The Saint Augustine vs HTM Thread (was Discord Spillover)

[Suaidan]

I'm a little concerned about the St. Jerome thing. This is worse than removing St Augustine (which they did) and St Isidore (which they did) but no one has ever dared to remove a well-known 4th century saint.

If this is true, such revisionism is beyond dangerous.

[SavaBeljovic]

This thread has been a rollercoaster... it started as the Discord spat/slap fight and now is the HOCNA vs the world thread. Maybe this should be moved to another thread? Just a suggestion

[Thomas_Deretich]

It seems to me that there are two inseparable issues here. First, Augustine's "place" in the Orthodox Church. Second, Augustine's "contributions" to Western departures from the ancient Orthodox Christian consensus. History indicates that Augustine (and Jerome) did not have an important place in the Universal Church of the Seven Ecumenical Synods analogous to the importance of the Three Great Hierarchs, or Athanasius and Cyril, or Maximus, or John Damascene. In contrast, Augustine was mainly influential in local Latin-language disputes over Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. Augustine did, however, contribute greatly to the departure of the West from the ancient patristic consensus. That is the sad tragedy. Romanides has written on how Augustine was not faithful to the teachings of his teacher Saint Ambrose. There is an entire book documenting how Augustine often distained the patristic teachings of Saint Cyprian and substituted Augustine's own personal preferences in place of the inherited deposit of the faith.

Augustine should not be used to divide old-calendar synods further, and such further division would be contrary to my purpose here, but we should not hide the historical facts about Augustine’s massive errors. Honest historiography on the estrangement of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology from ancient and Byzantine theology cannot sweep Augustine’s departures from patristic theology under the rug. If a thorough examination of the East-West schism is ever written in a single book, the topic of Augustine’s deviations from patristic consensus will require tens of thousands of words. The medieval Latin church fell into several fundamental errors. It increasingly relied on one man, Augustine, and his writings, to the detriment of the body of church fathers; and it increasingly relied on one man, the pope, rather than the body of the bishops, with all bishops charged with preserving the deposit of faith. In this way the late medieval Latin church became something very different from the original Church founded by Jesus Christ Himself, which preserved East–West unity up to and past the time of the Seventh Universal Council in A.D. 787, and further to the synod of 879–880 in Constantinople. That synod again forbade any change to the Creed, even by a pope of Rome; and it reaffirmed the validity of Saint Photius, who opposed extreme papal supremacy and other changes to the Christian faith.

THE ANCIENT CONSENSUS
During the first nine centuries of the Christian era, the one Christian Church—including the pope and church of Rome (the patriarchate of the west) and the four Eastern Orthodox Catholic patriarchates came to a consensus[1] on accepting the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament Scriptures,[2] the same eighty-five apostolic canons,[3] the same seven universal councils,[4] the same nine universally-accepted local councils,[5] and a list of twelve individual bishops whose canons (or decretal letters) were accepted by the Church, including Saints Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, and Cyril.[6] Augustine was not among these twelve bishops. There were also at least seven important western councils[7] that rejected both the errors of Pelagianism concerning salvation and also the errors of extreme anti-Pelagianism (also known as extreme Augustinianism). This represented an East-West doctrinal consensus that rejected both Pelagianism and extreme Augustinianism (which comes very close to four of the five points in the much later Protestant “Five Points of Calvinism”). (In modern times, both the Orthodox Churches [and even the Roman Catholic Church] again reiterated their rejections of extreme Augustinianism/Calvinism.) The Synodicon of Orthodoxy (compiled in stages between 843 and 1352) also lists numerous bishops and theologians considered authoritative teachers of the Church in East and West, including --- in addition to the twelve bishops who wrote canons or decretal letters accepted by the Fifth-Sixth Synod --- Saints Ambrose of Milan, John Chrysostom, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Theodore of Studium, Gregory Palamas, and several others. Augustine is not mentioned among these teachers by either the Fifth-Sixth Synod or the Synodicon of Orthodoxy. The Synodicon of the Holy Spirit and the Synod of 1285 in Constantinople were specifically directed against the Filioque error, to which Augustine contributed greatly.

