Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos Gives Specific Commentary of Fr. Peter's book -- Part 2 of 2

Read Part 1 here.

Editor's Note: In a newly translated book from Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, he takes two sections to praise and summarize the main arguments from Fr. Peter's celebrated book: The Ecclesiological Renovation of Vatican II: An Orthodox Examination of Rome’s Ecumenical Theology Regarding Baptism and the Church. We present the second of these two sections in this post. In this section, Met. Hierotheos gives commentary on three specific points which he believes deserve some emphasis in Fr. Peter's presentation concerning a new ecclesiology born out of Vatican II.

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6. The ‘New Ecclesiology’ of the Second Vatican Council[1]

Protopresbyter Peter Heers’s thesis, entitled The Ecclesiological Renovation of Vatican II, is remarkable in every way. For that reason, when I read it before it was published, I wrote an article, which was published, in order to present it to the wider public.

In this public presentation I cannot dissociate myself from what I wrote, but I do not want to repeat the same things. I shall simply emphasise particular aspects of certain points, and try to highlight very briefly some interesting characteristics that make this an important thesis.

I shall keep my attention on the thesis, setting out its central points without making my own analyses, because this is the purpose of presenting a book: to make the writer’s thoughts known. However, I shall make two comments of my own, one at the beginning and the other at the end.

1. The Contribution of Theological Schools to Research on Contemporary Ecclesiastical and Theological Issues

The thesis has clearly demonstrated that theological schools make a major contribution in the field of research, when it is undertaken with objectivity and is based on the analysis of documents that appear from time to time, and not on speculation and the attempt to uphold specific views already in existence.

The fact is that research into texts and theological trends, when undertaken objectively and dispassionately, can assist in dealing with critical theological and ecclesiastical issues, and so it helps the life of the Church.

As we know, there is a difference between charismatic and academic theology, but they cannot replace one another. Charismatic theology is primary theology, which is linked with experiencing the mystery of deification according to grace, whereas academic theology investigates the writings of the deified Fathers, and often goes on to make comparisons between their texts.

I want to congratulate the author of this thesis, Protopresbyter Peter Heers, because he worked on his subject with objectivity and sobriety, and has presented us with an important work which assists us all, when, due to lack of time and the way we live, we are unable to have access to the sources. However, I also want to congratulate his supervisor, Professor Demetrios Tselingides, because he set this subject and followed its development, but also because in this way he revealed a serious issue that concerns ecclesiastical life.

Objectivity and sobriety are indispensable in dogmatic and ecclesiological issues, because there are two tendencies on such matters. The first tendency is only interested in analysing the issues intellectually and speculatively, and the second tendency reduces everything to slogans. The thesis being presented today is written in an objective, scholarly manner, but it also reveals the tradition of the Fathers of the Church. It avoids both intellectual speculation and the use of slogans.

2. Three Basic Issues in Protopresbyter Peter Heers’s Thesis

Anyone reading Fr Peter Heers’s thesis finds that it covers various serious matters that provoke the reader’s attention.

In this talk I shall emphasise three points that made a particular impression on me, without excluding other points as well. The first is baptismal theology, or the theology of inclusiveness. The second point is the ecclesiology of communio. And the third is the absence from the decisions of the Second Vatican Council of the discernment of the energies of the Holy Spirit and of demonology.

The first two points are clear from the subtitle of his work: An Orthodox Examination of Rome’s Ecumenical Theology Regarding Baptism and the Church.[2] The third point is noted in the analysis of the subject of the thesis.

a) Baptismal Theology or the Theology of Inclusiveness

On the subject of baptism, we must begin by considering how Blessed Augustine differed from the teaching of the Eastern Fathers of the Church, as well as the difference between Thomas Aquinas and Blessed Augustine, and finally how this passed into the Second Vatican Council’s decree. I think this is the central point of this thesis.

Blessed Augustine, in his effort to deal with the Donatists, who claimed that their church had authentic sacraments, made a distinction between the validity of sacraments and their efficacy, saying that the validity of sacraments is not the same as their effectiveness.

