The 'great schism' - a positive event?

[Antonios]

Dear Celinda,


I see the Great Schism as an act of God’s mercy not as a heresy of the normal sort ... God allowed part of His Church to fall because He was not willing to abandon the culture. That did not mean that that life was not there in it's fullness, just that it could not be manifested fully.

I cannot agree with your assumptions. The Great Schism is an ecclesial tragedy, an act of violence to the Church. The root causes of this come from Satan. Stating that it was the result of God's mercy, somehow as an implementing tool to spread the Gospel to the West is an attempt to rationalize and justify a completely anti-Christian attack on the Church.


What is the result of God’s humility? The Church has changed culture so that now culture is once again coming into a place where encounter with the Living God is possible. The Western Church itself is on the road to regaining what it lost and is bringing Western Culture with it.

Celinda, I hope and pray this is true, but I think this may be a bit too optimistic. It may be true in the particular congregation you are in, but I can't say this is a true generalization. I am, though, willing to understand if you can provide me your reasoning as to why you feel the Western Church is regaining what it lost.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all,

As this thread was one that got entirely out of hand last week, I've spent considerable time moving things about. The thread was actually home to several different strands of fairly unrelated conversations, which I've separated out to different threads; as well as a long strand of inappropriate conversation which I have deleted.

In the end, there was only one post in the thread that actually dealt with its stated theme, the 'great schism - a positive event?', and I have left this here in case any should like to carry it further. The other strands of conversation have been moved to the following threads:

Tradition, Intellect and Experience >> Questions in postmodernity (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3845)
Tradition, Intellect and Experience >> Doctrine 'in the flesh' (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3853)
Sin, Evil, Devil & Repentance >> Did Satan know he was tempting the Christ? (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?t=3847)INXC, Matthew

[Peter Brooke]

Dear all

This is my first post and I may be plunging in the deep end, picking up a thread that seems to have not gone very far. But the question is an interesting one. I'm not sure that my reasoning will be the same as Celinda's but I too think the Great Schism could be seen as a positive event. I certainly don't see it as a 'tragedy'. Tragedy is the normal condition of fallen man and as such has no part in the Church which puts everything in the context of eternal life where tragedy as such is impossible.

There is a very interesting article by St John Maximovitch on the meaning of the word 'anathema'. St John points out that it does not mean 'curse'; it means separating out (thema) and offering up (ana). When the church puts someone under anathema it declares that there's no longer anything it can do to help that person; it offers the person directly into the hands of God. The person is now outside the logic of the church. What happens then is in the dispensation of God and we have no way of knowing anything about it, but we do know that the position the anathematised person has been arguing is outside the church. Things have been clarified.

Once a doctrine is clearly defined as outside the church - a heresy or a heterodoxy, that is something other than Orthodoxy - we can take a more relaxed attitude towards it. It is while it is in the church that it is dangerous. This is why any attempt to blur doctrinal distinctions is dangerous. more dangerous than the existence of clearly defined separate tendencies, separate communions. It is why - assuming the issue is important enough - we shouldn't be worried about 'disunion'. Clear separation is healthy.

As for whether all those souls who lived under Catholicism or Protestantism in the West were damned eternally I really don't think its useful to speculate, we've no way of knowing. All we can say is that if they are saved it is by a logic other than the logic of Orthodoxy. We can also say that they lived an intense and deeply moving spiritual, intellectual and political history and I can't help thinking the unorthodox thought that the world would have been poorer without it.

[Adrian Martin]

As for whether all those souls who lived under Catholicism or Protestantism in the West were damned eternally I really don't think its useful to speculate, we've no way of knowing. All we can say is that if they are saved it is by a logic other than the logic of Orthodoxy. We can also say that they lived an intense and deeply moving spiritual, intellectual and political history and I can't help thinking the unorthodox thought that the world would have been poorer without it.

An impressive first post!

