ORLAPUBS P. R9: LATIN INNOVATIONS NOT FOUND IN ORTHODOXY

It is at times useful to have a list of topics for discussion, and that will be provided after this caveat about lists: One must not let lists either overshadow the presuppositional frameworks that lists are often mere symptoms of--that is letting the tail wag the dog--or take the the place of a system--in which the items do not stand alone but are related in dependencies. A difference in thought worlds (CLICK HERE FOR DISCUSSION AND FURTHER LINKS TO THAT DISCUSSION, SEE HERE), hold to the pre-Augustinian view that the mode of the Son's procession from the Father ("generation") is ontologically different from the mode of the Holy Spirit's procession (pneûsis/pnéfsis, or what in the West is called "spiration") from the Father. If this difference cannot be analysed and defined by humans--who have got to resort to something like metaphor here because of the transcendent unknowability of Being beyond being, the divine Essence--it is nonetheless clear that the differentiation of the Son and the Holy Spirit does not require the Holy Spirit's proceeding from the Son as well as from the Father--something that (in the Orthodox view) infringes on the Father's being the sole Source of all that is. And that makes it a terribly important issue for the Orthodox, even though it is impossible to "analyse" God. The rôle of reason (lógos) in Orthodoxy theology no more makes it "rationalistic" than its pervasively mysteric outlook makes it anti-rational; the balance is exactly right. Critics of Orthodoxy cannot have it both ways.

FUNDAMENTALS THAT SEEM TO HAVE ESCAPED
THE NOTICE OF JUST ABOUT ALL COMMENTATORS

We find talk about everything except the sine qua non of Latin or Papal Catholicism: Its Mediæval juridical and other innovations stand or fall on the truth of its claim that all of its innovations have naturally developed out of seeds inherent in beliefs accepted in undivided Christianity. Yet as soon as original/Orthodox Christianity, Latin, and Reformation Christianity are analysed in terms of their incompatible paradigms (sets of axioms or presuppositions about reality and religion; see the forthcoming OLP publication, Why the non-Orthodox cannot understand how Western Christianity diverges from Eastern Orthodoxy), papal claims fall to the ground and cannot be sustained.

Because words mean different things in the original Greek-language, Latin, and Denominationist paradigms, we are more likely to be clear concerning what we disagree over that on what we agree over!!

Latin never succeeded in satisfactorily translating a aspect of Greek that could well be thought to have provided a principal reason for why God ordained for the holy Gospel to be propagated in the Greek language: Nouns derived form causative (energetic, usually transitive) verbs are usually paired thus: feminines ending is -sis (older -tis is preserved after -s-, as in pistis "faith") express energizations (and are often used where English has a gerund) VERSUS neuters in -ma(t-, the same root behind mind, Latin ment-) which express an abstract idea (also expressed by the neuter article plus infinitive), though it often expresses the result of an energization. Cf. (h)omoíosis "assimilation" : (h)omoíoma "likeness." In Gen. 1:26,Western Bibles mistranslate the former (energetic) term as though it were the latter (static) term. Assuming that God wanted Christianity to be presented to the world in a cognitive framework in which basic reality is energy (or light, the first thing created), a view that would incidentally not stand in obvious conflict with science later on, he would obviously plan the Incarnation to take place at a time and place where it could be propagated in Greek but also stand in continuity with the Hebrew Bible. He would presumably avoid Latin and in fact all Western languages with a more static view of reality (contrast Western "state of Grace" with Eastern Grace as uncreated Energy, Christ's Life). The booklet referred to above lists ten apparent paradoxes that are resoluble only when energy is part of the analysis.

