Ignatius on the Eucharist

[Arsenios]

Orthodox Christians almost always say that they believe in Transubstantiation or else that they agree with the RCC

They may be converts, or speakers in a foreign language - They may simply take TS to mean "becoming real"... Which it fundamentally tries to do... But you will not find it in the words of the first 7 Ecumenical Councils received by Greek Rome in Constantinople and Latin Rome in Italy...

I think we tend to just take it as a nice big word that by its very mysteriousness to us we regard it as meaning Mystery, I say!

Orthodox academic theologians, speaking with precision, do not use the term TS as an Orthodox word these days...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

I think you've misunderstood. If Orthodox people oppose the defining of any mechanics, why do they align with the RCC on this matter, knowing that the RCCs doctrine involves--and even requires-- that mechanical explanation?

We have not been in Communion with the Latin Church for a thousand years... In this matter, they have simply stepped beyond Mystery to offer a word for a means that they do not know... So we are in agreement that it occurs, and we reject the attempt at an explanatin of the means of that occurence... They have a fair number of these kinds of ideas, for they desired to unite Faith and Reason under their Authority over the Church... But even so, they ARE an Apostolic Church, whatever their errors may or may not be, and we see Her as our Sister...

Arsenios

 

[Albion]

They may be converts, or speakers in a foreign language - They may simply take TS to mean "becoming real"... Which it fundamentally tries to do... But you will not find it in the words of the first 7 Ecumenical Councils received by Greek Rome in Constantinople and Latin Rome in Italy...

It of course is not in the words of the Ecumenical Councils since the doctrine came along only later, but it seems that every time the subject of Transubstantiation comes up, the Orthodox people here (or wherever it may be) side with the Roman Catholics, even though their EO churches do not agree with Transubstantiation as it is taught by the RCC.

So you and I have nothing to argue about, but it is a curiosity to me that this happens at all. It is as though Orthodox posters fear taking issue with anything Roman Catholic--except, perhaps, for the Pope...lest doing that might place them in agreement with Protestants on anything!

 

[Arsenios]

Arsenios, I tend to agree with the view that it is a mystery; but the logic escapes me when someone says that it is a mystery and that how this is done is not known. Yet they declare that it cannot be transubstantiation. Perhaps it is safer to just leave it as a mystery with transubstantiation being one possibility.

The Orthodox do not do speculative Theology like this...

For us, Theology, including Dogmatics, is Empirical...

Key elucidational term: Think "Descriptive"...

Hence deducing from Scripture is not what we do...
We purify the heart unto God...
And report from there...

It normally takes most of a lifetime, hence our reverence for Holy Elders....

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

If Orthodox people oppose the defining of any mechanics,
why do they align with the RCC on this matter,
knowing that the RCCs doctrine involves--and even requires-- that mechanical explanation?

There are quite a few in Orthodoxy who have had the Spiritual vision to perceive the fiery action of God in the consecration of the Gifts - Even if only once... These reports preclude all English words remotely resembling MECHANIC... Mystery, the word of no words, comes closest...


Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

If Orthodox people oppose the defining of any mechanics, why do they align with the RCC on this matter, knowing that the RCCs doctrine involves--and even requires-- that mechanical explanation?

We only align with them up to the mechanics... Explaining a Mystery is a condescension to the fallen intellectual means of human understanding... The problem is that the arrogance of man in his thinking processes imagines with certainty that they are actually explaining the Mystery... Such human arrogance has no clue that it is dealing with tinker-toys - eg with their thoughts intellectually derived... True knowledge is Union with Christ... eg the Divinization of the man. This is the Orthodox Doctrine of Theosis... It is the quintessential feature of of Orthodox Saints, and is the unseen driving force underelying all the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, and the praxis of the Church, for it is the "KNOWING God" that IS Life Eternal... THAT is knowledge - It is NOT humanly derived, but "of God the Gift"...

So that when one thinks he is explaining an action of God in the Mysteries of His Holy Body, the Ekklesia of God, he is in that very thought deceived... The point of talk is encouragement in praxis [deeds]... It is not at all to give some "full understanding ever evolving" of the Eucharist...

We ENTER the Mystery in the Faith of Christ...

