Alexander: well said!

You are correct. It takes one to celebrate a Roman Eucharist and two to celebrate an Orthodox Eucharist.

This still does not refute the concept of the priest representing Christ to the laity. If anything it strengthens the idea, because there is a time (celebrating the Eucharist alone) when the Roman priest represents Christ to no one physically present at the time, whereas the Orthodox priest always represents Christ to at least one Reader.

In representing Christ in making the bloodless sacrifice, both the Orthodox and Roman priest pray in the first person plural. The plural does not mean the royal “we” in either case. The Church acts together in the offering, but it is through one man standing at the altar.

I apologise for using common parlance rather than technical language. You are correct, the priest asks God to bless us. The priest gives the blessing. We always sing at the end of the Liturgy, “Father, give the blessing!” We hold out our hands and petition, “Father, bless!” However, this giving of blessing, or asking God to bless us, is true in Catholicism, and for that matter in the benediction given in my old Presbyterian Church, where the pastor used the Aaronic blessing, “May the Lord bless you and keep you…”

The Orthodox priest is more explicit about representing Christ, even in the way he holds his hand when giving us the blessing. He is even more explicit about representing Christ at the end of the Liturgy, when he says, “May Christ our true God, through the prayers…” because the Catholic priest simply says, “May almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

The Orthodox priest represents Christ in confession when he places the epitrachelion over the head of the penitent. He represents Christ when he announces God’s absolution of the repentant. (The Roman priest also does the same thing, BTW.) This is because Jesus said to the Holy Apostles, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The Apostles represented Christ, the bishops are successor representatives of Christ and the priests are the representatives of the bishops. This isn’t medieval Romish error. This is the Holy Scriptures.

As for who (or Who) is the consecrator of the bread and wine, this is really trying to put too fine a point on it. The Roman priest says, “Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy, so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” This is less elaborate than the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, but it is the petitioning of the work of the Holy Spirit. We may spend an extra paragraph elaborating upon this, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t need all the added information to do His work. What is more important in the Lirtugy, the greater higlighting of the work of the Holy Spirit, or the actual work of the Holy Spirit in transforming the gifts?

Is the priest the consecrator? Try to have a Divine Liturgy without a priest or bishop. The priest is the appointed representative of the bishop, ordained by God to pray over the bread and wine. He is authorised to recount the words of institution in which both the Roman priest and the Orthodox priest say, “He took…broke…gave thanks…gave to His disciples and said…”

You have not demonstrated any way in which the Roman priest acts any differently from the Orthodox priest.

I forgot one more thing. In the Roman confession the priest can celebrate the eucharist alone. In Orthodoxy the priest cannot celebrate the eucharist without the presence (participation) of the royal priesthood (the laity). It is the perfect meaning of synergy.

Greg: There is a definitive statement. It is careful reading of the Liturgy including the fact that the plural does not mean the royal “we”.

Nick: On your Christi in persona question, you will often find that metaphor in Orthodox writings. However it is totally erroneous.

David: I don’t think it is contradictory to say that priest represents Christ to us even as he represents us to God.

😕 Is there a difinitive statement on the role of the priest in relation to Christ?

I don’t think it is contradictory to say that priest represents Christ to us even as he represents us to God. He represents Christ to us when he blesses us. He represents Christ to us when he hears our confession. He also represents Christ in the sense that he represents the bishop as the bishop represents Christ as an under-shepherd under the authority of the Chief Shepherd.

On your Christi in persona question, you will often find that metaphor in Orthodox writings. However it is totally erroneous. The anaphora is a collective prayer always in the plural, except in the Roman canon since the 10th century. The priest does not represent Christ. He represents us. In fact, because of that, while he recites the anaphora audibly in my parrish, I recite it myself in a very low voice to myself and God the Father to whom it is directed.

the institution of the Papacy denies the reality of the Incarnation by requiring the Pope to be between us and Jesus.

It’s statements like this that make me wish AOI had a discussion forum. In Orthodoxy are priests understood as acting in persona Christi?

David, correct theology does not guarantee salvation, but incorrect theology can and has led many away from Christ: to wit, the institution of the Papacy denies the reality of the Incarnation by requiring the Pope to be between us and Jesus. That is a major difference in our Christology. (BTW since the Church is the Body of Christ, your agreement that we have a different ecclesiology means that we also have a different Christology).

We also have a different soteriology as evidenced in part by the idea of created grace vs. divine energies. The list goes on and on and just keeps getting longer.

My approach is simply to have cordial relations and leave the whole question of unity up to Jesus when he comes again. The rest is futile, unnecessary and probably detrimental for all of us.

And abject arrogance is the principal sin many imperious, nominally Orthodox, bishops share in spades with that particular heretic.

