Indulgences [Moved from TAW]

[Monica child of God 1]

As the Orthodox Patriarchs said in their Letter of 1848 to Pope Pius the Ninth: ‘Among us, neither Patriarchs nor Councils could ever introduce new teaching, for the guardian of religion is the very body of the Church, that is, the people (laos) itself.’ Commenting on this statement, Khomiakov wrote: ‘The Pope is greatly mistaken in supposing that we consider the ecclesiastical hierarchy to be the guardian of dogma. The case is quite different. The unvarying constancy and the unerring truth of Christian dogma does not depend upon any hierarchical order; it is guarded by the totality, by the whole people of the Church, which is the Body of Christ’ (Letter in W. J. Birkbeck, Russia and the English Church, p. 94).

This conception of the laity and their place in the Church must be kept in mind when considering the nature of an Ecumenical Council. The laity are guardians and not teachers; therefore, although they may attend a council and take an active part in the proceedings (as Constantine and other Byzantine Emperors did), yet when the moment comes for the council to make a formal proclamation of the faith, it is the bishops alone who, in virtue of their teaching charisma, take the final decision.

But councils of bishops can err and be deceived. How then can one be certain that a particular gathering is truly an Ecumenical Council and therefore that its decrees are infallible? Many councils have considered themselves ecumenical and have claimed to speak in the name of the whole Church, and yet the Church has rejected them as heretical: Ephesus in 449, for example, or the Iconoclast Council of Hieria in 754, or Florence in 1438-9. Yet these councils seem in no way different in outward appearance from the Ecumenical Councils. What, then, is the criterion for determining whether a council is ecumenical?

 

[Monica child of God 1]

This is a more difficult question to answer than might at first appear, and though it has been much discussed by Orthodox during the past hundred years, it cannot be said that the solutions suggested are entirely satisfactory. All Orthodox know which are the seven Councils that their Church accepts as ecumenical, but precisely what it is that makes a council ecumenical is not so clear. There are, so it must be admitted, certain points in the Orthodox theology of Councils which remain obscure and which call for further thinking on the part of theologians. With this caution in mind, let us briefly consider the present trend of Orthodox thought on this subject.

To the question how one can know whether a council is ecumenical, Khomiakov and his school gave an answer which at first sight appears clear and straightforward: a council cannot be considered ecumenical unless its decrees are accepted by the whole Church. Florence, Hieria, and the rest, while ecumenical in outward appearance, are not truly so, precisely because they failed to secure this acceptance by the Church at large. (One might object: What about Chalcedon?

It was rejected by Syria and Egypt — can we say, then, that it was ‘accepted by the Church at large’?) The bishops, so Khomiakov argued, because they are the teachers of the faith, define and proclaim the truth in council; but these definitions must then be acclaimed by the whole people of God, including the laity, because it is the whole people of God that constitutes the guardian of Tradition. This emphasis on the need for councils to be received by the Church at large has been viewed with suspicion by some Orthodox theologians, both Greek and Russian, who fear that Khomiakov and his followers have endangered the prerogatives of the episcopate and ‘democratized’ the idea of the Church. But in a qualified and carefully guarded form, Khomiakov’s view is now fairly widely accepted in contemporary Orthodox thought.

 

[Monica child of God 1]

This act of acceptance, this reception of councils by the Church as a whole, must not be understood in a juridical sense: ‘It does not mean that the decisions of the councils should be confirmed by a general plebiscite and that without such a plebiscite they have no force. There is no such plebiscite. But from historical experience it clearly appears that the voice of a given council has truly been the voice of the Church or that it has not: that is all’ (S. Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, p. 89).

At a true Ecumenical Council the bishops recognize what the truth is and proclaim it; this proclamation is then verified by the assent of the whole Christian people, an assent which is not, a rule, expressed formally and explicitly, but lived. It is not merely the numbers or the distribution of its members which determines the ecumenicity of a council: ‘An ‘Ecumenical’ Council is such, not because accredited representatives of all the Autocephalous Churches have taken part in it, but because it has borne witness to the faith of the Ecumenical Church’ (Metropolitan Seraphim, L’Église orthodoxe, p. 51).

The ecumenicity of a council cannot be decided by outward criteria alone: ‘Truth can have no external criterion, for it is manifest of itself and made inwardly plain’ (V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 188). The infallibility of the Church must not be ‘exteriorized,’ nor understood in too ‘material’ a sense: ‘It is not the ‘ecumenicity’ but the truth of the councils which makes their decisions obligatory for us. We touch here upon the fundamental mystery of the Orthodox doctrine of the Church: the Church is the miracle of the presence of God among men, beyond all formal ‘criteria,’ all formal ‘infallibility.’ It is not enough to summon an ‘Ecumenical Council’ ... it is also necessary that in the midst of those so assembled there should be present He who said: “I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.” Without this presence, however numerous and representative the assembly may be, it will not be in the truth. Protestants and Catholics usually fail to understand this fundamental truth of Orthodoxy: both materialize the presence of God in the Church — the one party in the letter of Scripture, the other in the person of the Pope — though they do not thereby avoid the miracle, but clothe it in a concrete form. For Orthodoxy, the sole ‘criterion of truth’ remains God Himself, living mysteriously in the Church, leading it in the way of the Truth’ (J. Meyendorff, quoted by M. J. le Guillou, Missio et Unité, Paris, 1960, vol. 2, p. 313).

