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John Meyendorff
The Meaning of Tradition.
in Living Tradition (SVS
Press, 1978), pp. 13-26.
Reprinted on this site by permission
for the use of participants in the 2003 Liturgical
Institute of Music and Pastoral Practice.
The apostolic kerygma proclaimed to the world an historic event which happened "under Pontius Pilate," at
a determined date and in a definite setting. This unique event was,
on the one hand, the fulfillment of the whole history of the Old Testament.
Jesus Christ is "He of whom it was spoken in the law and the prophets"
(John 1:45). On the other hand,
it was the unique origin of universal salvation for succeeding generations.
The essential meaning of the New Testament supposes that Christ's redemptive
act has been completed once and for all, that nothing can be added to
it, and that there is no other way of benefiting from it but by hearing
the word of God proclaimed by the "witnesses." The Church is
called "apostolic" by reference to these witnesses, and this
adjective is even used in the Creed in order to make plain that link with
Christ's immediate disciples.
These fundamental principles
must necessarily determine our attitude towards "Scripture"
and "Tradition."
I.
Scripture, Tradition, and the Church
Anyone familiar with the Byzantine liturgical
ethos, or with any other traditional rites, whether Western or Eastern,
knows of the open and solemn veneration
of the Bible which those rites require.[1] This veneration means more
than the solemn reading of biblical passages, the constant repetition
of verses from the Psalms, and the daily singing of hymns taken from the
Old and New Testaments. It obviously means the veneration of Holy Scripture,
in particular the Gospel, as a book. This is the meaning of the incensing and kissing of the Gospel,
of the processions in which the Holy Book has the place of honor and represents
Christ Himself revealed in His Word.
The
only possible purpose of this liturgical veneration of Scripture is to
suggest to the faithful that it contains the very Truth of Revelation,
which the Church possesses precisely in a given written form. It is important
to note in this connection that whatever value is attributed to Tradition
and to the notion of the Church's continuity in the Truth and her in-fallibility,
the Christian Church never added its own doctrinal definitions to Scripture.
Founded upon the apostolic kerygma,
it included alongside the inspired literature of the Jews the written
evidence only of those who had seen the risen Lord with their own eyes
and who could write down for the Church the very words of the Master,
faithfully interpreting His teaching. The Church had only to define the
"canon," not to compose inspired writings, because she never
believed in any "continuous revelation," but only in the unique
historical act of God, accomplished once and for all in Christ. The writings
owed their authority to the fact that they had been composed by the eye
witnesses of Christ. The Church could only confirm this authenticity through
the guidance of the Spirit promised by Jesus Himself, not create it. This
authenticity, of course, is to be understood in a
wider sense and as concerning certainly the content, but not necessarily
the form of scriptural texts. The gospels of Mark and Luke, for instance,
were considered as part of the canon from the very beginning, although
they were not composed by members of the college of the Twelve, but the
content of their kerygma was traditionally attributed to the evidence of Peter and
Paul. Origen and other early Christians who doubted the Pauline authenticity
of Hebrews did not mean that it should be rejected from the canon, for
they did not doubt the fact that it was covered by Pauline authority in
a wider sense than direct authorship. No one ever suggested, on the other
hand, that anything besides apostolic writings should be included in the
canon; and it is this general principle which determined the rejection
of the Shepherd of HermasÊ
and the Epistle of BarnabasÊ from the
canon of Scripture.
Apostolicity
thus remained the basic criterion in the history of the formation of the
canon because it was also the only true characteristic of the Christian
kerygma as such. The Church's intervention and judgment concerned
only the limits of true Revelation;
and in order to exercise this judgment it needed a criterion external
to, but not independent from, Scripture. This criterion is the guidance
of the Spirit, through whom the Incarnation was realized and who abides
both upon Christ Himself, and upon His Body the Church. The Church, as
the community of those who have received the salvation brought by concrete
historical events, can have no other foundation than "the apostles
and the prophets" (Eph. 2:20) who witnessed to "that which they
have heard, which they have seen with their eyes, which their hands have
touched" (1 John 1:1) ; but this salvation of which they are witnesses has precisely
the result of bringing God to live among us and of making the Spirit "guide
us into all Truth" (John 16:3).