The teachings of Christ, the apostles, the New Testament Scriptures, the ancient synods, the ancient liturgies and prayers, and the ancient saints and writers of the Church, all together, represent the ancient Orthodox (right-believing) and Catholic (whole, universal) Christian consensus. This is known as the “consensus of the Fathers” (consensus patrum in Latin). It is also known, more literally from the Greek, as the “symphony of the Fathers” (symphōnía tôn patérōn), since this stream of teachers teaches Christian truth with symphonic or harmonious voices. This stream of authoritative teaching and practice is none other than historic Christianity itself. This body of historic Christian consensus teaching and piety predates the distortions introduced along with the rise of extreme papal supremacy during the later medieval period in the West.

THE PAPAL REVOLUTION
For at least the first nine hundred years of the Christian era, the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Churches of the East, despite temporary breakages in communion, formed one visibly united Church. After approximately one thousand years, the Church of Rome separated—theologically, sacramentally, and administratively—from the four ancient Orthodox Catholic patriarchates of the East. For simplicity, the schism is dated to the excommunications that were exchanged in the year 1054, but the separation was also a process that does not have only one key date. As the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) states, “Byzantium continued to live in a patristic atmosphere, using the ideas and language of the Greek Fathers of the fourth century. But in Western Europe the tradition of the Fathers was replaced by scholasticism―that great synthesis of philosophy and theology worked out in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Western theologians now came to employ new categories of thought, a new theological method, and a new terminology.” Coinciding with the schism of the eleventh century, the rise of scholastic theology and papal absolutism made the western Church a very different entity from what it had been when it was in communion with the Orthodox Churches of the East. As the influential French Roman Catholic priest and scholar Yves Congar wrote, “Between the end of the 11th century and the end of the 12th, everything is changed in the West.” The Orthodox Catholic Churches of the East continued the united Eastern-Western Orthodox Catholic Church of ancient times, whereas the Latin church became something very different, as serious historians agree, since “everything [was] changed in the West.”[9]

The fact that Augustinianism and Latin scholasticism constituted a radical theological change from ancient patristic theology of the East and West is acknowledged by competent modern historians of East and West. Another Roman Catholic scholar writes, referring to several Roman Catholic saints: "Latin theology, derived from St Augustine, dominated the [West-European] Middle Ages, and inspired the [Protestant] Reformers. So that from St Thomas [Aquinas] to Malebranche, from St Bernard to Jansenius, the history of theology and philosophy [in the West] was bound up with the fortunes of Augustinianism, just as if this were a second tradition mingled with the first, as if it had given, on the threshold of the new age, a new version of the Christian message."[10]

This “new version” of Christianity (post-schism Roman Catholicism) was put together in the late Middle Ages in the West on the basis of the deviations of Augustinianism, papal absolutism, and scholastic theology. Its novelty is acknowledged as a historical fact by theologians and historians of East and West. Augustine, the rise of papal supremacy, the Gregorian Reform, and Thomas Aquinas and scholasticism were key factors is causing the papal church to depart from the Orthodox Christian consensus of the first 850 years.

ENDNOTES
[1] This ancient East-West consensus on Scripture, dogma, councils, canons, and fathers was ratified at the Synod of 878–880 in Constantinople, Decree and Canons 1–3; Johan A. Meijer, A Successful Council of Union: A Theological Analysis of the Photian Synod of 879–880 (Ἀνάλεκτα Βλατάδων 23; Thessalonica: Πατριαρχικὸν Ἵδρυμα Πατερικῶν Μελετῶν, 1975); George D. Dragas, “The Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV (879/880) and the Condemnation of the Filioque Addition and Doctrine,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 44 [1999]: 357–369; James Thornton, The Œcumenical Synods of the Orthodox Church: A Concise History (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2007; 2d ed.; 2012), 122–133.

