The Liber Diurnus

The Roman Catholic Church says that its Pope has always been the infallible head over all of Christendom. One of the problems with this claim is the 6th Ecumenical Council (680), which anathematized (accursed and cut off from the church) Pope Honorius of Rome for the Monothelite heresy. (Jesus only having one will) The ecumenical councils are authoritative in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and this particular council took place while the two churches were still in communion.

The anathema of Honorius would seem to invalidate the Catholic claim of headship and infallibility of its popes. Rome counters this by saying that this was not an official pronouncement by the Pope, and that Rome never went along with the anathema.

The first problem with this claim is that the ecumenical councils did not anathematize bishops for opinions. They were only anathematized for taking official stands for heresy. So at least those at the council believed that Pope Honorius had officially come out in support of Monothelitism. Secondly, the Liber Diurnus shows that the Catholic Church did accept the pronouncement of the 6th Council and did see Honorius as a heretic.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia the Liber Diurnus is:

"A miscellaneous collection of ecclesiastical formularies used in the papal chancery until the eleventh century. It contains models of the important official documents usually prepared by the chancery; particularly of letters and official documents in connexion with the death, the election, and the consecration of the pope; the installation of newly elected bishops, especially of the suburbicarian bishops; also models for the professions of faith, the conferring of the pallium on the archbishops, for the granting of privileges and dispensations, the founding of monasteries, the confirmation of acts by which the Church acquired property, the establishment of private chapels, and in general for all the many decrees called for by the extensive papal administration."

Formula 84 af the Liber Diurnus deals with the oath that popes, from about the late 7th to the 11th centuries, took upon being elevated to the papacy. The Catholic Encyclopedia says this about Formula 84:

"Lucas Holstenius was the first who undertook to edit the Liber Diurnus. He had found one manuscript of it in the monastery of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme at Rome, and obtained another from the Jesuit College de Clermont at Paris; but as Holstenius died in the meantime and his notes could not be found, this edition printed at Rome in 1650 was withheld from publication, by advice of the ecclesiastical censors, and the copies put away in a room at the vatican. The reason for so doing was apparently formula 84, which contained the profession of faith of the newly elected pope, in which the latter recognized the Sixth General Council and its anathemas against Pope Honorius for his (alleged) Monothelism."

The relevant paragraph of formula 84 says:

"The authors were in actuality defending the new heretical doctrines of Sergius, Phyrrhus, Paulus, and Petrus of Constantinople, and were in agreement with Honorius, who expanded his perverse fix for the problem."

As one can see Pope Honorius is listed with the other heretics that new popes were to renounce upon taking the throne. This is very strong evidence that the Roman Catholic Church did accept the anathema of Pope Honorius for Monothelitism, and therefore did believe that he had made an official pronouncement of heresy.

This is also evidence that Rome has not always believed that its popes were infallible. And since infallibility and absolute headship over the Church are tied together (one can not have absolute authority over matters of doctrine and be fallible, since one mistake would lead the entire Church into heresy), then this is also evidence that the Catholic Church did not always see its bishop as the head over the entire Church.

Excerpt From: The Mountain of Silence

The following is an excerpt from the Mountain of Silence by Kyriacos C. Markides. It is part of a conversation between Markides and Bishop Maximos.

"Don't you think we would be utterly misguided," Father Maximos continued, "if we believed in a God for whom there was no evidence of existence, a God that was utterly beyond our grasp, a God that remained silent, never communicating with us in any real and tangible way?"

"But that means," I concluded, "that most believers are in fact blind believers, or as you called them 'religious ideologists,' that is, they believe in the ideas about God that they themselves concocted that may have little to do with God. No wonder there are so many problems with religion, so much religious fanaticism."

"Can you imagine how foolish we would be," Father Maximos expanded, "and how foolish the hermits and saints would appear, to carry on with their spiritual struggles simply because they believed in an imaginary God, or an utterly unapproachable and distant God? That would not be serious. In fact, one could call it pathological."

"I have no doubt that most modern secular psychotherapists and psychiatrists would view the monastic, eremitic lifestyle as another form of psychopathology," I pointed out. Then in a more serious tone I asked: "Are we to assume that the philosophical quest for God, one of the central passions of the Western mind from Plato to Immanuel Kant and the great philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has in reality been off its mark?"