Well, if we can appreciate the cultural and intellectual contributions of pre-Christian pagans such as Homer and Plato, I think we can respect what the Western communions have produced, as far as it goes. They have to work with what they have, which is good, but inadequate because outside the Church. I think we ought to hold fast to what is good, "Orthodoxizing" the heterodox culture.

[Kosta]

Dear Peter, actually i believe as you. Outside the tragedy that Rome fell into heresy, (and thus had to be cut off). This buffered Orthodoxy from westernisms such as scholastism and romanticism and all the other isms. Protestantism would of still came about and would of pitted the eastern church against it as well.

As Christ taught, it is better to cut off your hand and enter into the Kingdom maimed than be cast into hell. Todays times there is an emphasis on the unity of the churches (WCC), instead of whats prayed in the DL which is the unity of the faith. Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos in one of his writings makes the distinction between these two and there not the same thing.

[Yuri Zharikov]

Reading histories of ecumenical councils and other events when the Church tried to convince those falling into heresies to abandon godless teachings, I was always struck by how much effort, humility, and tears Fathers put into their attempts to keep the unity of the Body of Chirst. Anathema was always the ultimate decision and an extremely painful one. This is particulalry clear in, for example, the personal correspondence of St. Cyril with Nestorius before the 3rd Council... From this perspective any "cutting-off" is always a tragedy and a loss because you are cutting off not somebody else's but your own hand. Also because that those who dared to rise against the Church siding with the devil are eternaly damned as we read in many canons of feastdays dedicated to fathers and councils. Yet, I agree that those who inherited a heresy by being brought up in it are in the hands of God and we can say positively nothing about their eternal fate. In a sense, indeed, if a limb is going to rot it is better to sever it.

Regarding whether the contribution of the western christianity, which shaped the western mentality and civilization, to the world has been a good and enriching one or one that has deprived the world of its future (in earthly terms), I beg you to consider a few things expounded upon in most recent reports of the WWF (Living Planet 2006), UN IPCC (latest report on climate change), and the CSIS (Age of Consequences). In a summary, the Western cilvilazation has greedily devoured earth under itself and under other non-western and non-Christian civilizations. It drank or polluted their waters, depleted their fish, impoverished their soil, cut their forests, such out their resources, fouled up their air and generally has brought the whole live-able layer of the planet to a brink of a melt-down. When you read these reports you realise that the Book of Revelations is happening already... According to the latest report of the Center for Strategis and International Studies (http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/071105_ageofconsequences.pdf) here is what we may be looked at in 30 years (and this is a middle-ground scenario):

Water scarcity affects up to 2 billion people
Increased burden from malnutrition, diarrheal, cardio-respiratory & infectious diseases
Up to 15 million additional people at risk of flooding
Changes in marine and ecosystems due to weakening of the meridional overturning circulation
Wealthiest members of society pull away from the rest of the population, undermining morale and viability of democratic governance
Global fish stocks may crash, enmeshing some nations in a struggle over dwindling supplies
Governments, lacking necessary resources, may privatize water supply; past experience with this in poor societies suggests likelihood of violent protest and political upheaval
Globalization may end and rapid economic decline may begin, owing to the collapse of financial and production systems that depend on integrated worldwide systems
Corporations may become increasingly powerful relative to governments as the rich look to private services, engendering a new form of globalization in which transnational business becomes more powerful than states
Alliance systems and multilateral institutions may collapse—among them, the UN, as the Security Council fractures beyond compromise or repair.


In the Lord,
Yura

[Antonios]

Dear all

I'm not sure that my reasoning will be the same as Celinda's but I too think the Great Schism could be seen as a positive event.


Welcome Peter. It is good to have you here! I hope we can learn from each other, my beloved brother in Christ!

I do not mean to suggest the Lord has abandoned the western Churches and I refuse to believe that the Holy Spirit is not active within them. Love could not allow that.

It is always we, His fallen children, who abandon Him and depart from Him like the wandering prodigal son.

I do still maintain, however, that the Great Schism was a tragedy, an act of violence by satan towards the Church.