We
have just said that Scripture contained the entirety of the apostolic
witness. This entirety, however, is not a
verbal entirety, just as the authenticity of scriptural texts is
not necessarily a formal or verbal authenticity. The Word of Life is not a theological encyclopedia which has only to
be opened at the right page for the desired information to be found, exhaustively
treated. As for instance the works of Oscar Cullmann or Joachim Jeremias
have shown, modern exegesis discovers more and more that essential Christian
truths, such as the doctrine of the sacraments, not treated directly by
the inspired authors, are considered by them as self-evident. Jesus' logia
on the Bread of Heaven, the Vine, or "water springing up unto eternal
life" (even if the sacra-mental interpretation of these passages
is not the only possible one) cannot be fully understood if one ignores
the fact that Christians in the first century practiced Baptism and per-formed
the Eucharist. This makes it quite clear that Scripture, while complete
in itself, presupposes Tradition, not as an addition, but as a milieu in which it becomes understand-able
and meaningful. At a time when
no discussions had yet occurred on the "number of sources" of
Revelation, St. Basil of Caesarea, in plain and almost naive language,
states the interdependence and essential unity of Scripture and Tradition
in a famous passage of his Treatise on the Holy Spirit: "Among
the doctrines and teachings preserved by the Church, we hold some from
written sources, and we have collected others transmitted in an unexplicit
form[2] from apostolic tradition. They have all the same value ... For
if we were to try to put aside the unwritten customs as having no great
force, we should, unknown to ourselves, be weakening the Gospel in its
very essence; furthermore, we should be transforming the kerygma
into mere word."[3] He continues by referring specifically to
the rites of Christian initiation and the Eucharist.
There
cannot be, therefore, any question about "two sources" of Revelation.
It is not in fact a formal dictation of certain formally definable
truths to the human mind. Revelation in Jesus Christ is a new fellowship between God and man, established
once and for all. It is a participation
of man in divine life. Scripture does not create this participation; it
witnesses, in a final and complete
form, to the acts of God which realized it. In order to be fully under-stood,
the Bible requires the reality of the fellowship which exists in the Church.
Tradition is the sacramental continuity in history of the communion of
saints; in a way, it is the Church itself.
The
Orthodox definitely believe in the absolute, organic, and infallible character
of this continuity, and see it as implied by the very nature of Scripture.
If the continuity were broken, Scripture would lose its meaning, and that
which God wished to do through the Incarnation would in fact have failed.
Failures do, of course, occur in individual lives, and in the lives of
whole nations and societies; but the Church, as a gift of God, cannot be a failure, "for He wished to pre-sent
it in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might
be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:27). The existence of this Church
is a perfectly free gift of God, and its infallibility
is in no sense deserved by those who compose it, but is solely the consequence
of the fact that God dwells in her. All
members of the Church, every Christian community, may succumb to sin
as well to error; but through that very fact they cut themselves off from
the Church and must be reunited afresh through penitence.
II.
Tradition and Dogma
While essentially
and permanently self-identical, the Church lives in history. The divine
Truth which abides in her must, therefore, always face new challenges
and be ex pressed in new ways. The Christian message is not only to be
kept unchangeable, but it must also be understood by those to whom it is sent by God; it must answer new
questions posed by new generations. Thus enters another function of holy
Tradition: to make Scripture available and understandable to a changing and imperfect world. In this world, treating problems in
isolation from Tradition by simplistic references to Scripture may lead
to error and heresy.
The
history of doctrinal controversies since the beginning of Christianity
shows the evident concern of major theologians and Fathers of the Church
to preserve in their teaching not only the meaning 'of Scripture, but
even its wording. This concern did not prevent them, however, from using
non-scriptural terms when the defense of the Truth required it. In the
fourth century the Nicene Creed was carefully drawn so that only scriptural
terms were originally used. It was with the greatest difficulty that Athanasius
of Alexandria succeeded in having the word homoousios
included in order to express, in
language understandable in his time, truth which Scripture presupposed.
This example clearly illustrates the Church's awareness of possessing
living Truth which cannot be limited by purely biblical wording.