That entry, Baptism, is in silence, confessing God and spitting on Satan in the prayers of exorcism at its beginning, but the Waters of Regeneration are entered in Silence on the part of the one being so entered into Christ...

Arsenios

 

[FireDragon76]

Orthodox agree with Catholics and Lutherans that Christ is truly present in the sacrament so that eating the bread and wine is eating the flesh and blood of Christ. That doesn't necessarily mean we have a shared understanding of how Christ is present. But we understand that communion is physical, and not merely a spiritual action. You @Albion see that as "agreeing with Catholicism" only because you are imposing Catholic metaphysical categories in a way we would not.

 

[PeaceB]

The Roman Catholic Church teaches Transubstantiation. I described what that means.

No, you did not describe what it means.

 

[tz620q]

The Orthodox do not do speculative Theology like this...

For us, Theology, including Dogmatics, is Empirical...

Key elucidational term: Think "Descriptive"...

Hence deducing from Scripture is not what we do...
We purify the heart unto God...
And report from there...

It normally takes most of a lifetime, hence our reverence for Holy Elders....

Arsenios

I think I understand. I had a similar elucidation when pondering the decree of Papal Infallibility in 1870. It dawned on me that in defining what was Papal Infallibility we actually limited it, not extended it. All definitions are acts of saying something is this and is not that. Before the definition, all possibilities are accepted. After the definition, some are excluded and some included. So in defining the how of the Eucharist, we are in some ways limiting the ways in which God can do this. I had to reread your post above several times to understand how you would mean Empirical when referring to the Eucharist. My thought is that you do not mean that the bread and wine empirically change into the body and blood of Christ, so that our senses can detect the change; but that they are the body and blood of Christ and we through consuming them become the body of Christ. Is that right?

 

[Arsenios]

I think I understand. I had a similar elucidation when pondering the decree of Papal Infallibility in 1870. It dawned on me that in defining what was Papal Infallibility we actually limited it, not extended it. All definitions are acts of saying something is this and is not that. Before the definition, all possibilities are accepted. After the definition, some are excluded and some included.

That is all kinda true... And especially the latter...

So in defining the how of the Eucharist, we are in some ways limiting the ways in which God can do this.

Even if you re but identifying how God does it, you cannot avoid the question: "How do you know?" And if this means you will answer with a logical proof, you are back to tinker-toys... The Orthodox have SEEN the institution of the Bread and the Wine as the Body and Blood of our Lord, and the consistent descriptive is wild Fire coming from Heaven... Which we do not talk about all that much... The action of that Fire is most certainly not mechanical, nor can it properly be termed biologic, but can only by described as Mystery...

I had to reread your post above several times to understand how you would mean Empirical when referring to the Eucharist.

Sorry - The topic is itself Mystery, and the apprehending of Mystery can only then be described in terms which do not define, but instead describe, the experience...

My thought is that you do not mean that the bread and wine empirically change into the body and blood of Christ, so that our senses can detect the change;

I want to repeat this once again - The Bread and the Wine ARE the Body and Blood when Consecrated in an Apostolic Church according to the obedience of that Church's Ministers doing the consecration... The Bread IS the Body - Not the Presence of Christ, but the Risen Body of our Lord... It is Not his bloodied and battered Body on the Cross - Of ThAT Body, as He Resurrected, He told Mary "Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father in Heaven..." No... In The Eucharist, it IS the Bread that IS the Body... Just as He said BEFORE His Crucifixion...

but that they are the body and blood of Christ

Exactly so...

and we through consuming them become the Body of Christ.

No, we are already members of that Body, and we eat His Body and drink His Blood unto our having His Life in us, for healing and for forgiveness, for strengthening and health of both soul and body...

Is that right?

Pretty much so, I should say...

Have you ever heard the term: "Empirical Dogmatics"??
It is a book title by Hierotheos Vlachos...
A whole 'nother take on Dogma...

Arsenios

 

[tz620q]

Have you ever heard the term: "Empirical Dogmatics"??
It is a book title by Hierotheos Vlachos...
A whole 'nother take on Dogma...

