Not in the least – to fail to call her Theotokos (God-bearer, thus “Mother of God”) is to deny the Incarnation.
Then so does Paul.
Only to someone with a sophomoric understanding of the situation.
Especially since there are no altars to Mary.
Only to those who don’t pay attention to scripture.
There’s a great treatise the name of or author of which I don’t recall that explained how such images are “the Word in stone” because they proclaim the glory of God. Anyone claiming to teach from scripture should be required to read it.
Now there is a violation of a commandment, as all slander is.
You really ought to learn how to study the Bible instead of abusing it to fit your preconceptions.
It is the basic principle of priesthood, started by Moses and continued throughout Christendom.
“The priesthood of all believers” is the counter doctrine that is not supported by the high Church. Catholics even encourage going via Saints, or especially the Madonna.
Scripture. It is the view of Judaism and many who look on God as all powerful and controlling
I think there is a fundamental problem running through all your objections: you repeatedly assume a particular understanding of catholicity, ecclesiastical communion, and conciliar authority, and then treat the conclusions derived from that understanding as though they were self-evident historical facts.
But the very principles you are invoking are precisely what need to be established.
Let me address your objections individually, because I believe the historical evidence makes the problem considerably clearer.
1. Your claim that no ecumenical councils could exist after the schism without Eastern participation is not even universally accepted within Orthodox theology.
You wrote: “Without the participation of the East there could be no ecumenical councils.”
This is a remarkably categorical assertion, particularly given that an authoritative Orthodox metropolitan explicitly recognized the possibility of ecumenical councils after the separation between East and West.
Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh, in The Dogmatic Tradition of the Orthodox Church, writes: “any general and major councils even after the separation between Eastern and Western Christianity [1054] may still be considered and called ‘ecumenical councils.’”
Source: Metropolitan Maximos, The Dogmatic Tradition of the Orthodox Church, section Later Councils, published by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
The same text is available through the Orthodox Metropolis of Korea, belonging to the Ecumenical Patriarchate:
Notice what Maximos is saying.
He begins from the Orthodox Church’s own conviction that it is the Church of Christ. On that basis, he explicitly acknowledges that councils held after the separation from Western Christianity may still possess ecumenical status.
He further explains that the Orthodox Church has generally refrained from formally designating these later councils as ecumenical partly out of pastoral prudence and consideration for the ecumenical problem.
This is enormously significant for your argument.
Maximos is not claiming that every post-schism council must be considered ecumenical. Nor is he recognizing the ecumenicity of the later Catholic councils.
He is making a more fundamental point: the separation between East and West doesn’t, in itself, make the subsequent existence of ecumenical councils intrinsically impossible.
Whether a particular council possesses ecumenical authority depends upon the identity and authority of the Church holding it, you might answer that Maximos considers the Orthodox Church, rather than Rome, to have preserved the authentic continuity of the Catholic Church, but that answer concedes the very point I am making: the decisive criterion is not simply the absence of communion between East and West, but which ecclesiastical communion possesses the authority of the apostolic Church.
You therefore cannot establish the non-ecumenicity of Catholic councils merely by pointing out that Eastern Orthodox bishops did not participate in them.
You must first explain why Rome lacked the authority required to hold them.
2. Orthodox conciliar teaching itself recognizes councils of universal authority after the schism.
This is not simply an isolated observation by Metropolitan Maximos.
The Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, held in Crete in 2016, states in §3: “The Conciliar work continues uninterrupted in history through the later councils of universal authority”
It then identifies the councils associated with St. Gregory Palamas in 1341, 1351, and 1368, among other councils.
Source:Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church (2016), §3.
These councils took place long after the separation between Rome and Constantinople.
Now, the encyclical does not formally designate each of them an ecumenical council, and I am not pretending otherwise.
But it explicitly recognizes that councils convened after the separation can possess universal doctrinal authority.
Consequently, the absence of communion with another ancient apostolic Church cannot automatically be sufficient to eliminate every possibility of universal conciliar authority.
