Why I Was Wrong About Ecumenism

[Halbhh]

You’d have to be pretty specific on creeds since each denomination has their own thing going on.

The Apostle's Creed with "catholic" understood as its intended meaning -- universal -- embracing all believers in Christ together who believe:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

 

[Barney2.0]

The Apostle's Creed with "catholic" understood as its intended meaning -- universal -- embracing all believers in Christ together who believe:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

That would be just one of the many “creeds” we don’t accept as one of the historic creeds.

 

[Halbhh]

That would be just one of the many “creeds”we don’t accept as Canonical.

Ah, but the real question is whether each sentence is fully true to the scripture/beliefs in all ways, instead of only whether a church has been already using it instead of another or none. For someone not already familiar with it (me about 8 years ago), one can then consider all of it carefully and see if it is exactly true in all regards.

 

[dzheremi]

The Apostles' Creed is a uniquely Western creed, not found in any form of Eastern Christianity. It dates in its current form only to the 8th century, where it is found in the works of the Chalcedonian saint Permin (700-753). Its predecessor, the Old Roman Symbol, dates from the 4th century, where it is found in a letter to HH Pope Julius c. 341.

You'd do better to stick with the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 if you want to get to the basics and how to frame them in a way that everyone has agreed to, as this website does, because it does not have this problem of being unrecognized by any major church in the world as the Apostles' Creed does.

 

[Philip_B]

they are like those who will walk past Him in the desert in their hurry to meet Him

Very powerful image.

 

[Philip_B]

The Apostle's Creed with "catholic" understood as its intended meaning -- universal -- embracing all believers in Christ together who believe:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

The only Creed the whole assembled Church agreed to is the Nicene Creed of the 1st Council of Constantinople 381 AD. The Apostles Creed is simply a Baptismal Symbol in the West. See Ambrose of Milan writing to the Pope around 390 AD.

 

[ripple the car]

+++

 

[dzheremi]

Addendum to the previous post: I forgot about the Armenians...

(That sentence applies to a lot of things! Please forgive me, my brothers and sisters.)

The Armenians use a creed that is arguably an intermediate form of the standard that every other church uses, as it is likely attributable to a synod held c. 360s in Jerusalem by St. Epiphanius and other Orthodox bishops. I don't really know the text myself (the Copts, like everyone else, use the 381 form), but I found this interesting thread on Monachos forum which has Armenian participation and confirms it as a "Jerusalemite variant" of the original Nicene Creed of 325 (as that would've been the one Creed agreed upon that time, Constantinople still being in the future). This matches what I have read on the Armenian Creed.

Also note in that thread that apparently the Chaldean Catholics of Mesopotamia -- who were originally within the Church of the East (Nestorian) -- do not use the standard 381 version of the Creed, either. I do not know what they use instead.

So I would amend my previous post to say "all churches but two, which have their own special circumstances that explain why they do not use it" instead of "all"...but that's too long and boring to read, and especially unhelpful when I do not know the Chaldean circumstances. (From what I've been able to find in a downloadable book of their liturgy, it appears to be rather standard except for some strange wording which may be a translation issue -- "We believe in one Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father and the Son as a lifegiving Spirit"; "We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of our bodies, and life everlasting. Amen.", etc.)

 

[SolomonVII]

The ecumenism that I personally adhere to is to assume that people that believe in Christ share something very, very important with what I believe. At the same time I do recognize that there is no unity with those who use the name of Christ for their own agendas. This is of the antichrist.
Many of the divisions and denominations of the church are historical and cultural. That is not to say that these divisions are superficial because the differences that developed through historical and cultural cleavages are theologically important.
Practically speaking though, the truer ecumenism is in forming bonds with those whose agenda is Christ himself. There is a unity in purpose and in purpose and in meaning that spans congregational and denominational schisms and cleavages when we bond with people who give themselves to Christ, and not use the name of Christ to further their own agenda.

 

[Halbhh]

The only Creed the whole assembled Church agreed to is the Nicene Creed of the 1st Council of Constantinople 381 AD. The Apostles Creed is simply a Baptismal Symbol in the West. See Ambrose of Milan writing to the Pope around 390 AD.

