Why the Copts are NOT Monophysites:

I was referring to the Copts who are huge relative to the Christian population in Egypt, not all Egyptians.

There is no problem having discussions here.

As for the reasons for disunity, maybe this is your own personal experience, but technically, there is unity between both churches already. So, there really is no reason because there is no disunity.

God bless.

Mina

PS Your username worries me. Do you not know that the Coptic Church condemns Monophysites?

http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=29129801&postcount=44

So you believe the Fathers of Chalcedon, who accused him of proposing this heresy - including Saint Flavianus, who was lynch-mobed because of that - were ignorant and didn't know what they were dealing with?

Or that major Church historians, like Meyendorff, Florovsky, Wace, Walker, Schaff or Runciman were wrong?

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They accused him of heresy, and the accusation was done away with. He was not condemned at Chalcedon for heresy, but for alleged ecclesiastical issues.

These theologians wrote at times when writings of history and OO theologians weren't available for them to read. What about John Romanides, some other "more recent" Meyendorf, Grillmeier, Sellers, Norris, Torrence, Bondi?

Dioscorus only condemned Eutyches when, after refusing to attend Chalcedon to prove his Orthodoxy, he realized what he had done. Eutyches's condemnation was a desparate attempt to prove his Orthodoxy - which had a terrible side effect, by the way, because many monks were Eutychianists and severely draw their support because of that.

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He provides his own opinion without proving it. Has he read Ephesus 449?

Our interpretation: Eutyches professed Orthodoxy at Ephesus 449. Dioscorus accepted the Orthodoxy, and found that the condemnation of "one nature" from a bunch of men who confessed a "Nestorian" "in two natures" at the time was considered a condemnation of Ephesus 431 and thus a condemnation of Cyrillian Orthodoxy.

In Chalcedon, if he was so "desperate" in proving his Orthodoxy, why did he go on to condemn without fear the Pope of Rome, the "Petrine pontiff of the whole Church," or stand against Marcian and his oppression of the Church?

If Flavian received a lynch-mobbing, it was from none other than stupid emperial forces, who never learned to keep the state separate from the Church. St. Diosocorus was victim to the same mob in Chalcedon. In many ancient writings, Leo is considered along with Marcian and Pulcheria, a "murderer."

The thing I find amusing is that whenever Roman Catholics use the same argument to justify the filioque - they say "we believe the same things you do, but we just phrase it differently", most Orthodox fret about it. Now, everyone is more than happy to ignore Church Councils and compromising the faith in the for a false ecumenism's sake.

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I like to call it that everyone is happy to seach for the truth, and keep the Orthodox faith in true ecumenism.

The sentence "one incarnate nature" used by St. Cyrill was an apollinarian forgery falsely aributed to St. Athanasius.

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How do you know that? Did you read this work? Was St. Cyril that ignorant?

I've already answered this earlier somewhere in this thread. Simply put it, there is also within the range of possibility that the phrase "one incarnate nature" was an Alexandrian phrase misused by Apollinarius. We have sources of later patriarchs quoting St. Athanasius using that phrase.

This is the most logical conclusion. Even orthodoxmisinfo.com agrees that the Alexandrian school was always bent to accepting "one nature" as a Christological norm in their teachings.

St. Cyrill knew this sentence had its problems.

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Let's see what St. Cyril thought of the phrase "one nature" versus "two natures":

[FONT=&quot]But the brethren at Antioch, understanding in simple thoughts only those from which Christ is understood to be, have maintained a difference of natures, because, as I said, divinity and humanity are not the same in natural quality, but proclaimed one Son and Christ and Lord as being truly one; they say His person is one, and in no manner do they separate what has been united.[/FONT]

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Letter to Acacius

[FONT=&quot]Accordingly they are speaking in vain who say that, if there should be one incarnate [/FONT]fusiV[FONT=&quot] ‘of the Word’ in every way and in every manner it would follow that a mixture and a confusion occurred as if lessening and taking away the nature of man.[/FONT]

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Letter to Succensus

So, really, what St. Cyril agreed to is that the Antiochians say different phrases, but speak the same Orthodox faith. This different phrase "two natures" is for "simple minded" people. It is implied in his letters, even to his last work right before his death, that "one incarnate nature" is preferable. Even this phrase was well accepted in the anathemas of St. Cyril in the Council of Ephesus 431, and reaccepted in Ephesus 449 and 475.

In the next post, I will quote a fellow Copt's comments on the issue.

That's why he composed the Tome of Agreement with John of Antioch. This document was a perfect synthesis of Alexandrian and Antiochian schools of theology.

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Even Rick by his own writing agrees that the phrase is an Alexandrian expression. It's a shame that he lies and gets caught lying by his own writing.

Since "Leo agreed with Cyril", so said the Fathers of Chalcedon, yes, the oros of Chalcedon was a synthesis of the three theological schools of the time.

