Peoplehood: A New Model For Church Life: Part 1: Losing Ground

– Peter S. Williamson –

Why are church members having a harder and hardertime living a faithful Christian life? I can remember, growing up, hearing Bible stories at home and at church and thinking to myself, "Gee, I wish I could have lived back when Christianity was really interesting, when all the exciting stuff was going on." But I have come to see that I live in an age when Christianity is very interesting and when a lot of "exciting stuff" is going on. The 20th century has become the greatest age of missionary harvest in history. We have seen a tremendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit among Christians of many different backgrounds. Lay men and women have gotten increasingly active in carrying out the Lord's work. And ours is an age of martyrs that outshines every earlier time -- a century when more Christians have borne witness with their lives than any in the past. But alongside all the "exciting stuff' is a trend that threatens to undo the progress. In historically Christian North America and Western Europe, Christians to a great extent are not staying faithful to God's teaching about how human beings are to live. We all know the shocking and depressing figures that show that Christians are right in the social mainstream when it comes to cheating and pilferage, sexual sin, and chasing the dream of hedonistic fulfillment. Sociologists' findings only confirm what we see around us. A study conducted for the Christian Advertising Forum concluded that the 53 percent of Americans who say they have made a commitment to Christ at some time in their lives do not show values and life style distinguishable from the population as a whole. Even those of us who belong to the more theologically conservative sectors of the churches know a lot of Christians who drift away or stay at the fringes of church life and never really change their way of living. One fellowship of Christians that I know in Detroit, a group dedicated to radical discipleship, has seen its leadership riddled with a series of divorces in the last couple of years. Particularly serious is the failure to pass on Christianity to the next generation. My casual observation is that even in the best church situations only about a third of the children grow up following the Lord with the same degree of commitment as their parents. Another third continue going to church, but their lives revolve around other things. A third drop out entirely. Even as recently as 30 years ago Christians were doing better at guiding their children into an adult affirmation of faith in Christ. AN UNFAVORABLE CLIMATE Why are so many Christians not succeeding at living God's way of life? Why are Christian families no longer reliable transmitters of Christian faith and morality to the young? Why are Christians constantly losing ground in the attempt to live out the Christian way of life? Humans are social beings. Our lives are naturally influenced by the people around us. The Christian way of life, like any other, flourishes where it has social support. Our problems today, I believe, are rooted in the fact that the social environment that influences us is no longer very Christian. In many ways, in fact, it is anti-Christian. The complex problem of maintaining a Christian way of life in a non-Christian environment can be illustrated with a little story: A friend of mine had an office attached to the back of his house. It was bare and uninviting, so his wife and children decided that they would give him an aquarium at Christmas to brighten things up. After a couple of days my friend noticed that all the fish were floating on their side. This was puzzling. The fish had been fine in the pet store and were fine when he brought them home. There was nothing wrong with the aquarium. What could be the problem? He decided to try again. He bought some more fish, healthy like the first, and put them in. After a few days they died too. It finally occurred to my friend that his office, though attached to the house, was not as well heated. When he took the temperature, he found that on cold nights it sometimes went down to as low as 40 degrees So there was nothing wrong with the aquarium or the fish. What was wrong was the environment in which the aquarium was located. The fish could not survive the cold. Church life today is like the aquarium in my friend's office. We have every reason to think it should sustain Christians and their children in their life in the Lord, as it has in the past. But the environment in which the church is situated has changed. Major changes in society have produced a climate unfavorable to Christian living even for members of otherwise good churches. WHERE HAS IT COME FROM It is helpful to understand how our present situation has come about. Three changes in particular have been crucial in producing today's de-Christianized environment. One is very familiar and so needs little comment here. It is the secularization of thought and public life that has followed from the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinking has seen God as distant or nonexistent. Man has seemed capable of solving all his own problems by the use of his reason. The possibility of knowable, objective revelation from God is rejected. Religious faith is seen as conflicting with real, scientific knowledge. In fact, religion is seen as a divisive, emotional force that is best kept out of public life. Since the 18th century this outlook has come to pervade government, business, education, and media. A second change is less widely recognized. This is the breakdown of natural forms of human community due to the advance of modern technological society. Before the industrial revolution of the 18th century most people in Europe and America lived in a network of stable relationships with those they dwelt, worked and worshipped with. There were no big factories or big businesses, or large governmental, educational, or medical institutions. People normally worked in the context of a family household of some sort. Most people lived in villages or small towns. Even in the few cities, people were linked in neighborhoods and guilds. Extended family relationships played a significant part in people's lives. This small-scale, close-knit world gave people less privacy and fewer options than our own. But it provided a lot of support for Christian ideals, beliefs, moral teaching. There were positive reinforcements for right behavior, and negative pressures against departing from the norms. If someone began to get out of line with the values of the community, he would hear about it from relatives, neighbors, and others. There were disadvantages to this arrangement. Many people would not personally appropriate a relationship with God. Many were carried along without their faith being tested in ways that might have strengthened it. But the support and protection of the culture was nevertheless a great advantage. DISSOLVING RELATIONSHIPS Modern life, as we know, has changed all this. One social historian describes modernization as a social solvent. It dissolves the patterns of relationships that held people together. Protestant missionary and theologian Howard Snyder has highlighted some aspects of the process. If we ask ourselves what would undermine community, what would isolate people from one another and from a shared life, modernization is an exact answer to the question: "First, fragment family life. Since the family is the primary form of human community, undermining community begins with undermining the family by drawing off its members in different directions and into different worlds. "Next, move people away front the neighborhoods where they grew up rather than allow them to live near relatives and friends and among familiar landmarks. Then separate the places people work from where they live: divide their lives into as many worlds as possible. And gradually move people farther and farther apart through ever larger yards, bigger houses, or through walls, fences, and 'apartments.' "Then, bring television into the home. It is perhaps the modern world's most effective communication blocker. Use the automobile to extend the process further, allowing people to travel separately to stores, schools, and places of employment or entertainment. Add a second or third car to hasten the process." Obviously, personal relationships have lost out in the modern restructuring of society. Most neighborhoods, for example, have become insignificant as social units. To most ears it sounds odd even to suggest that people should have more than casual acquaintance with their neighbors. Schooling puts children in environments apart from their parents. Rather than growing up at home and being trained by their parents or uncles or aunts, children now are away the better part of the day and are taught by other adults, who may or may not share their parents' way of life. Extreme mobility constantly disrupts personal relationships. Most people have immediate family members they rarely see because they live in distant parts of the country. Many people end up not having any close relatives nearby. Because of such changes, individuals lack support and accountability in leading a Christian life. We can go even further and say that the breakdown of natural community undermines not only Christian faithfulness but basic human life: •Not only do many Christian marriages end in divorce, but the very idea of marriage as a defined institution disappears. People drift in and out of sexual relationships of every sort. Clear ideas of husband and wife roles vanish. Children are no longer seen as an essential part of marriage. • Not only do many children leave the church as they grow up, but many young people suffer psychological and emotional problems, which show up in alcohol and drug abuse, crime, and suicide. • Not only do many Christians fall into fornication, but homosexuality and pornography become widely accepted