The Baptism of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2

[Always in His Presence]

And I means that. I would explain. what I. see what 1 Cor 10:2 means and you can see how I see that verse , is what

I mean and. nothing more ??

dan p

The verse has absolutely nothing to do with the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

 

[retired firefighter]

Well known



Notice the emphasis on they were all - Look just a could verses back (remembering the Scripture was not written in chapter and verse.


Notice - the eleven were address, but there were others in the room that made up the 'them all' - Mary, the mother of Jesus, with His brothers and 120 people in total.

Did you catch it?

How many were filled with the Holy Spirit? Them all!

Thoughts

you hit the nail right on the head! too many of todays churches resist the movement of the Spirit . i once when into a church, they had a sign on the wall , it read: we believe in speaking in tongues but don"t encourage it . if you find this , shake the dust off your feet !

 

[retired firefighter]

And your OP. says the BAPTISM of the HOLY SPIRIT , and just asking , was that BAPTISM. with Water. OR a BAPTISM

WITHOUT WATER ?? two totally different events, one emerged into water , the other washed over by the spirit

dan p

 

[timothyu]

it read: we believe in speaking in tongues but don"t encourage it . if you find this , shake the dust off your feet !

So English only? No foreign tongues allowed?

 

[The Liturgist]

you hit the nail right on the head! too many of todays churches resist the movement of the Spirit . i once when into a church, they had a sign on the wall , it read: we believe in speaking in tongues but don"t encourage it . if you find this , shake the dust off your feet !

I believe in speaking in tongues but my experience of the phenomenon was so radically different from the Pentecostal experience, which is not to say your approach is wrong, but that we have perhaps a different understanding. Within Orthodoxy the most common theolougoumemnon is that it gives us the ability to communicate with those who have something important to tell us, but we lack a common language - it is a sacred gift to overcome the limitations imposed by the confusion of Babel.

Thus, in the Divine Liturgy, all words are spoken in comprehensible language; but according to the most common (but unofficial) understanding, the one I’ve experienced, well, we have some blessed clergy who can say things to the congregation in apparent silence.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Within Orthodoxy the most common theolougoumemnon is that it gives us the ability to communicate with those who have something important to tell us, but we lack a common language - it is a sacred gift to overcome the limitations imposed by the confusion of Babel.

Please indulge me -

Doesn't theolougoumemnon mean something that cannot be supported by Holy Scripture?

As for Tongues - can you offer a real world example perhaps - who are you communicating with?

 

[retired firefighter]

Please indulge me -

Doesn't theolougoumemnon mean something that cannot be supported by Holy Scripture?

As for Tongues - can you offer a real world example perhaps - who are you communicating with?

talking to God

 

[timothyu]

talking to God

As in quietly in your closet?

 

[Always in His Presence]

talking to God

Thank you, but I’ll wait until @The Liturgist answers the questions.

 

[FenderTL5]

Please indulge me -

Doesn't theolougoumemnon mean something that cannot be supported by Holy Scripture?

As for Tongues - can you offer a real world example perhaps - who are you communicating with?

I understand you are waiting for a more thorough response from The Liturgist..
I also look forward to his response.

On that last part one of the more common tongues examples that I'm aware of is that of a guest visiting Mt Athos and conversations taking place between individuals who don't understand the other's native language. I.E, an English only speaking guest converses with a monk who speaks only Greek.. yet somehow in that environment the communication barrier is supernaturally eliminated.
It's very much akin to the example in Acts 2.

 

[The Liturgist]

Doesn't theolougoumemnon mean something that cannot be supported by Holy Scripture?

