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Swimming the Bosporus 7: Of Popes and Patriarchs
Six posts in and there’s a question I keep getting: “We get why you left evangelical protestantism for Orthodoxy. But why didn’t you just choose the Catholic Church?” For a Westerner, swimming the Tiber is simpler than swimming the Bosporus based on cultural affinities alone. And, according to Google Maps, the drive from Wittenburg to Rome is 400 miles shorter than Wittenburg to Constantinople. So what gives?
To answer, I first need to give some historical context.
You can find all the Swimming the Bosporus posts here.
The Church was established on the Day of Pentecost, 33 AD, and quickly spread around the Mediterranean. Every church was in agreement with each other as one big, happy family. Well, churlish at times, but what’cha gonna do? False teachers popped up here and there promoting doctrines contrary to Christianity. Councils were convened to discuss foundational beliefs and to condemn heresies.
The first ecumenical council was in Nicaea (325 AD), agreeing upon the first part of the Nicene Creed. The second council (381) agreed upon the second part of the Nicene Creed, which remains accepted by the Orthodox, Catholics, and most Protestants today (with one exception mentioned below).
Ecumenical councils drew leaders from all over Christendom to discuss these matters, sometimes from as far away as England and Persia. Bishops and delegates from Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome, etc., discussed and prayed about the issues. Once they reached a consensus, an agreement was released. The Bishop of Rome was considered “first among equals” but, according to the churches of the East, that was a place of honor rather than authority. Rome ultimately considered it to be a place of honor and authority.
In 476, the Western Roman Empire collapsed while the Eastern Roman Empire kept going for another millennium. This cut off Rome from Constantinople administratively; they were already cut-off culturally since one spoke Latin and the other Greek. As western Europe descended into chaos, the Pope was one of the only regionally recognized leaders who could keep things afloat.
After a few centuries of this separation, Rome tweaked the Nicene Creed. The original stated:
[I believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.
The Pope’s new version was:
[I believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.
The added clause “and the Son” (“Filioque” in Latin) was not well received among the churches in the East. They disagreed with the doctrine, insisted the council-approved creed could not be changed, and said the Bishop of Rome couldn’t unilaterally redefine the faith on the fly.
Add that to the separate languages, estranged cultures, and wildly different political realities — the East and West were growing apart. In 1054, matters came to a head.
Just before a liturgy at Constantinople’s Hagia Sophia, a papal delegation strode to the altar and excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch then excommunicated the delegates. There wasn’t even a sitting Pope at the time since one had died and the next hadn’t taken office.
At the time, officials on both sides thought it would blow over, but it never did. The Great Schism stuck.
About 500 years later, a German monk named Martin Luther caused a bit of a stir. Intending to reform the Catholic church, he inadvertently created Protestantism. John Calvin had a different idea and started another church. Then more followed. Now we have approximately 90 bazillion Protestant denominations with new ones forming every other Sunday.
I spent many years in wonderful Baptist churches so I’ll use them as an example. In the US alone, there are 60 different Baptist denominations. If you don’t like the Southern Baptists, you can go with American Baptists, Conservative Baptists, or Free Will Baptists. Too modern? How about the Old Regular Baptists, Old Time Missionary Baptists, or the Original Free Will Baptists. Still too modern? Check out the Primitive Baptists — but don’t get them confused with the Primitive Baptist Universalists or the National Primitive Baptist Convention of the USA.
We’ve fallen far from “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,” so it’s no surprise evangelicals increasingly attend non-denominational megachurches. Who can keep up with this?
Back to Catholicism and Orthodoxy, all their differences stem from the question of papal authority. Rome thinks the Pope is the chief human authority for the universal church; Orthodoxy thinks the patriarchs around the world are, each for their group. After Rome left, the Orthodox named the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople the new “first among equals” as a place of honor, not authority. This continues today.
Since the Great Schism, the Vatican has altered all sorts of doctrines under the Pope’s authority. As a result, there are many differences between the two churches. Here’s a helpful explanation of a few:
After reading up on these issues, I personally thought the Orthodox had the better part of the argument. This obviously doesn’t mean I think Catholics or Protestants are totally on the wrong track. But, to me, Orthodoxy seemed like the best representation of the Church that Christ left to His Apostles.
Outside of these sticking points, what really struck me in reading the Church Fathers was the emphasis on experiencing God rather than just reasoning about Him. My default state is to be hyper-logical and I’ve spent most my life thinking about God instead of spending time with Him. Or, you know, actually doing what He says.