in society. MORAL FRAMEWORK ABANDONED A third big change - related to the first two - which has revolutionized society is the open rejection of Judeo-Christian morality. This cultural upheaval was a long time coming. Since the 1960s it has established itself as the reigning cultural position. Previously, Christian moral principles implicitly undergirded law and custom in the United States. Respect for honesty, authority, social responsibility, sexual morality, and family and religion were publicly promoted. Society was not officially Christian, but Christianity provided society's de facto moral framework. The Ten Commandments were taught in public schools. Laws prohibited behavior inconsistent with Christian moral teaching. In most social circles it was unacceptable to flout Christian morality. An interesting instance of this was the 1934 American movie industry guidelines. Among the movie producers' self-imposed strictures were these: One: The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not imply that low forms of sex relationships are the accepted or common thing. Two: Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, suggestive postures and gestures are not to be shown. Three: Pointed profanity (this includes the words 'God, Lord, Jesus, Christ,' unless used reverently, and 'hell, S.O.B., damn, gawd') or other profane and vulgar expressions, however used, is forbidden. Four: "Ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains." The movie-makers upheld these guidelines to some degree until about 1960. Today such a list of don'ts would be considered ridiculous. TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH The secularization of public life, the breakup of natural community, and the open establishment of an amoral consensus have produced a social environment inimical to Christian living. It is no wonder that Christians in this environment are not doing very well at living out their way of life and handing it on to their children. The de-Christianized environment has given rise to a characteristic problem of Christianity in our society: many people retain the name of Christian, and even worship and speak sincerely of their Christian faith, but their lives are shaped more deeply by non-Christian influences than by the gospel. This is a historic turning point in the life of the church. It calls for a fundamentally different way of living as the Christian people and relating to the society around us. My friend's aquarium required an adaptation-a heating element and a thermostat-in order to fulfill its purpose in a cold environment. The church today must make an analogous adaptation to sustain Christian life in the environment in which it finds itself. The transition we are in now is a time of great spiritual conflict, because evil spiritual forces are at work behind the de-Christianization of Western societies. Certainly the Holy Spirit is also at work around the world. But forces antithetical to Christ have gained the upper hand in the West. Without resorting to overt persecution, they are suffocating Christian life. God has been pouring out the Holy Spirit in powerful ways to equip us in this conflict. Only in the power of the Spirit can we stand in this time of trial. Only as the people of God are sealed and strengthened by the Holy Spirit can we resist the pressures and allurements of the powerful de- Christianized culture which has emerged (see Rev. 7:3). With less and less middle ground all the time between what serves God's purposes and what serves his enemy, it is a time for clear choices. We need to be clearly "in the Lord" and "in the kingdom of God," building up that which serves his cause. It is a time to make radical decisions in order to secure Christian life in an age of crisis. – (Sidebar Article) – The Early Christians:They Lived as a People The Christians of the first centuries saw themselves as a distinct people in the world. They showed their peoplehood by caring for one another as brothers and sisters in the new covenant, by making a separation between their own way of life and that of the people around them. The early Christian writers describe how the first Christians fulfilled their commitment to care of each other. Aristedes, a Greek Christian of the second century, gives us this picture: "They love one another and do not overlook the widow and deliver the orphan from him who treats him harshly. He who has supplies the needs of him who has not, without grudging. If they see a stranger they bring him under their roof and rejoice over him as a real brother, because they call themselves brothers not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. And whenever one of their poor passes from the world, each one of them according to his ability gives heed to him and carefully sees to his burial. And if they hear that one of their number is imprisoned or afflicted on account of the name of their Messiah, all of them anxiously minister to his needs, and if possible redeem him and set him free. And if there is among them any that is poor and needy, and if they have no spare food, they fast two or three days to supply the needy with what they need" (Apology, 15:7). At the end of the second century, the African Christian Tertullian adds these details: "On the monthly day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation, but only if it be his pleasure, and only if he be able, for there is no compulsion, all is voluntary. These gifts are . . . taken ... to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined now to the house; such too as have suffered shipwreck; and if there happen to be any in the mines or banished to the islands or shut up in the prisons for nothing but their fidelity to the cause of God's church, they become the nurslings of their confession" (Apology, 39). A modern historian, Igini Giordani, offers these descriptions: "Assistance was given to all who could be reached, but it was given first of all to companions in faith and in a spirit of brotherhood. 'Although the good which is done to strangers is greater,' wrote Tertullian, 'it does not come before that which is due to one's neighbors.' . . . "Because the Christians loved one another as brothers and called one another by that name-so that it could be said that they 'love one another almost before they know one another'-this love, translated into works of charity, created a real and effective solidarity between the rich and the poor. . . . "The virtue of hospitality was practiced on a vast scale, since every Christian traveling for business, necessity, or relaxation immediately sought out the Christian community wherever he arrived; and in it he did not feel a stranger" (The Social Message of the Early Church Fathers). The Christians' sense of being a distinct people, living their own holy way of life in the midst of nations, was a frequent theme of the early Christian teachers. At the end of the second century Clement of Alexandria boldly stated the contrast between the ways of life of Christians and other peoples in this way: "Let the Athenian follow the laws of Solon, and the Argive those of Phoroneus, and the Spartan those of Lycurgus; but if you enroll yourself as one of God's people, heaven is your country, God your lawgiver. And what are the laws? 'Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not seduce boys; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt love the Lord thy God.' And the complements of these are those laws of reason and words of sanctity which are inscribed on men's hearts: 'Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself; to him who strikes thee on the cheek, present also the other; thou shalt not lust, for by lust alone thou hast committed adultery." (Exhortation to the Greeks, 10). The Christians of the first centuries recognized that if they were to obey the commandments they needed to follow different customs from those of people around them who did not acknowledge God or his law. Giordani describes some of the conclusions the early Christians drew regarding the kind of spiritual separation to be made between themselves and the surrounding society: "The gospel teaching demanded that Christians stay away from all those places and exhibitions of one sort or another in which monotheism, or Christ as God, or his moral law might be offended. "Therefore they stayed away from religious festivals, they did not go to the temples, adorn their houses with garlands on the festival days, light torches, or wear wreaths upon their heads, etc. They continued to frequent the baths, the basilicas, and the forums in the daily round of business, but they did so with a feeling of revulsion, and they kept away from those places too as much as possible because of the records of idolatry, the exhibitions of corruptions, and the fraudulent transactions they were bound to run into when they entered them. The baths, for example, had in a great number of cases become real brothels and the attendants acted, even legally, as procurers." The Christians' refusal to exchange their own way of life for that of the non-Christians they lived among was recognized as a key issue between Christianity and pagan society. Giordani tells of one instance in which "Seven men and five women of Scillium were condemned to death by the proconsul of Asia because they refused to 'return to Roman customs.' The sentence of death read: 'Since Speratus, Nartallus, Cittinus, Donata, Vestia, and Secunda have confessed that they live in the manner of the Christians and since, when a reprieve was offered them if they would begin again to live after the manner of the Romans, they have persevered in their obstinacy, we condemn them to be put to the sword.'"(Pastoral Renewal, July/August 1988) The above has been used with the expressed permission of Faith & Renewal,Copyright (c) 1997 Faith & Renewal - www.christlife.org source: http://www.rebuildjournal.org/default.html

Not with a shout but with a whisper: Part Two

Here is the other article.

