Audio only:
Joe explains why he wouldn’t convert to Eastern or Oriental Orthodoxy over Catholicism.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I spend a lot of time on this channel responding to objections raised against Catholicism by Protestant apologists or by non-Christians. And I think because of that a significant portion of my audience is actually Orthodox. Now, as a Catholic, I’m very grateful to have you here. We have a lot of areas of agreement as I think the rest of my videos show. I also know though that many of the people watching this channel might be Protestants who are right now discerning whether they’re meant to remain Protestant or become Orthodox or become Catholic, and that can be a heavy question to discern. So today I want to address that question outright. Why be Catholic and non Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox? So we’re going to look at some of the areas we disagree. I’m going to actually answer this by telling you my reasons.
Now other people have their own lists. My reasons may or may not click for you. I hope you’ll let me know either way in the comments. And speaking of clicking, if you click on the link in the description below to shameless joe.com, that’s my Patreon, you can get bonuses there like ad free episodes and q and as for as little as $5 a month. And by the way, a special thank you to McKinsey over on Patreon for asking me to make this episode. Now I’m grateful both to her and for everybody supporting this channel over@shamelessjoe.com. So let’s begin with four areas where I think Catholics and Orthodox, at least broadly speaking, agree. First of all, we reject the idea of self shepherding sheep. There’s this model of Christianity associated with Protestantism in which the individual searching for the right church has to first settle all the big theological questions for themselves.
And then once they’ve figured out their own interpretation of everything in the Bible, they find the denomination or the church that best agrees with them. But this approach is not biblically sound. Nobody in the Bible behaves like this. Worse, it results in the individual sheep of the flock of Christ shepherding themselves instead of being led by the shepherds that God has given to us. Second, this is a heavy burden to place on somebody. Go get your PhD in theology. Go settle the reformation and the great schism child’s play, right? And only then you can be sure you’re joining the right church. Well, third, this approach also doesn’t work very well in real life. Father George Masterton, a Greek Orthodox theologian, points out that the church not you is infallible. So trusting in yourself and your interpretation that’s not going to work and is in fact how you get a bunch of different denominations teaching contradictory doctrines.
So if your answer to the question, should I be Orthodox? Should I be Catholic, requires advanced theology or obscure church history, I suspect that you’re making it too complicated. Second area of common ground, ecumenical councils are really important. When a theological controversy breaks out in Acts chapter 15, the church meets council and settles it and does so speaking on behalf of the Holy Spirit. Both Catholics and Orthodox recognize ecumenical councils as a means by which the Holy Spirit speaks infallibly through the visible church. Simple enough, third area of common ground. When Jesus founds the visible church, he makes St. Peter the leader of the other apostles. Now, I’ve said this before as a place where Catholics and Orthodox actually agree and some commenters disagreed and they didn’t like that too much. But the Orthodox church in America, for instance, refers to the holy, glorious and all praised leaders of the apostles, Peter and Paul, and they honor their joint feast day with a reading from Saint Augustine in which he says that Jesus entrusted his flock to St.
Peter in John 21 because Peter was first among the apostles. And as such the representative of the church besides which having turned in this instance to Peter alone as to the top apostle Christ by this confirms the unity of the church. So we agree on this. There’s some sense in which St. Peter is the top apostle. He can speak on behalf of the whole church, and this confirms the unity of the church. That brings us to the fourth area of common ground. Both East and West have always recognized that Peter and Paul established the Church of Rome and that this church somehow continues in a role of leadership presiding over the other churches. Now there’s plenty of disagreement about what that’s meant to look like, but history is too clear to deny it entirely. So for instance, the Greek speaking Saint Eu who grew up in the Church of Smyrna in the East, described how the Church of Rome was found by St.
Peter in St. Paul. And that is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority. Now that was in 180, but we see that authority exercised all throughout church history. So for instance, in the mid three hundreds, there’s this fight over Christology between the Ians and Antioch and St. Athenasius of Alexandria and Eusebius writes to the Pope and tries to get him to call a council and to be himself the judge if he’s so pleased to condemn Athanasius. Well, Pope Julius writes back Rebuking Eusebius and the Antiochian for not writing to him sooner and asking if they’re somehow ignorant that had they had doubts about Athanasius’s orthodoxy, they were supposed to first write to Rome and then await adjust verdict on the matter. St Spr of Carthage referred to this kind of practice of taking disputes to Rome as going to the throne of Peter and to the chief church wince priestly unity takes its source.
