Digging Out the Embedded Church - The Maranatha Community

CHAPTER 2 THE FIRST GREAT SPLIT: EAST AND WEST PART COMPANY
The „undivided Church‟ as Orthodoxy sees it lasted from Pentecost to 1054. During this time
there were plenty of divisions, heresies and schisms, yet it would be true to say that,
doctrinally anyway, a consensus was reached that most Christians have subsequently
accepted. This is seen as summarised in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of
Constantinople in 381 AD. Western bishops accepted this Creed and, because it came out of
an Ecumenical Council, Orthodoxy sees it as the authentic Creed of the Church for all time.
However, Orthodoxy does not accept the filioque clause: it claims this was inserted at a later
date, and unilaterally, by the Western (Latin) Church. Filioque („and from the Son‟) is the
phrase that says the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and from the Son; it was
probably first used at the Latin Third Council of Toledo in 589 AD. Orthodoxy sees this as
detrimental to the Father as the sole source of being in the Godhead. So, on two counts,
Orthodoxy rejects this clause: one that it was imposed by one part of the Church on the rest
(Emperor Charlemagne denounced the Greeks for not using the filioque), and the other that it
is bad theology.
Long before this first split of the Church in 1054, the Eastern Christians had developed a
distinctively Greek kind of Christianity. By as late as 450 AD few Western scholars could
read Greek (even Augustine of Hippo had difficulty), and it was rare for a Byzantine scholar
to know Latin.
There were other deep differences, too. As Timothy Ware points out in his book The
Orthodox Church, the Eastern idea of Church government was collegial rather than
monarchical. 25 No one bishop rose to be the supreme bishop over the East as the bishop of
Rome had become Pope in the West.
Today there are additional centres for Orthodoxy, for example Moscow, but still the same
principle is maintained of each patriarchate being autonomous yet linked to all the other
churches by adherence to the Orthodoxy which came out of the seven Ecumenical Councils
(from Nicaea in 325 AD to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD).
The distinction between laity and clergy was not as acute as in the West, where theology was
firmly in the hands of the clergy. Salvation was seen in the East as theosis, the indwelling of
God in the believer and the indwelling of the believer in God.
Salvation in the West has had more to do with a forensic view of sin‟s guilt being cleared by
the death of Christ on the Cross. For the East the Cross was the means of man‟s redemption,
but salvation is more than just forgiveness, it is also the union of the believer with God. So in
the Orthodox theology, the resurrection, by which the risen Christ is given to all who receive
him, is central.
Other differences also developed between East and West, with the East permitting clergy to
marry (though not bishops, who came from the monasteries) while the Catholic Church
25 Ware, Timothy, The Orthodox Church, Penguin Books, 1967, p 243.
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