OO vs. EO

[michaeldimmickjr]

Hello!

Could someone kindly explain the main differences between Oriental & Eastern Orthodox? I'm not trying to get either side arguing against the other so please, for the sake of the origional question don't do so.

Your Brother in Christ,

Michael

 

[minasoliman]

OO are made up of Coptic, Syrian, Armenian, Indian (two churches), Ethiopian, and Eritrean churches.

EO have 15 Churches, and can be seen in http://www.oca.org/OCworldindex.asp?SID=2

EO and OO have the same faith, but were split to due differing opinions and misunderstandings at the council of Chalcedon in 451 AD.

EO accept seven councils as ecumenical, while we only accept the first three (the fourth being Chalcedon, which was the cause of a sad schism).

EO's was the Church that split from the RCC, but we were always split anyway, yet amazingly, the Holy Spirit has preserved the essence of faith of both Churches. While many polemic EO's disagree, I can debate that they are wrong, and that they can "second-guess" the fallible Holy Fathers, who regardless of the misunderstandings, continued to preserve the faith, as we know them by their fruits.

Here's an OO article about the two families of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church:

http://www.paulosmargregorios.info/English%20Articles/orthodox_churches.html

http://www.paulosmargregorios.info/English%20Articles/3.htm

Now, small other differences can be cultural, ecclesiastical, and traditional (holy father wise). And extra EO councils mean extra canons, which are not part of our Church canons.

Xrictoc anecti!

 

[erinipassi]

Hi Michael,


Welcome to the Oriental Orthodox Forum ! Mina gave a great summary of the difference between the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox and I would like to elaborate on what actually split the two churches in the Council of Chalcedon in 459. Bits and pieces were mentioned in the thread called, "Why the Copts are not Monophysites" and I have copied and pasted some of the things that I mentioned in that thread for the sake of making things simple.


In order to elaborate on what happened in the Council of Chalcedon, allow me to go back to the third Ecumenical Council which was headed by St. Cyril who was the 24th Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church after St. Mark in the 5th Century. In that Ecumenical Council all the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Fathers were present.


"St. Cyril the Great is the hero of faith against the Nestorians. He exposed the heresy of Nestorius who was the Patriarch of Constantinople the Capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. St. Cyril explained to him the faith, but as he disobeyed and continued in his heresy, St. Cyril wrote against him twelve Anathemas which have become part of the Church Laws. Nestorius was then ex-communicated by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus which was convened in 431 AD and headed by St. Cyril of Alexandria."
http://www.copticcentre.com/article18.html



Here is a brief description of the Nestorian Heresy:


"According to the Nestorian concept, Christ was two separate persons, the one divine and beyond the reach of human frailty, and the other human and susceptible to all the fragility of the flesh. The divine Christ could neither suffer or die, and therefore, on the Cross it was the human Christ alone who suffered and died apart from the divine Christ."

"Thus the opinion of Nestorus was that the relation between the human nature of Christ and the Divine nature started just after His Birth from the Virgin and it was not a Hypostatic union. He explicitly said: "I distinguish between the two natures"".
http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/theology/nature_of_christ.pdf


Nestorius had spoken out against calling the blessed Virgin Mary the 'Theotokos''.....Abba Cyril strongly contested these views expounding the Orthodox doctrine of the indivisible union of the divine and human natures of Christ [calling it The One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos"], and arguing that if Jesus Christ is God, it follows that his mother is the ``Mother-of-God'' who bore Him forever. This is what the Apostles taught us and the doctrine of our Fathers. .......Just as Saint Athanasius had saved the Faith concerning the Logos in the Nicene Creed, so did Saint Cyril in defending the Theotokos maintaining the Orthodox Doctrine concerning the incarnation of the Logos in the Introduction to the Creed which he wrote in this regard.'' http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/cyril1.html


Now in order to understand what St. Cyril meant by The One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos, here is an extract from H. H. Pope Shenouda III:

The Divine nature (God the Word) was united with the human nature which He took of the Virgin Mary by the action of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit purified and sanctified the Virgin’s womb so that the Child to whom she gave birth would inherit nothing of the original sin; the flesh formed of her blood was united with the Only-Begotten Son. This Unity took place from the first moment of the Holy Pregnancy in the Virgin’s womb. As a result of the unity of both natures-the Divine and the human-inside the Virgin’s womb, one nature was formed out of both: "The One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos" as St. Cyril called it.

