I think the more interesting developments occurred after the fall of the western Roman empire. The eastern empire (Constantinople) had frequent arguments and disputes with the west over nearly everything, including Christianity. The eastern Orthodox church refers to itself as the "Catholic Church" in internal documents. After the west fell in 476, they continued to present themselves as "the" Catholic church, which was changed forever in 1200 when the largest Christian city in the world (Constantinople) was destroyed. The destruction took two years, and most of the writings, art and treasure of the richest city in the world was either destroyed, stolen, or lost.
> The eastern Orthodox church refers to itself as the "Catholic Church" in internal documents. After the west fell in 476, they continued to present themselves as "the" Catholic church...
Is that really so odd? Doesn't "catholic" mean something like "universal," and I think it would be very odd for one faction of a split organization to cede that kind of title to its rival faction.
I might be misunderstanding your point, but I kinda feel it should be followed up with a kind of "Did you know, Western European, that these two different things are actually similar in this way you didn't know about?"
It’s frequently explained to mean “universal” but my growing understanding of it is that it means that the wholeness of the faith exists at the local level, meaning that it does not have a dependency on some remote administrator in order to provide the Sacraments, etc.
This became an important point for the survival of Orthodoxy during the Arian crisis.
Christians make a distinction between churches and the church. The former is the physical building or even denominations like Lutherans or Roman Catholics. The latter is the group of people that are part of Christianity, across time and denominations. The Universal Church refers to the latter.
Galatians 1:2 "…the churches of Galatia…" vs Colossians 1:24 "…for the sake of his body, that is, the church…"
Your interpretation is correct - every single one of us was redeemed at the Cross. Essentially, Jesus came here to correct a kind of mistake.
God laid down laws and then people laid down further laws and eventually all the people, even those living by the law, were guilty of having committed sin - breaking the established laws of God and that crime meant their souls would be claimed by Satan, as being people "of the world" - but mostly the sins we committed we were led to commit. Most of humanity was guilty of only ignorance "Forgive them Father, for they kno not what they do" and yet by the terms of the law, the ignorant were also guilty of sin and all souls with sin would be redeemed by the one to whom God granted authority here...
So, Satan thought he won bc he beat God on a technicality, by confusing us so that even if we follow the law, we will not be saved by it, as it it not the true law. So, God choose option C and forgave all the sins - all of them, no picking and choosing and left in their place only one law, so that it couldn't easily be perverted as the previous teachings, as ALL PREVIOUS TEACHINGS had been. As Christianity has now. This act of God required his son, someone closer to him than us or angels, to die bc of sin but without cause as he had none.
CS Lewis does a fine job with this mythos in the Chronicles of Narnia - the older deeper magic that has authority over all other magics.
The whole thing, the crucification, was a trap set by God so that Satan would kill Jesus - to save us all from being Satan's property and it worked, we were/are saved, rn - it's already done and over.
Now we just have come home and it doesn't matter how bad we are - the prodigal son speaks to those of us with such concerns.
God, Jesus and anyone claiming to follow them ought to universally love everyone and anyone by default and without reason, expectations or cause - without exception and without judgement.
Some we see that weak and take advantage - let them do so, help even - turn the other cheek. As Mother Theresa said so eloquently, " Helping hurts - help anyway" - that is our calling.
To me God is like the Watsky song Sloppy Seconds - he'll take us regardless of anything we've done and he will love us as fucked up as we are at our worse amd loves us no more when we are at our best bc his love is without conditions.
That is the story of the crucification and how one man, preaching universal love, executed for that at the age of 33, is still spoken of 2500 years later.
We owe him for that - he expects nothing in return from us. All he wants is that we do what we know we ought to, that we not do what we kno we shouldn't or what we hate to do and to love each other as we love ourselves.
That sounds like a light yoke to me - these other people speaking for him rn, they all have such a heavy yoke of rules and morals and ethics and tradition and that's all wrong.
Then why can’t I wear my tie dye shirt at most churches?
I’ve completely fallen out of the church and Christianity. I do believe in a force that exists and acts and behaves as we described God as I grew up, which is in us and all things and all around us throughout all of creation, but I do not believe that that is God. I just call that the Universe now.
Wastky concerts are more my church than anywhere else in the world. I feel connected and holy in his crowds. I wear my clothes until they’re threadbare because of that song.
When I analyze my life now, I recognize it as what Jesus commanded us to do, but none none none of what I have motivated myself to do has been motivated by Christianity or God‘s calling.
Watsky broke me free from the Christian church, but he shaped my behavior to be more Christian than it ever would’ve been then when I was in and a part of Christianity and taking my teachings from the Bible.