[2] “Of the New Testament: four books of the Gospels [Matthew, Mark, Luke, John], one book of the Acts of the Apostles, thirteen epistles of the Apostle Paul, one epistle of the same to the Hebrews, two epistles of the Apostle Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude, one book of the Revelation of John” (Synod of 397 in Carthage, Canon 17).

[3] “[T]he eighty-five canons, received and ratified by the holy and blessed fathers before us, and also handed down to us in the name of the holy and glorious apostles” (Synod of 692 in Constantinople [Fifth-Sixth Ecumenical Synod], Canon 2).

[4] Synod of 325 in Nicaea (First Ecumenical Synod); Synod of 381–382 in Constantinople (Second Ecumenical Synod); Synod of 431 in Ephesus (Third Ecumenical Council); Synod of 451 in Chalcedon (Fourth Ecumenical Synod); Synod of 553 in Constantinople (Fifth Ecumenical Synod); Synod of 680–681 in Constantinople (Sixth Ecumenical Synod); Synod of 692 in Constantinople (Fifth-Sixth Ecumenical Synod; Quinisext Synod; Synod in Trullo); Synod of 787 in Nicaea (Seventh Ecumenical Synod).

[5] Synod of 256 in Carthage under Saint Cyprian, Canon 1; Synod of 314 in Ancyra, Canons 1–25; Synod of 315 in Neocaesarea, Canons 1–15; Synod of 340 in Gangra, Canons 1–21; Synod of 341 in Antioch, Canons 1–25; Synod of 347 in Sardica, Canons 1–20; Synod of 364 in Laodicea, Canons 1–59; Synod of 394 in Constantinople under Archbishop Nectarius of Constantinople and Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria, Canons 1–2; and Synod of 418/419 in Carthage, Canons 1–148.

[6] “[T]he canons [decretal letters] of Dionysius, formerly Archbishop of the great city of Alexandria; and of Peter, Archbishop of Alexandria and Martyr; of Gregory the Wonder-worker, Bishop of Neocaesarea; of Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria; of Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia; of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa; of Gregory the Theologian; of Amphilochius of Iconium; of Timothy, Archbishop of Alexandria; of Theophilus, Archbishop of the same great city of Alexandria; of Cyril, Archbishop of the same Alexandria; of Gennadius, Patriarch of this heaven-protected royal city. Moreover the canon set forth by Cyprian, Archbishop of the country of the Africans and Martyr, and by the synod under him, which has been kept only in the country of the aforesaid bishops, according to the custom delivered down to them” (Synod of 692 in Constantinople [Fifth-Sixth Ecumenical Synod], Canon 2).

[7] Synod of 473 in Arles, Synod of 474 in Lyons, Synod of 529 in Orange, Synod of 849 in Quiercy, Synod of 855 in Valance, Synod of 859 in Langres, and Synod of 860 in Toul.

[8] Kallistos Timothy Ware, “Eastern Christianity,” in Mircea Eliade, ed., Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987); Kallistos Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin, 1993); Kallistos Timothy Ware, “Scholasticism and Orthodoxy: Theological Method as a Factor in the Schism,” Eastern Churches Review 5.1 (Spring 1973): 16–27.

[9] Yves Congar, quoted in Kallistos Timothy Ware, “Scholasticism and Orthodoxy: Theological Method as a Factor in the Schism,” Eastern Churches Review 5.1 (Spring 1973): 16–27, at 16.

[10] Jean Guitton, The Modernity of Saint Augustine, 80, emphasis added, quoted in John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (The Martin D’Arcy Memorial Lectures 1981–2; Oxford: Clarendon Press 1987), 68. For a summary of pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic theology, see Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma ([1st German ed.; Grundriss der Katholischen Dogmatik; Freiburg: Herder, 1952]; 1st English ed.; tr. Patrick Lynch; Cork, Ireland: Mercier, 1955; [11th German ed.; Bonn: Nova & Vetera, 2010]; English ed. James Canon Bastible; rev. Robert Fastiggi; forw. Athanasius Schneider; Baronius, 2018; 2022).