Ukrainian president invites Pope Benedict XVI to visit Kyiv Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has invited Pope Benedict XVI to visit Kyiv, according to the Catholic World News. With Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone visiting Ukraine, President Yushchenko handed the Vatican Secretary of State a personal message to the Pontiff, asking him to visit Kiev sometime this year. A visit by the Roman Pontiff to Kiev could have great significance, at a time when Yushchenko is seeking to unify the Orthodox churches of Ukraine. Three separate groups are contesting the leadership of the country`s Orthodox faithful. One of those groups-- which maintains its fealty to the Patriarchate of Moscow-- has bitterly protested the establishment of a Catholic archdiocese in Kyiv, while another-- led by Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv - has been more friendly toward Rome. The Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar of Kyiv has proposed a single unified Ukrainian patriarchate for all Eastern Christians, bringing together Catholics and Orthodox. In his talks with Cardinal Bertone, President Yushchenko also asked for help from the Vatican Secret Archives in probing the record of the famine that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians under the Stalin regime. Yushchenko referred to the campaign of starvation as a policy of "genocide" under Soviet leadership. Cardinal Bertone was in Ukraine from May 23 to 26, to preside at two beatification ceremonies, for Sister Marta Vetskaya and Bohdan Khmelnytskyi. The Catholic World News permanent URL of article: http://www.unian.net/eng/news/news-253320.html

Not with a shout but with a whisper: Part One

Two recent news articles have shown how the unification of 'official Orthodoxy' and Roman Catholicism will come about. Read and consider. ROCIA will not be a part of this.

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=58680 Orthodox bishop shares Communion with Catholics Timisoara , May. 27, 2008 (CWNews.com) - A Romanian Orthodox bishop has shared Communion with Catholics, causing a sensation in a country where Byzantine Catholics and Orthodox have a history of tense relations. At the consecration of the Queen of Peace parish church in Timisoara on May 25, Orthodox Metropolitan Nicolae Corneanu of Banat asked to share Communion. The Orthodox metropolitan approached the altar and received the Eucharist from his own hand. Romanian Catholic Bishop Alexandru Mesian of Lugoj was the celebrant of the Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine Catholic church; Archbishop Francisco-Javier Lozano, the apostolic nuncio to Romania, was also present. Although Orthodox and Catholic bishops often join in ecumenical services, and occasionally participate in each other's liturgical ceremonies, they do not share Communion-- an indication of the breach in ecclesial communion between the Orthodox churches and the Holy See. In Romania, tensions between the Orthodox Church and the Eastern-rite Romanian Catholic Church have been pronounced, adding to the surprise created by Metropolitan Corneanu's action. With some Orthodox believers outraged by the metropolitan's sharing Communion with Catholic bishops, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania issued a statement saying that at the next meeting of the Orthodox synod, in July, Metropolitan Corneanu "may be asked to give an appropriate explanation" for his action. The statement from the Orthodox patriarchate went on to say that ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church, "already quite fragile, cannot be helped, but are rather complicated," by sharing in Communion. Metropolitan Corneanu-- who was one of the first Orthodox bishops to admit that he had cooperated with the secret police under the Communist regime-- has a record of friendship with Romanian Catholics. He was among the few Orthodox leaders prepared to return church properties that had been seized by the Communist government from Catholic ownership in 1948 and handed over to Orthodox control.