Yes, interesting that. When you read the two creeds through (any versions), you see the Apostle's Creed won't have the unnecessary dispute over the 'filioque' etc., but that the Apostle's creed states the clear and necessary elements of faith that Christians have. To try to use the Nicene Creed would of course bring up this unnecessary old argument, and activate those who want to argue about it. Generally, we are not required, nor do we actually, know all things about God, but rather we know many wondrous and wonderful things about God which are even yet not all the wonderful things we can expect, as told to us in Isaiah chapter 55. http://biblehub.com/niv/isaiah/55.htm

 

[dzheremi]

Yes, interesting that. When you read the two creeds through (any versions), you see the Apostle's Creed won't have the unnecessary dispute over the 'filioque' etc., but that the Apostle's creed states the clear and necessary elements of faith that Christians have. To try to use the Nicene Creed would of course bring up this unnecessary old argument, and activate those who want to argue about it. Generally, we are not required, nor do we actually, know all things about God, but rather we know many wondrous and wonderful things about God which are even yet not all the wonderful things we can expect, as told to us in Isaiah chapter 55. Isaiah 55 NIV

I personally wouldn't wade into the filioque argument (because I don't have to; 589 is far too late), but even then we don't judge whether or not something should be affirmed based on the mess that others can make of it -- e.g., we don't get rid of our Theotokias because the Roman Catholics have some strange ideas about the Theotokos re: the immaculate conception or her assumption without death; we don't cease baptisizing and communing infants because other forms of Christianity object to those practices for various reasons; we don't get rid of the Bible because of the many weird interpretations of it that non-Orthodox forms of Christianity may have, etc., etc.

The Creed of 381 is still the standard. Sans filioque.

 

[Halbhh]

The Apostles' Creed is a uniquely Western creed, not found in any form of Eastern Christianity. It dates in its current form only to the 8th century, where it is found in the works of the Chalcedonian saint Permin (700-753). Its predecessor, the Old Roman Symbol, dates from the 4th century, where it is found in a letter to HH Pope Julius c. 341.

You'd do better to stick with the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 if you want to get to the basics and how to frame them in a way that everyone has agreed to, as this website does, because it does not have this problem of being unrecognized by any major church in the world as the Apostles' Creed does.

But "to get to the basics" -- the central elements of faith for Christians, the more basic Creed of the two is...read them both and see.

 

[dzheremi]

That is the wrong way to look at it. "Basic" does not mean "simplest" in the sense of containing the fewest or least complicated statements. It means, as you've written, "central". As the Nicene Creed was written to answer the question at the center of Arian debate, which was about Christ's essential relationship to the Father (as Arius and his partisans taught that Christ and the Father were not of the same essence), it includes the exact refutation of the Arian view, making it 100% clear that Arianism and semi-Arianism and any similar view is rejected.

The Apostles' Creed would have been wholly insufficient for this purpose (which is not a criticism of it, since there is no evidence that it was written with that particular conflict in mind), as it contains no such statement. Even if we only look at it from that perspective (there are other things which the Creed in its 381 form answers -- e.g., the Pneumatomachoi, the various dualists, the millennialists, etc. -- but we need not bring in everything to make this point), it is clear why the Nicene Creed is more reliable, more widely accepted, and, yes, more fit to answer these basic questions than the Apostles' Creed.

 

[SolomonVII]

The filioque, or sola scriptural, or the perpetual virginity of Mary are not the hills that I would choose to die. The heinous slaughter of vast swaths of the unborn, the enslavement and degradations from godless principalities ushered in by the Marxists and neo Marxists; these are the issues that sort the wheat from the chafe, the Christ from the antichrist. That is the kind of ecumenism where brothers and sisters in Christ are to be found.
Theological agreements allow us to worship as a people, and they are important in order to foster our growth in Christ and worship of God. We are social creatures who require rites and repititions in order to develop in Spirit.
To require those rites and rituals to define the whole of the Body of Christ however is a descent into tribalism.
Our very eyes bear witness to the wolves in our congregations and the plumpness and innocence of the sheep congregating in other flocks.
Ecumenism is the means to put the universal back into the Catholic. It does not negate the importance of rite and ritual for anybody. But it seeks to erase the schisms that we impose on the body of Christ through our own unwillingness to see our brothers and sisters in Christ in those Christians whose works overflow with the Spirit of Christ.