According to Blessed Augustine, although the heretics have lawful baptism, since they use water and pronounce the words of the Gospel, they do not have it lawfully. The sacrament outside the Church is undeniable, but it lacks the power to save.[3] He formulated the curious opinion that outside the Church the Holy Spirit works at the moment of baptism and the sins of the one being baptised are wiped out, but these sins come back to him immediately, because he belongs to a schismatic and heretical group. In other words, anyone baptised outside the Church passes through a narrow zone of light, but enters again into darkness.[4]

This is speculation about the sacrament of baptism, and it clearly differs from the patristic teaching of his time. This patristic tradition continued the fixed principle of St Cyprian that was in force, according to which the canonical boundaries of the Church are the same as her charismatic boundaries. Augustine’s view that every baptism performed by schismatics and heretics is valid, as it is the one baptism of the Church, differs from the teaching of St Basil the Great, who rejects the baptism of certain heretics. Also, Augustine’s opinion that we should make a distinction between the heretics’ dogmas and how they make use of the sacraments that belong to Christ and the Church differs from the teaching of St Athanasius the Great, according to whom, although the heretics use the name of the Holy Trinity and the Orthodox ritual, their baptism pollutes rather than purifies.

It should be noted that the Fathers of the East accepted the exercise of economy and leniency with regard to the return of penitent schismatics and heretics to the Church. However, as the thesis states, “they never developed a new theology or divorced sacramental theology from ecclesiology in order to envision anew the Church and the status of the dissidents.”[5]

The thesis asserts that, although Blessed Augustine accepted that a heretic or schismatic could have the outward sign of baptism, in other words, the sacrament with its meaning and holiness, even so this baptism does not have the inner power to save that exists only within the unity of the Church. Being a member of the Church does not depend on powerless external signs. This means that, despite all his views on the validity of the sacrament of baptism outside the Church, Blessed Augustine never extended membership of the Church to include heretics and schismatics.[6] He attempted by means of this theory of his to receive into the Church not only Donatist laypeople without baptising them, but also members of their clergy without ordaining them.[7]

Later, however, in the thirteenth century, the scholastic Thomas Aquinas altered this idea of Blessed Augustine with regard to baptism. For Augustine the baptism of heretics and schismatics is an outward sign that is a mark on the body of the one baptised, and, in order to explain the validity of the baptismal sign, he took as an image the military mark incised on those enrolled in the ranks of the army. For Thomas Aquinas, however, this baptismal character is an indelible mark on the soul, which can never be removed.

According to Thomas Aquinas, therefore, the baptism of heretics and schismatics produces spiritual results. On this point Thomas Aquinas is clearly seen to differ from Augustine’s view. This theory leads to full acceptance of the presence of the energy of the Holy Spirit outside the Church, in the ‘sacraments’ of heretics and schismatics.

In the interval between the scholastic theology of Thomas Aquinas and the Second Vatican Council there were many developments and changes within Roman Catholicism on the subject of baptism, and also regarding what it means to be a member of the Church.

The views of Blessed Augustine, who, as noted above, in spite of recognising the validity of baptism outside the Church, never extended membership of the Church to include heretics and schismatics, were distorted, and would have been unrecognisable even to him, had he been alive. As the thesis comments: “Augustine would be appalled at the depths to which later theology took his ‘narrowing down’ to the essentials of validity.”[8]

The views of Roman Catholic theologians and the Vatican concerning baptism and who belongs to the Church went through various stages from the period of scholastic theology until just before the Second Vatican Council was convened. At the Lateran Councils (the first held in 1123, the second in 1139, the third in 1179 and the fourth in 1215) and the Council of Florence (1438-1439), the view that even an unbeliever can baptise in case of need acquired statutory validity.[9] Canon 87 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which is based on an official document of Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758), who in turn relied on the Jesuit Francisco Suárez, ruled that someone who is outside the Church can become a member of the Church (in the sense of becoming a Roman Catholic) by means of a correctly administered baptism, since he receives the faith of Christ, the righteousness of Christ and the character of Christ. This is a distortion of the views of Blessed Augustine.[10] Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi represents the concept of ‘exclusivity’, because, although it acknowledges the existence of Christians outside the Catholic Church, “they are not regarded as ‘really and truly’ members of the Church, ‘nor can they be living the life of its own divine Spirit.’”[11]