Despite the differences between pre-Chalcedonians and the Orthodox, they share a similar thought world. Note particularly that in Orthodoxy the biblical concept of Energy is vital (as the foregoing link clarifies), while in the West, there prevail a static (and indeed anti-time, anti-tradition), judicial outlook and judicial terminology--especially in connection with Salvation: "sacrament [originally "oath"], covenant, atonement, satisfaction, redemption, justification, legal adoption," etc. (This development went further in Protestantism, where, e.g. ordinance replaced sacrament.) In the West, these (admittedly, biblical) terms are allowed to overwhelm the ontological facts so dear to the Orthodox. The will-based framework of Western Denominationists is truly quite foreign to the being-based framework of the East, where will is subject to reason and was not treated in a very detailed manner till in the middle of the first millennium. But note that the East cannot be characterized with the term rationalism--something that is far from being characteristic of the "mystical" and ascetic East, which acknowledges the inability of reason to analyse divine Being beyond being.

An important thematic difference between East and West is the position of the Crucifixion of OLGS Jesus Christ vis-a-vis His triumphant victory over the devil, death, and decay that occurred with His glorious Resurrection: Even in the plangent services of holy Great Week, the alleluïas resound; and of course the Vespers on holy Great Sabbath in Orthodoxy, after the day's laments, we sing:

But in the West, the Crucifixion is the paramount theme--at least in thought (though it didn't use to be celebrated by Denominationists, and is not a holiday in Denominationist-dominated lands). It hardly needs to be said that the theme of the Crucifixion is anything but ignored in the East--where the sign of the cross is made with a great frequency, and where icons of the Crucifixion abound and are kissed and venerated and loved; but the Crucifixion is subordinate to its goal--the glorious Resurrection--with the Trinity the enduring theme of Orthodoxy. Where the West thinks of our Savior's Crucifixion as rendering payment to God for our sins (and Denominationists add that Jesus was a Substitute for us), the holy tradition would rather look on the Crucifixion in the manner of the Book of Hebrews--i.e. as perfect Worship with a perfect Offering. (If Sacrifice is returning to God part of the cosmos in token of His ownership of and lordship over all of it, then the perfect Offering is perfect Worship.) Propitiation is also a notion associated with latreutic offerings; whereas the "satisfaction" of divine justice in Western thinking (also in the East but with less centrality) is wholly juridical.
With the caveats now offered and the overwhelming importance of the divergence of the Western (Latin and Denominationist) and Eastern religious thought worlds already referred to--as well as the admission that divine intervention can overcome any difficulty--below is found a listing (CLICK HERE for the qualitative difference in value of a list and a system) of Orthodox-Latin differences, i.e. Latin innovations, classified according to very highly fallible human guesses over their resolubility (SEE ALSO HERE & HERE & HERE):

Insurmountable conflicts	Hard to resolve	Possibly resoluble
The procession of the All-Holy Spirit (in the unilaterally revised Western Creed --SEE HERE) Beatific Vision of the divine Essence as an intentional unity achieved through an intellectual vision of God Reality not energetic; Grace not the uncreated Energies of Christ's Life for the Latins, whose Sanctifying Grace is a created habitus non-operativus of the soul Failure to distinguish uncreated Energies of God from His from divine Essence Inherited guilt Death as a penalty for sinnning Immortality of the soul by nature. Non-ontological, juridical-satisfaction soteriology* Universal papal juris- diction Papal infallibility Supererogatory merits transferable by papal indulgences to living and dead Christians Consecration [in the Tridentine Rite]of the Eucharist other than by invoking the Holy Spirit	Analogia entis, as currently conceptualized The Creator of the cosmos is a "Word" Baptism normally without trine immersion "Indelible character" of "sacraments" (but "sacramentals" are not Mysteries) No divorce under any conditions (a marriage cannot die unless a spouse dies!) Monastic and lay vocations different in kind--not gradient, as St. Seraphim of Sarov said Eastern Uniates	The Immaculate Conception (the real problem is inherited sin) Transubstantiation Communion in one kind [no longer a rule] Use of unleavened bread at the m.h. Eucharist Sabbath (Saturday) fasting--other than the day before Great Pascha Allowing Pascha to precede the Jewish Passover Statues ("graven images") Assumption of the all-holy Theotokos Celibacy of parish priests (with excep- tions for Uniates and converted clergy) Last rites: Unction and Viaticum
*Satisfaction (God doesn't forgive until divine justice is fully satisfied in a penal manner for infinite insults to His infinite Glory), atonement, justification in Latin sense, redemption in non-Orthodox sense, and virtualist ("intentional") unity with God's imparticipable Essence. The Orthodox accept an ontological re-birth, adoption, membership in Christ, unity with God's uncreated Energies.

