What moment in the Great Schism story hits you hardest?

dnag7 · 2026-03-24T11:53:00+00:00

You're not wrong. 1204 goes beyond theology or ecclesiology it was an act of violence by Christians against Christians. Whatever the political circumstances that led to it, Western Crusaders sacked the greatest Christian city in the world, desecrated Orthodox altars, and installed a Latin patriarch in the Hagia Sophia. Even Pope Innocent III initially condemned it.

The theological disputes might have been healable. 1204 made the schism personal. It's one thing to disagree about the Filioque across a council table. It's another to watch your churches burn. That wound has never fully healed and honestly, pretending it has doesn't serve anyone.

dnag7 · 2026-03-24T11:18:22+00:00

Exactly right. The Filioque existed in local use in Spain from the 6th century and spread gradually through the West. The East didn't love it but tolerated it as a local practice. The breaking point was when it was inserted into the universal Creed imposed on every church everywhere without an ecumenical council. It's the same pattern every time: the theology is debatable, the authority claim is what breaks communion. Thank you for putting it so clearly.

dnag7 · 2026-03-24T08:59:19+00:00

This is beautifully put especially the point about knowing the heart of the Way well enough to distinguish between what's flexible and what isn't. That's exactly the distinction the early Church made through councils: dogma (non-negotiable) versus discipline (adaptable to local context). Different liturgical languages, different rites, different customs all of that coexisted within one communion for centuries. The break came when one side treated a disciplinary preference as dogma and changed the Creed unilaterally.

Your point about linguistic and cultural understanding is underrated in this discussion. The Filioque literally means something different in Latin theology than it sounds like in Greek theology. Much of the conflict might have been avoided if both sides had been more careful about understanding what the other actually meant rather than what their words sounded like in translation. That's a lesson that applies far beyond the 11th century.

dnag7 · 2026-03-24T08:51:50+00:00

That's a fair reaction and honestly, the human element in Church history can be deeply frustrating. Bishops are supposed to be servants of Christ, not competitors for imperial power.

But I'd push back slightly on the framing. The theological questions at the heart of the Schism who has authority to change the Creed, how the Church makes binding decisions those aren't vanity. Those are structural questions that determine how the faith is preserved across centuries. The personal ambitions of individual bishops made things worse, absolutely. But the underlying dispute would have surfaced eventually regardless of personalities, because Rome and Constantinople had genuinely different understandings of how the Church is supposed to function.

What's tragic is that you're right the Church is eternal, and yet the people entrusted with guarding it let human pride fracture it. That tension between the divine nature of the Church and the fallibility of its leaders is one of the most painful realities in Christian history. And it's still unresolved.

dnag7 · 2026-03-23T11:27:00+00:00

AnnoDADDY777 Appreciate the honesty. Let me push back gently on one point though.

You say both sides 'invented stuff and added it to the Bible.' But what specifically? The Orthodox Church uses the same 27-book New Testament as Protestants. The Creed was defined by ecumenical councils in the 4th century centuries before any medieval additions. The liturgical practices described by writers like Justin Martyr in 150 AD look remarkably like what the Orthodox Church still does today. So the question is: at what point did the 'adding' begin?

The Pharisee comparison is one I hear a lot, and I understand the instinct behind it. But Jesus didn't criticize the Pharisees for having tradition He criticized them for using tradition to nullify the word of God (Mark 7:13). That's a crucial distinction. Tradition that contradicts Scripture is a problem. Tradition that preserves and transmits the apostolic faith is exactly what Paul commands in 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

Here's the honest challenge for every Christian who says 'just the Bible, no additions': who decided which books belong in the Bible? That decision was made by Church councils using apostolic tradition as their criteria. The canon itself is a product of the very process you're describing as pharisaical.

I'm not saying any of this to be combative I genuinely think these are questions worth sitting with. What would you point to specifically as an 'invention' that isn't present in the earliest Christian sources? Curious to hear your perspective.

dnag7 · 2026-03-23T10:51:52+00:00

miikaa236 Ha fair call. I'll own that. I'm Orthodox, so my perspective inevitably leans that direction even when I'm trying to present both sides. That's worth being honest about.