Bishop Antonious Markos:A lit candle is better than stumbling in the dark

Prayer and the practice of medicine, time and chance have taken Bishop Antonious Markos El- Baramousy to the heart of the African continent. Four decades ago, Abuna Mikhail of Asmara welcomed him with these words: "Saint Mark is our father, and Alexandria is our mother." That was long before he was officially ordained Coptic Bishop for African Affairs. If there is a surefire way to enthrall the masses it is to combine ritual with miracle, mass with social and community work. "My memory of preaching to the poor begins in the early fifties, when I was a boy of 15." This weekly ritual began with a short trip to some poverty-stricken village outside Cairo where he held a service for Coptic peasants. The first village he served was Abu-Za'bal Al-Balad, in the vicinity of what is today Cairo's northernmost suburb, Al-Marg. He discovered Christian peasants who had never been baptised. Others had not had Communion for years. Poverty, illiteracy and illness were the most prominent features in their lives. Their need was great, the resources at his disposal hopelessly meagre. The learning curve was steep but he quickly realised that negative thinking led only to bitterness, fatigue and frustration. The encounters in the village prepared him for Ethiopia, which in turn prepared him for Kenya and South Africa. "Church is not just about rituals and prayer, it is a way of life, a unique sense of community," he stresses. Vocational training centres are established alongside the Coptic churches he has founded across Africa. "I long ago learned to adopt a holistic and humanist approach. When you preach to the dispossessed give them a fishing rod or trap. Teach them to fish. Don't give them fish," says the Bishop, striding toward his nonagenarian mother who is being helped to her seat by a nurse. "She likes it here" in the old people's home in the Anba Barsoom Al-Aryan Monastery, Helwan. Spotless and spacious, it combines a school, training centre and hospital. "We are building similar complexes across Africa," he tells me. "We need volunteers and adventurous professionals." Wherever he goes in Africa he always appears to be coming home, waving at one parishioner, shooting a big smile at another. The Coptic Church was a founding member of the All-Africa Council of Churches, a pan-African organisation that groups several churches. Bishop Markos was vice-president of the AACC for 11 years. The Coptic Church is also a member of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) which brings together a large number of Christian Orthodox and Protestant churches. He has participated in several WCC meetings in which he met many African clergymen from a wide variety of Protestant churches. And to the African clergymen he would invariably claim that the Coptic Orthodox Church is the oldest church in Africa, founded in Alexandria by its first patriarch, Saint Mark. Born in the Old Cairo district of Al-Malek Al- Saleh, the bishop's father was a clerk at the Ministry of Education. "My father was a poor but strong-willed and determined man. He made sure that all his children became university graduates, doctors, engineers, holders of PhDs." "A loving family, a fulfilling career and charity. All these things are important but there is this other dimension. Because the world is a very precarious place you need a comforter, larger than life. So many people are living on the edge." Bishop Antonious Markos maintains excellent working relationships with a wide variety of African churches -- mainstream Anglicans, Methodists and Roman Catholics as well as the more evangelical Pentecostalists, the indigenous African Zionist Christian churches of South Africa and the Kimbanguists of Central Africa. Through a Swiss missionary friend, the Reverend Wilfried Flade, he was introduced to Joseph Diangienda Kuntima, spiritual head of the large and immensely influential Kimbanguist Church. The bishop soon received an invitation to visit the Kimbabguist Theological College in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. Today there are three Coptic churches in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "We respect the indigenous cultural traditions of the people. We accommodate indigenous custom except where it flagrantly contradicts the tenets of the church." The bishop was instrumental in founding the Organisation of African Independent Churches in 1978, a grouping of indigenous African churches not affiliated to any European mother church. The Coptic Church was a founding member. There are 12 Coptic churches in South Africa today. One is in the African township of Gugulethu on the outskirts of Cape Town, another in Soweto, the sprawling Johannesburg township and a city in its own right. "Every people's language is dear to them." In one South African Coptic Church, the priest is an ethnic Zulu, the liturgy is in Zulu and even the music is not Coptic. "The parishioners choose fast-paced tunes for their services. I do not object." The bishop smiles. "Outward appearances do not really matter. Substance is from within." The bishop may be a man of religion but it is difficult to pigeon-hole him. He was the first Egyptian surgeon to practice in Ethiopia. His nickname, "Doctor Bishop", opened doors, endearing him to the poor, both confusing and amusing the powers that be. He initially had trouble convincing the Kenyan authorities that, even though he was a monk, he was applying to the Kenyan Ministry of Health for a licence to practice medicine. He tends to answer questions about his experiences in Africa south of the Sahara by painstakingly working out both the year and his age at the time as if shuffling through mental index cards for an autobiography already in progress. He has, indeed, written several autobiographical works covering different periods of his African ministry in which he variously describes himself as doctor, deacon, monk or bishop to designate the different stages of his career. The Coptic Church in Africa struggles against many odds, as no one knows better than Coptic Pope Shenouda III's special emissary in Africa and chief advisor on African affairs. Unlike the Church in North America and Australia, where wealthy Coptic communities sustain church coffers, the Coptic Church in Africa is poor. The bishop, moreover, does not want the activities of the Coptic Bishopric in Africa to be a drain on the church's resources though he is perfectly well aware that "a missionary without money is like a soldier without a gun." Even before his ordination Bishop Antonious Markos was obsessed with working for the Coptic Church, and no more so than in Ethiopia. He left Egypt for Ethiopia in May 1966. His first posting was in Asmara, today the Eritrean capital but then a pretty provincial city. From Asmara he was transferred to Deber Berhan -- The Mountain of Light -- a remote and impoverished outpost. Conditions there were deplorable. The church was too small to accommodate the masses outside every Sunday morning. Sixty children showed up for the first Sunday School. The following Sunday the number jumped to 250 children. In subsequent weeks it multiplied -- 500 to 1,000 to 1,500. Services were in Coptic and not Ge'ez, the ancient liturgical tongue of the Ethiopian Church. Perched high in the wild range it was wet and bitterly cold. Ethiopian doctors refused to work there, frightened off by rumours of the barbarous nature of the region's inhabitants. Bishop Markos's introduction to the youth of Ethiopia was through the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). Local YMCA leaders asked him to help in first aid training; in return he asked the youths to teach him Amharic. The Tigrinya he had learned in Asmara was incomprehensible in other parts of Ethiopia. The bishop never had a family of his own but in Ethiopia he adopted the son of a poor Ethiopian priest, educated him and raised him as his own. Also in Ethiopia the bishop founded a welfare association and home for needy students. Bishop Antonious Markos has the easy warmth of those born to minister. I first met him in Ghana in November 1977 when he was assessing the possibility of founding a Coptic church to serve the Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian communities in Ghana. Sometimes his diligent efforts do not bear immediate fruit and to this day there is no Coptic church in Ghana, even though he did manage to establish churches in two of Ghana's immediate neighbours, Ivory Coast and Togo. But Bishop Antonious Markos is patient and continues to work on founding a Coptic Church in Ghana. Africans appear to be particularly impressed with the Coptic funeral service. "Someone once told me that, 'you pray for the departed as if he or she was a king or queen'." Prayers for the departed are in the local African languages which is very important. Indeed, many Africans become curious about the Coptic Church after witnessing a funeral service. The Coptic Church sees itself as the Mother Church in Africa. And of all Africa's contemporary churches, the Ethiopian is the closest to the Coptic. "One faith and a 17-century spiritual bond," the bishop remarks. Tradition and the priesthood have linked the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches down the ages. The 20th century, however, witnessed a tragic break between the two. The bishop was in Ethiopia when talk of the severing of ties was first bandied. The prospect grew out of a long-running grievance and the demise of the emperor only exacerbated matters. The Elders of the Ethiopian Church were yearning to cut the umbilical chord between the Egyptian and Ethiopian churches and it was eventually severed, though the final cut was largely at the hands of politicians rather than the clergy. All the warning signals were there. The sudden deaths of first Abuna Basilious, the head of the Ethiopian Church, in 1969, and then of Egypt's Pope Kirollos in March 1970, presented an opportunity for radical change. The Egyptian Church "received a surprise request" from the Ethiopian Church to consecrate the Ethiopian patriarch in May 1971 without waiting for the enthronement of the new Egyptian pope. More symbolically significant and without any historical precedent, the Ethiopians also requested that their patriarch's consecration take place in Ethiopia and not Egypt. "The Coptic Holy Synod decided to send a Coptic delegation to Addis Ababa to consecrate the new Ethiopian patriarch. The Egyptian delegation was led by the Metropolitan Antonius of Sohag, the acting patriarch while the throne of Saint Mark was vacant. "After the end of the liturgy, we realised that all the films taken of the crowning of the Ethiopian patriarch had disappeared. The only pictures remaining were those of him adjusting the crown with the help of the Ethiopian bishop. And these appeared in the Ethiopian media with headlines like: 'For the first time the Ethiopian Orthodox Church crowned its patriarch with its own hands and in its own land and among its own people.' Tempers were running high," the bishop remembered. The Ethiopian emperor was a conservative who loved Egypt and its Coptic Church. His name was ritually changed from Ras Tafari to Haile Sellasie, or The Power of the Trinity. The old emperor couldn't stop the call for change which was reaffirmed after his political demise. The Egyptian doctor in Ethiopia was at a loss. He refused to play the blame game. In the past the Ethiopian Church was a daughter of the Coptic Church, but now it is a sister church, he told himself. The bishop cherishes the memory of the late Emperor Haile Sellasie. "His Imperial Majesty visited the sick and infirm in hospitals. He sat by their sickbeds, held the hands of his diseased and humble subjects. He was a kind man, a fatherly potentate who helped his people. He did not publicise his good works," the bishop assured me. "'Where is the Egyptian doctor who speaks Amharic,' inquired the emperor on one of his rounds." Thus began a special friendship between two devoutly religious men. Tragedy struck on the first day of the Ethiopian New Year in September 1974 with the eruption of the Ethiopian Revolution. The Egyptian doctor had no idea trouble was brewing as Mengistu Halie Mariam was usurping power as the country's new strongman. The imperial bodyguard was disbanded, the vast imperial estates confiscated and the private imperial exchequer closed. Next the aged and ailing Haile Sellassie was deposed. A few months later the head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Patriarch Abouna Theophilos was disrobed. The Egyptian Church refused to recognise the new head of the Ethiopian Church. They were trying times. The Egyptian medical practitioner loved the old Ethiopia but there was no place for him in the new. Ethiopia Tikdem, Ethiopia First, was the new slogan of the ruling military and revolutionary clique. The country was now officially atheist and the bishop soon received a surprise visit from a high-ranking officer who told him in no uncertain terms that proselytising was forbidden. Religion, he was told, was the root of backwardness. That was the last straw. He left Ethiopia for good in March 1975. He was to return for short visits again to the country he had come to love and Ethiopia was the springboard from which he explored other African countries. After a brief spell at the family home in Faggala, Cairo, the doctor headed for a monastery and braced himself for monastic life. But he yearned to return to the social concerns of his earlier career. At heart he was a preacher, a prosyletiser, more so than a medical practitioner. But he had vowed to devote himself to monastic life on 22 February 1964. Now he was about to fulfil his promise. On 29 July 1975 Pope Shenouda visited the Baramose Coptic Monastery, and the doctor was summoned and summarily informed that he would be consecrated as a novice at dawn. He spent a sleepless night in prayer and has never turned back. Even so he could not resist the pull of Africa and barely six months later he was back. Accompanied by a young Kenyan, Joseph Omanyo, who had just completed his theological studies in Cairo, he left for Kenya on 11 January 1976. Armed with liturgical books, altar utensils and a few medical and surgical instruments he arrived in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Kenya was a world away from its northern neighbour Ethiopia. His first task was to master Kiswahili, the national language. The second was to cater to the needs of the Copts of Nairobi who wanted to have liturgy only once a fortnight because they were accustomed to head for the beautiful countryside surrounding the Kenyan capital on Sundays to picnic. Services were therefore held twice a month, and still the congregation arrived late -- "just before the end of the liturgy". Life, at first, was difficult. He enrolled in a school of languages to study Kiswahili -- a Bantu language heavily influenced by Arabic. He had to speak the language of the people and within six months of intensive study he could communicate well with the locals. Food and accommodation proved to be a less easily surmountable problem. Devout Copts fast for well over half of the year. During the fasts Copts do not consume meat, dairy or other animal products. At the Methodist Church's guest house, where he was initially lodged, the cooks refused to prepare vegetarian meals for him. Lent of 1976 became a most trying time. In a separate incident the Archbishop of the African Independent Pentecostal Church in Kenya prohibited Bishop Antonious Markos from preaching the Coptic sermon. "Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely," the bishop says of the time. He knew he was in uncharted waters, but he pressed on. Trials and tribulations only strengthened his faith.*This articles is from Al-Ahram Weekly Online and can be found here. source: http://www.mycopticchurch.com/articles/read.asp?f=saints/BishopAntoniousMarkos.html

