Talk:Apostolos Makrakis

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This article is written in terribly stilted English. It really needs quite a bit of revision to make it more idiomatic.

I know I may be totally wrong here, but don't most Orthodox believe this man to be a heretic? Isn't this the same guy who claimed to be an Apostle, et cetera....?--JosephSuaiden 06:10, September 11, 2008 (UTC)

I was actually going to raise the same issue, but I couldn't find my documentation on the matter. I remember similar objections. --Willibrord 09:29, September 11, 2008 (UTC)
Read the sections in the article on Criticism and Legacy. While controversial to be sure, he was not actually excommunicated by the way, and in any event, he was the center of a very important religious phenomenon that several Orthodox and non-Orthodox have written about, and who should be studied or chronicled in order to clear up just such questions. It is also a matter of the history of the Greek church in the 19th century!
Angellight 888 10:59, September 11, 2008 (UTC)
We have articles on heretics. We even have a whole category for them. You don't have to be a "good guy" to make it into OrthodoxWiki. —Fr. Andrew talk contribs (THINK!) 15:01, September 11, 2008 (UTC)

According to Christos Yannaras: "The Synod excommunicated [Makrakis] to silence him, invoking ludicrous theological arguments, such as his views on the tripartite composition of man. When he died, however, the Synod agreed to give him a church funeral" Orthodoxy and the West, p. 224. --Fr Lev 15:08, September 11, 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this note Fr. This is interesting, because Professor Yannaras' account is different from that given by Archimandrite Simonopetritis (quoted in the article). I can add to this that I came across the following reference in a timeline authored by an Old Calendar group, which I cannot confirm and will need to be verified, but this is what they have to say:
1879 AD Council of Athens, convened and presided over by Metropolitan Procopius I of Athens, and attended by several bishops, condemns the Makrakists, who believe in the Protestant delusion that humans supposedly each consist of three natures: a body, soul and spirit; and that the former two are mortal and corruptible whereas the latter is divine, being the Holy Spirit; rather than believing that all men consist of only a single human nature; that this one nature consists of two compartments, to wit, a body and a soul; that man's sprit is simply another term for his soul and these terms are used interchangeably; that the human nature does not consist of anything divine in and of itself; and that the human soul or spirit is not eternal, but is rather created immortal and incorruptible by divine grace.
I am currently in the process of obtaining Andronis' book, (Makrakis: Evaluation of Half a century), which may help in #1) confirming Professor Yannaras' account of excommunication; #2)it will provide the complete Bibliographical list of Makrakis' works; #3) hopefully shed some light on the key issue of the tripartite consitution of man -- I would like to be able to refer to the canonical Orthodox teaching on this subject, either from the Fathers of the Church or Orthodox theologians, as I am not sure what it is at this point. Maybe someone can include that in the article here for reference. Oxford Professor Conybeare draws a comparison of Makrakis to the Ebionites and Adoptionists (this is included in the article already).
Cheers
Angellight 888 16:53, September 11, 2008 (UTC)