by Ianto Watt
So here we have a man of suspect lineage (and thus religious loyalty) who had stolen the position of Patriarch once before, and who was deposed by the Pope, and who then outlasted all of his former opponents only to be ‘rehabilitated’ by the next Emperor who needed a ruthless man to carry out his caesaro-papist designs of dominating the Church for his own political ends. Now do you see why I spent all that time digressing about Judaizers, the Talmud and Caesaro-Papism?
Now do you see why I talked about heresy and schism? And why schism is the more dangerous of the two (because the attack is carried out from within the organization)? Schismatics always insist they are true to the ‘real church’, and thus they do all they can to remain inside the church. Heretics, on the other hand, are expelled from the Church, and thus are external enemies. Do you understand why treason is worse than open aggression? It’s because it destroys a fighting man’s ability to trust his fellow combatant against an external enemy. It makes you wonder if the man next to you in the foxhole is a traitor, and this then causes you to lose your focus on the external enemy.
Treason is insidious precisely because it comes from the inside. This is why a traitor must be hanged, immediately. And Photius was, by any definition, a traitor to his primary superior, the Church. Instead, he served the Emperor first, last and always. Or, more precisely, himself. If he had been a General, that would be fine. But he was a churchman, not a kingsman. At least, he was supposed to be. And from this position of trust within the Church (and at the head of its Eastern flank), he sought to plant the long-term seed of the destruction of the Church. He did it for the short-term benefit of his earthly sovereign, and himself. And remember this, he wasn’t just trying to peel off a portion of the Church. No, he was trying to take the rich Eastern half, thinking (like all criminals do) that the poor would follow the rich, and thus he would capture the whole. And then, perhaps, capture even the Emperor himself. Photius wasn’t thinking small. No way.
Now let’s look at what Photius did and how he created the first and truly the most important schism in the Church, one which all subsequent ones would imitate. Then see if you agree with me that he was a power-hungry maniac that would stop at nothing in his desire to effectively wield the power of the Empire, even if it meant splitting the Church in two in his desire to dominate the whole. The whole earth. He made Emperors look mild.
Let’s start in 858 AD, when the current Emperor, Michael III, was in power. He was besieged on many fronts, especially from the Mohammedans to the south. He needed a man whose only loyalty was to him, as Emperor. The current Patriarch of Constantinople, Ignatius, wasn’t very cooperative with the Emperor, because Michael III had a habit of mixing in the affairs of the Church which, coincidentally, was a source of much wealth that the Emperor wanted. Pretty straight forward stuff for an emperor. You got it, I want it.
So the Emperor deposed Patriarch Ignatius and appointed a man who wasn’t even a priest! Guess who? Yes, Photius. His only claim to ‘holiness’ was that his uncle had been a former Patriarch of Constantinople. In a hurry-up ceremony, Photius was ordained to the priesthood by some bishops who were glad to curry favor with the Emperor. Then Photius was immediately installed as their superior! He quickly imprisoned Ignatius. So much for piety.
This didn’t go down well with the rest of the Church, especially the Pope, when he finally heard of it. He then deposed Photius and re-installed Ignatius, over the objections of the Emperor. But the Pope held firm, and things seemed like they were fixed. But Photius, being a patient man, waited till Ignatius (and the current Pope) died, and then, in a series of lying letters to the next Pope, explained away all his previous lies about what had happened. All was forgiven and the new Emperor re-appointed Photius to the post, and the new Pope agreed, having taken Photius’ unctuous apologies at face value. See the problem with forgive and forget? Sure, forgive the weasel, but don’t ever forget. And never reward them! As a great Freemason once said, ‘Trust, but verify’.
Anyway, the minute Photius was restored to power he began to undermine the position of the Pope in the Emperor’s court. Not that this would have surprised the Emperor. The current political and church issue of the day was whether the newly converted Bulgars (in Bulgaria, of course) would look to the east (Constantinople) or the west (Rome) for their liturgical direction. This was very important because liturgy (the mode of the sacraments, their magic) is the key to how a civilization develops. If the liturgy is dominated by a political power, the society will be politically dominated, and the political magic of usury would prevail.
