Listener Reviews and Gratitude

Speaker 2
What do you mean like who did they do this to? Well
Speaker 1
Pope Leo the Great. Did what? He restored people without a review court. Yeah. Where, who? St.
Speaker 2
Theodora, right?
Speaker 1
No, not St. Theodora. It's just North Africa. There was an appeal from the North Africans. It's in New Advent. It's in that book. I just can't remember the letter. Lusipinus, I think is the name. He had submitted a bunch of appeals to Rome, and then Leo wrote back and said, hey, there are some things that we're going to allow you guys to review, but in particular, these bishops were restoring them before you guys even have a chance to
Speaker 2
look at this. Well, North Africa was also directly in his sphere. No,
Speaker 1
no, just shortly after that, just shortly before that, there was a question on whether Rome could do that.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Under Apiarius.
Speaker 2
Yeah, it was decided that eventually it was decided that they could, even though North Africa said, no, you can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1
Yeah, they flip-flopped on that. Yeah, I mean. Right, but you can't use that Africa was directly under Rome. I mean, the cannons are still the canons. We're talking about Sardauka, right? It
Speaker 2
was a Latin-speaking area. All
Speaker 1
I'm saying is that you have Rome judging matters before review, way before canon 9 and 17. Because
Speaker 2
the Sardauka canons appeal to a broader area than just the Latin West. Yes. In the case of North Africa, that is the Latin West. And so you can, in a patriarchy, appeal directly to the patriarchs. They can vote a sin on
Speaker 1
it. So then would you say Pope Leo's handling of the situation in Arles with Hillary?
Speaker 2
Well, Gaul was part of the sphere. So you wouldn't,
Speaker 1
so you, okay, let me just get this straight. So Hillary of Arles. He's a patriarch of the West, right? Right, that's fine. The patriarch can do these things. Yeah, we can preface that, yeah. I forget the name of the dude that was purported to have married before he became a bishop. He appeals to Leo because Hillary deposed him. Okay. Pope Leo restores the guy without a review court. And all the commentators I read try to point out that Pope Leo was violating his Sardacan limit. Well
Speaker 2
he probably had the Roman Synod look out and the Roman Synod makes a decision in the name of its head. The other thing is that in the Sardacan Canons you can't, let's say this guy is deposed by Hillary. Leo gets the appeal, and Leo goes, okay, until we hear this and sort this out, until it's heard, you cannot replace him with anyone else. That's
Speaker 1
not what he did, though. He gave him his job back, and he required Hillary to accept that.
Speaker 2
Well, again, this is also, I mean it's in leo's sphere of influence anyway i mean what do
Speaker 1
you think about the fifth ecumenical council 553 do you believe that they could have finished an ecumenical council without Pope Vigilius. Well,
Speaker 2
they did. And the way that they did it was by taking writings of his from previously and saying, look, he actually signed off on this. Now, if you follow conciliar theory, you have to have everyone involved.
Speaker 1
Right. But what I'm saying is, do you think that by session seven when vigilius is out of the picture that the the patriarchs there believed that they could just finish and dogmatize their decrees a universal decree yeah they did and
Speaker 2
we know because they did and i've heard you say you spoke to Richard Price and he said that the bishops definitely thought they could. But Byzantine history
Speaker 1
does not believe that. The saintly Byzantine tradition of the East does not believe that. What does St.
Speaker 2
Horatio say at the Seventh Ecumenical Council when the four patriarchs made a universal binding decree? So
Speaker 1
you're referring to Cyril's life of Sabbaths. No, I'm referring to the Seventh
Speaker 2
Ecumenical Council.
Speaker 1
Yes, and they quote from Cyril Skypotholis's life of Sabbaths.
Speaker 2
Okay.
Speaker 1
They're quoting Cyril's life of Sabbaths, and in that quotation, Cyril is talking about the four patriarchs in Constantinople, the patriarch of Jerusalem being absent. So. Well,
Speaker 2
he sent delegates. He
Speaker 1
did, but the. He was
Speaker 2
represented there.
