You may have heard that His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk visited Dallas Seminary on Feb. 11, 2011.
Here is the message given by His Eminence to Dallas Theological Seminary faculty [not chapel or any other broad audience].
photos here.
Showing posts with label Orthodoxy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orthodoxy. Show all posts
25 February 2011
21 November 2010
Predestination and Grace
A friend of mine posted here and here recently on the issue of Eastern Orthodoxy's stance on Predestination and Grace. Click through to read his full posts.
I find it hard to agree with him, but he puts things out for everyone to examine.
He quotes from a gathering of Eastern Patriarchs that issued a statement [though not a conciliar statement]. From this Synod came the Confession of Dositheus.
No one wants to be called a Heretic. Nobody likes it because it sounds like a denial of genuineness or scholarship or sincerity or that the said Heretic is not actually a Christian. I am reposting his stuff here because the ACNA has been challenged by the OCA, via His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah, to eschew our Reformed Heresies. This will most likely be the very last one to drop...if it ever does.
I simply cannot read the Anglican Collects from the Book of Common Prayer without feeling the strong tap on the shoulder from Orthodoxy and Catholicism....Synergy!
I find it hard to agree with him, but he puts things out for everyone to examine.
He quotes from a gathering of Eastern Patriarchs that issued a statement [though not a conciliar statement]. From this Synod came the Confession of Dositheus.
“We believe the most good God to have from eternity predestinated unto glory those whom He has chosen, and to have consigned unto condemnation those whom He has rejected; but not so that He would justify the one, and consign and condemn the other without cause.”“But since He foreknew the one would make a right use of their free-will, and the other a wrong, He predestinated the one, or condemned the other.”“And we understand the use of free-will thus, that the Divine and illuminating grace, and which we call preventing [or, prevenient] grace, being, as a light to those in darkness, by the Divine goodness imparted to all, to those that are willing to obey this — for it is of use only to the willing, not to the unwilling — and co-operate with it, in what it requires as necessary to salvation, there is consequently granted particular grace.”“This grace co-operates with us, and enables us, and makes us to persevere in the love of God, that is to say, in performing those good things that God would have us to do, and which His preventing grace admonishes us that we should do, justifies us, and makes us predestinated.”“But those who will not obey, and co-operate with grace; and, therefore, will not observe those things that God would have us perform, and that abuse in the service of Satan the free-will, which they have received of God to perform voluntarily what is good, are consigned to eternal condemnation.”“We believe a man to be not simply justified through faith alone, but through faith which works through love, that is to say, through faith and works. But [the idea] that faith can fulfill the function of a hand that lays hold on the righteousness which is in Christ, and can then apply it unto us for salvation, we know to be far from all Orthodoxy. For faith so understood would be possible in all, and so none could miss salvation, which is obviously false. But on the contrary, we rather believe that it is not the correlative of faith, but the faith which is in us, justifies through works, with Christ.”“But to say, as the most wicked heretics do and as is contained in the Chapter [of Cyril's' Confession] to which this answers — that God, in predestinating, or condemning, did not consider in any way the works of those predestinated, or condemned, we know to be profane and impious.”
No one wants to be called a Heretic. Nobody likes it because it sounds like a denial of genuineness or scholarship or sincerity or that the said Heretic is not actually a Christian. I am reposting his stuff here because the ACNA has been challenged by the OCA, via His Beatitude Metropolitan Jonah, to eschew our Reformed Heresies. This will most likely be the very last one to drop...if it ever does.
I simply cannot read the Anglican Collects from the Book of Common Prayer without feeling the strong tap on the shoulder from Orthodoxy and Catholicism....Synergy!
14 June 2010
Very Positive Developments in the ACNA!
clipped from a Fr. Foster in Ft. Worth. Add his blog to your list and enjoy this entry from last Saturday.
******************************************************************************************
Very Positive Developments in the ACNA!: "The Living Church has a report on the recently concluded ACNA annual meeting. It reports a number of encouraging bits of news (italicized emphasis added by me).
Officials of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which launched a year ago as an alternative to the Episcopal Church, are reporting significant progress in their efforts to share Eucharist with other churches and to do evangelism alongside messianic Jews.
