between Rome and Geneva, or Moscow and Oxford. The Pope and the Czar are the two most
powerful rival-despots in Christendom. Where the two churches meet in closest proximity, over
the traditional spots of the birth and tomb of our Saviour, at Bethlehem and Jerusalem, they hate
each other most bitterly, and their ignorant and bigoted monks have to be kept from violent collision
by Mohammedan soldiers.
I. Let us first briefly glance at the consensus.
Both churches own the Nicene creed (with the exception of the Filioque), and all the doctrinal
decrees of the seven oecumenical Synods from a.d. 325 to 787, including the worship of images.
They agree moreover in most of the post-oecumenical or mediaeval doctrines against which
the evangelical Reformation protested, namely: the authority of ecclesiastical tradition as a joint
rule of faith with the holy Scriptures; the worship of the Virgin Mary, of the saints, their pictures
(not statues), and relics; justification by faith and good works, as joint conditions; the merit of good
works, especially voluntary celibacy and poverty; the seven sacraments or mysteries (with minor
differences as to confirmation, and extreme unction or chrisma); baptismal regeneration and the
necessity of water-baptism for salvation; transubstantiation and the consequent adoration of the
sacramental elements; the sacrifice of the mass for the living and the dead, with prayers for the
dead; priestly absolution by divine authority; three orders of the ministry, and the necessity of an
episcopal hierarchy up to the patriarchal dignity; and a vast number of religious rites and ceremonies.
In the doctrine of purgatory, the Greek Church is less explicit, yet agrees with the Roman
in assuming a middle state of purification, and the efficacy of prayers and masses for the departed.
The dogma of transubstantiation, too, is not so clearly formulated in the Greek creed as in the
Roman, but the difference is very small. As to the Holy Scriptures, the Greek Church has never
prohibited the popular use, and the Russian Church even favors the free circulation of her authorized
vernacular version. But the traditions of the Greek Church are as strong a barrier against the exercise
of private judgment and exegetical progress as those of Rome.
II. The dissensus of the two churches covers the following points:
- The procession of the Holy Spirit: the East teaching the single procession from the Father
only, the West (since Augustin), the double procession from the Father and the Son (Filioque). - The universal authority and infallibility of the pope, which is asserted by the Roman,
denied by the Greek Church. The former is a papal monarchy, the latter a patriarchal oligarchy.
There are, according to the Greek theory, five patriarchs of equal rights, the pope of Rome, the
patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. They were sometimes compared
to the five senses in the body. To them was afterwards added the patriarch of Moscow for the
Russian church (which is now governed by the "Holy Synod"). To the bishop of Rome was formerly
conceded a primacy of honor, but this primacy passed with the seat of empire to the patriarch of
Constantinople, who therefore signed himself "Archbishop of New Rome and Oecumenical
Patriarch.^305
- The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, proclaimed as a dogma by the pope in
1854, disowned by the East, which, however, in the practice of Mariolatry fully equals the West. - The marriage of the lower clergy, allowed by the Eastern, forbidden by the Roman Church
(yet conceded by the pope to the United Greeks).
(^305) See the passages in Gieseler II. 227 sq.