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These "fathers" included men who say that the letters of Ibas and Theodoret were Orthodox, and that Theodore of Mopsuestia was a doctor in the Church. I think if anything, if these men knew St. Cyril despised those three specifically (which probably they did), then there was really an agenda, not a fair trial. Leo simply did not know Cyril's writings to begin with. This was only lip service.

all of them claim(ed) Our Lord has "One Nature", and this is not Orthodox.

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I'm glad this man is no authority in the Church. Even Orthodoxinfo.com doesn't make that stupid mistake that he is making. By that same mouth, he is condemning St. Cyril who saw "two natures" as a weak expression to his last breath. St. John of Damascus himself does not condemn the use of "one nature," but embraces it. He condemns, or assumes, the belief of a confused nature, who he thought St. Dioscorus believed. Today, with recent scholarship, Rick only tries to compromise what the EO fathers believed with the truths of Chalcedonian conflict. At least orthodoxinfo.com is more consistent than he is in sticking with what the EO fathers taught them.

Now are you going to say that this is not monothelistims, but that we share the same faith (and just use different words?)

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Yes, it is not monotheletism. What HH Pope Shenouda is affirming is the "who" that does miracles or accepts insults. This "who" is ONE. Thus, since the person is one, it is one action aka will. This was answered earlier in the thread.

However, if it is a property or desire that comes from the nature, then you can say that there is a composite one. Even St. Severus confessed two wills and two energies. Even St. Maximus the Confessor did the same as well.

The rest of what he writes is nothing new. Written by a bunch of men who have nothing better in their lives than reaffirm their lies and cover up the truth.

I bid Rick well, but I do this not for him, but for others who have an open mind and are willing to do the research on their own.

God bless.

Mina

http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=29149078&postcount=52

One of the many people I admire, who goes by the name "EkhristosAnesti" writes a response much better than I could have written. This is from oc.net:

Well these sources certainly prove nothing. Let's have a look at them:

In other words, the Christ as Apollinaris conceived him is a single organism - "one composite nature" [3] - in which "the earthly body is knit together with the Godhead" ...

from Williston Walker et al, A history of the Christian Church, p. 164

Note [3] -> Apollinarius, Fragment 111, in Lietzman, H., Apollinaris von Laodicea und sine Schule (Tübingen, 1904).

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The fact Apollinarius may have used the phrase does not negate the idea that St. Athanasius used it. There is no logical connection between the proposition that Apollinarius used the phrase, and the proposition that St. Athanasius didn't. Therefore, there is no argument here.

In any event, the Chalcedonian emphasis and stress on the idea that Apollinarius used the phrase is meaningless in consideration of the following:

1) The term homoousion, before its Orthodox application at the Council of Nicaea had previously been used by condemned heretical groups (e.g. Gnostics) and figures. In fact it was conciliarly condemned at a local Synod at Antioch in A.D. 268 because of its being misused in a heretical context by Paul of Samosata. Regardless of all this, the homoousion expression now stands as a pillar of Orthodoxy regardless of its past misuse. Similarly, assuming the phrase to be of Apollinarian origin, we can confidently state that it was sanctified by the Holy Spirit's operation through St. Cyril and Ephesus 431.

2) Apollinarius's only heresies were his denial of Christ's human soul, and communicatio idiomatum; however, he did not teach that the humanity of Christ was somewhat divine as many claim. Thus, his heresies were not a result or the corollary of the mia physis forumula, but rather independent of it.

3) St. Cyril's employment of the mia physis Formula was not dependent upon the belief that it was used by St. Athanasius; St. Cyril employed it because he believed it to exemplify a proper Christological Confession of Faith. There were many instances in his writings where he went out of his way to defend the Mia Physis Formula; not once did he merely appeal to the notion that the phrase originated with St. Athanasius. Instead of resorting to an appeal to authority, he went on to prudently defend the expression on its own terms.

The effect of this language [i.e. John 1:14 and Philippians 2:6-11] , Cyril thought, could be summed up nicely in the expression "one incarnate nature of the divine Logos" - a phrase ge found in a work attributed to Athanasius but which in fact (though he was not aware of it) had been written by Apollinaris.

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I think if one is going to argue that St. Cyril was ignorant of the sources he was using (as if we today know better), that there be some substantial evidence to support that argument. So far, I have not seen a shred of credible evidence to support the claim that St. Cyril was ingnorantly using an Apollinarian forgery; the fact Apollinarius used the phrase is of little relevance.

Even though St. Cyril used this phrase, he knew that there was something wrong about it. That's why he clarified his position in the Formula of Reunion written in 433 to John of Antioch, where he mentions his belief in two natures.

