What interrupted the episcopal succession in Jerusalem?

RandyPNW · Feb 25, 2024

The Liturgist said:
The only “weak spots” that occur in the practice of church are when churches deviate from Holy Tradition, by engaging in innovations of a liturgical or doctrinal character.

Yes, that's the entire problem brother--they do deviate in such matters. And that's why these "weak spots" need to be regularly revisited. Otherwise, these "additions" will become part of the regular "tradition," even though it did not begin as such.

The Liturgist said:
For example, the two main problems in the Roman Catholic Church at present are Traditiones Custodes, which suppresses the beautiful traditional Latin mass, which unlike its replacement, is an ornate and exquisitely beautiful liturgy comparable to those of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the liturgical Protestants such as the Evangelical Catholic Lutherans and the High Church Anglicans; this encyclical being introduced by Pope Francis in 2021 and superceding previous bulls, encyclicals, pastoral instructions and so on of both Pope St. John Paul II and Blessed Pope Benedict xVI, memory eternal.

I grew up in a Protestant Lutheran Church denomination and repeated liturgies and creeds from birth. And they were very effective, true, and beautiful except that the spirituality in the congregation was near dead. People seemed to be mouthing the words and showing no real change in their lives to become more like Christ.

I had to leave when I approached adulthood. But I'm not opposed to the gist of what you seem to be saying.

The Liturgist said:
The more serious problem is the result of a document issued by the “Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith”, the latest rebranding of the Holy Office, which when it was known as the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith under the leadership of Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become Blessed Pope Benedict XVI, did superb work in support of the traditionalist papacy of St. John Paul II, in his arguments in defense of sexual morality and in opposition to abortion, and this excellent work was continued by Gerhard Cardinal Muller, who was fired by Pope Francis and replaced by a liberal cardinal with unusual ideas, who has at Pope Francis’s instruction issued a new document, Fiducia Supplicans, that directly contradicts one issued two years ago, which allows priests to bless, in a non-liturgical setting, same sex couples as well as other couples in “irregular” (that is to say, sexually immoral) situations.

If such a document was available prior to Pope Francis' new instructions, then it was just as bad if not worse, because it set the precedent for blessing same sex couples. You think a slight alteration from a previous same sex couple blessing is worse? Homosexuality is wrong period.

To bless those who abuse you, or sinners who disagree with you, is not a church function, but an outreach to the pagan world! We are not to bless same sex couples within or without the church. But we are to treat others respectfully *despite their sins.* We find the good in them, and bless that, rather than bless the part that is, beyond dispute, sin. And we should not play a part in covering up sin with a "blessing."

The Liturgist said:
Now some members will be quick to argue that the blessings are not of the relationships but of the couples, however, that is itself the problem, because the blessings are of the couples, together, as a couple, and not as individual members of the church, and what is more the blessings are not made in an effort to help the persons separate from those who they are in an immoral sodomitic or adulterous or other form of perverse relationship with.

Yes, but I thought you just said an early document was okay that blessed same sex couples? Blessing same sex couples "in a non-liturgical setting" is nonetheless blessing the "couples!"

The Liturgist said:
Both of these issues constitute an attack on the Holy Tradition of the ancient Church, including the received tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, which itself suffers primarily to the extent that it innovated and thus departed from the ancient tradition of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, through the introduction of novel doctrines like Papal Supremacy, Scholastic Theology (in particular the Satisfaction-based soteriology of Anselm of Canterbury, later refined by St. Thomas Aquinas, which takes the least profitable writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, a pious church father who was not perfect, as indeed no one is, but some of his works are much more useful than others, and expands and distorts them, creating a new approach to theology, Scholasticism, which indeed the Roman church goes so far as to differentiate from Patristic theology, with the last Church Father according to Rome being St. John Damascene (who in the Orthodox Church we refer to as St. John of Damascus).

Well, there are a whole lot of interesting issues in there. I like Augustine, Anselm, and even Aquinas. They spoke within the context of their own times. And the fact their influence loomed much larger than their own times was not their fault. Their teachings are obviously going to look worse in different times with different problems.

But I do agree that Scholasticism can be a problem, and I don't agree with Augustine on some matters. Who can agree on everything with someone so prolific!

And I also agree with you that the supremacy of the Pope is a huge, huge problem. As I've been saying, sectarianism divides the Church, separating good Christians from good Christians within different denominations.

There is no one single denomination of the Church! The Gospel was designed to reach out to every nation, which in itself implies that there would be many church denominations. Politics unavoidably separate Christian communions into separate organizations, even though they are each of the same Spirit.

The Liturgist said:
Scholastic theology in turn led to other innovations, such as Purgatory, Indulgences, and Papal Infallibility, and the veneration of the Sacred Heart and then of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and for that matter the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is an artifact of the way St. Augustine dealt with original sin in opposition to the heretic Pelagius, by suggesting that it spreads like a venereal disease.

There was bound to be different beliefs within the ancient Roman Empire. They were all of a single Church tradition originally, being within a single Empire. Different beliefs were not necessarily divisive matters, though they certainly could be.

Later, however, aberrations from the creedal basics became a threat from one denomination to another, when the various communions lived in separate political environments. When an aberrant view of the Eucharist or of Mary is presented in defense of the fundamentals of the faith I have less of a problem, as opposed to when it is demanding strict adherence to its own oddities.

For example, it may be argued that the wine became Jesus' blood in order to prove that we partake of Christ for real, and not just sacramentally. I have less problem with this unless a demand is being made that I assent to Transubstantiation.

Same thing with Mary's perpetual virginity. If this is just an attempt to prove that Mary was the Mother of God, ie mother of a divine Jesus, I have less problem with this if it is only trying to prove that Christ, her son, was divine. But if it is demanded of me that I accept the perpetual virginity of Mary as a doctrine, then I have a problem with this.