But if the liturgy was dominated by a religious power, then society would be dominated by their brand of magic. In this case, the case of Holy Rome, it would be the magic of charity, the opposite of usury. Rome was free of political dominance by now, since Charlemagne had submitted to the Church’s primacy. But the east was still under the thumb of the Emperor. And so, the immediate battle was to see who would win the prize of Bulgaria. The bigger prize, of course, was the rest of the world.
What, you don’t like the idea of the Church being superior to the state? OK, then the only alternative is the State is superior to the Church. Try that one out for a generation or two, in the Gulag. Tell me how you like it. Say hi to Chairman Mao, if you see him. Still don’t get it? It’s simple. The ruler has the power to send you to Hell. The only question is when. Earthly rulers can send you to Hell on Earth, but it only lasts till you die. Celestial rulers send you later, when you’re already dead. Unfortunately, you only die once, and it lasts forever. Hell, that is.
Anyway the Emperor wanted the Bulgars to be beholden to him. It was obviously necessary for Photius, as the Emperor’s yes-man, to find some reasons to convince everyone (and especially the Bulgars) that the Papacy was simply some back-water region of the Church and that the real locus of Truth was in Constantinople. Right next to the Emperor, coincidentally enough! Shazzam. And so, Photius had to dream up some good reasons for the Bulgars (and everyone else in Christendom) to ignore the Pope and follow their glorious leader in the East, as the North Koreans would say.
And what were these reasons he dreamed up? Let’s take a look. There were 5 of them, to begin with, but 4 were just window dressing. They were eminently forgettable, and all four of them have since been dealt with. Only the last one remains, till this day and likely till the end of time, as I’ll explain. What, you want to know the first four? Ok, but let’s make this quick. Photius said the Pope was the Anti-Christ because the Western (Latin) Church had added the following practices to the tradition of the early Church Fathers;
They fasted on Saturdays;
They began Lent on Ash Wednesday (not the Sunday before, as in the east);
They didn’t allow priests to be married (Luther paid close attention to this!);
They had Bishops (and not simply priests) administer sacramental Confirmation.
Pretty criminal stuff, no? Were any of these things doctrinal in nature? No. Did Rome condemn the eastern bishops for doing it their own way? No. Was anybody gonna go to Hell over this stuff? No. But Photius needed more than one reason, to disguise the nature of the attack. And the attack was brilliant. I know, I keep using that word, but why not? His name meant ‘Enlightened’, and this word really encapsulates his actions and essence. And it’s not for nothing that the flowering of his actions would ultimately come to be known, in the West, as ‘The Enlightenment’.
So what was this incredibly brilliant ploy? (I promise not to use that word for at least another 10 pages.) It was this; Photius demanded that his opponent (the Pope) describe the inner workings of God! What? Yes, exactly. How? Like this. The fifth charge he leveled against the Pope and Holy Rome was that the Pope had added the ‘filioque’ clause to the Nicene Creed’. Have I lost you yet? Bear with me. The ‘filioque’ clause is where it says that “…the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son…”.18 That’s what ‘filioque means in Latin; ‘and (from) the Son’. And here’s where the split began
.
Photius said that if the Holy Spirit (the 3rd Person in the Holy Roman Godhead) proceeded from the Father and the Son, then He was subordinate to them both. Thus the Holy Spirit was of lesser stature, and therefore not really part of the true Trinitarian Godhead. Therefore, anyone (read: the Pope) who said such a thing as that (‘filioque) was really a heretic! Since the Pope (and all the Christians in the West) said this, they must be heretics, and if the Pope was a heretic, he must be The Anti-Christ! Here were his own words; all Latins are: “forerunners of apostasy, servants of Antichrist who deserve a thousand deaths, liars, fighters against God”19 (Hergenröther, I, 642-46). C’mon, Photius, tell us how you really feel. You sound like Mohammed.
