A Catholic View of Eastern Orthodoxy (1 of 4)

First, I shall discuss why Catholics should not only show some ecumenical concern for Orthodoxy but also treat the Orthodox as their privileged or primary ecumenical partner.

Secondly, I shall ask why the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches occurred, focussing as it finally did on four historic 'dividing issues'.

Thirdly, I shall evaluate the present state of Catholic-Orthodox relations, with particular reference to the problem of the 'Uniate' or Eastern Catholic churches.

Fourthly and finally, having been highly sympathetic and complimentary to the Orthodox throughout, I shall end by saying what, in my judgment, is wrong with the Orthodox Church and why it needs Catholicism for (humanly speaking) its own salvation.

Part 1 First, then, why should Catholics take the Orthodox as not only an ecumenical partner but the ecumenical partner par excellence? There are three kinds of reasons: historical, theological and practical - of which in most discussion only the historical and theological are mentioned since the third sort - what I term the 'practical' - takes us into areas of potential controversy among Western Catholics themselves.

The historical reasons for giving preference to Orthodoxy over all other separated communions turn on the fact that the schism between the Roman church and the ancient Chalcedonian churches of the East is the most tragic and burdensome of the splits in historic Christendom if we take up a universal rather than merely regional, perspective. Though segments of the Church of the Fathers were lost to the Great Church through the departure from Catholic unity of the Assyrian (Nestorian) and Oriental Orthodox (Monophysite) churches after the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) respectively, Christians representing the two principal cultures of the Mediterranean basin where the Gospel had its greatest flowering - the Greek and the Latin - lived in peace and unity with each other, despite occasional stirrings and some local difficulties right up until the end of the patristic epoch.

That epoch came to its climax with the Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea II, in 787, the last Council Catholics and Orthodox have in common, and the Council which, in its teaching on the icon, and notably on the icon of Christ, brought to a triumphant close the series of conciliar clarifications of the Christological faith of the Church which had opened with Nicaea I in 325.

The iconography, liturgical life, Creeds and dogmatic believing of the ancient Church come down to us in forms at once Eastern and Western; and it was this rich unity of patristic culture, expressing as it did the faith of the apostolic community, which was shattered by the schism between Catholics and Orthodox, never (so far) to be repaired. And let me say at this point that Church history provides exceedingly few examples of historic schisms overcome, so if history is to be our teacher we have no grounds for confidence or optimism that this most catastrophic of all schisms will be undone. 'Catastrophic' because, historically, as the present pope has pointed out, taking up a metaphor suggested by a French ecclesiologist, the late Cardinal Yves Congar: each Church, West and East, henceforth could only breathe with one lung.

No Church could now lay claim to the total cultural patrimony of both Eastern and Western Chalcedonianism - that is, the christologically and therefore triadologically and soteriologically correct understanding of the Gospel. The result of the consequent rivalry and conflict was the creation of an invisible line down the middle of Europe. And what the historic consequences of that were we know well enough from the situation of the former Yugoslavia today.

After the historical, the theological. The second reason for giving priority to ecumenical relations with the Orthodox is theological. If the main point of ecumenism, or work for the restoration of the Church's full unity, were simply to redress historic wrongs and defuse historically generated causes of conflict, then we might suppose that we should be equally - or perhaps even more - nterested in addressing the Catholic-Protestant divide. After all, there have been no actual wars of religion - simply as such - between Catholics and Orthodox, unlike those between Catholics and Protestants in sixteenth century France or the seventeenth century Holy Roman Empire.

But theologically there cannot be any doubt that the Catholic Church must accord greater importance to dialogue with the Orthodox than to conversations with any Protestant body. For the Orthodox churches are churches in the apostolic succession; they are bearers of the apostolic Tradition, witnesses to apostolic faith, worship and order - even though they are also, and at the same time, unhappily undered from the prima sedes, the first see. Their Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers, their liturgical texts and practices, their iconographic tradition, these remain loci theologici - authoritative sources - to which the Catholic theologian can and must turn in his or her intellectual construal of Catholic Christianity. And that cannot possibly be said of the monuments of Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed or any other kind of Protestantism.

