The Great Schism and the Decline of the West (w/ Fr. John Strickland)

christendom is healing over dangerously perhaps almost capsizing some people would say probably today it will correct itself insofar as the ballast returns to liturgy and sacramental communion with god [Music] well hey everyone what is up welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin and this is gospel simplicity a place where we seek to bring simplicity out of theological and historical complexity today i am joined by father john strickland we're talking about the great schism which if you watch my channel you probably have heard of but in case you haven't it refers to the excommunication of the patriarch of constantinople and the pope of rome mutually in 1054 and kind of marks the division between the east and the west or what we often refer to now as the orthodox church and the catholic church but more than just talking about kind of the theology or the filioque way things that went into that in this video we're talking about kind of the cultural dynamics that were at play that led to that and then that came as a result of that specifically he talks about the loss of this view of the world that had been so prominent in the first millennium that idea of the inbreaking of the kingdom of god which he refers to as paradise that's a lot and he's going to explain it better than i just did but hopefully that what's your appetite for what you're about to hear before we get to the video i want to say a real quick thank you so much to my patrons subscribers and merch buyers who make this channel possible especially to my patrons those who give monthly to support this channel to help it keep going and growing thank you all so so much if you'd like to be a patron and get all types of fun perks like discount codes for march or potentially free merch depending on your tier early access to interviews to watch the videos without the ads on them or this long run up right here you can go to patreon.com gospel simplicity or if you'd like to make a one-time gift you go to paypal.me gospel simplicity well with all that being said here's the video well today i am joined by father john strickland father john grew up in orange county california of episcopalian background falling in love with russian history while an undergraduate he embarked on a career of historical study that resulted in earning a phd and teaching at several colleges while living in st petersburg russia for his dissertation research on church history he began attending a local orthodox parish and with time was received into the orthodox church there while in petersburg he also met his future wife elena together they now have five children father john maintains a historical blog and podcast under the title paradise and utopia enjoys woodworking he is also the author of several books on cultural history including the age of paradise the age of division which we'll be discussing today and the recently released age of utopia christendom from the renaissance to the russian revolution father john thank you so much for being here today thanks for having me austin it's real good to be with you well it is my pleasure and i'm glad we've been able to get to this point viewers won't know but it's been a journey getting here and i'm so excited to be able to have this conversation today well as i mentioned we're going to be discussing your book the age of division which i believe is out by ancient faith uh publishing i'll have links to that in the description but as i mentioned this is part of kind of a multi-volume project three out of the four have been released to date could you just let us know a little bit of what you're up to in this project yeah uh the the project is four volumes in all its uh project the project title is uh paradise and utopia the rise and fall of what the west once was uh it's an effort to understand where we are today in our cultural situation in the west by taking a um journey back in time kind of genealogical look back in time uh to the origins of what we can call the west uh the civilization and culture we call the west and to see um what's going on today which a lot of christians feel very uncomfortable and alarmed by uh the things happening in culture and the the separation of of western culture from christianity and christian influence to try to understand that by taking by by looking at the deep history of the west a lot of um people are commenting today about the situation the cultural situation the malaise of the west and they do so by bringing attention in so far as they look historically at origins they bring attention to things like the sexual revolution which occurred about a generation ago i actually kind of lived through that as a child didn't participate in it so much but i i went through it i saw it happening around me um uh others would go back further in time they'd look to the enlightenment as being the big kind of change the sea change and the history of western culture with the rise of secularism and things like that others would go back further and they'd look at the protestant reformation and important developments that happened then in weighing a foundation for modern culture a few might even go a little bit further back into the late so-called middle ages to the rise of nominalism and other intellectual um trends at that time but what i think is important to do uh as an orthodox christian is to who's a wes who who's a member of western culture and grew up in the west as a western orthodox you might say what i think is important is to go back even further um into the uh first millennium uh back beyond all those other points of reference all those points by the way are very valid and important but to understand where those came from i think one needs to go back to um the first millennium to see what western civilization and culture was like for that period of time which is really about a well it's a thousand years in length and my um my important point of of transition is the 11th century when the great schism occurred that that separated east and west that separated what's now known as the orthodox church and the roman catholic church i think that really is the turning point i think everything else flows out of that the reformation not nominalism the reformation the enlightenment the sexual revolution all of that can be made sense of if we look more deeply into our past and not just at relatively recent events um you know that are only 500 years old which is not so old if you're you know you're an orthodox christian anyway yeah that's fascinating and what i find really interesting about this work as a cultural history is that so often as one growing up in the west and educated in the west i didn't really hear much about the great schism as a cultural kind of turning point outside of maybe church history classes that's something that we talk about in theology with the philly oak way or something like that but in terms of just the history of western civilization it's not something that's generally on a lot of people's radar i think and so i'm interested to see as we go through this interview kind of some of the things that this sparked and kind of the the aftershocks of this schism but for those that are just trying to wrap their heads around this or to kind of orient them to this conversation what is this schism and why is it so important not just for church history but for western society yeah i i was just like you austin and i think a lot of people are in the west we grow up thinking there are two christian options one is roman catholic if it's if you're going to be drawn toward a traditional liturgical sacramental you know kind of definition of christianity the other is protestant if you're drawn more toward a scriptural i mean again i don't want to get into you know characterizations that don't mean much but those are the two polls and and as an orthodox christian who converted from protestantism um you know you i've come to see and i think a lot of people speak this way who are orthodox come to see those two polls as really being two sides of the same coin they're really very similar in so many ways that you don't see uh in the in the in the kind of culture and context of of the west you have to kind of step out of that that's the reason why it's effective and useful in fact necessary for us to go back to the first millennium when those change those those those didn't exist there was there was a united christendom um throughout you know most of what we'd call the west so um the the the great schism as it's known uh is usually of course dated to 1054. it's got a