Anyway, it was pretty simple logic. But let’s look closer. What if the Pope (along with all the Bishops of the Third Council of Toledo in 589 AD) hadn’t added ‘and the Son’? Then you could say that the Holy Spirit proceeded only from the Father, right? Doesn’t that also imply subordination? Of both the Son and the Holy Spirit? But never mind, that’s not the point. The real point is that Photius demanded that Holy Rome explain HOW this could be, not WHY. In other words, explain the inner workings of the Godhead. Good luck! Never mind the fact that the God of Holy Rome, by definition, is simple, because he is One. That means he has no ‘parts’. Therefore he doesn’t have ‘inner workings’. And, of course, he can’t ‘fall a-part’. Because he has no parts!
Now anyone who has studied the Holy Roman Operating System knows that it is built on two things; reason and faith. Reason tells us why God does something, and faith lets us accept it when we can’t explain how He does it. The word that sums this up is ‘mystery’. As in, do you understand the logic of women? You liar. Mystery is the word we use to express a belief in something that surpasses rationality.
For example, take a set of identical twins. One is lying on a bed in the hotel, alive, the other is lying in the morgue. What’s the difference? One is alive, the other is dead. Well, explain that, from a purely physical aspect, will you? They are exactly identical except one breathes and the other doesn’t. Show me the physical difference between them. Well, you can’t, unless you can explain how this thing we call ‘life’ works and how it got here. What’s life weigh? How long is it? What color? Where can I buy some more?
See what I mean? This concept of ‘life’ surpasses mere rationality, but we all agree there’s a difference between the quick and the dead, right? What is that difference, if it is not a mystery? And that’s exactly what Photius demanded of the Holy Roman Church: to rationally explain the mystery of how the Holy Spirit ‘proceeds’. This would, of course, include answering the question of who He proceeds from, thus answering the surface question Photius raised of ‘subordination’. Was not this demand of Photius simply brilliant? I know, I lied about not using this word again so soon, but what other word can I use? It’s an astoundingly cunning construction of a semantic riddle that cannot possibly be answered by any human in this life (or the next).
I know, Thomas of Aquinas explained it in his ‘Summa Theologica’, but who’s really going to read all 4,000 pages? I know I cheated and only read the abridged version of the abridged version. (Question 82 was the only part that really got me excited). And really, Aquinqas is the only one who could really understand his own explanation of this riddle. His answer was a riddle in itself. So how can the rest of us understand how one Person of God proceeds from another when we can’t even explain (or comprehend) how Adam proceeded from the Creation? Or how Eve proceeded from Adam. Hell, I can’t even explain why women can’t abide men who wear things that ‘don’t match’! At least that mystery is one I don’t care about. But the big ones, I do!
Yes, all Photius did was to demand a rational answer to a mystical question. And since no man could answer that, he set the stage for an everlasting split between those who believed one way and those who believed the other.
Now let’s look even closer. Both sides claim to believe in a Triune Godhead of the three Persons in one substance (metaphysically speaking). Both claim all three persons are equal and truly and fully God. Pretty mysterious, but all are agreed. So what’s the problem, since no one could explain either the procession from the Father alone or the Father and the Son? But since Photius was smart enough to write a book containing his denunciation of the Pope (and all Latins), and since he just happened to have the resources of the Emperor at his disposal for printing (by hand, a tedious and expensive proposition) and distributing it to all the eastern bishops, the Public Relations advantage lay with him. And PR, as we all should know, counts for everything. Just ask Eddy Bernays. Or his uncle, Sigmund Freud.
Let’s look at it another way. The western Church in Rome didn’t say you had to include ‘the filioque’ in the recitation of the Creed in the eastern Churches (although they insisted it was true). But Photius said you couldn’t say it, even though he couldn’t prove it was false. And after all, just what does this ‘filioque’ thought really mean? Does the procession of the Holy Spirit refer to a timeline? Doesn’t God the Father appear first in the Bible, and then Jesus the Son, and only later, just after Jesus death and resurrection, does it mention the Holy Spirit? And doesn’t Jesus say, after his resurrection, but before his ascension into heaven, that unless he returns to heaven the Holy Spirit can’t be sent to the believers? I mean, really, what’s the problem here? It’s all semantics (as everything important always is). And since God, in this Operating System, is outside of time, how can anyone really comprehend how He works, let alone when?
