The following is a private message which I sent to Ski concerning Augustine and other topics:
Ski,
http://www.orthodox-christianity.com/2011/10/augustine-the-source-of-eight-heresies/Apologize as I forgot to include the link in the first message. You might find this critic of Augustine more balanced than others if you first read his responses to comments on his article.
Particularly striking is his insistence that Augustine was not a heretic but rather the source of eight heresies. The City of God which was completed four years before Augustine died and does reflect far more sober and useful reflections than some of his earlier works which really do contain many errors. I particularly and pleasingly recall reading in the City of God several years ago Augustines defense of the Septuagint in spite of its critics who cite the self-contradictory chronology in which Methuselah dies after the flood began because as Augustine stated three of the Septuagint manuscripts have the uncorrupted legitimate chronology without that obvious error.
The Creation Era of Constantinople
(which is based upon the Septuagint chronology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_calendar Saint and Emperor Justinian praised Augustine in his discourse with west Roman bishops. The Acts of the Fifth Oecumenical Synod of 553 AD held under Justinian characterized Augustine as shining forth most resplendently among the African bishops. Significantly, the synod did not characterize Augustine as a saint, and he was not canonized in the Patriarchate of Constantinople until 1965 which is after that Patriarchate apostatized in the error of embracing heresies and other religions which engulfed that patriarchate after Patriarch Germanos V was forced off the throne in late 1918 when the Ottomans lost the war.
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About two years ago in Athens, I bought an outstanding book from a publisher named Estias entitled THE GREEK MINORITY IN ISTANBUL AND GREEK-TURKISH RELATIONS 1918-1974 by Alexis Alexandris. The author is now the Greek Consul of Istanbul and far more balanced than some other Greek writers I have encountered.
In its early chapters, this informative book by Alexandris describes the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the late nineteenth century as being polarized into two camps. Germanos V was the leader of the traditionalists, and Joachim III was the leader of the westernizing faction. During the 1890s after he had been compelled to surrender the throne of the patriarchate of Constantinople due to anti-Ottoman activities, Joachim III spent several years with his friends in Italy. Later, the masonic and ecumenist heresiarch Meletios Metaxakis who was patriarch of Constantinople from 1921 - 1923 still claimed the title from Mount Athos until 1926 even after he was forcibly expelled from Constantinople in 1923 by the colleagues of his political opposite the eastern Anatolian Orthodox Christian priest Papa Eftim who became a close friend of Kemal Ataturk and founded the Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople. The false Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis who introduced the papist Gregorian calendar schism to the Orthodox Church and openly supported the Greek invasion of Ottoman Anatolia was part of the same westernizing ecclesiastical faction which Joachim III had led in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century until his death in 1912. Significantly, before Meletios became patriarch in 1921 through a falsified election (as the scholarship of Alexandris and others have shown), a three year vacancy from 1918 to 1921 followed Germanos V whom Orthodox Christians must regard as the last genuine Patriarch of Constantinople before that institution became the servant of another master. Notably, Germanos V was loyal to the ancient Christian tradition of loyalty to the Ottoman Sultans and Roman Emperors - giving to God what belongs to God and to caesar what belongs to caesar.
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Joachim_III_of_Constantinoplehttp://orthodoxwiki.org/Meletios_IV_%28Metaxakis%29_of_ConstantinopleA similar vacancy perhaps indicating a withdrawal of the Spirit of God followed after Damianos I who became Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1897 had reposed in 1931.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_Orthodox_Patriarchs_of_Jerusalem This apostasy also recalls a significant detail concerning an annual miracle in the Tomb of Jesus Christ in Old City Jerusalem known as the Holy Fire which dates to the early Church and continues today. I have read in a book by a Serbian friend (Monk Serafim of Karoulia in Athos) who quoted a modern day Orthodox Christian monk from the Patriarchate of Jerusalem who asserted that the annual miracle of Holy Fire which spontaneously lights candles in the Tomb of Jesus every Holy Sabbath (the day before Easter according to the ancient Church Calendar) has for many decades only lit candles while they were resting in a book or candle holder in the tomb. The miracle of candles alighting spontaneously has only occurred in this way and has not spontaneously alighted anything in the hand of any human being whatever such as the Patriarch of Jerusalem for many decades (i.e. since the time of Patriarch Damianos in 1931 or before). This is an indication that God wants nothing to do with the modern patriarchs.
Holy Fire Miracle in the Tomb of Jesus Christ
http://www.holyfire.org/eng/A passage in a prophecy canonized by East Roman Emperor Leo IV that forms a major component of the Byzantine Apocalytic Tradition and is entitled CONCERNING THE POOR AND CHOSEN KING WHO WILL APPEAR WHEN THE TIME OF THE ISHMAELITES POWER COMES TO AN END. This prophecy which concerns the restitution of the Roman Empire and the final seven kings who will rule over it states concerning the first of these seven kings that HE WILL CHASE AWAY ALL THE BAD SACERDOTALS AND RESTORE THE WORTHY ONES TO THE HOLY PLACES.
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I discerned that the same pattern of degeneration into two factions prior to apostasy in nineteenth century Eastern Orthodoxy also seems to have characterized the final years of the early Roman papacy prior to its annexation by the Franks 900 years before in 999 A.D. The Book of Popes only records the lives and histories of all the early popes up to circa 886 A.D. and has been translated into english in three volumes by Raymond Davis.
The Book of Pontiffs
(The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715)
Translated By Raymond Davis
http://books.google.hn/books?id=u7HMq57xlhsC&dq=lives+of+the+popes+michael+whitby&hl=es&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1Lives of the Eighth Century Popes
(Ancient Biographies of Nine Popes From AD 715 to AD 817)
Translated By Raymond Davis
http://books.google.hn/books?id=VR3ZAAAAMAAJ&dq=lives+of+the+popes+michael+whitby&hl=es&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1Lives of the Ninth Century Popes
(Ancient Biographies of Ten Popes From A.D. 817-891)
Translated By Raymond Davis
http://books.google.hn/books?id=q7EuWhDYxM4C&dq=lives%20of%20the%20popes%20michael%20whitby&hl=es&source=gbs_similarbooksAlthough it had previously exercised oeconomy with regards to many Franks imbibing the filioque heresy mainly because of the papacys precarious position vis a vis the military and political power of the Carolingian Franks and their successors, the papacy did not itself adopt the filioque heresy until 1009 A.D. in which year the name of the pope in Rome was erased from the list of bishops honored by the Church in Constantinople. Notably, the papacy did not adopt the filioque heresy until after the last Roman pope in 999 A.D. - the year of three popes after which all popes were Franks. And after 1009, the Frankish popes formally subscribed to the filioque heresy.
The history of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries follows the same pattern as the papacy of 900 years earlier. The devil had apparently long been waiting to apply the same strategy to the Eastern Orthodox Church which had worked for him so long ago in western europe.
+ Dionysios