Not at all. Rather, there are many Scriptural texts the precise meaning of which is not agreed upon. The Orthodox Church works primarily by means of apophatic theology, the way of negation, so the Ecumenical Councils and Church Tradition tell us which doctrines are obviously contradicted by Scripture (and indeed the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils such as St. Athanasius the Great at Nicaea and St. Cyril the Great at Ephesus, and other ancient Church Fathers such as St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom (“the Golden-mouthed”), St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. John of Damascus, St. Severus of Antioch, St. Jacob of Sarugh, St. Gregory Palamas, and others, provided very extensive Scriptural backing for all dogmatic positions assumed by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox. This has the effect of forming what I like to call “the Pale of Orthodoxy” in that the councils and Church Fathers define what we must believe and in particular what we must not believe, but within this pale, a surprising amount of freedom is available.

Theolougoumena range from beliefs which are so prevalent among the Orthodox and enjoy such strong scriptural support that they are almost doctrine, to beliefs which are not common or singular, but what distinguishes a theologoumenon is that addresses an area where we lack a clear dogmatic definition. The theolougoumemnon does not contradict the interpretation of Scripture we have received as the deposit of faith we believe was handed down once from the Apostles - our faith in God, the Father Almighty, who is unoriginate and whose divine essence, shared with His uncreated Son and Holy Spirit, is love, and who represents all qualities perfected in the fullest and most absolute degree - a boundless sea of being, as St. Gregory the Theologian called Him, our faith in Christ as our Savior, his status as God incarnate having put on our human nature in order to restore and glorify it, our faith in the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Paraclete, who is everywhere present, and our belief in other important doctrines such as the Resurrection of Christ and our own future resurrection and the life of the world to come, and that God is unbounded, ineffable and immutable, and knowable only through His uncreated Energies, and in the incarnation of Christ.

Additionally the theologoumemnon, since is is not part of the essential doctrine, should not become the subject of intense debates, as did once happen under the rule of Emperor Justinian between the Theopaschites and the Apthartodocetae (with the Emperor apparently having embraced both positions; since that time the former view has become refined and the latter view has become largely forgotten, to the point where on hearing it most people would incorrectly think one was speaking of the Docetist heresy propagated by the likes of Cerinthus, which so outraged St. John the Beloved Disciple.

Thus the interpretation of tongues that I am, based on personal experience and my analysis of relevant scripture and Patristic texts, inclined to support, that described so eloquently by my dear and pious friend @FenderTL5 who is both more generous and more pious than I am, a man with a true Orthodox phronema, is as far as I am aware extremely widespread and probably the most common understanding of what speaking in tongues means among the Orthodox. In the 1970s there were a number of Orthodox who leaned into what was basically a Charismatic interpretation of tongues, however, the works of Fr. Seraphim Rose, who will probably, I dare say hopefully, be declared a glorified saint, in Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, a very prescient work which predicted many of the issues the church is experiencing at present particularly in terms of its relationship with popular society,

On the other hand a much less common theologoumemnon would be my privately held view, which I’m not sure if it is widely held or not, that the Apostles were with a few exceptions relatively young at the time of their discipleship with Christ our True God as the eleven successful members of the Twelve Disciples, with Judas being one of the few older ones, along with St. Levi and possibly St. Matthew, and of course Judas due to his self-destructive behavior which led him away from Christ and towards the Field of Blood, a warning lesson for us all, was replaced by St. Matthias before the descent of the Holy Spirit, in the first instance of the Holy Apostles performing an ordination (but not the last - the ordination of the Seven Deacons was particularly important, for St. Philip the Deacon would go on to do great things, but St. Stephen, the glorious Protomartyr, would be the first to voluntarily give his life for Christ, earning him the crown of martyrdom, an event which the Armenians celebrate in a particularly beautiful way on his feast day on December 26th (they do not celebrate Christmas until January 6th on the Gregorian Calendar, or January 18th for those in Jerusalem on the Julian calendar, for they ar the last church who celebrates the Nativity and the Baptism of Christ on the same day, whereas the rest, in the fourth and fifth century, adopted the practice of celebrating the Nativity 9 months from the ancient feast of the Annunciation on March 25th (and not, as some argue, based on some desire to paganize the Nativity by fusing it with the Roman festival of Sol Invictus, although the fact that Nativity being rescheduled made it impossible for Christians to participate in the rapidly dying Roman civic religion decades before Emperor Theodosius smashed the Altar of Victory and pushed through legislation to ban it outright; likewise the scheduling of the feast of the Meeting of the Lord, known in the West as Candelmas, did have the happy side effect of interfering with Lupercalia, although some ostensible Christians continued to celebrate it into the fifth century for which they were verbally chastised by a Christian leader, who questioned why they should want to “run naked through the streets like their forfathers” rather than celebrate the incarnation of their Savior.