In a report delivered at the ACNA’s annual meeting in Amesbury, Mass., on June 9, ecumenism task force chairman Ray Sutton listed a series of recent milestones that show how the ACNA is forging connections outside mainline Protestantism.
Dialogues with the Orthodox Church in America have reportedly knocked down one of the centuries-old barriers that have kept Anglican and Orthodox Christians from sharing Eucharist. The big concession: when sharing Eucharist, the ACNA would confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and not add the phrase and the Son, as Western Christians traditionally do in a formulation called the Filioque.
RWF: When I appeared before the Commission on Ministry to receive final approval to be ordained a priest the chairman asked me if I believed everything in the Nicene Creed. (It is good that they ask that question around here multiple times during the ordination process!) I told him I believed every single word of it with all my heart. But, I added, if the price of unity was the Orthodox Churches was our jettisoning the Filioque clause I would do it in a heartbeat as the West really had no business adding it unilaterally in the first place. So I consider this a great step in the right direction. May God hasten their efforts!
What’s more, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has lined up four meetings with ACNA representatives at seminaries later this year as the two denominations explore potential for Eucharistic sharing.
RWF: After I came to know Christ our Savior in my twenty-third year among the first works of theology I read were Luther's three great essays of 1521. Brother Martin's thought has deeply marked my own. (I will wager that I am the only clergyman in the diocese of Fort Worth who has taken a four-week 'Footsteps of Luther' study tour in Germany.) I would be absolutely delighted if this dialogue with the Missouri Synod bore fruit.
The ACNA is also inviting 17 messianic Jewish groups to a September summit to explore “how we can do ministry together,” Sutton said.
“We could get their congregations together with our congregations to fellowship, to pray and to seek ways that we be able to evangelize together among Jews and Gentiles,” said Sutton, rector of the Church of the Holy Communion in Dallas. “I think it will be a powerful witness for Jew and Gentile to stand together and proclaim Christ to our constituencies. It’s what happened in the New Testament.”
RWF: Interesting. May many people of all backgrounds coming to saving faith through this initiative.
Sutton’s report, which delegates received with rousing applause, comes as former Episcopal congregations now affiliated with the ACNA seek to establish a distinct, non-Episcopal identity. In addition to building bridges with other Christian communities, the ACNA aspires to define itself as a dynamic movement by planting 1,000 new churches within its first five years.
The ACNA is growing, albeit not as fast as some would like. Archbishop Robert Duncan, in his state-of-the-church address to about 100 delegates and bishops from across North America, noted that the church has swelled from 703 congregations a year ago to 811 now.
RWF: And now the bombshell:
Prospects for further growth, Sutton said, include welcoming as many as 150 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregations that are considering a move to the ACNA.
RWF: WOW! I wonder how this affects plans for the North American Lutheran Church.
The theologically conservative ACNA continues to tread in controversial waters as it carves a niche. Evangelizing Jews, for example, would put the ACNA at odds with most mainstream Jewish groups, which oppose the practice as an affront to Jewish identity. Also, whether to ordain women to the priesthood remains “an issue that divides us,” Duncan acknowledged in his address. Women’s ordination was on the agenda for panel discussion at the June 10-11 College of Bishops meeting, which was closed to lay delegates and press.
For now, the ACNA shows little appetite for internal conflict. Content to tolerate diversity of practice on women’s ordination, delegates to the Provincial Council avoided the issue and characterized their movement as more about unification, rather than fragmentation, within Anglicanism.
“We’re coming together, not splitting apart,” said the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, founding missionary bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a mission of the Province of Nigeria. “The Reformed Episcopal Church is now here after having been apart for 130 years. So we’re actually seeing the reversal of the fragmentation thing.”
Preserving certain strong relationships within the Anglican Communion proved to be a priority at All Saints Anglican Church, Amesbury, as the ACNA marked its first anniversary. The Rev. Lynne L. Ashmead, a deacon and the ACNA’s registrar, cautioned that dioceses need to follow specific record-keeping protocol in conformity with Communion-wide standards. Delegates likewise signaled deference to the Province of Rwanda when they affirmed the Anglican Mission in the Americas as a “ministry partner” that would remain under Rwandan jurisdiction rather than the ACNA’s.