The views developed by the Latins over the centuries, with scholastic theology and post-Reformation theology, were overturned by the decisions of the Second Vatican Council. Thus the ‘exclusivity’ of the papal encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (1943) changed into the ‘inclusiveness’ of the documents of the Second Vatican Council.[12]

The views of the theologian Yves Congar are remarkable. He could be described as the father of the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, and it has been said that the Second Vatican Council could be renamed Congar’s Council. His aim was the unity of the Christian world.

The thesis makes comparisons between Blessed Augustine’s objective of bringing the Donatists back into the Church, and Congar’s aim of achieving the unity of the Christian world in our time. Just as Blessed Augustine did not follow the Eastern Fathers and is regarded as a “theological pioneer” or, as Harnack described him “the first modern man”, and diverged from the established ecclesiology of his time, in the same way Congar suggested his own particular idea that schismatic communities retained elements of the Church, and that unity, albeit imperfect, existed.”[13] This the new theology of the Second Vatican Council.

b) The Ecclesiology of Communio

With regard to ecclesiology, the Second Vatican Council’s decree on Ecumenism differs from earlier decisions of the Vatican to enable it to position itself within the ecumenistic mentality of the twentieth century. This is clear on the subject of communio (‘communion’ or ‘unity’). This is a new ecclesiology, the ecclesiology of communio, which differs markedly from the Orthodox ecclesiology expressed by the Fathers of the Church.

Orthodox ecclesiology defines the boundaries of the unity of the Church according to ‘blood lines’, in other words, by the participation of Christians in the cup of the Body and Blood of Christ. In the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, however, the boundaries of unity are defined according to the water of baptism. In Orthodox ecclesiology, as expressed by the Fathers of the Church, the sacramental basis of communion depends on all the sacraments, because the sacraments are united to one another. However, according to the decision of the Second Vatican Council, sacramental unity is based on one baptism, whereas participation in the Divine Eucharist is the summit of unity reserved for those who are in full communion.[14]

The Second Vatican Council also defines the two-tiered unity of the Body of Christ and of membership, since those separated from the Vatican are also recognised as churches, but they are described as imperfect, because they are not yet in communion with the Pope. Thus someone who is separated from the Vatican is acknowledged as a member of the Church through holy Baptism, but someone who acknowledges the Pope as the head of the Church is recognised as a full member of the Church. Consequently, the documents of the Second Vatican Council distinguish between full and imperfect communion within the Church.

This is a serious issue, because the decisions of the Second Vatican Council differentiate between the Body of Christ and the Church. Being a member of the Body of Christ is not the same as being a member of the Church. All who are baptised, even Christians separated from the Vatican, are members of the Body of Christ, although imperfectly, but at the same time, because they are not in communion with the Pope, they do not fully belong to the Church. This theory is unprecedented in patristic ecclesiology.

Already in scholastic theology, following a process of development, theologians reached the point of distinguishing between the ‘true body of Christ’, which is the Divine Eucharist, and the ‘mystical body of Christ’, which is the Church. Pope Boniface VIII, on 8 November 1302, called the Church a ‘mystical body’ and proclaimed that this body has as its head Christ and the Vicar of Christ, Peter and the successor of Peter, each successive Pope.[15]

c) The Absence of Discernment of the Energies of the Holy Spirit and the Absence of Demonology

The thesis notes that the documents of the Second Vatican Council do not say anything specific about the discernment of the energies of the Holy Spirit, and “discernment of the methods of the fallen spirits, or demonology” is also absent. I regard both these points, as very significant.

A specific chapter in the thesis, ‘Discernment of the Spirit in Unitatis Redintegratio’ (the Vatican’s decree on Ecumenism), notes that the new ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council was drafted “for the purpose of moving away from the sharp, exclusivist distinctions drawn in Mystici Corporis, which placed the ‘separated brethren’ ‘outside of the life of the Divine Spirit,’” and in this way to return to the sources. In spite of this, no mention is made of the teaching of the Fathers of the Church about the grace of God and man’s participation in it.