Did the fact that Christians from Western Europe looted Constantinople in 1200 play a role in the Eastern Roman Empire's decision to stop identifying themselves as part of the Catholic Church, or were there already deep theological and political divides?
The pope who sent the schism message delegation died before it reached Constantinople. And the patriarch of Constantinople at the time, also died before his reply made it back to Rome.
> a role in the Eastern Roman Empire's decision to stop identifying themselves as part of the Catholic Church
From their point of view, the West abandoned the true (i.e. orthodox) faith.
Also, it's hard to argue that the Eastern Christians changed more than Western ones. For example, since the 12th century the pope has forbidden priest marriage. There is some debate in the Catholic Church about allowing this again. If that is implemented, it would simply be a reversion to what the Orthodox Church has always done.
Catholic means universal, so both present themselves as the original and true church, with the head either in Rome or Constantinople/Pentarchy. The actual break of communion comes from 1054 but really began much earlier.
Even in protestant churches like the Presbyterians and the Methodists you will hear references to the "Catholic Church" where it refers to the universal church that is inclusive all all believers regardless of denomination. For example in shows up in the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed.
Both churches have always identified themselves as "Catholic", or universal in the Greek language (katholikos). Orthodox Churches still use the creed in every service, where they say "We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church".
Also, it's not like the Roman Catholics claim to be heterodox or something, they also claim that their faith is "orthodox".
In the 1180s the Empire was governed by a French princess (regent for her son) and her late husband was very pro-western/latin. The relations between the Catholic crusader states and the Byzantine empire were also very good and Italian merchants controlled most of its economy.
Then.. an anti-western emperor came to power had all the Latins/Italians in Constantinople massacred (>10% of the population) and things went pretty much downhill from there. It was very rapid, though. There were of course disagreements before the late 12th century but both sides generally acknowledged that they were part of the same Christian word/universal empire (even if they didn't quite agree who was in charge).
1054, in fact, but the 1204 ransacking of Constantinople certainly didn't help with how the "Franks" (because that's how the Catholics were mostly called) were seen by the Christian-Orthodox (if it matters I'm a Christian-Orthodox myself).
I was reading a travelogue written by a Russian monk (? not sure, either a monk or a wealthy boyar predisposed to the Holy stuff) who was visiting Constantinople sometimes in the early 1300s, so a century after the whole tragedy, and he was still describing how destroyed the city looked because of the Franks and what big of a tragedy that was.
If you read Wikipedia, there was the Massacre of the "Latins" in Constantinople in 1182. That almost certainly made it easy to make it a revenge play for the Venetians and associates.
What I find most interesting is the Romans were unbeatable in battle, even the Byzantines. However, maintaining a large military presence was expensive and politically difficult to manage. So they used annual mercenaries from the north for the usual frontier squabbles, and the main army did the heavy lifting. It fell apart when there was a major conflict, and didn't help that the army held the city hostage demanding more money. So everyone was corrupt it would seem. Also there were the persistence of rumors of knights that may have kept most of the treasure for themselves and headed off to Cyprus. The Knights Templar were insanely wealthy given the times and cost of resources to mount expeditions.
They were, though? Adrianople, Yarmoud, Manzikert, Myriokephalon etc. it's just that the empire was extremely resilient and was generally able to recover from disasters which would have led to the collapse of most other states.
I think Hannibal is owed some credit for marching elephants over the alps - I believe Rome razed and erased Carthage on their 3rd or 4th try? No matter really, it wasn't their 1st.
By 1200 the Romans had been beaten in battle many times. Their loss at Manzikert to the Turks in 1071 severely weakened the empire, and they never really recovered from it.
It's funny how the Battle of Manzikert went from being an obscure battle only a handful of scholars cared about to a major topic in popular consciousness.
It's actually not quite so clear cut. 1053/1054 was when mutual excommunications between Rome and Constantinople happened, but (as the schism itself is evidence of) Constantinople did not speak for the entire church, and other eastern sees continued communion with Rome for quite some time afterward.
It really wasn't obvious at the time, though and it took at least 100 years or more for the split to become permanent.
e.g. There is currently a schism between the Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church which technically is not that different. Does that mean that the Russian Church is no longer Orthodox?
The Catholic church also consider itself to be Orthodox, just like the Orthodox Church is Catholic. Technically both are still the same same church (e.g. relative to Protestant churches) they just can't agree who is in charge.
The "Great Schism" wasn't even that great at the time, there were plenty of schisms that proceeded it, it just happened to be the last one and nobody really knew what it mean for the next few hundred years.