Chalcedonians and Monophysites: Do We Share the Same Beliefs?

In this short paper I am not going to try to give a comprehensive overview of the Christological controversies of the 5th-7th centuries; rather, I am merely trying to bring out a few points which are important for anyone who wants to approach the present discussions of reunion between the Chalcedonian church and the non-Chalcedonians with an informed understanding of the issues involved.

At the present time, it is being claimed that the Chalcedonian Orthodox Church and the non-Chalcedonians (monophysites) actually believe the same things with regard to the Incarnation of Christ, but that we express our common belief in different words. To understand clearly whether this is in fact true, we must be aware of the meanings of four key terms as they were used in the 4th and 5th centuries, at the time of the Trinitarian controversy (4th century) and the Christological controversy (5th century). These four terms are prosopon, hypostasis, physis, and ousia.

Four Key Terms

Prosopon, (plural: prosopa) had the basic meaning of face or countenance. Thus, it was also used to mean a character (in a play), mask, outward appearance or expression, role, an individual self or person, a particular individual, or a person in the legal sense.

Hypostasis (plural: hypostaseis) comes from the Greek verb uphistemi, which is a compound of upo (under) and istemi (stand); thus the basic meaning of uphistemi is to stand (or be placed) under as a support or foundation. Etymologically, hypostasis is the equivalent of the Latin substantio (substance). In my dictionary of Patristic Greek, the definitions of hypostasis go on for 7 pages, but in general we can say that the range of meanings included the substance, stuff or material (out of which something is made); the foundation (of a building or of a line of reasoning); the substantive existence of a being, or also the one who has this substantive existence (approximating the meaning of person); it could be used as an equivalent to ousia (essence), or it could refer to a concrete instance of an abstract essence, that is, nature realized in a particular individual. As you will note, in this paper I use the Greek word hypostasis rather than the word "person"; it is only after Chalcedon that "person" becomes a reliable translation for hypostasis.

Physis (plural: physeis) could refer to nature as manifest in the physical world; theologically, it signified "nature" with the meaning of an essence with the attributes proper to it; thus it referred to a concrete reality, whether a specific kind or species of being (such as the race of men) or, more specifically, to a particular being with its attributes—as we might, in English, on the one hand speak of "the nature of men" or "the nature of God," and on the other hand say, "He is of a shy nature, while she is of an outgoing nature." It is helpful to keep in mind that, before Chalcedon, many people felt that "to be anything more than a mental abstraction a physis must be realized in a concrete, independent entity, a hypostasis" (Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, p. 1500). Thus, to many people, speaking of two physeis necessarily implied the existence of two hypostaseis.

Ousia (plural: ousiai) is a participle of the verb "to be"; it could be translated "substance" (as in homoousios—consubstantial), but still with a wide range of meanings: one's property, possessions or substance; the material substance out of which a thing is made; immutable, stable being, ultimate reality; a real thing as opposed to a name or symbol of the thing; the true nature of a thing or the possession of such a nature; the primary real which underlies all change and process in nature.

As we have seen, each of these terms could be used in many ways (think of all the ways we use the word "nature" in English). This could, and did, cause difficulties when the Church tried to express in human language the fullness of truth which had been given to Her on the day of Pentecost. For example, the word prosopon had a rather weak meaning for the idea of "person" — to say that the one God had three prosopa could be interpreted in an Orthodox way, but it could also be intrepreted in a Sabellian or modalistic way: one God with three faces, one God Who played the three "roles" of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Likewise, to say that Jesus Christ had one prosopon could be interpreted in an Orthodox way, but it was also the way in which the Nestorians expressed their heretical idea that in Jesus Christ the Word of God was united to a specific man in a kind of moral union.

Another problem arose in the use of the three terms hypostasis, physis, and ousia. Although physis and hypostasis were usually used to refer to a concrete reality, while ousia usually had a more general and abstract sense, yet all three could be used interchangeably in many cases. Thus, in the First Council of Nicea, hypostasis and ousia were used more-or-less synonymously. In the theological language available to the Church in the 4th-5th centuries, there were simply no clear and obvious terms to express the theological ideas of "person" and "nature."

In the course of the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century, it became clear that the Church needed more precise language with which to express the unity and distinction within the Trinity, and the three Cappadocian Fathers brilliantly solved this problem by narrowing and clarifying the meaning of these terms, expressing the unity of God by speaking of one ousia and the distinctions between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit by speaking of three hypostasis. It was not, however, immediately clear how the terms used by the Cappadocians in Trinitarian theology could or should be applied in Christology—for example, to speak of the divine ousia united with the human ousia in Christ could sound as though the entire Trinity had become incarnate. A clear and Orthodox way to apply these terms to the Incarnation still had to be worked out. And thus we enter the Christological controversies of the fifth century.