Scholasticism began to dominate the Catholic Church just after the Great Schism, putting reason in the driver’s seat. The West tried to logically understand God and treat theology similar to philosophical inquiry.
The East instead pursued hesychasm, a mystical tradition of contemplation and prayer. They love reading about God, but the goal is to obey and experience Him. Since my entire life has focused on my head instead of my heart, I thought this approach would supply more of the things I lack.
As a final note, Catholic and Orthodox Christians have diligently worked toward a rapprochement, an effort that has increased in recent years. We can all pray that one day the 1,000-year-old schism is finally healed.
Chapter 8 here.
This is seventh in the series “Swimming the Bosporus,” on my journey from the megachurch to the Orthodox Church. Installments every Sunday morning. Click here to see all the posts.
Published in General
Do we think that the centuries long domination of Central and South America by Catholicism is responsible, even partially, for the current state of Central and South America?
North America was originally dominated by various protestants.
Does the superior performance of North America verses Central and South America demonstrate that protestant Christianity is more rational or more true or more practical than Catholicism? Or is this just a coincidence that does not reflect on those different versions of Christianity.
Well, yes. But the ruler of the Kingdom of God is God. Hell is a monarchy also, which illustrates what happens with a king less perfect than God. Until the actual monarch appears to rule over us, we need to find an appropriate means of regulating our behavior on this earth. I thing a republic is more forgiving of individual human folly than a kingdom.
The Romans often engaged in resettlement and populations moves too, especially when the conquered peoples were assumed to be hostile or dangerous. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but the Macedonians were still working from that old playbook.
Is the divide religious, though, or perhaps societal? Central and South America were conquered mostly by the Spanish, so perhaps a lot of the state of affairs can be laid at the way the Spanish monarchy ran things? I had a prof in college who taught what he considered to be the “Romano-Mediterranean” society as the explanation – areas most imbued with the old Roman / Justinianic law, while he taught that the Germanic legal systems inherited from England, Germany, and northern France were more amenable to modern prosperity. Lots of different theories abound.
I hear this a lot, and I do think culture matters, but here I think it undercuts the role of the individual. We owe our republic to the character of General Washington, who could have set us on the course to Banana Republicanism at multiple points in his career if he had only wanted power more or honor less.
I agree. That’s why I wrote “best be explained” and not “only be explained” by philosophy and culture. Of course geography and historical circumstance play a role. Just not the only role, or even the most important role.
I’m not “faulting” any cultures for failing to create certain cultural developments. That sort of moral language doesn’t really have a place in historical analysis, does it? But I’m sensing some defensiveness here – like an acknowledgement that the material, scientific and philosophical developments of the West are at least partially the result of Western philosophical and cultural commitments, must also be a denigration of other cultures. Is that what is driving the determination to write off Western cultural achievements as merely historical accidents?
I don’t see it that way. I agree with you that the West was lucky: The West isn’t populated by people naturally smarter, better and more moral than others. But they were lucky – if we want to put it that way – in their foundational cultural commitments arising from the mix of Greek and Roman culture leavened by Christianity. Geography had something to do with it too. But it was far from the only thing.
This is what I responded to this initially:
I argued in my original response that this was an overstatement. I stand by that still, and have defended that here, case by case. But saying that something is an overstatement is by no means as saying it is totally untrue.
I am glad, this is my main argument. I never argued that geography was the only thing, but it is an important thing, sometimes more important, sometimes less. In the case of how far the Ottomans managed to conquer once Byzantium was gone, and by what great efforts they were stopped, even then the West had a narrow escape.
This is rather similar to arguments claiming that the Reformation bequeathed us this or that societal advancement – advancements that the original reformers would have found anathema like “religious toleration”. The early Reformers were highly intolerant, hence all the wars, and only grudgingly came around to accepting toleration when it became clear that neither they nor the various factions, nor the Catholics would ever ultimately win, making tolerance better than endless war. It took centuries beyond that point of exhaustion for the notion of tolerance being a necessary evil to turn around and begin to be seen as a positive good (and one could argue it is a lesson still unlearned by many). Yes, you can say the Reformation got us tolerance, but we need to recognize that it was an initially unwanted byproduct, and not an end goal, and that it came at great cost.
Of course – I’m not trying to deny those, but to put them in context.
It is important to remember the phrase “necessity is the mother of invention”. I run an electronics company – one whose bread and butter is invention and development. Our inventions are the result of us responding to necessities – solving problems, creating new markets by way of application of new technologies. Could one argue that our inventions are the result of a culture of US capitalism and entrepreneurship and societal protection of intellectual property? Such things have created the environment where we can work, and would not have been possible in, say, modern Europe with its bureaucratic fetters.