The expression "One Nature" does not indicate the Divine nature alone nor the human nature alone, but it indicates the unity of both natures into One Nature which is "The Nature of the Incarnate Logos". ​

The same applies when we speak about our human nature which comprises two united natures: the soul and the body. Thus, man’s nature is not the soul alone nor the body alone, but their union in one nature called human nature. St. Cyril the Great taught us not to talk about two natures after their unity.​

So we can say that the Divine nature united hypostatically with the human ture within the Virgin’s womb, but after this unity we do not ever speak again about two natures of Christ. In fact, the expression "two natures" implies in itself division or separation, and although those who believe in "the two natures" admit unity, the tone of separation was obvious in the Council of Chalcedon - a matter which prompted us to reject the Council and caused the exile of St. Dioscorus of Alexandria.​

The detail of what actually happened in the Council of Chalcedon is followed in the next post.​

love and blessings​

erini​

 

[erinipassi]

In 451, a man called Eutyches started a heresy which taught that Christ has only one nature because his humanity dissolved in his Divinity and he was only divine. So in other words, he taught the heresey of Monophytism. The problem with Eutyches was that he was extremely cunning and although he was excommunicated for teaching this heresy, he later pretended that he was preaching what St. Cyril taught by saying he is teaching the One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos.


The major difference which Eutyches ommitted was the fact that according to Eutyches Christ's humanity dissolved in his Divinity forming only one nature, while St. Cyril taught us that there is a distinction between Christ's humanity and Divinity but they are hypostatically united and are not separated and are combined in one nature called The Incarnate Logos. This combination does not mean that the humanity and Divinity became dissolved into one, but it means that in this combined nature there co-exists Christ's Humanity and the Divinity along side one another. Just like the soul co-exists with the body to form one human nature.

So Eutychus appealed to the Eastern and Oriental Patriarches, in particularly, to St Dioscorus who was the 25th Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, on the pretext that he is teaching the doctorine of the "The One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos". So Pope Disocorus absolved Eutychus' excommunication because Eutyches did not tell him the real truth of his heresy. Later, Pope Disocorus discovered that Eutyches has lied to him and was teaching a heresy and excommunicated Eutyches in a local Coptic Council.


"At the Council of Chalcedon, the Coptic Church was misquoted and its teachings were wrongly deemed as being Eutychean. The Patriarch of Alexandria was accused of being Eutychean, because he had presided over the second Council of Ephesus which had absolved Eutyches........When Pope Dioscorus' Orthodoxy could not be questioned, other accusations were raised, centring around material issues such as the question of preventing Egyptian corn from being sent to other parts of the Empire. Neither Pope Dioscorus nor the civil judges were present when the council handed down the verdict deposing him, mainly for having excommunicated the bishop of Rome and not appearing at the Council session when summoned three times, although he was under house arrest at the time. Because of his Orthodoxy, Pope Dioscorus could neither be degraded of Ecclesiastic honour nor excommunicated." http://www.copticcentre.com/two.html

"In spite of the fact that the Council of Ephesus had excommunicated Nestorus, the Nestorian roots extended to influence the council of Chalcedon where the trend to separate the two natures became so apparent that it was said that Christ is two persons......Following the same trend, Lee, the Bishop of Rome, accordingly declared his famous Tome which was rejected by the Coptic Church and [the Oriental Churches]. But the Council accepted and voted for it, thus confirming that two natures existed in Christ after their unity." http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/theology/nature_of_christ.pdf​