The
verbal freedom which the Nicene Fathers demonstrated was not, however,
an internal liberty in relation to the evidence of Scripture. The Orthodox
Church has never proclaimed dogmas which are not direct interpretations
of historical facts related in the Bible. Let us take a
concrete and still relevant example, that of the veneration of
Mary, the Mother of God. For the Orthodox this veneration rests essentially
on the dogma of the anti-Nestorian Council of Ephesus (431) , which in
no way made any "Mariological" definition, but simply condemned
a doctrine, attributed to Nestorius,
according to which Christ was a union
of two "subjects": the son of Mary and the Son of God. However,
there was in Christ only one "subject." This was the Son of
God, who became also son of Mary. Therefore Mary must be the Mother of
the Son of God Himself. Thus she is the "Mother of God," Theotokos.
It is clear that the council was essentially concerned with the understanding
of in eminently biblical fact, the Incarnation. In order to express the
full actuality of the Incarnation, we recognize Mary as the "Mother
of God" and not of a simple
man, and consequently judge her worthy of quite exceptional veneration.
On the other hand, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception appears to
the Orthodox theologian as not only absent from the biblical narrative,
but also contrary to the biblical and traditional doctrine of the original
sin. in the case of the Virgin's Assumption and bodily glorification,
the tradition is formally preserved in Orthodox liturgical books and is
very widely found in the patristic writings of the Byzantine Middle Ages.
However, a definite uneasiness prevailed among the Orthodox
with the proclamation of the dogma by Pius XII. The several, partly diverging,
traditions which exist concerning the Assumption seem to them as belonging
to a category of religious facts which essentially
differ from those subject to doctrinal definitions. Although Scripture
it-self records similar cases, that of Elijah, for instance, the absence
of any reference to the death and glorification of the Virgin in the Bible
seems to indicate clearly that these events played 'no essential part
in the work of salvation as such. Consequently there was no need for the
Word of God to recount them and guarantee their authenticity. The entire
Gospel changes in meaning if Christ is not one but two distinct subjects,
while it remains strictly the same whether the Virgin was, or was not,
glorified in her very body after her death. The reserve, expressed almost
unanimously by the Orthodox when the dogma of the Assumption was pro-claimed,
does not presuppose any denial of
the corporal glorification of the Virgin, which is indeed testified by
a fairly ancient tradition, for it certainly appears to be in conaformity
with the divine plan concerning which God "hath done great things"
(Luke 1:49). But no theological
necessity seems to justify its inclusion among facts which realized
the salvation of mankind.
These
examples were brought forth here not for the sake of polemics on the issues
which they involve, but in order to illustrate the Orthodox approach to
the problem of "doctrinal development," whose meaning consists
neither in a sort of continuous
revelation, nor in making additions to Scripture, but in solving concrete
problems related to the one eternal Truth, the latter remaining essentially
the same before and after the definition. This attitude is clearly reflected
in the decisions of the early councils. Here is the beginning of the Chalcedonian
definition (451): "The wise and . salutary formula of divine grace[4]
sufficed for the perfect knowledge and
confirmation. of religion ... But, for as much as persons undertaking
to. make void the preaching of the truth have through their individual
heresies given rise to empty babblings ... ., this present holy, great
and ecumenical synod, desiring to exclude every device against the truth,
and teaching that which is unchanged from the beginning, has decreed .
. . "[5]
Doctrinal
definitions are normally made by ecumenical councils, but sometimes also
by local councils, or through a simple
general consensus of the Church.
These definitions are final and cannot be changed inasmuch as they express
the absolute Truth of Christ,
living in His Church. As we have seen earlier, Tradition is but an expression
of the permanent presence of God in the community of the New Israel. This
presence has its source in God Himself, and does not come from any external
criterion or sign. Continuity, permanence, and infallibility come from
the fact that in every place and at every time there is "one Lord,
one faith, one baptism" (Eph. 4:4-5). No juridical criteria or condition
can replace this presence. This is why Church history knows many "pseudo-councils"
(that of 449, for instance) which possessed the signs of ecumenicity,
but were finally rejected because they were not in the Truth, and also
several councils which were not assembled as ecumenical, but later acquired
an ecumenical authority. And, of course, while acknowledging the moral
authority of certain local churches, and in particular that of the first
among them, the Orthodox Church does not see any ecclesiological or historical
reason to recognize in one particular episcopal see a
final criterion of Truth.