Otherwise, the same reasoning would threaten the authority claimed for these Orthodox councils.
You need a further ecclesiological criterion explaining why such authority remains possible in one communion but is supposedly impossible in the other.
And merely asserting that Rome disrupted the previous unity does not supply that criterion.
3. The historical reality of the rupture cannot simply be dismissed.
You also wrote that Rome and the East were never actually out of communion.
But what exactly do you mean by communion?
If you mean that both retained apostolic succession, sacramental life, and substantial elements of the apostolic faith, that is one proposition.
If you mean that there was never an effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion, that is another proposition entirely.
In their Joint Declaration of 7 December 1965, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras explicitly acknowledged the:“effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion.”
The declaration carefully distinguishes the personal excommunications of 1054, which were not originally intended to sever communion between the Churches, from the effective ecclesiastical rupture that developed through subsequent events.
So the historical reality of the separation is not merely a retrospective Catholic interpretation, it was acknowledged jointly by the Bishop of Rome and the Ecumenical Patriarch.
Of course, you may argue that both communions retained important characteristics of the apostolic Church despite that rupture, but then the question becomes whether the loss of full communion necessarily extinguished the universal authority claimed by either side.
And, as Metropolitan Maximos demonstrates, the answer is not automatically yes.
4. Your dismissal of the non-Chalcedonian rejection of Chalcedon does not resolve the problem of universal reception.
You wrote: “A pseudo-rejection – the two sides were in agreement on doctrine, just not in how to express it.”
There is an interesting problem with this argument.
The official theological dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches reached a substantial Christological agreement in 1990.
Its Second Agreed Statement acknowledged that both families had preserved the authentic Orthodox Christological faith despite their differences in theological terminology.
Source:Second Agreed Statement Between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches (1990), §§8–10.
But what exactly does that establish regarding the historical reception of Chalcedon?
Doctrinal agreement does not retroactively erase the historical fact of ecclesiastical non-reception.
The Oriental Orthodox Churches historically rejected Chalcedon and do not recognize it as the Fourth Ecumenical Council.
Indeed, the 1990 agreement itself distinguishes the councils accepted by both families from the later councils recognized by the Eastern Orthodox.
It also recommends the lifting of historical anathemas and condemnations precisely because these divisions have not simply disappeared.
So you cannot dismiss the historical non-reception of Chalcedon merely by pointing to a modern recognition of substantial Christological agreement.
And your explanation raises a further question: If ancient apostolic Churches can preserve the authentic Christological faith while refusing to recognize a particular council as ecumenical, why does their non-reception not necessarily invalidate Chalcedon, whereas the Eastern Orthodox non-reception of later Catholic councils supposedly invalidates those councils automatically?
I’m not suggesting that these situations are identical in every respect, I’m asking you to identify the ecclesiological principle that justifies treating them differently.
If universal reception is necessary, who must participate in that reception?
Every historically apostolic Church?
Only those Churches already recognized as belonging fully to the true Catholic Church?
And who determines which Churches satisfy that condition?
These questions cannot be dismissed merely by calling the non-Chalcedonian rejection a matter of terminology.
5. Constantinople I demonstrates that simultaneous participation is not indispensable.
Consider the First Council of Constantinople in 381.
It was originally an assembly of Eastern bishops, without Western episcopal participation.
Nevertheless, it eventually came to be recognized as the Second Ecumenical Council.
Now, you may respond that the council subsequently received wider recognition, including in the West, and that is perfectly relevant, but notice what follows: If later reception can establish the ecumenical character of a council that originally lacked universal episcopal participation, then participation and reception cannot simply be treated as identical requirements.
You must specify which criterion you are invoking.
If you mean that universal participation is absolutely necessary, Constantinople I creates an obvious historical difficulty, If you mean that universal reception is necessary, then you must identify precisely whose reception is indispensable, and why.
This is not a trivial distinction, It concerns the very mechanism by which the Church recognizes authoritative conciliar teaching.