Speaker 1
Right, but you're misquoting the Seventh Ecumenical
Speaker 2
Council. No, I'm not misquoting it. Yes,
Speaker 1
you are. You just said that Terasius said that the four patriarchs without Vigilius.
Speaker 2
No, I didn't say they said without. I just said that he said the four patriarchs. Well, there's one missing. Now, his legates have
Speaker 1
to be there. He means by the four is Vigilius, Eutychius, and the patriarch of Alexandria, and Antioch. The patriarch of Jerusalem wasn't there.
Speaker 2
So in the case of Leo, okay, no pope ever, except for Vigilius, ever attended an ecumenical council. That's right. Would you say that the pope and the patriarchs affirmed an ecumenical council? Would you say that's out of line? Like, well, the pope wasn't there, so we can't say the pope approved. Well what I'm trying to say is that the
Speaker 1
Pope doesn't need to be there. That the Pope not
Speaker 2
physically being there, would you say that that hinders its accomplishment? Okay, so we know that Jerusalem sent delegates. Those delegates approved. Right, but what I'm saying is you're quoting the Seventh Ecumenical Council incorrectly. No, I'm not.
Speaker 1
Yes, you're quoting the state where Terasius brings up the life of Sabbath. No,
Speaker 2
he doesn't. It's in Price's book. This is the fifth and this is the fourth. Oh,
Speaker 1
sorry. Nicaea 2. Yeah, there's a dark blue. In Nicaea, it's page 148, I think. They bring up the statement that Cyril Skypothilus makes. Well, he says
Speaker 2
it at several points. He goes, when the four patriarchs.
Speaker 1
And those four patriarchs are vigilius. No, he doesn't say
Speaker 2
who they are.
Speaker 1
Yes, he does. I'm going to pull it up right now. And then in the life. Well, maybe he does. It's not a quote I'm aware of. In the life, I have it all here. I can point it out if we have time. If we have time. But the one particular disciple of Eutychius of Constantinople who did his vita, he writes about the presence of the four patriarchs in Constantinople. And he specifically omits Ustachius of Jerusalem.
Speaker 2
So how do you know that? I mean, I'm going to have to see the actual text. That being said, at the Fifth Council, what occurs is that they go, because in the past Vigilius has condemned the three chapters, even though he's wavering back and forth on it, we can take that statement, his commitment earlier, and we can make that into his ratification for
Speaker 1
it. And that's how they get through it. That didn't satisfy Justinian. It didn't satisfy anybody.
Speaker 2
Well, Justinian didn't like people disagreeing.
Speaker 1
Right, but what I'm saying is the council didn't grow feet yet because we still had to wait for Pope Vigilius's... Well, they closed it and issued the decrees. They did because they didn't know what the Pope was going to do. But when... Well, I don't
Speaker 2
think at that point they were... I mean, these are people who had just excommunicated a Pope. They didn't seem to really care what the Pope would do because they had his commitment to condemn it.
Speaker 1
Well, understand, the way that this whole controversy started was Justinian threatened all the patriarchs. The emperors always threatened patriarchs. They did, they did. But when they issued that excommunication of Agilius, I don't think we can say that that was completely done freely. They all knew what was going to happen if they said no. If they said no, we're not going to do that. Justinian would have just replaced him. All of them? What else would he have done?
Speaker 2
Well, he didn't replace the Pope.
Speaker 1
No, because he knew it was according to his own code. Every decision has to be judged by the Pope.
Speaker 2
Well, yeah, and they say that Vigilius, because he had condemned the three chapters,
Speaker 1
even though he wavered, he took the... Right, but that wasn't sufficient, because once the eighth... No, they closed the council. If it wasn't sufficient, why did they close the council? Because they didn't have any... they have no idea what the Pope was going to do. Well, they
Speaker 2
held out for a long time, and they went, well, okay, he... they looked at that, his condemnation earlier on. They saw him waffling. All right, well, he's decided it. We're going to take his ratification. Allow me to finish. Allow me to finish. They say we're going to take his condemnation of the three chapters. Then what we're going to do is we're going to add it to our own here, and we're going to close this council. And they were just on their way. They didn't seem to care because they figured that Vigilius himself would be replaced and his successor, if need be, would just approve it. But that breaks the Byzantine... Why does it break it? Vigilius agreed that he didn't...
