“The Immaculate Conception and the Orthodox Church” (4)

By Father Lev Gillet
From Chrysostom, Vol. VI, No. 5 (Spring 1983), pp. 151-159.
(Continued from Part I, Part II & Part III)
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V. There are three principal causes which provide an explanation for the opposition with which the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has been met in the Orthodox Church.
First and foremost, there is the mistrust felt a priori by many Orthodox about any doctrine [...]

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“The Immaculate Conception and the Orthodox Church” (3)

By Father Lev Gillet
From Chrysostom, Vol. VI, No. 5 (Spring 1983), pp. 151-159.
(Continued from Part I and Part II)
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IV. Let us now consider more closely the attitude of the Russian Church towards the question of the Immaculate Conception.
Every Russian theological student knows that St Dmitri, metropolitan of Rostov (17th century), supported the Latin ”theory of the epiklesis” (10); but young Russians [...]

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“The Immaculate Conception and the Orthodox Church” (2)

By Father Lev Gillet
From Chrysostom, Vol. VI, No. 5 (Spring 1983), pp. 151-159.
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(Continued from Part 1)
III. I shall begin by quoting several phrases which cannot be said with absolute certainty to imply a belief in the Immaculate Conception but in which it is quite possible to find traces of such a belief.
First of all - the patriarch Photius. In his [...]

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“The Immaculate Conception and the Orthodox Church” (1)

By Father Lev Gillet
From Chrysostom, Vol. VI, No. 5 (Spring 1983), pp. 151-159.
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I. It is generally agreed, I think, that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is one of the questions which make a clear and profound division between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Is this really the case? We shall try to examine quite objectively what Orthodox [...]

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When theology becomes ideology

… [T]he reading of history that you have taken on from Joseph Farrell, that I think constitutes an ideology, in fact resembles, theoretically and rhetorically, the ideology of those who gave fuel to the Bosnian war. It presents a discourse wherein the West is conceived to have fallen from divine grace, and the chief villain [...]

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“The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy”

A. St. Leger Westall, “The Fathers Gave Rome the Primacy”, The Dublin Review, CXXXII (January-April 1903), pp. 101-114.
The famous xxviii. Canon of Chalcedon has been for many centuries a favourite authority among all those who, whether in the East or in England, are anxious to find support in primitive times for their rejection of the Petrine [...]

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Canon 28 redux

I have just begun listening to Bishop Hilarion’s talk at the recent SVS conference. He makes reference to the (in)famous Canon 28 of Chalcedon, and gives the standard Orthodox (and generally non-/anti-Roman) interpretation of it: that it ascribes the origin of Old Rome’s primacy not to the will of Christ or succession from the Apostle [...]

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“A Latin’s Lamentation over Gennadios Scholarios”

The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies

“Overcoming the Schism,” Chicago, May 8-10, 1998

THE SCHISM: GROUNDS FOR DIVISION, GROUNDS FOR UNITY
“A LATIN’S LAMENTATION OVER GENNADIOS SCHOLARIOS”
Fr. Hugh Barbour, O. Praem.
In August of 1994, I was happy to be one of the many Latin clerics who over the years, in divisa or in borghese, have [...]

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Saint Basil on Unity and Legitimate Variance

Our friend Wei-Hsein Wan of Torn Notebook (formerly Bumi Dipijak) has posted a quote from Saint Basil the Great, with commentary, illustrating a certain broadness of mind about doctrinal matters, a legitimate variance and pluralism in theological expression, within a common dogmatic framework (the Nicene Creed, sans Filioque, quoted as such in Dominus Iesus 1):
At [...]

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Bishop Hilarion’s clarification

In response to the earlier post “Bishop Hilarion: God’s Mercy is immeasurable”, His Grace, Hilarion (Alfeyev), Russian Orthodox Bishop of Vienna, posted the following clarification in the combox:
Friends, I came across your blog by accident. Thank you for your interest in what I said in Rome. However, I must state that what some of you [...]

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