To these 25-30 differences, one must add the whole concept of validity in Latin theology (CLICK HERE AND ALSO HERE), not reconcilable with the outlook of the Orthodox as currently set forth, as well as arrangements that have doctrinal significance--e.g. having the Altar in the midst of the congregation vs. having it behind an iconostasion. (SEE ALSO HERE.) For the Orthodox, Jesus is Christ, the LOGOS or Reason and Wisdom of God (YHWH), God the co-essential and co-equal Son. It is unclear whether (depiste Luke 1:43) any Western Christians accept that Christ is YHWH (as in Exod. 1:20). Latin concepts like created-supernatural Grace and seeing the Divine Essence (even if non autem quantum ad modum essendi) with created means make little sense to the Orthodox--who of course deny that the divine Essence can be seen in any fashion--since uncreated Essence is Being beyond being and is unknowable and unseeable (even by a miracle--the way the uncreated Energies can be seen as uncreated Light) as well as imparticipable. Both Orthodox and Latins acknowledge the difference between the Icon (Image of God) in human essence and the Assimilation to God that humanity had before the Fall. The all-holy Theotokos is a Mediatrix with Christ, but not (as some Latins now propose to make de fidean article of faith) a Redemptress. In short, the whole non-energetic Latin paradigm (invented well over a dozen centuries after the Apostolic Age and derived from Islamic Cordova) is so different from the energetic Apostolic paradigm is a different forest--so different that the trees cannot be comparable.

CORRECT & INCORRECT VIEWS OF WHAT DIVIDES US

Honesty is the best policy. Ambiguous statements that Orthodox and Latins can interpret differently have heretofore proved self-defeating to the extent that there is today less confusion over our differences than over our supposed agreements. Those who would fudge over differences are doing the cause of unity no service.

Underlying the foregoing differences between the Orthodox and papal Christians is an even more basic and irresoluble difference causing many of the above. It is a difference in the frameworks of basic assumptions--paradigms that are simply incompatible. Consider inherited guilt: Even though current Latins say that no guilt is inherited--only an absence of sanctifying Greece. This is something that the Orthodox could verbally agree on with the Latins; but what each side means would be different, because saving Grace is Energy for the Orthodox and not for the Latins. What good would such an agreement accomplish? Without the Orthodox concept of energy, none of the differences in theology can be satisfactorily reconciled (SEE HERE). Without the acceptance of this Greek-Bible view of reality, there cannot be a sustainable agreement about Grace and unity with the divine Nature.

CONTRAST THE FOREGOING WITH THE FOLLOWING VIEW,
taken from Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, Præclara gratulationis publicæ, six years before the end of the nineteenth century--
and notice what is left out (this is not my translation!)

First of all, then, We cast an affectionate look upon the East, from whence in the beginning came forth the salvation of the world. Yes, and the yearning desire of Our heart bids us conceive and hope that the day is not far distant when the Eastern Churches, so illustrious in their ancient faith and glorious past, will return to the fold they have abandoned. We hope it all the more, that the distance separating them from Us is not so great: nay, with some few exception, we agree so entirely on other heads that, in defence of the Catholic faith, we often have recourse to reasons and testimony borrowed from the teaching, the rites, and customs of the East.

[We come to the first myth]

The principle subject of contention is the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. . . . Before the day when man separated what God had joined together, . . . the East, like the West, agreed without hesitation in its obedience to the Pontiff of Rome, as the legitimate successor of St. Peter, and, therefore, the Vicar of Christ here on earth.

[The allusion to St. Photios represents a concession that the Western heresy of Filioquism is an unsurmounted barrier]

And accordingly, if we refer to the beginning of the dissension, we shall see that Photios himself was careful to send his advocates to Rome on the matters that concerned him; and Pope Nicholas I. sent his legates to Constantinople from the Eternal City, without the slightest opposition, "in order to examine the case of Ignatius the Patriarch with all diligence, and to bring back to the Apostolic See a full and accurate report"; so that the history of the whole negotiation is a manifest confirmation of the primacy of the Roman See with which the distention then began.