[Suaidan]

It seems to me that there are two inseparable issues here. First, Augustine's "place" in the Orthodox Church. Second, Augustine's "contributions" to Western departures from the ancient Orthodox Christian consensus. History indicates that Augustine (and Jerome) did not have an important place in the Universal Church of the Seven Ecumenical Synods analogous to the importance of the Three Great Hierarchs, or Athanasius and Cyril, or Maximus, or John Damascene.

See, there's a lot of words here, but I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that the pre-schism Church and Orthodoxy later DID venerate Sts Augustine and Jerome. You can't just throw out Fathers you don't prefer, or bad things will happen. I've been busy, so I haven't had the time to take apart these arguments but am I to understand that HOCNA continues to gut Western Fathers out of their lived experience? This seems to be creating a parallel and counterfeit "Orthodoxy" that doesn't look like the real one at all....

[Suaidan]

Dear Thomas:

You’ve written at length here, and it seems that most people on the Cafe right now don’t want to address these rather lengthy charges. However, upon even moderate scrutiny these claims don’t hold up.

Augustine wrote several books explaining in detail his controversial views in the final nine years (especially the final four years) of his life. In these books, he wrote several passages that deviated greatly from the balanced way that the great Orthodox Fathers and Teachers (before and after Augustine) dealt with the same doctrines. In these extreme and unbalanced passages, Augustine seemed to teach that: (1) All human beings of all time were present “in” Adam when he sinned and “were” Adam when he sinned. (2) All human beings (men, women, and children) deserve to spend eternity in hell because we are all guilty of the sin that we committed when we all "were" Adam. (3) God arbitrarily chooses to give grace to a select few human beings (whether they desire it or not) and only the chosen can be saved. (4) God abandons all the rest of humanity, the majority (even those who desire to be saved). They have no chance at salvation. (5) God does not will that all men be saved. Augustine explains away the teaching of Scripture that God “wills all men to be saved,” by claiming that it only means the predestined, who happen to come from all kinds of backgrounds. (6) God “predestinates” (determines beforehand), in an inscrutable (inexplicable, essentially arbitrary) way that only a select few individuals will be saved.

To answer your five points:
1) Ironically this is actually proven by modern genetics. All humans, as the Scriptures teach, descend from two human ancestors.
2) St Augustine didn’t teach this, as he goes into depth on the concept of Hades when discussing the fate of unbaptized infants.
3) That’s standard Orthodox teaching, unless you’re a universalist.
4) That’s also standard Orthodox teaching, unless you’re a universalist.
5) St Augustine is explaining the term in a way that can be understood so that every person can know they have a chance of salvation.

Some of Augustine’s more extreme and unbalanced passages include the following:

[]“we all were in that one man [Adam], since all of us were that one man who fell into sin through the woman” (Augustine, City of God 13.4).
[*]“[a] class of men that is predestinated to destruction” (Augustine, Man’s Perfection in Righteousness 13)
[]“to those whom He has predestinated to eternal death, He is also the most righteous awarder of punishment” (Augustine, The Soul and Its Origin 16)
[*]“Of the number of the elect and predestined, even those who have led the worst kind of life are led to repentance through the goodness of God.... The other mortals ... have been made vessels of wrath .... He leads none of them to the wholesome and spiritual repentance by which a man in Christ is reconciled to God .... all men [are] of the same mass of perdition and condemnation .... God through his merciful goodness leads some of them to repentance, and according to His judgment does not lead others” (Augustine, Against Julian 1.4.14).
[*]“He ‘wills all men to be saved’ [1 Tim 2:4] is said so that all the predestined may be understood by it, because every kind of man is among them” (Augustine, Admonition and Grace 44).

I am going to skip over these quotes because most are not particularly shocking except the third, which I thought would be wise to give context. Here is the full chapter you cited there.