Scholasticism is a problem only if it claims to have absolute immunity to all rebuttal. So much can simply be stated as true, even if it is not proven by reason alone. I personally believe that reason must include faith in order to operate as proof for any doctrine. If doctrine is just stated to be true, by force of an imagined spiritual "reason," then anything can be declared to be true and proper tradition.

The Liturgist said:
In contrast, another Latin father, and a contemporary of St. Augustine, St. John Cassian, proposed that original sin is not transmitted through coitus but rather is inherited, and this allows for the Blessed Virgn Mary to have been, in Orthodox theology, sinless, while being conceived in ordinary process of sexual reproduction.

DNA does not include "sin," which is a spiritual disease. My view is that any physical act, including sex, is initiated through the imperfect hearts of men, who have corrupted spirits. Sin is transmitted from generation to generation due to procreation. But the sin is transmitted by spiritual means, by "spiritual DNA," as it were.

The Liturgist said:
Thus, the only weak spots on Holy Tradition are those places where people fail to maintain it, but instead introduce novelties and innovations, often under the pretext of ill-advised “reform”, or to keep the church “relevant” to a “changing world.” The severe problems with the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian liturgical reforms in the 1970s, both of which caused schisms which still persist, are a case in point.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. We certainly have some agreement there.

The Liturgist · Feb 25, 2024

RandyPNW said:
If such a document was available prior to Pope Francis' new instructions, then it was just as bad if not worse, because it set the precedent for blessing same sex couples. You think a slight alteration from a previous same sex couple blessing is worse? Homosexuality is wrong period.

Forgive me, I must not have made myself clear: the document that existed prior to Fiducia Supplicans contradicted it, and said that on no account could couples in same sex relationships receive a blessing. Now Fiducia Supplicans has been released, and says they can receive such a blessing, as long as it is not “liturgical”. The problem with that is that according to the sacramental theology of the Roman Catholic Church, all blessings given by priests, bishops and so on are liturgical, by definition. The attempts by some loyalist supporters of Pope Francis to claim that Fiducia Supplicans does not represent a change of position from opposing homosexual relations as intrinsically disordered and refusing to condone blessing them, to now being willing to bless them, are spectacularly unconvincing, and this is why the traditional Catholics such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider, and Cardinals Gerhard Schroeder and Raymond Burke, and the entire Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, have opposed Fiducia Supplicans and prohibited its implementation in their dioceses. And other traditional Catholics like Dr. Peter Kwasniewsky are working on figuring out if there is a way to canonically force Pope Francis to resign. However, there are a number of Catholics, even on Christian Forums, who are adamant in insisting that Pope Francis did not condone homosexual relations, and who are standing by him with a devotion that would be touching if it were not so misplaced. I am having quite a heated debate with some of them in another thread.

The Liturgist · Feb 25, 2024

RandyPNW said:
There was bound to be different beliefs within the ancient Roman Empire. They were all of a single Church tradition originally, being within a single Empire. Different beliefs were not necessarily divisive matters, though they certainly could be.

Note that all of the controversies I described occurred after the end of the Western Roman Empire, and the Eastern Orthodox Church was the predominant religion in what was left of the Eastern Roman Empire, and in other countries, such as the Kingdom of Georgia, and later on, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Kievan Rus, while the related Oriental Orthodox faith was (and still is) the religion of the Kingdom of Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, and also the Abyssinian Empire, also known as Ethiopia or Axxum, and was a minority religion (and still is) in Egypt, after a brief period of being the majority religion before the Islamic invasion, and likewise in Syria, under similar circumstances.

There were controversies within the Roman Empire when it was still intact and when the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches were still undivided, but these were resolved through the ecumenical councils, and also through informal and loosely coordinated action, for example, in response to the Gnostic heresy in the first three centuries of the church when the Pagan government of Rome meant convening an ecumenical council would be impossible (but local councils were convened).

RandyPNW said:
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. We certainly have some agreement there.

Indeed, I think we do. And I believe I understand where you are coming from, because I grew up in the United Methodist Church, and watched with horror as it became more lukewarm. I tried to fight this; I became involved in Congregationalism, trying to support confessional movements in the United Church of Christ, and conservative movements in the Episcopal Church, and I still support continuing Anglican churches, and confessional Lutheran churches. The real problem was that the mainline Protestant churches, and the Roman Catholic churches, and to some extent, even some particularly ethno-centric parishes of the Orthodox diaspora, lost the plot, and became increasingly lukewarm, and embraced liturgical revisions and theological liberalism. And the result was a loss of vitality in the faith.

My conviction is that continued sectarianism is not the answer, however, but a spirited ressourcement of Patristic theology combined with the vibrant liturgical experiences of those parts of the church which are still dynamic, such as the extremely persecuted Antiochian Orthodox Church, its Oriental Orthodox counterpart the Syriac Orthodox Church, and the closely related Assyrian Church of the East, another ancient denomination that also speaks Syriac, and has the largest population of vernacular Aramaic speakers in the world, in Iraq and Syria, and likewise the Copts, Armenians, who just experienced a genocide last summer in Ngorno-Karabakh at the hands of the Azerbaijani forces, supported by the Turks, and the Ethiopians, who like the Armenians, have been persecuted by both Communists and Muslims. And there are several other severely persecuted churches, for example, the Anglican Church of Pakistan, and the Church of North India, and so on.

These churches, which endure persecution, tend to have a certain vitality to them, in that their faith is like gold tested in the fire. And they tend to have, in the diaspora, large numbers of children in their parishes, and an intensity which one would never find in a mainline Protestant or novus ordo Catholic church.