6. Florence demonstrates that Eastern participation and Eastern reception are two different questions.
Your argument encounters another difficulty in the Council of Florence.
In 1439, four centuries after the schism, a substantial Eastern delegation participated in the council, and the decree of union was signed by most of the Greek bishops present.
The subsequent rejection of the agreement by much of the Orthodox world is a separate historical fact.
Even the Orthodox Church in America acknowledges the participation of the Greek delegation and the signing of the decree.
Source: Orthodox Church in America, The Great Schism in the Papacy, and the Conciliar Movement.
I know perfectly well that the Orthodox Churches do not recognize Florence as ecumenical.
That is not the point.
The point is that its failure to obtain enduring Orthodox acceptance cannot be explained simply by saying that the East did not participate. The East did participate. The agreement was subsequently repudiated.
You therefore need to distinguish whether the decisive requirement is participation, consent, subsequent reception, doctrinal correctness, or some combination of these.
Those are different criteria, and each requires justification.
7. Your appeal to the Church not being an “organized human institution” does not answer the question.
You wrote: “First you must decide if ‘organized human institution’ is what constrains the definition in the first place.”
But nobody has suggested that the Church is merely an organized human institution.
That is not the Catholic doctrine of the Church, and it is not the Orthodox doctrine either.
The Church is understood as a divine-human reality: the Body of Christ, animated by the Holy Spirit and possessing a visible apostolic, sacramental, and episcopal structure.
Recognizing the visible structure of the Church does not reduce her to a merely human organization.
And there is a further difficulty in your objection: you insist that the participation of particular ecclesiastical communities is indispensable for the ecumenicity of a council, but that is itself a claim about the visible and institutional constitution of the Church.
You cannot invoke the necessity of representation by particular episcopal communities and then treat questions about the identity and authority of those communities as though they were an illegitimate reduction of the Church to a human organization.
If the participation or reception of particular Churches is necessary for ecumenicity, then we necessarily have to identify those Churches and explain why their participation or reception is authoritative.
8. Your argument about Rome supposedly rejecting unity does not establish the loss of Roman authority.
You also wrote: “Since it effectively rejected the actual unity between two branches that were never actually out of communion, of course it could no longer ‘authoritatively represent the Catholic Church’.”
But the conclusion does not follow from the premise. Even if I conceded, purely for the sake of argument (because even many orthodox today aknowledge that the responsibility was mutual), that Rome bore primary responsibility for the rupture, you would still need to demonstrate why that fact necessarily extinguished whatever universal primatial authority Rome had previously possessed.
Responsibility for an ecclesiastical rupture and forfeiture of ecclesiastical authority are not logically equivalent propositions.
For your argument to succeed, you would need to establish an additional principle: that the authority of the Roman See was necessarily conditional upon maintaining communion with the other patriarchates, and that a rupture attributed to Rome automatically nullified that authority.
Where is this principle established?
Which ecumenical council defined it?
Which universally recognized ecclesiastical authority determined that Rome had forfeited its primatial prerogatives?
The historical responsibility for the separation is itself disputed, and major Orthodox theologians, including Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, have acknowledged serious mistakes on both sides, but even if the historical responsibility could be assigned exclusively to Rome, that would not, without an additional ecclesiological argument, establish that Rome had ceased to possess any authority to act on behalf of the universal Church.
That is the missing step in your reasoning.
9. The ancient primacy of Rome cannot simply be assumed away.
The Catholic–Orthodox Joint International Commission’s Ravenna Document of 2007 explicitly acknowledges, in §41, that Rome occupied the first place in the ancient ecclesiastical order and that its bishop was the protos among the patriarchs.
So, the existence of a universal Roman primacy is not merely a later Catholic assertion. The controversy concerns the precise authority attached to that primacy and whether that authority remained operative after the separation.
Source: Ravenna Document (2007), §§39–45.
