Can you please elaborate?
Too many things are held as inviolable by both East and West. It would require standing apart from any and all of those positions for there to be reconciliation. That would thus disannul many things that have stood for a very long time as orthodoxy for either side.
Why don't you want reunification? You're certainly not the first Christian I've encountered who's bristled at the prospect of Church reunification, and it's just so surprising to me. I do not understand why we'd be against it.
“How can two walk together except they agree?” It would have to be a fascade placing alleged unity above doctrinal integrity. That’s not even unity.
Oh. So does this mean that you believe that the Church's bishops became inauthentic teachers at Nicaea? I'm always curious to find out when the episcopacy became untrustworthy altogether, and this looks like maybe you think it was Nicaea, and not the AD 1054 mutual excommunication fiasco /Schism between western and eastern bishops?
I’m referring to something quite specific, and I can outline it briefly. Post-Nicea, the Cappadocians quite literally rescued the Faith from fracturing beyond recovery over the disparate use of Greek terms in Theology Proper. Basil came to the understanding that East and West were talking past each other because of their respective usage of terminology and the applied functional definitions of the key words used to explicate the Trinity.
By installing the appropriate implementation of hypostasis/es and ousia (per the Eastern formulaic), the accusations from both side were abated. But the West functionally retained their conceptual understanding, resulting in the necessity of the Filioque for the West and the continued necessity of its omission by the East.
The West contends that the ousia “has” the three hypostases, which is a diversion from the purity of the Cappadocian resolution to early pending and averted schism. The East rightly contends that the hypostasis/es underlie the ousia, and thus it is the hypostasis/es that “have” the ousia.
For this reason, the Filioque is an added component necessary in the West for all the reasons regarding the core debate that historically surrounded the schism relative to this contributing topic. But the Filioque is not only unnecessary in the East, it is abhorrent (again for all the reasons in contention for centuries leading up to 1024AD).
Because of the Papacy, the Filioque was “bullied” through, and the East ultimately initiated the ultimatum to the West to recant or be in schism. (The West, of course, would never see it in this light.) So I rightly consider the West to have become schismatized in 1024 from the One Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church, which is the East. It wasn’t a split of equals that can be reunited. Rome would have to openly repent of its corruption of heterodoxy and heteropraxy, and denounce the antichrist Papacy as sin and pride.
Rome will never do that, and that’s why any attempts at reunification will be a severe compromise of Ecumenism and Syncretism. So any alleged “unity” will be invalidated as merely a band-aid on a bullet hole, so to speak.
And your whole tact, whether you realize it or not, is from the perspective of Papal power-mongering. You’re passively demanding and expecting reconciliation without the repentance of the West (which would then violate the Magisterium, so it’s impossible).
It’s not that I don’t want the entire Church in unity, but “the poor you have with you always”. Those without the wealth of their existence (their ousia) qualitatively determined by their foundational individual reality (hypostasis) will always be poor. The Filioque, and its heinous leveraged means of installation in the creed/s, is an anathema. The West shrugs this off as you have done. This should not be.
Catholics and theologically/doctrinally/historicaly-literate Lutherans and Protestants of every ilk.
'Filioque' doesn't contradict the Nicaean creed, and its omission does nothing but simply subtract a clause from the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, changing nothing else. Anybody could omit 'filioque' without compromise.
You do not understand the significance of the Filioque and its inclusion or exclusion; nor the reasons for its spurious existence in the creed/s. As long as there is a Papacy, there cannot and should not be reconciliation. The Papacy would simply absorb all else by its power-mongering. Papists and anti-Papists cannot co-exist in “unity”.
Of course Rome want “reconciliation” in this manner. It means ruling the world. And that’s always been the Emperor-driven mindset of the West and her progeny. It’s Magisterial rather than Ministerial. The supplantation of all the Bishops in favor of one. Judas Syndrome.
The Papacy is a corruption that must be dissolved, and that means the West could never be in actual unity, instead demanding that the East concede to having been in schism rather than the truth that it has been vice versa. Reconciliation would wrongly absolve Rome of her sins without authentic repentance. This should not be.
Unless what you mean is, that to omit 'filioque' is to flip the bird to Peter's pastorate the papacy and to the Pope, and that you're able to do that without compromise. I guess I couldn't do that; you've got me there. But 'filioque' is definitely there because of the authority of the papacy over the other bishops, which is the same as the charism of infallibility which preserves the papacy from teaching error in any matter of faith and morals when teaching from Peter's chair, 'ex cathedra.'
It’s not “flipping the bird to Peter’s pastorate the papacy and to the Pope”. There is no such thing. The Roman See is the first among equals IN HONOR, not IN AUTHORITY. The authority rests with the Bishops as a whole, with due honor given to Rome in this regard. There can be no Christ Vicar and a usurpation of all Bishops together as the dissemination of all that Rome pretends to hoard for itself in that one vocation/calling.
The Pope is thus anathema to itself as a usurpation of position. A violation of all other Bishops for the sake of seizing power that does not exist. The Papacy must be dissolved for there to be authentic unity. Without such, Rome is doing lip service to reconciliation in impenitence.
I know that you don't believe in that. But it's Catholicism nonetheless, the Catholic position. It's somewhat understandable, in light of both Peter and Paul having lived in and been killed /murdered in Rome. The bishops who were in Rome when Peter and Paul were there, were probably the western bishops' Apostolic oral tradition forebears. They may not have gotten over to the east so much.
And certainly to their detrient, and thus to the Church at large. And you really can’t validly claim to adhere to Catholicism without being internal to the Church in totality, which you say you are not. This is beyond paradox.
I don't know anyone else who holds this position.
How oddly non-Catholic. Doesn’t that alarm you? It’s actually impossible to wholly embrace Catholic doctrine without being Catholic. It would seem you still have a number of things to work through if you are not converted to Catholicism and in good standing within the Catholic Church. It’s oxymoronic.
In Romans 10:9 KJV if I could ask, do you read it that Paul is essentially making salvific faith dependent upon two things, yes believing in Christ's Resurrection is one of them, but is the other one to believe that Jesus is God, in saying, "if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved?"
It’s at least strongly implied. And there are other things related to various doctrines that are at least as urgently implied.
I’m quite concerned about non-Sacramentalists. I’m even more concerned about those who adamantly refuse orthodox Christology and other such crucial points of historically settled and readily available core doctrines (like soul sleep, and a whole list of other issues that cannot be included).
I’m just not buying that the resurrection of our Lord is the sole criteria for salvific faith, even given your caveats. There are other essentials, no matter where the “line” is drawn to the contrary. If not, the historical anathemas could not stand and would thus be self-disannulling.
If a doctrine is missing, there is a vacuum that draws in false doctrine as substitue and replacement. That’s what the Greek prefix anti- means, and these things are relative to Christ. So that means such omissions with substitutes are antichrist. And that’s what the elevation of the Roman See is: Antichrist. We can’t have antichrist and unity IN Christ simulataneously.
So when the Pope steps down and the whole of Rome admits it’s been in schism to the One Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, THEN there can be unity. It won’t and can’t happen, and your own words indicate that.
