44 - Great Schism of 1054

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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All right, back to church history we go.

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We are making progress. We're going to get to the

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Reformation eventually. But one of the more important aspects, what number are we on now?

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44. 44. So we've only got eight lessons to go until we equal the last time.

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So I think I'll have eight lessons on Luther alone. So I think we're good. One of the great dates in church history when you start putting them together, certainly we think of 325 and the

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Council of Nicaea. But another that you would find on any meaningful church history final exam is the date of the great split between East and West.

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And that is 1054, specifically, well, it was sort of a process.

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But if you wanted an exact date, July 16 would probably be the date that you would use for that.

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And that split exists to this day between what would generally be identified as Eastern and Western Christendom, if you want to use that rather vague term.

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But this had been developing for quite some time.

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The two, I mean, I guess the first brick in the wall would be the shift in the late second century to Latin amongst most of the theological writers in the

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West, away from Greek. As you may recall, we mentioned this led to some issues, even at the

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Council of Nicaea and in the great Christological controversies, because you've got this translation issue between Greek and Latin.

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And there's some misunderstandings as a result. You may recall that one of the first big controversies in the church was the date of the celebration of Easter.

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And the Eastern churches celebrate to this day the date of Easter at a different time than Western Christendom does.

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It is interesting to note that when you look at most of the conflicts as far as dating is concerned, that modern scholarship would side with the

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East. So for example, the date of Easter, the

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East basically uses the Jewish calendar. Passover makes sense.

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14 Nisan. The West has a odd way of doing it that makes it, as you know,

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Easter bounces around in March and April all over the place. But that split, remember, with Victor.

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Remember when Bishop of Rome Victor was threatening to excommunicate?

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Remember the Quartodeciman controversy? I know we're going back. I don't even know when we started this series now.

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But over a year ago, I think. Going back a ways, but the Quartodeciman controversy, things like that.

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And what's the date of the commemoration of the birth of Christ in the

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East? Anybody know? January 6. January 6. That's where you get the 12 days of Christmas if you count from December 25 to January 6.

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It's supposed to be a feast that goes that long. And you may recall last year,

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I did a little study with us prior to the Christmas holiday on some of the historical information about, for example, when

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Zacharias would have been ministering in the temple and things like that.

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And there's a fair amount of information that points to January 6, too. So there had been those types of things, those types of differences,

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East and West, for quite some time. Another major strain that had developed was the issue of priestly celibacy.

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Now to this day, you need to be accurate in your understanding.

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The idea of priestly celibacy in the West is called a discipline, not a doctrine or a dogma.

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It's a discipline. And as such, a discipline can be abandoned, changed, modified, so on and so forth.

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And you're seeing that happen right now. I'm not sure if you noticed, the current pope just made comment,

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I think within the past 10 days, that he favors allowing priests to be married in Brazil, because there are just so few priests per proportion of the population that it just seems necessary.

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And this is not a dogmatic change, because it's not been doctrine or dogma, it's been discipline.

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And the East never embraced this concept, but the

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West did. And so this creates more of a, now if you want to be a bishop in the

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East, then yes, it's part of their discipline at that point, as well.

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But that was another one of the differences. Even the issue of facial hair, it's amazing how many times facial hair has come up in church history.

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But obviously, in the East, the tendency is toward the full beard, the big whopping type thing, which, and not just in no shave

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November, either. All year round, not the practice whatsoever in the

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West. Unleavened bread in the supper.

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The West, yes, the East, no. Not absolutely consistent on that, but that's the general rule.

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Then you had, and here's a word that you can use to win at Scrabble, or words with friends.

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Is that the Facebook version or something? I've never played it, but I know friends that do all the time. Sort of drives me nuts.

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But this is a good word to get you lots of points. Iconoclasm.

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Ooh. Ooh. Lots of vowels and stuff like that there. I could use some of my pretty light colors today, because Kelly's not here.