Arsenios

No, I had not heard it before. So I associated it with the empirical scientific approach, which from your response it is not. Though your thought that it is a descriptive, not scientific approach helps. In seeing fire illuminate the Eucharist, you do not try to explain the phenomenon but describe it only and leave it as a theophany. In that way, it is a reality that can be sensed, just not explained. Similar to Moses and the burning bush.

 

[FireDragon76]

Greek and western thinking about the world mitigates against accepting the Incarnation as a reality. In Neo-Platonism, people become gods through deification, but the Infinite does not become a creature. So it isn't surprising that Ignatius discusses both proto-docetism and denial of the Eucharist as the body and blood of Christ hand-in-hand. They do tend to go together.

 

[Arsenios]

No, I had not heard it before. So I associated it with the empirical scientific approach, which from your response it is not. Though your thought that it is a descriptive, not scientific approach helps. In seeing fire illuminate the Eucharist, you do not try to explain the phenomenon but describe it only and leave it as a theophany. In that way, it is a reality that can be sensed, just not explained. Similar to Moses and the burning bush.

You pretty much have it - It is not cognitively difficult to grasp by the intellect...

But can you see how it is that it also pretty much rules out Transubstantiation?

The role of the fallen rational mind is repentance...

Out rational powers are to be dedicated toward the fallen world...

Human reasoning is relegated to being an internal guard-dog...

Attacking on sight demonic approaches to the nous, the mind of a man...

If one has had genuine encounter(s) with God, he or she will recall that during such encounters, one is not ratioanally interrogating anything, but is totally involved in rapt absorption of what is transpiring... There is no thought process whatsoever...

This is the stage in discipleship where the three disciples, Iakovos Peter and John, saw the Kingdom of God come in Power on Mount Tabor... And when Peter tried to contribute his thoughts, he and the others fell flat on their faces unable to even move - Hesychia - Stillness within and without, but discipled without, that it be received within, and recognized whenever that encounter should occur...

It is the absorption of God in rapt stillness that gives Truth to the human soul, to the person encountering the Person Who is God...

This approach is, strictly speaking, scientific, but the science is Spiritual, meaning that anyone who is willing to do so can take on the discipling of the Apostolic Church and get the same results - eg It IS repeatable, and has been being repeated in all cultures at all times throughout the history of the Body of Christ, in varying degrees by varying personalities covering pretty much the full gamut of human depravity, from its lack in the Theotokos, to its full implementation in the Demoniac(s) of the Genessarenes...

The science, you see, of repentance, is discipled by those who have gained it in the historic and Apostolic Body of Christ... That way is the inside passage, as it were... There are others who did not come this way, yet gained Christ... John the Baptist was not raised by the Judaic Church, yet he Baptized Christ in the Jordan, becoming the only Prophet fortelling Christ to actually take His Head in his hands...

Melchidesek, I suspect, was another...

St. Mary another, perhaps not as much...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

Greek and western thinking about the world mitigates against accepting the Incarnation as a reality.

The Ancient Greeks were intellectuals par-excellance... And Paul wrote of them with humor - Idlers hanging out with bloated intellects in the agora hoping someone might come around with some NEW idea... Wherein they welcomed Paul, and rejected Christ's resurrection from the dead...

In Neo-Platonism, people become gods through deification,

Yes, in the Homeric sagas, especially in battle, with eyes ablaze, when the gods might have pity on them, undefeatable on the battle field... Socrates, not so much, but definitely divinely connected...

but the Infinite does not become a creature.

I do not remember the Neo-Platonic pre-Christian Greeks ever thinking in terms of something called "the Infinite"...

So it isn't surprising that Ignatius discusses both proto-docetism and denial of the Eucharist as the body and blood of Christ hand-in-hand. They do tend to go together.

Those were no doubt part of the cultural "old man" of many if not most of the Goyim...
The Nations...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

No, I had not heard of it (Empirical Dogmatics) before.

https://www.amazon.com/Empirical-Do...6173&sr=8-10&keywords=metropolitan+hierotheos

Not exactly cheap...

So I associated it with the empirical scientific approach, which from your response it is not. Though your thought that it is a descriptive, not scientific approach helps. In seeing fire illuminate the Eucharist, you do not try to explain the phenomenon but describe it only and leave it as a theophany. In that way, it is a reality that can be sensed, just not explained. Similar to Moses and the burning bush.