Speaker 1
Well, the Seventh Ecumenical Council says that it's the law of councils for Rome to ratify either through an encyclical letter or through his Apocrisarii.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and in writing on several occasions Vigilius condemned the three chapters.
Speaker 1
That's, when Vigilius comes back at the end, six months after the council, they include his second constitution as if it was a portion of the eighth session.
Speaker 3
So
Speaker 1
I don't think that you can sustain your head and members apostolic canon 34 structure to Constantinople 553 before the second constitution of Vigilius. I don't think that you can do that. Did Vigilius
Speaker 2
close the council?
Speaker 1
Yeah. Where? Because Justinian took that, Justinian took his second constitution. Did Vigilius himself actually close a council? Historically, no, but Justinian made the acts in such a way that Vigilius' second constitution... He tried to make it look like harmony. He tried to make it look like harmony. As opposed to the reality that there was not harmony. In order to fit the rules of a council.
Speaker 2
Well, no, because the bishops themselves, it was left in there because V has, you know, wavered on it.
Speaker 1
It was not left in the Acts.
Speaker 2
How they closed it?
Speaker 3
That's about time. Do y'all want to wrap up or do you want some more time? We
Speaker 2
can have some more time. Is
Speaker 3
that good for both of you? Yeah, we have the five more minutes, right? Well, that was with the five more minutes. Well,
Speaker 2
I got my ride coming about 15 minutes or
Speaker 3
so. Let's do five more minutes. And maybe as we in these five minutes, the two of you might want to kind of present your overarching view for your case. Here we go. Well,
Speaker 2
I mean, they didn't leave it in the council, so to say, I mean, but we have it in the conciliar acts themselves that they closed it. They felt it was okay. Justinian's goal is to reunite an empire. He doesn't want to make it look like this fragmentation. Justinian's goals were always political sure so the question is had he not had that political goal what would he have done the answer is he wouldn't even call the fifth ecumenical council because he was trying to bring together the monophysites what
Speaker 1
i would say is to look at this comprehensively from a first millennium perspective the bishops the bishops of each century almost tell us that without the ratification of the successor of Peter, I counseled. But I'm saying that because the Constantinople 553 was not an ecumenical counsel until Vigilius ratified
Speaker 2
it. Okay, look, in that debate with Jay Dyer, the first time I saw that, I thought you did very well because you stayed calm. And while Jay, I mean, I love Jay personally, but he lost his temper. Okay. I watched it a second time and I noticed that you were circling and you were stalling and
Speaker 1
you're doing that now and I don't like it. Sure. Ask me where, what, what, what do I need to satisfy then to get out of this circle? Okay.
Speaker 2
The circle is well one you can just stop repeating yourself and you can actually go okay look it's right here okay
Speaker 1
that's
Speaker 2
one the other is this how do the bishops themselves in the original acts how do they describe themselves as closing the council they
Speaker 1
completed it yeah
Speaker 2
there
Speaker 1
you go so that's it okay but here's the point i'm trying
Speaker 2
to make and they could walk away with a good conscience well
Speaker 1
they they could but here's the thing. You have all these other voices in the saintly heritage of the Orthodox Church that says you can't have a council, a legal council, without the presence of- Well, wait,
Speaker 2
in that fifth council, what they were deciding was a condemnation of the three chapters. Yeah. That was it. Vigilius had condemned the three chapters. They it in writing they had it in hand and then they went we are also going to condemn it all right all the patriarchates agree it's done right but no byzantine chronicler reads it that way just because they didn't have the original acts well they did fotis fotis
Speaker 1
of constantinople wrote in his famous letter to uh Bulgarian king, Boris, the Bulgarian king. Sounds very... He recounts all the ecumenical councils in explicit detail. It's a phenomenal document. And he goes through each ecumenical council, Nicaea, Constantinople, all those things, gives all the Roman pontiffs who are involved. When it comes to the fifth ecumenical council, he actually notes that Vigilius refused to attend, but eventually ratified the council. Which means that nobody understood Constantinople 553 as a fully completed ecumenical council until Vigilius came around six months later.