At any rate my uncommon theologoumemnon, derived from the fairly commonly held theolougoumemnon that the Apostles were relatively young, is that in the specific case of St. John the Beloved Disciple, that he was probably a young teenager, no older than 16 nor younger than 13 at the time of our Lord’s passion, which would explain his very long life, into the 90s AD, and why our Lord held him (to comfort him) and spared him martyrdom, and why our Lord had him be adopted by the Theotokos - it was not just for her benefit but for his as well, the kind of mutual synergy that characterizes love in the Christian family.

But I also readily admit I could be completely wrong on this point, since it is, as far as I am aware, both outside of formal Orthodox dogmatic definitions (and by extension those Scriptural verses of which we have a thorough understanding) and also does not contradict them, or any scripture, but rather addresses what might be implied by scripture (although as I learn more all the time my position may change - we do believe St. John was very elderly at the time of his repose, but as far as I am aware we do not believe he was a specific age). Assuming I am correct, that we do not have a more specific doctrine on the age of St. John the Theologian and Beloved Disciple, since my view is merely a theologoumemnon, I would never get in an argument, even with someone outside the Orthodox Church, to try to defend it, and if an Orthodox Christian such as my friend @FenderTL5 said that my view did contradict our doctrine and was erroneous or even heretical, I would listen very closely to what they had to say, because I would rather be wrong than inadvertently promulgate an error.

Whether I am right or wrong, what I do know is the importance to the Church of our most blessed and glorious lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, and of St. John, both worthy of veneration, and that they pray for us, and we seek their intercessions, that they might join us in our prayer to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, who are alone worthy of worship, week those churches on the Julian calendar celebrated one of the feasts of St. John the Theologian, and I watched a splendid ordination liturgy in Church Slavonic, in which the Holy Spirit was definitely active, for in the course of the ordination God the Holy Spirit is called upon to bless and consecrate those who have made of themselves a sacrifice, setting aside secular ambitions for service to the Church, which does not pay as well, but it is still a suitable occupation for a husband with a family in most cases, although for those mission churches, small parishes and certain other special cases where there are insufficient funds to pay for a married priest we rely greatly on hieromonks - monastic priests, and archimandrites, who are somewhat like monastic protopresbyters, and in turn those monastics who endure being out of their monastery to serve in this way prepare themselves and form the talent pool from which our church might select the next generation of bishops.

It is within a monastery where my own post poignant experience of speaking in Tongues occurred, and it was an exchange of specific information between myself and the hegumen of the monastery, who did not speak English, for the glory of God. Indeed I did not at at first realize who the monk was I was speaking with and asked him a question in English, which he answered, but not in English. Thus my experience was very much in line with what my excellent friend @FenderTL5 described.

 

[The Liturgist]

I understand you are waiting for a more thorough response from The Liturgist..
I also look forward to his response.

On that last part one of the more common tongues examples that I'm aware of is that of a guest visiting Mt Athos and conversations taking place between individuals who don't understand the other's native language. I.E, an English only speaking guest converses with a monk who speaks only Greek.. yet somehow in that environment the communication barrier is supernaturally eliminated.
It's very much akin to the example in Acts 2.

I do want to thank you again for this post, which makes very clear what I was saying. I feel I can always count on you to provide an interesting, concise and relevant explanation of our faith. Please pray for me, a sinner.