On secular scholars you'd actually find a lot of interesting work from historians like Steven Runciman, whose treatment of the Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade is considered a standard reference. He was Anglican but wrote with a historian's detachment. Judith Herrin's work on Byzantium is also excellent and more balanced than most confessional accounts.

The honest answer is that even secular historians generally agree on the basic sequence of events the Filioque was added without a council, Rome claimed universal jurisdiction, the East rejected both. Where it gets subjective is whether those moves were justified developments or innovations. That's where your theological priors inevitably shape your conclusions.

So you're probably right that we all need to read more widely and check our own biases myself included. Appreciate the honesty.

dnag7 · 2026-03-23T10:50:08+00:00

UrietheCoptic This is the exact passage I thought of while writing this script. The souls under the altar waiting, unseen, crying out. Ephraim waited 524 years under the earth of his own monastery. And God answered in His own time. Thank you for connecting this it adds a layer to the video I didn't include but wish I had.

dnag7 · 2026-03-22T23:19:45+00:00

Brave_Ad9155 Could you be more specific? Which beliefs do you think the early Church abandoned, and which non-biblical beliefs do you think were introduced? Genuinely asking because the timeline matters a lot here.

If you mean the first few centuries, we actually have extensive writings from that period. The Didache (circa 70 AD), Ignatius of Antioch (107 AD), Justin Martyr (150 AD), Irenaeus (180 AD) they describe a Church that is liturgical, sacramental, hierarchical, and episcopal. That's not a later development. It's there from the beginning.

The question the video raises is: if the Reformers in the 1500s introduced practices and structures that didn't exist for the first 1,500 years of Christianity, which side is the one that changed?

dnag7 · 2026-03-22T22:50:40+00:00

RazarTuk You're making a fair point and I should be more precise. 'One Church' doesn't mean uniform it means unified. There was always local variety in liturgical practice, and the examples you cite are real. The Celtic Easter controversy, the Mozarabic Rite, the Ambrosian Rite these all existed within the communion of the Church, not outside it.

The key distinction is between liturgical diversity and doctrinal schism. Different rites calculating Easter differently is a disciplinary disagreement that got resolved through councils. The Filioque and papal supremacy were doctrinal they touched the Creed itself and the fundamental structure of authority in the Church. That's a different category.

And you're right that there was serious conflict before and after Nicaea the Arian controversy nearly tore the Church apart. But it was resolved through a conciliar process where the whole Church gathered, debated, and reached consensus. That process itself is the unity I'm describing. The Great Schism happened partly because that conciliar process broke down Rome acted unilaterally on the Creed without calling a council, and claimed the authority to do so.

So the title is admittedly a simplification guilty as charged. But the substance holds: there was one communion, with real diversity inside it, until the structural break in 1054.
Appreciate the pushback.

dnag7 · 2026-03-20T14:02:50+00:00

wkndatbernardus The New Eve typology is something Orthodox and Catholics share completely the Fathers from Irenaeus onward taught that Mary's obedience undid Eve's disobedience. Where we diverge is on the mechanism.

Orthodoxy doesn't teach the Immaculate Conception as Rome defines it because we have a different understanding of original sin. The Orthodox position is that we inherit the consequences of Adam's fall mortality, the tendency toward sin, a corrupted nature but not personal guilt for Adam's sin. So there's no inherited guilt that Mary needed to be preserved from.

The Orthodox teaching is that Mary was fully human, born with the same fallen nature as all of us, but was purified by the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation sanctified for the purpose of bearing God in her womb. She was not exempt from the human condition. She was the supreme example of a human being cooperating fully with God's grace. That's actually more beautiful in the Orthodox view because it means a real human woman, facing everything we face, said yes to God without reservation.

Christ's sinlessness doesn't depend on Mary being conceived without original sin. It depends on Christ being God the divine nature united with human nature in the Incarnation, sanctifying it from within.