​

​

So to sum it up, the Coptic Orthodox Church has faithfully preserved what was passed down by St. Cyril who headed the 3rd Ecumenical Council and who taught us "One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos" (Mia Physis Tou Theou Logou Sesarkwmene). That is why we call ourselves Miaphysite and it comes directly from St. Cyril's teachings. ​

​

But we are wrongly accused of being Monophysites which I explained before is a totally different and is a heresy. Now we don't view the Eastern Orthodox as heretical because after much Dialogue, as Mina said, we found that, the Eastern Orthodox are stating that there is unity between Christ's Divinity and Humanity and is not separated. But the Coptic Church will not change the expression and terminology which was handed down by St.Cyril that is One Nature of God the Incarnate Logos. So this is where the main difference lies.​

​

I hope this explains it to you Michael, please feel free to ask more questions. ​

​

love and blessings​

erini ​

 

[feo]

I clicked on this thread because of the title! "OE VS. OO!"!!

Sounded like a match to me!
Kinda like... boxing.
WHO WILL WIN!@()#$

 

[michaeldimmickjr]

I clicked on this thread because of the title! "OE VS. OO!"!!

Sounded like a match to me!
Kinda like... boxing.
WHO WILL WIN!@()#$

LOL!

Your Brother in Christ,

Michael

 

[feo]

I just checked the time stamp on my last post... and I wrote that @ 3 AM! I need to stay away from these when I'm half asleep due to my weird'ness

 

[ExOrienteLux]

You mentioned that you acknowledge Dioscorus as a saint. Do you do the same to Timothy Ailouros?

What is your church's position on Pope Leo of Rome? Pope Hilary of Rome? Flavian of Constantinople? The council of Ephesus in 449?

-Philip.

 

[minasoliman]

You mentioned that you acknowledge Dioscorus as a saint. Do you do the same to Timothy Ailouros?

Yes! Naturally, your Church would accuse them of Eutychianism, but as the air of misunderstanding clears up, the truth is known these Miaphysite fathers are not heretics, but simply Cyrillian. All they did was repeat what St. Cyril wrote.

What is your church's position on Pope Leo of Rome? Pope Hilary of Rome? Flavian of Constantinople? The council of Ephesus in 449?

Again, naturally they used to be accused of Nestorianism, but now as misunderstandings are lifted, we see (or some of us see) the Orthodoxy in them.

But as usual, there are still those who will not relent from polemics, whether it be EO or OO.

While the status of EO and OO fathers are still anathematized from one another, there will come a time, and I pray, where these anathemas be lifted because in reality, their theologies do not contradict, but compliment.

Ephesus 449 is not confessed as an ecumenical council, since the whole Church did not accept it. However, we used to defend it to find nothing wrong with it. As the truth is revealed, Ephesus 449 was similar to Chalcedon. Both councils were hasty in condemning the other party without careful investigation.

God bless.

 

[ExOrienteLux]

Interesting post, Mina. One more quick question, though.

What is the Non-Chalcedonian Churches' view on Christ's will?

-Philip.

 

[erinipassi]

Hi Phillip,

To answer your question, here is what H.H. Pope Shenouda explains about Christ's will from a book called "The Nature of Christ" (http://www.copticchurch.org/Texts/Spirituals/Natofchr.pdf)

Has the Lord Christ two wills and two actions, that is a Divine will and a human will, as well as two actions, that is, a divine act and a human act? As we believe in the One Nature of the Incarnate Logos, as St. Cyril the Great called it, likewise:​

​

We believe in One Will and One Act:
Naturally, as long as we consider that this Nature is One, the Will and the Act must also each be one. What the Divine nature Chooses is undoubtedly the same as that chosen by the human Nature because there is not any contradiction or conflict whatever between the will and the action of both. The Lord Jesus Christ said: "My meat is to do the Will of Him that sent Me to finish His work. " (John. 4:34). This proves that His Will is the same as that of the Father. In this context, He said about Himself " the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner." (John. 5:19).