 

[Always in His Presence]

Not at all. Rather, there are many Scriptural texts the precise meaning of which is not agreed upon. The Orthodox Church works primarily by means of apophatic theology, the way of negation, so the Ecumenical Councils and Church Tradition tell us which doctrines are obviously contradicted by Scripture (and indeed the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils such as St. Athanasius the Great at Nicaea and St. Cyril the Great at Ephesus, and other ancient Church Fathers such as St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom (“the Golden-mouthed”), St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. John of Damascus, St. Severus of Antioch, St. Jacob of Sarugh, St. Gregory Palamas, and others, provided very extensive Scriptural backing for all dogmatic positions assumed by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox. This has the effect of forming what I like to call “the Pale of Orthodoxy” in that the councils and Church Fathers define what we must believe and in particular what we must not believe, but within this pale, a surprising amount of freedom is available.

Theolougoumena range from beliefs which are so prevalent among the Orthodox and enjoy such strong scriptural support that they are almost doctrine, to beliefs which are not common or singular, but what distinguishes a theologoumenon is that addresses an area where we lack a clear dogmatic definition. The theolougoumemnon does not contradict the interpretation of Scripture we have received as the deposit of faith we believe was handed down once from the Apostles - our faith in God, the Father Almighty, who is unoriginate and whose divine essence, shared with His uncreated Son and Holy Spirit, is love, and who represents all qualities perfected in the fullest and most absolute degree - a boundless sea of being, as St. Gregory the Theologian called Him, our faith in Christ as our Savior, his status as God incarnate having put on our human nature in order to restore and glorify it, our faith in the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Paraclete, who is everywhere present, and our belief in other important doctrines such as the Resurrection of Christ and our own future resurrection and the life of the world to come, and that God is unbounded, ineffable and immutable, and knowable only through His uncreated Energies, and in the incarnation of Christ.

Additionally the theologoumemnon, since is is not part of the essential doctrine, should not become the subject of intense debates, as did once happen under the rule of Emperor Justinian between the Theopaschites and the Apthartodocetae (with the Emperor apparently having embraced both positions; since that time the former view has become refined and the latter view has become largely forgotten, to the point where on hearing it most people would incorrectly think one was speaking of the Docetist heresy propagated by the likes of Cerinthus, which so outraged St. John the Beloved Disciple.

Thus the interpretation of tongues that I am, based on personal experience and my analysis of relevant scripture and Patristic texts, inclined to support, that described so eloquently by my dear and pious friend @FenderTL5 who is both more generous and more pious than I am, a man with a true Orthodox phronema, is as far as I am aware extremely widespread and probably the most common understanding of what speaking in tongues means among the Orthodox. In the 1970s there were a number of Orthodox who leaned into what was basically a Charismatic interpretation of tongues, however, the works of Fr. Seraphim Rose, who will probably, I dare say hopefully, be declared a glorified saint, in Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, a very prescient work which predicted many of the issues the church is experiencing at present particularly in terms of its relationship with popular society,