RandyPNW · Feb 25, 2024

The Liturgist said:
Forgive me, I must not have made myself clear: the document that existed prior to Fiducia Supplicans contradicted it, and said that on no account could couples in same sex relationships receive a blessing. Now Fiducia Supplicans has been released, and says they can receive such a blessing, as long as it is not “liturgical”.

Okay, gotcha. I wondered if there had been a miscommunication. I didn't think the RCC had *ever* blessed same sex couples. Pope Francis is *not* a Saint Francis--not even close!

The Liturgist said:
The problem with that is that according to the sacramental theology of the Roman Catholic Church, all blessings given by priests, bishops and so on are liturgical, by definition. The attempts by some loyalist supporters of Pope Francis to claim that Fiducia Supplicans does not represent a change of position from opposing homosexual relations as intrinsically disordered and refusing to condone blessing them, to now being willing to bless them, are spectacularly unconvincing, and this is why the traditional Catholics such as Bishop Athanasius Schneider, and Cardinals Gerhard Schroeder and Raymond Burke, and the entire Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, have opposed Fiducia Supplicans and prohibited its implementation in their dioceses. And other traditional Catholics like Dr. Peter Kwasniewsky are working on figuring out if there is a way to canonically force Pope Francis to resign. However, there are a number of Catholics, even on Christian Forums, who are adamant in insisting that Pope Francis did not condone homosexual relations, and who are standing by him with a devotion that would be touching if it were not so misplaced. I am having quite a heated debate with some of them in another thread.

Well, God bless you in your efforts! Thanks for clearing that up. Making a distinction between "liturgical" and "non-liturgical" is a smokescreen, and doesn't, at any rate, make a difference. This is that proverbial "slippery slope."

RandyPNW · Feb 25, 2024

The Liturgist said:
Note that all of the controversies I described occurred after the end of the Western Roman Empire, and the Eastern Orthodox Church was the predominant religion in what was left of the Eastern Roman Empire, and in other countries, such as the Kingdom of Georgia, and later on, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Kievan Rus, while the related Oriental Orthodox faith was (and still is) the religion of the Kingdom of Armenia and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, and also the Abyssinian Empire, also known as Ethiopia or Axxum, and was a minority religion (and still is) in Egypt, after a brief period of being the majority religion before the Islamic invasion, and likewise in Syria, under similar circumstances.

There were controversies within the Roman Empire when it was still intact and when the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches were still undivided, but these were resolved through the ecumenical councils, and also through informal and loosely coordinated action, for example, in response to the Gnostic heresy in the first three centuries of the church when the Pagan government of Rome meant convening an ecumenical council would be impossible (but local councils were convened).

Right. This was my point, that discussing matters within the same "conference" could mean, but did not have to mean, an emphasis on the particular slant, but more, on the agreed-upon orthodoxy. So none of this was likely to divide and destroy unity among Christians. (I'm referring to novel additions to original Christian traditions and doctrine.)

Once the "conference" (Empire) was divided, things like the particular wording of the creeds, and the particular dates of the holidays, came to be of increasing importance.

At what time in history various questionable "preferences" became a matter of tradition and required dogma within the RCC I'm not sure? I just know that "freedom of speech" somewhere died along the way--even among good orthodox Christians.

The Liturgist said:
Indeed, I think we do. And I believe I understand where you are coming from, because I grew up in the United Methodist Church, and watched with horror as it became more lukewarm. I tried to fight this; I became involved in Congregationalism, trying to support confessional movements in the United Church of Christ, and conservative movements in the Episcopal Church, and I still support continuing Anglican churches, and confessional Lutheran churches. The real problem was that the mainline Protestant churches, and the Roman Catholic churches, and to some extent, even some particularly ethno-centric parishes of the Orthodox diaspora, lost the plot, and became increasingly lukewarm, and embraced liturgical revisions and theological liberalism. And the result was a loss of vitality in the faith.

I don't have any antagonism towards the historic churches. They simply need revival, and not necessarily of the American frontier kind, eg camp meetings! Traditions can be revitalized simply by individuals who lead with real conviction and with enough activism to clear out the dead wood and rebuild using new lumber.

The Liturgist said:
My conviction is that continued sectarianism is not the answer, however, but a spirited ressourcement of Patristic theology combined with the vibrant liturgical experiences of those parts of the church which are still dynamic, such as the extremely persecuted Antiochian Orthodox Church, its Oriental Orthodox counterpart the Syriac Orthodox Church, and the closely related Assyrian Church of the East, another ancient denomination that also speaks Syriac, and has the largest population of vernacular Aramaic speakers in the world, in Iraq and Syria, and likewise the Copts, Armenians, who just experienced a genocide last summer in Ngorno-Karabakh at the hands of the Azerbaijani forces, supported by the Turks, and the Ethiopians, who like the Armenians, have been persecuted by both Communists and Muslims. And there are several other severely persecuted churches, for example, the Anglican Church of Pakistan, and the Church of North India, and so on.

Unfortunately, politics is a tool of repression in the East and in the Middle East. State-controlled Christianity there probably resists reform, but it certainly requires resources in good leaders and materials from other parts of the world. I'm not sure that theology and liturgy are as important as political/military support from Christian or post-Christian countries. But still, it is, I agree, important to have the foundation of truth in order to build upon it.

The Liturgist said:
These churches, which endure persecution, tend to have a certain vitality to them, in that their faith is like gold tested in the fire. And they tend to have, in the diaspora, large numbers of children in their parishes, and an intensity which one would never find in a mainline Protestant or novus ordo Catholic church.

Yes, as the book of Revelation reads, "I know that you are weak--just hold on to what you have." Sometimes we just have to hold fast, until Christ sends the rescue.

