Wandile
Archon
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2012
- Messages
- 3,331
- Reaction score
- 48
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- Location
- Johannesburg, South Africa
- Faith
- Catholic Church - Roman rite
- Jurisdiction
- Archdiocese of Pretoria
So IOW, after all this verbiage, you don’t have a rebuttal. Okay got it.The Tome was accepted on the basis of its compatibility with Cyril's Christology, as the acts of Chalcedon make clear. It's then basically memory-holed in Eastern Christological discourse in favor of Cyril's anathemas and then the 5th council, which Rome was uh... not enthusiastic about.
Abu Qurra's statements about Rome are interesting, but they're recognized as being outliers. His Arabic works aren't critically edited and lots of manuscripts have rather different material in these passages. Lamoreaux, whose translation is the closest we currently have to a text-critical reading based on multiple manuscripts, argues (probably correctly) that the material about Rome is original, but that it's a sign of Abu Qurra's polemical creativity, since it's an entirely novel argument in Christological polemic. I've read more Arabic and Syriac Christological texts than really is healthy, and the only other one I'm aware of that makes a sustained argument ecclesiology is an unpublished 10th century text, probably also from Northern Syria, that has a rather different take as Abu Qurra- that is, any issue where one patriarchate is in the wrong, it's clear who's in the wrong. The argument being that Rome's error in the filioque was just as obvious as Dioscorus' about Chalcedon.
In terms of Ibn al-Tayyib, he obviously didn't believe that Rome had any particular authority about doctrine, what with his not accepting any council from Ephesus on.
The point is that you can't cherry-pick poorly translated, uncontextualized quotes randomly strung together and expect people to take you seriously. If people actually thought of the papacy like you think they did, the entire picture of Church history would be different. But if you're familiar with the life of the Church in the Eastern Mediterranean and further afield prior to the Crusades, Rome just wasn't that big a deal to anyone besides Constantinople (which was for obvious, and unfortunate, reasons of power-politics).
About Chalcedon you are quite frankly wrong and I urge you to go read the acts. Leo’s tome was accepted on its face and not against St Cyrils (That came after a small group bishops questioned it). I’ll reiterate: Please don’t even attempt to try bring up the small group of bishops who questioned the tome, as having read the acts, it’s clear the tome taken was orthodox on its face and after its acceptance a small of group of bishops questioned the tome because of language as they held strictly to the cyrlian use of “one” (Ironically St Cyril himself wasn’t even as strictly tied to the use of “one” as they were). The council showed how from a point of common ground, as both parties accepted Cyril from the third council, how the two saints taught the same doctrine despite using different words.
As regards the 5th council, Rome and the whole west weren’t happy about it because initially it sought to undermine he faith of the 4th ecumenical council and rightly so the objected. The council actually ended up listening to westerners about how to avoid turning on the 4th council which is why they, in the end, condemned the works and not the persons (This suggestion came from the west if you’d don’t know). The reason why St Cyril was used in the 5th council was because the council was held to appease the non-Chalcedonian Cyrilians who held strictly to his wording. It’s only logical what they did.
As to Ibn Al-Tayyib. Him writing that passage down as matter of instruction to the Assyrians about ecclesiology and faith is evidence he believed that otherwise why would he write it in the first place ? You make him a liar and deceptive.
The Assyrians main gripe about the third council is not about Rome but about St Cyril and how they feel he was unfair at the council towards Nestorius. That’s why they easily established communion Rome later with very little qualms.
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