To put the same point in another way: the separated Western communities have Christian traditions - in the plural, with a small 't' - which may well be worthy of the Catholic theologian's interest and respect. But only the Orthodox are, along with the Catholic Church, bearers of Holy Tradition - in the singular, with a capital 'T', that is, of the Gospel in its plenary organic transmission through the entirety of the life - credal, doxological, ethical - of Christ's Church.

There is for Catholics, therefore, a theological imperative to restore unity with the Orthodox which is lacking in our attitude to Protestantism - though I should not be misinterpreted as saying that there is no theological basis for the impulse to Catholic-Protestant rapprochement for we have it in the prayer of our Lord himself at the Great Supper, 'that they all may be one'. I am emphasising the greater priority we should give to relations with the Orthodox because I do not believe the optimistic statement of many professional ecumenists to the effect that all bilateral dialogues - all negotiations with individual separated communions - feed into each other in a positive and unproblematic way.

It would be nice to think that a step towards one separated group of Christians never meant a step away from another one, but such a pious claim does not become more credible with the frequency of its repeating. The issue of the ordination of women, to take but one particularly clear example, is evidently a topic where to move closer to world Protestantism is to move further from global Orthodoxy - and vice versa.

This brings me to my third reason for advocating ecumenical rapport with Orthodoxy: its practical advantages. At the present time, the Catholic Church, in many parts of the world, is undergoing one of the most serious crises in its history, a crisis resulting from a disorienting encounter with secular culture and compounded by a failure of Christian discernment on the part of many people over the last quarter century - from the highest office holders - to the ordinary faithful. This crisis touches many aspects of Church life but notably theology and catechesis, liturgy and spirituality, Religious life and Christian ethics at large. Orthodoxy is well placed to stabilise Catholicism in most if not all of these areas.

Were we to ask in a simply empirical or phenomenological frame of mind just what the Orthodox Church is like, we could describe it as a dogmatic Church, a liturgical Church, a contemplative Church, and a monastic Church - and in all these respects it furnishes a helpful counter-balance to certain features of much western Catholicism today.

Firstly, then, Orthodoxy is a dogmatic Church. It lives from out of the fullness of the truth impressed by the Spirit on the minds of the apostles at the first Pentecost, a fullness which transformed their awareness and made possible that specifically Christian kind of thinking we call dogmatic thought.

The Holy Trinity, the God-man, the Mother of God and the saints, the Church as the mystery of the Kingdom expressed in a common life on earth, the sacraments as means to humanity's deification - our participation in the uncreated life of God himself: these are the truths among which the Orthodox live, move and have their being.

Orthodox theology in all its forms is a call to the renewal of our minds in Christ, something which finds its measure not in pure reason or secular culture but in the apostolic preaching attested to by the holy Fathers, in accord with the principal dogmata of faith as summed up in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church.

Secondly, Orthodoxy is a liturgical Church. It is a Church for which the Liturgy provides a total ambience expressed in poetry, music and iconography, text and gesture, and where the touchstone of the liturgical life is not the capacity of liturgy to express contemporary concerns legitimate though these may be in their own context), but, rather, the ability of the Liturgy to act as a vehicle of the Kingdom, our anticipated entry, even here and now, into the divine life.

Thirdly, Orthodoxy is a contemplative Church. Though certainly not ignoring the calls of missionary activity and practical charity, essential to the Gospel and the Gospel community as these are, the Orthodox lay their primary emphasis on the life of prayer as the absolutely necessary condition of all Christianity worth the name.

In the tradition of the desert fathers, and of such great theologian-mystics as the Cappadocian fathers, St Maximus and St Gregory Palamas, encapsulated as these contributions are in that anthology of Eastern Christian spirituality the Philokalia, Orthodoxy gives testimony to the primacy of what the Saviour himself called the first and greatest commandment, to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength, for it is in the light of this commandment with its appeal for a God-centred process of personal conversion and sanctification - that all our efforts to live out its companion commandment (to love our neighbour as ourself) must be guided.