[Unmentioned is the fact that, as soon as the delegates returned home from these and all similar synods--conducted with the assumptions of a non-Orthodox paradigm--the agreements were repudiated after having been examined in the original Greek-language paradigm of early and Orthodox Christianity. In what follows below, the word "easily" is a falsification of what happened at Lyons and Ferrara-Florence.]

For Lyons (1274), see the short article by C. N. Constantinides, "Byzantine scholars and the Union of Lyons" in The making of Byzantine history: Studies dedicated to Donald M.Nicol, edd. R. Beaton & Charlotte Roueché (Variorum, 1993).
For a reliable account of the negotiations in Italy that brought the long-evident division between Eastern and Western Christianity to a head, see I. N. Ostroumoff, The History of the Council of Florence, trans. Basil Popoff (pb., Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1971).

Finally, in two great Councils, the second of Lyons and that of Ferrara-Florence, Latins and Greeks, as is notorious, easily agreed, and all unanimously proclaimed as dogma the supreme power of the Roman Pontiffs.

[The following offers no hint of how irreconcilable paradigms can be reconciled; and no suggestions of how, within those paradigms, contradictory beliefs--those of early Greek-language Christianity and the many papal innovations over the years--could be reconciled . . . other than by adopting papalism in toto, as now becomes clear]

. . . We advise the reconciliation and union with the Church of Rome; and We mean a perfect and complete union, such as could not subsist in any way if nothing else was brought about but a certain kind of agreement in the tenets of belief and an intercourse of fraternal love. The true union between Christians is that which Jesus Christ, the Author of the Church, instituted and desired, and which consists in a unity of faith and a unity of government.

[There follow honey-coated words to conceal the all-too-obvious fact that the pope will have authority over our patriarchs that at present he does not have, not to speak of the power to tell us what is dogma necessary for Salvation--and very novel ones at that, from the Orthodox point of view]

Nor is there any reason for you to fear on that account that We or any of Our successors will ever diminish your rights, the privileges of your patriarchs, or the established ritual of any one of your churches. . . . if you re-establish union with Us, you will see how, by God's bounty, the glory and dignity of your churches will be remarkably increased.

[Note "return" in the following and then say "Aaarrrggghhh!!! Note the pretence that what has been handed down to both parties is linked as though it were the same on both sides]

May you thus return to that one holy Faith which has been handed down both to Us and to you from time immemorial . . .

[And if not all Eastern patriarchates can be lured, try to get some--indeed the largest segment; note how the word "separated" is slipped in, and note the irony of "many"--the faithful non-Uniates; nor overlooked the bribes]

Suffer that We should address you more particularly, nations of the Slavonic race, . . . If in unhappy time many of your forefathers were separated from the Faith of Rome, consider now what priceless benefits a return of unity would bring to you. The Church may give you manifold aids to salvation, prosperity, and grandeur.

[In the following words addressed to the Denominationists, his assessment of what they have devolved into may not be far off]

     . . . If they will but compare that Church with their own communions, and consider what the actual state of religion is in these, they will easily acknowledge that, forgetful of their early history, they have drifted away, on many and important points, into the novelty of various errors; nor will they deny that of what may be called the patrimony of truth, which the authors of those innovations carried away with them in their desertion, there now scarcely remains to them any article of belief that is really certain and supported by authority.
    Nay, more, things have already come to such a pass that many do not even hesitate to root up the very foundation upon which alone rests all religion, and the hope of men, to wit, the divine nature of Jesus Christ, our Saviour. And again, whereas formerly they used to assert that the books of the Old and the New Testament were written under the inspiration of God, they now deny them that authority: this, indeed, was an inevitable consequence when they granted to all the right of private interpretation. Hence, too, the acceptance of individual conscience as the sole guide and rule of conduct to the exclusion of any other: hence those conflicting opinions and numerous sects that fall away so often into the doctrines of Naturalism and Rationalism.
    Therefore it is, that having lost all hope of an agreement in their persuasions, they now proclaim and recommend a union of brotherly love. And rightly, too, no doubt, for we should all be united by the bond of mutual charity. Our Lord Jesus Christ enjoined it most emphatically, and wished that this love of one another should be the mark of His disciples.