lot of pre-history to it it's got a lot of post history to it 1054 is a relatively arbitrary date but it means something at that on that on that date a representative of the pope of rome came to constantinople and even though the pope had died in the meantime in route when he was in route his name was cardinal humbert and therefore he no longer had a legitimate embassy he had no legitimate um a kind of role to play as a representative of now a dead pope nevertheless he excommunicated the patriarch of constantinople on grounds that we could go into but anyway that's the effect of what he did and the favor was returned by the patriarch of constantinople and this all happened in 1054 in july 1054 and so from that point forward there were efforts to reunite east and west together but those efforts failed of course and and the result was uh what's called the great schism or in in my books i prefer just to more more emphatically call it the great division the great division which is the launching point for the book we're talking about today the age of division christendom from the great schism to the protestant reformation yeah and i i wanted to start with this book here i mean all three of the books that you've put out seem very interesting to me but this seems to kind of be the the crux of it right the kind of turning point in the series that has shaped the west so much and then you're kind of expanding on that as you go and then giving kind of the back history or showing the idea of the age of paradise before this i appreciate also kind of the nuance you brought with that even to the point of the the death of the pope there which i know has some implications for some people who are interested in these things but you also mentioned that in some ways this dating while significant can be arbitrary in other ways i think some people might be wondering what what exactly does he mean by that and so just briefly i i think i imagine maybe what you're getting at here this question might help elucidate it if we were to go back to 1054 and we were say i don't know somewhere in the byzantine empire i know some of my uh subscribers might prefer just the roman empire and in the east we'll uh let them decide on that but to what extent would they have known what was going on in 1054 would this have been like an immediate oh my goodness the world is changing or would it have been there was a skirmish between some leggets and the patriarch and they said some things and you know i'm sure this will kind of blow over can can you kind of put us in the shoes of people who would have been alive at that time like how significant would this have felt that's a great question i think that's a great question and of course i think the the uh answer is of course of course first of all let's just acknowledge we have very few documents so wouldn't it be great to um you know have a document from some local newspaper you know in the region of serbia or let's say um you know kiev let's say which would just recently received orthodox christianity um about 50 years earlier under uh vladimir grand prince vladimir wouldn't it be great to read the kiev daily post you know headlines you know uh cardinal humber representative the papacy uh excommunicates patriarch of constantinople and and uh and the same happens uh from the point of view patriarch of constantinople you know and let's interview the local bishop in kiev and ask him what he thinks about this and what's going on in the local parish churches we have our guy on the scene our reporter you out in front of saint sophia cathedral in in kiev of course we don't have that kind of documentation from that period of time so it's somewhat speculative what is written is written by the people usually that are involved in the disputes and of course those points of view are very very tendentious they're very you know they're very opinionated cardinal humbert actually did write a report and an account of this but of course his point of view is obviously his point of view um i think uh to try to reconstruct a sense of your excellent kind of question um uh we recon to create an answer to it i think very little would have changed very little would have changed um for for a while for a long while decades even a century or two um there were places in christendom east and west that you know just shrugged their shoulders if they heard of it at all i mean i suppose that probably in uh in ireland or you know northern england or something like that very little was known about this for decades probably and this had happened before it didn't happen often so we shouldn't over emphasize that but it had happened before there was something that i call the nicolaitan schism which historians coming from a western point of view that's shaped by the roman catholic view of things often called the photian schism because it involved patriarch photios of constantinople in the in the ninth century but if the schism itself the separation of communion actually was initiated by the pope of that time named nicholas so from my point of view i think an orthodox understanding of that would be that it was really the nicolaitan schism but those had been healed in the past this one was never healed and so i think the answer to your question is is that at first very little happened very little cultural consequences were evident um but with time and say a century and a half later it's pretty clear that something has happened it happened long ago from that point of view and by 1204 you know most historians would say the schism is cemented in place by the um by the conquest of constantinople by now roman catholic armies under the command of the pope even though the pope at that time innocent iii had not wanted constantinople attacked he made the most of it and imposed a roman catholic patriarch on the throne in constantinople declaring this great schism to be at an end through the use of military power so it took uh in short a couple of centuries uh probably to play out but certainly did play out and and with time as we know well enough today there are real differences between east and west and my argument is is those differences are most fruitfully traced back to the 11th century's great schism um my argument is is that the great schism mattered in the history of the west um usually it's ignored as you said earlier it's just a church history kind of thing and roman catholics and pro orthodox can you know disagree about its its meaning but it's just something that belongs to you know a kind of a footnote in cultural history i'm putting it front and center i'm saying our culture today was profoundly shaped by the great division between east and west that is centered upon this event in 1054. um yeah that would be my argument yeah i really appreciate that and i also appreciate as a good historian there the acknowledgment at the beginning of you know we would love to know more about these things right but but we have to maybe hold certain conclusions about what the average person on the street of kiev thought about it loosely in light of the fact that we don't have all that data but i think it's a fun question to explore to recognize that in some ways we we kind of only understand these events in the rear view mirror in a lot of ways and so as it develops over time we can see okay this is a meaningful place to put the demarcation point but it's not as though on the very next day all of these things happened all at once these are processes that as the churches kind of grow apart there and you mentioned uh kind of the cementing of that in a very visceral way with the sacking of constantinople which many people will highlight there so i appreciate all of that before we dive in a little bit more to the schism i just want to kind of rewind just a second back to the kind of pre-history to the schism because throughout your books there's this concept of paradise and um not to was john milton paradise lost not to uh plagiarize him but there's this idea of that paradise going away if you will what are you referring to when you talk about paradise because i imagine people might say well certainly not everything was perfect and rosy before 1054 and then everything was immediately bad what is the concept of paradise that you're using here hey we'll be 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up and she said wow you've been reading where'd you get that from milton and i said no i got it from orthodox hypnography we we go through that every year at great went before great went starts we we envision adam outside of paradise weeping for his separation from it and rejoice in in