So look, a simple positive Catholic case would be this. Jesus establishes Peter as the leader of the Apostles, not so that Peter’s going to boss everybody around all the time, but so there would be both a visible leader and a visible sign of unity. So you knew if you were in union with Peter, you were in union with the visible church and this sign of unity continues on with Peter’s successors, the Popes of Rome. Now that connection is made pretty explicitly by early Christians like St. Tatu and the three hundreds, if we’re in union with the Church of Rome, we’re in union with the visible church. That’s why as EU said before, it’s a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church. But okay, let’s say you reject all that you decide that no whatever may have been the case in the early days of the church, we can no longer trust the Church of Rome.
Now in that case, where should we go? You might say become Orthodox, but that’s really not a good enough answer. So for instance, should I become Eastern Orthodox or should I become Oriental Orthodox? Both Catholics and Eastern Orthodox accept the Council of Caldon which taught that Christ is one person with two natures human and divine. The Oriental Orthodox reject Caldon is a false counsel referring instead to the one nature of Christ that is both fully human and fully divine. So to resolve the Eastern verse Oriental question, do I need to go do a deep dive on the differences between Monoism di Fism and Mia Fism and figure out which side I think is correct? Because that sounds very much like the kind of self shepherding that we should rightly reject. On the other hand, maybe you just say, well, we’ll decide it geographically. If you live in Serbia, you join the Serbian Orthodox Church and accept Caldon.
If you live in Armenia, you join the Armenian Orthodox Church and reject Caldon. But geography doesn’t seem like a reliable way of determining the truth of a religion or establishing church unity any more than if I’ve said, pastor Jim, down the block is the church closest to me, so I’m going to accept whatever he’s teaching. Clearly something more is needed and it’s not clear to me that Orthodoxy can provide it. Now maybe you can do better than I can. Maybe you can find a clear reason to accept Eastern orthodoxy over Oriental Orthodoxy. If so, your work has really just begun. The first among equals in Eastern Orthodoxy is the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, but about two thirds of Orthodox are Russians. Why is this a problem? Because for the nearly seven years now, the Russians have not been in communion with Constantinople. Now the reasons for that schism are complicated. They’re partly political involving Ukraine and they’re partly doctrinal. But the point is this, the Russian position is that the ecumenical patriarch is now actually a schematic outside of the Orthodox church itself.
CLIP:
The situation is not new. Also, in the past there were cases when patriarchs of Constantinople would fall into a heresy or schism. Back then it was those patriarchs who turned out to be outside of orthodoxy and not those who were forced to seize Eucharistic communion with him. We pray for patriarch Barmy of Constantinople to come back to his senses and for his return unto the path of canonical orthodoxy. However, our main task is to strengthen the unity of the multimillion strong Russian church, which unites Orthodox believers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other countries.
Joe:
And so the Russian claim is that being Orthodox isn’t a matter of being in union with anyone, not even the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople who might himself be a heretic or a sch asthmatic. Instead, being orthodox is just a matter of faithfulness to dogmatic and canonical tradition which might compel you to actually break communion with the visible church in places like Constantinople. But how is an ordinary person going to settle these kind of questions? Just how much self shepherding is needed to sort through, for instance, the disputed dogmatic and canonical traditions in their interpretation, and how likely is it that you’re going to be able to do so in an accurate way that isn’t going to be colored by your political or national biases and prejudices? So look, if the early Christians were right that we can find unity with Peter and his in Rome, I see a clear reason to be Catholic.
But if they were wrong, I don’t see a clear reason to be Oriental Orthodox or Russian Orthodox or Greek Orthodox. And getting that question right actually seems to be really important, but that’s just one issue. Another issue is related to this question of ecumenical councils. Remember, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox agree that ecumenical councils are binding and are capable of speaking infallibly, but we actually all agree that not every gathering of bishops is automatically an ecumenical council, not automatically infallible, not automatically binding. As the Eastern Orthodox Bishop and theologian Callistus Ware pointed out, councils of bishops can air and be deceived. And there are in fact multiple instances in which things that looked like ecumenical councils have been rejected as false councils. Again, we all agree on this and from a Catholic perspective, it’s clear enough how to sort through this. We believe it is necessary for the Pope to accept a council in order for it to actually be a binding ecumenical council.
It’s a clear principle by which we can say that there have been exactly 21 ecumenical councils, but what about from an Eastern Orthodox perspective where asks, how can one be certain that a particular gathering is truly an ecumenical council and therefore that its decrees are infallible? And his answer, what it is that makes a council ecumenical is not so clear. In fact, the Eastern Orthodox don’t just disagree amongst themselves about what it is that makes a particular gathering of bishops an infallible, ecumenical council. They don’t actually even agree about how many councils there have been. There are debates about whether there have been seven or eight or nine. Now no one actually look at two possible councils. The first is in 4 49 at what was called the Second Council of Ephesus. From all appearances, it looks like a valid council at the outset, but from a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox perspective that alleged counsel endorsed terrace and in fact the Pope’s representative to the council, a deacon in future Pope actually named hilarious declared I contradict, and he stormed out.