I’m perfectly aware that §39 of the same document describes the schism as having made ecumenical councils impossible in the strict sense used by the commission, but the document also expressly records the Catholic recognition of later Western councils as ecumenical, and it leaves the precise prerogatives of Roman primacy as an unresolved issue for theological dialogue.
Consequently, it would be incorrect to pretend that this joint document definitively settles the controversy in favor of either ecclesiology.
It recognizes the disagreement, and it is precisely that disagreement which your argument assumes has already been settled.
10. The actual logical problem with your position
I think we can now formulate the issue as a straightforward dilemma.
First possibility: You maintain that, once communion between East and West was disrupted, neither side could possibly exercise universal conciliar authority without the participation or reception of the other.
But then you must explain why Metropolitan Maximos explicitly recognizes the possibility of post-schism ecumenical councils, and why Orthodox conciliar documents recognize later Eastern councils as possessing universal doctrinal authority.
You must also justify the principle that the absence of one separated communion necessarily invalidates the ecumenicity of councils held by the other.
Second possibility: you acknowledge that one ecclesiastical communion can retain the authority necessary to hold ecumenical councils even after another communion has separated from it.
This is the possibility that Maximos recognizes from an Orthodox perspective, but then the mere occurrence of the schism cannot automatically establish the impossibility of subsequent Catholic ecumenical councils.
The decisive question becomes which communion actually retained the relevant authority of the apostolic Church.
You may argue that this was the Eastern Orthodox communion.
Catholic theology argues that the Roman See retained its universal primatial authority and that communion with the successor of Peter remains constitutive of the Church’s universal visible unity.
Both positions require theological and historical justification.
What you cannot do is treat the first position as an unquestionable premise and then claim to have disproved the second merely by appealing to that premise.
That would be circular.
And notice that this difficulty becomes even more apparent when you simultaneously maintain that both Rome and the East remained genuinely holy, catholic, and apostolic.
If both retained authentic apostolic characteristics, why should the rupture automatically deprive Rome of every possibility of exercising universal authority while leaving Eastern conciliar authority unaffected?
There may be a principled answer to that question, but it must be demonstrated, rather than simply assumed.
Let me therefore clarify exactly what I am arguing: I’mnot claiming that the mere survival of the Roman See automatically proves the ecumenicity of every council subsequently recognized by Rome.
Nor am I claiming that the testimony of Metropolitan Maximos somehow constitutes Orthodox recognition of the later Catholic councils. It obviously does not.
My argument is more precise: you have not established that the absence of Eastern Orthodox participation or reception necessarily renders a council non-ecumenical, independently of the question of which communion possesses the authority of the Catholic Church.
Indeed, an authoritative Orthodox metropolitan expressly acknowledges that ecumenical councils may still be possible after the schism.
The Orthodox Council of Crete recognizes later councils of universal doctrinal authority.
The history of Constantinople I demonstrates that simultaneous representation of East and West was not indispensable.
The history of Chalcedon demonstrates that rejection by ancient apostolic Christian communities does not automatically prevent a council from being recognized as ecumenical by others.
The history of Florence demonstrates that participation and subsequent reception are distinct questions.
And the Catholic–Orthodox Ravenna Document acknowledges both the ancient primacy of Rome and the continuing disagreement concerning its prerogatives.
Taken together, these facts make it impossible simply to assume that the separation from the Eastern patriarchates necessarily deprived Rome of the authority to recognize or participate in ecumenical councils.
You must first identify and defend the relevant ecclesiological criteria.
“Guarantee you?” Who would be silly enough to try? You’re a disaffected Roman Catholic.
By the way, you fancy yourself a devotee of the Ionian Greek Ideal but I seriously wonder what your sources are for your version of that Ionian Greek Ideal. Greek? maybe, but Ionian? Even ChatGPT says: “not so much.”
Around 2002-2004, I was well acquainted with a mathematical savant, now deceased. Fortunately he left over 3,000 posts in a now-defunct physics forum and 100+ pages of wide-ranging commentary on a good number of topics, principally mathematical. He was well acquainted with the Greek cosmologists.
