... the continuation of the Julian calendar is contrary to God's time and to the letter and the spirit of the Nicene Fathers.
This is so wrong. T...
Many posters have provided argumentation and evidence to back up their conclusions yet, sadly you keep on asserting the same conclusions over and over.
Believe me, I don't know where to start when facing the reasoning and conclusions like you presented. It is enygmatic to me how could one draw such a conclusions based on such a flawed reasoning. I would love if I would be able to help you seing the flaws, but, alas, I usually feel being helpless.
This is superb! We have started to agree (at least in our mutual frustration). I think though that with a bit more effort we can make further progress.
One issue is that you managed to place majority of Orthodox being contrary to God based on misreading of one article of Archbishop Peter and discarded three well-reputed cannonists he quoted in his article as well as the practice of the Church for 1600 years. For your info, his article is reasoning the lack of canon of Nicea regarding non celebration with the Jews, since it was promulgated only as a state law by the Emperor. (BTW, you do know that the Canons of the Ecumenical Councils were legaly binding in the Empire, i.e. they had the status of the law, don't you?)
First, I admit that I have not put much weight on the practice of the Church for the past 1600 years and that my opinion does indeed accuse the majority of the Orthodox in not putting sufficient weight on God's time. I must also admit that I have read four or five different sources and that one of them was Archbishop Peter's fine work. I also read the relevant portions of the Pedalion after I downloaded it from the Lawyers' site. However, my opinion is based on the facts as we have them and not on secondary sources, unless we have no other choice. I realize that it is, at least, somewhat arrogant of me, but I do think that it is important to consider the primary sources first.
At this point, it may be opportune to point out that you are arguing not your point but your counterpoint. However, you do give enough indicators of your possible primary sources so that may be we can look at them in concert. Let's start with Nicaea.
- We both apparently agree that not one of the published canons of the Ecumenical Council is germane to the issue. I mean I could reproduce each and every one of the official canons of the First Ecumenical Council, but there is no need: There is no mention of the date of Pascha (Please look it up; it is your turn).
As Archbishop Peter explained: "As early as the third century, then, the Christians began to devise their own calculations of the Easter date. A learned Alexandrian, Anatolius (later bishop of Laodicea in Syria), used for his Easter computation the nineteen-year cycle invented in 432 BC by the Athenian astronomer Meton. However, most Churches in the region of Antioch continued to follow the computation of the Synagogue in spite of the fact that the latter no longer took the equinox into account. This on occasion caused considerable differences in the date of Easter between the Antiochian churches and others; in contrast, variations among the latter were neither frequent nor notable.
These differences promoted the question of the date of Easter before the First General Council at Nicea. This venerable assembly did take a decision on this issue. But though there have been references to a decree (in Greek honos), there does not seem to have been issued a written text of it. Thus, the document to which reference is often made is in fact a compilation of a number of authentic data. According to this kind evidence, we are able to reconstruct the decision of the first General Council on the question of Easter follows:
* Easter must necessarily be celebrated on the same Sunday by all churches
* this Sunday must be the first after the full moon following the vernal equinox
* the Churches that follow the Jewish calculation must abandon it and conform with the general usage
However, there was some resistance to that decision which necessitated new injunctions: the First Canon of the Council of Antioch (around 330 AD), and the Seventh Apostolic Canon (second half of the fourth century). These canons condemned those who celebrated Easter "with the Jews." This did not mean, however, that the dissidents were celebrating Easter on the same day as the Jews; rather, that they were celebrating on a date calculated according to the synagogal computations."
Archbishop Peter's conclusion here is backed up by the apparent non-problem of celebrating Passover and Pascha on the same day as I pointed out in my earlier posting (the one with the tables of coincidence).
But Archbishop Peter didn't say a word about the Apostole's Canon which did lay down the said rule not to celebrate Pascha with Jewish Pesach. And you know that this ancient canon was elevated as an Ecumenical One by the 1st canon of the 6th Council?