The Christological Controversies of the Fifth Century

At the time of these controversies, there were two main theological schools of thought within the eastern section of the Roman empire: the "Antiochene" and the "Alexandrian" schools. There were a number of differences between them, such as their methods of interpreting Scripture. For our purposes, it is most important to consider their different understandings of how our salvation was accomplished.

The Antiochene school was characterized by an insistence on the full humanity of Christ. Against Apollinaris, who said that the Word of God had assumed only human flesh, the Antiochene theologians were concerned to preserve the entire human nature, including freedom of will, of the Incarnate Christ. For them, it was the union and cooperation of the human with the divine in Christ which brought about our salvation — if Christ were not fully human, we would not be saved. Their shortcoming was in a weak or poorly expressed understanding of the union between the human and divine natures; taken to its logical extreme (and most or all heresies are an attempt to make the Christian Revelation fit human logic in one way or another), this led to the heresy of Nestorius.

The Alexandrian school, on the other hand, was characterized by a deep opposition to the heresy of Arius, who had held that the Logos was not God but a created being, although superior to humans. Thus the Alexandrians especially insisted on the divinity of Christ — if the Son of God had not united our humanity to Himself so completely that He made it fully His own, we would not have been saved. The weakness of this school of thought was a tendency to reduce the humanity of Christ to a purely passive element which seems to lose its distinctive humanness and to be absorbed into the divinity; the logical extreme of this is monophysitism.

St. Cyril of Alexandria, although fully Orthodox, nevertheless stood within the Alexandrian theological tradition. Because of this, and also because of his intense opposition to the heresy of Nestorius, he was especially concerned to assert the unity of the Incarnate Word. To do this, he picked up the phrase, "one nature (physis) of the Word of God Incarnate" out of a writing which was being circulated under the name of St. Athanasius the Great. As it happens, in the 6th century this was discovered to be a fraud — the work had actually been written by Apollinaris. To the Antiochenes, the phrase used by St. Cyril sounded Apollinarian, and in a way they were right; at the same time, St. Cyril (who believed that this phrase carried the authority of St. Athanasius) was interpreting it in an Orthodox way. St. Cyril's shortcoming was simply a certain imprecision in his way of expressing the union of God and man in the Incarnation—or rather, in his concern to emphasize the unity of divine and human in Christ, he could find no clear way of expressing the reality of the full humanness of Christ. His theology was Orthodox but his language was somewhat ambiguous. He did understand that the Orthodox view of the Incarnation could be expressed in other terms; in his letters he indicated that he also accepted speaking of Christ as having two natures, as long as that was interpreted in an Orthodox way. His preference, however, remained with the "one nature" formula, because he felt it was a better safeguard against Nestorianism.

We must keep in mind that at this point the word "nature" (physis) still had a rather broad range of meanings. All, both Alexandrians and Antiochenes, usually used physis and hypostasis as equivalent. The Antiochenes tended to speak of two physeis and two hypostaseis, in order to show clearly the fully-functioning humanity of Christ, but in this way they only had the weak word prosopon to indicate the unity of divine and human. The Alexandrians usually spoke of one physis and one hypostasis; St. Cyril used the phrases "one nature (physis) of the Word of God Incarnate" and "one hypostasis of the Word of God Incarnate" interchangeably. Speaking of one physis and one hypostasis, the Alexandrian theologians showed clearly the complete unity of divine and human in Christ, but they found no satisfactory way of indicating Christ's full humanity. It remained for the Council of Chalcedon to combine the insights of both these schools by separating the two terms and using hypostasis to refer to the one Person of Christ and physis to refer to the full divinity and the full humanity which were united in Him.

The Council of Chalcedon

As we have seen, the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools of thought each emphasized an aspect of the Incarnation which was absolutely vital for our salvation: the Antiochenes stressed the importance of a complete, fully-functioning humanity in Christ, freely and perfectly cooperating with the divine. The Alexandrians insisted on the necessity of a union between human and divine that was so intimate, so all-embracing, that the Word of God truly made His own the humanity which He had assumed. The Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon, avoiding the heretical extremes of each position, combined the best from both schools in the Chalcedonian definition:

Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all with one voice teach that it should be confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same Son, the Same perfect in Godhead, the Same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the Same [consisting] of a rational soul and a body; homoousios (consubstantial) with the Father as to His Godhead, and the Same homoousios (consubstantial) with us as to His manhood; in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of the Father before ages as to His Godhead, and in the last days, the Same, for us and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin Theotokos as to His manhood;

One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, made known in two natures [which exist] without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the difference of the natures having been in no wise taken away by reason of the union, but rather the properties of each being preserved, and [both] concurring into one prosopon and one hypostasis— not parted or divided into two prosopa, but one and the Same Son and Only-begotten, the divine Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from of old [have spoken] concerning Him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and as the Symbol of the Fathers (the Nicene Creed) has delivered to us (quoted, with a few small changes of my own, from Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. I, p. 524).

The "breakthrough" of Chalcedon was made possible at least partially by the contribution of St. Leo the Great, Pope of Rome, who, in his Tome, drew a balanced and harmonious picture of the Incarnate Christ as existing in two natures (substantiae in the Latin original), united in one person (persona in Latin). The bishops assembled at Chalcedon carefully compared the Tome of St. Leo with the writings of St. Cyril and declared St. Leo's theology to be fully Orthodox. Dioscoros, however, refused to accept the phrase "union of two natures" or "...in two natures." He insisted on the phrase "union from two natures" or "...out of two natures" (ek duo physeon). This formulation had been used widely in the decades leading up to Chalcedon, but it had the drawback of being able to be interpreted in a monophysite way, as it was by Eutyches, who declared that he accepted two natures before the union but only one nature after the union —that is, when the two natures of Godhead and manhood were Joined in the Incarnation of Christ, they were united into one composite, divine-human nature. Dioscoros, in maintaining that the Incarnation was a union from two natures, not a union of two natures, denied that the two natures continued to exist, each preserving its own characteristics, in the Incarnate Lord. His position was decisively rejected by the Council.

The Aftermath of Chalcedon

Chalcedon remained true to the thought of St. Cyril of Alexandria, but in order to express this thought clearly, it had to abandon his words ("one nature of the Word of God Incarnate"). Large groups, however, refused this modification and insisted on retaining the wording of St. Cyril; these were the monophysites (from "mono" and "physis"). Because of their insistence on St. Cyril's exact words, some historians call them "fundamentalist Cyrillians."

Because the regions where the monophysites were in the majority were at the fringes of the Empire (Egypt, Palestine and Syria), and because the emperor tried to impose acceptance of Chalcedon by brute force, some historians explain the division between the Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians as being the result of political and cultural tensions. This is overly simplistic, as we realize when we note that the Christians in Syria were divided between Nestorians, Chalcedonians and monophysites.