He was an agnostic atheist, and certainly not the kind of person who would spend time or energy on the topic of reincarnation.
Look, i think we need to distinguish between the nature of a spiritual being and the manner in which that being may become perceptible to human beings.
The thing is that the separated soul is immaterial and doesn’t naturally possess a visible human form, but being immaterial doesn’t mean that a spiritual being cannot manifest itself visibly.
Think about angels and demons: both are, by nature, purely spiritual beings, yet Scripture and Christian tradition (and even the experience of many persons throughout the world) repeatedly describe them appearing in recognizable forms, sometimes even resembling ordinary human beings, other times animals.
And such manifestations do not necessarily involve the assumption of a material body, because a spiritual being may also be made perceptible through an appearance produced in the senses of the person witnessing it. In either case, the visible appearance doesn’t establish that the spiritual being actually possesses a physical body.
An angel appearing as a man does not thereby become a human being, nor does a demon appearing in bodily form acquire a human body as part of its nature.
Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that a separated human soul is ontologically identical to an angel or a demon, because the human soul is naturally ordered toward union with its own body, but the analogy illustrates an important distinction: the visible manifestation of an immaterial being doesn’t require that the being possess a physical body.
So, returning to Samuel, even if we accept that the medium genuinely perceived him as an elderly man wearing a robe, why should we conclude that Samuel possessed any kind of physical body?
The narrative tells us that Samuel appeared and was recognized, but it doesn’t explain the ontological mechanism of that appearance, it is entirely conceivable that God permitted Samuel’s disembodied soul to become perceptible under a recognizable human appearance, without Samuel having undergone bodily resurrection or possessing a glorified body.
Actually, both Augustine and Aquinas considered the possibility that Samuel genuinely appeared by a special divine dispensation.
The same basic distinction applies to Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration.
Their appearance in recognizable human form does not, by itself, establish that they both possessed resurrected and glorified bodies. Elijah is a special case because of the circumstances of his departure from earthly life, while Scripture does not explicitly tell us the precise mode of Moses’ appearance.
Jewish mystical and Kabbalistic concepts concerning souls after death, particularly reincarnation and spirit possession are:
1. Gilgul (גִּלְגּוּל) — Reincarnation or transmigration of souls. A soul returns to earthly life in another body, often to complete unfinished spiritual work or achieve tikkun (rectification).
2. Dybbuk (דִּבּוּק) — A wandering or troubled spirit of a deceased person that attaches itself to, or possesses, a living person. It does not undergo a new birth.
3. Ibbur (עִבּוּר) — Literally, impregnation. A soul temporarily joins a living person, often to assist that person spiritually or accomplish a particular task. Unlike a dybbuk, this association is generally considered beneficial.
4. Neshamah (נְשָׁמָה) — The soul, particularly its higher spiritual dimension. This is not itself a form of reincarnation or possession.
A fourth concept more directly comparable to the first three is Dibbur (דִּבּוּר), meaning speech, though it is not a standard fourth category of postmortem soul movement.
The three established concepts most likely on your mind are gilgul, dybbuk, and ibbur.
These are especially relevant to Murphy because Jewish mysticism distinguishes a soul’s rebirth in a new body (gilgul) from a deceased spirit’s attachment to an already living person (dybbuk or ibbur). Neither is equivalent to resurrection.
This is the reason that so many swung to the idea of sola scriptura. Both the observed behaviours of the priests and the biblical evidence against the priests support this view. The priests had put themselves between the people and God since Mose, but more so after returning from Babylon. Here is the surviving biblical account of the stance against the men of the church. I say surviving because I highly doubt that all of the text against the scribes survived the scribes throughout the copying process. The Hexapla supports this view.