On the other hand a much less common theologoumemnon would be my privately held view, which I’m not sure if it is widely held or not, that the Apostles were with a few exceptions relatively young at the time of their discipleship with Christ our True God as the eleven successful members of the Twelve Disciples, with Judas being one of the few older ones, along with St. Levi and possibly St. Matthew, and of course Judas due to his self-destructive behavior which led him away from Christ and towards the Field of Blood, a warning lesson for us all, was replaced by St. Matthias before the descent of the Holy Spirit, in the first instance of the Holy Apostles performing an ordination (but not the last - the ordination of the Seven Deacons was particularly important, for St. Philip the Deacon would go on to do great things, but St. Stephen, the glorious Protomartyr, would be the first to voluntarily give his life for Christ, earning him the crown of martyrdom, an event which the Armenians celebrate in a particularly beautiful way on his feast day on December 26th (they do not celebrate Christmas until January 6th on the Gregorian Calendar, or January 18th for those in Jerusalem on the Julian calendar, for they ar the last church who celebrates the Nativity and the Baptism of Christ on the same day, whereas the rest, in the fourth and fifth century, adopted the practice of celebrating the Nativity 9 months from the ancient feast of the Annunciation on March 25th (and not, as some argue, based on some desire to paganize the Nativity by fusing it with the Roman festival of Sol Invictus, although the fact that Nativity being rescheduled made it impossible for Christians to participate in the rapidly dying Roman civic religion decades before Emperor Theodosius smashed the Altar of Victory and pushed through legislation to ban it outright; likewise the scheduling of the feast of the Meeting of the Lord, known in the West as Candelmas, did have the happy side effect of interfering with Lupercalia, although some ostensible Christians continued to celebrate it into the fifth century for which they were verbally chastised by a Christian leader, who questioned why they should want to “run naked through the streets like their forfathers” rather than celebrate the incarnation of their Savior.

At any rate my uncommon theologoumemnon, derived from the fairly commonly held theolougoumemnon that the Apostles were relatively young, is that in the specific case of St. John the Beloved Disciple, that he was probably a young teenager, no older than 16 nor younger than 13 at the time of our Lord’s passion, which would explain his very long life, into the 90s AD, and why our Lord held him (to comfort him) and spared him martyrdom, and why our Lord had him be adopted by the Theotokos - it was not just for her benefit but for his as well, the kind of mutual synergy that characterizes love in the Christian family.

But I also readily admit I could be completely wrong on this point, since it is, as far as I am aware, both outside of formal Orthodox dogmatic definitions (and by extension those Scriptural verses of which we have a thorough understanding) and also does not contradict them, or any scripture, but rather addresses what might be implied by scripture (although as I learn more all the time my position may change - we do believe St. John was very elderly at the time of his repose, but as far as I am aware we do not believe he was a specific age). Assuming I am correct, that we do not have a more specific doctrine on the age of St. John the Theologian and Beloved Disciple, since my view is merely a theologoumemnon, I would never get in an argument, even with someone outside the Orthodox Church, to try to defend it, and if an Orthodox Christian such as my friend @FenderTL5 said that my view did contradict our doctrine and was erroneous or even heretical, I would listen very closely to what they had to say, because I would rather be wrong than inadvertently promulgate an error.

Whether I am right or wrong, what I do know is the importance to the Church of our most blessed and glorious lady Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, and of St. John, both worthy of veneration, and that they pray for us, and we seek their intercessions, that they might join us in our prayer to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, who are alone worthy of worship, week those churches on the Julian calendar celebrated one of the feasts of St. John the Theologian, and I watched a splendid ordination liturgy in Church Slavonic, in which the Holy Spirit was definitely active, for in the course of the ordination God the Holy Spirit is called upon to bless and consecrate those who have made of themselves a sacrifice, setting aside secular ambitions for service to the Church, which does not pay as well, but it is still a suitable occupation for a husband with a family in most cases, although for those mission churches, small parishes and certain other special cases where there are insufficient funds to pay for a married priest we rely greatly on hieromonks - monastic priests, and archimandrites, who are somewhat like monastic protopresbyters, and in turn those monastics who endure being out of their monastery to serve in this way prepare themselves and form the talent pool from which our church might select the next generation of bishops.

It is within a monastery where my own post poignant experience of speaking in Tongues occurred, and it was an exchange of specific information between myself and the hegumen of the monastery, who did not speak English, for the glory of God. Indeed I did not at at first realize who the monk was I was speaking with and asked him a question in English, which he answered, but not in English. Thus my experience was very much in line with what my excellent friend @FenderTL5 described.

I mean no offense whatsoever - but your almost 1,700 word reply is almost impossible to understand from the view point of people not versed in your religious vernacular.