"
******************************************************************************************
Very Positive Developments in the ACNA!: "The Living Church has a report on the recently concluded ACNA annual meeting. It reports a number of encouraging bits of news (italicized emphasis added by me).
Officials of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which launched a year ago as an alternative to the Episcopal Church, are reporting significant progress in their efforts to share Eucharist with other churches and to do evangelism alongside messianic Jews.
In a report delivered at the ACNA’s annual meeting in Amesbury, Mass., on June 9, ecumenism task force chairman Ray Sutton listed a series of recent milestones that show how the ACNA is forging connections outside mainline Protestantism.
Dialogues with the Orthodox Church in America have reportedly knocked down one of the centuries-old barriers that have kept Anglican and Orthodox Christians from sharing Eucharist. The big concession: when sharing Eucharist, the ACNA would confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and not add the phrase and the Son, as Western Christians traditionally do in a formulation called the Filioque.
RWF: When I appeared before the Commission on Ministry to receive final approval to be ordained a priest the chairman asked me if I believed everything in the Nicene Creed. (It is good that they ask that question around here multiple times during the ordination process!) I told him I believed every single word of it with all my heart. But, I added, if the price of unity was the Orthodox Churches was our jettisoning the Filioque clause I would do it in a heartbeat as the West really had no business adding it unilaterally in the first place. So I consider this a great step in the right direction. May God hasten their efforts!
What’s more, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has lined up four meetings with ACNA representatives at seminaries later this year as the two denominations explore potential for Eucharistic sharing.
RWF: After I came to know Christ our Savior in my twenty-third year among the first works of theology I read were Luther's three great essays of 1521. Brother Martin's thought has deeply marked my own. (I will wager that I am the only clergyman in the diocese of Fort Worth who has taken a four-week 'Footsteps of Luther' study tour in Germany.) I would be absolutely delighted if this dialogue with the Missouri Synod bore fruit.
The ACNA is also inviting 17 messianic Jewish groups to a September summit to explore “how we can do ministry together,” Sutton said.
“We could get their congregations together with our congregations to fellowship, to pray and to seek ways that we be able to evangelize together among Jews and Gentiles,” said Sutton, rector of the Church of the Holy Communion in Dallas. “I think it will be a powerful witness for Jew and Gentile to stand together and proclaim Christ to our constituencies. It’s what happened in the New Testament.”
RWF: Interesting. May many people of all backgrounds coming to saving faith through this initiative.
Sutton’s report, which delegates received with rousing applause, comes as former Episcopal congregations now affiliated with the ACNA seek to establish a distinct, non-Episcopal identity. In addition to building bridges with other Christian communities, the ACNA aspires to define itself as a dynamic movement by planting 1,000 new churches within its first five years.
The ACNA is growing, albeit not as fast as some would like. Archbishop Robert Duncan, in his state-of-the-church address to about 100 delegates and bishops from across North America, noted that the church has swelled from 703 congregations a year ago to 811 now.
RWF: And now the bombshell:
Prospects for further growth, Sutton said, include welcoming as many as 150 Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregations that are considering a move to the ACNA.
RWF: WOW! I wonder how this affects plans for the North American Lutheran Church.
The theologically conservative ACNA continues to tread in controversial waters as it carves a niche. Evangelizing Jews, for example, would put the ACNA at odds with most mainstream Jewish groups, which oppose the practice as an affront to Jewish identity. Also, whether to ordain women to the priesthood remains “an issue that divides us,” Duncan acknowledged in his address. Women’s ordination was on the agenda for panel discussion at the June 10-11 College of Bishops meeting, which was closed to lay delegates and press.
For now, the ACNA shows little appetite for internal conflict. Content to tolerate diversity of practice on women’s ordination, delegates to the Provincial Council avoided the issue and characterized their movement as more about unification, rather than fragmentation, within Anglicanism.