 

[Philip_B]

Yes, interesting that. When you read the two creeds through (any versions), you see the Apostle's Creed won't have the unnecessary dispute over the 'filioque' etc., but that the Apostle's creed states the clear and necessary elements of faith that Christians have. To try to use the Nicene Creed would of course bring up this unnecessary old argument, and activate those who want to argue about it. Generally, we are not required, nor do we actually, know all things about God, but rather we know many wondrous and wonderful things about God which are even yet not all the wonderful things we can expect, as told to us in Isaiah chapter 55. http://biblehub.com/niv/isaiah/55.htm

The difficulty that I have with the Apostles Creed and the difficulty that many of us have with the Apostles Creed is that the Christology is light (there is no affirmation of the eternal generation of the Son), and the Pneumatology is light (it does not address the matters raised by the pneumatomachi).

If you look at Ambrose's history, from his acclaimation as Bishop by the assembly, when he was simply a layman, in Milan which had been a centre of Arianism. Ambrose sought peace with large Arian constituency, despite himself being a Nicene Christian. It is easy to see why Ambrose appealed to the Pope for the Creed of the Apostles. It came to be the Baptismal Symbol, but never replaced the Nicene Symbol as the Eucharistic Creed.

Arguing for a non-conciliar Creed that has never been accepted in the East does not resolve the issue at all, and in reality is like saying we can fix the problem caused by the ten tonne bomb by replacing it with a 50 tonne bomb. We don't fix a smaller problem by introducing a bigger problem.

I don't for one moment doubt the sincerity of trying to bypass the filioque controversy, however I think in the end that the only way that will happen is when the Church in the West drops it, and returns to the Creed that was the Creed agreed to at the 1st Council of Constantinople, and affirmed at Ephesus and Chalcedon. It is the Creed of the Church historically, and the statement of faith on CF.

 

[Halbhh]

The whole question about ecunimism isn't whether the Church can be one -- it already is.

We know those who are His follow Him, and listen to Him, and are visibly doing as He said.

Rather the question to ask ourselves regarding the unity of Christians vis a vis ourselves are ones like these about: Am I following Christ?

Do I truly welcome the stranger as He said we must do? (Matthew chapter 25)

Do I have the humbleness of a little child, as He said we must?
(Matthew chapter 18)

Am I entering through the only Gate?
(John chapter 10)
John 10 NIV

Ain't no other way. A esoteric church doctrine, or a fine theological point -- useless, and likely quite dangerous to you.

 

[ubicaritas]

Ain't no other way. A esoteric church doctrine, or a fine theological point -- useless, and likely quite dangerous to you.

Unless those doctrines exist to protect consciences from spiritual abuse (which is what most doctrine in Lutheranism is concerned with). I see doctrine being criticized alot, without understanding the context for why churches even have doctrine.

 

[Halbhh]

Unless those doctrines exist to protect consciences from spiritual abuse (which is what most doctrine in Lutheranism is concerned with). I see doctrine being criticized alot, without understanding the context for why churches even have doctrine.

My fault for using the word 'doctrine' which has a very different definition for different people, some even using the word to simply include even direct quotes from epistles for instance. Since the word means such radically unalike things to different people, perhaps it's best for me to try to find another word or phrasing to communicate precisely what I mean, and not cause confusion.

Variously, instead of "doctrines" I could write depending on the instance in question a variety of more exact descriptions like "widely unaccepted notions that majorities of Christians reject" or at other times "highly debated speculations under intense scrutiny" or sometimes "widespread traditional misunderstandings". But then finally there is also "overly simplified summaries of the gospel that leave out crucial parts, endangering many Christians". But perhaps I'll just have to forego all such labels and simply address how Christians listen to Christ (http://biblehub.com/john/10-27.htm), and such encouragements. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Tayla]

But why attempt to join everyone together into one body, while their minds, their beliefs, and their practices remain dissimilar and contradictory? This is not unity! How can there be one body but different minds?

Christians are in unity even if they think they aren't. This, because, they worship the same God and have faith in Jesus and worship Jesus. The problem is: Christians have come to the incorrect view that differences in doctrine, belief, and practice; that these differences mean they are not in unity.

Christians should stop fighting with each other; this is destroying the credibility of the gospel for those we share our culture with.

 

[Halbhh]

Christians are in unity even if they think they aren't. This, because, they worship the same God and have faith in Jesus and worship Jesus. The problem is: Christians have come to the incorrect view that differences in doctrine, belief, and practice; that these differences mean they are not in unity.

Christians should stop fighting with each other; this is destroying the credibility of the gospel for those we share our culture with.

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Most useful post I've seen in a very long time!