Why or why not become Anglican?

Paidiske said:

And I agree. But there is a difference between, "I accept this claim as true," and "I accept this claim as infallibly true." One does not need to hold the second position to be Christian.

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I do not see how a true statement cannot be infallibly true. For example, "God is Love" is a true statement and who will deny that it is infallibly true? Many such statements can be presented, statements whose self evident truth cannot be denied, and who could reasonably say that those statements are not infallibly true?

Paidiske said:

t's not as if they saw our orders as valid before we ordained women, so it's not as if the obstacle is any bigger now than it was before.

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On this point, it was not always the case that the Orthodox saw Anglican orders as invalid. On the contrary, as recently as the 1940s, ROCOR, as I was about to mention in my preceding post when I got distracted, received Anglican clergy by vesting. This can only be done if their original ordination was considered valid. For example, at present, Roman Catholic priests can be received in most of the canonical Orthodox churches by vesting, and also if a priest moves between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church, they would be received by vesting, and also this is true concerning the Assyrian Church of the East, with some exceptions (I suspect the Copts would not recognize the orders of the Assyrians, but I could be mistaken, @dzheremi do you know what the policy is on that?) This is of course because the Coptic Orthodox Church tries to be a bastion of anti-Nestorianism, and despite the reforms at the Assyrian church since Mar Dinkha IV of blessed memory became Catholicos in 1974, the Copts still suspect it of being Nestorian. There are some Ethiopian Orthodox monks who suspect all Chalcedonian churches of being Nestorian. And conversely there are Chalcedonian monks who believe all Oriental Orthodox churches are Monophysite, despite this never being the case.

Paidiske said:

It's not as if they saw our orders as valid before we ordained women, so it's not as if the obstacle is any bigger now than it was before.

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At some time after 1534 AD the Catholic Church ceased to accept Anglican Orders as licit, it took time, and, I believe, changes in the rites of ordination, for that to happen.

Paidiske said:

Communion with other churches would be a good thing, but not worth setting aside women's vocations for.

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I cannot speak to what you think communion is worth, I imagine that you cannot speak definitively for your own communion on that matter.

Xeno.of.athens said:

I do not see how a true statement cannot be infallibly true.

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That, then, is the fundamental difference in our point of view. I believe many things to be true. I do not believe in my own ability to infallibly discernn truth, though, so I always hold open the possibility that I may, in fact, be wrong about something, and something I believe to be true may, in fact, not be true.

Similarly, I do not believe in the ability of any other person, or group of persons, or church, to infallibly discern truth, so I find the claim by a church that they are infallible in their truth claims, and the requirement by such a church that its members accept that claim of infallibility (and all that logically flows from that), to be simply insupportable.

Xeno.of.athens said:

I cannot speak to what you think communion is worth, I imagine that you cannot speak definitively for your own communion on that matter.

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I don't need to. The fact that we've chosen to ordain women, and not to pursue attempts to re-unify with churches which don't accept that, speaks for itself.

Paidiske said:

Communion with other churches would be a good thing, but not worth setting aside women's vocations for.

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There is actually a Syriac Orthodox Church, called the Malankara Independent Syrian Church, which is one of three Syriac Orthodox Churches in India, the result of a schism between the two larger ones, the Jacobites and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, which lately has called itself the Indian Orthodox Church, because the Jacobites want to remain under the Patriarch of Antioch and the IOC does not, and the IOC has actually persecuted the Jacobites to some extent with assistance of the state and the corrupt legal situation, but before things reached that level of nastiness, the church in Thoyizoor decided it wanted nothing to do with the absurd schism, and frankly I don’t blame them. This church entered into relations with the protestant Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which is a full member of the Anglican Communion. When the Mar Thoma Metropolitan in charge of that church dies, his successor is ordained by the Metropolitan of Thoyizoor, and vice-versa. The Malankara Independent Syrian Church however is in all functional respects an Oriental Orthodox church, using the traditional liturgy, and I believe it even has some relations with the other Oriental Orthodox patriarchates (this is the case with the IOC, and part of the reason why the IOC has been successful, because, pragmatically, the Copts, Armenians and Ethiopians have been willing to relate to it as though it were another Oriental Orthodox Patriarchate, but this was probably the right decision, because the IOC has in the past supported schismatic Syriac Orthodox clergy in the Middle East, and there was a real risk of the IOC forming something which could have been like the Old Calendarist movement in the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Global South in the Anglican Communion, albeit not driven by any particular doctrine but rather simply by resentment for the established order.

