No

by John Traveler

Created on: February 01, 2012

The answer to the question of reunification of Roman Catholicism with its Eastern Orthodox counterpart is a simple one, no. It is in the formulation of this simplistic answer that a multiplicity of cultural , liturgical and ecclesiastical complexities must be confronted. In a purely historical context, the date of the schism of East and West factions of the trinitarian belief is fixed as 1054 CE, but the incipient root of the issue stretches all the way back to the late second century and the establishment of Trinitarian doctrine.

From the cultural perspective, the schism is just as easily definable as a bifurcation along socio-ethnic, Greek versus Roman divisions, as it is from geographical view point. Then, when one considers the original form of Christianity was its Unitarian form of belief, the association of this Gnostic form with  neo-Platonic and neo-Pythagorean vestige holds definite implications. Furthermore, the distinction of Greek versus Roman liturgical interpretation by the apologist writers Irenaeus (Greek) and  Tertullian (Latin) set the stage of a dissenting foment that would simmer for the next seven centuries. The Roman Catholic Churches attempt to eradicate the Arian(Gnostic) faction of Christian belief, through what could be characterized as the very first instance of the inquisition in 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea, set the stage for debate of lingering  liturgical disputes.

There are probably a variety of liturgical differences which would sufficiently characterize the disparity  of belief with respect to 4th century CE East and West factions of Trinitarianism, but the simplest to explain and understand in lay terms is that entwined in the creation mythology and specifically the status of Adam’s soul referred to as the doctrine of traducianism by Tertullian. What this doctrine basically asserts is that since God created Adam and his soul, that Adam was essentially created without sin. The dispute arises with respect to Adam’s descendants down to us today and the quandary as to whether the soul is directly created by God in each individual or inherited from ones progenitors. This simple issue becomes instantly complicated when its implications with respect to “original sin” are taken into consideration. It’s extended interpolation in context of the status of immaculate conception with respect to Jesus of Nazareth, brings about further convolution of doctrinal notions, and in aggregate, these and other issues were in dispute between emerging East and West sectarian divisions of Trinitarian belief throughout most of the 4th century CE.

After the First council of Constantinople in 381 CE, the first truly Christian Roman Emperor asserts an edict ending public enunciation of any pagan and Gnostic forms of religious belief. With this development, any members of the Eastern church, who might have been perceived as having Gnostic leanings, were subject to immediate excommunication and worse, a trip to the village square lashed to a pole to attend a barbecue held in their honor. Needless to say the days of outspoken dissenters in the orthodox Trinitarian church were over. Shortly thereafter, Augustine of Hippo a Roman convert to Christianity, joined the priesthood and would become one of the most prolific apologists who’s works for the most part remain extant. In his work commonly referred to as “Against Pelagians, books I and II.” Augustine defines the Western Church’s doctrine with respect to original sin, and it is a doctrine the Eastern Orthodox bishops took accepting with, it only privately. Needless to say, the Eastern Orthodox church completely rejects St. Augustinian doctrine while the Western Church leans on it as one of the cornerstones of its doctrinal edifice.  

By the end of the first millennium, political circumstances in Europe were drastically altered. The western Roman Empire had become succinctly separated from its eastern counter part as a result of Gothic invasions fallowing the Battle of Adrianople in 367 CE. Then, the new foment of Islamic belief began to unite former Persian and Semitic factions attempting to retake their former holdings in the Eastern Mediterranean. By the time of the 1054 schism of Catholicism the succinct tapestries of East and West factions of it were already well distinguished by the color of Euro-Roman and Greco-Byzantine threads they were woven from.

One theme woven into the tapestry of Western Trinitarian orthodoxy is a  notion which would ultimately be in part responsible for the Western Catholic schism we know today as Protestantism. Equally offensive to the Eastern Church, is the notion of Papal divinity, that as Jesus was God on Earth so remain the apostolic succession beginning with St Peter and continuing to this day with Pope Benedict.

Today Roman Catholicism attempts to trivialize the East West dispute, and it alone longs for a reunification of the once mighty Universal Christian Church. This attitude is clearly articulated in the Western Churches online New Advent Encyclopedia article on the subject of the East/West Schism, the last sentence refering to Eastern Orthodoxy reads: “For, indeed, after nine centuries of schism we may realize on both sides that it is not only the greatest it is also the most superfluous evil in Christendom.” The characterization of Eastern Orthodoxy as a “superfluous evil” hardly employs a lexicon likely to foster any zeal on the part of the Eastern Church to rejoin a mother church which excommunicated it a millennium ago. Moreover, when one considers that the Eastern Orthodox consistory, priests, and laity have voiced no more desire to reunite with Western Orthodox Catholicism than have any institutions of Protestantism, such reunion is not even a remote possibility, at least not until the Roman Catholics are willing to make some doctrinal concessions instead of demanding them from the Eastern Church.

As this writer attempted to make plain at the outset of this article. the issues involved in the doctrinal altercation between the factions of East and West Catholicism  are complex and far more extensive than can be addressed here with the restriction of  400-1500 words. There are many new issues which have come up since, like baptismal precedence (such as Anabaptism), monastic celibacy, and even the spiritual status of the feminine nature. These issues have taken 1600 years to become fully defined, and the resulting definitions leave no room for accommodation of any dissenting opinions. Moreover, since the very beginnings of Christianity, there has never been a single case this investigator has ever come across in which factions of opposing Trinitarian doctrinal belief have reunited; in fact, just the opposite has generally been the case. Protestantism, which has been around less than 500 years is today represented by more than a thousand distinct denominations of it in the United States alone. In the final analysis we are no more likely, any time soon,  to witness East and West orthodox Catholics in any doctrinal embrace of each other, than to see Methodists joining a Pentecostal revival and speaking in tongues.

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