Theological differences

Subtle theological differences also developed between both parts of the Church, but two issues in particular proved touchy for centuries and were principal factors that led to the Great Schism of 1054:

 

Wording of the Nicean Creed: In A.D. 589, a Church council added the Latin word filioque (meaning “and from the Son”) to the Nicean Creed (see Chapter 7 for the full text) so that the creed now said that “the Holy Spirit... who proceeds from the Father and from the Son...” The Western Church rapidly accepted this change, while the Eastern Church vehemently protested its inclusion, viewing the tweak as invalid and reckless. As you see in the section “Divine Revelation through Tradition,” later in this chapter, the Eastern Church considers creeds as much the Word of God as the Bible itself, so any changes they make to the creeds are a huge deal.

 

Authority of the pope: For centuries, a group of bishops led the Church, heading up geographical areas such as Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople. From the very beginning, Christians displayed a general willingness to give preference to the bishop of Rome (the pope) in terms of leadership, calling him Primus inter Pares, or “first among equals.” Over the years, however, the bishop of Rome assumed stronger leadership as the Western Church paid less attention to the “among equals” part. The East became frustrated when the bishop of Rome began acting as sole authority, making decisions without discussion with the Eastern bishops. Ultimately, the Eastern Church refused to accept the bishop of Rome’s claim to be the supreme authority of the Church.

 

Decision-making differences

Christians in the East and West even differed in how they reached decisions. In the Eastern churches, decision making was a collaborative process, involving participation by the laity (the non-clergy congregation). Western churches reached decisions through the clergy (ordained ministers) alone and through those in higher positions of the Church hierarchy.

 

“Yo ho, yo ho, the monastic life’s for me”

Both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have a monastic tradition, meaning some of these Christians take a vow to forsake the world and live solely for God. (Monasticism comes from the Greek word monachos, meaning “to live alone.”) Men who take this vow are monks, and women who do so are nuns. Catholic monasticism focuses on communal life, in which a group of monks (or nuns) live, pray, and work together. Although Orthodox monks (and nuns) live together in monasteries, Orthodox monasticism embraces the ideal of living alone with God as one’s only companion. Both Catholic and Orthodox monks and nuns often return to secular communities for Christian service as a way to demonstrate Christian perfection.

 

Catholics also have a tradition of religious brothers (or friars) and religious sisters. Religious brothers and sisters are members of one of the mendicant orders, which means they live on the voluntary offerings of faithful Catholics. They take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience within a religious community. Brothers live in friaries and sisters live in convents, and traditionally they work in humility and poverty among poor people in cities. They also have governing rules and guidelines that are quite distinct from those of monks and nuns. Check out Catholicism For Dummies, by Rev. John Trigilio, Jr. and Rev. Kenneth Brighenti (Wiley), for more.

 

Political and geographical differences

Although the West and East were parts of the same Roman Empire during the early centuries, the political environment became more and more splintered as time went on, making geographical differences harder to deal with. What’s more, after Islam spread into places geographically in-between where the Eastern and Western Churches dwelled in the seventh and eighth centuries, travel and communication became more challenging due to the hostile Muslim territory. As a result, the Western and Eastern Churches found it harder and harder to resolve theological disputes.

 

Viewing the split today

After the split in 1054, the Churches made some initial attempts to reunify, but these were always unpopular in the Eastern churches and didn’t go anywhere. Then, when the Western-led Crusades (medieval military campaigns that the Western Church undertook to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslims) occurred years following the split, these campaigns only served to reinforce the separation, as Eastern churches viewed the Western Crusaders as aggressors.

 

After a certain point, both sides gave up trying to restore a single unified Church and went their separate ways. The Eastern Church remained largely isolated from the rest of the Christian Church for nearly a thousand years. While the Eastern Church expanded into Russia and parts of Eastern Europe, Western Christianity , mainly through the work of Catholic and Protestant missionaries, spread throughout all the continents of the world and emerged as mainstream Christianity.

 

Because of its isolation, the Orthodox Church is the one arm of Christianity that remains most mysterious to many Catholics and Protestants today, particularly Protestants. However, recently, Catholics and Orthodox Christians have made attempts to resolve their historical problems through an ongoing dialogue that started in the 1960s and continued during the period of Pope John Paul II’s reign.