See, again this makes little sense to me. How can the declaration of one Synod be as authoritative as an Ecumenical Council?
Which is why I alluded to their pastoral nature and the Synod's desire to talk to ROCOR about it. However, a Synod does not have to be ecumenical for it to be authoritative--many canons are from local synods or individual Fathers. The point is how they are accepted after the fact by the Church--which can take up to a hundred or more years. Witness how II Nicea was not firmly accepted by the whole church until the council of 879 at St Sophia.
It also drives home the point that a Council is what is truly neccessary to resolve the issues "Old Calendarists" find troubling.
I would welcome such a council, but the problem is that it could easily be a new Heirea or a new Ephesus II or a new Florence. The Church doesn't stop acting while we wait for a council, which is the problem I have with the Cyprianite position.
If even after the first and "last" Ecumenical Councils it took several decades for major theological issues to be settled, then why have those in "resistance" lost faith that in time all will be resolved? Where is the justification for such long standing "synods in resistance"? The Church's history is full of incorrect belief, practice, and discrepancy which was later resolved from the inside out.
80 years is not a long time--but here you hit the point about Resistance Synods. That is a clear Cyprianite theory, that "part" of the Church "resists" the other. I do not see such a thing in history when dealing with heresy. Instead, I see "alternative" Churches set up during the Arian controversy, during the Arsenite controversy, during Iconoclasm. These Churches continued to act as the Church and not really concern themselves with the polity of the heretics. However, they did concern themselves with bringing the heretics back, which eventually happened, albeit in different ways in each of the above cases. We have not lost faith that in time all will be resolved, I don't know why you think that? Because of the declaration of gracelessness? Again, the Church does not stop acting as the Church--it has the keys and can determine who is a member. Were the iconoclasts grace-filled before repentance? No! Yet on repentance many were accepted in rank and with their entire diocese.
As for those others who have "crossed the line" and apparently, by your assessment, lost grace. Well, what right do you have and by whose scale do you judge?
I speak in my own opinion on the matter of the fact that some may and some may not. I don't think any heretic has grace; the issue for me is what about those who are not heretics but are only in communion with them? When do they lose grace? I believe that is a debatable point. But those who clearly teach heresy and are ecumenists and on the New Calendar (notice I am saying both) lack grace. The question is: what about those like my friend, who are ignorant and are on the New Calendar because of birth but who confess Orthodoxy otherwise? Those are the people I wish to reach out to and not apply the strictness of logic to their situation. Ultimately, God will decide.
Can you really say "hey, the Greeks are pretty bad, but man...those Antiochians must really be lacking grace."
I do not decide who is graceless--they decide by leaving the Orthodox faith. There are plenty of symptoms of a move away from Orthodoxy in both teaching and preaching and spiritual life. However, I could be wrong in my personal assessment which is why I do not offer it on the internet.
Also, do the great many elders and (fewer) saints who have come from the "New Calendarist" jurisdictions over the last 75 or so years mean anything to a group like the GOC?
The GOC as a whole has not ruled on this. Some are admired and some not. For instance, one prominent Elder on Mt Athos, now deceased, who is popular among some New Calendarist "resisters from within" is touted as a beacon of Orthodoxy, but Met Petros of Astoria knew him on Mt Athos very well and said he was deluded. Others, like Fr Nicholas Planas, are considered Holy by many. (St) Justin Popovic was a beacon of Orthodoxy. We can learn a lot from them, but we must not embrace their communion with heresy. It is a lot like St Isaac of Ninevah, who was in communion with the Church of the East when it was in the process of becoming Nestorian, but who is a saint in our Church.
What is the meaning of the life of elder Paisios for the GOC?
What about other saintly and contemporary Greek elders who still belong to the official Church? What about the monks of Fr. Ephraim?
We do not follow elders as if they are gurus. Some are good, some are not. Fr Ephraim's monasteries keep people away from the GOC and he had deluded visions of the Theotokos telling him to join ROCOR and then tellling him to go back all in the span of one month (one of our GOC priests was at his apartment when he talked about this, and said he made no sense with this hopping around). But we read their writings and those of Met Hierotheos. We learn what we can from them but do not countenance their communion with the EP.
What about the witness of St. Justin of Serbia who spoke out against Ecumenism with a tone rarely matched even among those in "resistence" yet remained a part of the official Church?
Like I said, he was a great man.
What about St. John of San Francisco who was known to commemorate the Russian Patriarch on occassions and never denied that the Russian Church in Russia possessed Grace.
Ah, he is a saint in our Church too, insofar as we have a temple named after him. He was an occasional guest at St Markella's--in fact, on Ioannis's website ecclesiagoc.org, you can see a picture of him with Bp Petros and I believe another one of him in front of St Markella's. He is a great saint. The Russian Church had a different approach than the GOC, that only an ecumenical council could pronounce grace or lack thereof, and we respect that, but wanted to have a unified response. Unfortunately, our sinfulness resulted in a rupture between ROCOR and us that kept that from happening.
What of the modern Russian elders who are already venerated as saints... did God grant this to them without a grace possessing Church?
Like I said, the encyclicals were pastoral documents relating to the Church in Greece, and are not completely theological and canonically thought out, as a council was never called with ROCOR to do so.
Are the saints and elders wrong? Maybe they were just misguided and now the Old Calendarists can set them straight.
While I don't like the tone you are taking, and feel you are responding to my sincere and straightforwardness with baiting and disdain, I will still keep answering. We have our saints and elders too--don't forget it. And our saints and elders did not commemorate the Masonic patriarch of Constantinople or the communist-praising patriarch Justinian in Romania, etc. The New Calendarist saints and elders may have been holy, may have been grace possessed, etc, but yes, they were in fact wrong to be in communion with the EP.
Those mentioned above were also, for the most part, in great opposition to "modernism", ecumenism, and "renovationsim"...yet remained within the official Church, working and praying for Orthodoxy. Still...some of the resisters have labeled their Church's as graceless and heretical.
As a whole, what do you want to say their Churches were? Beacons of Orthodoxy? A place where the fullness of right belief resides? Again, I see this issue as pastoral and not so much as dogmatic because it is ambigious dogmatically. But pastorally, it is simple: leave the New Calendar Church.
Anastasios
