Last week’s meeting of the Anglican Oriental Orthodox International Commission in Hawarden, Wales, and the agreement on dropping the filioque clause of the Nicene Creed has moved the two families of churches “one step closer to as close as we can be”, a leading Orthodox bishop has said.
“For us, we saw [the filioque clause] as an addition to the Creed,” Bishop Angaelos, General Bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom, said. “One of the founders of our Church, Saint Athanasius, was instrumental in formulating it. As a church that has been persecuted for most of its existence, our faith and faith issues are exceptionally important.
“The relevance [of the agreement] is that we are one step closer to as close as we can be. There are things that we are not going to be able to agree on but that should not stop us resolving things that we can agree on.”
These kind of arguments always confuse and amuse me. Christianity is under a death assault by Islam on one side and Western culture on the other. I am unsure why we argue among ourselves about anything beyond Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. The rest is all man made and mere window dressing. Most of it was written by theologians who live or lived sheltered lives with no real association with evangelism. Can you imagine St. Olaf going into a Viking camp and telling them they are going to Hell if they don’t say the filioque? If he had, they’d have whacked off his head and Minnesota would be without a lot of place names. And Go back to the previous article about the Bishop of Birmingham refusing to consider giving communion to Anglican spouses. The only justification for that are dogmas of the Catholic Church which will be pointless when we meet Jesus face to face.
Thank you for pointing out yet another reason for why theological discussion with the Anglican Communion is rather pointless.
Yep