You need to understand the picture language that Jesus spoke in. He singled out Peter because of his unwavering faith and Jesus built his church on similar faith. He was not speaking in material terms about this church (John 6:63) as he said that “his kingdom is not of this world” and therefore, his church is not here, it is in Heaven and piece of it should be in each person’s soul. Jesus was saying that to take part in his heavenly church, we need the type of faith that Peter demonstrated. Once we build this church in our soul and keep it clean, then God or Jesus can live in us through this spiritual church.
Jesus was trying to tell His followers that you need to have God in hearts, not is some material building.
For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, Ephesians 3:14-17.
He also told us how to go to church.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Matt 6:6
Jesus was battling with the material thinking of the church leaders and also with his apostles. He was also fighting with what I call The Unvirtuous Circle - This is a process that has existed since the writing of the first bible where church leaders, priests and scribes (theologians) rewrote the inspired teachings of the prophets to meet their own interpretation. This was not always with evil intentions, but the result was the same.
[Jesus] Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. Luke 9:22
Solomon [the Yahwist] wrote the first version of the OT around 950 BC. By the time of the prophet of Micah (740 – 700 BC), the bible had already been corrupted.
The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us. Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest. Micah 3:11-12
Even then, the priest and their ‘prophets’ were chasing material wealth. Jeremiah (627-580 BC) reflected these feelings about the leadership of the Jews and
How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them? Jeremiah 8:8-9
Then came the Babylonian Exile (598 – 538 BC), where the Jews were conquered and brought to the city of the Devil. The time they were here did not help their spiritual understanding of the OT. The prophet Ezekiel (593-570 BC) was with them, but they could not understand his inspired teachings either.
And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee. And the spirit entered into me when he spake unto me, and set me upon my feet, that I heard him that spake unto me. And he said unto me, Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me, even unto this very day. For they are impudent children and stiffhearted. I do send thee unto them; and thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God. And they, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, (for they are a rebellious house,) yet shall know that there hath been a prophet among them. And thou, son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost dwell among scorpions: be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house. And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear: for they are most rebellious. Ezekiel 2:1-7
Malachi (445-425 BC) was the last prophet of the old testament, who came after the Jews returned from the city of the devil and rewrote the OT, tainted with their experiences there.
For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts. Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law. Malachi 2:7-9
Jesus knew this long-standing problem with misunderstanding of inspired texts.
And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Matt 23:9–13
You do know that using ChatGPT on history is a folly? Even none of the Greeks I know don’t understand the differences between the Ionian, the Dorians and the Spartans before the fall of Athens at the beginning of the 4th century BCE.
No forcing involved. The forcing is to impose Doctrine onto the story.
The only reason for Priests is to separate the masses from God and claim them to be “special”. The are ordained by humans.
Where it comes from does not change the contradictions.
Does not automatically insist that the person asking cannot do it for themselves. They might just like some support, as encouraged by Jesus
It is the Scriptural view expressed by Eccl 3. (et al)
God is in control, we humans just have to go along with it. He hardens hearts, He sends forces beyond our resistance, He listens but ultimately does his own thing (Sodom Gomora), He gets His way (Jonah), He is unfathomable (job), and He is biased and has favorites (Judaism).
I could go on, but I am not quoting short enough assages.
Roymond, you know that I respect you and i appareciate your contests, but I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding going on here, I’m trying to understand where you see a contradiction in my argument, because the two passages you’ve quoted don’t appear to establish one.
Your original objection was that, since East and West had supposedly never truly ceased to be in communion, no council held without Eastern participation could be ecumenical, but this already presupposes a particular understanding of ecclesiastical communion and of the conditions necessary for a council to be ecumenical. That is precisely what I was questioning.
Furthermore, the 1965 Joint Declaration of Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras explicitly acknowledges that, although the excommunications of 1054 were not intended to sever communion between the Churches, subsequent events eventually brought about an effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion.
We therefore need to distinguish between retaining authentic apostolic faith and sacraments, on the one hand, and remaining in full ecclesiastical communion, on the other. These are not interchangeable propositions.