And the Oriental Orthodox have had enough of that. There are, for example, four separate Armenian Apostolic Churches, which are now once again in full communion; the two larger ones existed historically because for a time there were two Armenian Kingdoms, that of Armenia proper and that of Cilicia, but in the 20th century, after Armenia proper was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union, many Armenians started to distrust the Catholicos of All Armenia, and instead formed parishes associated with the Catholicos of Cilicia. No one in Oriental Orthodox wants to return to this pointless factionalism.

But the interesting result of all of this is there is an Oriental Orthodox church in full communion with the Anglican Communion via the Mar Thoma Syrian Church.

Paidiske said:

I do not believe in my own ability to infallibly discernn truth

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The above is irrelevant to the infallible truth of a statement. What any specific individual discerns is not a reflection on the truth of the statement, "God is Love".

Xeno.of.athens said:

The above is irrelevant to the infallible truth of a statement.

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It is not irrelevant. The inability of any individual to infallibly discern truth is exactly why I reject ecclesial claims of infallibility. We don't become infallible just because we're discerning communally as a church.

Paidiske said:

The fact that we've chosen to ordain women, and not to pursue attempts to re-unify with churches which don't accept that, speaks for itself.

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Yes, it does.

Paidiske said:

I don't need to. The fact that we've chosen to ordain women, and not to pursue attempts to re-unify with churches which don't accept that, speaks for itself.

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Also it should be noted that ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and the three Eastern communions continues and was not completely derailed in 1979 when the Episcopal Church ordained women, as some claim. Indeed since 1979 we have seen the large scale installation of Byzantine icons at major Anglican cathedrals, including Westminster Abbey, and other such measures. I suspect part of the reason this happened was because of the Orthodox background of Prince Philip, memory eternal, and the interest he and King Charles III have had in, among other things, the preservation of Orthodox monasteries.

And as the case of the Malankara Independent Syrian Church shows, the fact that there are female priests in the Anglican communion has not prevented at least one Orthodox church from being in communion with it.

Paidiske said:

It is not irrelevant. The inability of any individual to infallibly discern truth is exactly why I reject ecclesial claims of infallibility.

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Amen, it is a fundamental difference in perspective.

I attach infallibility to the statement, not to the reader. If the reader misinterprets or misunderstands, that is correctable by means of patient instruction. If the statement itself is in error then no patient instruction can make it true, only amendment can do that.

HosannaHM said:

From what I understand- you would be able to hold that conviction as an Anglican, yes. However, not all Anglicans would have to agree with the wording you laid out there. Specifically eternal security/once saved always saved

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I would maybe, be allowed to hold that position, but as you ask why a person would or would not become Anglican. That is the reason that i would not become Anglican. As i would be holding a position that the majority (99%+) of the Anglican church does not believe in.

The Liturgist said:

(I suspect the Copts would not recognize the orders of the Assyrians, but I could be mistaken, @dzheremi do you know what the policy is on that?)

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I honestly don't know, as I've never heard of that happening. I would think that Assyrian priests would look to be accepted into one of the Orthodox Syriac churches, for obvious reasons. I did meet an Assyrian-identifying young man in the Coptic Orthodox Church once (at the parish at which I was baptized, St. Mark's in Scottsdale, AZ.), but he was the product of an Egyptian-Iraqi marriage, not a convert from anything. I suspect he may be the world's only Assyrian named Bishoy.

dzheremi said:

I honestly don't know, as I've never heard of that happening. I would think that Assyrian priests would look to be accepted into one of the Orthodox Syriac churches, for obvious reasons. I did meet an Assyrian-identifying young man in the Coptic Orthodox Church once (at the parish at which I was baptized, St. Mark's in Scottsdale, AZ.), but he was the product of an Egyptian-Iraqi marriage, not a convert from anything. I suspect he may be the world's only Assyrian named Bishoy.

