebellion against God, when in fact, they (along with you and I) have no idea of the experience of separation from God and the horror that it entails. I have encountered this argument numerous times and still find it unconvincing. Every single one of us acts in accord with that which is in our own best interest. That is what sinners do here on earth, even though it means hurting others. The best interest of the greedy is the power and security money brings. The best interest of the fornicator is unrestrained pleasure. Take the man who is so often cited as the worst possible sinner - Adolf Hitler. All his actions were in his own best self-interest. Yet you say that there might be those who would not act in their own self-interest and choose hell over heaven? I find that hard to believe.

people acting in self interest is what makes hell what it is. so if you are arguing that self interest will lead people to repent, you are arguing something that is contradictory and definitionally makes no sense.

plus, Hitler isn’t a great example to use, since he hated Jews and hell is hating the presence of Christ Who is a Jew.

 

[ArmyMatt]

I believe I read that Origen died in the peace of the Church, despite having some rather odd views.

Origen was condemned in his own lifetime and by local councils and Fathers long before St Justinian.

Justinian closed the four theological schools in the empire that were teaching Apokatastasis, called the council, and set out to give a single definition of proper belief to which all citizens would be expected to believe.

He failed

actually, the 5th Council and his insertion of “Only Begotten” into the Liturgy kept both sides talking.

to say he failed is to also say St Constantine failed at Nicaea, since Arianism didn’t die off and kept persecuting the Church.

 

[The Liturgist]

Origen was condemned in his own lifetime and by local councils and Fathers long before St Justinian.


actually, the 5th Council and his insertion of “Only Begotten” into the Liturgy kept both sides talking.

to say he failed is to also say St Constantine failed at Nicaea, since Arianism didn’t die off and kept persecuting the Church.

Indeed, St. Justinian succeeded at Constantinople II in terms of getting rid of Monergism. And his insertion of the Hymn of St. Severus, Ho Monogenes, into the liturgy, and his marriage to the Syriac Orthodox Empress Theodora, really improved relations with the Oriental Orthodox. Later in his life, for reasons I don’t understand, Justinian, who had been a Theopaschite, changed his mind and embraced Apthartodocetism and began arresting all of the bishops of the Oriental Orthodox church of Antioch, with only one of them avoiding capture, that being Jacob bar Addai, who may have been tipped off by Theodora, and who then ordained a massive number of bishops to prevent future decapitation-type incidents against the Syriac Orthodox Church, but this resulted in a negative state of affairs that persisted until the Islamic conquest of Egypt and Syria, which caused the Eastern Orthodox and the Oriental Orthodox to begin working together for survival.

Indeed in the 19th century the Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Churches of Alexandria actually tried to merge, but were prevented from doing so by the Albanian Muslim Khedives, who were theoretically viceroys at the service of the Sultan in Constantinople, but in practice had attained a state of sovereignity in the 19th century, so for example, when the UK and Egypt invaded Sudan to avenge the death of General Charles Gordon and the Egyptian civillians in Khartoum at the hands of the Islamic terrorist and self-proclaimed messiah Muhammed Ahmed al Mahdi, who died shortly after the attack, but whose Sufi sect, the Ansaris, remained in control of Sudan, the result was the formation of a joint government called the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium of the Sudan, whose flag consisted of the Union Flag and the Egyptian Flag.

At any rate, no Orthodox church has declared itself Monergist or Universalist, whereas some Eastern Orthodox churches have advanced ecumenical relationships with their Oriental Orthodox counterparts, especially between the Antiochian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox, whose Metropolitans of Aleppo were, as many of you know, abducted in 2013 and remain unaccounted for, with the Antiochian Metropolitan being Peter Yazigi, the brother of the Patriarch, John X Yazigi, and both churches have prayed for each others bishops, and have not yet as far as I am aware declared them dead, so perhaps there is hope, but the situation was tragic, and it was one of the events that contributed to my decision to convert to Holy Orthodoxy. I was also moved by a speech given by Metropolitan Philip Saliba, and by a lecture on YouTube, Salvation In Christ, by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, which I rather wish @Light of the East would watch as it addresses this topic in a compelling way, and also by a lecture from Fr. John Behr entitled “The Heresy of Orthodoxy” which was really brilliant, in which he addressed the absurdity of the Gnostic gospels and also of the “Quest for the historical Jesus” that ignores the primary source of historical information about the man, which is the tradition of the Early Church. It was brilliant. And this material reinvigorated a lifelong interest I had in Orthodoxy and led me to join the OCA (for geographical reasons of convenience) the following year. And then in 2015 I got to meet Elder Ephrem, actually I encountered him by accident on the first night of my weeklong stay at his monastery when I inadvertantly entered in his office while looking to find my mother at the church service (I had fallen sound asleep from exhaustion from the drive there and the heat and slept through dinner, and had no idea where she was or if she had gotten up for the liturgy, and I was also worried about her to a great extent due to a problem she was having at the time with neuropathy, but I encountered Elder Ephrem and he put me at ease, identified himself and expressed a profound, divine love for me, all without saying a word, and seldom in my life have I felt such love and divine grace, and then on entering into the Catholikon for the Divine Liturgy I found my mother was already there and she was alright, and we proceeded to have a wonderful weeklong pilgrimage to a monastery with gardening so beautiful it is rivalled only by Disneyland. Indeed the four churches and two chapels on the monastery grounds combined with their beauty make me think of St. Anthony’s as Orthodox Disneyland, and I have suggested to the monks on a few occasions that they might consider installing a monorail so as to provide convenient transportation around the monastery, with scenic views of the different churches.