RandyPNW · Feb 25, 2024

dzheremi said:
We've been through how your analogies to cars and appliances are inappropriate, but I'm curious what "weak spots" you have in mind. What is a "weak spot" in a particular tradition that you feel needs to be "renewed" so as to not lead to "worse problems" (worse problems than...)?

I reject your assumption that an aging religion is not comparable with aging appliances. We see in Joe Biden a vivid example of what aging does to his Catholic faith.

The "weak spots" I refer to are quite obvious to a Protestant like me. I was raised a Lutheran, from both sides of the family. And we had no appreciation for certain Popes who wanted to kill Martin Luther under the pretext of "dialogue." Traditions such as Papal Supremacy, Papal infallibility, etc. need to be questioned and changed.

But I'm not holding my breath. Aging has set in to the point of post mortem frigidity/Rigor Mortis.

Xeno.of.athens · Feb 25, 2024

Betho said:
the destruction of the city by the Romans in 70 AD, during the First Jewish-Roman War.

The events of 135 AD were even more disruptive of Church life and will have led to a break in the line of bishops in Jerusalem.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 25, 2024

The Liturgist said:
The reason why this is a conversion for Jews is because Jews do not worship the Trinity

Now this all being said, I absolutely detest anti-Semitism and I bitterly regret the way Christians have treated Jews over the preceding centuries, with some exceptions. Indeed, even on those occasions where we have been mistreated by Jews, we have no business persecuting them, for Christ commanded us to bless those who persecute us. Thus, while I do support efforts to convert the Jews to Christianity, including low-key efforts conducted by the Orthodox (who will receive Jewish converts and work on an approach that is based on attracting Jews and other potential converts through the beauty of our liturgy, and this approach works, and also keeps us safe, particularly in the Middle East where direct proselytism of Muslims, for example, is impossible, so attracting Muslims in the same way is the only way they can be evangelized without endangering the Christian communities, who are always, it seems, one accidental offense or intentional act of malice on the part of a zealous Mufti away from being exterminated; the Jews on the other hand do not react violently to proselytism, and also share the same essential morality of Christians thanks to the Torah and the Noachide Laws (which were reflected in the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15) so I also support an Anglican mission in the Holy Land which does engage in active proselytism.

While I appreciate you long historical treatise, what I meant was that a Jew does not "convert" to belief in his own Moshiakh. A Moshiakh is already part of Judaism. It is WHO that is which is in question. Bar Kokba, Shabbatai Zvi and even Schneerson and others were thought of as THE Moshiakh, but all failed. Yeshua was a Jew. Gentiles were grafted in.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 26, 2024

RandyPNW said:
Jews convert from Rabbinic Judaism to Christianity.

Yeshua is the Jewish Moshiakh. A Jew need only believe in Him. Gentiles are grafted in.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 26, 2024

RandyPNW said:
Jews convert from Rabbinic Judaism to Christianity.

Yeshua is the Jewish Moshiakh. A Jew need only believe in Him. Gentiles are grafted in.

RandyPNW said:
And I also agree with you that the supremacy of the Pope is a huge, huge problem. As I've been saying, sectarianism divides the Church, separating good Christians from good Christians within different denominations..

The Orthodox do not have a pope (in the same respect as the Roman Church does).

RandyPNW · Feb 26, 2024

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
Yeshua is the Jewish Moshiakh. A Jew need only believe in Him. Gentiles are grafted in.

How many generations did it take for Jews to be viewed as a Chosen Nation? How long has it been since Gentile nations were viewed as Christian Nations? I hardly think that I, a product of many centuries of Christianity in Europe, have had to be "grafted" into a Chosen Nation that ceased to be "chosen" in the time of Jesus.

Paul was speaking of Gentiles in his own time, who had to be grafted into the only Christian tradition that existed in his time, namely Israel. This was a common view under the Law, which had only recently expired, that Gentiles could become proselytes into the Jewish faith by adopting the Law of Moses as their own.

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
The Orthodox do not have a pope (in the same respect as the Roman Church does).

I know this. The original group were patriarchs, and the preeminent patriarch in the West was the Roman Pope.

The Liturgist · Feb 26, 2024

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
While I appreciate you long historical treatise, what I meant was that a Jew does not "convert" to belief in his own Moshiakh. A Moshiakh is already part of Judaism. It is WHO that is which is in question. Bar Kokba, Shabbatai Zvi and even Schneerson and others were thought of as THE Moshiakh, but all failed. Yeshua was a Jew. Gentiles were grafted in.

Respectfully, on the basis of my own catechesis and the works of contemporary Eastern Orthodox apologists such as Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, I must dissagree emphatically:

Thus, as Archpriest Damick explains in Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, while it is true that Gentiles were grafted into Christianity which was the continuation of the legitimate Hebrew religion, Rabinnical Judaism can be thought of as the younger cousin of Christianity; it is an offshoot religion formed by those Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ, and thus developed a series of doctrinal distortions of a theological nature, pertaining to the identity and nature of God, and also a liturgical and mystical nature, and finally a practical nature, in that it developed legalistic and theurgical, emmanationist dimensions in the form of the Talmud and Kabbalah which make it radically different from both Christianity and the ancient Hebraic religions which preceded Christianity.

Therefore, while it is true that a pious Second Temple Jew who was not particularly given to the errors of the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and other heretical sects (which had already distorted the faith so greatly by the time of Christ, compared to its pure beginnings under St. Nehemiah the Prophet and St. Esdras the Priest) in being baptized to receive Christ was not converting in the sense that they were not changing religions, the New Testament makes it clear that in other cases, it was a conversion experience, for example, in the case of St. Paul, he rejected Christ to such a degree and also embraced the false doctrines of the Pharisees to such an extent that his experience on the Road to Damascus was a true conversion, for the religion he practiced before accepting Jesus as the Christ, the incarnate Word of God and Savior, was functionally different from the religion he practiced after our Lord appeared to Him, and this was such a powerful experience it moved him to call himself Paul rather than Saul.