that christ's incarnation has opened the gates of paradise to us again the word paradise is an important one in my vocabulary as a cultural historian and a church historian i guess um and and in in so far as it's uh uh it's like it's an interpretive device that's how i like to use this word and utopia which the two of them together kind of define my vision of of the history of the west it's an interpretive device in that it it enables us to evaluate and make sense of the past interpret the past it's a device it's somewhat artificial in the sense that like i'm using it in a way that um it might be used in very different ways and is used in different ways in other contexts by other authors and i don't want to um you know claim that that's like my brand or something like that that would be horrible i would never do that but what i believe is is that traditional christianity um cultivated from day one and i my my narrative begins at pentecost a lot of people they look on christendom and they think oh what's christendom christendom is that like civilization of the middle ages which is a term i don't use the term medieval writes orthodoxy out of the uh out of the narrative just by definition because the middle ages only defines what happened in western europe for a period of time that was dominated by by the roman catholic influence and in that civilization um and then it came to an end uh reputedly with the protestant reformation which leaves orthodoxy still out of the narrative so i don't use the term medieval or middle ages it's a modern term uh it was invented in modern times in order to write christianity out of the narrative of the history of the west and so you get a tripartite three-part way of defining the history there's ancient and there's medieval and then there's modern and the medieval just comes in between it means middle right it means it has no value in itself that civilization from this point of view so anyway back to the question what does paradise mean i think paradise as i use it is is intended as an interpretive device to describe the culture um uh what i call a paradise culture that um that orients directs members of that culture toward the eternal kingdom of heaven that is revealed by christ to the apostles and placed at the center of the gospel of jesus christ that the kingdom of heaven has broken into this world the kingdom of heaven has drawn near that this world now participates in heaven in paradise and the participation in that heavenly kingdom even now in this life is real and defines the culture that springs out of pentecost and then really takes over after the conversion of constantine but not for 300 more years my first volume talks about the third of the first volume is dedicated to everything before constantine so it's if by no means christendom is established somehow by a church-state relationship it was already there transforming the culture according to its vision of paradise the church was and so that's what i consider paradise to be i want to emphasize never and i state this in the books i'm afraid sometimes i've had people talk to me about the books and i get the sense that they didn't pick this up i talked about this in the books never do i think the world becomes paradise i emphatically state that it cannot become paradise um the kingdom of heaven is not of this world but it has broken into this world and that's something that i think the orthodox church has kept alive in her especially worship but her piety generally and that's kind of what i'm bringing as an orthodox scholar to a history a 2000 year history of the west is that sense cultivated in me by my church and my my church's tradition of participating in and experiencing the kingdom of heaven even in this world once that participation in the kingdom of heaven withers as i believe it does after the 11th century schism then that creates new forces that result resolve themselves in the rise of an alternative secular variant of paradise which is utopia an effort not to seek the kingdom of heaven which is not of this world in this world but rather to see the world as an end in itself and to create a seculum a space in this world where we can you know write great novels and build great um governments and pursue a lot of great things uh human rights and all sorts of other reforms and and so forth progress can occur but it's not salvific it's not grounded in the kingdom of heaven it belongs exclusively to this world and i believe that's what happens and that's the story i'm telling in age of division that's what happens as a consequence of the of the great division and the separation of the west from the east all right let's dive into that a bit because i think it's a fascinating thesis and the kind of hermeneutical key or kind of the interpretive device there of paradise and the inbreaking of the kingdom of god and the experience of that in this world without it kind of so saturating the whole world that there's no distinction there at all i think it's a really interesting way to look at cultural history and to see how there's kind of divergent paths going on here now for a clarification for my audience because i think they'll be interested in this they might many of them haven't read the book yet but i'm sure after this conversation they'll click the link and they'll buy it and they'll read it and they'll love it but but in the meantime when you say that after the schism the the sense of the kingdom of god or the experience of the inbreaking of the kingdom of god in this world paradise if you will diminishes or or withers i think might have been the words you used is that because of the schism in the sense that not being in kind of like an ecclesial union with the patriarch of constantinople just kind of saps that of its efficacy kind of like you might say the sacraments aren't kind of efficacious in a catholic church i don't know if you'd say that but i know some people might say something like that or is it more of a result of moving away from some of the influences of the east does that question make sense it does it does make sense and and uh you'll be disappointed to know it's both and in my in my judgment um uh i do certainly not uh bring a great deal of um you might say ecclesial kind of um uh conviction into into the book why i do but i don't try to make statements about the effects of the sacraments and validity and stuff like that that's just not my thing at all um what i do believe is that um ecclesial uh ecclesiology matters i guess we could put it this way i think ecclesiology matters my narrative is shaped by an ecclesial or ecclesiological understanding of civilization that a civilization has a culture i i define christendom as a civilization with a supporting culture that directs its members toward the heavenly transformation of the world at least for the first millennium um that changes into a secular transformation of the world after the um after the renaissance but um and and volume two the age of division is designed to show that transition and what happened um i think that um the the sacramental life of the orthodox church um is a very important part of shaping culture and was very important in that first millennium um i i make a lot out of the the um eastern features of of the west during that first millennium one of my chapters is entitled when the west was still eastern it's not today but it was once very eastern there was a couple of centuries where all the popes of rome themselves the people who held that office were from the byzantine east they might have been greek they might have been syrian but they were being recruited from the east and they were in rome but they were very much shaped by an eastern piety my first volume spends a lot of time talking about examples of popes like gregory the great that any roman catholic would would see i mean he's one of the four doctors of the church the early church he's a tremendously important and and beloved saint in the roman catholic church and so he is in the orthodox church as well and gregory the great uh who's arguably the most important pope you know before mo before the papal reformation gregory the great um he he spent uh years in constantinople he attended hagia sophia in the worship there for orthodox he helped compose he he had a role in in in in composing the uh the the wonderful pre-sanctified divine liturgy that served during great went on weekdays during great lent with its heavenly uh experience of god's presence in this world now the powers of heaven with us invisibly do serve the one of the hymns has it where the eucharist is brought in although the king of