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She's in Vegas, but that's where Summer lives now, in case you're wondering. Every time you tell somebody, oh, she's in Vegas.

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Oh, OK, I hope she hits big. And no, that's not why she's there. Iconoclasm, or the iconoclastic controversy.

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Let's see. You see the word icon there. The controversy raged from 726 till 843.

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I guess I can write that down. 726 to 843.

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Emperor Leo III attacked the use of icons.

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Now, what are icons? Well, I almost would have had some examples to show you, but the

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Orthodox church I went into in Kiev didn't have the one

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I was looking for, so I didn't get anything. But today, an icon is a picture or a carving in what's called bas -relief.

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At the time, the term included statuary. Today, the

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Eastern Orthodox churches have many, many paintings, carvings, et cetera, which are icons, but they don't have statues.

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They have icons. Now, eventually, well, what's the difference between?

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Because in the icon, there is relief. It's not just flat. It's not just a painting with paint on a flat surface.

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You have relief, texture, not even texture.

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There's substance to it. Yeah, what? Wasn't the difference between gravity? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what

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I was getting to. Eventually, the nose test was used in the East to determine if something was an icon or a statue.

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So if you could grab the item's nose, then it's a statue.

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And if you can't, then it's an icon. So you can sort of feel something there, but as long as you can't actually grab it by the nose, then it's not a statue.

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It's a icon. At the time of the iconoclastic controversy, the terms were not so tightly defined as they became at later point.

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Some wanted a removal of all statues, pictures, carvings. Others were just opposed to statuary, et cetera, and et cetera.

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Controversies are never nice and clean and easy as we would like them to be. When Leo III banned icons, the patriarchal bishop of Rome condemned the iconoclastic controversy

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So Leo is an iconoclast. So he is against statuary, icons, so on and so forth.

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So the bishop of Rome condemned Leo, and Leo responded by removing a number of areas from Roman purview.

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So he said, well, if you're going to do that, then you're not in charge of this area, this area, that area, so on and so forth.

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State and church have been mixed for a very, very long time. This is the emperor engaging in theological activity and having controversies, the bishop of Rome.

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Very, very common once you have sacralism at full speed.

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Under the descendants of Leo III, the program was pressed with vigor, resulting in a split with the ascetic monks who were closely connected with the icons.

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And so many of the monasteries in the east would have a tremendous amount of icons and things like that.

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John of Damascus. Now, John of Damascus, very well known because he is one of the first church fathers.

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Because if you look at the time frame here, what's this corresponding with?

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What major event in world history we've already looked at is going on during this time period?

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The rise of Islam. The rise of Islam, 632 to 732. So, it's right toward the end of that time period.

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So, John of Damascus is very well known because he's one of the first Christian writers to interact with Islam.

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And so, one of our earliest views of Islam from outside, well, actually one of our earliest views of Islam, period, because there's not a lot of Islamic writing from that time period, comes from John of Damascus.

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And he came to the defense of icons. And so, he is opposed to the iconoclasts.

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Leo IV, which would be the next in the line, was not a strong iconoclast, and his wife

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Irene, who reigned as co -regent after Leo's death, overturned the policy. So, Leo's first descendant is not as strong in pressing it as he had been.

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The seventh ecumenical council was held at Nicaea in 787.

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So, Nicaea II, not nearly as important as Nicaea I.

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Nicaea II is in 787, and that one you do not have to memorize, though it is interesting.

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It's interesting because you will have Protestants today that will say, oh,

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I can agree with the first seven ecumenical councils. They're truly ecumenical, they're worldwide, et cetera, et cetera.

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Anybody who says that, I just look at them and go, so, you've actually read Nicaea II?

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You've actually maybe worked through some of the biblical reasons for that, and if you're listening in support of statuary and icons in Nicaea II and find it to be something, you can go, yeah,

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I'm online with that. When you look at Athanasius' defense of Nicaea in the mid -4th century, and compare it, with all due respect, to the tripe that was produced by Nicaea II, it's stunning.