However, I do agree with you in other cases. Obviously, St. James the Just, and St. John the Beloved Disciple, and St. James the Great, and St. Andrew the first Called, and his brother St. Peter, and the rest, did not convert to a new religion but rather simply received Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, with Peter being the first to clearly articulate who their Rabbi actually was, following the Transfiguration.

But at present, in the case of contemporary Judaism, and even in the case of many forms of Christianity, particularly those forms which are not sacramental or liturgical, one does convert from those to Holy Orthodoxy and is grafted on, the same as for Jewish converts as for gentile converts. And indeed, after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt and the repose of the last persons who were raised as practitioners of Second Temple Judaism, and its replacement by Rabinnical Judaism, the Church became, as had been planned in the economy of salvation from the beginning, the sole legitimate religion, and the relationship between it and Rabinnical Judaism is the same as the relationship between it and Zoroastrianism and certain other West Asian religions with a similiar concept of ethics and morality and a a similiar focus on liturgical worship. Mandaeism, Yazidism, Alevism (in its Ishikist interpretation, rather than its Sufi Islam interpretation), Bektasism, and more recently, the Sikh and Bahai faiths come to mind as examples of religions that, like Rabinnical, Karaite and Ethiopic Judaism, are highly admirable, with beautiful liturgical practices evocative of Christianity and its predecessors in Second Temple Judaism, and the Levitical Religion of the Tabernacle and the First Temple, and the Captive Judaism brought about by Nebuchadnezzar, and before all of these, the Religion of St. Noah and other interesting and mysterious manifestations of true Orthodoxy, such as the doxology of the priestly king Melchizedek.

We have to differentiate between these divine religions, such as those of Noah, and Melchizedek, and Abraham, and Moses and Aaron, and Jeremiah and Daniel, and Nehemiah and Esdras, and the failing Second Temple Judaism at the time of Christ, which already had leaders who had renounced any kind of Judaic Orthodoxy, and then after the emergence of Christianity and the accession of so many millions of Jews to it, including nearly all of the Ethiopian and Indian Jews and I would guess at least a sixth of all Jews in the Levant and Mesopotamia, probably more, that the remaining Rabinnical religion and its offshoots such as Reform Judaism and even, strictly speaking, Karaite Judaism, which was a reaction to the excesses of the Rabbis as opposed to the strictness of the Rabinnical doctrine, lacks continuity with Second Temple Judaism. So a Chasidic Jew from Chabad who believes that Schneerson is the Messiah is really several religions removed from Second Temple Judaism and Christianity, so when persons from the Messianic faction of Chabad become Christians, they are definitely converting, as much as someone converting from Mormonism or Swedenborgianism or the Bahai faith is converting; in that through false prophets, and misguided religious leaders, Mormonism has become something other than Christianity, and likewise, the various offshoots of Rabinnical Judaism have become a diverse family of religions far removed from Second Temple Judaism, so it is no longer simply a matter for a Reform Jew or a Chassidic Jew or a Karaite Jew to accept Jesus as the Christ, because their entire understanding of who and what God is, and what He meant in his revealed scriptures, has become radically distorted.

The Ark of Salvation cannot have anything in common with the Ship of Theseus.

dzheremi · Feb 26, 2024

The Liturgist said:
one of the most beloved Maphrians was Mar Gregorios bar Hebraeus, a 12th century Jew who embraced Syriac Orthodox Christianity

Not to pull things too far afield, but I am under the impression that the idea that Mor Gregorios was Jewish has been rejected by most modern scholars on his life. Is there reason to support this bit of his history today?

Admittedly, the specifics of Mor Gregorios' life are not a specialty of mine, but I do know that the "Hebraeus" in his name is argued to refer to his place of origin rather than his family's ancestral faith -- that is to say, to the town of 'Ebra ('Ebro) outside of Malatya, Turkey. If that's true, then it is obvious how we get his name in Syriac, since ܒܪ ܥܒܪܝܐ written in the original clearly lacks the initial "H" that makes it appear to be related to "Hebrew" in the Latinized version of his Syriac name. In Syriac, it starts with an 'e, which is the Syriac equivalent of the Arabic 'a (ayn), represented with this character ع in that alphabet, which looks like this in Syriac: ܥ. Seeing as how Semitic languages form words by filling in consonantal roots with various patterns of vowels, we can tell pretty much immediately that the "H" could not have come from Syriac (or Hebrew, for that matter, if Mor Gregorios was indeed a Jew). Perhaps it came along as a result of his life and works coming to be known to the Latin-speaking world (as the form Hebraeus is clearly Latin), but to my mind that is made somewhat less likely by the apparent fact that he was more commonly known in Latin by the Latin version of his Arabic name, Abulpharagius (from the Arabic ابو الفرج Abu al Faraj).

The Liturgist · Feb 26, 2024

RandyPNW said:
How many generations did it take for Jews to be viewed as a Chosen Nation? How long has it been since Gentile nations were viewed as Christian Nations? I hardly think that I, a product of many centuries of Christianity in Europe, have had to be "grafted" into a Chosen Nation that ceased to be "chosen" in the time of Jesus.

Paul was speaking of Gentiles in his own time, who had to be grafted into the only Christian tradition that existed in his time, namely Israel. This was a common view under the Law, which had only recently expired, that Gentiles could become proselytes into the Jewish faith by adopting the Law of Moses as their own.

I know this. The original group were patriarchs, and the preeminent patriarch in the West was the Roman Pope.