And I am only half joking, because it is actually possible to create monorails which are extremely unobtrusive to the surrounding environment; the one at Disneyland by design calls attention to itself, but there are a number of small automated monorails, peoplemovers, aerial tramways and funiculars in operation around the world which are designed to blend in with the scenery to such an extent that they are almost camouflaged, since obviously it would be distracting to the pilgrims if a Mark V monorail with those loud air horns, especially Monorail Purple which was much loved by Disneyland guests for having the loudest and clearest air horns (Monorail Blue had the worst, and was also the most disliked by drivers, and it once was backed off the switch track, and Purple had a reputation for sluggish acceleration, while Monorail Orange had the best acceleration and Monorail Red was known to be the fastest on the straight section of track across the parking lot, but obviously I digress, since we have gone from Monergism and the churches incorrectly accused of Monophysitism to Monorails, although I would propose monorails are less depressing than any of the unfortunate heresies and schisms that have happened in the history of the church.

So moving back to my original point, @Light of the East , if you read Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky or The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware or the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, or better yet the larger Fount of Knowledge of St. John of Damascus, you will find that monergism and Universalism are not remotely compatible with Orthodox doctrine, and any bishop should be able to confirm that to you, with the possible exception of the controversial retired Archbishop Lazar Puhalo.

The limit according to Metropolitan Kallistos Ware is that we can hope all may be saved, and there is a prayer for the salvation of all in the Great Litany, but we cannot say all must be saved, for to do opens up numerous theological cans of worms that have already been discussed ad nauseum in this thread, and because collecting thousands of loose worms is doubtless an exhausting task which I fear that more than one bait shop owner has had to deal with, hence the origin of the cliche, the Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox Church in their wisdom excluded monergism and universalism from the doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church at the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Synods, and also this served as the basis for the Synod of Dositheus in 1672 anathematizing Calvinism and declaring John Calvin to be an heresiarch, since he had taught a monergist doctrine and the possibility existed that a Patriarch of Constantinople had embraced Reformed Theology, although if I recall the same Synod determined the letters attributed to the Patriarch, who had been killed on the orders of the Sultan for unknown reasons perhaps related to the treacherous nature of politics at the Sublime Porte and other horrors of Turkocratia, to have been forgeries.

 

[The Liturgist]

By the way Fr @ArmyMatt I want to say what a pleasure it has been conversing with you on this and other subjects in the Ancient Way. I had not interacted with you much previously but of late the Traditional Theology forum has been inactive and there have been some absurd threads posted by Seventh Day Adventists relentlessly attacking everyone who disagrees with them, and these effects combine to make The Ancient Way something of a blessed respite from certain other discussions on the forum, where I have had the pleasure of frequently discussing various matters of the Orthodox faith with our friends @prodromos @Lukaris @HTacianas @PsaltiChrysostom and several others.

Please pray for me, a sinner, and also pray for the continued health of my mother, who is doing very well at present. Her baptismal name is Anna.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Indeed, St. Justinian succeeded at Constantinople II in terms of getting rid of Monergism. And his insertion of the Hymn of St. Severus, Ho Monogenes, into the liturgy, and his marriage to the Syriac Orthodox Empress Theodora, really improved relations with the Oriental Orthodox.

he also showed how Chalcedon could be understood through an Alexandrian lens.