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I mean, Athanasius is using much of the same type of argumentation from the original language that we would use to defend the

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Trinity and the deity of Christ today, and the absurdity of the biblical interpretation used in Nicaea II is stunning.

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It's Trinity broadcasting worthy. I mean, it really is, it's that bad. It's just, whew.

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And so, but Nicaea II, it's reason for fame is it defends the use of icons and statuary in worship.

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So, Nicaea II, John of Damascus, they back,

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Seventh Ecumenical is influenced by John of Damascus and backs his perspective, but Leo V, 813, yeah, 813 to 820, reinstituted iconoclasm.

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Theophilus was the last of the staunch iconoclasts, for soon after his death, his widow,

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Theodora, gave up iconoclasm so as to gain the widest possible support for their son, Michael III.

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By 843, a synod was called that confirmed the rulings of Nicaea. So, you've got about 120 years there where back and forth, you have some efforts.

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Now, why would there even be an interest in the East for iconoclasm that results in at least in the

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East the use of icons rather than statuary? One of the primary reasons is

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Islam. To this day, Muslims look at especially

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Roman Catholic churches and go, I think that looks like idolatry. Person bowing down in front of a statue of Mary, lighting candles, rocking back and forth, praying the rosary, sort of looks like worship to me.

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And so, you can trace some of the external sources for this to the fact that in the

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East, in most places in the East anyways, except where the Byzantine Empire still holds out against the constant encroachment of Islam, Christians are now living under Islamic rule.

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And that's going to have a major impact on how you think and how you reason and your theology and everything else.

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And it is interesting in light of modern events with the conversion of Hank Hanegraaff to Eastern Orthodoxy a few months ago.

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Well, started a couple years ago, at least those of us in the know knew that. That the tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy is pretty much frozen in time, pretty much with Nicaea too.

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And so they can go, we've been, we've got centuries and centuries. Yeah, but only back to about that time period.

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And that time period has already moved a long ways from a significantly biblical orthodoxy in many aspects.

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Once you freeze tradition in that way, you can say we have an ancient tradition.

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You do. But it's not an apostolic tradition. Just because it goes back to the 8th or 9th century doesn't make it apostolic by any stretch of the imagination.

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And so that's really where a lot of this comes from. But this also gives a different sense and hue to Eastern worship than in the

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West. We're looking at factors that led to the split in 1054. Then we have the

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Filioque Clause. The Filioque Clause, when, if you look,

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I imagine it's up front someplace. Probably in here.

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Oh, maybe not. I don't think the Trinity has the name. Yeah, it doesn't. Only has the

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Apostles Creed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, in the

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Nicene Creed, in the West, when it speaks of believing in the

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Holy Spirit, it speaks of the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father Filioque and the

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Son. In the East, it says the

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Spirit proceeds from the Father without the phrase Filioque and the

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Son. So the Spirit proceeds only from the

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Father, not from the Father and the Son in Eastern Orthodox theology of the

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Trinity. Historically, once again, it's pretty clear that the original form did not contain the

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Filioque Clause, that this was a later development in post -Nicene Orthodoxy.

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And you'll have differences between many of the great, you know, the Cappadocian Fathers, most of them are in the

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East, and later Western developments. Obviously, Filioque is Latin, so.

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So this doctrinal difference continues to this day.

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And while interesting, I don't know, both sides, the people who wanna get super zealous on both sides will say, well, if they don't believe the way we believe, then that results in da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da.

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99 % of all Christians, at least in the West, probably not in the East, at least in the

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West, have lived their lives without ever having heard the phrase Filioque. The one thing you can say for Eastern Orthodoxy is that it is self -consciously

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Trinitarian. There's a lot about the Trinity in the worship of the

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Eastern Orthodox Church. And hence, most Eastern Orthodox folks are aware of this, because it's one of the things that sets them apart.