glory enters low the the sacrifice is a born fulfilled let us draw nigh with faith and love and become communicants of life eternal alleluia that's a hymn that's contained within this liturgy that gregory is said in in the eastern tradition in the west he's not seen this way but in the eastern tradition somehow mysteriously we don't really know how he contributed to the formation of this liturgy very very um paradise in character again christ is present the king of glory has drawn near to us let us draw near to him receive him i believe that the orthodox church did cultivate very strongly it had the doctrine you know of deification i know you've talked about deification and other episodes of your podcast and and kind of looked that through and thought about it from different points of view that that understanding of human salvation which puts primary emphasis upon man's participation in the life of the holy trinity the life of god especially through sacramental life as this has worked out especially in hesachasm for instance gregory palamos and and hesicasm this is a very you know rich tradition or part of orthodox or eastern piety that was shared in the west during these uh during the first millennium um and i think the west was really you know i call the i was really being shaped by this eastern piety i call the easter um the east the uh the cradle uh as well as uh you know i called the cradle of western culture but also the uh guardian of western culture and the the protector um and the tutor uh of western culture during this first millennium that began to change when the the frankish empire was assembled with a specific goal politically determined in many ways so they were very christian very spiritual people but nevertheless uh the goal of separating itself from the byzantine or roman east and that formation of the frankish empire whose most famous ruler was charlemagne was a really important turning point away from uh a eastern west a west that was shaped by and and nourished by eastern piety orthodox piety and as it was defined in the east of course the west was still orthodox at that time so that's that's an ecclesial ecclesiological explanation but your other question like the two alternatives you gave me um again to repeat i think that communion matters i think that communion does have an impact it's mysterious and we can't define it but i think it's important and that's one of the things that a empirical historian would just like ignore like what are you gonna do with that you don't do anything with that but i'm not exactly limited to that as as an orthodox christian scholar and historian but the other point you you asked about the other option was that it's um that the the change the trans transition is one that's just more cultural in in definition here i would pick up on what i said about the franks a moment ago and i would kind of lay at your feet that example so here we're getting away from a kind of a mystical understanding of of ecclesiology and and and shared communion and stuff like that sacramental unity and now we're looking at a more empirical way of understanding how the west changed that change certainly was underway uh as a result of the frankish effort to define what they called the greeks this was a term they used to you know isolate and kind of objectify what they were not we are not like those greek theologians we are frankish theologians and that once the the frankish influence became so powerful that it could even win over the papacy and the papacy in the face of the unbelievable heresies that were going on in the east the orthodox papacy uh rejected the heterodox or heretical um constantinople and and byzantine east during the iconoclastic controversy the heroic papacy turned to the franks for protection and that kind of set the west under the influence of empire and uh papacy on a direction that would eventually result in the great schism of 1054. i appreciate the both and and i think the question itself well i think it's a question i try to anticipate questions people might have as well as the questions i have i think it's probably a self-consciously post-enlightenment question to ask which one of those is it when those things could very well overlap and it doesn't have to be one or the other so i appreciate you highlighting kind of both and there the the two aspects of it and hopefully that will clarify um kind of where you're coming from in some ways for my viewers and so if i'm understanding this correctly and you draw this out in your book that not only so 1054 it's decisive because of the excommunication but there's already a trend towards kind of this separate western identity forming at this time apart from the east and then that kind of begins to snowball even more after 1054. would you say that the schism of 1054 is in part and i know we can't necessarily talk deterministically in terms of history here but that it is a result of that waning influence of the east that's kind of the flowering of that and then we see even more of its consequences afterwards would that be a fair way of characterizing it if you're anything like me you might have this vague sense that you should be investing or you'd like to invest more to be a good steward of your money to prepare for the future and to be more generous by increasing the money that god has given you but it can be a bit overwhelming right how do you know what stocks to pick and how do you know when to pick them or what to buy and how are you sure that the money you're investing isn't actually supporting causes that go against your christian moral convictions well that is where c3 christ-centered capital comes in christ centered capital is an organization that offers timely stock picks mock portfolios and investment analysis to help you align your christian moral convictions with your money what they do is they give recommended stocks and they analyze what these companies are 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you can rest assured that not only are they giving you good advice but the money you give them is going to good causes i'd encourage you to check them out christcenteredcapital.com to learn more today i would want to do this i would i and this is what i do in in both volumes one and and volume two which also kind of recapitulates the end of volume one ends in the on the eve of the um great schism and just as the at the end of the first millennium so that's a really important moment in the history of the formation of or the continued evolution of western culture we've already had the the we've already had pentecost in the early church we've already had the influence of the east um on rome and other parts and we could look at the celts in their amazing um paradise culture after they're converted um the franks we've now talked about them the next key development um in explaining 1054 it's it's um it's not so much that as you asked the east began to wane in its in its influence on the west there was that but what i would bring immediate attention to i think the immediate circumstances for the great schism were the rise of papal supremacy in a very heroic i want to emphasize this papal supremacy for me you know it does mean something very significant that i don't myself share as an orthodox christian but i do recognize that historically it was like there was nothing else that could be done considering the condition the spiritual condition of the west in the 10th century in the 10th century you have um you have first of all in rome itself uh different partisan factions determining who who can be made a pope and many of the popes are just chosen because they're politically or economically prosperous or powerful and you have some awful examples of popes at this time every roman catholic you know kind of would agree wholeheartedly that the the popes of the uh the 10th century the 900s were really failing to live up to the high standards of that office um but so the papacy kind of had a a kind of a crisis that needed to be resolved internally but then externally the west was under the power of successors to the disruptions of the viking invasions uh which you know a 9th century especially and then by the 10th century the 900s you have a lot of you have a lot of churches and and monasteries ruled by secular powers it's called the proprietary system a proprietary system and it really demoralized the west tremendously it's spiritual life and from the office from from from from rome and and by the way it wasn't the vatican at this time it was the lateran palace um vatican is is something that's introduced as the capital uh uh the center of