We know that in scholastic theology the uncreated energy of God is identified with His uncreated essence - the familiar actus purus - and it is believed that God communicates with the world and human beings by means of created energies. Ultimately, according to Western scholastic theology, man communicates in the sacraments with created energies and not with uncreated energies. The Second Vatican Council did not refer specifically to this serious matter. One wonders, therefore, how it can refer to sacraments and deification.

Also, the documents of the Second Vatican Council do not mention the distinction between the energies of God. God’s energy is single, but according to its results a distinction is made between creative, providential, purifying, illuminating and deifying energy. All human beings participate in God’s creative, sustaining and providential energy, but sharing in these energies does not make them members of the Church. God’s purifying, illuminating and deifying energies are given within the Church, without, of course, excluding God’s special interventions.

The documents of the Second Vatican Council also lack any reference at all to the wiles of the devil before and after baptism. Without knowledge of the devil’s machinations and how to deal with them, Christology and ecclesiology are unintelligible.[16]

An ecclesiology that makes no reference to whether God’s grace is created or uncreated, and, what is more, insists on the created grace of God and also lacks any reference to warfare against the devil and the passions, does not constitute ecclesiastical teaching about baptism and the Church.

3. The Conclusions of the Thesis

Protopresbyter Peter Heers worked methodically, studying both the theological currents that preceded the Second Vatican Council and the context within which this Council operated. He also made a thorough study of the Council’s documents, as well as the analyses made after the Council by various Vatican theologians. At the end of his thesis he sets out the conclusions, which are the quintessence of the whole work.

His basic conclusion is that the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council is not a return to patristic tradition or a return to the sources, as was proclaimed, but a deviation from this tradition. In reality it is “a new dogma, or rather heresy”. These decisions, as the author and researcher of this thesis asserts, actually constitute a new Reformation that brings “Rome closer to Protestantism.”[17]

This ecclesiology is based on so-called ‘baptismal theology’, which constitutes “an ecclesiology of inclusiveness” and aims to reduce the unity of the Church “to a minimum of the least common elements”. ‘Baptismal theology’ overlooks unity in the Divine Eucharist, and the unity between the sacraments. It is not, however, possible for the unity of the Church to be founded only on baptism, which is performed in different ways, and to bypass the Divine Eucharist.

Another important point is that the new ecclesiological convergence between Christians centres on “the acceptance of a Church divided in time”, which could be described as “ecclesiological Nestorianism, in which the Church is divided into two separate beings,” the Church in heaven outside time, which is “alone true and whole”, and the other ‘churches’ in time, which are “deficient and relative”, and seek to draw near to one another. As a result of such a theory “the human nature of the Church, being divided and rent asunder, has been separated from the Theanthropic Head.” This sort of ecclesiology, which is “ecclesiological Nestorianism” or “church-historic Docetism,” as Fr Georges Florovsky remarks, is contrary to the teaching of the Orthodox on the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

As the conclusion of the thesis states, it is significant that some Orthodox theologians do not realise that the Second Vatican Council’s decision is a departure from Orthodox patristic theology. They do not criticise this theory, and in fact “the bibliography of Orthodox critical examinations spans less than half a page.” They have even adopted this new heretical ecclesiology, which overturns the teaching of the Fathers. Various Orthodox theologians and Hierarchs, as recorded here, “have written and spoken of the Church and her Baptism in terms nearly identical to those used in the texts of Vatican II and contemporary Roman Catholic theology.”

It is also surprising that some contemporary Orthodox theologians do not perceive all these deviations, “but have rather reduced the ecclesiological question to one of primacy.”[18] I could add that they do not even see this primacy in the context of the dogmatic significance attributed to it by Roman Catholics, according to whom Christ gave His high-priesthood to the Apostle Peter, and he gave it to the Pope. Instead, these Orthodox theologians view primacy simply in a canonical and Eucharistic framework, as though the Pope were merely the president of the Eucharistic synaxis. The so-called Petrine office, however, does away with the entire foundation and infrastructure of contemporary theological dialogue.