Can you simplify so someone outside of your sect can understand what you are saying and the response is not lost on soliloquy. Many thanks in advance.

I asked two pretty straightforward questions, let's start with definitions

1. The definition of theologoumemnon, did you mean​

theologoumenon​

Which is: : a theological statement or concept in the area of individual opinion rather than of authoritative doctrine​

​

Found here: Definition of THEOLOGOUMENON​

What is your definition and why does it seem to differ from the formal one?

 

[The Liturgist]

I mean no offense whatsoever - but your almost 1,700 word reply is almost impossible to understand from the view point of people not versed in your religious vernacular.

The only specifically Orthodox terms I used in my post was theologoumemnon - which was the term you asked for, and where I referred to my friend @FenderTL5 as having an “Orthodox phronema”, a compliment I offered him out of great admiration for his piety, which means “an understanding of the Orthodox faith.”

I would also note in a passing reference to Emperor Justinian I referred to the dispute between the Theopaschites and the Apthartodocetae, but these are not specifically Orthodox terms and all you need to know is that these groups had a disagreement.

What is your definition and why does it seem to differ from the formal one?

The formal definition you cited is the formal definition I would use.

However, it does not follow by any means that a theologoumenon is not without Scriptural support - rather, theologoumemna are “theological opinions” about issues where the Orthodox Church has not made a formal dogmatic definition (which actually extends to most things, since Orthodoxy works by proscribing incorrect worship through the Ecumenical councils and to a lesser extent by prescribing means of correct worship, since Orthodoxy means “right glorification”, but while the liturgy gives you a lot, it does not cover everything, for example, the exact meaning of “speaking in tongues” lacks a formal theological definition, but the prevailing theologoumemnon I have encountered based on Scripture and the experience of the church is the one summarized by my friend @FenderTL5.

I would respectfully suggest if you have questions about the Eastern Orthodox Church specifically, that you ask my pious friends @FenderTL5 @prodromos @HTacianas and @jas3 all of whom I love very much, who are more pious than I am, and who can probably give you a more useful and more concise answer.

My main area of expertise is in four specific areas - the history of Christian worship, the related field of liturgical arts (church architecture, church music, liturgical texts, vestments, the liturgical calendar, the lectionary - that is to say, the appointed scripture readings in different denominations), ecclesiastical history more generally, and in the fields of church history and the study of heretical belief systems on the fringes of Christianity like anti-Trinitarianism, specifically, comparing the cults of today like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses with the heresies of the early church that they correspond with, in the case of Mormons and J/Ws, the Tritheists and Arians.

And with regards to these four subject matters I try to approach them generally rather than from an Orthodox-specific perspective, so my knowledge of the history of worship is not confined to the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox or the ancient churches more broadly, but also includes the liturgical Protestants such as the High Church Anglicans and Confessional Lutherans whose worship I love so much, and also extends into the realm of aliturgical and semi-liturgical churches, such as the Puritans, the Salvation Army, the Baptists of North America and so on.

 

[Always in His Presence]

The only specifically Orthodox terms I used in my post was theologoumemnon - which was the term you asked for, and where I referred to my friend @FenderTL5 as having an “Orthodox phronema”, a compliment I offered him out of great admiration for his piety, which means “an understanding of the Orthodox faith.”

I'm glad you like the poster and have respect for them - it has zero to do with my question.

I would also note in a passing reference to Emperor Justinian I referred to the dispute between the Theopaschites and the Apthartodocetae, but these are not specifically Orthodox terms and all you need to know is that these groups had a disagreement.

Neither are common terms - and neither have anything to do with either my question or the subject of the thread.

The formal definition you cited is the formal definition I would use.