As for your comment, “That’s exactly what I said,” concerning the agreement between Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christians, I think you’re overlooking the reason I introduced that example.
I wasn’t disputing their substantial Christological agreement: i was pointing out that doctrinal agreement does not necessarily entail formal reception of the same ecumenical councils.
The 1990 Second Agreed Statement explicitly acknowledges both their common authentic Christological faith and the fact that the two families do not recognize the same councils.
So my point remains: if the historical non-reception of Chalcedon by ancient apostolic Churches does not automatically deprive it of ecumenical status, why must the non-reception of later Catholic councils by the Eastern Orthodox automatically deprive those councils of theirs?
I’m not suggesting that the situations are identical: there may be a perfectly coherent ecclesiological reason for distinguishing them, but that reason needs to be articulated and defended.
And this brings us back to your original claim: you seem to be assuming that Eastern Orthodox participation or reception is indispensable to the ecumenicity of any post-schism council, even while acknowledging that both East and West retained authentic apostolic characteristics.
But why should that particular criterion be regarded as self-evident?
My argument is not that Rome’s recognition automatically makes a council ecumenical (although I obviously affirm, personally, the ecumenical nature of the ecumenical councils on the second millenium), it is that the absence of Eastern Orthodox participation or reception does not, by itself, demonstrate the contrary.
To establish that conclusion, you would first need to explain why the authority necessary to recognize or celebrate an ecumenical council could not have remained with Rome after the rupture.
Asking you to establish that ecclesiological premise is not a contradiction on my part, it’s simply asking for the justification of the principle on which your conclusion depends.
Massimiliano, an anecdote about something that happened in my own family, but first, a point about Samuel’s appearance to the medium at Endor.
In 1 Samuel 28:11–14, the medium sees Samuel, but Saul does not appear to see Samuel. In fact, Saul has to ask her what she sees and what the figure looks like. Only after she describes an old man wrapped in a robe does Saul conclude that it is Samuel. Nowhere in the remainder of the account does the text indicate that Saul ever saw Samuel himself.
In other words, Samuel appeared in a recognizable human form to the medium, but not, apparently, to Saul. His visibility was relative to the observer.
Now for my story.
The house in which my wife and I presently live originally belonged to my wife’s parents. For many years, the couple next door were the comadre and compadre of my in-laws. My mother-in-law and her comadre were the best of friends. Both loved gardening, and they spent many happy hours working in their respective gardens and talking across the fence that separated their properties.
Unfortunately, the compadre, whose name was Angel, had a habit that infuriated my mother-in-law.
When his wife became blind from glaucoma, and later after she died, Angel took over watering the plants on his side of the fence. But Angel was no gardener. He would leave the water running so long that it overflowed onto my in-laws’ property. Because his property was slightly higher, the runoff would wash soil and sometimes plants out of my mother-in-law’s garden and down the driveway.
My mother-in-law was not pleased. In fact, she became so angry with Angel that she sometimes said insulting things to him.
Over the years, Angel’s wife died, then my father-in-law, and finally my mother-in-law, who died in 2009.
Angel and his wife had two daughters, Esperanza and Angelina. Both had married and moved away before their mother died. Angelina, my mother-in-law’s goddaughter, had a son named Andrew, who was seriously autistic. His autism was sufficiently severe that he could not safely be left alone.
Angelina frequently visited her father to do household chores for him, bringing Andrew along. As Andrew grew older, he would play outside in his grandfather’s yard while Angel sat nearby keeping an eye on him.
Andrew had visited often enough to recognize my mother-in-law as the elderly woman who lived next door to his grandfather, although they were never particularly close.
One day, sometime after my mother-in-law’s death, Angelina brought Andrew to her father’s house as usual. While Angelina was inside doing chores, Andrew was outside with his grandfather.
Something extraordinary happened. According to what Angelina subsequently told my wife and me, my deceased mother-in-law appeared to Andrew. Andrew recognized her as the old lady who had lived next door to his grandfather. And she had a message for him. She wanted Andrew to tell his grandfather, Angel, that she was sorry for the way she had treated him.