He does not seek for Himself a will that is independent of that of the Father. Consequently He Says "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” (John 6:38). It is obvious that the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity have One Will, for the Lord Jesus Christ said: "I and My Father are One. " (John. 10:30).

Hence, since He is one with Him in the Godhead, then He is essentially one with Him concerning the Will. Again, the Son, in His Incarnation on earth, was fulfilling the Will of the heavenly Father.

Thus it must be that He Who united with the manhood had One Will. In fact, Sin is nothing but a conflict between man's will and God's.

But remember that our Lord Jesus Christ had no sin at all. He challenged the Jews saying: "Which of you convicts Me of Sin?. " (John. 8:46). Therefore, His Will was that of the Father. The Saints who are perfect in their behaviour achieve complete agreement between their will and the Will of God, so that their will becomes that of God, and the Will of God becomes their will.

And St. Paul the Apostle said "But we have the mind of Christ. " (1 Cor. 2:16). He did not say that our thoughts are in accord with the mind of Christ, but that "we have the mind of Christ", and here the unity is stressed. If this is said about those with whom and in whom God works, then how much more the unity between the Son and His Own manhood would be in all that is related to the will, the mind and the power to act! He, in Whom the Divine nature has united with the human nature, a Hypostatic and Essential union without separation-not for a second nor a twinkle of an eye.

If there was not unity between the Will of the Divine nature of Christ and His human nature, this would have resulted in internal conflict. Far be it from Him! How then could Christ be our guide and our example... to follow in His footsteps (1 John.2:6)?. The complete righteousness which marked the life of our Lord Jesus was due to His Divine as well as His Human will. The same is true of the salvation of mankind, the message for which Christ came and said: "For the Son of Man has come to save that which was." (Matt. 18:11). This is the same Will of the Father who "He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. " (1 John. 4:10).

Thus, the crucifixion was the choice of the Divine as well as the human nature. Had it not been One Will, it would not have been said that Christ died by His Own Will for our sake. Since the Will is One, the Act is necessarily One. Here we do not distinguish between the two natures.

love and blessings

erini


​

​

 

[ExOrienteLux]

Thanks for the reply. It definitely answered something that I was wondering about.

+IC XC NIKA+
-Philip.

 

[orthedoxy]

Thanks for the reply. It definitely answered something that I was wondering about.

+IC XC NIKA+
-Philip.

Why do you have the name ExOrientalux Where you Chinese before?

 

[ExOrienteLux]

It's Latin. Ex Oriente, Lux. "Out of the East, Light."

+IC XC NIKA+
-Philip.

 

[minasoliman]

Dear Philip,

Please keep in mind that we are not confusing the actions and desires of each ousia in Christ. But we tend to look at what is "chosen." Even St. Maximus believed in a "mia gnome," or the "one will willed." When we saw "two wills" being confessed we misunderstood that as two different choices or two centers of willing, which implies two prosopa in Christ.

So there is a difference between the faculty of the willing and the decision made by the faculty. Here, His Holiness only stresses the decision and never delved into the faculty, as St. Maximus the Confessor did. At one point, St. Maximus even confessed "one energy" (mono energia) and interpreted it in an Orthodox fashion, and he even defended and interpreted St. Dionysius the Aeropagite's "one theandric will" as Orthodox as well (St. Dionysius lived at the time of St. Paul the Apostolic who wrote the Pauline Epistles we have in our Bibles). According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

But if the word will is taken to mean not the faculty but the decision taken by the will (the will willed, not the will willing), then it is true that the two wills always acted in harmony: there were two wills willing and two acts, but one object, one will willed; in the phrase of St. Maximus, there were duo thelemata though mia gnome. The word will is also used to mean not a decision of the will, but a mere velleity or wish, voluntas ut natura (thelesis) as opposed to voluntas ut ratio (boulesis).

