/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>563525

Yeah the holy spirit pours out from the Seat of Peter

Filioque is a fucking meme, that's what.

The expression "from the Father and the Son" had been used in the Latin West since the 5th century, its implementation in the Creed and the theological elaborations on what it means for the Holy Spirit to proceed from the Father and the Son were a purely Western development, and Yves Congar makes a good case that from a Greek perspective, it simply means that the Holy Spirit "proienai" from the Son, and that "procedere" is a translation of "proienai" rather than "ekporeumenai." While it's true that it means the fault is with St Jerome for not taking into account the theological meaning "ekporeumenai" had taken for the Greeks, and the fathers of the 3rd Council for using Jerome's (mis)translation, and most of the Latin West for embracing an interpolated Creed, and the overall Church for not convoking an ecumenical council to address the issue (the Greeks were whiny but also just content with not having the filioque in the Creed, while Rome accepted the orthodoxy of the filioque but swept it under the rug as long as they didn't put it in the Creed themselves), in the end, when the Greeks say that the Holy Spirit "ekporeumenai" from the Father alone, and the Latins say that the Holy Spirit "procedere" from the Father and/through the Son, they're talking about different things, and neither side has actually taken the time to see what the other side's conclusions imply.

It would certainly be great if the Catholics recognized the Council of Blachernae as having an orthodox pneumatology, and the Orthodox recognized the Council of Florence as having an orthodox pneumatology. Not because we must be ecumenical modernists, but because we understand the differences between the Latin and Greek theology better than the Fathers of these councils did, on both sides of the "curtain."

So, to respond to your question…

The Holy Spirit can be said to proceed from the entire Church onto the world, really. The Church -is- the Body of Christ after all. He sent His Father's Holy Spirit onto the apostles, but the Holy Spirit was transmitted to the other bishops, and to the laymen, and to converts, and so on.

>Also why would we need a Papa on earth, or Papal infallibility, if the Church/bishops/saints/body-of-christ itself has guidance of the holy spirit?

The exact way in which the Church has guidance of the Holy Spirit is disagreed upon. We can at least say that St Irenaeus's belief that episcopal succession suffices to guarantee orthodoxy was wrong, since we've had more than a few heretical bishops since then, causing several schisms (the Donatists, Nestorians, the Monophysites, the Catholic-Orthodox split) or at least controversies (the Arians, the Pneumatomachoi, the Monothelites).

The early Church simply enough wasn't concerned with that issue, just as they were not concerned with the baptism of converts from heresies. When the issue presented itself, different bishops had different ideas of how the tradition applied. For another example, see the Novatian schism: a new situation presented itself, and different parties appeared because there was no set answer in the early Church and so there was no evident way to interpret the tradition.

cont.

In the case of the Papacy, even Catholic scholars agree that the exact authority and role of the bishop of Rome within the Church had been a development. We can find easily in the 2nd century Fathers that the Church of Rome "presides in love," and that the community of Rome was founded by Peter and Paul, and that it is well-known throughout the Church, and that its behavior is excellent, but there are no exact statements on the nature of why the Church of Rome presides in love - is it because it had been divinely established to do so, or is it because it is so well-known in the first place? Did its rank come before or after its proof of orthodoxy and orthopraxy? This simply wasn't a question that popped up, so nobody answered it.

We can find in the scriptural commentaries of some Fathers their views on certain passages that speak of Peter in an exclusive way, such as the infamous Matthew 16:18. Overall, for the first few centuries of the Church, Peter was understood as either the perfect example of a Christian or of a bishop, and so the Lord's words to him applied to either all Christians or all bishops. But also, Peter wasn't treated as the only leader of the apostles - St John Chrysostom, in particular, saw Peter, James, and John as being equal in authority, and even James as having higher authority than Peter while in Jerusalem.

The doctrine that Peter himself still lives and acts within the Church began to clearly appear when, among the many theological controversies of the 4th to 7th centuries, the Church of Rome remained perfectly orthodox, due to being a theological backwater of sorts (rather than having its own little theological school as with Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, even Jerusalem) and being rather far away from where the conflicts were happening.

cont.

The most obvious first "clash" between how the Churches saw Rome and how Rome saw itself happened at the 3rd Ecumenical Council, where Constantinople decided to be 2nd in rank next to Rome, when the "pillar" Churches at the time were Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. This canon was obviously contested by the ultra-conservative Church of Rome, but the most elaborate understanding as to why comes from Pope St. Leo the Great.

St Leo asserted without a doubt that Peter is still alive and acting within the Church, not through all bishops (as certain Fathers thought) but through particular bishops, notably through the bishop of Rome, who is the direct successor of Peter. When Jesus spoke to Peter, He spoke to the Pope and to all Popes. This was not necessarily a happy fact - it meant that the role of the bishop of Rome was even more so important, as he had to be not merely an arbiter, but a true rock of faith for the rest of the Church, something Leo exhibited at its best with his Christological Tome.

But even then the modern Catholic view on the Papacy had far from reached its final development - in fact, St. Pope Gregory the Great believed that, yes, Peter still lives and acts through the Petrine see, but the Petrine see is occupied by three bishops of equal rank and authority - the Bishop of Rome (Peter was its first bishop), the Bishop of Alexandria (Mark was its first bishop, but was sent by Peter), and the Bishop of Antioch (Peter was its first bishop).

Eventually this view would develop to concern the Bishop of Rome alone, and we know the rest. But it doesn't mean that this is a human invention - it just means that it responds to a problematic that the 1st century Church simply did not have to face to begin with, and so did not give us a clear and evident answer for. (i'm ordodogs so you can bet I disagree but yeah)

TL;DR the Catholics "need" papal infallibility because the formulation of papal infallibility is a response to controversies that made papal infallibility a necessary doctrine if the Catholic Church is to indeed be and remain the Church. Questions about the exact role of the Pope during the 1st millenium, the question of what is the Pope's authority in relation to civil authorities, the question of antipopes, and so on… They each gave their own part of the equation, which, all put together, gives the doctrine of papal infallibility.

I don't know why I said "3rd ecumenical council." I meant "2nd." I'll also gladly be corrected if I made mistakes - I'm not done studying this subject.

>>563607

>>563610

>>563615

You're a nerd, you know that?

>>563621

>Hey guys you know this guy that seems to actually be trying to contribute to the discussion?

>He's A NEEEEEEERD

>NEEEEEEEERD

>>563607

The West and the East

You're so in denial that you have to make up some revisionist history to justify that your "orthodoxy" is nothing but a political movement that has no other interests than increasing its worldly power.

>>563669

Are you the guy who told me in another thread that the Greeks had been saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son but stopped for political reasons?

You still have to show proof, you know.

But pre-emptively, I put on the table the Letter to Marinus and, of course, the council at Constantinople in 879.

i'm glad that this is our version of rei vs asuka

>>563718

My bishop can beat your bishop

Pride is a sin Orthos ;)

>>563755

diapers

>>563755

Very ironic post given thread context