"Yes. Completely."

...."If this is true," I reasoned, "then the Creed within the Christian tradition does not mean what most people assume to be its message, that is, a blind faith in the idea of God."

"That's a popular fallacy with all its disastrous consequences. True faith means I live with God, I am one with God. I have come to know God and therefore I know that He truly is. God lives inside me and is victorious over death and I move forward with God. The entire methodology of the authentic Christian mystical tradition as articulated by the saints is to reach that stage where we become conscious of the reality of God within ourselves. Until we reach that point we simply remain stranded within the domain of ideas and not within the essence of Christian spirituality which is the direct communion with God."

The atheists at Penn State recently held what they called a Blasphemy Challenge. They offered a slice of pizza to anyone who would blaspheme God. The question that needs to be answered is, how can one blaspheme a non-existent entity? Who is being blasphemed?

Once an atheist blasphemes God he leaves unbelief and begins to fight against God. In doing so he is admitting the existence of the God whom he is fighting.

So in having the blasphemy challenge the atheists at Penn State find themselves in the interesting position of declaring the existence of the very God whom they claim does not exist.

Peter and the Keys

In Matthew 16:18-19 Jesus gives to Peter the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, and tells him that whatever he binds on earth will be bound in Heaven and whatever he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven. The Roman Catholic Church claims that this means that Peter had authority over the other apostles, and by extension the pope who is the successor to Peter, has authority over all of Christendom.

In Matthew 18:18 Jesus gives the same authority to bind and loose to all of the apostles though he does not give them keys. So it is the keys that the Catholic Church focuses on for Peter's and by extension Rome's authority.

They point to Isaiah 22:22-24 to show that when the king gave to his steward the keys to the kingdom this meant that the steward had authority over all of the kingdom. The problem is that in Isaiah 22 only one person is given the authority that goes with the keys. In Matthew 18 Jesus gave the same authority that goes with the keys (binding and loosing) to all of the disciples. So what is the significance of the keys?

The Catholic Church says that all of the apostles were given authority, but the keys indicate that Peter was given greater authority. Why then does Jesus use the exact same words when he gives authority to the rest of the apostles as he did when he gave Peter the keys? One would think that if the other apostles were given less authority than Peter, then Jesus would have indicated this with different wording. It seems to make more sense that if Jesus uses the exact same wording in giving authority to the rest of the apostles as he does when he gives Peter the keys, then they must have the exact same authority.

What then is the significance of the keys? There may be none. It could be that the keys were implied when Jesus gives the same authority to the apostles as he did to Peter. It could also be that in only giving Peter the keys, but giving the rest of the apostles equal authority with him, Jesus was giving Peter the place of honor amongst the disciples. So the keys in Matthew 16 shows Peter's special place amongst the disciples, while equal authority is given to all in Matthew 18.

This seems to be the more biblical and historical way of seeing Peter and by extension Rome's place in the Church.

Revelation

When I tell people that we can know who God is through his revealing of himself to us they generally respond by saying that revelation is not something that happens in the real world. They claim it to be merely the product of religious fantasy. On the contrary revelation occurs every day. In fact, it is the main form of human communication and the beginning of all human knowledge.

When we converse with another human being we do so through revelation. We cannot read each others mind. We must take what is in our mind and reveal it (usually through the spoken word) to someone else. Once they hear what has been said they proceed to think about it, and then in turn, reveal what they are thinking to us. Professors through the use of the spoken word, power point presentations, etc. reveal to their students the knowledge they have of the subject they are teaching. Only after this knowledge has been revealed can students begin to reason about it. When we read a book the author is revealing to us through the written word the ideas he desires to communicate, and then we can think about it. Even science begins with the revelation of the material world, and then they do their experiments and draw their conclusions.

Reason always follows revelation. The same then must be true when it comes to God. First God reveals himself to us and then we can begin to think clearly about him.

The True Church and the Holy Trinity

The Orthodox Church's claim that Rome had a primacy of honor within the Church, but the Church was ruled by consensus, is consistent with the nature of the Holy Trinity. The Catholic Church, which says that the Pope has supreme jurisdictional authority over the entire church, and Protestantism which is hopelessly divided along doctrinal lines, is not consistent with the Trinity.