[Now we come to the heart of the matter; too bad, the same sentiment was not reflected in the pope's view of relations with the Orthodox]

But how can hearts be united in perfect charity where minds do not agree in faith?

[So back to the basic pitch that the Body of Christ is the papal "obedience"--the usual juridical terminology is side-stepped here]

It is on this account that many of those We allude to men of sound judgment and seeking after truth, have looked to the Catholic Church for the sure way of salvation; for they clearly understand that they could never be united to Jesus Christ as their head if they were not members of His body, which is the Church; nor really acquire the true Christian faith if they rejected the legitimate teaching confided to Peter and his successors. . . .

[The novelty of the official scholastic paradigm and its derivation from Cordovan Arabic Aristotelianism are now to be passed over in silence]

and not a few . . . have shown forth . . . the uninterrupted succession of the Church of Rome from the apostles, the integrity of her doctrine, and the consistency of her rule and discipline.
. . . Suffer that We should invite you to the unity which has ever existed in the Catholic Church and can never fail; suffer that We should lovingly hold out Our hand to you. The Church, as the common mother of

all, [!!!!!]

has long been calling you back to her; . . .

[It's all and always "her"!]

The Orthodox teach that the divine Being in the form of His uncreated Energies, not His Essence or Being-beyond-being, is participable. (In a framework lacking energy--despite Fr. Lonergan's views about Aquinas himself, Grace is static rather than energetic in the West: either the Latins' official "created (but "supernatural") habit, quality, or form of the soul" (or created but supernatural habitus entitativus) or else the Reformers' state of "being in divine favor and imputed Grace." Both of the Western teachings are states; neither is satisfactory in this day and age. But basic axioms or presuppositions about reality are hard to confront and dispute. (CLICK HERE FOR MORE ON ENERGY.) On inherited guilt in the left-most list above, note that the immaculate conception of the m. h. Theotokos (who is more familiarly called Panayía by Greeks) is vacuous if original guilt is abandoned; or rather, if no one is born with an ancestor's guilt, only the moment of receiving special Graces she received is in dispute. Her "Repose" or "Dormition" in Orthodoxy differs from the Latin "Assumption": The Orthodox believe that the body of the Theotokos was metathesized or translated (carried off) to Heaven after her repose; more than this is permitted but not required belief--and is certainly not a dogma of the Faith. A canticle in the First Canon of the night service for the Falling Asleep of our all-holy Lady says: ". . . like Your Son and Creator, you have submitted to the laws of nature in a manner above nature; therefore, dying, you have risen to live eternally with your Son."

As for the papacy, the Orthodox find 100% unacceptable the papal claim that his authority is ex sese, non ex ecclesia "for his own self, not from the Church." For the Orthodox, the whole Church--laity and clergy--is the source of ultimate authority and authenticity.

The foregoing lists do not take into account great and partly irreconcilable differences in piety--or theolog(o)umena like the difference over Angels: Where the East ascribes preternatural bodies (like the resurrected bodies of humans) to Angels, the Latin scholastics come down on angelic incorporeity. Aside from differences in how "non-graven" icons are revered in East and West, there are, on one side, rosaries, devotions to the Blessed Sacrament, novenas, way of the Cross (carried out only in Jerusalem by the Orthodox), etc.; and on the other side, paraclesis services, trisagions, mol(i)ebens, akathists, four "lents," and various differences in services commemorating those fallen asleep in Christ. Such differences are powerfully important for the average parishioner--just as differences in liturgical languages are for some Orthodox--who in theory prefer the language of the place. Aside from the mitigation of fasting in the Latin Church (Sabbath fasting, except on holy Great Sabbath, was prohibited by Ecumenical Synods), the foregoing nineteen or twenty points exhibit divergencies of differing importance: Seven belong to differing thought worlds.