And fourthly, Orthodoxy is a monastic Church, a Church with a monastic heart where the monasteries provide the spiritual fathers of the bishops, the counsellors of the laity and the example of a Christian maximalism. A Church without a flourishing monasticism, without the lived 'martyrdom' of an asceticism inspired by the Paschal Mystery of the Lord's Cross and Resurrection, could hardly be a Church according to the mind of the Christ of the Gospels, for monasticism, of all Christian life ways, is the one which most clearly and publicly leaves all things behind for the sake of the Kingdom.

Practically speaking, then, the re-entry into Catholic unity of this dogmatic, liturgical, contemplative and monastic Church could only have the effect of steadying and strengthening those aspects of Western Catholicism which today are most under threat by the corrosives of secularism and theological liberalism.

My judgment that the Latin Creed differs from the Greek original?

Your Creed also differs widely from the Greek original of the First Ecumenical Council. The anathemas are missing, for instance, and there are many additions.

My judgment that a canon issued by the Ephesian fathers forbids alterations of the Creed of Nicaea, not of Constantinople 381.

When these documents had been read out, the holy synod decreed the following.
1. It is not permitted to produce or write or compose any other creed except the one which was defined by the holy fathers who were gathered together in the holy Spirit at Nicaea.
2. Any who dare to compose or bring forth or produce another creed for the benefit of those who wish to turn from Hellenism or Judaism or some other heresy to the knowledge of the truth, if they are bishops or clerics they should be deprived of their respective charges and if they are laymen they are to be anathematised.

"The anathemas are missing..."
Anathemas are retained in the Rudder, and in the Synodicon.

...there are many additions."
Yes? Such as?

"1. It is not permitted to produce or write or compose any other creed except the one which was defined by the holy fathers who were gathered together in the holy Spirit at Nicaea."
By your logic, they anathematized themselves because the symbol of the Faith they issued is the Nicene-Constantinopleatin version. You are confusing creed with symbol. Strictly speaking, the "Creed" we recite is the Nicene-Constantinopleatin symbol of the Nicene Creed, creed being that which the Nicene fathers believed. That creed is not open to alteration. The filoque is an alteration of the Christian creed.

My judgment that the Latin Creed differs from the Greek original?

Shame on me for not going to the original documents to see what the Council of Ephesus actually said. It may come to a great shock to you but the Council of Ephesus DOES NOT forbid changes to the words of the Creed. The actual words of Canon VII are:

WHEN these things had been read, the holy Synod decreed that it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea.
But those who shall dare to compose a different faith, or to introduce or offer it to persons desiring to turn to the acknowledgment of the truth, whether from Heathenism or from Judaism, or from any heresy whatsoever, shall be deposed, if they be bishops or clergymen; bishops from the episcopate and clergymen from the clergy; and if they be laymen, they shall be anathematized.

Since the faith proclaimed by the Latin version in no way contradicts the faith proclaimed at Nicea and contained in the Greek version of the Creed there is no violation of canons of the Council of Ephesus.

I caution you against insisting that the words of the Creed be exact. If this were so then Ephesus itself would be condemned by its own canon because the Creed of Constantinople differs from that of Nicea.

" Since the faith proclaimed by the Latin version in no way contradicts the faith proclaimed at Nicea..."
That is the Latin view, not the Orthodox view. The Orthodox view is that a different Faith was composed by the Council of Toledo in 589. History shows that Rome resisted using the Spanish version of the Creed until forced to do so in 1014. So I go with the popes of Rome before and you go with the popes of after. I go with Tradition and you with novelty.

The Orthodox view is that a different Faith was composed by the Council of Toledo in 589.

A private judgment of the Greek bishops only and not an act of the entire Church.