In the Trinity the Father is the head. The Nicene Creed states that we believe in one God the Father. It goes on to say that the Father has begotten a Son and brought forth the Holy Spirit. All comes forth from the Father, but the Father takes no authority over the Son and the Holy Spirit, nor are the persons of the Trinity divided in any way. The three persons of the Holy Trinity do all by consensus having one mind and one will.

For the Trinity to be in line with the Catholic model the Father would have to exercise authority over the Son and the Holy Spirit. For the Trinity to be in line with the Protestant model the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would have to have three separate minds with three separate ways of thinking.

Only the Orthodox Church maintains consistency with the Holy Trinity. There is a head, which at one point was Rome but is now Constantinople, but all is done by consensus. The Church is of one mind, not because one man is head over all, but because by the grace of the Holy Spirit there is consensus amongst all.

The true Church must be consistent with the Holy Trinity from which it comes, and only the Orthodox Church fulfills that role.

Naturalism

Modern scientists have defined science as being atheistic and naturalistic. Any particular scientist may personally believe in God, but he can not bring this belief to his work. Therefore any theory on origins, no matter how scientific in its approach, if God is in any way implied in its conclusion, is declared to be unscientific. As a result, modern scientists have made sure that naturalism cannot be challenged in the scientific arena.

Scientists say that all theories must be falsifiable. In other words, there has to be a way of proving them to be wrong. Since any attempt to prove naturalism wrong would need to have the supernatural as its conclusion, and this is not allowed in today's science, then there is no way for it to be falsified. Therefore it has to be questioned as to whether naturalism it is a valid scientific theory.

Some would counter this by saying that evolution is the theory and naturalism is simply a way of describing the evolutionary process. So it is evolution that needs to be falsifiable and not naturalism. There is no doubt that evolution is a theory, and therefore must be falsifiable, but it is a theory to explain the out workings of naturalism. If evolution is proven to be wrong, scientists would need to come up with another theory with which to replace it. In the mean time they would still believe in naturalism. So the theory of naturalism can stand on its own without evolution. The theory of evolution comes along as the mechanism. So naturalism and evolution are both theories. The over all theory of origins is that everything came about naturally over a long period of time. The theory of evolution is the mechanism through which naturalism works.

In order to properly evaluate a theory one must be able to compare it to a competing one. Since supernaturalism is the only alternative to naturalism, and it is not allowed into the scientific arena, then naturalism cannot be properly evaluated.

If our justice system only allowed prosecutors into the courtroom, a sizable majority of the cases would return with a guilty verdict. If we were to add defense attorneys to the mix, then that majority would be radically lowered. It very well could be that the reason so many people believe in naturalism is because it is the only theory they have been taught.

Those who support naturalism say that theories of origins which support supernaturalism can still be taught, but they must be done so in a religion or philosophy class. The problem with this is that everyone must take science classes, but philosophy and religion classes are usually optional. Therefore vastly more people end up taking science classes. In addition, our culture values the conclusions of science more than it does religion or philosophy. So if people are taught naturalism in science class, and then take a religion or philosophy class that deals with origins, because of the way we have been trained to think in today's culture, they will tend to value what they learn in science class more than what they learn in a religion or philosophy class.

To counter this, I think universities should offer a class in which one half of the semester students are taught naturalism, and then tested on their knowledge of the subject. In the other half they would be taught a theory, such as intelligent design, (by one truly knowledgeable in it) and tested again. The final would consist of writing a paper on which theory they believed to be correct and why. They would not be graded on which theory they chose, but on how well they defended their choice. This would not only give them an alternative to naturalism, but would also give them a means to properly evaluate it as a theory.

If naturalism is as obviously true as their proponents say, then they should have nothing to fear from such a class. The truth is always better seen when contrasted with that which is false. Therefore students would be able to see, in a much clearer light, the true superiority of naturalism. If not, then maybe some students would see its flaws and reject it. Either way for the first time students would be getting a real scientific education on origins, and there would finally be a way to falsify naturalism.