therefore no Reformation. She planted Christianity among the Slavonic races, but they were isolated
from the progress of European history, and have not materially affected either the doctrine or polity
or cultus of the church. Their conversion was an external expansion, not an internal development.
The Greek and Latin churches were never organically united under one government, but
differed considerably from the beginning in nationality, language, and various ceremonies. These
differences, however, did not interfere with the general harmony of faith and Christian life, nor
prevent cooperation against common foes. As long and as far as the genuine spirit of Christianity
directed them, the diversity was an element of strength to the common cause.
The principal sees of the East were directly founded by the apostles—with the exception
of Constantinople—and had even a clearer title to apostolic succession and inheritance than Rome.
The Greek church took the lead in theology down to the sixth or seventh century, and the Latin
gratefully learned from her. All the oecumenical Councils were held on the soil of the Byzantine
empire in or near Constantinople, and carried on in the Greek language. The great doctrinal
controversies on the holy Trinity and Christology were fought out in the East, yet not without the
powerful aid of the more steady and practical West. Athanasius, when an exile from Alexandria,
found refuge and support in the bishop of Rome. Jerome, the most learned of the Latin fathers and
a friend of Pope Damasus, was a connecting link between the East and the West, and concluded
his labors in Bethlehem. Pope Leo I. was the theological master-spirit who controlled the council
of Chalcedon, and shaped the Orthodox formula concerning the two natures in the one person of
Christ. Yet this very pope strongly protested against the action of the Council which, in conformity
with a canon of the second oecumenical Council, put him on a par with the new bishop of
Constantinople.
And here we approach the secret of the ultimate separation and incurable antagonism of the
churches. It is due chiefly to three causes. The first cause is the politico- ecclesiastical rivalry of
the patriarch of Constantinople backed by the Byzantine empire, and the bishop of Rome in
connection with the new German empire. The second cause is the growing centralization and
overbearing conduct of the Latin church in and through the papacy. The third cause is the stationary
character of the Greek and the progressive character of the Latin church during the middle ages.
The Greek church boasts of the imaginary perfection of her creed. She still produced considerable
scholars and divines, as Maximus, John of Damascus, Photius, Oecumenius, and Theophylact, but
they mostly confined themselves to the work of epitomizing and systematizing the traditional
theology of the Greek fathers, and produced no new ideas, as if all wisdom began and ended with
the old oecumenical Councils. She took no interest in the important anthropological and soteriological
controversies which agitated the Latin church in the age of St. Augustin, and she continued to
occupy the indefinite position of the first centuries on the doctrines of sin and grace. On the other
hand she was much distracted and weakened by barren metaphysical controversies on the abstrusest
questions of theology and christology; and these quarrels facilitated the rapid progress of Islâm,
which conquered the lands of the Bible and pressed hard on Constantinople. When the Greek church
became stationary, the Latin church began to develop her greatest energy; she became the fruitful
mother of new and vigorous nations of the North and West of Europe, produced scholastic and
mystic theology and a new order of civilization, built magnificent cathedrals, discovered a new
Continent, invented the art of printing, and with the revival of learning prepared the way for a new
era in the history of the world. Thus the Latin daughter outgrew the Greek mother, and is numerically
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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