LOL, The Lutheran World Federation just canceled The Nicene Creed in The West

Rev. Anne Burghardt, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation

 

The Lutheran World Federation just resolved the problem of the insertion of the filioque with a reactionary surrender to the Orthodox, jettisoning reason for emotion.

"Let's just recite The Nicene Creed without 'and the Son' and then we can be friends". 

. . . we suggest that the translation of the Greek original (without the Filioque) be used in the hope that this will contribute to the healing of age-old divisions . . ..

Here.

Is there a better example in the long history of Christian theology of the failure of the church to be guided into all the truth?

The Protestant schism is only 507 years old, the East-West now 970.

The filioque was a reasonable development within Trinitarianism, stubbornly resisted by the church in the East because it wasn't explicitly Nicene (325). Its first known promulgation at the Third Council of Toledo in 589 in a context of Arianism, the primarily Eastern heresy from the early fourth century, spread in the West but rankled the East, so much so it became a red line by 1054.

They got tired of their reputation for mistakes, I guess.

The first Protestant Reformers insisted generally on the text of Scripture to guide into all the truth, in keeping with the thinking of ancient fathers of the church such as Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, and Epiphanius of Salamis, who specifically on the subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father "and the Son" thought it was the plain teaching of the New Testament.

The Reformers thought that the New Testament Scriptures were the result of that process described by Jesus in the Gospel of John, that the Spirit would guide into all the truth. To them the filioque was obvious.

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

-- John 16:13ff.

To contemporary Lutherans? Not so much.

Intellectually, if we may use that term elastically, the liberal Lutherans now have more in common with the enthusiasts, the Schwärmer, the 16th century's charismatics and radicals, than they do with the Protestant Reformation.

To them the Spirit is still revealing truths to all and sundry: His truth, her truth, my truth, your truth, hir truth, their truth, but the more important thing is the feeling of unity. Besides, most Christians today have no clue about an obscure topic like the filioque. It's a speedbump, not a roadblock.

The way for this in liberal Lutheranism was prepared for by their enthusiastic embrace of modern critical scholarship of the Bible, with the result that everything has been up for grabs: The theory of evolution, women's ordination, homosexuality, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Hey, why not the filioque? "Just take it . . . to the limit . . . one more time."

The origins of that, however, ironically enough, are in the Enlightenment rediscovery of . . . reason. What goes around, comes around, you might say, as the phonograph needle scratches across the vinyl.

Ultimately speaking, neither the well of human reason nor the well of human feeling produces rivers of living water.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. 

-- Ecclesiastes 1:14

Centuries before the East-West Schism, the schismatic Roman Pope Victor I broke with the Christians of Asia Minor over celebrating Easter on Nisan 14

 

 Aka the Quartodecimans, the fourteenthers.

Victor [died 199 A. D.], who presided over the church at Rome, immediately attempted to cut off from the common unity the parishes of all Asia, with the churches that agreed with them, as heterodox; and he wrote letters and declared all the brethren there wholly excommunicate.

-- Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, V.XXIV.9.

 

Orthodox Easter 2024 is Sunday, May 5th, five weeks after Easter in the West:

Orthodox Pascha often occurs later in the spring ... especially out of sync with the actual astronomical phenomena linked to an accurate calculation of the Paschal date. ... During the 21st century, the Orthodox and Western Churches will share a common celebration of Pascha only 31 times.

 

Victor's unbrother-like heat towards the Eastern churches, in the controversy about Easter, fomented that difference into a schism.                                                                           

-- The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety  

Butthurt Roman Catholic thinks Luther himself would want to put his genie back in the bottle lol, opts for the authoritarianism of the old magisterium

Yeah, just disconnect your brain and do what we tell ya.

 

 

 

 

 

 

37.5% of the world's Christians now beg to differ as Protestants because Luther and his heirs thought otherwise, but Rome's problem with schism long predates Luther.

 

Unintended Consequences Of Martin Luther’s Reformation

 

Over the last 500 years, most American Christians — Protestant and Catholic — have operated as functional Lutherans. All I need is a Bible, a brain and the Holy Spirit to interpret Scripture. How has that worked out? Western missionaries, European and American, have exported a gospel around the world that has yielded more than 45,000 Christian denominations globally and more than 200 in the U.S., according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity.

 

If you think this is a problem (I do), remember that we can’t solve a problem using the same mind that created it. I suggest returning to the early centuries of the church, when a magisterium, an authority beyond individual interpretation, settled these sorts of disputes.

 

What is more comical, Michel Houellebecq's misplaced faith in the competence of theologians or his ignorance of Catholicism's responsibility for schism?

Restoration: An Exchange of Views on Religion Between Michel Houellebecq and Geoffroy Lejeune

"Can the Catholic Church regain her former splendor? Yes, perhaps, I don’t know. It would be good if she moved away definitively from Protestantism and drew closer to Orthodoxy. Unity would be the best solution, but it would not be easy. The question of the Filioque could easily be resolved by competent theologians. ... Basically, it amounts to this: The Catholic Church, in the course of its history, has granted much too much importance to reason (aggravated over the centuries, probably, under the influence of Protestantism). Man is a being of reason: That’s true, from time to time. But he is above all a being of flesh, and of emotion. It would be good not to forget that."

The first schismatics are the Roman Catholics themselves, and then the Greek Orthodox, and they are divided to this day

Spare me the critique of "schismatic" Protestantism beginning with Luther in 1517.

You Catholics and Orthodox were at it over 400 years before us, and still are.

Meanwhile Protestants laid the groundwork for the most free, enlightened and prosperous populations which have ever existed in human history while you sit there arguing about who runs this rathole and that rathole as both are being overrun by Muslims.

In 1053, the first step was taken in the process which led to formal schism: the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Michael I Cerularius ordered the closure of all Latin churches in Constantinople, in response to the Greek churches in southern Italy having been forced either to close or to conform to Latin practices. According to the historian J. B. Bury, Cerularius' purpose in closing the Latin churches was "to cut short any attempt at conciliation". ... Several attempts at reconciliation did not bear fruit. In 1965, Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras I nullified the anathemas of 1054, although this nullification of measures taken against a few individuals was essentially a goodwill gesture and did not constitute any sort of reunion. Contacts between the two sides continue: every year a delegation from each joins in the other's celebration of its patronal feast, Saints Peter and Paul (29 June) for Rome and Saint Andrew (30 November) for Constantinople, and there have been a number of visits by the head of each to the other. The efforts of the Ecumenical Patriarchs towards reconciliation with the Catholic Church have often been the target of sharp criticism from some fellow Orthodox.