the papacy only later but for now in the 11th century at the lateran palace in rome where the pope uh resided uh a really heroic assembly of big personalities strong reformers appear who say we've got to do something about this we can't just stand around and see all this degradation taking place peter damien's one of these people the future gregory the seventh pope of rome gregory vii known as hilda brand is is involved the aforementioned cardinal humber is involved and they all come together as a kind of a reformist party and for the first time in in history it took a millennium really for it to appear you have a reformation take place and it's that papal reformation which pr the primary goal of which was to clean up and elevate the spiritual life of the west that sets in motion the great schism that came well about a generation after this got off the ground it gets off the ground in the in the pontificate of leo the ninth um and and it's leo the ninth who sends the um the embassy to constantinople he's the one who dies he was actually in captivity that's really fascinating story i talk about in the anecdotal opening of age of division he was actually in jail when he sent humbert off to constantinople he felt paralyzed he he had this investment in reforming the west but he couldn't do that in jail and furthermore the patriarch of constantinople was an alternative center of power that he he needed to have submit to him in order to feel like he could take over leadership of of western reform reform the papal reformation is is what that can be called and that's that austin is that's the context for 1054 more than any other immediate one well that's perfect because the papal reformation is exactly where i wanted to go and just kind of as an aside i always find it interesting i don't want to downplay the the current difficulties that many of my catholic viewers are facing with kind of some ecclesial crisis is a word some might use i know ralph martin is a fan of that word but in comparison to some of the the past difficulties the papacy has faced or some of the past popes that have been around i think that's just one of the beauties of history is getting to contextualize current events in terms of there there's been some serious challenges in the past that uh that the church has gotten through which might just uh be helpful for people that are listening but i do want to go to the papal reformation there because i think it's important the the way you highlight it both as a heroic thing in terms of kind of reforming the church and being able to gather these personalities together to really bring order there but then it also is being referenced as kind of one of the causes of this schism which leads to the decline of the west and i can imagine some of my viewers wondering like how is it both right because for instance for my catholic viewers they they want to claim that the the rise of kind of that this papal reformation it was a good thing it was a needed thing a heroic thing in the words that you used but they might feel uncomfortable saying that it's also the cause of the schism right and so in what ways has is this heroic thing of the papal reformation leading to kind of what you're pinpointing as the turning point towards the the decline of the west in other words what could the the papal reformation or the papal reformers have done differently facing the crisis that they were without it leading to the schism that's a good question what could they have done differently um some counterfactual historiography there i'm not sure i'm up to the uh task that's an interesting project i think to undertake what what what could have happened what how could it have been differently what might have been that is a fascinating book topic actually um which i don't think i'm ready to say anything you know significant or interesting about right now i think that um you know just in general the radical um i think any historian any historian of what's called the middle ages and especially this 11th century agrees that the the policies of the pe popes and their backers i i mentioned peter damien and and others the policies of the popes were radical they were radically different than what had happened before they're not completely you know out of the blue there's not like there was never any evidence of this kind of behavior before leo the first is often pointed to as an early 6th century pope who um i'm sorry fifth century pope who who said a lot of very important things about the role of the papacy and its authority especially in the west um but there was never any um any claims before the 11th century that the entire church must submit to the authority of the pope of rome a doctrine which gets a kind of later and more even extreme expression in the famous unum sanctum of boniface viii it is necessary for the salvation of every human being to be subject to the pope of rome that's a radical change of ecclesiology ecclesiology is no longer centered upon the the local bishop in communion with other local bishops with his clergy under him and the people gathering together in local church parish churches participating sacramentally in the body and blood of christ and that it's the presence of jesus christ the head of the church that unites this ecclesial community together now it's a an office it's a legally defined office that was that was deemed necessary for the papacy to have the authority needed to shake up and improve the west as i described it briefly a moment ago and so what you what you find here is that making um a a commitment to using the office of the pope rather than the more mystically defined experience of of the church as the body of christ but the office of the pope with you know cadres of you know you might say activists or reformers um working under him and and for the same end the the the bishops the cardinals now that are created and and the bishops and the the clergy and the monks especially what you get is an institutionalization then of reform uh one of the things i make a point of toward the end of volume two uh age of division and also again at the beginning of volume three age of uh utopia is that the protestant reformation when it comes i mean this is one of the things an orthodox point of view helps with um because we don't get this in our own culture internally the protestant reformation is an extension of the papal reformation um the protestant reformation was not like for the first time ever there were efforts to clean up the church that had been institutionalized in the 11th century with a papal reformation and i think those two events in the history of the west are very closely related and because of their close close relationship really help explain why we wound up where we are today and again i think you have questions about what caused that to have an impact on what came later but to try to summarize i think once the papacy is seen as an institution that that institutionalizes um reform or what we might call i i use this term i think you picked up on it in our exchange i noticed it a transformational imperative i i use that term throughout all four volumes i see that as being at the core of the cosmology or understanding of the world that is contained within traditional christianity from pentecost forward a transformational imperative that members of this civilization called christendom have a built-in need to transform the world the cosmos that for a millennium that transformation was heavenly that is to say the experience was mystical it took place largely within the ex the spiritual experience of of of people participating in the liturgy and the sacraments of the church but beginning with the papal reformation it became institutional it became directed toward kind of targeted ends like we've got to clean up these monasteries we've got to use clooney which is a famous uh southern french monastery that helps lead the reform effort and then sito and the sister stercian orders founded and other agents of this reformation become institutionalized and once that institutionalization of what had formally been a more mystical understanding of transformation uh occurred then we begin to see other things happen that diminish or weaken the paradisiacal culture that is at the center of my attention here we could talk about some of those things if you'd like yeah i think that that probably makes the most sense to turn to some of those effects here um and you you list a lot of them i mean everything from i think one of the ones that just stood out to me as i reflect back on it talking even about the the involvement of the laity in uh