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Indeed, talk about opposites attracting! Although that said, not all Assyrians are members of the Church of the East, and the Coptic Orthodox Church clearly doesn’t have an issue with the Assyrian people but with the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East owing to what I regard as vestigial traces of Nestorianism. The Assyrian church at least is officially not Nestorian, but Nestorius is still venerated as a confessor, but since 500 AD their Christology has been Chalcedonian since the reforms of Mar Babai the Great, and Mar Dinkha IV made further reforms to make it less Nestorian. There was one really gross Nestorian hymn composed by Mar Narsai (I find it gross, at any rate, because I really dislike Nestorian Christology, and Mar Narsai, who the Church of the East regards as the Flute of the Spirit, composed a hymn which to me embodies all that is wrong with Nestorianism, in contrast to the beautiful hymns composed by St. Jacob of Sarugh, venerated by the Syriac Orthodox Church as the Flute of the Spirit (a note for readers: this is in reaction to St. Ephraim the Syrian, who predated the Nestorian and Chalcedonian schisms and is venerated universally by all traditional churches as “The Harp of the Spirit”).

Actually St. Jacob of Sarugh’s hymn on the Eucharist, Haw Nurone, is so good that I include it in the list of hymns and creeds that represent my confession of faith (this also includes the Nicene creed, in its original Orthodox form, the original Orthodox version of Quincunque Vult, commonly called the Athanasian Creed, although written much later, but part of it is taken from an anti-Arian writing of St. Athanasius, and another part of it is taken from the 21st homily of St. Gregory Nazianzus, which is a panygeric for St. Athanasius, in which he famously declared the name of Athanasius has become synonymous with virtue), in both cases without the filioque, and also the Apostle’s Creed, because it contains an important confession of the Harrowing of Hell, the hymn Te Deum Laudamus, and the hymn Ho Monogenes, which your church uses on Good Friday, and which opens the Syriac Orthodox liturgy and follows the Second Antiphon in the Byzantine and Armenian liturgies. And I am open to additional hymns. I would include, were it not for the fact that it seems written for the specific use of the priest, the Confiteor ante Communionem sung by Coptic priests “Amen, amen, amen, I believe and confess until the last breath…”

Perhaps you might have an opinion on whether the laity could recite that. The language is reminiscent of a commonly used confiteor ante communionem of the Eastern Orthodox (the one that includes the phrase “Accept me this day O Lord as a communicant” and “for I will not betray you with a kiss, nor divulge Thy secrets to Thine enemies” and so on. For that matter, the Eastern Orthodox Paschal hymn in which our Lord is praised for “Trampling down death by death” and the Wesleyan Paschal hymn “Christ our Lord is Risen Today” both seem like they should be on the list. I tnink also the Trisagion, in both the Eastern Orthodox Trinitarian form and the Coptic Orthodox Christological form, specifically the longer Coptic form which has multiple verses in addition to the addition by St. Peter Fullo which caused so much needless controversy among Chalcedonians; its a bit reminscent of the later controversy between the Russian Old Rite Orthodox and the Nikonians over how to make the sign of the Cross, with the Old Believers making it with two fingers to denote the humanity and divinity of our Lord and the Nikonians making it with three fingers to denote the three persons of the Trinity. Both are fundamentally correct. I really dislike it when schisms happen for stupid reasons.

In the case of Anglicanism, the actual original reason the Anglican church was formed, involving Henry VIII, for a long time actually put me off of the Anglican church, which is unfortunate, because I really missed out on a lot of liturgical beauty growing up, and also I had no idea the Episcopal Church was connected with the Anglican church, but I do remember when the Continuing Anglicans took over the former Episcopal Church in Chico, California, which had been a Chinese Restaurant, and later meeting the priest of that parish when I was 12 and greatly admiring him, that church being in the Anglican Province of Christ the King. I think the Episcopal Church made a huge mistake in selling that parish, because it is a beautiful church, but fortunately it was rescued, and it was not allowed to fall into the hands of an undesirable denomination like the Unitarians, but rather remained Anglican, and ultra high church Anglican at that.

I feel that since church services ought usually to be sung (although I do like Anglican said services, and I have not experienced a Catholic low mass, but i expect the silence would be appealing, but in general, my view is that in most churches, too much of the service is read rather than sung), my statement of faith should consist primarily of hymns that are doctrinally Orthodox.

Paidiske said:

That, then, is the fundamental difference in our point of view. I believe many things to be true. I do not believe in my own ability to infallibly discernn truth, though, so I always hold open the possibility that I may, in fact, be wrong about something, and something I believe to be true may, in fact, not be true.