So if you read HH's words in this light, there is nothing heretical in what he said. He simply believed as any Orthodox would believe what is chosen rather than what is desired. It is obvious that Christ had a human will and a divine will, but united without confusion, without mixture, without division, and without seperation.

God bless.

 

[minasoliman]

To clarify things of what HH the Pope wrote, here is what HE Metropolitan Bishoy, famously known as the right hand of our Pope, wrote:

from his fourth Christological lecture which can be found in http://www.metroplit-bishoy.org/files/lectures/Lecture 4.doc :

Question:

About wills issue.

Answer:

In our agreement with the Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches, a point was mentioned concerning the will of the Logos. In our Interpretation of the First Agreed Statement on Christology on page 6 you find the following:

The Will of the Incarnate Logos: The real union of the divine with the human. The agreed statement gave a very clear solution for the debate concerning will of Jesus Christ as follows. The real union of the divine with the human with all properties and functions of the uncreated divine nature, including natural will and natural energy, inseparably and unconfusedly united with created human nature with its properties and functions, including natural will and natural energy. It is the Logos incarnate Who is the subject of all willing and acting of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said to the Father, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mat. 27:46), and in His prayer in the Mount of Olives he said, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” (Mat. 26:39).

We have to make a distinction between what we can call natural will and personal will. The natural will is the desire, while the personal will is the decision. We all believe that Jesus Christ is one single person not a composite person from two persons, but only one single person Who is the Person of the Word of God, the Logos. It is not normal for one person to have two personal wills, otherwise he will be two persons; and this is a Nestorian concept. The monothelites, are those who believe in a single will in Jesus Christ, they were anathematized by the Chalcedonian churches.

Our church also does not accept this concept that the natural human will was dissolved. The natural divine will, natural human will were united without confusion and without mixture. To say ‘without confusion’, means that the natural human will of Jesus Christ was not eliminated because of the union. Does this mean that Jesus Christ had two wills? It is impossible to say that He had two wills, otherwise He is going to be considered two persons. That’s why we should define what we mean by the word ‘will’. The same problem concerning the natures emerges with ‘will’. He has His natural divine will united to His natural human will, but the two natural wills continued to exist in the union, in complete harmony without contradiction.

What is the natural will and what is the personal will?

The natural will is the desire; the personal will is the decision.

You can say, ‘I want to drink, but I don’t want to drink’; ‘I have a will to go, but I don’t will to go.’ What does this mean? If you are fasting you say ‘I am willing to drink, but I shall not drink’? It means that ‘I desire to drink but I decided not to drink’. So, there is difference between the natural will and personal will. The personal will works with the decision, while the natural will works with the desire.

As a human being Jesus Christ felt hunger and thirst while He was fasting on the mount. He naturally desired to drink or to eat, because His divinity did not eliminate the properties of His humanity; the energies and the natural will were not eliminated. Only tendency to sin was absolutely not in Him. He never had a desire for sin - not to desire and resist; no never. He was absolutely holy and infallible. However, all the other human desires were in Him. One of these desires as any human being was that he does not like to die. This normal desire was present in Him when He was approaching the cross. But, obeying the Father, as a person He is the second Person of the Holy Trinity; He is free, but He has input to His personal decision from His human desire and divine desire. His divine desire is identical with the desire of the Father. The three hypostaseis are three persons, three in their will, loving each other, but they have the same will and the same desire. Three in number, but one in nature. Naturally, whatever the Father desires, the Son desires, and the Holy Spirit desires.

Are the natural wills identical? No, because if they are identical this means that we are Eutychean and that there is confusion, since the natural desire of His humanity was absorbed in His divinity. This is the heresy of Monotheletism. If the two natural energies and natural wills are reduced to one natural will, this is the Eutychean heresy. Saint Cyril of Alexandria said that the differences of the properties of the two natures were not destroyed because of the union.