 

[Macarius]

By this logic, would you say that any practice that once was in the Catholic, or other, Church, but is now not allowed or is reformed, is therefore not really Catholic (or whatever) and so should not be a factor in any consideration of those groups?

If it was practiced by the entire catholic church, but later rejected, we'd have to ask if the church's identity was threatened by that. For example, for a long time it was Latin practice to use only Latin in the mass. Now it is not that practice. At the least we'd have to say that, for the RCC, Latin-in-mass is not Holy Tradition (necessary for the church).

However, when evaluating the "sides" of a schism, I believe it fair to assess their relative beliefs at the time of the schism itself.

But today, yes - the Catholic church defines its own beliefs. As does the Orthodox Church. There have been some pretty stupid things done by people within Orthodoxy. This practice occured for a time, but then was condemned. Just as I wouldn't claim Catholics today are obligated to believe that paying for indulgences is proper, it wouldn't seem proper to pin this on the Greeks today.

However, the conecpt of an indulgence IS in the RCC catechism today - as is the theology of the bank of merits, temporal sin, purgatory, etc. So if the question is "DO we practice indulgences" or "are they Orthodox" the answer would be no.

 

[MoNiCa4316]

I'm still trying to understand this..... In the early Church, weren't many of the bishops (and laity) in heresy? It was the Councils who clarified doctrine.. which the people already knew, but the Councils clarified them. That is how it is done in the Catholic Church, - we don't believe that the Pope 'creates' any new doctrine, but simply confirms what people already believe (usually this is done when a doctrine is being challenged by heresy). In Orthodoxy, who would have the 'final word' - the people or the Church hierarchy?

 

[Gwendolyn]

I do not want to be rude, but I do think indulgences pre-date the schism, specifically in the Celtic church... At least, that is what I've read in at least two books on the Celtic church before AD1000.

HOWEVER

At that time, an indulgence meant simply the truncating of the duration of one's penance (not being able to receive the Eucharist). Since penances lasted years for many sins, if a Christian was seen to have reformed himself, the bishop could, in light of the Christian's interior conversion, re-admit him to the Eucharist after only part of the duration had passed.

THEN

In the middle ages, on the mainland, penance became 'doing things' rather than not being able to receive the Eucharist, and it began to be seen as 'punishment' rather than medicine for the soul, and then there came the abuses with purgatory and buying indulgences that would remit time spent there and such.

I do not know why or how the shift occurred, but I wonder, do you, as Orthodox Christians, find the first understanding of indulgences to be problematic? Re-admitting someone to the Eucharist? It is obvious that, naturally, the second understanding is rejected.

 

[Macarius]

I do not want to be rude, but I do think indulgences pre-date the schism, specifically in the Celtic church... At least, that is what I've read in at least two books on the Celtic church before AD1000.

HOWEVER

At that time, an indulgence meant simply the truncating of the duration of one's penance (not being able to receive the Eucharist). Since penances lasted years for many sins, if a Christian was seen to have reformed himself, the bishop could, in light of the Christian's interior conversion, re-admit him to the Eucharist after only part of the duration had passed.

THEN

In the middle ages, on the mainland, penance became 'doing things' rather than not being able to receive the Eucharist, and it began to be seen as 'punishment' rather than medicine for the soul, and then there came the abuses with purgatory and buying indulgences that would remit time spent there and such.

I do not know why or how the shift occurred, but I wonder, do you, as Orthodox Christians, find the first understanding of indulgences to be problematic? Re-admitting someone to the Eucharist? It is obvious that, naturally, the second understanding is rejected.

I think you're right to point out that we're dealing with slippery definitions here.

If, by "indulgence" we mean an act of pastoral care to remit a penance which was given by that pastor, then yes - we still practice that today. In fact, if I recall, even LUTHER recognized that as a proper role for the church (he, in the 95 theses, based his critique of RCC indulgences in part on the argument that they overstepped the authority of the church - which to him was only allowed to remit punishments it itself had created as acts of penance).

But the word 'indulgence' has a MUCH different connotation today. I think we reject it precisely because it has come to apply exclusively to the RCC practice. This does not necessitate seeing it like the medieval version of buying / selling the things, but rather they are now inextricably bound up with ideas like temporal penalities, the bank of merits, papal authority, etc.

 

[MariaRegina]

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