/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

they did but the majority of the Eastern orthodox church didn't accept it, so it was eventually repudiated.

To Orthodox, it wasn't a real council. There were only a handful of bishops present, under political pressure, who conceded to terms which are contrary to Orthodox doctrine. Major issues like this need to be done at a great council where the whole Church is represented and comes to consensus.

Catholic understanding is that it is the bishops who hold the power. So if the Pope says a council is ecumenical, it is ecumenical, end of story.

Orthodox understanding is that both the clergymen and the laypeople hold the power. A council should, ideally, have representation from every local church, and define the most important aspects of the faith. But it must also be received as ecumenical by the Church as a whole, kind of mirroring the process of why the scriptures are recognized as canonical.

The union of Florence needed to be ratified by a council back home, and some legates of the Pope followed the Orthodox back to their home to make sure this would happen. But the process was immediately complicated by 1) most of the bishops who left for Florence retracting their agreement to the council as soon as they left, and 2) most of the clergymen and laypeople back home being extremely unhappy about the council. After a few years the union was ultimately ratified… in Constantinople, binding the Ecumenical Patriarchate alone, and even then it is not because the Patriarch and the Emperor decide something is true that the other bishops lose their authority to disagree, so really it only binded the pro-union party. Four months later the city fell, a last liturgy was held between pro and anti-union Orthodox (possibly the only actual moment of union and spiritual brotherhood) and after the city's fall, the demise of Constantinople was seen as divine punishment for agreeing to Florence, so the council was repudiated (and a council was held some 40 years later to formally repudiate it and make sure it would never be agreed to again).

TL;DR Florence wasn't agreed to by the Orthodox because it didn't define the truth, so the Holy Spirit pushed the clergy and the laity to reject it. And canonically, union happened between Rome and the pro-union party at Constantinople, far from the grand "East-West union" that some Catholics seem to think happened.

Of course, there are no excuses to reject the ecumenicity of the council if one believes that the Pope's word is sufficient to make a council ecumenical.

>>715259

Uh, there were more than a "handful bishops". And every major church was represented. You must be getting this confused with the Second Council of Lyons.

>>715259

So basically like the First Council of Constantinople, except the Pope accepted that council 100 years later.

Though he never accepted the canon that made Constantinople as 2nd Rome and more important than Alexandria. But the Orthodox act as if that is ecumenical.

Cherrypicking the Councils since 300 AD

>>715263

You seem upset.

>>715261

>A council should, ideally, have representation from every local church, and define the most important aspects of the faith. But it must also be received as ecumenical by the Church as a whole, kind of mirroring the process of why the scriptures are recognized as canonical.

This is a doctrine of ecumenical councils tailored to never be in agreement ever again.

The laity rejected the agreement because they hated the latins, not for doctrine, Holy Spirit or anything.

No Council ever had a representation from every local church.

Every single Council had a big amount of bishops and lay people reject it. Arians, miaphyisites, etc.. sometimes entire nations like Egypt.

Good to know according to Orthodox standards not even the Seven Ecumenical councils should be ecumenical.

>>715265

>The laity rejected the agreement because they hated the latins, not for doctrine, Holy Spirit or anything.

Not really, this didn't start until after Mark of Ephesus roused up excitement against the Catholics.

As for the bishops, the vast majority of them, including Mark of Ephesus himself back when the council was starting, wanted nothing but to reunite with the Catholics, whom they saw as separated brethren, and urgently needed political allies, and for whom they felt sorrowful nostalgia. It is purely a matter of doctrine that bothered them.

>No Council ever had a representation from every local church.

Hence "ideally".

>Every single Council had a big amount of bishops and lay people reject it. Arians, miaphyisites, etc.. sometimes entire nations like Egypt.

They ceased to be in communion with the Church after that, and it still took some time for the pro-Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian hierarchies to become strictly separate and for the council to be recognized as ecumenical.

Something I should've mentionned earlier - the notion that clergymen can do something on their own is foreign to Orthodoxy. A Divine Liturgy cannot be done if there are no laypeople to commune, for instance. The Church is the whole body of believers, and all have received the Holy Spirit, and this is why we can say in one sense that every member of the Church owns the keys of heaven, as St Augustine says:

>If it was said to Peter alone, Peter alone did this; he passed away, and went away, so who binds, who looses? I make bold to say, we too have these keys. And what am I to say? That it is only we who bind, only we who loose? No, you also bind, you also loose. Anybody who's bound, you see, is barred from your society; and when he's barred from your society, he's bound by you; and when he's reconciled he's loosed by you, because you too plead with God for him.

Power in the Church resides not from the top, as if in a pyramid, but in both the shepherd and the sheeps, as a synergy between them.

>>715266

>As for the bishops, the vast majority of them, including Mark of Ephesus himself back when the council was starting, wanted nothing but to reunite with the Catholics, whom they saw as separated brethren, and urgently needed political allies, and for whom they felt sorrowful nostalgia. It is purely a matter of doctrine that bothered them.

This is because the Council started to push the western idea of conciliarism, and the Orthodox approved it.

However over the years, when it was moved to Florence, the Pope changed. The new Pope was very hostile to the idea of conciliarism and he had it his way.

>>715272

>This is because the Council started to push the western idea of conciliarism, and the Orthodox approved it.

….

You do know that the Orthodox specifically chose to do the council with the Pope rather than with the conciliarists, right?

They specifically did not want to deal with the conciliarists.

>>715273

Also, Basel was the council that was driven by the conciliarists. The Orthodox were not present.

Ferrara and Florence were driven by the Pope's party, and the Orthodox were present.

>>715277

>To quote from New Advent, a respected catholic source:

I would be careful around that. The Catholic Enyclopedia is 109 years old, it has some ridiculous errors and biases on certain articles. The New Catholic Encyclopedia is better but sadly copyrighted.

>>715278

Anything that has come from "theologians" or scholars after the start of the 20th century is corrupt with modernism. The Catholic Encyclopedia is the latest before the sickness set it and even then you can still see hints of it in the encyclopedia.

>>715277

>except Vlad the Impaler

Based Dracula

>>715273

>So, in short, though the emperor tried to force it, the council didn't get to be ratified officially, so it wasn't truly a valid council, in the orthodox view.

>And after the city fell, the anti-unionist party rose to power, justifying the fall of the city while under a unionist patriarch and emperor as God's sign that the Union was heretical.

So you are saying the heroical Emperor who died in one last glorious charge agains the Ottomans was in communion with Rome?

What are we waiting to beatify him, even though Greeks will be mad?

>>715546

Sorry for the late reply(just remembered now, out of the blue, which thread your remark was in)

Some consider him a saint, buuut:

>Some Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholics consider Constantine XI a saint (or a national martyr or ethnomartyr, Greek: ἐθνομάρτυρας). However, he has not been officially canonized by either Church, partly due to controversy surrounding his personal religious beliefs and partly because death in battle is not normally considered a form of martyrdom by the Orthodox Church. According to Catholicism and Orthodoxy, martyrs are those who voluntarily accept death for their faith, typically in a situation where they have the option to give up Christianity and live, but choose death instead.

Tl;dr: He's a controversial figure in this whole situation.

Tbh, this entire thing was mired in controversy.

Half the reason both East and West were there was to settle their own internal grudges, be they anti-popes, turks, or hussites, a lot of factions chimped out and flip-floped on their promises, or shitposted just to show how awesome they were(see the palamite-dominican rivalry), and then the entire city fell before things could settle down, and now everyone blames the other faggots for it happening.

Marvelous.

>A council during the conciliar movement

invalid