When we begin the Prayers of Preparation for the Reception of Holy Communion we pray:

When thou O man art about to eat the Master's Body
draw nigh with fear; It is Fire...

The Gifts are very much akin to the unconsuming fire of the Burning Bush...

That bush, btw, still is living at St. Katherine's Monastery on Sainai...
We have cuts from it growing at our Mother Church...

The idea here is that it is the phronema of the Church that wrote Scripture that we seek to attain... And that phronema is always turned to God...

Arsenios

 

[Arsenios]

So you and I have nothing to argue about,

My Brother, this is a sad state of affairs, and I appreciate your angst...
I will do what I can to help you with this complaint of yours...
A swift yet hidden shin-kick under the table is simply not an option just now...

but it is a curiosity to me that this happens at all.

Curiouser and curiouser...

It is as though Orthodox posters fear taking issue with anything Roman Catholic

I would venture a guess that the reports you will find from a largish number of those of the Latin Communion, while perhaps not exactly unanimous, will be found to be overwhelmingly the opposite of your view... Yes, we do have this alarming tendency to go just a wee tad over the top when it comes to the fundamental heresy which we see them as embracing - eg Papal Authoritarian Rule over the Apostolic Churches... And yes, the roasts can get toasty... Mostly because that confession of Papal Rulership of the earthly Church is the defining feature of the difference between a Western Latin Catholic and an Eastern Catholic... They will forgive most anything else you may happen to disagree with them about in doctrines, but the Pope must be seen as the Head of the earthly Church... Without that pillar, the entirety of their theological excesses fall...

The University of Athens department of Theology had been taken over pretty much by Latin Scholastic professors last century (Man am I getting old!), moving in to "help" that persecuted country back into her Communion after she had managed to extricate herself from the overlordship of the Ottoman Turks who were running a criminal-political parasitical enterprise on the Christians under Her... (has a kind of familiar ring, no?)... And one pious and Orthodox PhD candidate wrote his PhD Thesis that overturned the Scholastic department and returned that feature of that university to the Orthodox Faith of Christ... That man's name was (nowFr.) John Romanides - He was easily able to defend his thesis on the Patristic Theology of the Orthodox Church against the Latins there over him, and the thesis was made popular in a book he wrote that was but a re-write of the thesis for a popular audience. - My Avatar, Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, studied under him - He has been a father to many great lights now still alive... So what is needed is not vigorous arguments against the Latin Confession that stand up like a big dog and bite harder, but instead a pastoral concern for anyone in error... We have no authority over them, nor do they over us... Even when they become our enemies, we are to abide in our love for them... And that goes for not only them, but for all mankind

--except, perhaps, for the Pope...lest doing that might place them in agreement with Protestants on anything!

I used to think that by playing on the Protestant hatred of the Pope I might have an edge in converting them to Orthodoxy - expecially after having a few "successes"... Until I caught on that edge and bought the hard face of an unforgiving mogul - Well, it wasn't quite THAT dramatic... The means of conversion for Orthodoxy is God - Living a Christian life and deep hesychastic prayer... Love is not a treasury of wrongs... The freedom of this Faith is absolutely fundamental... Worldly pressures of any kind are but God's ekonomia for getting us to turn to Him, but are not for us to use to persuade or motivate others to our point of view... The witness is the life lived and its impact...

Well, Albion, I hope I have managed even if just a little to help you with your complaint at the start of this post... And if not, please forgive me and rest assured that I will try to do better next time!

Arsenios

 

[Albion]

I would venture a guess that the reports you will find from a largish number of those of the Latin Communion, while perhaps not exactly unanimous, will be found to be overwhelmingly the opposite of your view..

If you are referring to my surprise at them swallowing their tongues when something comes up for discussion and the Orthodox decline to oppose the Roman teaching...yes, you would think so. But, no, that's not been the experience around here.

 

[Arsenios]

If you are referring to my surprise at them swallowing their tongues when something comes up for discussion and the Orthodox decline to oppose the Roman teaching...yes, you would think so. But, no, that's not been the experience around here.

