Ray begins this session with the Filioque crisis that hit in 787 – The Latin phrase “and the Son” the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and the Son – the Western church added this to the Nicean Creed in 787. This eventually split the eastern and western church in 1054. The issue for the Eastern church were twofold: one you don't change creeds, make a new one but don't change the creed that took so long to wrestle through and second, Islam was coming through the East and had the same Shema as Israel - there is one God, for the Eastern church adding the phrase would seem they were advocating for three Gods.
The Western church also had reasons for adding the phrase one of which is they were working in tribal cultures that seemed to view Jesus as a super tribal chief rather than God. This is an important concept for us today as we approach mission. In the western church we don't trust the Spirit we trust Christology. We preach Christ to unleash the Holy Spirit. The Orthodox churches believe the Holy Spirit is unbounded - you don't bring Christ to a community, you discover Christ in the community.
Next we looked at Monasticism beginning with the Desert Father's and then up through Francis and Dominic. One interesting point that came up that through half of its history the Roman Catholic Church allowed priests to marry. It wasn't until Benedict that priests became celibate. The cause for this is too long to go into. Today with the decline in the priesthood and with the chruch moving toward a Latin and African world maybe Pope Benedict (who ended limbo last week) will bring reform by allowing priests to marry.
We concluded this session with a lecture and discussion on the crusades.
1 comment:
Rose, I'd love to hear more of your (and Ray's) thoughts on the Ohrodox model of hte Spirit - I've been intrigued by this before. Your comment that "we preach christ to unleash the holy spirit" certainly appears to be true; it's an interesting thing to think through implications of.
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