One summer afternoon in the year 1054, as a service was about to begin in the Church of the Holy Wisdom' (Hagia Sophia) at Constantinople, Cardinal Humbert and two other legates of the Pope entered the building and made their way up to the sanctuary. They had not come to pray. They placed a Bull of Excommunication upon the altar and marched out once more. As he passed through the western door, the Cardinal shook the dust from his feet with the words: 'Let God look and judge.' A deacon ran out after him in great distress and begged him to take back the Bull. Humbert refused; and it was dropped in the street. It is this incident which has conventionally been taken to mark the beginning of the great schism between the Orthodox east and the Latin west.So begins an interesting history of the first Christian schism at this site for Orthodox Christians (Orthodox in this case meaning the Eastern Orthodox Church). It's interesting to see this story from another angle. One can understand the upset over the sacking of Constaninople, but that was 1204 and apologies ought to cover that by now. The question of the filoque is tougher. I understand it was an addition to the creed, but I don't see how it is that some see it as heretical. It is helpful in rebutting Arianism, which has been a perennial issue that Christians have had to rebut. Arianism is the idea that Christ was only a man; the latest incarnation of this very old idea is Dan Brown's novel, The DaVinci Code. Poor little me, seeing all the interest and fuss Brown's novel has generated, thinks that retaining the filoque still makes sense. It's like Tolkien said in that letter I posted about yesterday, "my church was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant) which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history - the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set." I guess my question is, how do the Orthodox deal with Arianism?
Ecce Homo I haven't done a quote from Pope Ratzinger's Introduction to Chistianty in a while and even though I have finished the book there are still one or two passages I want to share, including - perhaps even especially - this one. When I first began to look over what Christianity teaches, to look at the gospel story and to try penetrate why it has been so compelling to so many for so long, this was one of the things that leapt out at me. I was happy to see our Pope confirm it. Expanding on the Apostles Creed where it says "... suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried," Ratzinger writes: The fact that when the perfectly just man appeared he was crucified, delivered up by justice to death, tells us pitilessly who man is: Thou art such, man, that thou canst not bear the just man - that he who simply loves becomes a fool, a scourged criminal, an outcast. Thou art such because, unjust thyself, thou dost always need the injustice of the n...
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