“O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”. In other words: O Father if You want You may let this cup pass from Me, but not as I desire but as Your will which is also My will, As You and Me decided. Let it not be My desire but Yours which is Your decision and My decision.

Jesus Christ has one personal will because He is one person. Concerning the natural will we can say that they are two in one, since the two natural wills are not mixed or cancelled, but they are in a perfect union, thus they are not separated. His human desire and His divine desire are not separated. Why? Because He never followed His human desires unless it was accepted by His divine desire; and that is the full obedience of Jesus Christ to the Father. Why do we say ‘to the Father’ and not ‘to His divinity’? Because if we say that He is obedient to His divinity, this will mean that He is two personalities. When I say, ‘He’, this refers to the person. So I cannot say that He is obedient to Himself; that is illogical. When we mention His obedience, we always refer to the Father; and the Father is automatically has the same desire and the same will of the Son. It is wrong theologically to say that He was obedient to His divinity. This is a Nestorian expression which is already condemned by Saint Cyril of Alexandria in his twelve anathemas. Anything that leads to the concept of two persons, is Nestorian. We should be very careful when we tackle this issue. In the Greek text it is: “Let it be not My desire, but Yours.” In Arabic it is, “Not My desire, but Your desire” In Greek the word was not repeated when he was referring to the Father but said, “But Yours”. The core of the problem is that He said, “My will”. The Greek term has two meanings, desiredecision.[font=&quot][1][/font] So scientifically speaking, the Greek text allows this interpretation.

In the first agreement the following is stated:

and The real union of the divine with the human, with all properties and functions of the uncreated divine nature, including natural will and natural energy inseparably and unconfusedly united with the created human nature with all its properties and functions, including natural will and natural energy…It is the Logos incarnate[font=&quot][2][/font] Who is the subject of all willing and acting of Jesus Christ.

In the second agreement, it is more clear:

The one hypostasis of the Logos incarnate is always Who is acting and willing..

It is the Logos incarnate Who is the subject of all willing and acting of Jesus Christ. In other words all willing and acting are from one person. But, sometimes He acts according to His divinity; and sometimes according to His humanity. Thus the human natural will did not cease to exist, and also divine energies and human energies did not cease to exist.

What does this mean? It means that sometimes He did things from His divine energy and sometimes He did things from His human energy. When He accepted death, He accepted it according to His humanity. When He destroyed Hades, He destroyed it according to His divinity, and so on. The source of the energy was continuous in Him. What is human was present and that’s why He fell under the cross; because His human energy continued in the union, without being separated from His divine energy. When He raised the dead from the tombs, after His crucifixion, this was done through His divine energy. So, the two energies continued to exist in the union.

Simply, the two natural wills continued to exist in the union. The two natural energies continued to exist in the union, without being separated. One person was willing and acting – the same person. Sometimes His will according to His humanity is to eat, and according to His divinity with the Father He is content to do it, so He eats according to His human desire with the consent of the Father. The motive of eating comes from His human desire, not His divine; because divinity does not hunger.

God bless.

 

[ExOrienteLux]

Interesting....

One question more: how do the Copts/Armenians/Ethiopians fold their fingers when they cross themselves?

+IC XC NIKA+
-Philip.

 

[erinipassi]

Hi Phillip,

The finger configuration in the Coptic Orthodox is the same as the Eastern Orthodox, the first three finger including the thumb symbolise the Trinity (Three in one) and are held together to the forehead and the last two fingers are folded together to the palm.

love and blessings
erini

 

[ExOrienteLux]

Thanks.

+IC XC NIKA+
-Philip.

 

[ExOrienteLux]

Wait. If the three fingers raised represent the Most-Holy Trinity, what do the two fingers folded to the palm represent?

-Philip.