Whether beauty and truth has blossomed from this crack is another topic, and one in which all glory goes to God, Who can make all things new.

In Christ,
Antonios

[Anthony]

We can also say that they lived an intense and deeply moving spiritual, intellectual and political history and I can't help thinking the unorthodox thought that the world would have been poorer without it.

I also fully agree with this thought, and think it was beautifully expressed. But I don't think I would draw the conclusion that the Schism was a positive event (unless one would be willing to say, along similar lines, that the Fall was a positive event).

[Peter Brooke]

Thanks for all the responses to my rather incoherent mailing. I wrote what follows when there were only the posts of Adrian and Kosta and since then the replies of Yuri, Antonios and Anthony have appeared, all of them sympathetic and interesting. I think what follows addresses points they make but I apologise if it does so a bit indirectly. I hope too - with Yuri's post especially in mind - that my argument doesn't appear too rosy. With regard to the violence of language used in the anathemas I think this is understandable while the error is still in the body of the Church. Once the separation is clear and well-established a different approach becomes, I hope, possible.

After I had posted my message I began to wonder what I meant when I said Orthodoxy could not allow of the possibility of tragedy. Its one of those cases where you feel there's a truth there but you're not sure exactly what it is.

I see tragedy as the recognition that this side of the grave the good does not triumph. We are in the hands of Fate (or of spiritual forces, 'gods') which can be understood as at best capricious or at worst positively malicious. For an atheist, since there is no spiritual principle at work, the course of things must necessarily be capricious though the humanist conviction, carried over into Marxism, is that we can master our own fate and steer it towards the good. But though this must indeed be the great effort of our lives, experience shows that it does not work. The good outcomes, such as they are, always turn to bad, and the weight of suffering in the world is always greater than that of happiness. Which confirms Christ's word that the world is under the governance of the Prince of the World.

Which is why, if we left it at that, tragedy would be the deepest and truest form of human expression. And since tragedy has depth we should see it as an ally (and in many respects I think the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, can be seen as tragic in its outlook. Without the Gospel even God appears as a tragic figure). But once everything is put in the context of eternal life - or, in Christian terms, 'We who had been given to death were raised and were judged worthy of life' - then all that horror is seen as a process leading to something infinitely greater. The Prince of the World governs by permission under the providence of God Who has wider intentions. And so the Church encourages us to accept everything that happens thankfully as the will of God. Everything. Which doesn't mean we don't struggle with it. It may be its role precisely to provoke such struggle.

It may be difficult to apply this logic to an event such as the Great Schism which seems on the face of it to have deprived millions and millions of souls of the opportunity for salvation. But that is why I stress St John Maximovitch's account of the meaning of the word 'anathema' - separated out from the Church and delivered up directly into the hands of God. 'It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God' and I hope never to fall under anathema. But once people are outside the Church they are - so far as their eternal wellbeing is concerned - outside our comprehension. They participate in a logic that is not the logic of the Church. It is however difficult to look at the history of the Church of the Rome and of Protestantism and believe that all the struggle and intensity of spiritual longing that is contained in it is without value in the eyes of God (I stress 'contained in it' - there are of course many other less agreeable things that are contained in it as well).

It is presumptuous for us to assert that there is salvation outside the Church; but it is equally presumptuous to assert that there isn't. What we can do (or those with authority to do it can and must do) is to assert clearly who is outside the Church and who isn't. The Great Schism was such a clarification and all such clarifications are to be welcomed. More to the immediate point it occurred under the providence of God and was therefore for the best even, in ways that we cannot possibly understand, for those who were anathematised.

[Father David Moser]

Which is why, if we left it at that, tragedy would be the deepest and truest form of human expression. And since tragedy has depth we should see it as an ally (and in many respects I think the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, can be seen as tragic in its outlook. Without the Gospel even God appears as a tragic figure). But once everything is put in the context of eternal life - or, in Christian terms, 'We who had been given to death were raised and were judged worthy of life' - then all that horror is seen as a process leading to something infinitely greater. The Prince of the World governs by permission under the providence of God Who has wider intentions. And so the Church encourages us to accept everything that happens thankfully as the will of God. Everything. Which doesn't mean we don't struggle with it. It may be its role precisely to provoke such struggle.