Well, the classic view of the liturgical churches such as Eastern Orthodoxy is that when we are baptized in Christ, we are grafted onto the Body of Christ, which is the Church, and this point is stressed by the baptismal hymn “Whoever is baptized in Christ has put on Christ, alleluia.” Then, in the Eucharist, we are united in Communion with the rest of the Church, that is, all of the other Christians going back to the eleven faithful disciples at the Last Supper. This is based on our reading of 1 Corinthians, along with the other Pauline epistles, and John ch. 6, and Matthew ch. 16, and Luke-Acts, particularly the Ascension narrative in Luke, where our Risen Lord becomes known to the Disciples in the breaking of bread.

I should also stress that the interpretation I have just summarized for you is of great antiquity, and is evident, for example, in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Clement of Rome, and St. Irenaeus of Lyons, not to mention the Nicene fathers such as St. Athanasius, St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and the champions against Pelagius, St. John Cassian and St. Augustine of Hippo.

Indeed it is this great antiquity and historical continuity, which persists on through the centuries, so that if i were to keep going, my post would turn into a laundry list of Church Fathers spanning the centuries, even if I limited myself to some of the more interesting such as Mor Gregorios bar Hebraeus, St. Gregory Palamas and St. Seraphim of Sarov, for instance, it still forms something of a great cloud of witnesses who all held a remarkably homogenous understanding of Christian ecclesiology.

The Liturgist · Feb 26, 2024

dzheremi said:
Not to pull things too far afield, but I am under the impression that the idea that Mor Gregorios was Jewish has been rejected by most modern scholars on his life. Is there reason to support this bit of his history today?

Admittedly, the specifics of Mor Gregorios' life are not a specialty of mine, but I do know that the "Hebraeus" in his name is argued to refer to his place of origin rather than his family's ancestral faith -- that is to say, to the town of 'Ebra ('Ebro) outside of Malatya, Turkey. If that's true, then it is obvious how we get his name in Syriac, since ܒܪ ܥܒܪܝܐ written in the original clearly lacks the initial "H" that makes it appear to be related to "Hebrew" in the Latinized version of his Syriac name. In Syriac, it starts with an 'e, which is the Syriac equivalent of the Arabic 'a (ayn), represented with this character ع in that alphabet, which looks like this in Syriac: ܥ. Seeing as how Semitic languages form words by filling in consonantal roots with various patterns of vowels, we can tell pretty much immediately that the "H" could not have come from Syriac (or Hebrew, for that matter, if Mor Gregorios was indeed a Jew). Perhaps it came along as a result of his life and works coming to be known to the Latin-speaking world (as the form Hebraeus is clearly Latin), but to my mind that is made somewhat less likely by the apparent fact that he was more commonly known in Latin by the Latin version of his Arabic name, Abulpharagius (from the Arabic ابو الفرج Abu al Faraj).

I am familiar with the alternative explanation for his last name, but I don’t give it much credit, because unlike, for example, the very strong evidence that St. Isaac the Syrian was a member of the Church of the East, based on the work of Sebastian Brock, in the case of St. Gregorios bar Hebraeus, the traditional Syriac Orthodox hagiography, written by the priestly communities in the church that continue to have vernacular knowledge of Classical Syriac to this day, he is recognized as a recent convert from Judaism. Indeed, I think the fact that the Latins knew him mainly as Abulpharagius gives credence to the idea that the Hebreaus in his name was inserted intentionally at a later date by Syriac Orthodox hagiographers, in order to stress his Jewish ethnicity, in order to make the point, which the Syriac Orthodox church has often made, that it has, both in India and the Middle East, historically always been something of a magnet for Jews wanting to convert to Christianity and that it is the Semitic church par excellence, without the Mesopotamian tribal baggage that one encounters with the Assyrians, for example (and it is widely known that the Assyrians are largely of Hebrew descent, based on their liturgy and other factors, although they also have a vested interest in downplaying this in favor of Assyrian Nationalism; the Syriac Orthodox are ambivalent towards Assyrian Nationalism, with some embracing it, others instead embracing an Aramaic Nationalism, and still others preferring a purely ecclesiastical identity which can be mutually inclusive of the Mar Thoma Christians, or Nasranis, of India, and the Suroye Christians of the Middle East, as well as newly converted populations, for example, in Latin America, in Guatemala and Brazil, for instance).

RandyPNW · Feb 26, 2024

The Liturgist said:
Well, the classic view of the liturgical churches such as Eastern Orthodoxy is that when we are baptized in Christ, we are grafted onto the Body of Christ, which is the Church, and this point is stressed by the baptismal hymn “Whoever is baptized in Christ has put on Christ, alleluia.” Then, in the Eucharist, we are united in Communion with the rest of the Church, that is, all of the other Christians going back to the eleven faithful disciples at the Last Supper. This is based on our reading of 1 Corinthians, along with the other Pauline epistles, and John ch. 6, and Matthew ch. 16, and Luke-Acts, particularly the Ascension narrative in Luke, where our Risen Lord becomes known to the Disciples in the breaking of bread.

I should also stress that the interpretation I have just summarized for you is of great antiquity, and is evident, for example, in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, St. Clement of Rome, and St. Irenaeus of Lyons, not to mention the Nicene fathers such as St. Athanasius, St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, and the champions against Pelagius, St. John Cassian and St. Augustine of Hippo.

Indeed it is this great antiquity and historical continuity, which persists on through the centuries, so that if i were to keep going, my post would turn into a laundry list of Church Fathers spanning the centuries, even if I limited myself to some of the more interesting such as Mor Gregorios bar Hebraeus, St. Gregory Palamas and St. Seraphim of Sarov, for instance, it still forms something of a great cloud of witnesses who all held a remarkably homogenous understanding of Christian ecclesiology.

This is the whole problem with tradition that focuses on the original time frame, instead of recognizing what emerges over time. I'm not talking about some kind of relativity in terms of interpreting original biblical doctrine, but more, about understanding context as the Bible meant to be applied.

