“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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On Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception

Not all [modern] Orthodox theologians deny [the Immaculate Conception], though some do very explicitly deny it, thereby illustrating the different development which took place in the West and left the East comparatively unaffected. The development of an explicit doctrine of the Immaculate Conception originated in the Pelagian denial of original sin, which denial forced Latin [...]

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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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Spe salvi facti sumus?

How many Roman Catholics (and Western Christians in general) honestly recognize in these comments their own Faith in the Risen Lord Jesus, their hope in the Resurrection of the body, and their personal experience of Easter/Pascha, the Queen of Feasts? Please be as honest and as charitable as possible in your answer.
(Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics, please sit [...]

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Bishop Hilarion: God’s Mercy is immeasurable

How far can the mercy of God extend? Is there a limit? According to Jesus’ own revelations to St. Faustina, the answer is no. God’s mercy for His creation is unfathomable, without boundary, and unlimited by any constraint, human, or non-human.
In an amazing, even surprising ecumenical moment in the Catholic Church’s first World Congress on [...]

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What is “created grace”?

From our old friend Mike Liccione comes an important clarification on the Latin Catholic notion of “created grace” –
There certainly were Catholic theologians in the later Middle Ages who were “nominalists,” and it is certainly true that many of those nominalists treated the question of grace in more or less the way janotec criticizes. But not all [...]

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