Here is the text of the canon 1 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Also called the
"In beginning either a discourse or an action of any kind the thoughtful find it best to begin with God, and to rely upon God, in accordance with the utterance of the Theologian. Hence, inasmuch as we have already preached piety in a clarion voice, and the Church in which Christ[127] has been laid as the foundation is continually growing apace and waxing more and more capable, insomuch that it may be said to have outgrown the cedars of Lebanon, and now in commencing a recital of sacred words,
by divine grace we decree that the faith which has been handed down to us shall be and remain exempt from any and every innovation and mutilation just as it has been delivered to us by those who have been both eye-witness and servants of the word of the God-approved Apostles, and further by the three hundred and eighteen holy and blissful Fathers who convened in Nicaea in the reign of Constantine, who became our Emperor, against ungodly Arius and the heathenish deity of a diverse god, or one might more aptly say of a multitude of diverse gods, which was dogmatized by him; and who in their unanimous consensus of opinion regarding the faith revealed and stated to us with convincing clearness the fact that the three hypostases of the thearchic nature are of the same essence, without allowing this important point to remain hidden under a bushel of ignorance, but, on the contrary, openly taught the faithful outright to adore the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit with one adoration, and deposed and denounced the opinion that divinity if of unequal grades (or ranks), and efficiently overthrew and demolished the puerile toys which the heretics had built up and erected upon sand in opposition to Orthodoxy. Likewise it is to be noted that we are determined to strengthen as much as we can the faith which was proclaimed by the one hundred and fifty Holy Fathers who convened in the Imperial City itself in the reign of Theodosius the Great, who also became our Emperor, embracing the utterance of the Theologian and driving out profane Macedonius along with previous enemies of the truth, on the ground that he impudently and arrogantly opined the head of lordship to be a servant and slave, and as having preferred as a matter of choice to split the indivisible unit in robber fashion, as though the mystery of the hope were not sufficient to sustain us. Along with this abominable fellow who waxed rabid against the truth they courageously condemned also Apolinarius the monstrous initiate of wickedness and vice, who vomited forth an ungodly view proclaiming the Lord to have been taken up in body without a mind and without a soul, so that it is hence evident that he too was addicted to the unwelcome conclusion that we have been left with an imperfect hope of salvation. But as a matter of fact we also gladly ratify the teachings set forth by the God-bearing Fathers who earlier assembled themselves in the city of Euphesus in the reign of Theodosius, who was the son of Arcadius and who also became our Emperor, and we hold them to be an unbreakable and mighty power of piety, preaching one Christ the Son of God who became incarnate, and the intemerate Ever-Virgin who seedlessly gave birth to Him, holding her to have been properly speaking (Note of Translator. — Lest the exact meaning of this exceedingly important phrase be lost upon the unwary reader, it may not be amiss here to state that it would be more usually expressed in ordinary English by the word literally) and “in truth a Theotocos” (i.e., when interpreted into plain English, “a woman who gives birth to God or to a god”), and driving away into banishment the driveling dissension of Nestorius on the ground that it has lost all contact with the Divine Oracle, while at the same time it seeks to renew the prevalence of Jewish ungodliness and aversion to piety, and we dogmatize the one Christ to be human being in due form and a God in due form. But we do not stop here. We Orthodoxly confirm the faith which was engrossed upon a pillar in the Metropolis of the Chalcedonians in the reign of Marcianus, who also became our Emperor, by the six hundred and thirty God-approved Fathers, which conveyed to the ends of the earth in a loud voice the one Christ the Son of God composed of two natures and in these two same natures glorified; and we have driven out of the sacred precincts of the Church Eutyches the vain-minded, who declared it to be his opinion that great mystery of the Economy was only seemingly consummated, as something sinister and miasmatic, and along with him also Dioscorus and Nestorius, the former being a defender and champion of dissension, the latter of confusion, and both of them being diametrically opposite outlets of impiety, fallen out in the same direction towards one and the same yawning chasm of perdition and godlessness. But neither do we stop here. We take the pious utterances of the one hundred and sixty-five God-bearing Fathers who assembled upon