But then again, they wouldn’t be possible in Beirut either because that’s not a stable place to build a manufacturing and R&D business, for lots of different reasons, or in Egypt. Likely not in India either.
The United States is a blessed combination of ideology and geography both. Europe had the right environment once, but is now sclerotic after two world wars and nearly half a century of fighting communism – we were spared those things here. We honor the founding fathers for creating the system they did, but they in turn recognized that their great distance from Europe allowed them to do what was otherwise impossible.
So when Christ appointed Peter as the rock on which His church was to be built, Peter became the first in a series of regents until the King’s return.
That is certainly what Catholics believe Orthodox do not believe in regents. God is king and we accept no substitutes.
Scholasticism had many positives, to be sure, and I knew I couldn’t summarize it in a sentence or two. I can write about Evangelicalism and Orthodoxy because I have now lived both, but I’ve never had that experience with Catholicism. I visited a few Masses and services here and there, but not enough to get a deeper sense of the faith. Even after two years in Orthodoxy, I feel like I’ve just dipped a toe in the shallow end.
Obviously, I’ve learned much from the pre-schism authors, and read others like Dante, Brother Lawrence, Chesterton, and Merton. But I definitely bow to your expertise on Aquinas.
I think we are in broad agreement, but let me try to put my views the following way. I suspect you might agree with much of it.
The crucial event that made Christendom was the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh. What happens when God Himself walks among us as a man, performs menial work as a carpenter, hobnobs with sinners and others of no account, and ultimately dies a humiliating death? The very notion of work, the dignity of labor and indeed the dignity of the material world itself is changed.
In the ancient world, manual labor was considered by its very nature demeaning. Philosophers and religious thinkers tended toward transcendence of the material world. I revere ancient philosophers like Plato and especially Aristotle, but Aristotle would never lower himself to clean a toilet (unlike his medieval successor Thomas Aquinas). I don’t blame Aristotle for that. It’s the natural, and even correct, view absent the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. I have a very strong attraction to ancient Greek philosophy and its dignity, and the dignity of natural philosophers in other cultures.
But Christian culture, both East and West, was formed on the fact of the Incarnation. This was revolutionary in a way the early Christians could never anticipate, and it transcended geography or particular historical circumstance. It colored all of subsequent Christian history both East and West. In the West, rather than seeing clearing land and reclaiming swamps work no decent men would do, monks embraced it as redemptive work in the light of Christ. The best and brightest, rather than striving to distance themselves from the material as far as they could, instead turned their talents toward understanding and mastering the material world as a product of God’s Creative Intelligence. Thomas Aquinas was born a nobleman and could have lived a life of leisure. Instead, he took a vow as a mendicant Dominican, spending his life laboring to reveal God’s Truth through the lights of both Nature and Revelation.
Western medieval monks tamed Northern Europe into productive agricultural land. Out of need, yes, but without the cultural background that gave dignity and redemptive value to menial labor, I don’t see it happening.
Indeed. One of the things so so heavily distinguishes both Orthodox and Catholicism from a lot of the rest of Christianity is that they are radically incarnational. Christ not only took on flesh to redeem mankind, His very presence on Earth sanctifies it all. As I noted in my essay on Theophany, Christ’s baptism in the Jordan blessed the river and, in effect, all the waters of creation. As one priest I know likes to put it, “matter matters”. As CS Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, (paraphrasing here) the Incarnation is like the beginning of a military invasion to reclaim creation from the evil one. I worry that a lot of modern Christians are so fixated on the 2nd Coming that they have forgotten what the first was all about, and so veer dangerously into a sort of gnosticism that insists this life doesn’t matter.
One of my all-time favorite Orthodox saints is Nektarios of Pentapolis and Aegina. Born poor, but devout, is eventually sponsored to attend schooling, is made a deacon, and then sent to the Orthodox community in Egypt, serving the patriarch. Patriarch recognizes his talents and his love for service, elevates him to Bishop. Nektarios uncovers financial regularities and petty jealousies among others in the patriarchal office, and makes the wrong enemies – slandered, fired, and sent packing with his reputation in ruins though he’d been innocent. Eventually after working as a parish priest back in Greece he is made the dean of a seminary. When the custodian was taken ill, Nektarios kept that hidden from the board and was found scrubbing the school toilets at 1 am so that the school would hold open the job for when the custodian got better. A bishop, the school dean, and yet he was staying up extra late to clean the toilets so that the ill custodian could still be paid.