 

[rusmeister]

My own take is that I do not know best. The Church, in the consensus of the fathers on Holy Tradition, knows better than the individual. And frankly, Origen and Macdonald are well-meaning individuals who defy that consensus. Compassion is an important part of the Christ-like attitude. And yet there is false compassion, one misplaced, that leads people astray. One that leads people like Met. Kallistos and Inga Leonova to suggest or demand that the Church change its teachings on marriage and sexuality. That misled desire, like that which would negate the doctrine of hell, springs from compassion for suffering.

Lewis saw Macdonald as his mentor. Yet his writings and stories, while sympathetic, ultimately disagree with his mentor’s view. In TGD, Frank is ultimately swallowed up by the Tragedian. Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia. The children leave the dwarves behind. It is not given to us to see a future in which they are redeemed. As far as we can see, they are lost. You are not wrong to hope that in some way, they might be ultimately redeemed. You ARE wrong, though, in insisting that the individuals you cite should enable us to override the consensus of the fathers.

It is not a final argument, but it is best for us to see our fate as “a game which we can really lose”. Were universalism to become prevalent, far too many would, seeing an eternity in which we are guaranteed paradise no matter what in the end, abandon their own struggle against their passions and toward theosis. The final argument is that we as individuals do not know best.

 

[The Liturgist]

he also showed how Chalcedon could be understood through an Alexandrian lens.

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.

 

[ArmyMatt]

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,

saints are saints in spite of their sins which we must always remember. there was a lot of bad blood between the two sides at the time.

 

[The Liturgist]

It is not a final argument, but it is best for us to see our fate as “a game which we can really lose”. Were universalism to become prevalent, far too many would, seeing an eternity in which we are guaranteed paradise no matter what in the end, abandon their own struggle against their passions and toward theosis. The final argument is that we as individuals do not know best.

Indeed, this is also my position. And furthermore, not only do we lose the incentive to fight the passions and pursue Theosis, but also the incentive to evangelize, because what is the point of baptizing all nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost if such baptism is of no actual benefit to them on account of universal salvation?

I have one other concern, and that is that the Unitarian Church, while it began its transition from being a heretical Christian denomination like the Swedenborgians, the Metropolitan Community Church, Christian Science and the United Church of Canada, to being a religion that no longer is identifiably Christian except in a small number of parishes, such as King’s Chapel in Boston, which retains a tenuous Christianity (they are well known for using a version of the 1662 Anglican Book of Common Prayer with all references to the Trinity deleted) but instead is devoid of a specific religious identity and features many people who practice Wicca or other occult religions and many atheists, agnostics and deists, in the mid 19th century following the resignation of the influential poet Ralph Waldo Emmerson from his position as a Unitarian minister because he did not believe that faith in Jesus Christ, even in the diluted form professed by Unitarians, was necessary for salvation, a view which was not reciprocated, causing him to resign, but this was the kind of resignation meant to influence people a certain way, and it had the intended effect, but the full transition from Unitarian Christianity being to the current prevailing Unitarian Universalism only came about when the Unitarian Church in the US merged with the Universalist Christian Church in the mid 20th century, an event which was almost immediately followed by the majority of Unitarian Universalist churches from either side of the merger moving swiftly to abandon the vestigial Christian faith that they had previously been a part of, to the extent that the logo of the Universalist Church prominently depicted the Holy Cross. This also influenced the British Unitarians to follow suit, but the leading center of thought was clearly in America, centered around Harvard Divinity School and the Unitarian Universalist churches in New England.

One final point of interest is the universalism and offensive liturgical eclecticism characterizes an extremely liberal and eccentric Episcopalian parish in San Francisco. This parish chose their patron saint St. Gregory of Nyssa on the basis of his supposed universalism, having misunderstood his work, or more likely not even having read it but rather merely having heard that he was universalist, which makes sense given that church has icons painted in the Byzantine style of various non-Christians painted, infuriatingly, in our style, and also engages in other offensive acts of cultural appropriation by combining aspects of our liturgies, for example, the Paschal Matins and Divine Liturgy, with a potpourri of heretical and non-Christian material, such as the dances historically practiced by Shakers, and also in their funeral service, the urn with the cremains (obviously they made no provision for Christian burial as that would be too Orthodox for their tastes, and to them we are nothing more than a convenient source of inspiration for their eclectic heterodox worship), is placed in a Shinto Shrine. I really wish one of the Orthodox Churches would file a formal complaint with the Episcopal Church USA over that parish on the grounds of abuse of sacred iconography and worship practices that are integral to Eastern Orthodox Christianity (and also Oriental Orthodox Christianity; they “borrowed” the use of liturgical umbrellas from the Ethiopian church, which uses these umbrellas to cover the Eucharist and also sacred icons and relics during processions, which is a good and practical idea, particularly when one considers the relative poverty probably means that many of their churches have leaky roofs or problems with condensation). They also have multiple anaphoras, like the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, but one of their anaphoras is “The Anaphora of Cain”, specifically referring to the proto-murderer who killed his brother Abel.