This
lack in Orthodox ecclesiology of a
clearly defined, precise, and permanent criterion of Truth besides
God Himself, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, is certainly one of the major
contrasts between Orthodoxy and all classical Western ecclesiologies. In the
West the gradually developed theory of papal infallibility was opposed,
after the collapse of the conciliar movement, by the Protestant affirmation
of sola Scriptura. The entire Western ecclesiological
problem since the sixteenth century turned around this opposition of two
criteria, two references of
doctrinal security, while in
Ortho-doxy no need for, or necessity of, such a
security was ever really felt for the simple reason that the living
Truth is its own criterion. This opposition was rightly emphasized in
the nineteenth century by the Russian theologian A.
S. Khomiakov, but it is based upon a
concept of the Church which was already that of Irenaeus: "Where
the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God
is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is Truth."[6]
III.
Tradition and Traditions[7]
No clear notion
of the true meaning of Tradition can be reached without constantly keeping
in mind the well-known condemnation of "human traditions" by
the Lord Himself. The one Holy Tradition, which constitutes the self-identity
of the Church through the ages and is the organic and visible expression
of the life of the Spirit in the Church, is not to be confused with the
inevitable, often creative and positive, sometimes sinful, and always
relative accumulation of human traditions in the historical Church.
The
distinction between "Tradition" and "traditions" is
certainly one of the major tasks of the contemporary ecumenical dialogue,
and it constitutes one of the most urgent responsibilities of Orthodox
theologians. For even outside of its ecumenical involvement, the Orthodox
Church faces this problem with a particular acuity.
An
Orthodox generally conceives his Christianity as an integral whole which
finds its expression in doctrinal convictions as well as in liturgical
worship and in whatever attitude he takes as a
Christian. This attitude is quite different from that of the average
Roman Catholic, who is much more ready to accept change when it comes
from the proper authority. Its psychological root is in the absence of
an absolute, permanent doctrinal power (noted above) and in the positive
sense of responsibility that
an Orthodox usually has for the integrity
of his faith. He is, consciously or unconsciously, but rightly, aware
of the fact that all acts of worship have some doctrinal implications
and that true Christianity is to be taken as a
whole set of beliefs and attitudes. At an elementary level, when
he is not able to make the necessary distinctions between the essential
and the secondary, he prefers to preserve everything. The formal and ritualistic
conservatism of Eastern Christians undoubtedly played a positive role in history. It helped them to preserve their faith during
the dark 'ages of the Mongolian and Turkish occupations. However, it does
not reflect as such the catholicity of the Church. Today, it represents
a problem which Orthodox theologians have to
handle if they want to face seriously not only the modern world and the
ecumenical movement, but also a
number of reformist movements inside the Orthodox world itself.
The first task of Orthodox theology today must be to rediscover, through
a true sense of catholicity, the role of the one, holy Tradition of
the Church, as distinct from the pseudo-absolute and human traditions.
If one turns to the past of the Church, it is surprising how many traditional
authorities one can find to support this rediscovery, especially in documents
related to the schism between East and West.
Since
apostolic times Christians have always conceived their unity as unity
in faith, although it was obvious that every local church could express
this faith in its own language, liturgical rite, and, originally, even
in its own baptismal creed. This linguistic and liturgical variety did
not at all prevent church unity from remaining a very practical reality. In the second century
Irenaeus could speak of a unique
apostolic Tradition equally well preserved in Rome, Smyrna, and Ephesus.
When Christological controversies broke the unity of the Eastern Church,
the situation began to change. The schism roughly followed existing cultural
and linguistic boundaries, and a majority of non-Greek Eastern Christians
(Copts, Syrians, Armenians, Ethiopians) adopted monophysitic confessions
of .faith. The Orthodox Chalcedonian churches followed Rome and Constantinople,
and their influence was practically restricted to the Graeco-Latin world
of the Roman Empire. Finally, this unity was itself broken with the great
schism between the Ancient and the New. Rome, again following racial and
linguistic lines.