It is hard, you see, to maintain any semblance of humility when one, instead of swallowing one's tongue, blathers forth in righteous condemnation of false doctrine at the hands of another... And because of the fact that humility is the primary virtue of all repentance, and because the Orthodox are in fact being discipled in the Apostolic Faith, I am overjoyed to learn from you, my dear Albion, that at least on this forum they are actually finding some measure of real success in the enterprise of repentance in this great Faith of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ...

On other venues, I have not had nearly this much encouragement, finding them proudly proffering forth their blathersome and self-righteous condemnation of others who are not their servants, but His... Such actions, as you must needs be aware, contribute only to the hardening of the heart, and never to persuasion of right opinions...

So again, I am renewed in yout debt my Brother...

Thank's be to God!

Arsenios

 

[Albion]

It is hard, you see, to maintain any semblance of humility when one, instead of swallowing one's tongue, blathers forth in righteous condemnation of false doctrine at the hands of another

Of course I can sympathize with that perspective--as far as it goes. But this, what you wrote, does not adequately describe what I was referring to.

No, I wouldn't expect Orthodox Christians to be blathering forth when these issues arise, but I was simply noting, with disappointment, that when an issue on which EO and RC agree but not P, then the Orthodox become outspoken. If, however, there is an issue where EO and P agree but in opposition to the RC, then the EO fall silent. I was wondering why that should be.

 

[Arsenios]

Of course I can sympathize with that perspective--as far as it goes. But this, what you wrote, does not adequately describe what I was referring to.

Perhaps we are maturing in the Faith - We started out here as an insulated bunch of pretty ethnic Churches that really kept pretty much to themselves, then began evangellizing, with the huge reception of the CCC into the Antiochian Archdiocese in one big gulp, and then a bunch of recovering Protestants still out there proving their newly confessing Faith to be right in the face of all their old beliefs, all the while affirming their inherited disdain for the Papal Church, and not after some 20 years or so, finally finding the confidence born of the recovery of Apostolic repentance... And from here, it is no longer needed, this need to prove one's self and the doctrines of Orthodoxy superior to other doctrines... We now KNOW them so in the Praxis of the Faith that adopted us... So that our perespective has shifted from confrontational toward pastoral evangellical outreach... The intellectual battle was decided some time back now... What foreward looks like I dont know, except to bear witness in our lives and in our prayers for the world and thereby in that very outreach...

When an issue on which EO and RC agree but not P, then the Orthodox become outspoken.

OK - We agree on the Real Presence, and when a P disagrees, we join forces to persuade him or her...

If, however, there is an issue where EO and P agree but in opposition to the RC, then the EO fall silent.

OK- We agree that the RC doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is false, and the RC's affirm it - I have argued this issue endlessly against the RCC, showing its dogmatic impossibility, wherein it makes our Salvation in the Church, in the Body of Christ, not possible... Perhaps other Orthodox posters have simply decided not to push an issue that the RCC is not yet ready to concede and get into a big fight over it... It is not all that easy to argue issues of Faith, and family fights get ugly easily, and so we tend perhaps to just take a step back... I only discuss it because I am practicing to have conversations as an exercise in establishing some kind of way to avoid not inflaming passions in such dialogues... And the means I have chosen is the one wherein nothing is more important to me than the soul of the person with whom I am having the conversation... I will typically take their side in the dialogue... Taking their best argument, proving it, and then showing what it seems to not be addressing, looking for a way forward...

I have tried a bunch of different approaches, and the confrontational proving of one's "opponent" wrong is the least helpful of all, and yet this does seem to be the approach of a lot of P's...

If you visit the EOC sector of this website, you will find that most there are simply and fairly quietly working on their own repentance - They know how hard it is to maintain humility in the face of theological argument... Yet they like each other - Indeed they love one another - So they have a place to hang out, and to discuss more 'local' kinds of issues... I happen to be the more blabber-mouthed kind of EOCer here, and enjoy the discussions...

So that is the long version of the shorter one - I have seen a lot of fights across the web where RCC vs EOC arguments get a lot of ugly, and I have participated in some of that ugliness... I have stopped doing so, because it does not help... Praying for your 'opponent' does help a lot...

I was wondering why that should be.

Do you have a theory?

Arsenios