Andrew attempted to communicate what had happened to his grandfather. How successfully he managed to do so, I don’t know. Andrew spoke little or no Spanish, as I recall, while Angel spoke very broken English.
What I do know is that Angelina subsequently told my wife and me about the incident. Important points: Andrew was autistic and not a witch. My mother-in-law did not appear to Angel. She did not appear to Angelina. And, so far as I know, she never appeared to Andrew again.
I cannot prove what Andrew experienced, and I am not presenting the story as proof of an afterlife, a disembodied soul, or a glorified body. I am simply relating an incident reported to me by a person I knew and know personally, involving people whose relationships and circumstances were familiar to me.
But consider the parallel with Samuel at Endor. 1 Samuel 28, Samuel appears to the medium but not to Saul, even though Saul is the intended recipient of his message. In my story, my mother-in-law reportedly appeared to an autistic child (Andrew) but not to Angel, even though Angel is the intended recipient of her message.
In neither case does the reported appearance establish the bodily condition of the deceased person. That, I think, is worth considering when we speak of a deceased person appearing in recognizable human form.
So, Massimiliano, I think your explanation of how a disembodied soul might become perceptible to a living person is entirely compatible with both accounts. I am not arguing that either Samuel or my mother-in-law must have possessed a physical body, much less a glorified one.
What interests me is that, in both accounts, the deceased person reportedly appeared to one individual but not to the person for whom the message was intended.
Neither account establishes the bodily condition of the person who appeared. Nor, I suggest, does either establish that the person was necessarily disembodied.
So perhaps we agree on more than we disagree: an appearance in recognizable human form does not, by itself, settle the question of what kind of existence the deceased person possesses.
Terry, thank you for sharing your anecdote. It’s certainly not the first personal story you’ve shared with me, and I always appreciate hearing them, a lot.
Regarding the broader question of the resurrection, as I’ve said before, I think the crucial distinction is between the possibility of an extraordinary bodily resurrection before the general resurrection and the claim that such resurrections occur ordinarily, as part of the normal condition of the departed.
I have no difficulty accepting that God could, through an extraordinary intervention, raise someone bodily before the general resurrection. God’s power is not constrained by the ordinary course of events, and divine revelation certainly leaves room for exceptional anticipations of the final glorification of the body, most notably in the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption.
But acknowledging that something is possible through an extraordinary divine intervention is quite different from claiming that it regularly occurs, especially since Scripture consistently presents the resurrection of the dead as a future, eschatological event associated with Christ’s return.
In John 6:39–40, Jesus repeatedly speaks of raising the faithful “on the last day.” Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 15:22–23, Paul places the resurrection of those who belong to Christ at His coming.
None of this necessarily excludes extraordinary exceptions, but an exception to the ordinary order does not establish an alternative ordinary order.
And this is where I see the difficulty, because If we were to suggest that departed individuals numbered among the saved regularly receive their glorified bodies immediately after death, rather than ordinarily awaiting the general resurrection, we would be proposing something very difficult to reconcile with the consistent eschatological framework of Scripture and Tradition.
Moreover, why should this apply exclusively to the saved? Scripture also teaches that the wicked will be raised from the dead (John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15). If bodily resurrection ordinarily occurs immediately after death, what grounds would we have for restricting that principle to the righteous?
So my objection has never been to the possibility of an extraordinary anticipation of bodily resurrection, it just concerns the suggestion that such anticipations might constitute a regular occurrence, when the biblical witness presents the resurrection of the dead as an event fundamentally associated with the last day.
A council is either ecumenical or it is not – it can’t be ecumenical for one group but not for another. But Rome has insisted that all its councils are ecumenical even though only adherents of Rome were even invited.
First, because the successors of all the apostles were at least invited to come; second, because there was actually no doctrinal disagreement.
Eastern participation is indispensable because both East and West retained authentic apostolic characteristics.