Or is it somehow that the Father and the Son are somehow superior to the Holy Spirit? Then why did Jesus tell the Apostles to baptize everyone ‘in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’? It’s not like the ‘filioque’ was denying anything already revealed. It was simply describing the sequential activities of the three Persons in the Godhead as they are revealed to all idiotic men within the confines of time, not eternity. And anyone who can’t accept that God could (and should) be greater than pure rationality (that is, that He should be mysterious), is arguing for a purely human version of God. Who wants that? Besides Richard Dawkins, I mean.
Well, anyway, there you have it. Photius demanded that rationality should trump mystery. And when the West resisted, Photius excommunicated the Pope (and all Latins). Incredible! He committed an act reserved to the leader of the Church, thus implying that he was the head of the Church. And at the same time, he sold the peoples of the Eastern Empire on the relative advantages of being free from a doctrinal authority, at the behest of the Emperor, who resided in the East. Thus, he sowed the seeds of a national (versus universal) Church. In Photius’ brave new world, there would be numerous Popes (aka ‘Patriarchs’) who would rule with near-absolute religious authority in their own land. But they would all be subordinate to the Emperor, of course. Because Caesar is the real Pope in a system like this.
Now here’s the next problem: each region of the Eastern Church was ruled by a Patriarch, who was in effect the local Pope. But no Patriarch could overrule another Patriarch in another region, since they were supposedly ‘equals’. This meant that there could be absolutely no further development of doctrine, as there was no supreme authority over all of them that could declare something to be doctrinally true (or false).
In other words, the Eastern Churches became frozen in time. Doctrine could not continue to develop in the Eastern Churches. I’m not talking about doctrinal change (as in ‘evolving’), but rather development (as in ‘grow organically’). And thus there has been no further intellectual development of doctrine in the Eastern Churches since that time. Whereas in the West, the Church grew in her understanding of the mysteries of the faith, as developed in the ongoing Ecumenical Councils over the next 1,000 years since the final split in 1054 AD. . Want proof? When was the last time the ‘Orthodox and Ecumenical Patriarchs’ of the East held an Ecumenical Council?
As a result, there has been no doctrinal genius like Thomas of Aquinas in the Eas
t, because there was no authority that could examine any new work and pronounce it true (or not.). And the irony is, the East demanded that the West provide a rational explanation of the inner workings of God, but they denied this need for the respect of rationality in all their own actions since then, whether it was of a moral, political or organizational nature. But never mind that, they got what they wanted- freedom from higher authority. Except from the Emperor, of course. And the Emperor got to subdivide the power of the Church amongst a host of mini-popes, each of which was beholden to him in some fashion or another. And none of them alone would be big enough to oppose him. And none of them would submit to another to lead them, as a unified group, in opposing the Emperor. Pretty neat trick. For the Emperor, that is.
So, what does all this mean, grandson? It means that the East has been stunted intellectually, and shackled politically, as these national Churches are all under the thumb of whichever political system dominates their country. They have no supra-national authority they can appeal to for help when a particular Emperor or King or Warlord or Party Chairman decides that he wants to ‘influence’ (run) the Church. These nationalistic churches have no one to turn to, and so they must submit. And isn’t that the meaning of ‘Islam’ (submission)? And isn’t that what they have had to do, as Islam has conquered the four eastern Patriarchates, while Rome alone has stood free? Well, what about Moscow, the substitutionary ‘fifth’ patriarchate? It’s illegitimate, from a historical perspective, and anyway, they would claim to be the Second Constantinople anyway, as that is implicit in their claim to be the Third Rome. And that, in turn, has made them subordinate to the C-zar.