Fidelity to the Fathers does not mean “cherry-picking” quotations to defend our preconceived positions. It means acquiring what Orthodox theologians call the “patristic mind” — a way of seeing shaped by the life of the Church...
@ruckusofantioch@blessedmikko@JeromeChukwuwem clean full circle performative contradiction.
using a nominalist-adjacent criterion (words as the standard) to police theology, while simultaneously invoking realist ontology to condemn Barlaam
None of the saints used this terminology btw.
By this reasoning we r supposed to believe that you believe in two Gods bc that’s what’s implicated by ontological distinction, a distinction in being. This notion contradicts Palamas, Kokkinos, Scholarios, and Eugenikos. It’s heretical.
@ruckusofantioch@blessedmikko@JeromeChukwuwem do you even understand what i just said?
your declarations mean nothing.
your theological praxis is nominalist.
we can all read it here.
@ruckusofantioch@blessedmikko you just assume your scholastic interpretation of DS is what is meant in the Synodikon.
no one is falling for these theatrics.
@ruckusofantioch@blessedmikko@JeromeChukwuwem you misinterpret the definition because of your incorrect framework. that’s why quoting Kokkinos back to you is pointless.
you can’t see the words clearly.
@ruckusofantioch@blessedmikko Divorcing the name from reality and reducing divine operations to human mental constructs is nominalism in praxis. The fact you think hiding behind a historical label saves your ontology proves my point. Blind man speaking.
@ruckusofantioch@blessedmikko You’re confusing historical taxonomy with epistemological mechanics. Your system claims 'moderate realism' for the created order, but under Absolute Divine Simplicity, you reduce God's distinct attributes and acts to mere concepts in the human intellect (distinctio rationis).
@blessedmikko@JeromeChukwuwem Does the distinction between God's essence and His uncreated operation exist in God, or only in the created mind's perception of God?
@ruckusofantioch@blessedmikko It means your entire epistemological framework is downstream of scholastic abstraction and nominalism. There is no 'neutral' reading of Athanasius.
So you project alien, post-Augustinian categories onto Patristic realism and mistake your compromised hermeneutic for objectivity.
@blessedmikko@ruckusofantioch do you think it matters that you were homeschooled? your curriculum is still western academia.
yes i also received it.
but our difference is that you won’t let it go
@blessedmikko@ruckusofantioch through the western secular education you are brought up with.
it’s a failure to step out of your own paradigm to begin with.
@blessedmikko@ruckusofantioch Mikko born in western culture -> finds Orthodoxy -> launders western metaphysical baggage through specific epoch of Russian manuals -> finally reads St. Philotheos Kokkinos to interpret 'pragmati' through an alien nominalist lens.
@blessedmikko@ruckusofantioch it pertains with his conversation with Ruckus complaining about idiosyncrasies.
all he needs to see is you and Ruckus’ misinterpretation of St. Philotheoa Kokkinos as saying “purely notional”
to see the hypocrisy of Ruckus’ statement
@JeromeChukwuwem For 1351 it translates pragmati: an objective uncreated reality, not a mental concept.
You’re defending a guy who chops quotes to push a solely notional (kat' epinoian monēn) distinction. 1351 anathematized that.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here, Vmal. If you’re attempting claim that my understanding of God’s essence & attributes comes solely from the Russian Fathers—as if they contradict other Fathers—you’re aware that both St. Philotheos Kokkinos as well as Constantinople 1351 & Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos identify the distinction between God’s essence & His operations as solely notional/conceptual, right, with no Father in any tradition identifying that distinction as a “real, ontological” one?
@JeromeChukwuwem you’ve seen the debates on this topic. you’ve watched Bradshaw. you should know what an Orthodox means when they say “real ontological distinction”. so this is sophistry.
@vmalonbc@JeromeChukwuwem What is meant by “real, ontological distinction” & mere “conceptual distinction in the mind of the creature,” given saints use real (notably never “real, ontological”) & “merely conceptual”/“merely notional” in reference to the distinction between essence & operation?
@NoeticSpring@ruckusofantioch Father, isn't binding your theology strictly to a specific epoch of Russian theologians functionally identical to just mirroring the idiosyncrasies of a single spiritual father?
Mar advocates the former. Both reduce the catholic fullness of the Church to a localized simulacrum.