Liturgy of Book VIII of the Apostolic Constitutions

Shota

Παλαιό Μέλος
Apostolic Constitutions are among the series of works that claim for itself apostolic provenance (in particular, they are said to be written by St. Clement who supposedly records the saying of the Apostles), which attribution however is rejected by modern scholarship. According to modern scholarly consensus AC are a liturgical and canonical collection compiled ca. 380 by an editor living in the environs of Antioch. The work is known for its Arianising traits and its compiler is commonly called a semi-Arian in the scholarly literature.

AC have been published a number of times. The best edition is Les Constitutions Apostoliques (SC; 320, 329, 336), introd., texte critique, trad. et notes par M. Metzger, Рaris, 1985-1986. This edition has replaced an older one by F. X. Funk (Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, Paderborn, 1905; available online here).

The liturgy that is of concern in this message is contained in Book VIII of AC. According to the 2002 encyclical of the Standing Synod of the Church of Greece this liturgy (as published by the Greek liturgist, Professor Ioannis Foundoulis) has to be performed on September 1 each year within activities connected with services for the environment.

Foundoulis' text is based on Funk's edition, which however is not the best one (as pointed out as early as 1910s by Turner). Apart of this fact, the disturbing thing is that the liturgy comes from a collection with Arian features (something noted already by St. Photios in his Bibliotheca, see the Greek text here and the English text here). Of notice is the fact that AC were explicitly disapproved by the Penthekte Ecumenical Council in its Canon 2. In the introduction to his edition Foundoulis tries to find justification for the use of the liturgy of Book VIII by references to various Church Fathers. The first among them is somebody whom he himself (!) calls pseudo-Proclus. It is unclear what Foundoulis wants to show: the work which he refers to does not belong to Saint Proclus of Constantinople, but is a 16th c. forgery by Constantine Paleocappa (F. J. Leroy, "Proclus, 'De Traditione Divinae Missae': un faux de C. Paleocappa", OCP, Vol. 28, 1962, p. 288-299). Next he invokes Leontius of Byzantium, who, however, most likely is talking about Chrysostom's liturgy and not that of AC (the reasoning why the modern liturgists believe this is the case is too long to be described here). Finally, Foundoulis mentions Nicholas of Methone and St. Markos Eugenikos as those who approved of the liturgy of AC. It is true that they do so, but both belong to the time quite remote from the compilation of AC. Moreover, the liturgy is clearly mentioned in the context of polemics and e.g. in St. Markos' case it gives a too convenient an argument against Latins (liturgy written down by the bishop of Rome from the Apostles' words) to be neglected. Nobody can blaim him for that, especially given the fact that already by the times of the Penthekte AC were believed to be authentic work of the Apostles, although corrupted by heretics.

The theology of the liturgy of Book VIII of AC was a subject of two studies: by Thomas Kopecek (Thomas A. Kopecek, "Neo-Arian Religion: The Evidence of the Apostolic Constitutions, " in R. C. Gregg, ed., Arianism: Historical and Theological Reassessments (Philadelphia, 1985), 153-79) and by Archbishop Georges Wagner (Georges Wagner, "Une liturgie anoméenne", in A.M. Triacca et A. Pistoia, eds., Trinité et liturgie, Conferences Saint-Serge, XXXe semaine d'études liturgiques, Paris 1983, Roma, 1984, p. 385-393). Their conclusion is that this theology is anomoean, i.e. extreme Arian. I'm not an expert in these matters. Although I do not find some of the arguments of Kopecek entirely convincing, others seem convincing to me are and e.g. the parallels between the wordings in the liturgy and Eunomius' (chief leader of anomoeans) works exposed in both articles are noteworthy. I have attached both articles (half of the pages in Kopecek are scanned upside down. I hope somebody can reunite the individual files into one pdf file). Finally, as argued by Cabié (the bibliographical information on his paper can be found here), it is not even clear that the liturgy of Book VIII was ever used in practice: it is possibly an "idealised" text produced by the editor of AC and constitutes a literary text rather than a text actually used in liturgy.
 

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Shota

Παλαιό Μέλος
Further to what I wrote, I would also like to mention the fact that upon comparison of the exerpts from AC and one Arian commentary on the book of Job (Der Hiobkommentar des Arianers Julian, hrsg. von Dieter Hagedorn, Walter de Gruyter, 1973), based on language, style and theology, Dieter Hagedorn makes a good point for identification of its author with the compiler of AC.
 

basil

Παλαιό Μέλος
I have attached both articles (half of the pages in Kopecek are scanned upside down. I hope somebody can reunite the individual files into one pdf file).

Done.
 

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  • Foundoulis_KeimenaLeitourgikes.pdf
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Shota

Παλαιό Μέλος
To see the differences between Funk's and Metzger's editions, see the two attached files (p. 182,51-53 and p. 192,176-179 from Metzger's) where one clearly sees the subordinationism that the compiler of AC confesses (Father->Son->Holy Spirit; Holy spirit is ranked among creatures in the most unambiguous terms). Of course these are not singular instances and there are parallels in other parts of AC too, but since we are talking about the liturgy of Book VIII, I thought it would be useful to give these examples. These two examples have been censured out from a number of manuscripts because of their obvious unorthodox character.
 

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