the liturgy down to the the baking of the bread and how changes in that changes the involvement of the laity and the surface we don't have to jump into that but i think one of the big ones one of the kind of the hot topic things or something that a lot of people will point to as kind of a difference between the east and the west and you you touch on it a bit is the approach to theology now i know that properly speaking this is a cultural history but i think this in some ways falls under that as well with the rise of scholasticism can you talk a little bit about how this relates to the schism sure um i mean as much as i'm able i'm not trained in theology and i would never claim to you know have a handle on scholastic theology i don't um but i've you know done some research and i i've done enough that i think i can you know speak at least you know superficially about some of the developments that occurred and how they relate to the larger culture you know what i'm offering is a long-term history it's not a a a localized very intensive you know study of one topic i'm trying to see the bigger picture here and scholasticism as a theological movement has a place in that bigger picture um let me preface that by just saying you know you mentioned the laity not playing uh as much of a role i you know if if one wants to just list kind of the leading signs that something had changed you know because you mentioned like one might say okay well the you know papacy played this role but that doesn't explain cultural phenomena it doesn't explain other things and and it does take some explaining it just takes some work to work that out but there's it's remarkable how different christendom western i call it the new christendom it's so different in my evaluation than the old christendom of the first millennium east and west and i believe that old christendom continued in the east at least up until uh the fall of constantinople to the turks in the 15th century and then later the rise of uh westernism uh in peter the greats russia in the uh 17th 18th centuries but um this new christendom really is radically different in character i mean just look at all the things that start to appear in the culture and civilization of the west after that 11th century not only papal supremacy with a very legalistic understanding of church membership ecclesiology now is is evident um you have for instance the first crusades fought within a generation there have never been crusades there have been religious violence christians are as given to violence i suppose as anyone is on earth and christianity doesn't protect us from i you know i you mentioned like paradise the first millennium was by no means a golden age i never want to come across suggesting that there were horrible things going on and i document a lot a lot of them took place in the east especially the court of those byzantine emperors but you have the crusades starting and those become you know a centuries-long phenomenon um never occurred before there were canons in the ancient church that you can't kill people even in warfare even in a justified war uh and still receive communion but now fighting wars um against infidels or even orthodox christians or radical western christians becomes salvific according to those crusades um you've got to the rise of uh you've got the rise of doctrines that weren't there before like purgatory it had been a theological opinion before and it's perfectly appropriate to hold theological opinions but as a dogma it really doesn't show up in about the 12th century um and and so purgatory takes its place purgatory projects the experience of paradise the kingdom of heaven beyond this world and even who knows how and sometimes they spoke about thousands of years you know beyond this world it's it's hard to understand what a year would be like after you die but but there's this idea that you know this post-mortem punishment is needed before you can really delight and enjoy the the presence of of of spiritual transformation in in paradise so these things really have an impact and they're all kind of happening at the same time um uh the use of of of only one language latin that really becomes important um other little details begin to occur as well unleavened bread which was a big dividing issue i don't want to get into that because it's not a big deal for me but it was a big deal for people a million a thousand years ago and the use of unleavened wafers unleavened bread is introduced in the west our first document if i'm not mistaken is the ninth century franks and then it becomes institutionalized in in rome in the 11th century beyond the filioque way 11th century is when that's introduced in rome in the mass in rome are there a lot of things that suddenly change the clericalism if if now the church is seen the church is seen as a is the pope and a body of clergy that now are celibate and that's also a big reform that takes place that the clergy must be celibate and there's a campaign to make sure they all are um they're set apart from the laity who are married that the priest in the local parish church is different than the laity in this sense as a real separation i call it a bifurcation of of christian society and the kuwaiti are kind of put in a position of secondary almost um observers as as spiritual life plays out so there are really quite a few changes that occur but you've brought attention to one of those and that's scholasticism which also appears in the 11th century it grows out of a number of forces one was a discovery of aristotle through contacts with the arabs who had translated aristotle it also has something to do with the internal dynamics of the west there is a tendency toward after the francs toward rationalism in in theological reflection there had always been an element of rationalism you might call it there always been reasons certainly in theology the eastern as well as western early fathers used aristotle and plato you know augustine used a lot of plato eastern fathers used you know made use of these these uh pagan um philosophers but aristotle really is appropriated you know thomas aquinas the greatest scholastic calls him the philosopher right and and i think it would be silly to argue that there's really no difference that this the the impression that scholasticism is a change a sea change in theology is is a chamera it didn't it doesn't really have any validity if you look at thomas aquinas he was super mystical he loved for instance i i know he loved um the mystic um uh saint dionysius the aria pagat um he liked to say all of his theological writings were nothing but straw you know at the end of his life beautiful statements you know humble statements mystical statements made by him but he did and and he did make a a a great deal out of aristotle and we do see not only rationalism you know in trying to define what happens when the eucharist becomes the body and blood of christ like that had never been like everyone agreed it happened but no one tried to kind of explain it like get their mind in control of that and you really see this kind of the the reason trying to get control of what were mysteries before in in in traditional christianity legalism enters in at this time alongside that scholasticism you asked me about the university systems created and law faculties are arranged so that people can write canons huge bodies of canons defining normative christianity from a roman catholic point of view are produced which in the in the effect of we may talk about penitential pessimism in the effect of penance and stuff like that begin to emphasize like a much more routine based pro forma approach to repentance which had not always been seen that way in the history of christendom so scholasticism does play an important role how could it not because it shapes the thinking process the pattern of thinking that obviously is going to have an impact on culture generally and that is something we can date undoubtedly to the post-great schism um centuries there's no question about this i want to pick up where you uh started to leave that off there with the idea of penitential piety i think it is a really fascinating thing and was one of the areas of your book i found really interesting anecdotally i'm currently actually at after i finish doing this interview i will be finishing up a writing sample for applications to programs and medieval studies and lay the devotional piety and things of the of that sort are of special interest to me and so i enjoyed this part of your book can you talk a bit about the kind of rise of penitential piety here what that means and maybe how that