[quote:31diavut][quote:31diavut]Then you have some serious issues of contradictory doctrine. How can you teach both dual procession as of one principle (which we consider heretical) and a single procession from the Father alone with the Spirit being sent in time through the Son? Or am I missing the import of Victor’s quote, which didn’t seem heretical but which, as I said, was rather difficult to understand clearly?

James[/quote:31diavut]

Matters dealing with the Trinity are difficult to understand. As I noted before that the RCC accepts the Orthodox formula of single procession, but also recognizes double procession. This is not contradictory. It onlyappears that way to those who take a step back and say 1+1+1=1. This is something we both believe in James. Can you please tell me how our Trinitarian theology has had repercussions to the faith? Just give me one example.

~Victor

PS-Btw, would you recognize the following as an authoritative source?

[url:31diavut]http://www.scoba.us/resources/filioque-p03.asp[/url:31diavut][/quote:31diavut]

You mean practical repercussions or theological ones? The biggest practical repercussion is, of course, the Great Schism. Theological repercussions are more open to argument (as they can be seen as opinions) but I think as a direct consequence of the filioque western Christians tend to concentrate more on the Essence than the Persons of God and that he logical consequence of the dual procession idea is to make the Holy Spirit ontologically inferior – in other words you distort the nature of God. A related, though tangential, outcome of taking Bl. Augustine’s tradition of philosophising the relations in the Trinity is the tendency, which we certainly see as harmful, to over-rationalise the faith in western Christendom, especially amongst your Scholastic theologians. It seems to me that everything in the RCC seems to revolve around legalistic definitions and you seem to miss the Mystery. A couple of cases in point are your incredibly legalistic canonisation process (which I just found out the details of re. John Paul II) and the doctrine of Transubstantiation. It’s probably more appropriate to see the filoque and Scholastic theology as two fruits of the same spirit of rationalism which invaded the west, though.

As for your source, a reliable source for what? A reliable source for the reunification talks in North America, certainly. I would, however, say that many, probably the vast majority of, Orthodox Christians I know strongly disagreed with some of those findings and that, other than perhaps in the very ecumenicalist Patriarchate of Constantinople, you’re unlikely to find non-American churches agreeing wholeheartedly (though everyone will in part). Like the Roman Catholic church, we have liberals in our western churches (I know one who seems more Protestant than Orthodox) and they can tend to skew perceptions of Orthodoxy. I’d rather go with the Fathers, the Councils and the saints of Orthodoxy, who consistently condemned the dual procession. Until the Roman catholic Church can do the same and admit that it was a tragic mistake (shouldn’t be too hard given the number of pre-Schism Popes who taught categorically that it was wrong – and aren’t they supposed to have been infallible even though they hadn’t defined that yet?) then I think we ought to be realistic and admit that any reconciliation between our two Churches is as far away as at any point between the 11th century and now – probably further than in some periods.

James