“We’re coming together, not splitting apart,” said the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, founding missionary bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a mission of the Province of Nigeria. “The Reformed Episcopal Church is now here after having been apart for 130 years. So we’re actually seeing the reversal of the fragmentation thing.”
Preserving certain strong relationships within the Anglican Communion proved to be a priority at All Saints Anglican Church, Amesbury, as the ACNA marked its first anniversary. The Rev. Lynne L. Ashmead, a deacon and the ACNA’s registrar, cautioned that dioceses need to follow specific record-keeping protocol in conformity with Communion-wide standards. Delegates likewise signaled deference to the Province of Rwanda when they affirmed the Anglican Mission in the Americas as a “ministry partner” that would remain under Rwandan jurisdiction rather than the ACNA’s.
17 October 2009
05 October 2009
"In the Footsteps of Tikhon and Grafton" — Nashotah House to Host Anglican-Orthodox Ecumenical Conference with St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary
This upcoming conference has not had much press coverage. Strangely since the inaugural convention of the ACNA in June I have heard very, very little about it. Any news about, or from, the conference will be a delight to this blogger.
27 August 2009
So FAST
Instead of a blog entry watch my first ever video. I hope you can pick out the two real people...if you cannot just ask...or read some religion news from this week!
Cheers!
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090827234300923
Cheers!
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090827234300923
27 June 2009
24 February 2009
Great Lent
"Great Lent" is the normal name given in Eastern Christianity for what we in the west simply call Lent. I personally like 'Great Lent' because Advent was a lesser penitential season while Lent is the Greater one.
For this season I plan to refrain from 3 vices, or 3 weaknesses, in order to pour better things in to my soul. First is Facebook. Yes I'm on Facebook, and yes it is very addictive. I have 300 friends on that site that I like to follow. Since joining back in the summer of '08 I have felt the zap from energy better spent elsewhere. So don't look for me on there for at least the Lenten season.
Second, I will put down another encumbrance that so easily besets me. This one is the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I'm sorry, I've been watching this since it debuted on TV just after the first Contender. Again, it started with a bimonthly event on cable and another couple events every year on PPV. Now there are monthly PPVs and many different shows highlighting the sport every week. They can cripple the late hours of the evening watching back the recording that my DVR faithfully records. I'm signing off for Lent. Since I know that March Madness and other sports could quickly fill the void I'm going to fast from all televised sport until after the Great Lent.
They next one should not be admitted by a type-II diabetic, but hey, I'm confessin' me sins. I will also abstain from desserts.
Tomorrow I will post the 3 disciplines I plan to practice in place of the three vices. That, after all, is the point of fasting during Lent--to grow closer to the Lord through spiritual excercises and proficiency.
For this season I plan to refrain from 3 vices, or 3 weaknesses, in order to pour better things in to my soul. First is Facebook. Yes I'm on Facebook, and yes it is very addictive. I have 300 friends on that site that I like to follow. Since joining back in the summer of '08 I have felt the zap from energy better spent elsewhere. So don't look for me on there for at least the Lenten season.
Second, I will put down another encumbrance that so easily besets me. This one is the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I'm sorry, I've been watching this since it debuted on TV just after the first Contender. Again, it started with a bimonthly event on cable and another couple events every year on PPV. Now there are monthly PPVs and many different shows highlighting the sport every week. They can cripple the late hours of the evening watching back the recording that my DVR faithfully records. I'm signing off for Lent. Since I know that March Madness and other sports could quickly fill the void I'm going to fast from all televised sport until after the Great Lent.
They next one should not be admitted by a type-II diabetic, but hey, I'm confessin' me sins. I will also abstain from desserts.
Tomorrow I will post the 3 disciplines I plan to practice in place of the three vices. That, after all, is the point of fasting during Lent--to grow closer to the Lord through spiritual excercises and proficiency.
26 January 2009
"Silence of the Apostles"
Several bloggers within the Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox faith have similar posts challenging the Protestant notion of tradition and history. Since I am a protestant I have delineated the issue farther out to the Radical Reformers...[cough, deFORMERS].