Which would be:
theologoumenon
Which is: : a theological statement or concept in the area of individual opinion rather than of authoritative doctrine

However, it does not follow by any means that a theologoumenon is not without Scriptural support -

Which is a contradiction of the definition you said you followed.

rather, theologoumemna are “theological opinions” about issues where the Orthodox Church has not made a formal dogmatic definition (which actually extends to most things, since Orthodoxy works by proscribing incorrect worship through the Ecumenical councils and to a lesser extent by prescribing means of correct worship, since Orthodoxy means “right glorification”, but while the liturgy gives you a lot, it does not cover everything, for example, the exact meaning of “speaking in tongues” lacks a formal theological definition, but the prevailing theologoumemnon I have encountered based on Scripture and the experience of the church is the one summarized by my friend @FenderTL5.

Which again has zero to do with the topic of the thread - or my inquiry.

I would respectfully suggest if you have questions about the Eastern Orthodox Church specifically, that you ask my pious friends @FenderTL5 @prodromos @HTacianas and @jas3 all of whom I love very much, who are more pious than I am, and who can probably give you a more useful and more concise answer.

I'm not interested (in this thread) in information on anything other than the topic of the thread - which you still have not addressed.

My main area of expertise is in four specific areas - the history of Christian worship, the related field of liturgical arts (church architecture, church music, liturgical texts, vestments, the liturgical calendar, the lectionary - that is to say, the appointed scripture readings in different denominations), ecclesiastical history more generally, and in the fields of church history and the study of heretical belief systems on the fringes of Christianity like anti-Trinitarianism, specifically, comparing the cults of today like the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses with the heresies of the early church that they correspond with, in the case of Mormons and J/Ws, the Tritheists and Arians.

And with regards to these four subject matters I try to approach them generally rather than from an Orthodox-specific perspective, so my knowledge of the history of worship is not confined to the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox or the ancient churches more broadly, but also includes the liturgical Protestants such as the High Church Anglicans and Confessional Lutherans whose worship I love so much, and also extends into the realm of aliturgical and semi-liturgical churches, such as the Puritans, the Salvation Army, the Baptists of North America and so on.

Congratulations - again - what does any of that have to do with the two questions I asked, or the topic of the thread?

While I offer congratulations on your education and piety - 95% of what you have posted has anything to do with the topic of the thread. I appreciate your insight - I just wish you would give it on the subject rather than pontificating on things not germane to the topic.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'm glad you like the poster and have respect for them - it has zero to do with my question.

Indeed, rather I owed to my friend @FenderTL5 for explained what my belief was in greater detail sparing me from having to do so myself.

Which is a contradiction of the definition you said you followed.

No, for this reason - there are multiple interpretations possible of much of Scripture. The Orthodox Church has, only in a small number of cases, expressly determined what the correct interpretation is (or more often, what the correct interpretation is not). For example, those who read Matthew 28:19 and assume the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are modes, rather than distinct persons of the Holy Trinity, as did Sabellius in antiquity and the Oneness churches today, are, by our doctrine as expressed in the Nicene Creed as revised at the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinple in 381, in error.

However, from Scripture we can say its possible that St. John the Beloved Disciple, for example, was a young teenager at the time of his discipleship (we know he was younger than his brother St. James the Great), and thus I hold to a private theologoumemnon that at the time of the Great and Holy Pascha in 33 AD where Christ our True God died on the Cross and rose again on the morning of the First Day in order to trample down death by death and remake us in His image, on those in the tombs bestowing life - a view which is doctrine, I have the theological opinion, from Scriptural inferences, that St. John could very well have been between the ages of 13 and 16 (16 if we say that he must have completed Bar Mitzvah before becoming a disciple of our Lord and if we say that the practice of Bar Mitzvah was at the time exactly that as it is now in contemporary Judaism, less than 16 if we relax that assumption).

The more widely held Theolougoumemon that the majority of the Apostles were young by our standards, in their late teens to mid twenties, is fairly common based on life expectancy at the time and the perilous nature of navigation on the Sea of Galilee.

