17.

 What do you consider to be the most important point made in this chapter?

            By far, the most significant points are those given in the prefatory notes' summation of the Great Schism. The textbook's account, while not without some merit in giving general background information, is rationalistic in its approach and is very much lacking in real substance in causal analysis. This defect no doubt traces to the author's non-Orthodox background.

            The textbook's explanation of the Great Schism would appear flawed to Orthodox theologians as they have never thought in the Cartesian method of the West. Two Greek hierarchs, Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna and Bishop Auxentios of Photiki, comment on this fact, saying that unlike the Western thinker, Orthodox do not begin at zero, at nothing, and then develop their observations about things. Instead, they begin at one, as it were, and work from certain basic assumptions.

            In the Western system that begins at zero, the hierarchs explain, Western thinkers might begin by assuming that God does not exist (or that nothing exists), and then proceed to establish the existence of God and the created world. When the Westerner projects this way of thinking onto history, he is confused how an obscure religion in a remote section of the world could have accomplished its triumph.

            Even if a Westerner does acknowledge the divine nature of the Christian religion, the hierarchs continue, he is inclined to assume that the Church was something less than a divine manifestation. He usually imagines that it took root in the Roman Empire because of certain social, political and economic factors that favored its growth. A Westerner begins with a secular history that is infused with a divine witness, but with a zero assumption about the divine content of history.

            This way of thinking impinges upon the textbook's analysis of the Great Schism and taints it, for its author projects social, political, linguistic and cultural factors onto that history. Ultimately he gets bogged down in the details of the historical minutiae of the event until his task of generalization suffers. That is, he fails to convey the larger picture of the historical event, which is the goal of historical inquiry.

            As noted, an Orthodox works from certain assumptions. He always assumes the existence of God and His created world, for example, and bases his intellectual observations on this a priori assumption. In viewing history, an Orthodox makes the assumption that the Christian Church is divine and that history is the story of its divine manifestation. He begins with a history that is divine, a history whose content is the story of the manifestation of the divine.

            The textbook's analysis of the Great Schism ultimately fails because its author, like other rationalistic scholars, tends to ascribe too much importance to secondary causes to historical events, thinking that they are the real causes. This is not so, for political, cultural, economic and other factors are completely secondary. The primary cause of history is always spiritual. As Hieromonk Seraphim Rose once explained at a remote monastery in a mountain wilderness:

The real cause [of historical events] is the soul and God; whatever God is doing and whatever the soul is doing. These two things actualize the whole of history; and all the external events — what treaty was signed, or the economic reasons for the discontent of the masses, and so forth — are totally secondary. In fact, if you look at modern history, at the whole revolutionary movement, it is obvious that it is not economics that is the governing factor, but various ideas which get into people's souls about actually building paradise on earth. Once that idea gets there, then fantastic things are done, because this is a spiritual thing. Even though it is from the devil, it is on a spiritual level, and that is where actual history is made.

The primary cause of the Great Schism, that is, the spiritual cause, was the temptation placed into the hearts of the popes by the devil — the temptation to sell out Christ for earthly rule, for universal sovereignty and domination. The popes yielded to that satanic suggestion, even as many angels once yielded to Lucifer's suggestion to rebel against God, and even as Adam and Eve yielded to temptation in the Garden of Eden. Therein lies the spiritual level where the history of the infinitely tragic fall of the Roman Church was made. Indeed, it is on that level that all history is made.

            To view history in this way is to acknowledge that there is a first cause, which is what God does in history and how the soul reacts to it, and that the secondary cause is ordinary events. This understanding is the correct understanding of history, for it looks above, not below.

            Hieromonk Patapios of Etna observes that the author of the textbook apparently does not believe that divine providence is the central guiding principle in the historical unfolding of the Orthodox Church. From an Orthodox point of view, the Cambridge University-educated scholar explains, “The Great Schism was not only a tragedy, but also an act of divine providence that protected the Eastern Church from infection by the bacterium of Latin heresy.” It is parenthetically added that “the tragic dimensions [of the schism] are to be found in the loss of human souls, many of whom were innocent victims of the heresies promoted by the popes and their toadies.” [The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way Reviewed, p. 8].