The
prestige of these two centers was so great in their respective areas that
all non-Roman and non-Constantinopolitan traditions tended to disappear
during a long process of evolution lasting from the sixth to the twelfth
century. Both sides started to recognize the ethos and practices of their
respective metropolis as the only acceptable pattern. In the East the
ancient Egyptian, Syrian, and Palestinian liturgies were gradually replaced
in the Orthodox Church by the Byzantine rite. In the eleventh century
Patriarch Michael Cerularius, in his attacks against the Latins, was already
firmly convinced that the practices accepted in the "city guarded by God," i.e. Constantinople, constituted
the only true Christian tradition. For him there was no longer any distinction
between the Tradition of the
Church and the local practices of the imperial capital.[8] His Latin opponents
adopted an even sharper attitude in their famous decree of excommunication
against Michael, deposited on July 16, 1054, on the altar of St. Sophia.[9]
The extreme point of the controversy was reached when Pope Innocent III,
after the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, thought
for a brief time that
it was possible to realize an integrally Latin Christendom under his leadership.[10]
Fortunately
the Orthodox Church has always found in its midst a number of eminent witnesses faithful to the ancient catholic Tradition.
The process of liturgical unification according to the practice of the
Great Church of Constantinople did not prevent the translation of the
Byzantine rite into the language of the various peoples converted to Ortho-doxy.
In fact it was the use of the vernacular as the liturgical language that
gave the Byzantine missionaries their principal element of success throughout
the Middle Ages. It prevented the Greek Church from undergoing a
fossilization comparable to that of the Nestorian and Monophysite
churches in the Middle East.
On
the other hand, the great Byzantine theologians were always conscious
of the necessary distinction between "Tradition" and "traditions."
In the very midst of the Graeco-Latin disputes about rites and practices
several voices were heard restoring the true scale of values, and it is
good to keep their memory alive today.
Patriarch
Photius is the first to be mentioned here. Condemned by Pope Nicholas
I on the basis of canonical norms unknown in the East, Photius proclaimed the principle
of coexistence in the universal Church of all legitimate local traditions:
"Everybody must preserve what was defined by common ecumenical decisions,"
he writes to Nicholas, "but a particular opinion of a church father, or a definition issued by a local council, can be followed by some and
ignored by others. Thus, some people customarily shave their beards, others
reject this practice through (local) conciliar decrees. Thus, as far as
we are concerned, we consider it reprehensible to fast on Saturdays, except
once a year (on Holy Saturday), while others
fast on other Saturdays as well. Thus Tradition avoids disputes by making
practice prevail over the rule. In Rome, there are no priests 'legitimately
married, while our tradition permits men once married to be elevated to
the priesthood. .." Photius alludes here to the legislation of the
council in Trullo, or Quinisext
(691), which Rome did not receive. He consciously avoids imposing it upon
the Westerners and finally establishes a
general principle: "When the faith remains inviolate, the
common and catholic decisions are also safe; a
sensible man respects the practices and laws of others; he considers
that it is neither wrong to observe them, nor illegal to violate them."[11]
Faith alone, according to Photius, is thus the criterion for judging the
practices of the local churches; nothing else can be opposed to their
legitimate variety.[12]
Similar
to that of Photius was the attitude of Peter, Patriarch of Antioch and
correspondent of Michael Cerularius. He gave Michael the advice to restrict
his criticism of the Latins to the doctrinal question of the filioque
and to consider the other standing points of litigation as "indifferent."[13]
A contemporary, Theophylact,
Greek archbishop of Ochrid, in a treatise consecrated to Graeco-Latin polemics, also considers the
question of the procession of the Holy Spirit as the only serious problem
between Constantinople and Rome. Setting aside the liturgical and canonical
accusations of Cerularius, he returns to the principle defined by Photius:
"Unless one ignores ecclesiastical history, one will not use such
arguments; only those practices can threaten church unity which have a doctrinal implication[14]
In
the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries all contacts between Greeks
and Latins implicitly presupposed, at least in Byzantine minds, that reunified
Christendom would pre serve a
variety of local traditions. Nicholas Cabasilas, in speaking of
the epiclesis of the Spirit
at the Eucharist, recalls the Latin rite itself as an argument in favor
of the Byzantine position;[15] there is no doubt that for him the Latin
liturgical tradition possesses a catholic
authenticity.