This is a remarkable paragraph here that cuts to the core of the "tragedy" of the fall. As a result of the fall, mankind lost that eternal perspective and his "world" shrunk so that all things were measured not by eternity but by this world or even worse by the span of his own life. It is indeed the resurrection that lifts our gaze beyond the span of our own earthly life and even beyond the life of this world and returns it to eternity where everything takes on new meaning, new perspective and most importantly, new hope. Any time we discuss anything regarding our lives or the Orthodox faith, we must always do so, not according to this world, but rather according to eternity. That is God's perspective and it is the only one which is truly complete enough for us to begin to grasp God's mercy and provision for use and which can give us hope and turn our weeping and sorrow into joy and dancing.

Fr David Moser

[Peter Brooke]

Although I'm grateful to Fr David for his generous comment I don't feel I've said what I wanted to say about the Great Schism and why it was a positive event. I got a bit waylaid on the subject of tragedy and all I managed to say on that subject was that this event didn't fit into the peculiar definition of the word 'tragedy' which I happen to favour. It was important to me because I think tragedy (in this way of understanding it) is the antechamber of Christianity, the necessary precondition to it, like 'consciousness of sin', to which it is closely related.

But to say as I did that the Great Schism was positive because Christians should regard everything as occurring under the providence of God and therefore positive, isn't very helpful. As Anthony said, by that token we must regard the Fall as positive (and of course we can, and Blessed Augustine did). The point, however, is not whether it is positive in the dispensation of God but whether or not we can approve of it and by extension whether or not we can approve of the lifting of the anathemas by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras in 1965.

I take the view that the imposition of the anathemas was positive but the raising of them was negative. I am helped in this by my rather benign view, taken from St John Maximovitch (On the Meaning of the Word 'Anathema', available at http://www.stmaryofegypt.org), of what an anathema is. Not a curse but a delivering up (literally 'up') of the anathematised person into the hands of God.

I said in an earlier post that I hoped never to come under an anathema but it occurs to me that had the Roman church not changed direction with the Second Vatican Council I would have been under its anathema, both as the Protestant I used to be and the Orthodox Christian I like to imagine I am now. I made my way to Orthodoxy (ROCOR) in France and along the way I frequented the Roman Catholic church and I found they were practising a very open communion which eventually I found quite distressing. They were giving it out 'comme les petits pains', as Genevieve Dalban, my great teacher and guide in many things, herself a Catholic of the old school, used to complain.

The difference when I encountered Orthodoxy was palpable. There the sense of the awesome enormity of what the Communion is was preserved, and, inseparably, the sense of the danger of it - that to participate unworthily is to eat and drink damnation to the soul - which is why to refuse communion to those who, for whatever reason, are outside the church, is to do them a favour. The Chalice, as Matthew has explained so well on another thread, is the centre of everything - it can only be approached after preparation, in fear and trembling. To ever imagine that one can in some way claim it as a human right, is to do terrible damage to one's own spiritual life.

When the anathemas were exchanged in the eleventh century, the German Church was very different from the Roman Catholic Church as it is now. It was full of an immense intellectual, political, aesthetic energy that was going to sweep through the world over the following five or six centuries. Like Yuri I see this energy as largely Satanic in character like the energy of the British Imperialists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or the United States at the present time. In purely human terms, however, there was much in it that was stunningly impressive. Orthodoxy, which is not and cannot be a 'church militant' in anything like the same way, had to defend itself - it could not allow itself to get caught up in the current (as it nearly did again at the Councils of Lyon and Florence-Ferrara).

