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The Legacy of Nicaea

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Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#41

Post by throw0101a »

gred wrote: post #13
shtzvhdx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venerate: 1 to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference 2 to honor (an icon, a relic) Merriam-Webster. What's the problem with venerating Mary? The Apostolic Church, East and Rome can over come their differences, there's little substantive difference.

Many Catholics believe that Mary was born without sin (immaculate conception), never died (assumption into heaven), can advocate to Jesus for believers (intercession) and has been crowned the Queen of Heaven. This goes well beyond "admiring" or "honoring". To complicate matters, many of these dogmas were only formalized by the Catholic church in the past 200 years. Quite a hard sell for the "sola scriptura" contingen…

> Many Catholics believe that Mary was born without sin (immaculate conception), never died (assumption into heaven), can advocate to Jesus for believers (intercession) and has been crowned the Queen of Heaven.

So do the Orthodox churches. And both have roots going back way longer that 'just' two hundred years:

> Mary as Queen of Heaven is praised in the Salve Regina ("Hail Queen"), which is sung in the time from Trinity Sunday until the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent. It is attributed to a German Benedictine monk, Hermann of Reichenau (1013–1054). Traditionally it has been sung in Latin, though many translations exist. In the Middle Ages, Salve Regina offices were held every Saturday.[21]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Heaven#Salve_Regina

> "Majestic and Heavenly Maid, Lady, Queen, protect and keep me under your wing lest Satan the sower of destruction glory over me, lest my wicked foe be victorious against me." St. Ephrem the Syrian (4th Century)

* http://theorthodoxfaith.com/article/mary-as-the-queen-of-hea...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephrem_the_Syrian

And if we're going to with potentially troublesome dogmas, I would think the Real Presence would be much higher on the list:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#42

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #20
BigTTYGothGF wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any of the organizations involved want to do this? Who benefits? The material conditions are also very different, there's basically no sectarian violence anymore.

There is a lot less. I wouldn't say there is none. Not sure how old you are but many of us can remember the conflict in Northern Ireland. And today, one might look at the way the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been treated in the Russia-Ukraine War.

I don't think I'd call either of those sectarian violence. There's certainly a religious flavor to the Troubles, but I see it as primarily an anti-colonial struggle.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#43

Post by jswelker »

throw0101a wrote: post #39
jswelker wrote: post #31

I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. Rather than accepting the inherent paradoxes in Christ's message, it attempts to shoehorn it together using the philosophical swiss army knife of the era, Neoplatonism. As a result, now Christian orthodoxy is saddled with neoplatonic philosophical vestigial baggage in the term "consubstantial",…

> I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. And yet intellects like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas did not: what do you 'know' that they did not, or vice versa? Also, are you aware of the encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason")? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio > Faith and reason are like two wings on which…

I'll ignore your ad hominems there.

I am not saying I _know_ anything. Rather, I am disappointed in the incredible hubris and overconfidence shown by the Church fathers, not in terms of their faith but in terms of their certainty in the intellectual tools they had available and the extent to which those fumbling tools describe a God who in their own telling is infinite.

Yes I have read large portions of the Summa, Augustine, Anselm, Boethius, Origen, and others, and I am fairly confident in saying that if you strip away the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle and their followers, many of the arguments laid out by the patristics become tautologies at best and semantically meaningless at worst.

I am not saying I know what the answers are. Just that we need more humility than what was shown by a church council convened by--checks notes-- a power hungry and opportunistic Roman dictator.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#44

Post by lvass »

jswelker wrote: post #43
throw0101a wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. And yet intellects like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas did not: what do you 'know' that they did not, or vice versa? Also, are you aware of the encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason")? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio > Faith and reason are like two wings on which…

I'll ignore your ad hominems there. I am not saying I _know_ anything. Rather, I am disappointed in the incredible hubris and overconfidence shown by the Church fathers, not in terms of their faith but in terms of their certainty in the intellectual tools they had available and the extent to which those fumbling tools describe a God who in their own telling is infinite. Yes I have read large portions of the Summa, Au…

We definitely need more humility. For starters, not to casually dismiss beliefs held by millennia due to some artifacts without even specifying them.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#45

Post by dctoedt »

throw0101a wrote: post #39
jswelker wrote: post #31

I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. Rather than accepting the inherent paradoxes in Christ's message, it attempts to shoehorn it together using the philosophical swiss army knife of the era, Neoplatonism. As a result, now Christian orthodoxy is saddled with neoplatonic philosophical vestigial baggage in the term "consubstantial",…

> I find the Nicene Creed to be a major stumbling block as a person of Christian faith with a background in formal philosophy. And yet intellects like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas did not: what do you 'know' that they did not, or vice versa? Also, are you aware of the encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason")? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_et_ratio > Faith and reason are like two wings on which…

> Further, in your "formal philosophy" studies, how much of logic and proofs did you study?

