Turkish Oppression Continues

Turkey has determined that the Ecumenical Patriarch can no longer be called “ecumenical patriarch.” Read it all here. Consider writing your legal representatives.

 Some other links of interest are here and here.

Back to Subjectivism

Here is an interesting article by an M. James Sawyer on Protestant views of the canon of Scripture. It is interesting to note how much is actually conceded to arguments made by Catholics and Orthodox. In the end what he argues for is a return to Calvin’s view of the internal witness of the Spirit. I don’t think that gives us any objective reason or method for why Protestants accept the canon that they do. Some of my reasons can be found in Rupert Davies’ little book, The Problem of Authority in the Continental Reformers.

Emperichoretic Ecclesiology

“And to this end we brought to his remembrance the great examples left us by the Apostles, and the traditions of the Fathers.  For although the grace of the Holy Spirit abounded in each one of the Apostles, so that no one of them needed the counsel of another in the execution of his work, yet they were not willing to define on the question then raised touching the circumcision of the Gentiles, until being gathered together they had confirmed their own several sayings by the testimony of the divine Scriptures.

And thus they arrived unanimously at this sentence, which they wrote to the Gentiles:  ‘It has seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay upon you no other burden than these necessary things, that ye abstain from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication.’

But also the Holy Fathers, who from time to time have met in the four holy councils, following the example of the ancients, have by a common discussion, disposed of by a fixed decree the heresies and questions which had sprung up, as it was certainly known, that by common discussion when the matter in dispute was presented by each side, the light of truth expels the darkness of falsehood.

Nor is there any other way in which the truth can be made manifest when there are discussions concerning the faith, since each one needs the help of his neighbour, as we read in the Proverbs of Solomon:  ‘A brother helping his brother shall be exalted like a walled city; and he shall be strong as a well-founded kingdom;’ and again in Ecclesiastes he says:  ‘Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.’”

So also the Lord himself says:  ‘Verily I say unto you that if two of you shall agree upon earth as touching anything they shall seek for, they shall have it from my Father which is in heaven.  For wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

 

The Sentence of the Fifth Ecumenical Council

A Hostile Witness

Here is an interesting article, Michael A. Fahey, S.J., Eastern Synodal Traditions: Pertinence for Western Collegial Institutions that is currently being ignored by the folks over at Cathedra Unitatis, while they make much hay out of other articles from this collecton. It vindicates a number of criticisms regarding development in Catholicism that the Orthodox have made.