In one of my classes, I recently listened to a debate over this which basically consisted of “this one’s older 'cause I say so.” Not coincidentally, it was an Orthodox and a Catholic arguing.
So which one did come first? And did the Orthodox Church split from the Catholic, or vice versa?
Neither is older. Both branches arose from the early churches of the first century AD. The permanent split arose in 1054, in large part over the attempt by the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) to assert supreme authority over the entire Christian chuch, which the eastern churches resisted.
This site presents the history from a Protestant perspective, which is likely to be more objective, as well as from Catholic and Orthodox perspectives, which naturally are more biased.
It was explained to me, that after the council of Nicea (when people were using the Apostle creed) it was called the holy catholic church, then in a dispute over the Trinity in1054,the Orthodox then split,even though they still recite the creed as the creed states,they do not call themselved Catholic.
Monavis
You’d have a hard time convincing the Holy Orthodox Greek Catholic Church (AKA “the Greek Orthodox Church”) that they don’t call themselves Catholic.
Bottom line on this is that both churches consider that prior to the split there were five patriarchs leading local dioceses headed by bishops united in collegial leadership of the church, with the one in Rome being first in honor and the one to which disputes on theology, polity, and ethics were often referred. There were reasons behind that practice.
After the fall of Rome, the Patriarch of the West, at Rome, concentrated a great deal of power and decisionmaking over the national churches owing allegiance to him. The national churches of the East retained a great deal more autonomy.
It’s a really bad case of “it all depends on how you weigh the facts” but the really good answer is “both and neither are right.” Each preserves half the modus operandi of the pre-1054 church.
Ironically, we are theologically very, very close overall. So there is, at least, hope for reunification one day.
There is a slight difference in how the Catholics and the Orthodox recite the Nicene Creed.
In the section that deals with the Holy Spirit, Catholics, and many Protestants state "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son…" The Orthodox omit the italicized part. This is know as the “Filioque clause” and derives from a difference in belief regarding the nature of the Trinity.
The Creed was used for many centuries, then the Orthodox and Catholic church split until then it was recited by both factions, so for about 700 years it was recited as the Holy Catholic church as the word Catholic means universal.
Monavis
Yes, monavis, we’ve already established that both churches refer to the Holy Catholic Church when reciting the creed. The difference in how the groups recite the Creed is in a different part, namely the filioque clause.
As I understand it, the filioque dispute is mostly moot.
It is for the Catholics ('cause we imposed it with some secular political interference and it was never a major issue once the politicians died). There are some Orthodox groups that consider it a dumb mistake that they are not willing to shed or spill blood over. There are several Orthodox groups who consider it a really serious issue. (How many of them are more incensed by the theology and how many are angrier over the political history, I am not sure.)
When John Paull II got off the plane in Greece and asked for forgiveness, it lessened some of the hostility among the Orthodox, but you may have to poll them, church by church, to discover how “moot” the point remains.
I’ve always been told that its ROMAN Catholic vs. OTHODOX Catholic vs. BYZANTINE Catholic, etc… They are ALL Catholic, just not 100% on the same page.
It’s like the evolution claims… NOT that humans evolved from apes, but that both evolved from a the same source ancestry.
It’s not moot at all. The filioque is still considered heresy by Orthodoxy as a whole, despite what some various nonbinding ecumenical discussions that nobody cares about have come out with, and Catholic converts to Orthodoxy are required to specifically state they reject the filioque doctrine before they can be made catechumens.
Close but not quite on the mark.
The Eastern Orthodox Church as an overarching communion is made up of twenty-odd autocephalous churches mostly divided up on national lines. I.e., people speaking Bulgarian and living in Bulgaria attend the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in their home town, which has a Bulgarian bishop under a Bulgarian patriarch or metropolitan, etc. Many though not all of them include “Catholic” in their official names. In an earlier post here I mentioned the Holy Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, the official name of the organization better known in English as the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Catholic Church as an overarching communion likewise has some oddness. Probably 90% of the church belongs to the “Latin Rite” (AKA “Roman Rite”, whence
“Roman Catholic”), the one most Westerners are familiar with, with celibate priests, Mass in Latin up until the 1960s, etc. However, there are 21 other “churches” in about ten other “rites” (the technical English terms for them, not the pejorative quote usage) which are either Eastern churches that preserved allegiance to the Pope or formerly Orthodox groups which split from Orthodoxy and reunited to Catholicism at one time or another (details vary on this from group to group). The Melkites and Maronites of Syria and Lebanon are examples, as is the Byzantine Rite. One of the smallest and oldest is the Italo-Albanian group, always Catholics with allegiance to the Pope, comprising a small community of Illyrians and Albanians living in Italy’s “heel” and about a half dozen American parishes.
To further complicate matters, there are five big national churches which refused to subscribe to the Council of Chalcedon’s definition of the two natures in Christ, and maintain a separate existence in communion with each other but not with Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. Usually collectively called the Oriental Orthodox, they include the Coptic Church in Egypt, the Ethiopian Church (formerly called Coptic and now preferring something like Tewodrite), the Syrian Orthodox Church (AKA Jacobites, and to be distinguished from the Antiochian Orthodox Church, part of Eastern Orthodoxy), the Armenian Gregorian Church, and one of the several competing parts of the Mar Thoma Churches of Kerala, India.
and in other news, about 20 years ago the Anglican Church of Canada dropped the “filioque” from the creed in the new Book of Alternative Services. It was still in the Creed in the Book of Common Prayer - I don’t know if the Church updated that as well.
For more info on the filioque issue than one might believe possible, see this: the filioque: a church-dividing issue? an agreed statement of the north american orthodox-catholic theological consultation.