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And hence, would probably be better off arguing this point than almost anybody in the

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West would be, because it's just not something that we think much about. But it's one of the issues that is pointed to as the reason for the division.

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Now, there's all sorts of ecumenical yammering going on today between Rome and Constantinople in regards to these issues and the nature of the relationship of East and West and all that kind of stuff.

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Could there be a rapprochement? Well, I sort of doubt it, but you never know.

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But all these issues were boiling to the surface. And so finally, what happened in 1054 is

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Cardinal Humbert, love that name, was irritated by Serularius, Patriarch of Constantinople.

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Serularius burned a tractate favored by Humbert in the presence of the

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Roman legates. On July 16th, 1054, Humbert had placed in the high altar of the

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Church of Sophia in Constantinople, which I think is the one that's been turned into a mosque once the

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Muslims took over, a decree of excommunication. As the legates left the church, they shook the dust from their feet and Serularius responded by excommunicating

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Rome. So it was a quid pro quo and they both excommunicated the other and that excommunication has remained in effect now for almost 1 ,000 years.

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I wouldn't be surprised to see a change between now and 2054, yes sir.

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It hasn't, you know, Francis is such a out -of -the -mainstream type guy that I would not faint if he thought he had the authority in and of himself to say, you know what, long enough.

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The problems are extremely practical, however, and I'm not sure that there's somebody in leadership on the other side that is quite as amiable or amicable or pliable as he is because one of the key things to keep in mind when we think about Eastern Orthodoxy is, and I may have mentioned this before,

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I think I talked to you about the term Energia, energies in Eastern Orthodoxy and sort of almost a magical sense that develops in what would be cultural

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Eastern Orthodoxy, which is the vast majority of Eastern Orthodoxy in the world is cultural. Ukraine, where I go fairly regularly, it's extremely cultural there.

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But one of the things to keep in mind is that the West has an advantage here.

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In that the West developed a one -person leadership model centered upon the

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Bishop of Rome. The East has always had multiple patriarchs because there were multiple apostolic sees.

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Remember I mentioned to you, if you look at your, if you look at one of those maps in your

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Bible, for those of us who remember maps in Bibles instead of apps on iPhones, if you look at the map in your

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Bible of the Mediterranean and the biblical world and you draw a line right down the middle and then you mark on it the churches that claimed with some type of credibility to be apostolic, to have been founded by an apostle, what you discover is in the

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East, you've got Jerusalem, you've got Antioch, Alexandria eventually claimed this,

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Constantinople would eventually claim this. You've got big, powerful bishoprics in the

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East and so the East develops a concept of collegiality where everybody's gotta get along.

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You've got equally powerful people and yeah, you eventually sort of get the patriarch of Constantinople sort of looked up to as the highest but he's just one amongst equals.

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Over against the West side, there's one city, one place that says founded by an apostle,

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Rome and so you have a monarchical view in the West and this whole idea of multiple sources of authority and collegiality in the

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East and that continues to be reflected in the forms of government that you have in those two churches to this day and so it'd be easier for Rome to make that move than it would be for Eastern Orthodoxy because you gotta get everybody on board.

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You gotta get, sort of like our Congress today. My fear is someday what's gonna happen is enough of the populace is gonna get sick and tired of complete gridlock to where neither side is willing to do anything to move the country forward that everyone's gonna agree that you know what?

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We need just one person, sort of like Star Wars. We need the emperor. Let's give the emperor the authority and voila, you now have despotism.

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That's sort of the situation ecclesiastically speaking and so I would be surprised to see something happen.

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I can't imagine the way things are going that over the next 37 years or so that there's not gonna be some type of major movement along these lines.

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I really do. So anyway, that's the great split of 1054.

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We also have during this time, yes sir? It very, yeah, yeah it is.

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Where is there a progressive kind of left wing? Well, it exists in the world and hence is going to be influenced by what's happening in the world.

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The reason that there is a inherent conservative element to Eastern Orthodoxy is because its theology is defined by its liturgy and therefore the tradition that has developed over the past 1200 years is very difficult to change.

