dzheremi
Coptic Orthodox non-Egyptian
- Aug 27, 2014
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If I may, the problem with that view is that it assumes that one or the other stance will be given up if it is found to be 'untrue', or that this is how doctrinal stances even work in the first place. You are a Roman Catholic, for instance, so even if you hear 5,000 times about how false your church's ecclesiology vis-a-vis the role of your Pope is, it's not like hearing it 5,001 times is going to be the thing that changes it all, and causes you to affect unity with ____ (whatever body is arguing against your ecclesiology). That's simply not how things work, and it would be extremely naive to think they could, would, or even should work that way. And yet your interlocutor in this hypothetical example is not doing anything but sticking to and articulating the truth, as they recognize it.
Your truth (A) is not the same as mine (not-A) or someone else's, and at the level of traditions which are lived in communion, it is beyond any one indivdiual's or group's power to do anything about that -- meaning you may convert one or a group from A to not-A or vice-versa, but A and not-A will not therefore be 'unitable' as positions/traditions unless all who profess either find some way to do so. That is why, as you've put it earlier, union between OO and EO (who are much closer to each other in terms of mindset than any other pair, so you'd think it would be the easiest test case for this whole 'reunion' idea) is held up by a few key people. Unity means everybody involved in the enterprise, not everybody minus the people who don't agree who we are going to stop counting so that we can pretend to have more unity than we have. For another historical example that I will assume will have some resonance with you as a Roman Catholic, this is why the attempted reunion council of Florence in the 15th century (between the RC and the separated Eastern and Oriental churches) did not produce any lasting unity. On the EO side, Mark of Ephesus stood up and eloquently protested what the majority were ready to accept, while on the OO side we never actually had the same understanding as Rome of what we were signing on to in the first place.
It's not as simple as "A is true, and if we sit down and talk about it, people who don't believe that A is true will change their minds/unite with us." We've been talking for over 1400 years (remember that the first major schism involving a still-existing Christian body was when the Nestorians left in the wake of Ephesus in 431; we in the Coptic Orthodox Church only stopped talking to them in the mid-1990s after the breakdown of talks held at Anba Bishoy monastery in Egypt, while your communion is still talking to them, since your principles re: dialogue are different enough than ours to allow that). It has yet to magically (re-)unite Christendom. Dial back your expectations a bit, maybe.
Your truth (A) is not the same as mine (not-A) or someone else's, and at the level of traditions which are lived in communion, it is beyond any one indivdiual's or group's power to do anything about that -- meaning you may convert one or a group from A to not-A or vice-versa, but A and not-A will not therefore be 'unitable' as positions/traditions unless all who profess either find some way to do so. That is why, as you've put it earlier, union between OO and EO (who are much closer to each other in terms of mindset than any other pair, so you'd think it would be the easiest test case for this whole 'reunion' idea) is held up by a few key people. Unity means everybody involved in the enterprise, not everybody minus the people who don't agree who we are going to stop counting so that we can pretend to have more unity than we have. For another historical example that I will assume will have some resonance with you as a Roman Catholic, this is why the attempted reunion council of Florence in the 15th century (between the RC and the separated Eastern and Oriental churches) did not produce any lasting unity. On the EO side, Mark of Ephesus stood up and eloquently protested what the majority were ready to accept, while on the OO side we never actually had the same understanding as Rome of what we were signing on to in the first place.
It's not as simple as "A is true, and if we sit down and talk about it, people who don't believe that A is true will change their minds/unite with us." We've been talking for over 1400 years (remember that the first major schism involving a still-existing Christian body was when the Nestorians left in the wake of Ephesus in 431; we in the Coptic Orthodox Church only stopped talking to them in the mid-1990s after the breakdown of talks held at Anba Bishoy monastery in Egypt, while your communion is still talking to them, since your principles re: dialogue are different enough than ours to allow that). It has yet to magically (re-)unite Christendom. Dial back your expectations a bit, maybe.
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