In crude terms, the German church saw the Holy Spirit operating through its own administrative system, magically guiding and preserving it from error. The intelligent pursuit of the interests of the administrative system was itself, so it was believed, a work done under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy on the other hand saw the Holy Spirit as operative in particular persons - the deified Saints - marked usually by ascetic preparation through a radical withdrawal from and rejection of the world. The administrative system was validated by its loyalty to, and its ability to nurture, saints. This was not a system well calculated to maintain or project worldly power (it had begun by inheriting an empire that had been created on principles that were essentially alien to it) and the Orthodox world did eventually succumb to the more worldly and political force of Islam which, however, because it was so clearly marked out as different from Orthodoxy - so obviously 'anathema' - was much less dangerous than the German church would have been.

Now this Western church has lost a great deal of its impetus and is casting around for allies among those it had previously anathematised - both on the Protestant and on the Orthodox side, which requires a certain intellectual agility. From a purely political point of view the lifting of the anathemas and opening of Communion makes a certain sense. It is a huddling together in the face of the tide of secularism. But the moment we begin to think in such political terms we have lost. Our job is to preserve the inheritance given to us by the Saints and therefore the sense of our own unworthiness in the presence of the Saints and our own inability to stand in judgment over them, which means preserving things we may not like knowing that there may be meaning in them we do not understand. Above all it means preserving the sanctity of the communion which means preserving the walls that protect it (against the appalling sentence in the Thyateira Confession to the effect that the Church has a door but no walls).

The Roman Catholic church operates on a different logic, a logic not grounded in the 'mystical theology' of Deification (some Catholics will accept that such a thing is possible, others don't. It isn't the foundation of the authority claimed by the Church). As such it is better for both sides that we treat what divides us with great respect.

[Speros]

I believe that the Schism was a positive event for Eastern Orthodoxy, because it allowed Orthodox tradition to develop and flourish without being hampered by the papacy.

[Paul Cowan]

I believe that the Schism was a positive event for Eastern Orthodoxy, because it allowed Orthodox tradition to develop and flourish without being hampered by the papacy.

This is wrong on so many levels. And no, I don't feel like elaborating on it.

[Speros]

This is wrong on so many levels. And no, I don't feel like elaborating on it.

Please excuse me for reciting history.

Here is Phyllis Tickle's response to my question as to how the Schism benefited Eastern Orthodoxy:

"Well, for one thing, Orthodoxy was cut free to spread like wild fire all over the eastern half of the known world and then some. It also led to the preservation of hundreds of sacred texts that otherwise would have been lost or trashed had they moved into western control."

[Ryan]

Please excuse me for reciting history.

Here is Phyllis Tickle's response to my question as to how the Schism benefited Eastern Orthodoxy:

"Well, for one thing, Orthodoxy was cut free to spread like wild fire all over the eastern half of the known world and then some. It also led to the preservation of hundreds of sacred texts that otherwise would have been lost or trashed had they moved into western control."

It's a bit like saying, "it's a good thing Satan rebelled, so that we could clear out all of those bad angels from Heaven."

[Speros]

It's a bit like saying, "it's a good thing Satan rebelled, so that we could clear out all of those bad angels from Heaven."

If the question is whether Eastern Orthodoxy benefited from the Schism, the answer is yes.

[Olga]

Please excuse me for reciting history.

Here is Phyllis Tickle's response to my question as to how the Schism benefited Eastern Orthodoxy:

"Well, for one thing, Orthodoxy was cut free to spread like wild fire all over the eastern half of the known world and then some. It also led to the preservation of hundreds of sacred texts that otherwise would have been lost or trashed had they moved into western control."

Phyllis Tickle needs to brush up on her history. This sort of howler reminds me of the all-too-frequent error in reference books on the history of Christian art which begin with Giotto and Cimabue at the close of the 13th century. Iconography? What's that? :)

Just one example which exposes Ms Tickle's error: The evangelising work of Sts Cyril and Methodius, bringing Orthodox Christianity to the Slavic lands beginning in the 850s, centuries before the Great Schism. Two notable converts to the faith were Great Princess Olga of Kievan Rus', and her grandson Vladimir; the latter formally establishing Orthodoxy in Rus' in 988.

