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AUGUSTINE UNKNOWINGLY REJECTS THE DOCTRINE OF THE ECUMENCAL COUNCILS CONCERNING THE OLD TESTAMENT LORD OF GLORY INCARNATE AND HIS VATICAN AND PROTESTANT FOLLOWERS DO THE SAME

PART III: THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES' CREED OF 381

© John S. Romanides

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There was and still is the historical Creed of the Second Ecumenical Council of 381 AD which is the only Creed which is in full use by the Orthodox Churches. However, we now have "The World Council of Churches' Creed of 381 AD." Between both these Creeds the words are exactly the same. But the WCC's Creed is a complete distortion of the original Creed of the Second Ecumenical Council of 381. As far as this writer knows this distortion is contained in every document put out by the WCC about this Creed of 381 AD. This is especially so in the WCC's book "Confessing The One Faith," edited by Gennadius Limouris. This book was the fruit of several years of study by many study meetings conducted by 'so-called specialists' who carefully? studied this Creed for the purpose of establishing a common basis of faith on which to build a firm foundation for a future union of the Churches. Unfortunately the exposition contained in this book has no relation whatsoever to the historical reality of this Creed. It is a collection of completely correct words, but cut off from their original context within which the Fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council composed this Creed. The writers of this Creed had reacted to the philosophical presuppositions of the heretical Arians, Macedonians and Eunomians. It was not a product of the categories explained by Augustine himself in Part I of this exposition. It was the product of only those categories found in Part II of this study.

The real heretics condemned in 381 AD used the Church's teachings within the context of solving philosophical problems posed mostly by Aristotelians and Platonists. They were especially ridiculing the claim that God created everything from nothing. This would make God a potential creator who became a perfected actual creator when He actually became creator. Paul of Samosata had solved this philosophical problem by falling back on the Church's distinction between God's radically unknown nature or essence and His relation to His creation not by any inner necessity, but by will. In other words God does not create by nature, but by will. This distinction between what God is by nature and what God does by will solved a philosophical problem but created serious doctrinal ones. This in turn provoked the question of whether the existence of God's Logos and Holy Spirit were product of His will or nature. If of will then a creature. If of nature then a necessity of nature. The Fathers refused to follow such a road of speculation since they consistently maintained the position that there is no similarity whatsoever between the uncreated and the created and that "It is impossible to express God and that it is even more impossible to conceive Him." It is only within the sphere of the cure of the sickness of human personality centered in the heart that one may come to know God in Christ. This cure takes place by the purification of the heart and in its illumination by unceasing prayer, while the intellect is occupied with normal activities while asleep and awake. When this illumination of the heart results in the experience of glorification one has been ordained a prophet whose mission becomes to lead others into the same cure of the human personality. This is the main and essential mission of the Body of Christ

Also these same Fathers of the Roman Ecumenical Councils rejected the pagan teaching that happiness is the destiny of man since glorification is destiny. In this regard it is interesting that Augustine wrote his book "Beata Vita-The Happy Life" before his baptism when He was still a Platonist. On his way to his baptism he affirms that what he is now accepting by faith he will be rewarded by "...comprehension. Meanwhile, I am confident that I shall find among the Platonists what is not in opposition to our Sacred Scriptures."[ 1 ] A glaring proof of the difference between the Augustinian tradition of both Vaticanians and Protestants and the Orthodox Fathers is the one translates St. Paul to say "If one is honored, the rest rejoice," instead of "If one is glorified, the rest rejoice."(1 Cor. 12:26)

In sharp contrast to the Franco-Latin Augustinian tradition, the Fathers of all Ecumenical Councils relied only on the cure of the sickness of religion at the center of the human personality. What is sick in humans is their "spirit" because distorted by partial communion with the uncreated glory of God which saturates and governs creation.

The beginning of the restoration of communion between the human spirit and God's Spirit is the purification and the illumination of the heart by unceasing prayer which may lead one to glorification. One begins by acceptance faith during the stage of purification of the heart. This becomes inner faith as unceasing prayer takes possession of the heart on one's way to glorification. Rather than repeat what I had already developed on this subject for this Lutheran-Orthodox Dialogue the reader may turn to my study entitled "Church Synods and Civilization"[ 2 ] on this website.

However, this study has now been complemented by my newer study in Greek entitled "Religion is a Neurobiological Sickness and Orthodoxy is its Cure",[ 3 ] published by Koutloumousiou Monastery of Mount Athos. The thesis is very simply. There is an electrical short circuit between the heart which pumps blood and the spinal cord which circulates spinal fluid. The unceasing prayer in the heart repairs this short circuit resulting in the cure of the phenomena of phantaces which are the chief weapons of the devil by which he causes deviations from the cure of the purification and illumination of the heart and glorification. The chief of these phantaces is the belief that one can express and conceive God. This is the very foundation of all idolatry, both non Christian and Christian. For this reason most Christians today are correct when they say that their Christianity is one of the many religions since all of them are products of an electrical short circuit.

The WCC Christology meeting at Rhodes, Greece 4-10/1/1988

In any case I was invited to be above meeting and was quite impressed by the fact that this project had not yet taken into consideration the fact that both the Fathers of the First and Second Ecumenical Councils and their heretical opponents were concentrating on the identity of both the pre-incarnate and incarnated Logos in both the Old and New Testaments. In other words both Orthodox and the heretical Arians and Eunomians accept in common the inherited tradition that the Logos of both the Old Testament and the New Testament is Christ Incarnate. So in my group I gave such patristic examples I have given in Part II of this paper. I explained how both the heretical Arians condemned at the First Ecumenical Council and heretical Eunomians condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council had argued that the Logos in both the Old and New Testaments was created and how at both Councils the Orthodox argued that He his uncreated and consubstantial with the Father. Some Protestants reacted quite negatively. When they realized that I did not expect them to personally accept such teachings, but to accept them as part of a descriptive analysis of historical reality-this they accepted. So I gave them some texts as examples. So they drew up minutes and voted that a reference should to made to this historical fact with references to such texts in a future edition of the project at hand.

But the final New Revised Version of the WCC's "Confessing the One Faith" appeared in 1991 without any reference to this faith of the Fathers of the First and Second Ecumenical Councils: that the Logos in the text of the Creed of 381 is the Angel of the Lord Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush as we saw in Part II. It seems quite clear that certain hidden directors of the WCC deliberately made sure that such a position will not take hold in the circles of the WCC since it is not the position held by either the Protestants or by the Vatican who still follow Augustine as we had seen in Part I of this study. In other words both the Vatican and the Protestants, who still follow the positions of Augustine in Part I, do not belong to the tradition of any one of the Nine Ecumenical Councils, especially neither that of First (325), neither that of the Second (381) , nor that of the Ninth (1351).

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FOOTNOTES

[ 1 ] Contra Academicos, III, 43.

[ 2 ] Published in Theologia, Athens, vol. 63, issue 3, July-September 1992, pp. 424-450 which was presented at the VIth Meeting of the Lutheran-Orthodox Joint Commission Meeting 31/5-8/6/1991 Moscow, USSR. Revised for Subcommission Meeting, June 17-21, 1992, Geneva.

[ 3 ] This study was published in a volume entitled "ORTHDOXY AND HELLENISM ON THE WAY TO THE THIRD MILLENIUM," EDITION OF THE SACRED MONESTARY OF KOUTOUMOUSIOU, MOUNT ATHOS, pp. 67-87.

 

[ Introduction ] - [ Part 1 ] - [ Part 2 ] - [ Part 3 ]

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