Do not, my son, let senile timidity displease your youthful confidence. For my own part, indeed, if I proved unequal, either under the teaching of God or of some spiritual instructor, to the task of understanding the subject of our present inquiry on the origin of souls, I am more prepared to vindicate God's righteous will, that we should remain in ignorance on this point, as on many others, than to say in my rashness what either is so obscure that I can neither bring it home to the intelligence of other people, nor understand it myself; or certainly even to help the cause of the heretics who endeavour to persuade us that the souls of infants are entirely free from guilt, on the ground, forsooth, that such guilt would only recoil on God as its Author, for having compelled innocent souls (for the help of which He knew beforehand no laver of regeneration was prepared) to become sinful, by assigning them to sinful flesh without any provision for that grace of baptism which should prevent their incurring eternal damnation. For the fact undoubtedly is, that numberless souls of infants pass out of the body before they are baptized. God forbid that I should cast about for any futile effort to dilute this stern fact, and say what you have yourself said: That the soul deserved to be polluted by the flesh, and to become sinful, though it previously had no sin, by reason of which it could be rightly said to have incurred this desert. And again: That even without baptism original sins may be remitted. And once more: That even the kingdom of heaven is at last bestowed on those who have not been baptized. Now, if I were not afraid to utter these and similar poisonous allegations against the faith, I should probably not be afraid to propound some definite theory on this subject. How much better, then, is it, that I should not separately dispute and affirm about the soul, what I am ignorant of; but simply hold what I see the apostle has most plainly taught us: That owing to one man all pass into condemnation who are born of Adam unless they are born again in Christ, even as He has appointed them to be regenerated, before they die in the body, whom He predestinated to everlasting life, as the most merciful bestower of grace; while to those whom He has predestinated to eternal death, He is also the most righteous awarder of punishment not only on account of the sins which they add in the indulgence of their own will, but also because of their original sin, even if, as in the case of infants, they add nothing thereto. Now this is my definite view on that question, so that the hidden things of God may keep their secret, without impairing my own faith. (The Soul and Its Origin, 16.)

Thus only a quick search of the text reveals he is talking about the nature of Original Sin DIRECTLY IN OPPOSITION TO THE HERETIC PELAGIUS. But more on that in a bit perhaps.

In contrast to Augustine's extreme few of the fall, which comes close to Calvinistic "total depravity," the Orthodox Fathers take a more balanced approach. “[W]e rejected/lost the divine likeness, but we did not destroy the image/icon [τὸ καθ’ ὁμοίωσιν εἶναι θείαν ἀποβαλόντες, τὸ κατ’ εἰκόνα οὐκ ἀπωλέσαμεν] {Gr.P.Chap. 39[PG.150:1148/Γ.Π.Σ.5:56–57/Sinkewicz1988:126–127]}. Many Fathers identify the "icon of God" (the imago Dei) in humanity specifically in our rationality and conscience which can choose to repent and seek God's grace. There is no arbitrary and irresistible "election" of only a select few, as in Calvinism and literal Augustinianism. There is no arbitrary and irresistible predestination to sin, death, and damnation as in Calvinism and literal Augustinianism.

The idea that St Augustine doesn’t understand man as the Image of God is laughable. This can be easily shown by the fact that the Saint devoted an ENTIRE BOOK to the subject. (On the Trinity, book XII. I’ll even link it here. While the Saint doesn’t start with the term, by the fourth chapter the nature of man as the Image of God is discussed at length.)

I certainly won’t address Calvinism here. Of course a convert from Calvinism may perhaps see Calvin in everything, including the writings of a Saint who wrote over a thousand years before Calvin existed.