History shows that Rome resisted using the Spanish version of the Creed until forced to do so in 1014. So I go with the popes of Rome before and you go with the popes of after. I go with Tradition and you with novelty.

The popes did not condemn Filioque before 1014. Pope Leo III approved its doctrine but only advised that the word be omitted from the recitation of the Creed.

Anathemas are retained in the Rudder, and in the Synodicon.

But not in your liturgy.

the symbol of the Faith they issued is the Nicene-Constantinopleatin version

"They"? Where did Ephesus issue the new version of the Creed? The only one quoted in the Acts is the Creed of Nicaea.

creed being that which the Nicene fathers believed

Ah, I see. I thought you were upholding the old Orthodox position (i.e. the one defended by Mark of Ephesus) which was that it referred to the words themselves. Needless to say, since the filioque was believed by the Fathers at Nicaea and Constantinople, it is you who have departed from their creed, unless you want to claim, absurdly, that Sts. Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil, etc. did not believe in the creeds which they assisted in framing.

I go with the popes of Rome before

Do you go with Pope St. Leo the Great?

Here begin the rules of the Catholic faith against all heresies, and especially indeed against the Priscillianists, which the bishops of Tarraco, Carthage, Lusitania, and Baetica have composed and with a command of Pope Leo of the City transmitted to Balconius, bishop of Gallicia. ...
The Spirit is also the Paraclete, who is himself neither the Father, nor the Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son. Therefore the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, the Paraclete is not begotten, but proceeding from the Father and the Son. (Creed of the Council of Toledo, 447 AD)

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06073a.htm

"In 796 the Patriarch of Aquileia justified and adopted the same addition at the Synod of Friaul, and in 809 the Council of Aachen appears to have approved of it. The decrees of this last council were examined by Pope Leo III, who approved of the doctrine conveyed by the Filioque, but gave the advice to omit the expression in the Creed."

The Spirit is also the Paraclete, who is himself neither the Father, nor the Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son. Therefore the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, the Paraclete is not begotten, but proceeding from the Father and the Son. (Creed of the Council of Toledo, 447 AD)

Worse than I thought in Spain, but I'll not accuse St. Leo of this.

"In 796 the Patriarch of Aquileia justified and adopted the same addition at the Synod of Friaul, and in 809 the Council of Aachen appears to have approved of it. The decrees of this last council were examined by Pope Leo III, who approved of the doctrine conveyed by the Filioque, but gave the advice to omit the expression in the Creed."

That's an excellent tertiary source. Now show us a primary source please as to Pope Leo III's approval and conveyal.

Worse than I thought in Spain, but I'll not accuse St. Leo of this.

St. Leo's own words:

And so under the first head is shown what unholy views they hold about the Divine Trinity: they affirm that the person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost is one and the same, as if the same God were named now Father, now Son, and now Holy Ghost: and as if He who begot were not one, He who was begotten, another, and He who proceeded from both, yet another; but an undivided unity must be understood, spoken of under three names, indeed, but not consisting of three persons. This species of blasphemy they borrowed from Sabellius, whose followers were rightly called Patripassians also: because if the Son is identical with the Father, the Son’s cross is the Father’s passion: and the Father took on Himself all that the Son took in the form of a slave, and in obedience to the Father. Which without doubt is contrary to the catholic faith, which acknowledges the Trinity of the Godhead to be of one essence in such a way that it believes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost indivisible without confusion, eternal without time, equal without difference: because it is not the same person but the same essence which fills the Unity in Trinity. (Letter 15, Quam laudabiliter, To Turribius, Bishop of Asturia, 447 AD)

I'll see about getting back to you on St. Leo III.

I caution you against insisting that the words of the Creed be exact

Endless rationalizations. The "Creed" is an exact definition of Faith, as formulated by the Councils. How can we profess the same Faith if the eastern half omits an important word, and the western part adds it?