Similarly, I do not believe in the ability of any other person, or group of persons, or church, to infallibly discern truth, so I find the claim by a church that they are infallible in their truth claims, and the requirement by such a church that its members accept that claim of infallibility (and all that logically flows from that), to be simply insupportable.

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In my case, while there are some things I regard as infallible, for example, the Nicene Creed, I do not regard our ability to understand them on our own as infallible, but requiring the Holy Spirit, and I think an extreme humility is needed. There is a grave danger when a the leader of a church takes it for granted that they have infallibly ascertained the correct meaning of a text. I think doing that is heading down the road that leads towards spiritual delusion.

In addition, one can positively accept the authority of the church and scripture without assigning it the quality of infallibility.

So I do regard, for instance, the Bible, as infallible, but only if correctly interpreted, and I don’t believe I have the ability to infallibly interpret it, and the Patristic figures whose interpretations I prefer reposed over a thousand years ago in most cases, so the entire concept of infallibility strikes me as being somewhat superfluous. Since if we were to assume infallibility we could easily fall into spiritual delusion, if we assign infallibility to an office we run into a host of problems, and also, correct me if I’m wrong, but the 39 articles, while declaring that Scripture contains all things needed for salvation, does not use the word infalliblity, and it certainly does not assign the Anglican church infallibility (for if it did, that would be hypocritical, since a major premise of the 39 articles was that the churches of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem had all fallen into error, and the takeaway I got from that message was that any church could fall into error, which I agree with; regarding the churches of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem I potentially agree, depending on which one the 39 articles is talking about; I am not entirely sure if Cranmer was aware there were a multiplicity of churches there, but I actually think he didn’t care, but rather used the names of those three churches because they are mentioned along with Rome as having autocephalous status in Canons 6 and 7 of the Council of Nicaea, and also he did not want to offend the Church of Constantinople, because with the exception of John Calvin, the early Magisterial Reformers seemed very interested in getting to know the Church in Constantinople, and Cranmer had even quoted from the Byzantine liturgy with the Prayer of St. Chrysostom in Mattins, Evensong and the Litany, which is itself interesting, because he assigns it to St. John Chrysostom, but the prayer in question is used in Byzantine synaxis regardless of which anaphora is being used (I think it is also used if there is no anaphora, if it is a Typika service, which is the Eastern equivalent of Ante-Communion, provided a priest is present, since it is one of those prayers that were historically silently said by the priest while the antiphon was sung).

Xeno.of.athens said:

Amen, it is a fundamental difference in perspective.

I attach infallibility to the statement, not to the reader. If the reader misinterprets or misunderstands, that is correctable by means of patient instruction. If the statement itself is in error then no patient instruction can make it true, only amendment can do that.

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It's not just the reader, though. It's also the institution making the statement, or putting together a "package" of statements and holding them out as infallible and therefore required beliefs. Any of those statements may or may not be true, may or may not have been correctly discerned, understood and articulated; but to claim to be able, not only to infallibly know, but to infallibly know to a degree which justifies burdening the conscience of others....

It's far, far too high a claim.

The Liturgist said:

In addition, one can positively accept the authority of the church and scripture without assigning it the quality of infallibility.

... Since if we were to assume infallibility we could easily fall into spiritual delusion, if we assign infallibility to an office we run into a host of problems, and also, correct me if I’m wrong, but the 39 articles, while declaring that Scripture contains all things needed for salvation, does not use the word infalliblity, and it certainly does not assign the Anglican church infallibility (for if it did, that would be hypocritical, since a major premise of the 39 articles was that the churches of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem had all fallen into error, and the takeaway I got from that message was that any church could fall into error, which I agree with;

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Exactly.

Paidiske said:

Any of those statements may or may not be true

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Let's take them as all true. Would they be infallible then?

Paidiske said:

to infallibly know to a degree which justifies burdening the conscience of others....

It's far, far too high a claim.

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Yet that is precisely what the creed does.

The Liturgist said:

In addition, one can positively accept the authority of the church and scripture without assigning it the quality of infallibility.

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Dei Verbum is explicit about the inerrancy of holy scripture because its source, its author, is God.

Xeno.of.athens said:

Let's take them as all true. Would they be infallible then?

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They may be all true, but I cannot accept that they are infallibly asserted.

Xeno.of.athens said:

Yet that is precisely what the creed does.

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No. The Creed is a statement of faith on the part of those who say it; but we do not say it in an attempt to impose it on anyone else.