The standard advice is “Come and See.” If nothing else, check out a vespers service to get a taste of it. And I still listen to a lot of other music :)
I believe they are complementary. In my personal background, it was nearly all reason, so that is why Orthodoxy appealed to me more.
Question for my Orthodox brethren – How are Saints determined in the various Orthodox churches? I am familiar with the basic RC process, but I have never stopped to consider how the sanctified are declared in Orthodoxy. Are any of you familiar with the process? If so an explanation would be appreciated.
Popular acclamation. Basically the people decide, and testify as to various miracles and intercessions. Eventually one of the patriarchates will investigate, and officially glorify the saint. But often such holy people are treated very much as saints years before there is a formal recognition. There is a certain Matushka Olga of Alaska, for instance, whose miraculous intercessions are very well known (some are recounted in a book I reviewed here), and though she has not been officially been added to the roster, you find churches all over with icons of her (I visited a women’s monastery with her icon last year), and one lady in my parish chose Olga of Alaska as her patron saint when she converted.
St. Herman of Alaska was not officially glorified until 1970, but his reputation preceded him.
Thanks Skip.
I just finished reading the Wikipedia entry for Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD).
The main message of MTD is the following:
[1] God created the cosmos.
[2] God loves you.
[3] God wants you to feel good about your self, wants you to have a high self-esteem.
[4] God wants us all to be nice and tolerant towards one another.
[5] Good people go to heaven when they die.
Has Eastern Orthodox, the Catholic church and the protestants resisted this move towards MTD?
I cannot speak for the Catholic church with regards to the modern times, and Francis is a puzzle, but MTD is heretical to traditional Catholicism, and MTD is utterly anathema to Orthodoxy. We are not called to be “good”, we are called to be Holy.
[edited]
The Nicene Council was the pinnacle of censorship wherein many of the writings that recorded Jesus’ actual statements were put on the chopping block. The Book of Thomas, the Book of Mary of Magdalene and others were disappeared.
Apparently the telling of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead was also re-written for being too much of an occult occurrence.
This website presents interesting dicussions about what went on: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html
I always felt the Greek Orthodox religion had a better handle on human nature, due to their not preventing priests from marrying. (I enjoyed the fuller description of what it meant for Orthodox priests to marry that was offered up in comment # 25.)
The so-called “gospel of Thomas” was well understood to be a gnostic fraud, written perhaps 2 centuries after Jesus, even in ancient times, and textual analysis of surviving copies today bears this out as it uses vocabulary and turns of phrase simply not extant during the first century. Not everything even then that purported to be Christian actually was so, and the writings of the time are replete with descriptions of various cults who may have invoked Jesus in their mysteries, but practiced things abhorrent or foolish.
You present one side of the argument, but the other side exists as well:
https://www.essene.com/Gospels/GnosticAndSophia.html
“By AD 300 it was apparent that a moral tide had turned. The new faith was focusing the ideas of a new evolutionary cycle, one which began to speak for the rights and equality of all humanity. It was one voice that Rome could not bend to her ways. Conversions began to be made among the upper classes and politicians. In the end, because its top people were able to perceive the source of power in a society and use it to advantage, Rome capitulated. Under Emperor Constantine, in AD 325, Christianity was accepted as the official state religion.
“A union was born which permanently altered both Rome and the church. On its side, Rome began certain reforms to lift the lower classes from their bondage. But on the Christian side, perhaps the brush with Roman power was too heady a temptation. Soon the church leadership began to show the same hunger for wealth and power which had so marred the Roman rule. This new class of orthodox church leader began to accumulate riches and rule the congregations with an iron will.
“Within this stream of competing factions and ideas the flame of Gnosticism burned brilliantly for a brief time. In the first 2 centuries of the Christian era it enjoyed its triumph, spreading rapidly through the eastern Mediterranean. It mainly influenced the intellectuals and philosophers, drawing to its ranks a more highly educated adherent than did the mainstream sects which were often composed of the peasants and slaves.
“When the latter more mainstream groups began to be organized around orthodox leaders demanding strict adherence to the newly forming church rules, the Gnostics fell into disrepute. Because they had voiced the absolute necessity of individual freedom in finding salvation and because they refused to bow to any authority other than their own, they began to be viewed as renegades, a danger to the growing power base of Constantine’s church. Consequently, they were disdained & persecuted, not so much by forces outside the Christian community, but by the very community to which they had once belonged.”
If you are seriously going to cite the Essenes and defend the gnostics while dragging out the old saw about Constantine somehow perverting the church, then we have nothing to discuss. The gnostics taught then and teach today doctrines that are radically antithetical to Christianity.