In both cases we see a belief which is based on an interpretation of Scripture, where neither Scripture nor the early Church Fathers a definite answer on the correct interpretation, and thus formal dogmatic theology is silent, but nonetheless, there is enough implied in Scripture for the formation of a theological opinion.

Theological opinions would not be theological if they did not begin and end with Scripture, for all Orthodox beliefs, whether official doctrine or theologoumemna flow from Scripture, even those which pertain to events in the life of the Early Church recorded by the Fathers but not in Scripture itself, for example, the Dormition of the Theotokos, which is doctrine, and flows from Scripture, which clearly attests to the uniquely blessed nature of the Theotokos, her extreme holiness, her willingness to risk being stoned under false accusations of adultery had St. Joseph been less kindly and had he not been persuaded by the divine revelation he received, and her imperative instruction to all of us to do what Christ tells us to in the Water into Wine pericope in the Gospel According to John.

But in some cases, Scripture is unclear, and we lack an official doctrine. Indeed, in some cases it is so unclear as to be inscrutable - based on 2 Peter 1:20, this verse can, among other things, be read as meaning that in the case of prophetic Scripture, the answer is unknowable, and we know this to be the case regarding precise moment in time when Christ will return - so no Orthodox Christian would dare embarrass themselves by offering a theologoumemnon in which they presumed to calculate a date for His return; indeed doing so would be to us an indication that that member had fallen into prelest (which means spiritual delusion).

But in other cases, for example, the exact nature of Speaking in Tongues, there is enough information for a large number of Orthodox faithful, based on Scripture and the experience of the Church, to form a Theologoumemnon which is consistent with Scripture and flows organically from what is described in Scripture.

 

[The Liturgist]

I should add, I occasionally encounter members who believe there is only one obvious interpretation possible of Scripture, but this clearly isn’t the case, for even those who have sought to construct, from Scripture alone, a comprehensive exegesis of the entire Bible, without reference to church tradition, have produced variant output. For this reason, theologians and preachers ranging from Karl Barth to John Nelson Darby to Chuck Smith have each proposed interpretations of Scripture which agree on certain obvious portions but which disagree on numerous other details. And likewise, these interpretations also all clash both with earlier Protestant and Catholic systematic theology that refers to church history and tradition, such as that of the Confessional Lutherans, of John Calvin and of Thomas Aquinas, and also with the ancient Patristic exegesis so well summarized by St. John of Damascus, which forms the basis for Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox theology until the present.*

Since this is not the case, it therefore follows that there will be some questions of scriptural interpretation which have not been resolved in Orthodoxy and other denominations, such as Lutheranism, to be subject to formal dogmatic definitions. These unresolved issues, mostly of secondary importance, which Lutherans refer to as adiaphora, are the province of theologoumemna.

For, just as the Lutherans would later do, the leaders of the Byzantine, Syrian, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, and Indian churches, like their Roman counterparts, would, through a series of church councils, come to form, on the basis of Scripture, liturgical tradition, ecclesiastical experience and Patristic analysis, agree upon doctrinal definitions to cover the most pressing and controversial issues.

Yet, since going past that point would risk division over trivial issues, instead, like Lutherans in the realm of adiaphora, Orthodox Christians in the realm of theologoumemna have the freedom to hold such views as are not contrary to church doctrine or without Scriptural basis (the two are the same thing, from our perspective, for to quote St. Isidore of Seville, Scripture is in the interpretation, not the reading), provided of course we do so with humility and the recognition that holding such opinions too tightly might be unwise, since we are outside the realm of defined dogma, meaning we could well be proven completely wrong. Perhaps St. John was 25 at the time Christ our True God was cruficied; I do not know, I have an opinion, but I do not claim it to be definitive.

*And which also continues to influence many in other denominations, such as Confessional Lutheranism, as demonstrated by anything written by @ViaCrucis , Anglicanism, such as the Caroline Divines, the non-Juring Scottish Episcopalians, John Wesley and the Methodist movement during his lifetime, and the later Anglo-Catholics).