Setting aside the theological dimension of the discussion, it would appear that David’s cautionary observation is very well-taken:

It’s going to be a very interesting Judgement Day when Jesus says, “You may have let the unborn die, you may have blessed genocidal armies, you may have encouraged earth-worship, but you got it right on created grace and Divine simplicity, and by golly you saw right through that Filioque error, so come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

As for the Filioque, Jesus did say “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.” So Jesus says He sent the Holy Spirit. I believe in single procession, because I think it is ontologically correct. A Catholic or his bishop in Rome may believe in double procession because it is economically correct. (They could even argue that economic procession cannot be separated from ontological procession and therefore say that John 16:7 mandates double procession, though I would disagree with them.) Neither side calls Christ a liar. They understand what He said in different ways.

With regard to Ephesians note that it says of the purpose of the ministry gifts: “for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith”. Our edification comes from different sources in different ways. That in no way imparts that “during the Apostolic period, there was not unity of the faith”. People, then and now, learn of the faith, come to the faith and grow in the faith and the understanding of it. That is not a prescription for unity when there are fundamental core disagreements. If it were, then Paul’s and others’ warnings against false teachers would have been superflous and meaningless.

Monastasim and fasting are pietistic acts — not doctrinal errors. I have been speaking of core doctrinal difference and innovations.

How I get from Ezekiel to the Transfiguration to Hesychasm is easy. Ezekiel had a vision of God’s energies. This was not novel in Judaism. In the Transfiguration, the three Apostles had a vision of God’s energies. In Hesychasm, one hopes through “stillness” per Palamas of experiences the same kind of vision.

When you say that “multi-jurisdictionalism is enough of ‘faith’ that it has prevented Orthodox from being in communion with each other. Seems then that is it an innovation that has broken the unity of the faith”, let me give you an example. We (the former Free Serbian Orthodox Church) was out of communion with the Serbian Patriarchate from 1963-1992 because of political reasons. Reconciliation was achieved merely by the act of concelebrating the Liturgy. Patriarch Paul himself said that although we were in schism and out of communion, during the whole time he acknowledged that we always shared the same faith. This was a disciplinary and not a doctrinal matter.

With regard to the Filioque, there can be only one resolution. Either the single or dual procession. Let’s put philosophy and philosophistry aside. Jesus Christ said in John that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. He prounounced a single procession. What he says has more weight that what 1,000 times a 1,000 Bishops of Rome say. Adding the Filioque, simply stated, is tantamount to calling Christ a liar. That I will never do.

Anyway, as always, we Orthodox can disagree on Rome and still be Orthodox. Sorry I can’t say the same for Rome.

Michael, I do not believe that all of the differences between us and the Roman Church are philosophical dilemmas. I do believe that a lot of the differences are either a) philosophical dilemmas, or b) dilemmas of our own making that are not of the essentials but are entrenched in centuries of antagonism that is rooted in theological, personal, political and other causes that cannot be easily separated, nor ignored with the cavilier attiude of “Speak to the hand, ’cause the True Church ain’t listenin'”.

This is true because there were and are sinful men on both sides, whether they were born sinners in the West or became sinners in the East. We just rest in the assurance that more of our sinners were guided by the Holy Spirit and we got it right. After all somebody has to be right, because there can only be one side that is the True Church.

I have to wonder what would have happened if there hadn’t been the tiff over the Filioque, given that the East didn’t get really riled up over the developments in the West until that nasty incident in 1054. The Latin and Greek segments of the Church had been drifting in different theological and liturgical directions long before that. I dare to suggest that if the bishop of Rome hadn’t gotten a bit too high and mighty (though his predecessors in St Peter’s chair had exhibited pretensions to supremacy for at least eight centuries prior) and demanded uniformity, other than a few theologians, the East wouldn’t have cared less – at least not cared enough to have broken communion. Even then, there wasn’t a perfect fracture of communion between all bishops under Rome and all bishops under the other four patriarchies. This, too, took time to develop. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can de-sanctify every saint who lived after 1054.

I’m not sure how the non-prevailing gates of hell imagery applies here, but I’m always a bit leary of using that passage, since it is in the context of the declaration of the Petrine primacy, even if Peter’s successors are no longer primus inter pares, but rather primus ex ecclesia.

I disagree with your assertion that we do not have the same Christology as the Romans. We both adhere not only to the Christology of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, but also the to decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Yes, we do have different ecclesiology and anthropology. With regard to anthropology it could be said that the Ecumenical Patriarch does not place the same value on unborn human life as the dastardly arrogant Roman Pontiff. That’s different anthopology on a very real level with very real consequences. But fortunately our ecclesiology lets us say our Green Patriarch is off his rocker, whereas all the papists are obliged to agree with their Vicar of Christ.

It’s going to be a very interesting Judgement Day when Jesus says, “You may have let the unborn die, you may have blessed genocidal armies, you may have encouraged earth-worship, but you got it right on created grace and Divine simplicity, and by golly you saw right through that Filioque error, so come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”