[Kosta]

Please excuse me for reciting history.

Here is Phyllis Tickle's response to my question as to how the Schism benefited Eastern Orthodoxy:

"Well, for one thing, Orthodoxy was cut free to spread like wild fire all over the eastern half of the known world and then some. It also led to the preservation of hundreds of sacred texts that otherwise would have been lost or trashed had they moved into western control."

I hope this Phyliss person isnt a scholar. First off at that time Orthodoxy was shrinking due to the advance of Islam. Alexandria and Syria was no more. Asia Minor eventualy was taken over by Turks and Islam introduced. This weakening of the eastern empire is a major factor in the schism. Rome began to look westward more and more. There was a cultural shift.

Secondly the renaisance came to be because as Islam entered western Europe, they brought with them greek books from places like Alexandria. These spurned a revival in western europe lifting them out of the dark ages. The muslims actually used these books more for cooking than anything, so no they were not trashed once they got into western hands.
As Olga has said the growth of Orthodoxy occured in the 8th century because of conversion of northern territories not east. Even a highschool drop out knows this.

[Jonathan Michael]

Secondly the renaisance came to be because as Islam entered western Europe, they brought with them greek books from places like Alexandria. These spurned a revival in western europe lifting them out of the dark ages. The muslims actually used these books more for cooking than anything, so no they were not trashed once they got into western hands.

I was more under the impression that the Greek texts which ignited the Renaissance were brought by Greeks fleeing the advance of Islam rather than the Muslims themselves. It could be a mix of both, but the Renaissance does time very well with the Fall of Constantinople in 1452, especially when we include the years before the city's fall, when Orthodox Christian emigration would have been high as Byzantine lands shrunk.

[Ben Johnson]

Some historians will say classical learning came to Europe from Constantinople; some historians will say it came through Spain.

[Kosta]

Some historians will say classical learning came to Europe from Constantinople; some historians will say it came through Spain.

I would agree with both. The seedlings of classical learning may have even ignited in Italy after 1204, when large amounts of booty was carried off from Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople many byzantine romans fled to the city-states of Italy. Some even before such as Manuel Chrysolarus. You also had the Moors of Spain contributing alot. Many greek manuscripts translated into arabic and into the european languages. There was an italian renaissance and a spanish rennaisance. Throw in the invention of the gutenberg press to tie everything together and you have a renaissance.

[Speros]

I hope this Phyliss person isnt a scholar. First off at that time Orthodoxy was shrinking due to the advance of Islam. Alexandria and Syria was no more. Asia Minor eventualy was taken over by Turks and Islam introduced. This weakening of the eastern empire is a major factor in the schism. Rome began to look westward more and more. There was a cultural shift.

Secondly the renaisance came to be because as Islam entered western Europe, they brought with them greek books from places like Alexandria. These spurned a revival in western europe lifting them out of the dark ages. The muslims actually used these books more for cooking than anything, so no they were not trashed once they got into western hands.
As Olga has said the growth of Orthodoxy occured in the 8th century because of conversion of northern territories not east. Even a highschool drop out knows this.

Tickle is a well known scholar of theology and church history. While bad things happened as a result of the schism, they shouldn't cause one to overlook the good. There was widespread missionary effort by the Eastern Church post-Schism. And the Eastern Church was able to preserve its identity largely because of its split with Rome.

[Herman Blaydoe]

Tickle is a well known scholar of theology and church history. While bad things happened as a result of the schism, they shouldn't cause one to overlook the good. There was widespread missionary effort by the Eastern Church post-Schism. And the Eastern Church was able to preserve its identity largely because of its split with Rome.

It is not about "preserving identity", it is about preserving the Apostolic Witness, it is about preserving Truth. The split caused the Truth to be diluted in the west and led to further splits in the so-called "reformation". "How good and pleasant it is, when brothers dwell in unity" says the psalmist. The split was neither good nor pleasant. Unity and like-mindedness were a recurring theme in the letters of the Apostles. So sad it gets such short shrift in today's designer religions.