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Ha! That's nonsense. If St. Cyril thought there was something wrong with the Mia Physis formula, and if he truly sought to remedy his alleged error by allegedly proclaiming a belief in "two natures" in the Symbol of Reunion, then why would he insist on using the Mia Physis formula after the Symbol of Reunion, nay, till his very last breath (he in fact used it in the last work written before his death--"On the Unity of Christ")?

The Symbol of Reunion was not a clarification of St. Cyril's Christology. It was not even written by St. Cyril in the first place. T. Thomas accounts for St. Severos of Antioch's explanation of the purpose and implications of the Symbol of Reunion:

The Formula of Reunion, contends Severus [24], had been drawn up against the background of a split in the Church, which itself was the result of an inability on the part of the Antiochene tradition to understand the faith in a proper way. Cyril agreed to it only after seeing that all basic principles of the faith had been preserved. In other words, the Formula of Reunion can be cited as authority only after taking into account the terms of agreement which went with it. It is in this context that one should look into the meaning of the statement in which the phrase occurs. This statement reads:

And with regard to the evangelistic and apostolic sayings concerning the Lord, know that theologians make some common, as relating to one Person—prosopon—and distinguish others, as relating to two natures, interpreting the God-befitting ones to the Godhead of Christ, and the lowly ones of His humanity. [25]

This statement affirms that theologians take some of the words and deeds of our Lord as referring to the one Person, and the others they divide between the two natures. The intention is not to divide the words and deeds ‘between the natures in such a way that some are ascribed to the divine nature alone, and some to the human nature exclusively; they are of the one incarnate nature of God the Word. We recognize the difference in the words and the deeds; some are God befitting, some are man befitting, and some befit Godhead and manhood together’ [26]. The fact about this statement is that it did not contradict the Cyrilline principle of seeing the difference between Godhead and manhood in the one Christ in contemplation. But the Council of Chalcedon, argues Severus, went beyond the Formula of Reunion in sanctioning the ‘two natures after the union’, which the fathers had excluded.

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Notice that the Symbol does not indicate that Christ exists in Two Natures; rather, in speaking of how theologians are to treat the words and deeds of Christ, it explains that those very words and deeds can be distinguished between two natures. It's very important that we understand the fundamental implication of the context in which the phrase "two natures" is being used; it is being used in regard to theological contemplative analysis; it is not being used with regard to the reality and actuality of Christ's Incarnate existence.

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So, perhaps, you can see that the Formula of Reunion was misinterpreted in the Council of Chalcedon, even misinterpreted by Nestorius, who thought that St. Cyril "retracted from his own heresy".

And St. Cyril was always talking about Christ to be "of two natures in contemplation," while being "one incarnate nature in reality." The former means that you can contemplate which things He did as human and which characterizes His divinity, but a communicato idiomatum occured, that means a sharing or communication in properties occured, so that one can say that God died in the flesh (or as St. Cyril puts it, the "fire bends with the iron, even though when striking the iron, the fire is never touched), and the flesh performed miracles through the Divinity (He after all, went through walls and walked on water). Both natures worked together in unison, as if they were "one nature," just as humanity's soul and body work as one human nature.

This is what "one nature" means. That's why St. Cyril saw that simple-minded folks, like Antiochians, could not comprehend the depth and beauty of the phrase "one incarnate nature" and the importance of this phrase in theosis.

God bless.

Mina

Have you ever read or heard about a miracle in YOUR OWN Church that you are more likely to doubt? I have, and even before I read the Chalcedonian debates, I was just appalled at the amount of modern-day (and past) miracles that are not filled with spiritual significance or teaching, but simply a result of people looking for miracles or looking for ways to justify something in the form of a miracle as if it's some sort of authority.

First of all, the idea to depend on a miracle as some sort of dogmatic authority should be HERESY, in my own personal opinion. Miracles are there for spiritual help. When I did not pray for months, an email was sent to me "accidentally" by a bishop that prayer is one of the hardest virtues to accomplish, and yet prayer is very important to combat all our life's struggles. Therefore don't be lazy and pray, he said to me.

That was truly me. That was a miracle. The result of that miracle was to pray.

When Christ did miracles, he did not do it haphazardly, but with a spiritual, perhaps even theological allegorical lesson. Why then are churches, including our own filled with miracles that do not edify one's self, but glorify others? Because people are filled with enough insecurity to add in a hagiographical story that sounds interesting and makes something justifiable.

Consider the story of the Council of Chalcedon. The great martyr St. Euphemia supposedly appeared to the bishops of the council to justify the condemning of St. Dioscorus. Again, first we are faced with the questions:

"Is this a necessary story, so important that it is part of the dogma of Orthodoxy to believe?"

If Yes, then we have a serious problem. If people put this as an argument to show how much we are heretical and that the EO is the true Church alone, then their Church is not built on the rock of faith St. Peter confessed, but on sandy grounds ready to be toppled by the oceans completely, and would lead many people to disbelief and regret.