I could understand that the uncertainty remains if the last Council were that of Ephesus, which the Latins reject. But the definition of the Faith as stated in that Council was approved and recognized, by the whole Church, as true and final at the the following Council. From then on, neither side of the Church had any authority to change its contents by adding or subtratcing from that expression of Faith lest it formulate a new faith -- because the finalized Creed is a definition of Faith, not a description of Faith.

That some individual Fathers of the East shared in formulating filioque before the Church defined it is not surprising. The Fathers were not always right on all points. But, the question is: did any of the Eastern Fathers continue to profess or speculate about the filioque after the Council of Chalcedon?

It appears that only the Western Patriarchate continued in its defiance of the Councils by insistitng on using the filioque.

Please notice the tenses here in what you quoted: "... as if He who begot were not one, He who was begotten, another, and He who proceeded from both, yet another."

This is not, as is the filioque heresy, a discussion of the eternal hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit. It is instead a reference, at least apparently, to there being three distinct persons and to the Son's mission in time. For example, Holy Scripture tells us, "And when he had said this, he breathed on [them], and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (Jhn 20:22). That, it appears to me, is what St. Leo is referring to. The Creed, by contrast, refers to the hypostatic eternal generation of the Son and to the hypostatic eternal procesion of the Holy Spirit, an entirely different subject. Of this, Jesus Christ Himself said, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, [even] the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father (Jhn 15:26 )".

This is not, as is the filioque heresy, a discussion of the eternal hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit. It is instead a reference, at least apparently, to there being three distinct persons and to the Son's mission in time

This seems to be an interpretation very hard to maintain, in light of the fact that St. Leo is explicitly explaining why the Persons are differentiated, a matter of their eternal relation. Moreover, how would a temporal procession of the Spirit be congruous with the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father? "who begot .. He who was begotten ... He who proceeded".

But, the question is: did any of the Eastern Fathers continue to profess or speculate about the filioque after the Council of Chalcedon?

Yes. For instance, St. Hormisdas' formula of reunion had the filioque. John of Montenero noted at Florence:

After Augustine came Pope Hormisdas, who reigned in the days of the Emperor Justin, when John, Patriarch of Constantinople, was trying to bring peace again to the Church after the aberrations of his predecessor Acacius. Both Emperor and Patriarch accepted the profession of faith of Hormisdas to make it the norm of orthodoxy. Yet that profession contained the following:
'Great and incomprehensible is the mystery of the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, an undivided Trinity, and yet it is known because it is characteristic of the Father to generate the Son, characteristic of the Son of God to be born of the Father equal to the Father, characteristic of the Spirit to proceed from Father and Son in one substance of deity' (P.L. 63, 514B).

"After Augustine came Pope Hormisdas, who reigned in the days of the Emperor Justin, when John, Patriarch of Constantinople, was trying to bring peace again to the Church after the aberrations of his predecessor Acacius. Both Emperor and Patriarch accepted the profession of faith of Hormisdas to make it the norm of orthodoxy. Yet that profession contained the following:

'Great and incomprehensible is the mystery of the Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, an undivided Trinity, and yet it is known because it is characteristic of the Father to generate the Son, characteristic of the Son of God to be born of the Father equal to the Father, characteristic of the Spirit to proceed from Father and Son in one substance of deity' (P.L. 63, 514B)"

I may be mistaken but I believe St. Mark of Ephesus refused to accept this. In other words, as with the Didache, it is of questionable provenance. Being of questionable provenance, it is unworthy of consideration other than as a curiosity of some sort. Sort of like an unusual dead rat.

Well, what Mark said was that anything teaching the Procession from the Son must have been forged, since he knew that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. Hardly an objective standard.

"The words of the western Fathers and Doctors, which attribute to the Son the cause of the Spirit, I never recognize (for they have never been translated into our tongue nor approved by the Oecumenical Councils) nor do I admit them, presuming that they are corrupt and interpolated ..."

PS: Note that while Mark insists that the Son isn't the cause of the Spirit, Gregory of Nyssa says that he is (Against Eunomius, I, 42).

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