Monday, June 13, 2011
Augustine as heretic
I claim that all of Eastern Orthodoxy took a very different path from Rome and the West with regard to philosophy and syllogistic reasoning. The Greek Orthodox to this very day consider Augustine a heretic. The Russian Orthodox were very much influenced by Europe which is evident in their rejection of Byzantine chant in favor of four part harmony (not that the Old Believers in Russia retained their Znamanie chant which was not harmonic). The Russians call Augustine BLESSED but would not call him SAINT. Some scholars feel that Augustine laid down the foundations for the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther found a lot of ammunition in Augustine. It was only during the counter-Reformation that the Jesuits took a closer look at what Augustine was doing. Actually there is a passage from Jaroslav Pelikan, a brief passage, that reflects the gradual shift from East to West over the centuries. I will look it up and repost it. Jamison has a good point about the carnal and egoistic activity of philosophy which (as Paul said of the Greeks on the Hill of Mars) is "always seeking some new thing."
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Jeffery Nicholas the final line of the article is "LaRosa recognizes they are breaking Church law — specifically Canon 10:24 — but says, "when you have an unjust law, sometimes it needs to be broken before it can be changed." " and you say "The concluding line is true prima facie. The question is, Is it true in this case?" I would like to hear your answer to your own question. DO YOU feel that women should be ordained as priests? Do you feel that a male only priesthood is a social injustice? IF the Papacy should one day declare that women may be priests and that same sex marriage is permitted then would you subscribe to such things and feel that "papal infallibility" was in effect. The reason I bring up the Greek Orthodox of Sinai and Mt. Athos is that they have an unbroken tradition going back to the earliest centuries and so somehow they are a photograph of what the first century Christians were like. And we KNOW that the very first part of the New Testament was one of Paul's epistles written around 51 AD and the first Gospel was not in its final form until around 100AD and the complete canon of the Greek Septuagint only dates to the 4th century AND THEREFORE the first 20 or so years of Christianity was with NO NEW TESTAMENT and so the notion of a "Bible Based Church" goes right out the window.
