Two Sides of the Same Coin

Western Orthodoxy Inhabits a Place that Explains and Unites the East and West into One, Cohesive, Historical Worldview

A Conversation with Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Prompt Text: "The unity of every local congregation springs from the unity in the Eucharistie meal. And it is as the celebrant of the Eucharist that the priest is the minister and the builder of Church unity. But there is another and higher office: to secure the universal and catholic unity of the whole Church in space and time. This is the episcopal office and function. On the one hand, the Bishop has an authority to ordain, and again this is not only a jurisdictional privilege, but precisely a power of sacramental action beyond that possessed by the priest. Thus the Bishop as "ordainer" is the builder of Church unity on a wider scale" - George Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodoxy View

Seminarian: I think this understanding of the Episcopate is shared East and West. I think also, that the reason Confirmation is restricted to the Bishop in the West is because by separating Baptism and Chrismation until the Baptized are at an age of understanding, the West made Confirmation akin to Ordination by making it a function of church unity. I think this is demonstrated by the fact that in the West Confirmation is sometimes referred to half-seriously as ‘ordination to the laity.’

Bishop: This is a good take. It is accurate to say that this is how it was later perceived, but not necessarily what is actually happening.

Seminarian: I feel the issue isn't with the choice to restrict Chrismation to the Episcopate, but rather the decision to delay Confirmation that is the crux of the issue -- The former flows from the latter pretty gracefully.

Bishop: Theologically, the restriction of Chrismation to the episcopacy is not necessary, as can be seen in the prevalence of presbyterial confirmations throughout the East, especially when it is understood to be the laying on of hands for the impartation of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, as all of the Eastern Fathers clearly attest. It also shows how the episcopal and presbyterial ranks bifurcated into a pyramidal structure in the 3rd-4th Centuries, with distinct roles, rather than one being seen as an extension of the other, and became two separate ranks of a higher-lower hierarchy rather than a nested taxis of grace.

Seminarian: Do Western Fathers attest to something different than the East? 

Bishop: There are slightly different ways of understanding what is going on. I think the West started to divide the sacramental actions into “points”, which the East never did, which ended up attaching weight to the baptism more than the Chrismation, and the Words of Institution over the Epiclesis. If you look at them side by side, you can see how the West prioritized pronouncing formulas as the core of the sacramental act. The East prioritized the calling down of the Holy Spirit as the “perfecting of the sacraments”. This is seen in both Baptism and the Eucharist, because they are considered incomplete without this element of invocation and laying on of hands. 

These differences increased over time, ending in Theodore Balsamon’s argument in his letters to the Church in Alexandria, which propose that Latin Sacraments kept the form but did not have the substance, since they lacked the proper involvement with the Holy Spirit, i.e. they both had cut off an Epiclesis and relied on the speaking of a formula by the priest in his role of spiritual authority for efficacy. He argued for rebaptism on this point, because the Latin sacraments were not “filled with the Spirit.” It seems polemical now, but the divergences in sacramental theology do highlight the different perceptions of East and West, and help to understand what some of the underlying mutual distaste is actually stemming from, rather than just beards, leaven, and married priests. Balsamon’s theological understanding has become a hidden canonical element behind the denial of the West’s sacraments in the East. 

Personally, I see Balsamon’s influence as anachronistically narrowing, and he seems extremely unfair and biased towards Churches outside of the direct influence of Constantinople, and even within the scope of Byzantine Tradition he tries to restrict and limit, rather than mining the riches of what was available in the Eastern Tradition at the time. He is the one who truncated and reworded the Acta of Nicaea 1, so that all the other ancient liturgies could not be used, and replaced everything with the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgikon of the Hagia Sophia. He is now the one and only canonical interpreter used by the Eastern Orthodox, from his Nomocanon in 14 Volumes, which was extracted into the "Rudder" by St. Nikodemus in the mid-1700's. I feel the narrowness and anti-Westernism of Eastern Orthodoxy today, like the negativity we have experienced from our Eastern Rite brethren, is a result of Balsamon being amplified over the last 800 years. Unlike a lot of RC theologians, and Anglican wishful thinking, however, I do think we are having a meaningful engagement because we understand this. That’s unique and rare. 

Seminarian: Everything you described about the pointalism of Western Sacramental thinking aligns exactly with how I have understood it.

Bishop: As long as we administer sacraments in the Eastern format, with each having an Epiclesis, then we can maintain Western rites and liturgies without scandalizing the East. The “pointedness” of Western Scholasticism’s reliance on formulas, as well as the “around-ness” of the Eastern mystical approach, needs to be spoken about and contrasted, in an unbiased and loving way. The problem with EO theological apologies since the “Neo-Patristic Synthesis” about the West is its dismissiveness and relatively mean spirit. What the East needs to realize is that they were in communion with the West for a very long time, while these theological differences were already a feature of Western theology, and that these features were only deemed “heretical” after the political climate changed and the East needed an excuse to stop recognizing their Western counterparts as truly Christian and brothers. While the West has worked through this, especially since Vatican II, and now recognizes the efficacy and validity of the Eastern sacraments, the East has yet to reevaluate the real situation and see their position for what it truly is - a politically motivated “cancelling” of an ancient Christian brotherhood for the sake of denying the claims of the Pope. What we offer in contrast to this is a denial of papal claims without resorting to ahistorical and innovative theories, which anachronistically attempt to reinterpret Christian history in an unfair and self-complimentary way. 

Seminarian: While I think there's a good core to the formulalic definitions of the Sacraments in the ability to point to the proper form and matter provides assurance to the believer of God's grace and presence in its performance, ending the discussion and celebration there is inoperable without the Spirit. 

Bishop: Yes, exactly, it splits two sides of the same coin into two coins.