The Byzantine Church did not venerate Augustine liturgically and his writings started to be read in the Slavic and Greek East much later, under heavy Western influence over the Eastern Churches (Peter Galadza, “The Liturgical Commemoration of Augustine in the Orthodox Church: An Ambiguous Lex Orandi for an Ambiguous Lex Credendi,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52.1 [2008]: 111–130, https://www.academia.edu/4835529/_The_L ... card=title; Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten, eds., The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013]).It is a well-documented fact that Bishop Augustine of Hippo became very extreme and stubborn in his final four years, when he wrote works like On Correction and Grace (De correptione et gratia, AD 426) and Unfinished Work Against Julian (Contra Julianum opus imperfectum, AD 428–430). Augustine essentially denies the clear teaching of Saint Paul (1 Tim. 2:4) and several later synods that God desires all human beings to be saved. Augustine unpatristically reinterpreted “all men” to mean merely people from “all kinds” of tribes, languages, stations in life, etc. Augustine (De correptione et gratia 44), writes, “He ‘wills all men to be saved’ [1 Tim. 2:4] is said so that all the predestined may be understood by it, because every kind of man is among them.” Augustine was rebuked, especially by the Orthodox monastics of Gaul, for this false, unpatristic interpretation. But he remained stubbornly in error until his repose. In another section of the same unfortunate treatise (De correptione et gratia 14), Augustine seems to come very close to the great Calvinist error of “irresistible grace” (Augustine referring to gratia as “indeclinabiliter et insuperabiliter,” rather than the later “gratia irresistibilis”), although some scholars do not interpret Augustine’s words at face value here and attempt to minimize the clear similarity to the error of “irresistible grace.” There are numerous other passages in which Augustine seems to affirm embryonic versions of four of the five Calvinist TULIP errors: total depravity (lack of free will), unconditional (arbitrary) election, irresistible (coercive) grace, and perseverance of the saints (coercive grace denying human free will).

To this I will simply counter with this corrective, written long ago and obviously forgotten. More need not be said. We know the “Fr. N” is Fr Neketas Pallasis, and the “Fr. P” is Father Panteleimon. The corrective is well-deserved, and thankfully most people who have left HOCNA have escaped the perpetual Romanidean time-loop that those within still have.

https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/augu ... ss_aug.htm

A strict Augustinian notion of double predestination (with arbitrary predestination to damnation) was rejected by numerous synods of bishops in the West: Synod of Arles (AD 473; Synodal Statement written by Saint Faustus of Riez), Synod of Lyon (circa AD 474), Second Synod of Orange (begun July 3, AD 529, under the presidency of Archbishop Caesarius of Arles), Synod of Mainz (AD 848), [First] Synod of Quiercy (AD 849), [Second] Synod of Quiercy (May, AD 853, under the presidency of Archbishop Hincmar of Reims), Synod of Valence (January 8, AD 855, presided over by Bishop Remegius of Lyon), Synod of Langres (AD 859), and Synod of Toul (AD 860). None of these synods condemned Augustine by name, and some were even influenced by his writings, but they all rejected some of his extreme statements on predestination.

One could go further and say that most of the people in those Synods considered Augustine to be a Saint of the Church, but that fact might be somewhat embarrassing to your case.

I’m ignoring the last three paragraphs of unsourced opinions and historical revisionism because they’re unsupportable based on what we know about the Fathers of the West. HTM’s revisionism on St Augustine, St Jerome, and a host of other Western Fathers (which had multiplier effects due to people like Gregory of Colorado and Lazar Puhalo) is far more embarrassing to them than anything St Augustine ever wrote. They should drop the hatchet against the saints of God out of the simple fear “but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest it may happen ye be found even to fight against God.” (Ac 5:39)

Fr Joseph Suaidan
The Placing of the Cincture (Sash) of the Most Holy Theotokos, 2024 AD/7532 AM

[Suaidan]

This thread has been a rollercoaster... it started as the Discord spat/slap fight and now is the HOCNA vs the world thread. Maybe this should be moved to another thread? Just a suggestion

This is a good idea. Splitting thread

[Stylite Nous]

These issues are difficult and I suspect that there is at least a grain of truth to the line of thought that Augustine did plant many erroneous seeds that would later germinate into western heresies. Is the healthiest balance precisely the one posited by Fr. Seraphim Rose in "The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church"?