the ground of this Imperial City in the reign of Justinian, who became our Emperor and who passed away at the termination of his pious career, and, recognizing them to have been inspired and uttered by the (Holy) Spirit, we teach them outright to our posterity; which Fathers indeed as a Council anathematized and consigned to abomination Theodore of Mopsuestia, the teacher of Nestorius, and in addition Origen and Didymus and Evagrius, who joined hands in refashioning the Greek myths and recounting to us periods and mutations of certain bodies and souls, prompted by raptures and hallucinations of the mind, and in drunken revelry impiously exulting over the resurrection of the dead; as well as what had been written by Theodoret against the right faith and correct belief and against the twelves heads (or chapters) of blissful Cyril; and also the so-called letter of Ibas. And again we faithfully join together in the promise and vow to preserve and safeguard and keep inviolable the faith declared by the Sixth holy Council recently assembled on the grounds of this Imperial City in the reign of Constantine, who became our Emperor and passed away at the termination of his divine career, and which received still greater validity by virtue of the fact that the pious Emperor himself sealed up the volumes containing it by impressing them with his own seals with a view to ensuring their safety in every succeeding age; and which has with the love of God clearly enabled us to entertain an Orthodox conception of the straightforward dogma which they outlined of the truth that there were and are two natural wills, or, that is to say, wishes, and two natural energies inherent in the incarnate economy of our one Lord Jesus, the true God; and which Council by a vote of piety condemned those who teach their laities outright the doctrine of a single will and of a single energy inherent in our one Lord and God Jesus Christ, among whom we cite by name Theodore the Bishop of Faran, Cyrus (the Patriarch) of Alexandria, Honorius (the Pope) of Rome, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter, all four of whom have acted as presiding chairmen in this God-guarded city, Macarius who became the Bishop of the Antiochians, Stephanus his disciple, and foolish (or witless) Polychronius. Hence we solemnly decree that this Council, while preserving intact the common body of Christ our God, and, succinctly speaking, of all the men who have distinguished themselves in the Church of God and have become luminaries in the world, “holding forth the word of life” (Phil. 2:16), is committed to holding the faith firm and sure, even till the consummation of the age, and that it shall remain immutable and unaltered, as well as their God-imparted writings and dogmas; and rejecting and anathematized, on the ground that its authors were enemies of the truth, and snortingly and ravingly uttered vain things against God and made injustice and unrighteousness the highest objects of their study and meditation. If, however, there be anyone in the world who does not care to hold and embrace the aforesaid dogmas of piety, and believe and preach thus, but, on the contrary, attempts to by-pass them, let him be anathema, in accordance with the definition (or rule) already previously promulgated by the aforesaid holy and blissful Fathers, and let him be erased and expunged from the Christian Roll like an alien, and as one not belonging to our faith. For
we are fully resolved and have been determined not to add anything to or to remove anything from what has previously been decreed, or any words whatsoever that we have been able to understand."
I highlighted the only possible references I could find but, as you can see, it is inconclusive for there is no mention of an ancient canon (of the First Council) regarding the date of Pascha. (As we saw, there was not such a canon in the first place).
At this point I still think that you have not proved your point. Now, I realize that later interpretations (the Pedalion comes to mind) agree with you. Nonetheless, you have yet to provide sources that back you up. I am sorry to say this but no matter how nice, learned and pious man you may be, you still must advance a passable argument.
I still owe you, and other posters, the rebuttal of "scientific superiority" of Gregorian Calendar over the Church One. Since it takes time, and effort, to do that, you'll have to wait a bit for it.
Meanwhile, it would be good if you could question your habit of making hasty conclusion about well-established and long-lasting practice of the Church based on hearsay you heard from ignoramus and misreading of one single article.
First, my views are not based on one article. Second, if you read through this thread, you will see that I have consistently used deductive logic and valid premises for my conclusions. It is futile to disagree with my conclusions for they are valid, logical ones. Should you wish to prove me wrong, you must impeach my premises. You simply have not done so yet, although you seem to be slowly warming up to the task.