Speaker 2
Except the bishops who closed it. Well, they didn't know what else were they gonna do? Close it. I mean, they were like, we have it in writing. He's actually, okay, we joined his with ours and it's done.
Speaker 1
Well, I would say that it was inconsistent. It was possibly inconsistent.
Speaker 2
So let's say a pope. Let's say a pope says, you know, X is anathema. And then these other bishops go, great, X is also anathema, and then all of a sudden the Pope comes down with dementia. Well, you don't just come down with dementia, but you get what I'm going, he goes crazy. And he goes, actually, you know what, this obnoxious thing, it's not actually anathema. What do you do? Well,
Speaker 1
it's very different, because in this case, when Pope Vigilius anathematized the three chapters, was before the framework of a council was even put into stage.
Speaker 2
Well I mean the other bishops also excommunicated or condemned the three chapters before a council was even put together.
Speaker 1
Right. So that's what then why did they need to gather in a council?
Speaker 2
Well to formulate canons as one. Right. But Vigilius
Speaker 1
wasn't cooperative
Speaker 2
at that point. To make it more public to also get a lot of the monophysite bishops to come.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm satisfied. I don't know if maybe we should give our final...
Speaker 3
Yeah, feel free to wrap up and tell people where to find you. Thank you both. I started it, so maybe... No, no,
Speaker 2
you first. Okay. Yeah, big thanks to both of you. We have like a minute or two to do it? Sure. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 1
So, you know, I mentioned in my opening statement that I was looking at four things. The Council of Constant, or Leo, yeah, I think it was Leo, the Council of Chalceda and the Formula of Hermistus, the three chapters controversy, and the Laurentian schism. all of these historical episodes, what we have is clear testimony from saints venerated by Catholics and Orthodox that speak about the rights and divine prerogatives given to Peter and his successor over the whole church that lands you in the neighborhood of Vatican I. I don't know any other church today that can comport with the data. We might be able to say, well, it's not exactly how things are today in the Vatican. Yeah, I grant that. There is some distance. But if the magic number is 500, I think the evidence of the patristic era in the 5th and 6th centuries lands us at 470, whereas the Eastern Orthodox number would be like 300. So in other words, I think the data lands you in the neighborhood of what the Vatican I called the papacy. And I think that, you know, I think that was successfully shown. I don't think that we needed an example of a pope acting all by himself in isolation from everybody else. We just needed the theological commentary on what they believed about the privileges of Rome.
Speaker 2
Yeah,
Speaker 1
that's it.
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me here today, by the way, Matt. And thank you so much, Eric. No, this
Speaker 1
was great.
Speaker 2
In my opinion, I do not see the Catholic case proven. I think that if you have a document stating that it has been the ability and it has been the capability, or it has been the ability, and it has been something that has actually occurred that the Pope can do. That's what satis cognitum is. You need to have actual examples of that. If you're claiming a pig can fly, you need to have a pig that flies. And so while you can say, all right, well, you just need the theological framework, you then end up throwing satis cognitum under the bus because it tries to provide a physical framework. And that being said, you're not a dumb guy, Eric. You're not. You're a smart guy. And you know as well as I do that you would provide the maximalist interpretation if you thought it was possible. Instead, you've presented the minimalist position. Because I think that even in your opinion, in your heart of hearts, I think that you realize that only the minimalist position is available. And that being that there's a theological, or in your opinion, the minimalist position is that there's a theological framework, but not actual historical evidence per se of the Pope doing these things. So that's all.
Speaker 3
All right, fellas, thank you very much. Thanks to everybody who's watching. If you enjoyed this debate, give the video a like, share it, and if you really liked it, feel free to subscribe to the channel. God bless. Thanks very much. Thanks
Speaker 2
so much.

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