InnerPhyre . .why didn't Irenaeus and the Bishops of the Church question the Authoirty of Pope Victor to excommunicate the churches of Asia as heterodox? They didn't question his authoirty . . the questioned his reasons . . . They urged him to reconsider . . . But never did they question his authority to do so . .
From Eusebius of Caesarias
Church History Book V Chapter 24 (320 AD):
But the bishops of Asia, led by Polycrates, decided to hold to the old custom handed down to them. He himself, in a letter which he addressed to Victor and the church of Rome, set forth in the following words the tradition which had come down to him
"Among these are Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who fell asleep in Hierapolis; and his two aged virgin daughters, and another daughter, who lived in the Holy Spirit and now rests at Ephesus; and, moreover, John, who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and, being a priest, wore the sacerdotal plate. He fell asleep at Ephesus. And Polycarp in Smyrna, who was a bishop and martyr; and Thraseas, bishop and martyr from Eumenia, who fell asleep in Smyrna. Why need I mention the bishop and martyr Sagaris who fell asleep in Laodicea, or the blessed Papirius, or Melito, the Eunuch who lived altogether in the Holy Spirit, and who lies in Sardis, awaiting the episcopate from heaven, when he shall rise from the dead? All these observed the fourteenth day of the passover according to the Gospel, deviating in no respect, but following the rule of faith
For those greater than I have said 'We ought to obey God rather than man'." He then writes of all the bishops who were present with him and thought as he did
Thereupon Victor, who presided over the church at Rome, immediately attempted to cut off from the common unity the parishes of all Asia, with the churches that agreed with them, as heterodox; and he wrote letters and declared all the brethren there wholly excommunicate. But this did not please all the bishops. AND THEY BESOUGHT HIM TO CONSIDER THE THINGS OF PEACE, AND OF NEIGHBORLY UNITY AND LOVE. Words of theirs are extant, sharply rebuking Victor. Among them was Irenaeus, who, sending letters in the name of the brethren in Gaul over whom he presided, maintained that the mystery of the resurrection of the Lord should be observed only on the Lord's day. He fittingly admonishes Victor that he should not cut off whole churches of God which observed the tradition of an ancient custom.
They
BESOUGHT him to
CONSIDER . . .
They didn't say . . what in the heck are you doing . . you have no right to do that, you have overstepped your authority . . .
Do you see this?
Fr. Alexander Schmemann was dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary for over twenty years where he taught church history and liturgical theology.
Finally we come to the highest and ultimate form of primacy: universal primacy. An age-long anti-Roman prejudice has led some Orthodox canonists simply to deny the existence of such primacy in the past or the need for it in the present. But an objective study of the canonical tradition cannot fail to establish beyond any doubt that, along with local 'centers of agreement' or primacies, the Church has also known a universal primacy...
It is impossible to deny that, even before the appearance of local primacies, the Church from the first days of her existence possessed an ecumenical center of unity and agreement. In the apostolic and the Judaeo-Christian period, it was the Church of Jerusalem, and later the Church of Rome -- "presiding in agape," according to St. Ignatius of Antioch. This formula and the definition of the universal primacy contained in it have been aptly analyzed by Fr. Afanassieff and we need not repeat his argument here. Neither can we quote here all the testimonies of the Fathers and the Councils unanimously acknowledging Rome as the senior church and the center of ecumenical agreement.
IT IS ONLY FOR THE SAKE OF BIASED POLEMICS THAT ONE CAN IGNORE THESE TESTIMONIES, THEIR CONSENSUS AND SIGNIFICANCE. It has happened, however, that if Roman historians and theologians have always interpreted this evidence in juridical terms, thus falsifying its real meaning, their Orthodox opponents have systematically belittled the evidence itself. Orthodox theology is still awaiting a truly Orthodox evaluation of universal primacy in the first millennium of church history -- AN EVALUATION FREE FROM POLEMICAL OR APOLOGETIC EXAGGERATIONS. [18]
Russian Orthodox convert Vladimir Soloviev:
All Orthodox Christians are agreed that the apostolic power of binding and loosing was not conferred upon the Twelve as private individuals or in the sense of a temporary privilege, but that it is the genuine source and origin of a perpetual priestly authority which has descended from the Apostles to their successors in the hierarchy, the bishops and priests of the Universal Church. But if this is true, then neither can the two former attributes connected particularly with St. Peter in a still more solemn and significant manner be individual or accidental prerogatives; the less so, in that it was with the first of these prerogatives that our Lord expressly connected the permanence and stability of His Church in its future struggle against the powers of evil.
If the power of binding and loosing conferred on the Apostles is not a mere metaphor nor a purely personal and temporary attribute, if it is on the contrary the actual living germ of a universal permanent institution comprising the Church's whole existence, how can St. Peter's own special prerogatives, announced in such explicit and solemn terms, be regarded as barren metaphors or as personal and transitory privileges? Ought not they also to refer to some fundamental and permanent institution, of which the historic personality of Simon Bar-Jona is but the outstanding and typical representative? The God-Man did not establish ephemeral institutions. In His chosen disciples He saw, through and beyond all that was mortal and individual, the enduring principles and types of His work. What He said to the college of the Apostles included the whole priestly order, the teaching Church in its entirety. The sublime words which He addressed to Peter alone created in the person of this one Apostle the undivided sovereign authority possessed by the Universal Church throughout the whole of its life and development in future ages.