moves away from the paradoxical view of the world yeah i think that's really important austin it really is and again i'm not a specialist in this this is not something that i've you know spent you know my lifetime researching and understanding other people rachel fulton for instance is one such person i think you interviewed her did you not uh yeah her interview will probably be the one right before this i mean it's out now and then yours will be the one after that so yeah okay very good yeah very good so she's done a marvelous job you know researching that and written a lot about it and knows a lot more about it than i do um but what i what i do what i do think i see here uh in the piety of of the period after the the great division the 11th century to let's say the 15th century um is a um an emphasis upon uh uh uh grief sorrow anxiety uh uh um disquiet disquietude um again a lot of this can be connected to other things going on in the culture of the west the new christendom uh i mentioned already purgatory once purgatory is introduced as a necessary process for almost every christian save the ex the the rare saint who goes straight to heaven once that's introduced then there's this terrifying you know prospect of being punished in a way that's hellish that i mean a lot of accounts during this time and this changes over time so a modern roman catholic understanding of purgatory would not necessarily say it this way and and again i don't pretend to to have studied all this in exhaustively but i do know that sources from this period of time emphasize the agony the the horrifying um agony that people will undergo in purgatory and for a very long time some of this is built into the vision of of course the famous vision of dante the second of his three uh volume uh divine comedy uh is purgatory um and and it's pretty it's pretty hard to see what's going on in in in some of the uh uh uh purgatorial sufferings people have to go through but dante was kind of a light uh had a light touch there are other accounts like the purgatory of st patrick which is a description of going to hell basically from this period of time going to hell but being able to escape it that's the thing about purgatory is you go to hell but it doesn't last eternally that's scary and people began to really agonize over what's going to happen to me um there were there was this manifests itself in a lot of the other elements of piety that's more doctrinal but but um the penitential pessimism can be found uh in a new range of images that emphasize jesus agony on the cross of course it's traditional christian conviction that jesus suffered and died on the cross for the sins of the world there's no question about this that the salvation of the human race was worked out on the cross by jesus christ and that that suffering was real um but there if you read the gospels there's not i mean they don't there's no sense of there's no blood it's not a bloodbath is it the crucifixion is not a bloodbath in in the gospels but by the end of this period by the 1300s and 1400s you have crucifix iconography it's questionable if it's even you know could be properly called iconography in a conventional sense at this point that is designed to uh cause horror in the people who see it uh the the contorted twisted broken bleeding body of jesus is so graphically depicted uh in some of this i think you know one of the earliest examples is the 10th century gyro crucifix which shows christ dead and slumped and and uh and and and more um emphasizing his his death than his coming resurrection traditional uh iconography especially found in byzantium had emphasized a christ on the cross who yes is dying or has died but his body is beautiful it's it's it's radiant with with beauty and light and it's all a proclamation of the coming resurrection now like that resurrection is like suspended and there's a just attention to the agony of christ um you the uh eastern uh the isenberg crucifix for instance isenheim i'm sorry isenheim crucifix of the 15th century um if you look at that google it type it up look at it it's like whoa that is really horrifying stuff ghastly to look at that becomes the art of of the west under the influence of this penitential pessimism uncertainty about one's salvation an experience of of of of salvation that's um that's uh that's that's suspended until a postmortem punishment has been worked out um images of christ that are intended to cause someone to feel guilt and uh grief over the fact that they caused jesus to go through these horrifying visually horrifying agonies there's no question that saint anselm of canterbury in the 11th century saint bernard of clairvaux and many others who followed we're emphasizing the effective response the emotional response of people to the suffering of christ and by like the goal now of the piety is to make you feel guilty make you feel horrible that jesus had to go through this for your sake now there is something healthy in that there's an element of healthy christianity i think in that but it went so overboard that it caused a tremendous disruption to the paradise of culture that the west had inherited from that first millennium and that that decline of the paradise culture which was about resurrection was about deification which was about the joy of experiencing paradise you know in the mass standing at the mass and and and participating in the in the holy eucharist now the ladies more and more isolated from the clergy standing at the altar and the closest they get is when the chalice is raised you know and people would come streaming in at that moment just to see the chalice raised and the miracle work and then they go back to outdoor into the street and do something else some of the accounts from the middle ages speak of this this all had a detrimental effect on the peritocycle culture that had been generated in the old christendom for a millennium but which has gone into decline since the great division of the 11th century yeah i really love the way you're able to kind of paint that picture of the the very physical differences that are happening as far as the the separation there and also the idea of kind of rewinding from the resurrection to the crucifixion and kind of fixating on that or kind of um pausing on the resurrection not to say at all that the the west didn't believe in the resurrection by any means but where is the the focus of devotion there i think that's it's a really interesting thing to think about and the way that relates to how we see the world generally are we living in that in breaking of the kingdom of god or is that kind of pushed off further and further i think that there's a lot for people to think about there i think that's probably the final thing we'll talk about in terms of the impacts of the schism this has been a really fun conversation before we wrap up with just a couple quick questions i do want to end on this closing question having looked at all of this and i know that you are an orthodox priest and so part of the answer to this might just be simply become orthodox but for someone living in the west that feels this tension of that the west does seem to have this decline whether they put that at the schism or at the enlightenment at the reformation that there's the sense that something's wrong and that we're looking for where it went wrong you're placing that at the schism and i think you've put a lot of good arguments together for that what what can western christians do to regain that sense of paradise is is there anything short of becoming orthodox and restoring communion there that could lead towards a more paracycle view of the world or is that really at bottom the only answer so i would you know as a as a convinced orthodox christian i would obviously emphasize the value of returning to what i understand to be the original faith of of of christianity which i define as the orthodox faith um but but no i would not say that um i've i've painted a picture the only uh uh i've create i've brought attention to a problem the only solution to which is universal conversion to orthodoxy um i i think that that obviously would have a tremendous impact but it's unlikely obviously to happen at a large level orthodoxy remains the best kept religious secret in america even though that's changing through channels like your own actually um people are learning more and more about it um i think that what is needed austin is um you know what would and and i have to say i'm an historian okay so i i said at the beginning my project is to explain where we are today by looking at the deep past going well back beyond the