Matters like how the churches were originally organized having "love feasts," and the practices of women, speaking or not in the church, as well as the length of hair for the genders, were all matters focused primarily on the 1st century with an emphasis on church order rather than on tradition. We can still have gender differentiation without determining, in our day, whether a man should have short hair and women long hair!

So when the NT Bible was written, it was written specifically to the conditions that then existed, when there were *no national churches,* and when the only form of national religion of the doctrinally-orthodox kind had been Israel. It was to *that tradition* that Paul indicated Gentile converts had to associate with in order to become a broader community and one rooted in history.

The Jewish People themselves did not instantly become a national entity, but had to pass through the stages of separation from the Chaldees, formation into tribes in a particular region, and ultimately unification under kings. They did not convert but evolved from an original starting point.

On the other hand, Gentile nationals had to abandon the paganism of their own nationality to join in with Israel to develop their own starting place. Afterwards, they had to form minorities within their own respective nations until those nations converted into a Christian nation.

At that point, coming into existence as a Christian citizen was no different that the Hebrew originating from Abraham, a Hebrew tribe, and the Israeli nation. They were not converts from paganism, but rather, grew up *within Christianity.* They were not "grafted into Israel," but rather, emerged as citizens of Christian nations.

Drawing upon the original 11 therefore misses the point entirely because it ignores the history of Christianity since that time and focuses on conditions that only existed in that early stage of Christian development. After that, tradition continued to look back, rather than forward, insisting on keeping the language of "conversion," rather than "Christian origination." I trust you will understand?

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 26, 2024

The Liturgist said:
Respectfully, on the basis of my own catechesis and the works of contemporary Eastern Orthodox apologists such as Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, I must dissagree emphatically:

Thus, as Archpriest Damick explains in Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, while it is true that Gentiles were grafted into Christianity which was the continuation of the legitimate Hebrew religion, Rabinnical Judaism can be thought of as the younger cousin of Christianity; it is an offshoot religion formed by those Jews who rejected Jesus as the Christ, and thus developed a series of doctrinal distortions of a theological nature, pertaining to the identity and nature of God, and also a liturgical and mystical nature, and finally a practical nature, in that it developed legalistic and theurgical, emmanationist dimensions in the form of the Talmud and Kabbalah which make it radically different from both Christianity and the ancient Hebraic religions which preceded Christianity.

Therefore, while it is true that a pious Second Temple Jew who was not particularly given to the errors of the Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and other heretical sects (which had already distorted the faith so greatly by the time of Christ, compared to its pure beginnings under St. Nehemiah the Prophet and St. Esdras the Priest) in being baptized to receive Christ was not converting in the sense that they were not changing religions, the New Testament makes it clear that in other cases, it was a conversion experience, for example, in the case of St. Paul, he rejected Christ to such a degree and also embraced the false doctrines of the Pharisees to such an extent that his experience on the Road to Damascus was a true conversion, for the religion he practiced before accepting Jesus as the Christ, the incarnate Word of God and Savior, was functionally different from the religion he practiced after our Lord appeared to Him, and this was such a powerful experience it moved him to call himself Paul rather than Saul.

However, I do agree with you in other cases. Obviously, St. James the Just, and St. John the Beloved Disciple, and St. James the Great, and St. Andrew the first Called, and his brother St. Peter, and the rest, did not convert to a new religion but rather simply received Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, with Peter being the first to clearly articulate who their Rabbi actually was, following the Transfiguration.

But at present, in the case of contemporary Judaism, and even in the case of many forms of Christianity, particularly those forms which are not sacramental or liturgical, one does convert from those to Holy Orthodoxy and is grafted on, the same as for Jewish converts as for gentile converts. And indeed, after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt and the repose of the last persons who were raised as practitioners of Second Temple Judaism, and its replacement by Rabinnical Judaism, the Church became, as had been planned in the economy of salvation from the beginning, the sole legitimate religion, and the relationship between it and Rabinnical Judaism is the same as the relationship between it and Zoroastrianism and certain other West Asian religions with a similiar concept of ethics and morality and a a similiar focus on liturgical worship. Mandaeism, Yazidism, Alevism (in its Ishikist interpretation, rather than its Sufi Islam interpretation), Bektasism, and more recently, the Sikh and Bahai faiths come to mind as examples of religions that, like Rabinnical, Karaite and Ethiopic Judaism, are highly admirable, with beautiful liturgical practices evocative of Christianity and its predecessors in Second Temple Judaism, and the Levitical Religion of the Tabernacle and the First Temple, and the Captive Judaism brought about by Nebuchadnezzar, and before all of these, the Religion of St. Noah and other interesting and mysterious manifestations of true Orthodoxy, such as the doxology of the priestly king Melchizedek.

We have to differentiate between these divine religions, such as those of Noah, and Melchizedek, and Abraham, and Moses and Aaron, and Jeremiah and Daniel, and Nehemiah and Esdras, and the failing Second Temple Judaism at the time of Christ, which already had leaders who had renounced any kind of Judaic Orthodoxy, and then after the emergence of Christianity and the accession of so many millions of Jews to it, including nearly all of the Ethiopian and Indian Jews and I would guess at least a sixth of all Jews in the Levant and Mesopotamia, probably more, that the remaining Rabinnical religion and its offshoots such as Reform Judaism and even, strictly speaking, Karaite Judaism, which was a reaction to the excesses of the Rabbis as opposed to the strictness of the Rabinnical doctrine, lacks continuity with Second Temple Judaism. So a Chasidic Jew from Chabad who believes that Schneerson is the Messiah is really several religions removed from Second Temple Judaism and Christianity, so when persons from the Messianic faction of Chabad become Christians, they are definitely converting, as much as someone converting from Mormonism or Swedenborgianism or the Bahai faith is converting; in that through false prophets, and misguided religious leaders, Mormonism has become something other than Christianity, and likewise, the various offshoots of Rabinnical Judaism have become a diverse family of religions far removed from Second Temple Judaism, so it is no longer simply a matter for a Reform Jew or a Chassidic Jew or a Karaite Jew to accept Jesus as the Christ, because their entire understanding of who and what God is, and what He meant in his revealed scriptures, has become radically distorted.