The fact that Christ did not see fit to make the formal foundation of His Church and the guarantee of its permanence dependent on the common authority of all the Apostles (for He did not say to the apostolic college: "On you I will build My Church") surely goes to show that our Lord did not regard the episcopal and priestly order, represented by the Apostles in common, as sufficient in itself to form the impregnable foundation of the Universal Church in her inevitable struggle against the gates of hell.
In founding His visible Church Jesus was thinking primarily of the struggle against evil and in order to ensure for His creation that unity which is strength, He crowned the hierarchy with a single, central institution, absolutely indivisible and independent, possessing in its own right the fullness of authority and of promise: "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it". [19]
http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/papalprimacy.html
Please stop trying to get me to debate with you.
Then don't go making claims in a debate thread and expect silence from the ones you are talking to . .
This is a debate forum . . if you don't want to debate, then please stop posting claims that invite refutation.
To be frank, I tried to enter an honest discussion with you, because it appeared you wanted one . . now I am not sure why you are here to begin with.
Note that nowhere here have I said Oh you Catholics are all wrong etc. I simply said only one of us CAN be right, not both. And minimalizing the differences between us does nothing to bring us back together. It only leads to false superficial unity, which is worthless.
I agree . . but you know, for having been Catholic, and given what you have said above, I don't think you understood the positon of the Catholic Church.
It is a both/and IP . . . There are different methods and means of administrating decisoins of the Church . . some are in Church Council . .that is the college of Bishops acting together . . the infallible decres that come from that cannot be overturned by a pope . . . so yes, the bishops act equally . .
But there is also the primacy of the See of Peter, where final authority rests for particular things and in particular circumstances . .
It most definitely is a both/and . . . It seems you have simply failed to understand this and are pitting one against the other . . .
Again, he was simply stating Orthodox belief...laying it all out there...this is what we believe.
Yeah . . its too bad that Orthodox belief has to include a denouncement of another's faith in order to bolser its claims to be the true Church . .
The true Church needs no such bolsering to make its prima facia case . . .
Just like when a Catholic says that Protestants left the true faith...you don't always provide objective evidence. You simply say that's Catholic doctrine, and that's fine.
When requested we provide it IP . . a FAR cry from what has happened in this thread . . .
And no . . we don't need to go around posting OP's that put down Protestantism in order to make our claim regarding who and what is the true Church . . .
The intent of this thread was misunderstood,
Was it? The intent of this thread has nothing to do with the issue I raised.
REGARDLESS of the intent of this thread, negative claims regaridng Our Church and Faith, and later about me personally, were made by the OP and he has not once produced any objective evidence to back them up . . . (and posting numerous links for us to go read copious amounts of literature and then try to guess what it is in it he specifucally uses for "objective evidence" is not the same as providing the objective evidence requested).
Pleae don't confuse the issue I brought up with something else ..
and as always in this wretched place, fists started flying immediately. If a Catholic member were to start a thread about why Catholicism is just grand and included a part that said "and even when the Orthodox broke away in the schism, our faith remained the same" or something like that, somehow I don't think you'd see a ton of Orthodox screaming about it, because we know that's what you believe, even though we could not disagree anymore strongly.
Several fallacies in there IP . .first, we don't go around starting such threads . . and second, even if we did, to state that the Orthodox is in
SCHISM is an
ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THING than what was stated in the OP and subsequent Posts . . To state one is in schism is not the same as accusing one of being heterodox . ie heretic . . or any of the other things I pointed out:
but I must condemn any who falsely lay claim to being established by Christ, like the modern Roman Catholic Church, .
Rome also teachings the 1000 year after Christ teaching of substitutionary atonement which is heterdox, and very damaging.
your church cannot be the Church Christ established.
To be in schism is something entirely different than what was posted above by the OP about the Catholic Church.
The point is, sugarcoat our differences if you will, but we are extremely different.
The point is, no sugarcoating at all . . but an HONEST LOOK at our differences instead of relying on the polemics of the past . . are you up for it?
Our faiths are not the same. The way we see sin is not the same. The way we see salvation is not the same. These are fundamentals. They can't be glossed over. We are not one Church. We are not part of your church and you are not part of ours. We haven't been for a millenium. Saying that we are in order to make nice will not make it so, nomatter how much the Pope wants it to be so.
I am really sorry you are not able to see past the polemics so common now in many places within the Orthodox Church, that seems to put blinders on to the very real realities of cultural and semmatical differences that make things appear other than they really are . .
I have no such blinders on IP . . . I do my best to take into consideration the cultural and semmatic issues that are a necessary and unavoidable component of the issues that separate the two Churches . . .
One day I hope that the majority of Orthodox will see the importance of doing so as well . . .
Till that day . . . .
Peace to all . . ..