This came to my mind while preparing the next post on Blessed Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr for our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. It is a serious challenge too. I really want to know how a convinced Baptist/Presbyterian scholar [or any Christian that operates outside of the Apostolic Tradition] deals with the question. Here's the question.
If the Incarnation of Jesus Christ began the new Humanity into which we are all Baptised, and if the Son of God succeeded in His promise of granting the Church and the Apostles His gift of the Holy Ghost, and if the missionary activity of the Apostles and their disciples is in fact evidence of the Lord expanding His Kingdom and His Church [I'm trying not to be prolix]...
then when and HOW did they botch the job thereby losing the 'true' teaching of Scripture somehow recovered during the reformation?
If they did not lose it, then why should anyone remain separated from the Body for which Jesus died, and which Body is the mystical company of those that have kept the Apostolic Tradition of Sacraments, creeds, three-fold orders under the Bishop, and liturgical fidelity [to name a few]?
Yes, I am reading Pelikan's The Vindication of Tradition.
This came to my mind while preparing the next post on Blessed Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Bishop and Martyr for our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. It is a serious challenge too. I really want to know how a convinced Baptist/Presbyterian scholar [or any Christian that operates outside of the Apostolic Tradition] deals with the question. Here's the question.
If the Incarnation of Jesus Christ began the new Humanity into which we are all Baptised, and if the Son of God succeeded in His promise of granting the Church and the Apostles His gift of the Holy Ghost, and if the missionary activity of the Apostles and their disciples is in fact evidence of the Lord expanding His Kingdom and His Church [I'm trying not to be prolix]...
then when and HOW did they botch the job thereby losing the 'true' teaching of Scripture somehow recovered during the reformation?
If they did not lose it, then why should anyone remain separated from the Body for which Jesus died, and which Body is the mystical company of those that have kept the Apostolic Tradition of Sacraments, creeds, three-fold orders under the Bishop, and liturgical fidelity [to name a few]?
Yes, I am reading Pelikan's The Vindication of Tradition.
06 May 2008
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'"
The Vatican says that Anglicans must choose sides...protestant or Catholic. We usually call ourselves both!
"Does it [Anglican Church] belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century?"
If Rome is willing to live by those qualifications [1st Millennium vs. 16th century dogma] then we have something to talk about. I'm not trying to push an ultra-protestant agenda, but I'm being hopeful that Rome is willing to unify around the first Millennium of our common Faith.
"He [Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity] said he hoped that the Lambeth conference, an event which brings the worldwide Anglican Communion together every 10 years, would be the deciding moment for Anglicanism."
Him don't know much about Lambeth, do he?
"Cardinal Kasper, who has been asked to speak at the Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "We hope that certain fundamental questions will be clarified at the conference so that dialog will be possible."
When said questions are not clarified, it is hoped that they will countenance the GAFCon structure. It will be a long, long summer.
"Does it [Anglican Church] belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century?"
If Rome is willing to live by those qualifications [1st Millennium vs. 16th century dogma] then we have something to talk about. I'm not trying to push an ultra-protestant agenda, but I'm being hopeful that Rome is willing to unify around the first Millennium of our common Faith.
"He [Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council of Christian Unity] said he hoped that the Lambeth conference, an event which brings the worldwide Anglican Communion together every 10 years, would be the deciding moment for Anglicanism."
Him don't know much about Lambeth, do he?
"Cardinal Kasper, who has been asked to speak at the Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury, said: "We hope that certain fundamental questions will be clarified at the conference so that dialog will be possible."
When said questions are not clarified, it is hoped that they will countenance the GAFCon structure. It will be a long, long summer.
17 March 2008
Orthodox? You keep using that word...
C. Michael Patton, a classmate of mine back in seminary days, has a conversation going on about the kind of Orthodox we claim to be. I have pointed my readers to his blog before. When I posted on my choice to seek orders in the Anglican Church, he was kind enough to point his readers over here, and besides I read his blog daily--Usually good reading (but then, not all posts are Michael's!).
Chime in over at Parchment & Pen.
Kind of reminds me of that famous quote from Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. "
Classic.
Chime in over at Parchment & Pen.
Kind of reminds me of that famous quote from Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. "
Classic.
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