It might seem more plausible, at least on the surface, to say that the difference between Chalcedonians and monophysites is only a matter of language — keeping in mind also that some of the monophysites were Syriac speakers, which led to the problem of finding adequate translations of subtle theological terms. Isn't it possible, some say, that the Chalcedonians are using the word physis in one way, and the non-Chalcedonians in another way — that they are simply using different language to express the incomprehensible mystery of the union of human and divine in the Incarnate Christ? If this is so, then we all believe the same thing but we are simply expressing it in different ways. This is the line of reasoning followed by the Chalcedonian/non-Chalcedonian dialogues of recent years. It seems convincing, but it is false, as we can see when we look further down the road to the monothelete controversy, the theology of St. Maximos the Confessor, and the 6th Ecumenical Council, as we will do in the final section of this paper.

Reunion Attempts

Between the 4th and 6th Ecumenical Councils (451-680), there were many attempts at reunion between the monophysites and Chalcedonians. Some were regional; others were the official policy of the Empire. In some cases the attempt was made to blur the issues and come up with a statement vague enough that everyone could accept it and interpret it as they liked; in other cases the Emperor or the Patriarch of Constantinople simply forbade discussion of the points of division. None of these attempted reunions lasted.

In the present attempt at reunion with the monophysites, we see the same tendencies to blur the issues and to avoid mentioning points on which we disagree. Let us look, for example, at a talk given at the third consultation between the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox theologians in Geneva in 1970 by Fr. Paul Verghese and printed in the Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XVI, nos. 1 and 2, 1971, pp. 133-143 (This talk is also printed in Does Chalcedon Divide or Unite?, pp. 127-137, under the name of Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios, the name Fr. Verghese took when he was consecrated a metropolitan). The author, a theologian of the Syrian Orthodox Church of India, states that:

those who accept Chalcedon and those who reject that council agree that Christ is consubstantial with us in his humanity and that the human nature with all its properties and faculties remains distinct and unabsorbed in Christ.... We are happy that both those Orthodox Churches in communion with Constantinople and even our Roman Catholic friends accept this double consubstantiality. In this respect all of us adhere to the one authentic tradition, even when some of us do not accept the council of Chalcedon. This means that for us Chalcedon is not an essential element of the authentic tradition, and as far as we are concerned, other churches can also reject Chalcedon and still be within the authentic tradition (Review, pp. 134-135; Does Chalcedon, pp. 128-129).

The idea expressed in this passage — that we hold the same faith although one group accepts all seven Councils while the other group rejects the last four — was also stated in several discussions during the 1970 consultation (all quotes taken from the Review, pp. 30-34):

Bishop Gregorios [Coptic]: We are asked why, if we accept the faith of Chalcedon, we do not accept the council itself. The fact is the we have difficulties about the horos [definition] of Chalcedon. Our fathers found Nestorianism in the horos of Chalcedon.... Even if we accept the teaching of Chalcedon, we are not obliged to accept Chalcedon.

Liqe Seltanat Habte Mariam [Ethiopian]: By all means, you continue to believe in Chalcedon; but do not expect us to accept Chalcedon.

Bishop Zakka [Syrian]: When we say we accept the faith, we mean the faith that the Church had before Chalcedon, formulated by the three ecumenical councils accepted by all. Let us be quite clear; Chalcedon is not acceptable to us.

Verghese: When the faith is already there without Chalcedon why insist on Chalcedon being accepted? There should be no misunderstanding of the position of the non-Chalcedonian Churches; there will be no formal acceptance of Chalcedon.

Fr. Paul Verghese later made a statement in which he began by saying that, "In my mind it is clear that we do agree on the substance of the teaching of not only the 4th, but also the 5th, 6th, and 7th councils" and concluded, "I only wanted to emphasize the fact it is a really big stumbling block for us if the Chalcedonians assert that the 7 councils are inseparable."

The Importance of the Sixth Ecumenical Council

The vehement assertion by these non-Chalcedonian theologians that "Chalcedon is not acceptable to us" raises the question of whether they do in fact accept the faith of Chalcedon. The faith of Chalcedon was expressed in the definition of Chalcedon; if they cannot accept the definition, it seems reasonable to conclude that they do not accept the faith. Still, one might argue that they are only resisting a certain language which seems, to them, to have Nestorian overtones. The question remains, do we have the same belief about the Incarnation of Christ, simply expressing it in different words? To see if this is so, let us look further at the paper presented by Fr. Verghese, where he considers "the Sixth Council which appears to us badly muddled, not to say in grievous error" (Review, p. 137; Does Chalcedon, p. 131). Regarding the dogmatic definition of the 6th Council, he states:

Here, as earlier in the decree, the Tome of Leo is expressly affirmed. The decree actually calls the Tome "the pillar of the right faith." You can perhaps understand that all this is rather difficult for us to accept. For us Leo is still a heretic. It may be possible for us to refrain from condemning him by name, in the interests of restoring communion between us. But we cannot in good conscience accept the Tome of Leo as "the pillar of the right faith" or accept a council which made such a declaration. The council approves explicitly what I clearly regard as heresy in the Tome of Leo: "Each form does in communion with the other what pertains properly to it, the Word, namely doing that which pertains to the Word, and the flesh that which pertains to the flesh." If one rightly understands the hypostatic union, it is not possible to say that the flesh does something on its own, even if it is said to be in union with the Word. The flesh does not have its own hypostasis. It is the hypostasis of the Word which acts through the flesh. It is the same hypostasis of the Word which does the actions of the Word and of his own flesh. The argument of the horos [dogmatic definition] in this Sixth Council is basically unacceptable to us (Review, p. 139; Does Chalcedon, p. 133).

We are unable to say what this council says when it affirms "two wills and two operations concurring most fitly in him"....

To summarize: Acceptance of the Sixth Council is much more difficult for us than the acceptance of Chalcedon. The following are the chief reasons:...

b) We are unable to accept the dithelete formula, attributing will and energy to the natures rather than to the hypostasis. We can only affirm the one united and unconfused divine-human nature, will and energy of Christ the incarnate Lord.

c) We find that this Sixth Council exalts as its standard mainly the teaching of Leo and Agatho, popes of Rome, paying only lip-service to the teachings of the Blessed Cyril. We regard Leo as a heretic for his teaching that the will and operation of Christ is to be attributed to the two natures of Christ rather than to the one hypostasis. The human nature is as "natural" to Christ the incarnate Word as is the divine. It is one hypostasis who now is both divine and human, and all the activities come from the one hypostasis (Review, pp. 140-141; Does Chalcedon, pp. 134-135).