At the end of the thesis Protopresbyter Peter Heers proposes the reorientation and redirection of Orthodox engagement with the heterodox on three points.

The first point is that ‘baptismal theology’ or ‘baptismal ecclesiology’, which has been embraced by Roman Catholics, the World Council of Churches and some Orthodox theologians, must be thoroughly examined on the basis of the centrality of the Divine Eucharist to the unity of the Church.

The second point is that the historical course of the theological development of the new ecclesiology needs further study, in order to determine “clearly ... its theological origins in the post-schism West.”

And the third point is that further research is needed into the departure of Blessed Augustine’s ecclesiology from the patristic consensus that existed before him, and also into the departure of Thomas Aquinas from Blessed Augustine’s ecclesiology as regards the baptism of schismatics and heretics.

4. My Concluding Note

Reading this important thesis many times and, I think, as attentively as possible, I have discovered how Roman Catholic theology developed after its departure from Orthodox patristic theology and tradition; how the views of Roman Catholics on baptism and ecclesiology developed from Blessed Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and later theologians; and how this development passed through various decisions, and finally arrived at the Second Vatican Council, which produced a new ecclesiology.

This new ecclesiology, however, did not return to the patristic tradition - for example, to the teaching of St Ignatius the God-Bearer or St Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons - despite the fact that it was proclaimed ‘as a return to the sources’. Instead, it went so far as to distort even Blessed Augustine’s views. It is a ‘new ecclesiology’ set within the perspective of ecumenism. Most important of all, through the decisions of the Second Vatican Council the Roman Catholics neither departed from the heresy of the actus purus, nor dissociated themselves from the heretical filioque, nor distanced themselves from the primacy of the Pope, which is regarded as a matter of dogma, in that the high-priesthood of all bishops supposedly depends on the high-priesthood of the Pope, which was given to him by the Apostle Peter - the so-called Petrine ministry.[19]

The book being presented today is very important and should be read both by theologians and the wider public. Above all, it should be read by bishops, particularly by those involved in theological and inter-Christian issues and theological and inter-Christian dialogues.

April 2015

ENDNOTES

[1] Address given at the presentation of the Greek edition of the thesis of Protopresbyter Peter Heers on 18 June 2015

[2] This is the subtitle of the English edition. The exact wording of the subtitle in Greek can be rendered as 'An Orthodox Examination of Baptism and the Church according to the Decree on Ecumenism'. - Translator's note

[3] Protopresbyter Peter Heers, Ecclesiological Renovation of Vatican II: An Orthodox Examination of Rome's Ecumenical Theology Regarding Baptism and the Church, Uncut Mountain Press, Simpsonville SC 29680, 2015 (Greek edition, Uncut Mountain Press, Petrokerasa, Thessaloniki, 2014), pp. 51-4 (all page numbers refer to the English edition)

[4] Ibid. pp. 82-3

[5] Ibid. pp. 100-101

[6] Ibid. p. 91

[7] Ibid. p. 99

[8] Ibid. p. 88

[9] Ibid. p. 288

[10] Ibid. pp. 85-6

[11] Ibid. pp. 106-7

[12] Ibid. p. 106

[13] Ibid. pp. 95-105

[14] Ibid. pp. 183-4

[15] See Archim. Irenaeus Delidimos, Episkopos, theia Eucharistia [Bishop, Divine Eucharist], in Proceedings of the Conference of the Holy Metropolis of Drama, Klyros kai laos os Soma Christou [Clergy and Laity as the Body of Christ], Drama 1988, pp. 74-5

[16] Heers, ibid. pp. 167-181

[17] Ibid. pp. 296-7

[18] Ibid. pp. 297-9

[19] See George D. Panagopoulos, Zitimata ekklisiologias [Ecclesiological Issues], pub. Myrmidones, Athens 2015, pp. 116ff.

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SOURCE:

Vlachos, Metropolitan Hierotheos, The Orthodox Church and the Rest of the Christian World: The 'Holy and Great Council' in Crete 2016, translated by Birth of the Theotokos Monastery (Pelagia) (Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery (Pelagia), 2025), pp. 111-121.