However, what is amusing about all of this is that naturally, they are very supportive of the perverse practice of marrying men to others of the same sex, and likewise with Lesbians and persons who mutilate their genitalia and become self-murderers, according to various canons such as Canon I of the First Ecumenical Synod in Nicaea, and in doing so are unaware of the fact that St. Gregory of Nyssa is one of only a small number of Church Fathers who wrote canons specifically to prohibit homosexual behavior, his brother St. Basil of Caesarea being another (I suspect this perversion was perhaps common in Cappadocia, and that is why St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Basil wrote canons against it).

So in selecting St. Gregory of Nyssa as their patron saint, they selected someone who was not actually Universalist, and also one of the Church Fathers who felt compelled to not only condemn homosexual behavior, but also to write a canon anathematizing all such behavior in his diocese.

 

[The Liturgist]

saints are saints in spite of their sins which we must always remember. there was a lot of bad blood between the two sides at the time.

Yes this is a good point. And certainly with St. Constantine I always remember, when I am tempted to dislike him for his causing the exile of St. Athanasius in this elder years, that this does not negate all the good he did, both in the short term and in the long term, by embracing Christ, and also the work his mother did, and also it has occurred to me that it is probable that Emperor Constantine may have become senile and was being manipulated and exploited by Eusebius of Nicomedia, who is a man we know to be entirely unscrupulous and who absolutely would have gaslit St. Constantine in order to reverse Nicaea. And also if we examine the circumstances of it Emperor St. Constantine did not actually reverse Nicaea, but rather, he was lied to about St. Athanasius, as there was a false allegation that St. Athanasius had murdered someone who was providing the services of a presbyter without first having been ordained, when all St. Athanasius did was visit the man and tell him he needed to be ordained to celebrate the Eucharist, which was quite a nice thing to do I think, and also the readmission of Arius to communion was based on the lie that he had repented of his error, which we know from what Eusebius of Nicomedia did when Emperor Constantius came to power as an actual Arian, that this was clearly a charade in order to restore Arius to good standing during the remaining years of St. Constantine’s reign, and this was only thwarted by the fact that Arius rushed to the lavatory of the Hagia Sophia when he was about to be readmitted to communion, and subsequently died from a very bad case of what is sometimes called, by American tourists in Mexico who have made unwise choices regarding dining locations, Montezuma’s Revenge.

Likewise, it seems highly unusual that St. Justinian would go from being one of the most pro-Oriental Orthodox emperors, who married an Oriental Orthodox woman, and who actively had worked throughout his career to reconcile them to us, including appending the hymn which opens the Syriac Orthodox liturgy, Ho Monogenes (which the evidence suggests was likely written by Mor Severus of Antioch, and which has the effect of precluding Nestorianism in the same way the revised Nieno-Constantinopolitan Creed precludes Gnosticism, Arianism, Semi-Arianism and Pneumatomacchianism) to the second antiphon, and also embraced the Theopaschite theology stressed by Mor Severus, and also was instrumental in the introduction of the Presanctified Liturgy to the Byzantine Rite, and there is some evidence that Mor Severus had written the first example of that as well, known as the Signing of the Chalice (and this would explain why the older of the two Presanctified Liturgies known to have been used by the Eastern Orthodox has the name of St. James, and perrhaps why it was later mostly replaced by that which was obviously composed by Pope St. Gregory the Great, even though the two were used differently, with the former being celebrated after the third and sixth hour, and the latter being a Vesperal Divine Liturgy, this being because the primary Syriac Orthodox liturgy is that of St. James, and presumably this was also true of the Oriental Orthodox Greeks in Antioch, like Severus, and so naturally a presanctified version of the Syriac Orthodox liturgy would most likely be a presanctified version of the Liturgy of St. James and would have been introduced into our communion on that basis).