My advice: Do not be so naive in hagiography, and that goes for OO's as well.

So in rebuttal, I offer you also the same things that comes from people who like to publish what someone calls "pious frauds:"

http://copticorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2006/12/anti-chalcedonian-hagiography-in.html

One example that should lead a Chalcedonian to question his own trust in hagiography would be this story:

One example concerns a certain Coptic Monastic identified as Abba Andrew. Abba Andrew is recounted as having witnessed a vision in which a group of wealthy Bishops stirring a blazing furnace pick up a small child and throw him in the furnace. After three days, the furnace is opened and the child comes out unharmed. Recognising the child to be Christ, Abba Andrew questions Him regarding those who had thrown Him into the fire. The child Christ responds saying: "The Bishops have crucified me for a second time and decided to deprive me of my glory." Abba Andrew, noticing a humble old man in the distance, who throughout the entire incident refused to participate in the activities of the Bishops, inquires into his identity. The child Christ responds: "This is Dioscoros, the Patriarch of the Alexandrines, who alone did not associate with them in their malicious intent."

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God bless us all and make us smarter more intellectual human beings.

SpyridonOCA said:

If you were convinced and satisfied in believing that you are Orthodox, why start a thread like this? The Christology of Chalcedon is neither Antiochian nor Alexandrian, it is a reasonable compromise and faithful to the fathers. I have love for non-Chalcedonians, yet to me their Christology is a tertium quid that causes confusion.

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Says the same person who read Fr. Samuel's book? Chalcedon, whether you like it or not, was actually strongly Antiochian in terminology, more so than the Formulary. It never considered Alexandrian terminology until Constantinople 553. Not to mention the Papal legate's acceptance of the Three Chapters.

To say Chalcedon was not Antiochian is an obvious polemical deception.

God bless.

PS Tertium quid? You gotta be kidding me. I thought people thought we didn't believe in the human nature, and now you're saying we're Nestorians? This is precisely the same irrational argument made against St. Severus, who was called BOTH a Eutychian and a Nestorian.

SpyridonOCA said:

That is a hard question to answer. I don't believe it will be resolved without a new Ecumenical Council.

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BINGO!!!

This is what I pray for soon. Only thing is that is should be quite a simple council. It would only reiterate the 8 other meetings we had with one another, which would end with a liturgical celebration between the two together for the first time officially in 1500 years.

SpyridonOCA said:

If you honestly believed that your church is not heretical, you would be satisfied in this belief rather than starting threads to justify it. I do not know whether Non-Chalcedonians are heretical or not. I do believe, however, that you have more important matters to discuss regarding your faith.

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If you were so satisfied that Chalcedon was not Nestorian, you wouldn't need to continually defend yourselves either. If St. Athanasius considered the faith of the divinity of Christ to be sufficient, he wouldn't write dozens of books on the subject.

In fact, you got it all wrong. I'm not "justifying my beliefs." I'm defending my Church against your lies and deceptions and poor research. If you read the OO fathers in a spirit of truth rather than assuming you know the truth, you wouldn't say this.

Obviously, we're not satisfied with the belief of Chalcedon because it's NOT ENOUGH to describe Christology that is different from Nestorius'. It may be interpreted Orthodox, and that is exactly what later councils did, and what EOs and OO's got together to study. And if Chalcedonians really wanted to convert non-Chalcedonians, murdering our men, women, and children just to accept the Tome of Leo does not help. It was no different than the actions of Mohammend of Islam.

It's interesting you say that you don't know whether we're heretical or not, and yet you turn around completely and say that we completely denied the faith St. Cyril taught. Do you even realize your self-contradiction?

You go to websites like orthodoxinfo.com which are just a bunch of rubbish, lies, contradictions, and no scholarly basis at all. You are stubborn in your beliefs, and you even will go to lengths to support the Byzantine empires killing of our ancestors, completely contradicting the edict of Milan and the freedom of religion St. Constantine promised. It's one thing to come after bishops and priests, it's another thing to kill laypeople who choose to be non-Chalcedonians.

I'm disappointed in you and your shoddy reasons for being in doubt. It's nothing but your personal opinions and wants instead of searching the truth.

God bless.

SpyridonOCA said:

I'm sorry that I have offended you. I do believe there are more important matters to discuss. If the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy decided to restore communion, that would be fine with me. Until that time, let's not pretend there is union where union does not yet exist, even if it should exist.

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If that is the case, that you stand as a person who does not want to assume a union or who does not know where you stand, then you should not assume we are anti-Cyrillians either (or that we even deserved the deaths the empire caused on our ancestors).

A simple "I don't know" about us and about your choice of government will be sufficient enough for a well-meant and consistent apology.

God bless.