The Ark of Salvation cannot have anything in common with the Ship of Theseus.

We agree in some of what you have written. However, Yeshua was not the Buddist or the Bahai Moshiakh...he was the promised JEWISH Moshiakh. Because Chasidic or Rabbinic Judaism does not accept Him at present, does not negate that fact. Some of your views may be some of the reasons that Jews that come to believe in Yeshua do not become Orthodox but enter Messianic Judaism.

Yeshua HaDerekh · Feb 26, 2024

RandyPNW said:
How many generations did it take for Jews to be viewed as a Chosen Nation? How long has it been since Gentile nations were viewed as Christian Nations? I hardly think that I, a product of many centuries of Christianity in Europe, have had to be "grafted" into a Chosen Nation that ceased to be "chosen" in the time of Jesus.

Paul was speaking of Gentiles in his own time, who had to be grafted into the only Christian tradition that existed in his time, namely Israel. This was a common view under the Law, which had only recently expired, that Gentiles could become proselytes into the Jewish faith by adopting the Law of Moses as their own.

I know this. The original group were patriarchs, and the preeminent patriarch in the West was the Roman Pope.

Not sure I understand what you are trying to say because it does not seem like it has anything to do with what I said...

The Liturgist · Feb 26, 2024

RandyPNW said:
This is the whole problem with tradition that focuses on the original time frame, instead of recognizing what emerges over time. I'm not talking about some kind of relativity in terms of interpreting original biblical doctrine, but more, about understanding context as the Bible meant to be applied.

Matters like how the churches were originally organized having "love feasts," and the practices of women, speaking or not in the church, as well as the length of hair for the genders, were all matters focused primarily on the 1st century with an emphasis on church order rather than on tradition. We can still have gender differentiation without determining, in our day, whether a man should have short hair and women long hair!

So when the NT Bible was written, it was written specifically to the conditions that then existed, when there were *no national churches,* and when the only form of national religion of the doctrinally-orthodox kind had been Israel. It was to *that tradition* that Paul indicated Gentile converts had to associate with in order to become a broader community and one rooted in history.

The Jewish People themselves did not instantly become a national entity, but had to pass through the stages of separation from the Chaldees, formation into tribes in a particular region, and ultimately unification under kings. They did not convert but evolved from an original starting point.

On the other hand, Gentile nationals had to abandon the paganism of their own nationality to join in with Israel to develop their own starting place. Afterwards, they had to form minorities within their own respective nations until those nations converted into a Christian nation.

At that point, coming into existence as a Christian citizen was no different that the Hebrew originating from Abraham, a Hebrew tribe, and the Israeli nation. They were not converts from paganism, but rather, grew up *within Christianity.* They were not "grafted into Israel," but rather, emerged as citizens of Christian nations.

Drawing upon the original 11 therefore misses the point entirely because it ignores the history of Christianity since that time and focuses on conditions that only existed in that early stage of Christian development. After that, tradition continued to look back, rather than forward, insisting on keeping the language of "conversion," rather than "Christian origination." I trust you will understand?

No, frankly, I have no idea what the “original 11” you are talking about is, and I also note that you are in error concerning the history of the development of baptism and tne liturgical rite, and what is more, we are not “grafted into Israel” but rather “grafted into the Body of Christ” - what St. Paul wrote applies to anyone baptized, regardless of whether or not they were Jews.

The early church and the Orthodox Church of today do occasionally exclude traditions which are not deemed a part of, or in some cases are regarded as incompatible with, Holy Tradition, for example, the early church discontinued celebrating Pascha on the 14th of Nissan, it anathematized belief in Chiliasm, which had at one time been popular, with Chiliast content in the writings of St. Justin Martyr, for example, and it would phase out the deaconesses as unnecessary when a combination of the widespread use of baptismal robes and a reduced need to baptize adult women made keeping them unnecessary.

Likewise, we no longer have lay exorcists, areas of the church set aside for various categories of penitents, and so on. So the faith of the Orthodox Church is dynamic; it is only the Holy Tradition consisting of the Gospels and other scriptures and their Apostolic interpretation in the sacramental life of the Church, rather than the entire collection of traditions and practices surrounding it, that is inalterable.

The Liturgist · Feb 26, 2024

Yeshua HaDerekh said:
We agree in some of what you have written. However, Yeshua was not the Buddist or the Bahai Moshiakh...he was the promised JEWISH Moshiakh. Because Chasidic or Rabbinic Judaism does not accept Him at present, does not negate that fact.

Obviously, but what difference does it make? What do you want us to do with this information?

Some of your views may be some of the reasons that Jews that come to believe in Yeshua do not become Orthodox but enter Messianic Judaism.

Firstly, the views I have expressed are those of well respected Eastern Orthodox clergy such as Archpriest Andrew S. Damick, who cannot be accused of anti-Semitism (unlike, say, some of the Old Calendarist clergy).

Secondly, I know of far more recent Jewish converts to Eastern Orthodoxy and other liturgical Christian churches such as Anglicanism (which unlike Orthodoxy, has a controversial but important ministry that actively proselytizes Jews in the Holy Land), than I know of Jewish converts to Messianic Judaism, which rather in my experience seems to be more along the lines of the Molokans or the Sabbatarian Christians.

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