D
dcointin
Guest
Pfaffenhoffen,
I appreciate your sympathy for Orthodox Christians. Understanding one another’s perspective is going to be critical if we would ever achieve recommunion between our churches. In that spirit I would like to offer a few criticisms of my own church regarding the subjects you wrote about.
As horrible as the fourth crusade was, it is important to remember a significant event that preceeded it: the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople:
“The Massacre of the Latins occurred in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in May 1182. It was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic or “Latin” merchants and their families, who at that time dominated the city’s maritime trade and financial sector. Although precise numbers are unavailable, the bulk of the Latin community, estimated at over 60,000 at the time, was wiped out or forced to flee. The Genoese and Pisan communities especially were decimated, and some 4,000 survivors were sold as slaves to the Turks. The massacre further worsened relations and increased enmity between the Western and Eastern Christian churches, and a sequence of hostilities between the two followed.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
It is important to remember that atrocities were committed by both the west and the east, and that neither of us can claim a historical moral superiority. This is something I was unaware of until listening to a talk given by Archimandrite Robert Taft at Lumen Gentium, and needless to say it was quite eye opening.
“Although he was hot-headed, Michael was convinced to cool the debate and thus attempt to prevent the impending breach. However, Humbert and the Pope made no concessions, and Humbert was sent with legatine powers to the imperial capital to resolve the questions raised, once and for all. Humbert, Frederick of Lorraine, and Peter, Archbishop of Amalfi, arrived in April 1054 and were met with a hostile reception; they stormed out of the palace, leaving the papal response with Michael, who in turn was even more angered by their actions. The patriarch refused to recognize their authority or, practically, their existence. When Pope Leo died on 19 April 1054, the legates’ authority legally ceased, but they effectively ignored this technicality.
In response to Michael’s refusal to address the issues at hand, the legatine mission took the extreme measure of entering the church of the Hagia Sophia during the Divine Liturgy and placing a bull of excommunication on the altar.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Schism
Although Pope Leo IX may have chosen a poor representative in Cardinal Humbert, the Byzantine emperor was to blame for not treating him with the courtesy due of an envoy. Had he met with him and convened the resident synod to discuss the matters of dispute, the schism may have been avoided, at least at this time.
While I agree with you that the filioque should have been formally discusses at an ecumenical council, I also place blame on controversialists such as Photius for not attempting to understand what the doctrine actually taught as the Latins articulated it. It was possible for easterners to understand and accept it if they investigated the matter and studied the Latin underlying it, not relying on Greek translations that distorted its meaning. St. Maximos the Confessor should have been their model, who said this about the filioque:
“Those of the Queen of Cities [Constantinople] have attacked the synodal letter of the present very holy Pope, not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to the theology [of the Trinity] and according to this, says ‘the Holy Spirit also has his ekporeusis from the Son.’
The other deals with the divine incarnation. With regard to the first matter, they [the Romans] have produced the unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of the gospel of St John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit – they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession – but that they have manifested the procession through him and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence.
They [the Romans] have therefore been accused of precisely those things of which it would be wrong the accuse them, whereas the former [the Byzantines] have been accused of those things it has been quite correct to accuse them [Monothelitism].
In accordance with your request I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them (the ‘also from the Son’) in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. But since the practice of writing and sending [the synodal letters] has been observed, I wonder whether they will possibly agree to doing this. It is true, of course, that they cannot reproduce their idea in a language and in words that are foreign to them as they can in their mother-tongue, just as we too cannot do.”
monachos.net/content/patristics/patristictexts/185
I believe that if his advice were followed by both sides, this whole controversy could have been avoided.
I appreciate your sympathy for Orthodox Christians. Understanding one another’s perspective is going to be critical if we would ever achieve recommunion between our churches. In that spirit I would like to offer a few criticisms of my own church regarding the subjects you wrote about.
As horrible as the fourth crusade was, it is important to remember a significant event that preceeded it: the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople:
“The Massacre of the Latins occurred in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in May 1182. It was a large-scale massacre of the Roman Catholic or “Latin” merchants and their families, who at that time dominated the city’s maritime trade and financial sector. Although precise numbers are unavailable, the bulk of the Latin community, estimated at over 60,000 at the time, was wiped out or forced to flee. The Genoese and Pisan communities especially were decimated, and some 4,000 survivors were sold as slaves to the Turks. The massacre further worsened relations and increased enmity between the Western and Eastern Christian churches, and a sequence of hostilities between the two followed.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Latins
It is important to remember that atrocities were committed by both the west and the east, and that neither of us can claim a historical moral superiority. This is something I was unaware of until listening to a talk given by Archimandrite Robert Taft at Lumen Gentium, and needless to say it was quite eye opening.
“Although he was hot-headed, Michael was convinced to cool the debate and thus attempt to prevent the impending breach. However, Humbert and the Pope made no concessions, and Humbert was sent with legatine powers to the imperial capital to resolve the questions raised, once and for all. Humbert, Frederick of Lorraine, and Peter, Archbishop of Amalfi, arrived in April 1054 and were met with a hostile reception; they stormed out of the palace, leaving the papal response with Michael, who in turn was even more angered by their actions. The patriarch refused to recognize their authority or, practically, their existence. When Pope Leo died on 19 April 1054, the legates’ authority legally ceased, but they effectively ignored this technicality.
In response to Michael’s refusal to address the issues at hand, the legatine mission took the extreme measure of entering the church of the Hagia Sophia during the Divine Liturgy and placing a bull of excommunication on the altar.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Schism
Although Pope Leo IX may have chosen a poor representative in Cardinal Humbert, the Byzantine emperor was to blame for not treating him with the courtesy due of an envoy. Had he met with him and convened the resident synod to discuss the matters of dispute, the schism may have been avoided, at least at this time.
While I agree with you that the filioque should have been formally discusses at an ecumenical council, I also place blame on controversialists such as Photius for not attempting to understand what the doctrine actually taught as the Latins articulated it. It was possible for easterners to understand and accept it if they investigated the matter and studied the Latin underlying it, not relying on Greek translations that distorted its meaning. St. Maximos the Confessor should have been their model, who said this about the filioque:
“Those of the Queen of Cities [Constantinople] have attacked the synodal letter of the present very holy Pope, not in the case of all the chapters that he has written in it, but only in the case of two of them. One relates to the theology [of the Trinity] and according to this, says ‘the Holy Spirit also has his ekporeusis from the Son.’
The other deals with the divine incarnation. With regard to the first matter, they [the Romans] have produced the unanimous evidence of the Latin Fathers, and also of Cyril of Alexandria, from the study he made of the gospel of St John. On the basis of these texts, they have shown that they have not made the Son the cause of the Spirit – they know in fact that the Father is the only cause of the Son and the Spirit, the one by begetting and the other by procession – but that they have manifested the procession through him and have thus shown the unity and identity of the essence.
They [the Romans] have therefore been accused of precisely those things of which it would be wrong the accuse them, whereas the former [the Byzantines] have been accused of those things it has been quite correct to accuse them [Monothelitism].
In accordance with your request I have asked the Romans to translate what is peculiar to them (the ‘also from the Son’) in such a way that any obscurities that may result from it will be avoided. But since the practice of writing and sending [the synodal letters] has been observed, I wonder whether they will possibly agree to doing this. It is true, of course, that they cannot reproduce their idea in a language and in words that are foreign to them as they can in their mother-tongue, just as we too cannot do.”
monachos.net/content/patristics/patristictexts/185
I believe that if his advice were followed by both sides, this whole controversy could have been avoided.
