The Big Divorce

American history classes tend to focus a significant amount of attention on the Protestant Reformation. Maybe because the English speaking American colonies were founded by Protestants. But, of course, there was another schism that took place several centuries before then, the one between the Latin speaking Roman Catholic Church and the Greek speaking Eastern Orthodox Church.

When Constantine began showing favoritism toward the small Christian religion, the empire was already heading toward a split. After building and withdrawing to his new Christian city of Constantinople, Constantine gave one of his Roman palaces, the Laterane Palace, to the Bishop of Rome. In time, the Bishop of Rome became the Pope, but the eastern church was not very impressed with the Pope or Rome after it ceased being part of the empire. There were several points of contention between east and west from the 5^th century up until the final split in the 11^th century. There was some funny business about the veneration of idols (veneration, not worship), but the final straw came when the west slightly altered the official Nicene Creed. (The city of Nicaea was in the eastern part of the empire, and my guess is the eastern church liked having the foundational creed originating in their neck of the woods.)

The Nicene Creed is all about the weirdness that is the Trinity. Christianity is rooted in the monotheistic Jewish religion, and the early Christians liked the monotheism and wanted to keep it, and they liked how that made them distinct from the polytheistic Pagans. Monotheism also fit nicely with Greek philosophy. But they were stuck with these early writings—we now call them the New Testament—that made it pretty clear that there was some kind of difference between Christ and God. I think the concept of the Trinity was their way of fixing that problem. It doesn’t really make sense, but they solved that by saying it’s a divine mystery.

Three persons, one God. (Persons, not parts, because different parts comes too close to saying there’s more than one God.) The son is eternally begotten, not made. There was no time when God the Son did not exist, but somehow God the Father and God the Son have a father-son relationship, but God the Father did not make the son. He “begot” the son, and since there was no time when he was without the son, the begetting is eternal. Strange, strange, strange. God the Spirit has always been part of the Trinity, too, and according to the Nicene Creed, God the Spirit proceeds from the Father. God the Father did not make God the Spirit, and he did not beget the spirit. (God the Spirit can’t be too much like God the Son. There can’t be two sons, so the relationship has to be different. So the spirit proceeds. The spirit is not begotten, and certainly not made.) God the Spirit proceeds from God the Father. However, the west decided that God the Spirit also proceeds from God the Son. The eastern church was having none of that. They said that was it, they were done, and they were out the door. The divorce is now nearly a thousand years old.

It’s like having two friends who hate each other. You’d like to hang out with both of them, invite them to the same parties, but they hate each other. Finally, you can’t stand it anymore and ask one of them to explain, and they tell you…and you wish you hadn’t asked.