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Chapter 5. The Breach between East and West
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Chapter 5 The Breach between East and West w They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jer. 2:13) That there has been a breach, sometimes referred to as the Great schism, between the Christian East and the Christian West is incontrovertible . What that breach was about, however, and when and how it took place are less clear. the stock answer in the West to the latter question is that it took place in 1054, when Cardinal Humbert of Mourmoutiers , who had been sent to Constantinople as a papal legate to ask for imperial help against the normans, to resolve some differences of rite and practice, and to assert papal supremacy over the entire Church in the East as well as the West, marched into the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom during the Divine liturgy on July 16 and placed on the altar a bull of excommunication against the patriarch, Michael Cerularius (or Kerularios or Keroularios), who a few days later excommunicated Humbert in turn. (on more than one occasion i have seen newspapers identify the Eastern orthodox Church as “a church that broke away from the roman Catholic Church in 1054 aD.”) that incident in July 1054, however, is quite misleading as an answer to our question, since the pope who had sent Humbert there, leo iX, had died several months earlier, in April, with no successor yet named, so that Humbert had no official 137 138 In Search of the Triune God capacity at the time.1 the excommunication itself was Humbert’s own spontaneous initiative, not an official act of the Western Church, nor was it even intended by Humbert as an excommunication of all Eastern Christians, but only of the patriarch and some of his immediate entourage.2 Misleading as the 1054 answer may be, on the other hand, it is not simply negligible, since from that time on, the Churches of both East and West have tended to perceive themselves as separated, whereas before then, despite their differences and occasional conflicts, they had always perceived themselves as living within one Church.3 it will be somewhat easier to address the question of what the real breach was about than the question of when and how it could be said actually to have begun, although the two are intertwined. the breach took place partly over theological issues and partly over organizational ones. Most of the differences of rite and practice between East and West—such as the Western practice of celebrating the Eucharist with unleavened (azyma) wafers in contrast to the Eastern use of leavened bread and the question of whether priests should be bearded or clean shaven—would probably now be dismissed as minor by both sides.4 the papal claim to universal authority over all other patriarchs and bishops, on the other hand, has remained important, and some on both sides consider that to be a theological issue as well as an organizational one. The most important theological issue, however, has been identified for many centuries as the filioque, the change the West made in the nicene Creed when it interpolated the phrase “and the son” into the text that originally said only that the Holy spirit “proceeds from the father.” both of these, the organizational and the doctrinal, are issues that developed over time, so that the only way to understand them adequately will be to consider them historically to see how they emerged and what shape they took at various times in particular contexts. i will begin with the doctrinal issue. beginnings of Divergence i said in the introduction that augustine’s book on the trinity has been one of the most influential works of theology ever produced in the Western Christian world but that it was also a fateful first step toward the split between Western Christendom and the Eastern Christian world. i think it should be clear after the discussion in the preceding chapter that, important as that step may have been, especially against the background of the chasm between man and God opened by augustine’s idea of original sin, it was only a first step. augustine was simply trying, on the basis of the idea that the “image of God” in man might be a clue, to speculate about the meaning of the newly official doctrine of the Trinity that people were asking him about. It seems clear from the fact that he...