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It doesn't, you can't just go, ah, we're gonna forget about that. And so there is a real connection to the past, one's ancestors, things like that within traditional

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Eastern Orthodox thinking but obviously in light of what happened in the 20th century. I mean millions of people murdered under communism and many of them were

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Eastern Orthodox. And the impact of socialism and everything in major Orthodox nations, the rise of atheism and things like that.

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Orthodoxy can't help but be stressed and I think

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Orthodoxy is more strained than many other perspectives in attempting to respond to the modern world in that way.

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So yeah, there was a patriarch after the

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Reformation who was Calvinistic and tried to move Orthodoxy toward reformed theology.

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There was just one of them, he didn't last long but he was there and most would look at him, see that's just an aberration.

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We have our tradition, can't change the tradition. That's why they seem stuck and will it stay that way?

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I don't know, I don't know, it's possible. At the same time, we have after, what was the really dark period of time for the papacy?

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What did we call it? The pornocracy. The pornocracy. People other than Sean can't answer.

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It's just, I'm gonna start calling him Hermione. Thank you,

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Josh, very good, yeah. The pornocracy. Should I not know who

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Hermione was? I better not follow that one up at all. And everything else, yeah,

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I read a book once. Oh no. Um, anyway, I just know your friends who listen like to hear you mentioned during the,

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I'll see this on Facebook, I'll be seeing people, hey Sean, you got mentioned in church history again.

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And it's like, oh, wow, sad. I have no control over my fans. Yeah, your fans, yes, yes.

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Sean's fans who only listen to church history to see if Sean gets mentioned during church history. They like you too.

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Because he's sitting in the front row and going, oh me, oh me, call on me. Anyway, yes, the pornocracy.

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You sort of figure, once it gets that low, there's only one way it can go from where it was, you know?

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I mean, it's sort of like the cardinals. You can only go up from there, you know? So, even though they're actually fairly good at staying right there at the lower end of mediocrity.

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But anyway, that's what happens with the papacy. We saw the first great pope,

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Pope Gregory the Great, that's why he's called that, AD 590. But then once you get through the period of the pornocracy, you start seeing a rather meteoric rise.

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And of course, part of it is because it's filling a vacuum, a power vacuum, a political vacuum, a cultural vacuum.

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These are dark days, the Vikings and everything else. And so, which is not a football reference there.

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Though I haven't been born in Minneapolis, having suffered through four Super Bowl losses, it does sort of seem like the same type of thing.

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Middle ages, dark ages, whole nine yards, same issue. Being a Vikings fan's like living in the

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Middle Ages constantly. Gregory the Seventh, also known as Hildebrand.

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Well, that was his actual name, obviously. Not also known as, but. Anyway, Hildebrand, 1020 to 1085.

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And he is physically small and unattractive, which probably kept him out of some of the trouble that you get into in Rome.

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But he had a very brilliant mind. And so he is very, very different from all of the popes during the pornocracy and things like that.

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You also have the development around this time of the College of Cardinals.

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Now, what's interesting, up through the fourth century, there were certain churches around Rome where they were the only churches where you could be baptized.

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Not every church could baptize. And by the way, if you actually look at the baptisteries in these churches, they're all big enough for immersion, but anyway.

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Those priests who could baptize were known as cardinal priests.

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And they were marked off by what? Take a wild guess. They wore red, cardinal red.

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Had nothing to do with the football team either. And by the 800s, the name was still around, only now there are cardinal bishops becoming the

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College of Cardinals in the ninth century. And Hildebrand was the treasurer of the

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College of Cardinals. So this is just another layer of ecclesiastical authority that had developed.

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Now, before Nicholas II, 1058 to 1061 is when he reigned.

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Before Nicholas II, popes were chosen by the populace of Rome. Most people don't know this.

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So up until the middle of the 11th century, popes were chosen by the populace of Rome.