Logic and proof only get you so far — IIRC, lots of math-based cosmological conjectures don't survive confrontation with observations from the real world. Cf. my favorite proof-texts:

- Rom. 1.20: "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Emphasis mine.)

- 1 Thess. 5:21: "Test all things; hold fast to that which is good."

- Deut. 18:22: "If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed."

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#46

Post by shtzvhdx »

dvt wrote: post #16
shtzvhdx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venerate: 1 to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference 2 to honor (an icon, a relic) Merriam-Webster. What's the problem with venerating Mary? The Apostolic Church, East and Rome can over come their differences, there's little substantive difference.

"Venerate" is a technical term here, so using the dictionary definition is incorrect.

[dead]

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#47

Post by shtzvhdx »

gred wrote: post #13
shtzvhdx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venerate: 1 to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference 2 to honor (an icon, a relic) Merriam-Webster. What's the problem with venerating Mary? The Apostolic Church, East and Rome can over come their differences, there's little substantive difference.

Many Catholics believe that Mary was born without sin (immaculate conception), never died (assumption into heaven), can advocate to Jesus for believers (intercession) and has been crowned the Queen of Heaven. This goes well beyond "admiring" or "honoring". To complicate matters, many of these dogmas were only formalized by the Catholic church in the past 200 years. Quite a hard sell for the "sola scriptura" contingen…

[dead]

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#48

Post by shtzvhdx »

wahern wrote: post #26
undershirt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The differences between East and Rome are very substantive in my mind. The Holy Spirit operates in the Church differently (decentralized vs centralized), and they experience God differently (directly vs indirectly), and they even shape the Trinity differently, not to mention preservation vs development of doctrine. To me, this means they differ on major categories: corporate, individual, divine, and temporal.

Lay members of these various churches certainly seem to believe there are huge theological differences, which they infer from the differences in day-to-day practices. But if you read the views of most of the high-level clergy and theologians in all these churches (and not the fringe, e.g. not the monks on Mt. Athos, or bishops trying to score political points), the differences are incredibly thin and not at all signi…

You'll enjoy Vladimir Solovyov, Dostoevsky's inspiration for Alyosha.

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#49

Post by jswelker »

lvass wrote: post #44
jswelker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll ignore your ad hominems there. I am not saying I _know_ anything. Rather, I am disappointed in the incredible hubris and overconfidence shown by the Church fathers, not in terms of their faith but in terms of their certainty in the intellectual tools they had available and the extent to which those fumbling tools describe a God who in their own telling is infinite. Yes I have read large portions of the Summa, Au…

We definitely need more humility. For starters, not to casually dismiss beliefs held by millennia due to some artifacts without even specifying them.

Good idea! I haven't and won't. Now read me the original text of Anselm's ontological argument and explain it in modern English without falling back to ancient philosophical gibberish like "substance" and "potentiality".

Re: The Legacy of Nicaea

#50

Post by gred »

dragonwriter wrote: post #35
gred wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Catholics believe that Mary was born without sin (immaculate conception), never died (assumption into heaven), can advocate to Jesus for believers (intercession) and has been crowned the Queen of Heaven. This goes well beyond "admiring" or "honoring". To complicate matters, many of these dogmas were only formalized by the Catholic church in the past 200 years. Quite a hard sell for the "sola scriptura" contingen…

> To complicate matters, many of these dogmas were only formalized by the Catholic church in the past 200 years. Quite a hard sell for the "sola scriptura" contingent. There are only four things on that list, and only two of them are dogmas (and there are a whole two more Marian dogmas that aren’t on your list), so I am not sure where the “many of these dogmas” comes from; also, the various Protestant positions on th…

It's a little ironic to label a call to "stop adding new things" as a "new thing" itself, no?
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