So why would St. Justinian go from doing that to violently persecuting the Oriental Orthodox and even rejecting Theopaschitism in favor of the obscure and somewhat complicated alternative of Apthartodocetism, which has always been somewhat theologically suspect? The whole thing is strange, and so I think charity compels me to consider the possibility that events happened of which no record survives which caused this apparent volte-face, which might have involved some kind of coercion of the Emperor, or a poisoning of him, or some other situation of the sort that could happen to the Emperor of the most powerful nation on Earth in the sixth century, a man whose prominence and political power exceeds that even of the US President and was probably last wielded by Charlemagne, with the closest contemporary equivalent being Stalin after the Soviets developed nuclear weapons, although the Soviets were usually the weaker of the two powers in the Cold War, much like the Sassanian Empire’s centuries long cold war with the Romans. So since we don’t know what actually caused this drastic change on the part of Emperor St. Justinian, you make a good point that charity compels us to, at a minimum, acknowledge that saints aren’t perfect, something I feel particularly compelled to remember considering that I tend to regard Oriental Orthodox saints as venerable, and also some Roman Catholic saints, and the scholarship of Sebastian Brock has provided compelling evidence that St. Isaac the Syrian was a member of the Church of the East, and for that matter it is widely believed that the very important St. Cyril of Jerusalem may have been semi-Arian, and furthermore I would argue that charity also compels us to consider that since we don’t know what actually happened in the case of Justinian to cause this abrupt shift, we should not ascribe malice to him personally, since we have no right to presume to judge him, or anyone else for that matter, and Christianity requires us to believe the best about people, but I am a sinner and as a result of this occasionally I have believed uncharitable things about other people and been judgemental rather than reserving such judgements to God, who alone has all the facts and is capable of rendering a fair verdict regarding the actual motivations of people for certain actions and the reality of moral culpability, and the limit of our ability is to make imperfect legal determinations in criminal and civil law based on standards of evidence, which occasionally are incorrect and result in great injustices being inflicted, but the legal system nonetheless serves a purpose. However, one of the beautiful things about the Orthodox Church is that it is not legalistic, indeed, it is less legalistic than most other churches. If we were any less legalistic we would probably degenerate into a free for all like the Unitarian Universalists, who despite being heretics are people with good intentions who have made a very bad decision when it comes to their religious views, but one nowhere near as bad as those people persuaded to convert to a religion such as Islam or Mormonism, which includes a very dear friend of mine.

Actually in his case, his name is Adam, and I pray for him and ask for prayers. I think he was converted because he was a huge fan of the original Battlestar Galactica, which was a ripoff of Star Wars produced by Glen Larson, as opposed to the more sophisticated 2003-2009 series produced by Ronald D. Moore, who was one of the major writers for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which he was also a fan of. And Mormonism, as it tends to do, provided him with a wife. This happened after I had joined the Orthodox Church, and I actually called the only Orthodox church in his town, a GOArch parish, but it is a very small parish with a very elderly membership that lacked a permanently assigned priest and thus sometimes did reader services on Sunday, and they didn’t have anyone who they could send around to try and invite my friend to visit them before he comitted to Mormonism, unfortunately.

Also I would like to apologize for the topical shift in this post, but your post prompted a metanoia in me, as I realized I have been sinning in a severe way inadvertently, for some time, by presuming to impart sinister intent to St. Justinian’s change of position on the Oriental Orthodox when in fact the incident is highly unusual, I have no knowledge of what actually occurred, and no right to judge him anyway, and I had been regarding St. Constantine as being the victim of elder abuse, and for all we know something similiar could have happened to St. Justinian, and just as I hope some random person on the 36th century equivalent of the Internet doesn’t impute negative motives to me where none exist, or for that matter, people in my day to day lives, which sometimes occurs and is always distressing, that I had better repent of that, for I have been guilty of hypocrisy.

So thank you Father for helping me, and please pray for me, a sinner. And may God grant you many years, Father. I am literally in tears right now, of joy and relief, for you have lifted the burden of a particularly poisonous sin from me. The soldiers you serve as chaplain are lucky to have you.

 

[ArmyMatt]

no worries, man. and thank God.

and I dare say that since St Justinian was also a politician, there could be some things he said or did that was taken out of context. plus, it’s always good to remember that it all might be true and he could have repented at the end.

 

[Light of the East]

Origen was condemned in his own lifetime and by local councils and Fathers long before St Justinian.


actually, the 5th Council and his insertion of “Only Begotten” into the Liturgy kept both sides talking.

to say he failed is to also say St Constantine failed at Nicaea, since Arianism didn’t die off and kept persecuting the Church.