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Now, of course, there were times when there was political involvement. But the official mechanism was the people of Rome, because you're the bishop of Rome.

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I mean, that makes sense. In 1059, so five years after the

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Great Split, in 1059, a new process was adopted. Cardinal bishops would consider candidates for the papacy and then put forth a candidate for the people to confirm or deny.

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And so the people are still involved, but only in the sense of confirming or denying the candidate that the cardinals themselves have presented.

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And eventually, as today, the cardinals all gather, you know, close and lock the doors and the white smoke, black smoke conclave thing that we've seen a couple times over the past couple of decades.

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Even just a few years ago, in an extremely unusual situation where the pope had not yet died and, as a fact, is still alive, that was the first time in like nearly 700 years that happened.

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Anyway, Gregory, as pope, took office in 1073.

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He saw his authority as extending over secular authority.

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He would utilize a dictatus pape, the papal bull, which, though it has a possible funny way of being understood today, did not have that funny way of being understood in the past.

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He said there was no universal ruler except for the pope. Hence, the pope could depose kings or emperors.

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This is a ultimate claim of ultimate authority coming forth from Gregory in 1073.

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And then he decided to follow through with this. So Gregory and Henry IV disagreed over the appointment of the

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Archbishop of Milan. Now, Henry IV is emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Man by the name of Godfrey was

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Henry's choice, but Gregory didn't want him. The emperor called the

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Diet of Worms. Yes, Diet of Worms, but this was in 1076, not 1521.

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So they had been meeting in Worms for a long time by the time Luther came along. And the

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Diet of Worms rejected Gregory's authority. So now you've got the

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Holy Roman Empire and the Diet saying the pope has no right to go against us.

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So you've got the state and the church at direct contradiction here. But what's it over?

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It's over the appointment of the Archbishop of Milan.

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And so Gregory excommunicates Henry, and he released all of Henry's subjects from fealty to Henry.

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So he says to all of the citizens of the Holy Roman Empire, as the pope,

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I release you from having any obligations to the emperor. You don't have to pay your taxes, you don't have to serve in the army, you don't have to do anything, he says.

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So Henry eventually backs down. But that wasn't enough for Gregory.

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And so Gregory was at a retreat in the Alps called Canossa, C -A -N -O -S -S -A,

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Canossa. And so Gregory forced Henry to come to Canossa and made him wait for three days in the snow outside the door before letting him in.

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Henry crawled on his knees to Gregory asking for forgiveness for his actions against Gregory.

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He was the pope. Now this is one of the great iconic pictures in the history of the relationship of the papacy and secular authority, and it's certainly one the popes look back upon with some measure of longing.

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When the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire sits outside your door in the snow for three days, and once you open the door, crawls in on his knees begging for forgiveness.

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Well, you've pretty much established that you're the man and that you have supreme and final authority.

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That's pretty much what you've done in that situation. And this is the height, one of the heights of papal authority that is reached that really is never fully reached again, though it sort of stays up there for a while.

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It's going to decline, and that declension will eventually lead to what's called the

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Babylonian captivity of the church and the Reformation, and the situation that we see today where I don't see too many of the world's leaders.

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I don't see Putin sitting outside Pope Frankie's door for three days in the snow.

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That's not gonna happen. And there'll be some people would say, and that's the problem.

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Well, okay, you can view it any way you wish, but I don't want to rush through the next pope because he's really important.

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His name is Innocent III. I've always found the utilization of the name

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Innocent by popes, especially this pope and others, to be one of the somewhat humorous elements of church history.

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But we will pick up with Innocent III the next time as we look at the expansion of papal power and then its eventual demise, which starts us into the material that is the background to the

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Reformation. So there's light at the end of the tunnel. We will get through.

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We will get through, okay? All right, let's close the Word of Prayer. Father, we do thank you once again for this opportunity, the freedom that we've had to gather together to consider once again what you've done in history and how we are influenced by all of these things.