It is surprising that the author of these statements could also say that "In my mind it is clear that we do agree on the substance of the teaching of not only the 4th, but also the 5th, 6th, and 7th councils" (Review, p. 34). The question of whether the will is attributed to the nature or to the hypostasis was a major bone of contention in the monothelete controversy and thus of central importance in the considerations and final decision of the Sixth Council. Although Verghese, in the Forward to the issue of The Greek Orthodox Theological Review we have been drawing on, states that "The meeting at the University of Bristol, England in 1967... eliminated the possibility that the Monothelete position was the one espoused by the Oriental Orthodoxy" (Review, unnumbered page), here he has stated a central tenet of the Monothelete position, namely, that the will belongs to the one hypostasis and not to the two natures. But if, as he points out, the hypostasis of the Incarnate Christ is the hypostasis of the Word, then there are two possibilities: First, that the hypostasis (person) of the Second Hypostasis (Person) of the Holy Trinity changed at the Incarnation and became a composite hypostasis with a composite will, as seems to be implied by Fr. Verghese's reference to the "one hypostasis who is now both divine and humane — but this is unacceptable to us, as we cannot imagine the Second Person of the Holy Trinity changing and becoming composite. Or, second, that if the will belongs to the hypostasis, and the hypostasis is that of the Word of God, then the human nature of Christ is entirely moved and controlled by the hypostasis (person) of the Word of God — in other words, the humanity of Christ is a purely passive instrument of His divinity, completely lacking in freedom and having no operation (energy) of its own. In this case, Christ's humanity is not, in fact, a freely and fully-functioning humanity; although it is still possible for the non-Chalcedonians to say that Christ is consubstantial to us with regard to His humanity, they clearly do not share the same beliefs as us with regard to Christ as perfect God and perfect Man.

The Sixth Ecumenical Council, however, is "far more than the dogmatization of two wills in Christ," as Dr. Joseph Farrell points out in his excellent study, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor (St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 1989, p. 191). The theology of St. Maximus is exceptionally broad, deep and subtle; in this short paper I cannot hope to capture Dr. Farrell's analysis of St. Maximus, but I will briefly mention some of his conclusions regarding the importance of St. Maximus and the acceptance of his theology by the Orthodox Church in the Sixth Ecumenical Council. As he says, the Sixth Council is the confession, not so much of two wills in Christ, but of His human will, and, therefore, of the voluntary nature of His Passion; it is also the confession of human free choice and of the necessity of the cooperation of the human will in our salvation (p. 191). Dr. Farrell also presents St. Maximus, and therefore the Sixth Ecumenical Council, as a major link in the chain of Orthodox theological development from the Arian controversy in the 4th century to the theology of St. Gregory Palamas and the hesychast council of 1351:

The Sixth Ecumenical Council is thus far more important for the Orthodox than is the Chalcedonian definition, because in its definition are hidden the responses of one of the Eastern Church's most brilliant theologians to the vital issues of divine predestination and human free will. Furthermore, it is important because in it is also hidden the presupposition of a vast theological development, reaching back beyond the Triadology [Trinitarian theology] of the Cappadocians to the Arian controversy, to the Origenist Problematic and its underlying neoplatonic foundations. More than any other council, it was called upon to reflect in a systematic way upon the relationships of Triadology, Christology, and the divine and human wills. In a major way it confronts the issue of revelation and reason, of theodicy [the problem of evil in a world created by a loving and omnipotent God] and the possible use (or rejection) of the philosophical meanings of philosophical terms...(p. 192).

Dr. Farrell goes on to contrast the monothelete understanding of the sinlessness of Christ as a mere passive determination of the human nature by the divine nature with the dithelete doctrine of St. Maximus which "takes as its starting point not fallen humanity but the deified humanity of Christ and the saints in the eschaton" (p. 193), and points out that:

St. Maximus has truly outlined a unique doctrine of free choice.... In so doing, he was led to posit the existence of a real distinction between the category of the divine essence and the divine energies, and of the divine energies amongst themselves.... By doing this, he quite clearly pointed out the direction of subsequent development of the formulation of doctrine to [St. Gregory] Palamas (p. 193).

The Sixth Council is inseparable from the Council of Chalcedon, which it clarifies and interprets; it is my contention, therefore, that it is through their attitude towards the Sixth Council, as well as the Fifth and Seventh, that we can see whether or not a particular Christian communion truly accepts the teaching of Chalcedon.

Fr. Verghese concludes his paper by stating that if acceptance of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th Councils is necessary for reunion, there is little hope that that this will be achieved in the near future. But if, as some of the Chalcedonian participants had suggested, the last four Councils are not to be regarded as equal in importance to the earlier ones, he suggests that the churches "begin formal conversations with a view to restoring communion between our two families", with the first step being the issuance of a common statement which "should state clearly that we share, between our two families, substantially the same authentic tradition of the undivided Christian church";

The statement would also make clear that while it is not possible for the Chalcedonian Churches to repudiate or reject any of the seven councils, it is equally difficult for the non-Chalcedonians now to formally accept the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh councils recognized by the Chalcedonian family. It could be made clear that the non-Chalcedonians would refrain from formally condemning either the council of Chalcedon or Pope Leo. The statement will also make clear that the Chalcedonian churches would refrain from condemning Dioscurus and Severus as heretics" (Review;, pp. 141-142; Does Chalcedon, pp. 135-136).

In this suggestion we see the inclination to seek a dishonest intercommunion both by avoiding coming to terms with our points of difference — for example, the offer that the non-Chalcedonians would refrain from formally condemning St. Leo the Great, although Fr. Verghese has repeatedly stated that they regard him as a heretic — and by coming up with a statement of "agreement" so broad that all parties can subscribe to it, each interpreting it as they like. In response to this, we can say with Fr. John Romanides (Church of Greece), one of the Chalcedonian participants, that

We strongly sense that... we have all along been the objects of an Ecumenical technique which aims at the accomplishment of inter-communion or communion, or union without agreement on Chalcedon and the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Ecumenical Councils.... The faith confessed by the Fathers of Chalcedon is the true faith. If we accept that faith we must also accept the Fathers who profess this true faith (Review, p. 30).

+ + +

Bibliography

Does Chalcedon Divide or Unite?, Gregorios, Lazareth and Nissiotis, eds., World Council of Churches, Geneva, 1981.

Farrell, Joseph P., Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 1989.

Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell and Scott, eds., Oxford University Press, 1968.

Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XVI, nos. 1&2, Spring & Fall, l971.

The following two volumes are very scholarly in tone, and thus although they contain a tremendous amount of information, these would likely be difficult to read for someone without training in Church history.

Grillmeier, Aloys, Christ in Christian Tradition, Volume One: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon, John Knox Press, l975.

Grillmeier, Aloys, Christ in Christian Tradition, Volume Two, Part One: From Chalcedon to Justinian I, John Knox Press, l987.

The following two books are useful, except for the author’s statement in both of them, that the theology of the moderate monophysites is the theology of St. Cyril; I hope I have shown in this paper some of the reasons I believe this statement cannot be supported and in fact I believe Meyendorff himself contradicts it.

Meyendorff, John, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, Corpus Books, 1965.

Meyendorff, John, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, SVS Press, 1989.

Patristic Greek Lexicon, G. W. H. Lampe, ed., Oxford University Press, 1984.

Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition, Volume 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700), University of Chicago Press, 1974.

* Pelikan’s book is one of the most useful works I have listed here; although it focuses on the period 600-1700, it gives a lot of background. The first volume of the series, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), would be even more useful however I did not have access to it while working on this paper.