When he returned home, Pope Leo agreed with him declaring it a robber council. That wasn’t a true council. And here’s the thing, the Eastern Orthodox agree today. So Caldon is rejected by a patriarch, the patriarch of Alexandria, and that means the Alexandrians are in schism. But second Ephesus is rejected by the Pope. And that doesn’t mean the pope’s in schism, it actually means second Ephesus doesn’t get to count as a valid council. That looks like exactly what Catholics have always claimed that the approval of the Pope is necessary for the validity of an ecumenical council. In fact, many Orthodox and Protestants today will refer loosely to the seven ecumenical councils in the early church before the great schism in 10 54 without seemingly realizing that the reason that exactly these sevens are the ones accepted are because these are the seven accepted by the Pope. But what about after 10 54 when there’s this split between Eastern Orthodoxy and the Catholic church?
Well, after this point, there are no ecumenical councils that are binding on all Orthodox. As I mentioned, there are a few disputed would-be councils, but the generally accepted number is seven councils with the last one being in seven, seven. Well, as you know, there’ve been some big theological disputes since then from the great schism to the Protestant Reformation to any number of countless fights over the centuries. And throughout this, the Catholic church has responded with ecumenical councils clarifying disputed issues and denouncing new errors. But the East has fallen silent, at least in the form of new ecumenical councils, and that is not for lack of effort. There were actually two instances in which the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches attempted to reunite at ecumenical councils. The first time is at the second council of Leon. In the 1270s there, the ecumenical patriarch on the 11th endorsed reunion with the Catholic church and affirmed the disputed Phil Qua and the Creed.
That attempted reunion only lasted about 10 years, and it was unpopular in the East, a stronger attempt. And one that weir actually alludes to in his book is the Council of Florence in the 1430s. Now there there’s a large delegate. Some 700 Greeks came to the Council of Florence. This included bishops, ambassadors, even the Byzantine Emperor himself. They discussed and debated the issues dividing Catholicism in Eastern Orthodoxy. And after extensive conversation, reunions seemed to finally happen on July 6th, 1439, all but one of the eastern bishops signed a declaration of reunion reentering communion with the Catholic church. Both sides clarified what they had meant the whole time on the topic of the Philly Oak Way, an issue on which both sides had wrongly suspected. The other of heresy, both the Greeks and the Latins explicitly agreed that the Pope is this successor of St. Peter the vicar of Christ, and he has a primacy over the whole world, not just over the West.
Now, this reunion triggered the Oriental Orthodox Church to send delegates of their own, and three years later they announced that they wanted to reenter communion with the Pope as well. This is an amazing story, and it spoke to the power of ecumenical dialogue and actually bringing both sides around to see one another’s perspective better. And so for a brief period, reunion was seemingly actually achieved. Once again, people back in Constantinople rejected it, and the East went back into schism after Constantinople fell in 1453. Nowadays, Bishop Mark of Ephesus, the one outlier who wouldn’t sign, is commemorated in Eastern Orthodoxy as a saint for fighting against Reunion with the Catholic church. Now, I mention this for two reasons. First, both of these councils suggest to me that if the churches are ever going to be one again, it’ll be when the East is ready to re-accept the leadership of the Bishop of Rome.
And two, the Council of Florence sure looks like a valid ecumenical council and one endorsed by the overwhelming majority of bishops and leggos there present, including the ecumenical patriarch, the Byzantine Emperor, the metropolitan of Moscow, et cetera. So what is the argument that Florence isn’t a valid council? What is the argument that it’s not authoritatively teaching that the Pope is seriously head of all Christians east and west? It can’t just be that you happen to reject that teaching. That’s not how ecumenical councils work. It can’t even be that large swaths of Christians reject the council. After all, large swaths of Christians rejected the Council of Caledon, which is why Oriental Orthodoxy exists. So it seems to me that the most logically consistent position is to say the early church fathers were right. It is a matter of necessity for us all to be in union with the Church of Rome. And there’s exactly one place for that leaves us in union with the successor of Peter. But why should we believe that St. Peter had that kind of authority or special role in the first place? Well, because I think scripture says so, and I don’t just mean places like upon this rock passage in Matthew 16, I think there’s an even clearer proof in Luke 22, which I unpack right here in which you can check out by clicking the link. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.