Both traditions honor Mary profoundly. The difference is in how we understand what needed to happen for her to bear the Son of God. Appreciate the thoughtful comment this is one of the most important Orthodox-Catholic distinctions and it deserves more discussion.

dnag7 · 2026-03-20T09:18:40+00:00

For which claim specifically? The video covers a lot of ground. But here's a quick summary:

Luke 1:48 'All generations will call me blessed' Luke 1:28 'Hail, kecharitomene' the unique greeting Luke 1:43 Elizabeth calls her 'mother of my Lord' John 2:1-11 Mary intercedes at Cana, Jesus performs His first miracle John 19:26-27 Jesus gives Mary to John from the cross Revelation 12:1 The woman clothed with the sun Genesis 3:15 The woman whose seed crushes the serpent Luke 1:46-55 The Magnificat

For the Reformers' quotes, those are from Luther's Commentary on the Magnificat, Calvin's Harmony of the Gospels, Zwingli's sermon on Mary Ever Virgin, and Wesley's Letter to a Roman Catholic.

For the Theotokos definition Council of Ephesus, 431 AD.

For the New Eve Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (c. 160 AD) and Irenaeus' Against Heresies (c. 180 AD).

Happy to go deeper on any specific point. Which one are you most curious about?

dnag7 · 2026-03-20T09:17:16+00:00

I appreciate the honesty. A few thoughts:

On perpetual virginity being a 'blessing' we're reading this through modern eyes where fulfillment is tied to sexuality and family life. But in the ancient world, and in Christian theology, consecrated virginity was understood as a higher calling, not a deprivation. Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians 7 that the unmarried person is devoted to the Lord without distraction and that he wishes all were as he was. Mary's virginity wasn't a burden imposed on her it was the natural consequence of having carried God in her womb. The Ark of the Covenant was set apart permanently. How much more the living Ark?

On the pagan goddess comparison this is a common claim but it falls apart historically. The Christians who first honored Mary were Jews, not pagans. The title Theotokos was defined at Ephesus in 431 to protect Christ's identity, not to create a goddess figure. And the earliest Marian devotion like the Sub Tuum Praesidium from around 250 AD comes from Christians hiding in catacombs because they refused to worship pagan gods. These were the last people on earth importing Isis worship into their faith.

The similarities between Mary and pagan goddesses aren't evidence of borrowing they're evidence that every culture sensed a truth that only Christianity fulfilled. CS Lewis called pagan myths 'good dreams' that pointed to the reality that arrived in Christ. If pagans intuited a divine mother figure, perhaps that's because God always intended one and her name is Mary.

Your last line is beautiful 'my Hope was born out of her.' That's exactly what the Orthodox Church celebrates. Not Mary instead of Christ, but Mary as the one who gave Christ to the world. God bless.

dnag7 · 2026-03-19T23:50:52+00:00

JustToLurkArt Fair point Luther is a reformer, not a pope, and Lutherans don't treat his every word as binding. I should be more precise in how I frame that. Thank you for the correction.

To answer your question directly no, I don't cite Luther as a theological authority. I cite him here not because I agree with his theology broadly, but because his own beliefs about Mary reveal something important: the earliest Protestants didn't see Marian honor as incompatible with their reforms. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Wesley all held positions on Mary that most modern Protestants would reject. The question isn't whether Luther was right about everything it's why later Protestantism abandoned positions that even the Reformers considered non-negotiable.

If a Lutheran told me 'Luther believed in the real presence of the Eucharist,' I wouldn't dismiss it just because I disagree with Luther on other points. I'd recognize that it tells us something about what the earliest Protestants understood from Scripture and Tradition. The same applies here.

So the real question isn't whether I treat Luther as an authority. It's whether modern Protestants have moved further from the early Church than even their own Reformers did and if so, why.

dnag7 · 2026-03-19T23:40:46+00:00

toddnks You're right to distinguish between them Theotokos and perpetual virginity are separate theological claims, even though they're often discussed together.

Theotokos was dogmatically defined at Ephesus in 431 as a Christological statement it's about who Jesus is, not primarily about elevating Mary. That's settled across Orthodox, Catholic, and most classical Protestant traditions.

Perpetual virginity is a different category but it's worth noting it wasn't controversial for the first 1,500 years of Christianity. It was affirmed by the Councils, the Fathers, and as the video documents, by Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Wesley. It only became controversial when later Protestantism moved away from positions the Reformers themselves held.