He failed in his objective to unify the empire and bring an end to the warring. That was his desire for the council and the anathemas to achieve and it didn't do it.

 

[ArmyMatt]

He failed in his objective to unify the empire and bring an end to the warring. That was his desire for the council and the anathemas to achieve and it didn't do it.

by that line of reasoning, every emperor failed who called a council, not just St Justinian. it’s absurd to single out St Justinian if that’s the issue.

 

[Light of the East]

by that line of reasoning, every emperor failed who called a council, not just St Justinian. it’s absurd to single out St Justinian if that’s the issue.

You lost the train of thought that I was presenting. My issue was that the condemnation of Origen was part of Justinian's desire to unite the empire under one theology. I'm singling out Justinian because for him in particular, that was the issue. It was not necessarily the same for the other councils.

 

[Light of the East]

Indeed, St. Justinian succeeded at Constantinople II in terms of getting rid of Monergism.

Okay, now this is interesting to me. I thought that Constantinople II was specifically about the rejection of Chalcedon and the issues of Christ's nature that were addressed there. Could you tie this together for me, please, with specifics on what was said at that council about monergism?

 

[Light of the East]

My own take is that I do not know best. The Church, in the consensus of the fathers on Holy Tradition, knows better than the individual.

It would certainly have been nice if this was the prevalent attitude towards Augustine and his theological novums which he introduced and which were accepted carte blanche by the Church without so much as a council called to question some of his bizarre and unOrthodox ideas, such as each man bearing the guilt of Adam's original sin.

The consensus of the Church appears to be, from historical record, that Universalism was the predominant teaching of the Church, being taught in four theological schools before Augustine started his attack on the teaching. Indeed, we find that at one time in his life, Augustine embraced the teaching himself. Only the theological school at Rome taught Eternal Conscious Torment, and it is odd that the East so easily gave in to Roman Catholic views of salvation, eschatology, anthropology, and the Gospel.

And frankly, Origen and Macdonald are well-meaning individuals who defy that consensus. Compassion is an important part of the Christ-like attitude. And yet there is false compassion, one misplaced, that leads people astray. One that leads people like Met. Kallistos and Inga Leonova to suggest or demand that the Church change its teachings on marriage and sexuality. That misled desire, like that which would negate the doctrine of hell, springs from compassion for suffering.

No, it springs from some of us actually studying the Bible and realizing that the concept of hell came from Roman Catholicism and wretched Latin mistranslations of the Greek which were, for some bizarre reason, accepted by the East. The problem with modern Christianity is that we read bad translations, accept that they are correct, and are too busy to do our due diligence and dig into the Greek and Christian history and see where this idea of a place called "hell" and eternal torment actually came from.

Lewis saw Macdonald as his mentor. Yet his writings and stories, while sympathetic, ultimately disagree with his mentor’s view. In TGD, Frank is ultimately swallowed up by the Tragedian. Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia. The children leave the dwarves behind. It is not given to us to see a future in which they are redeemed. As far as we can see, they are lost. You are not wrong to hope that in some way, they might be ultimately redeemed. You ARE wrong, though, in insisting that the individuals you cite should enable us to override the consensus of the fathers.

It is not a final argument, but it is best for us to see our fate as “a game which we can really lose”. Were universalism to become prevalent, far too many would, seeing an eternity in which we are guaranteed paradise no matter what in the end, abandon their own struggle against their passions and toward theosis. The final argument is that we as individuals do not know best.

So let me ask you this, because I need to understand the Orthodox teaching on this: is theosis the same as salvation? Maybe Fr. Matt could help me out with this. I don't see it that way, but there is a lot I have to learn.

BTW - This IS one of my pet peeves with those who are teaching Apokatastasis. David Bentley Hart did an interview for the NY Times regarding Universal Salvation, and neither in that article, nor anything he wrote do I see the warnings that Jesus and St. Paul gave regarding the suffering that the wicked will experience as they are cleansed from their sins. It is dishonest to let people think that Universal Salvation somehow means that those who do not conquer their passions in this life are somehow going to be exempt from pain, some of it quite severe, in the next age as they are brought face to face with He who is Truth and the wickedness they have indulged themselves in. In my book on Apokatastasis, the last chapter is exactly this - a very serious and stern warning that those who engage in sin will face the pain of Christ's chastening in the next life, and it ain't gonna be fun!

 

[Light of the East]

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.

I find myself amazed as I read your posts. You have a deep well of knowledge of the history of Orthodox and the various parts of it.