conventional points of reference to understand why we're dealing with our secularized post-modern anti-christian kind of thing going on in our culture today but um i'm going to have to take responsibility for understanding that culture in the last part of my forthcoming volume four age of nihilism because i'm going to be talking about it the role of universities the role of um of of movie and music producers the role of uh of politicians uh in in advancing this this anti-christian kind of agenda i will have to understand that better but i don't claim to be a kind of a culture critic someone who's really exhaustively studied our culture today and knows kind of exactly what's wrong with it and what the solutions to it are uh so but with that said i think that the the the picture that i'm painting and the problem that i'm identifying um the problem is solved as we return to traditional christianity my books for instance you know are very explicit in using the term traditional christianity for me that means orthodoxy but i can i certainly recognize that roman catholicism and protestantism also have elements of traditional christianity within them there's no question about this to me um there's no question and so um i think it's by returning to those first millennium elements of our um of our culture which we share together whether we're orthodox roman catholic or protestant i think returning to that experience of paradise which i throughout um especially volume one i locate i talk about things like government and art and stuff like that but i center it all upon and claim it springs out of like a source from the liturgical sacramental life of the church east and west divine liturgy in the east the mass and the west both of these were the um the sources for a paradise culture so i think as far as um uh today if if christians who are not orthodox um you know and have a strong conviction about the roman catholic or protestant faith that they hold i want to think in terms of like finding a solution to the problem we have today it's going to be found by returning to the roots uh their own roots which will take them back to a a an approach to uh christianity that is centered upon liturgy centered upon sacramental communion with god the experience of god's presence of of of heavenly imminence that the the kingdom of heaven has drawn near and is filling this world and that pessimism begins to dissipate insofar as we experience god's loving caring presence in this world through liturgy through common worship and through sacramental communion this is all going to help like uh correct it's the ship of christendom is healing over dangerously perhaps almost capsizing some people would say probably today it will correct itself insofar as the ballast returns to liturgy and sacramental communion with god it's been it's been thrown off keel by secular secularization um and and utopian thinking in modern times and i think the way back is to to return to that first millennium um source of our common western culture which is communion with god through liturgy in the sacraments that's really fantastic i appreciate that answer and i think a lot of my viewers will be encouraged by that and i know they will anticipate uh with with great excitement uh that fourth volume where you get into some of those things in the age of nihilism so thank you so much for the work that you've done on this project i can only imagine the amount of work that has gone into such an expansive history and so thanks for all of your work on that and thanks for coming on the channel today to discuss these things i always like to close here on the channel with what i call the final four it's just four kind of rapid fire questions uh one word one sentence answers just help people get to know the guest a little more so with that being said the first one of those is what has been the most fruitful habit or spiritual discipline in your life i would say that attending what we in my church call the resurrectional vigil on saturday evenings in preparation for the divine liturgy on sunday morning is um is that um obviously attending sunday services is is the key is this is the most important but in the ancient tradition of the church beginning in jerusalem in the fourth century there was a long series of prayers and and hymnography and gospel bible scripture readings and so forth called the resurrectional vigil it was a vigil kept all night long until the crowed on the day of the lord the first day of the week which is also the eighth day of creation taking us into the kingdom of heaven uh in the eastern church i think it's still true in western churches sunday the day of the lord in most languages not in english but in most european languages was that is the day of the resurrection of jesus christ and we rise up in joy on that day and we get ready for it by attending a service that is designed to keep us in expectation waiting using the cosmos and the darkness that comes over the world after sunset saturday evening and waiting and waiting and waiting and watching and watching it's very biblical to do this right matthew 25 behold the bridegroom comes at midnight things like that and then celebrating the day of the lord with the divine liturgy this is the wonderful thing that we do as christians certainly in the orthodox tradition and so assembling together for not a separate liturgy it's not a liturgy it's it's a preparatory series of services vespers and matins combined together to call uh to to uh to uh called the resurrectional vigil on a weekly basis to experience the joy of the resurrection fascinating i wasn't even aware of that i've learned many things today but that is one of them so thank you for that all right second question outside if i may i saw you uh you've you've attended orthodox literatures before and enjoyed it so let me recommend to you the resurrectional visual on a saturday evening it's really something beautiful all right i will have to check that out i appreciate that i'll i'll file that away and hopefully be able to make it to one second question outside the bible what has been the most impactful book on your life the idiot by dostoyevsky i got it into one sentence there didn't i there you go all right good choice all right so you're having coffee with your undergrad or early grad school self i know you've been through a decent amount of schooling so pick either one what's one piece of advice you give him for his future and as a historian i would say study what you love make your study your life don't study something that is going to be marketable i had a professor as a graduate student at a secure university who worked on my project to study the history of the orthodox church in russia before the revolution became my first book the making of holy russia he said well if you must but that's not marketable and he's probably right i didn't get the job that i the jobs i applied for at secular universities coming out of graduate school um but i don't regret it one bit do what you love take your your intellectual curiosity into what matters and and live live uh through that through those studies that's great advice all right final one is that this channel is called gospel simplicity but it's often pointed out that the topics can often be a bit on the complex side which has resulted in some people asking me will i rename the channel gospel complexity to which i answer with a resounding never but if you had to answer the question what is the gospel what would you say the gospel is the good news of course that's what it means right so the good news that god did not remain aloof in heaven looking down with contempt on our sins but became one of us joined himself to us offered to us salvation and participation in his divinity that we might be raised out of uh the despair of sin and darkness and death and uh and enjoy um life in him for all eternity and that's for every human being that's good news indeed it is well father john thank you so much for being here today once again the link uh to your books will be in the description down below if you all want to check them out but i want to thank all of you as well for being here for watching this especially if you've come all the way to this point thank you so much for your time i do not take that lightly i'll close as i always do by saying until next time go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

Views: 17,031

Keywords: fr john strickland, orthodoxy, schism, downfall of the west, religious decline, orthodox vs. catholic

Id: 1f5WfRL_lf0

Length: 78min 15sec (4695 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 05 2022