In
modern times this attitude has become practically universal. In 1895,
for instance, the Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimos and his synod expressed
it in their reply to the encyclical Praeclara gratulationis of Pope Leo XIII;
the union of the churches can be realized through unity of faith, but
this unity does not imply a
unification of "the order of the holy services, hymns, liturgical
vestments and other similar things which, even when they preserve their
former variety, do not endanger the essence and unity of the faith."[16]
The
establishment of a clear distinction between the holy
"Tradition" as such, and the human traditions created by history,
is probably the most essential aspect of contemporary theology, especially
when and if it wants to be ecumenical. The very reality of Tradition,
a living arid organic reality manifesting
the presence of the Spirit in' the Church and therefore also its unity, cannot be fully understood unless
it is clearly distinguished from everything which creates a normal diversity inside the one Church. To disengage Holy Tradition from
the human traditions which tend to monopolize it is in fact a necessary condition of its, preservation,
for once it becomes petrified into the forms of a particular culture, it not only excludes the others and betrays the
catholicity of the Church, but it also identifies itself with a passing and relative reality and is in danger
of disappearing with it.
Therein
lies a very urgent problem for contemporary
Orthodoxy, especially in connection with its ecumenical responsibility
and involvement. There was a
time when the "Christian East" as such stirred enthusiasm
in ecumenical circles as a beautiful, exotic, and mysterious
tradition, attractive because it was "different." With the growth
of mutual knowledge and information this phase now belongs to the past,
simply because the ecumenical movement has been taken seriously by its
participants. While still appreciative of the possible contributions which
could be made by local traditions to the catholic reality of the Una
Sancta, they look forward to the One
Church itself. The union of all is the fundamental
aim of ecumenical activity and thought. The obvious Orthodox responsibility
is to show where this union
can become reality and how it
can be realized. The claim of the Orthodox Church to be already the Una
Sancta must be substantiated in the empirical reality ofÊ its life, so that it may really appear also
as the Catholica. This is precisely
the goal of the internal reformation which the Roman Church is seeking
presently in order to substantiate her own similar claim.
But
all these efforts will bring forth fruit only if they end upon an encounter,
not only with each other, but also with the Lord in the Spirit of
Truth. To be truly ``ecumenical" is to be ready at every moment for
this encounter, which will come on a
day and at an hour when we least expect it.
Notes
[1]Cf. our essay on "Bible and Tradition
in, the Orthodox Church," in The
Student World (Geneva, 1958, no. 1), pp.
39-45.
[2]Mystikos: this adverb,
which can also mean "secretly" and "sacramentally,"
seems to be used here in order to imply that certain doctrines were kept
in the closed Christian community, as distinct from the Scriptures, which
were known to all.
[3]De Spiritu Sancto, 27.
[4] The context
shows that this "formula" is the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople.
[5]English text
in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second
series, vol. 14 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans), p. 203.
[6]Adversus haereses III, 24, 1; English translation in The
Ante-Nicene Fathers I (New
York, 1925), p. 458.
[7]Cf.
our essay under this title in St Vladimir's
Theological Quarterly vol. 6 (1962), pp. 118-127.
[8]See especially
his letter to Peter of Antioch in Migne, P.G. 120, cols. 781-796.
[9] Text in Migne,
P.L. 147, col. 1004.
[10]In his letters
of that time, the Pope speaks of maintaining the Greek liturgy and practices
in Constantinople only as a
temporary tolerance (Migne, P.L. 216,Ê
col. 902; 215, col. 964D-965A) ; cf. a.
Rousseau, "La question des rites entre Grecs et Latins des
premiers siecles au concile de Florence," Irenikon
vol. 22 (149), pp. 253-254; M.
Jugie, Le schisme byzantin (Paris, 1941), p. 253.
[11] Ep. 2, in Migne,
P.G. 102, cols. 604D-605D.
[12] In his encyclical
of 867, Photius resorted to purely disciplinary and liturgical accusations
against the Latins (Saturday fasting, sacerdotal celibacy, chrismation
administered by bishops alone), but he had in view the Latin missionary
activity in Bulgaria, an area which he considered as part of his patriarchate
and where Latin clergy were denying the validity of Greek practices. There
is therefore no essential contradiction between his attitude in 861 and
867.
[13]Migne, P.G.
120, cols. 812A-813A.
[14]Migne, P.G.
126, col. 245B.
[15]Explanation o f
the Divine Liturgy, XXX; trans. by J. M. Hussey and McNulty (London: SPCK, 1960).
[16] I.N. Karmires,
Ta dogmatika kai symbolika mnemeia tes orthodoxou
katholikes ekklesias, vol. II (Athens, 1953) p. 935.
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