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Christian Unity (the book) - The Maranatha Community

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CHAPTER 2THE FIRST GREAT SPLIT: EAST AND WEST PART COMPANY<strong>The</strong> ‘undivided Church’ as Orthodoxy sees it lasted from Pentecost to 1054.During this time <strong>the</strong>re were plenty of divisions, heresies and schisms, yet itwould be true to say that, doctrinally anyway, a consensus was reached thatmost <strong>Christian</strong>s have subsequently accepted. This is seen as summarised in <strong>the</strong>Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed of Constantinople in 381 AD. Westernbishops accepted this Creed and, because it came out of an EcumenicalCouncil, Orthodoxy sees it as <strong>the</strong> au<strong>the</strong>ntic Creed of <strong>the</strong> Church for all time.However, Orthodoxy does not accept <strong>the</strong> filioque clause: it claims this wasinserted at a later date, and unilaterally, by <strong>the</strong> Western (Latin) Church.Filioque (‘and from <strong>the</strong> Son’) is <strong>the</strong> phrase that says <strong>the</strong> Holy Spirit proceededfrom <strong>the</strong> Fa<strong>the</strong>r and from <strong>the</strong> Son; it was probably first used at <strong>the</strong> Latin ThirdCouncil of Toledo in 589 AD. Orthodoxy sees this as detrimental to <strong>the</strong> Fa<strong>the</strong>ras <strong>the</strong> sole source of being in <strong>the</strong> Godhead. So, on two counts, Orthodoxyrejects this clause: one that it was imposed by one part of <strong>the</strong> Church on <strong>the</strong>rest (Emperor Charlemagne denounced <strong>the</strong> Greeks for not using <strong>the</strong> filioque),and <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r that it is bad <strong>the</strong>ology.Long before this first split of <strong>the</strong> Church in 1054, <strong>the</strong> Eastern <strong>Christian</strong>s haddeveloped a distinctively Greek kind of <strong>Christian</strong>ity. By as late as 450 AD fewWestern scholars could read Greek (even Augustine of Hippo had difficulty),and it was rare for a Byzantine scholar to know Latin.<strong>The</strong>re were o<strong>the</strong>r deep differences, too. As Timothy Ware points out in his<strong>book</strong> <strong>The</strong> Orthodox Church, <strong>the</strong> Eastern idea of Church government wascollegial ra<strong>the</strong>r than monarchical. 25 No one bishop rose to be <strong>the</strong> supremebishop over <strong>the</strong> East as <strong>the</strong> bishop of Rome had become Pope in <strong>the</strong> West.Today <strong>the</strong>re are additional centres for Orthodoxy, for example Moscow, butstill <strong>the</strong> same principle is maintained of each patriarchate being autonomousyet linked to all <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r churches by adherence to <strong>the</strong> Orthodoxy which cameout of <strong>the</strong> seven Ecumenical Councils (from Nicaea in 325 AD to <strong>the</strong> SecondCouncil of Nicaea in 787 AD).25Ware, Timothy, <strong>The</strong> Orthodox Church, Penguin Books, 1967, p 243.Page 43

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