DVD #11 - The Church (cont'd.)
At the Ecumenical Councils, the representatives sent by the Pope always had the first place, you see. But as time went on and as the Church of Rome became more and more responsible - some of this is the result of historical circumstances - you know, the Greek-speaking half of the empire, the whole political structure did not fall apart for 1500 years. Constantinople did not fall to the Turks until 1453. But the old Rome in the West - the Latin Empire, had fallen to barbarian invaders by the 5th century. So the whole structure of society - political/social structure - was collapsing, and it was the figure of the bishop of Rome in the West, even beginning with for example, Pope Gregory the Great (pointing to an icon of St. Gregory) in the 6th and early 7th century, who had to pull the pieces together of the entire society, not simply be the first bishop of the Church, but be really the leader of society at that time. But as a result, as the centuries progressed, the bishops of Rome began ascribing to themselves an authority that in the eyes of the Greek Church was something that was not there in the early Church. They claimed to have two things that we reject, regarded as additions to the deposit of Faith.
1. Supremacy
2. Infallibility
The bishops of Rome claimed to exercise infallibility. Now, infallibility isn't the problem here because as we're going to see, as Orthodox, we believe in the infallibility of the Church. To believe in the infallibility of the Church is a very simple thing. It means that because it is not a human society - the Church is a communion of persons called by God to share the life of the Holy Trinity, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit; therefore, we have the promise of God, the promise of Christ, Who will be with his people until the end of the world, that the truth that He came to give us will always be taught in this world until the end of time. That's what we mean, as Orthodox, when we speak of the infallibility of the Church.
However, in the Roman Church, when it began to be claimed that this infallibility was expressed through one mouthpiece, you see, the bishops of Rome, well, this was a great problem. This was something that was not in our understanding and experience of the early Church...something that was not present in the early Church. Likewise, when the bishops of Rome began to claim, what is called supremacy - Supremacy is the understanding that the bishops of Rome - the Pope- has immediate authority over the entire Church. You see, that's quite different than saying that those who have received the Apostolic authority, just as the Apostles, everywhere, by the laying on of hands, established bishops and presbyters and deacons to be means through which the authority that Christ gave to His Apostles is perpetuated in the Church until the end of the world. That these Churches begun by the Apostles, whose existence continued through the bishops, priests, and deacons, that the Apostles established, all existed together in communion with the bishops being in communion with one another just as the Apostles were. The bishops of the great Churches, the great cities, the Patriarchs, as they were called. The cities of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and among these Patriarchs, the bishop of the greatest city, Rome, having the first place. That's one thing. But to say that the bishop of Rome has immediate jurisdiction over the entire Church is quite another thing.
That is the doctrine of supremacy of the Pope that began to be exercised with great force in the middle ages. And it's over this that the core, we could say, the center of the division between Greek East and Latin West occurs. And we would say, the Orthodox claim would be that what happened here in this great tragedy - no one would deny it is a tragedy - is by claiming that these doctrines regarding the papacy, together with the doctrine of the filioque - regarding the Holy Spirit - were, in fact, to be imposed on the entire Church. You see, they tried to force the Orthodox Church to accept these doctrines. By doing so, the Latin Church, the Roman Catholic Church, left the communion of the one Church.
So, there was no division of the Church that occurred here. You did not have the Church split into two Churches because there cannot be two Churches anymore than there can be two Gods. It cannot be that the claims made by one Church and the claims made by the other are equally true because we are dealing here not simply secondary matters. Rather we are dealing with things that are at the very core of what God wills to do for the human race, the revelation that He has made of Himself and entrusted to those human beings that compose His Church. So it is the Orthodox doctrine when there is this kind of strife in the Church that either one claim must be true or the other must be true. They cannot be equally true. Nor can one say that both are false, that truth is relative. There is no such thing as relative truth in the Christian experience. Truth regarding God is always absolute.
In the third tragedy to befall Christianity, the Reformation, which is when the Orthodox look at Reformation beginning in the 16th century, of course it is a phenomena of the Latin Church. The Orthodox Church never underwent the Reformation. The Latin Church continued to have this tension within itself regarding the nature of authority. You see, in the Orthodox Church's eyes, I believe we mentioned this already, that once there is the attempt to narrow down the tradition of the Church, insist on a visible criterion of authority, rather than seeing as the criteria of authority in the Church, the entire tradition found in the Scriptures, the Fathers, the liturgical services, the councils, the Creed, the Saints, and everything else that goes along with it. To say that instead of that, we will have this one point of authority whether it's in the case of the infallible and supreme pontiff, the bishop of Rome, or later on when that is cast off by the teachers of the Reformation - whether it is the Bible independent from how the Bible has been understood in the communion of the Church, and the inevitable consequence of that - that the criterion of the truth becomes my own interpretation of the Bible - my own conscience regarding what is right and wrong. Of course, the result of that is umpteen hundred Protestant denominations."