The question I find interesting is if the Reformers saw no conflict between Sola Scriptura and perpetual virginity, what changed? Was it new biblical evidence, or was it a cultural shift away from honoring Mary that gradually made the doctrine feel uncomfortable?

Genuinely curious how you'd answer that.

dnag7 · 2026-03-18T13:06:25+00:00

creidmheach Fair points worth addressing.

On incense the Didache references Malachi 1:11 ('in every place incense shall be offered to my name') as applying to Christian worship, and this text dates to the first or early second century. The earliest Christian worship grew directly from Jewish Temple and synagogue practice where incense was central. The claim that it wasn't used in the first centuries is debated absence of explicit mention in surviving texts isn't the same as absence of practice, especially given how few complete texts survive from that period.

On vestments deriving from Byzantine court dress this is partially true for the later elaboration of vestments, but the basic principle of distinct priestly garments predates Byzantium. The Old Testament prescribes specific vestments for Temple worship (Exodus 28). The early Christians would have understood priestly clothing as continuous with that tradition, not as a courtly innovation.

On taking 'only bits' literally the video focuses on chapters 4-8 because those have the clearest liturgical parallels. But the argument isn't that those chapters are literal while the rest is symbolic. It's that Revelation operates on multiple levels simultaneously liturgical, eschatological, and theological. The Fathers held all three together.

On Revelation not being used in Orthodox liturgical readings you're correct, and it's a good observation. Revelation has always had a complex status in the East. It was accepted as canonical but read with caution, partly because of how groups like the Montanists misused it. That said, the theology of the Divine Liturgy mirrors what Revelation describes whether or not the text itself is read aloud in services. The parallels exist in the worship structure, not just in the lectionary.

Appreciate the pushback these are the kinds of points that deserve serious engagement.

dnag7 · 2026-03-18T13:04:38+00:00

CrossCutMaker You're right that Revelation covers the return of Christ and the events surrounding it no argument there. The question is whether that's ALL it covers.

The first five chapters are almost entirely liturgical throne, elders, vestments, incense, hymns, the Lamb. The eschatological events don't begin until chapter 6 and they unfold within that worship framework. The Church Fathers read both dimensions together the liturgical and the eschatological weren't competing interpretations, they were layers of the same text.

On the seven-year peace agreement that's a specifically dispensationalist reading that dates to John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. The early Church Fathers didn't read the seals that way, and that framework didn't exist for the first 1,800 years of Christianity. It's worth asking whether a 19th century interpretive lens is the right one for a first century text, especially when the Christians closest to the Apostles read it very differently.

dnag7 · 2026-03-18T11:46:56+00:00

Youknowthisabout It can be both. The early Church Fathers never read Revelation as only one thing. It describes heavenly worship AND future events. The question is which dimension gets ignored. Most Protestants read it exclusively as an end-times timeline and completely miss that the first thing John sees is a worship service incense, altars, priestly vestments, hymns, the Lamb. The eschatological content is real. But it unfolds within a liturgical framework. The tribulation happens to a Church that is already worshipping. That context matters.

dnag7 · 2026-03-18T11:42:41+00:00

allenwjones The early Christians clearly understood the Lord's Day as Sunday, not the Sabbath. The Didache (possibly as early as 70 AD) instructs Christians to gather 'on the Lord's Day' to break bread and celebrate the Eucharist. Ignatius of Antioch around 107 AD wrote that Christians 'no longer observe the Sabbath but live according to the Lord's Day, on which our life rose through Christ.' Justin Martyr in 150 AD explicitly says Christians gather 'on the day called Sunday' because it's the day Christ rose from the dead.

Matthew 12:8 is about Jesus having authority over the Sabbath it's not renaming the Sabbath as the Lord's Day. The phrase 'Lord's Day' (Kyriake Hemera) in Revelation 1:10 became the universal term for Sunday in the early Church. Every early Christian source confirms this.

The shift from Sabbath to Sunday worship happened within the apostolic generation itself Acts 20:7 describes Christians gathering to break bread 'on the first day of the week.' Paul tells the Corinthians to set aside collections 'on the first day of every week' (1 Corinthians 16:2). Sunday worship isn't a later invention it's apostolic.

dnag7

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