The Doctrinal Core II: Azymes, Purgatory, and Created Grace

Around the two great issues — the Creed and the papacy — the schism accreted a second tier of doctrinal disputes: the unleavened bread of the Latin Eucharist, the doctrine of purgatory as satisfaction by cleansing fire, and the scholastic teaching that grace is a created gift. This file states Rome’s position on each in its own terms, and the Orthodox confession as the Church’s — distinguishing throughout what the Church has actually judged from what remains theological opinion.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Azymes: The Bread of the Eucharist

Rome’s position. The Latin rite consecrates unleavened bread (azymes), on the understanding that the Lord instituted the Eucharist at a Passover meal with unleavened bread; Florence defined that the Body of Christ is truly confected in either wheat bread, leavened or unleavened, priests being bound to their own church’s custom (Laetentur Caeli, 6 July 1439, in Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1990).

The Orthodox confession and its proportion. The Orthodox Church consecrates leavened bread (artos), the universal practice of the ancient Church in East and (for most of the first millennium, on the Greek argument) also in the West, and her polemists from Leo of Ohrid and Niketas Stethatos onward read the azymes as Judaizing and as symbolically “lifeless” (the texts in Will, ed., Acta et scripta, 1861; the fullest study Smith, And Taking Bread… Cerularius and the Azyme Controversy of 1054, Paris: Beauchesne, 1978; the history in Language, Rite, and Law). Yet the Church has never dogmatized the eleventh-century polemic’s maximal claim (that azyme bread is no Eucharist at all): the sane Orthodox assessment, already voiced by Peter III of Antioch in 1054 and standard since, is that the azymes are a Latin innovation and a symptom of estrangement from the common tradition — a matter for correction in any true union — but not the heart of the schism, and that the thirteen monks of Kantara died not for a rubric but for the principle that Latin authority could not compel Greek conscience (Peter III’s letter in Will, Acta et scripta, 1861; Runciman, The Eastern Schism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955, ch. 2; Kolbaba, The Byzantine Lists: Errors of the Latins, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000, on the weighting; on Kantara, The Latin Empire and the Popular Schism).

Purgatory: Satisfaction and Cleansing Fire

Rome’s position, in its own terms. Souls who die in grace but imperfectly purified undergo after death a purification, purgatory, “cleansing pains” (poenae purgatoriae) — Florence, following the Latin theology of satisfaction, taught that such souls are cleansed after death and aided by the suffrages of the living, the Mass above all (Laetentur Caeli, 1439, in Tanner, Decrees, 1990); Trent reaffirmed the doctrine and its link to indulgences (Trent, Session 25, Decree on Purgatory, 1563); the medieval framework distinguished eternal punishment, remitted in absolution, from temporal punishment requiring satisfaction in this life or the next (the scholastic development in Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Goldhammer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, a critical history from a secular medievalist).

The Church’s confession. The Orthodox Church prays for the departed and confesses that they are aided by the Eucharist and the Church’s prayer; she has examined the Latin purgatory — a distinct intermediate state of punitive-purifying fire, within a juridical economy of satisfaction — and not received it. The question was, in fact, the first item formally debated at Ferrara in 1438, where St. Mark of Ephesus delivered the Orthodox replies: the Church knows no purgatorial fire and no third place; the imagery of fire in the Fathers is either eschatological (the river of fire of the Judgment) or figurative; the departed await the Judgment in foretaste of blessedness or anguish, and the Church’s prayer avails them — but God’s forgiveness is not a ledger of temporal penalties to be burned off (Mark of Ephesus, First and Second Orations on Purgatorial Fire, ed. L. Petit, Patrologia Orientalis 15, Paris, 1927; the debate narrated in Gill, The Council of Florence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959, ch. on Ferrara; the Orthodox doctrine at Eschatology). The full treatment, including the toll-house theologoumenon which is not the Church’s answer to purgatory but a distinct and internally debated tradition, is in St. Mark of Ephesus: Purgatory and the Last Things and the hub file Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.

The dogmatic nerve is worth exposing, because “the Orthodox reject purgatory” is often stated without it. What the Church refuses is not the thought that the departed may be purified — her own prayers ask mercy and rest for them — but the juridical anthropology beneath the Latin doctrine: sin construed primarily as debt of punishment requiring satisfaction, grace as the administered currency of that satisfaction (indulgences follow logically), and the life of the world to come mapped with a confidence the Fathers never claimed. Mark of Ephesus’ orations make precisely this argument from the apophatic reserve of the tradition (Mark of Ephesus, Orations on Purgatorial Fire, PO 15; Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed., Penguin, 1993, on the Orthodox reserve about the intermediate state).

Created Grace and the Essence–Energies Distinction

Rome’s position, in its own terms. In the scholastic tradition given classical form by Aquinas, sanctifying grace is a created gift — a habit infused into the soul’s essence, really distinct from God himself, by which the creature is elevated to the supernatural order (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 110, a. 2: grace as “a certain quality” in the soul); the light of glory by which the blessed see the divine essence is likewise created (Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus, 1336, defining the immediate vision of the divine essence by the blessed). Rome has never received the Palamite distinction of essence and energies, and its theologians historically criticized it as compromising divine simplicity — though the modern Catholic literature is far more sympathetic (the older critique and the newer reassessment surveyed in Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019; Ware, “God Hidden and Revealed: The Apophatic Way and the Essence-Energies Distinction,” Eastern Churches Review 7, 1975).

The Church’s confession. The Orthodox Church, in the hesychast councils of Constantinople (1341, 1347, 1351), whose Tomos of 1351 is received as authoritative doctrine and incorporated into the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, confesses that God is imparticipable in his essence and truly participated in his uncreated energies; that grace and the light of Tabor are uncreated — God himself in his self-giving, not a created effect standing between God and man (Tomos of the Council of Constantinople 1351, in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy; Gregory Palamas, Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts, trans. Gendle, Classics of Western Spirituality, New York: Paulist Press, 1983; Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, London: Faith Press, 1964). On this confession stands the Orthodox doctrine of theosis: real deification by participation in God’s uncreated life, not the bestowal of a created quality (see Theosis and St. Gregory Palamas). Created grace is therefore, for the Church, not a school-opinion she happens not to share but a teaching that, examined, forecloses what the Gospel promises — “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) — and she has not received it (Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957, chs. 4–5; Ware, The Orthodox Church, new ed., Penguin, 1993, in the chapter on God as Trinity).

Chronologically this dispute matured last: Palamas’ Latin-influenced opponents (Barlaam, Akindynos, Gregoras) and the fourteenth-century councils postdate 1204, and the question was not debated at Florence. But it belongs to the doctrinal core because it exposes the same fault line as the Filioque — whether God’s self-communication is truly himself or a created intermediary — and because since the sixteenth century Rome’s non-reception of Palamas has been a standing item in every serious inventory of what divides (Russell, Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism, 2019; Siecienski, The Papacy and the Orthodox, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, on the modern inventories; see What Divides and What Reunion Requires).

Weighing the Core

Per METHODOLOGY §4.1, a closing precision. These three are not of equal weight, and the Church’s own conduct shows the weighing: she anathematized no one over azymes at the level of dogma (Peter III’s proportion prevailed in the end); she rejected purgatory conciliar-representatively at Ferrara and in the repudiation of Florence; she dogmatized the uncreated character of grace in councils she receives as binding. Set beside the Filioque and the papal claims (the companion file), they complete the answer to a question often posed as if unanswerable — “what, doctrinally, actually divides?” — and Section 09 draws the consequence: a real union would require agreement in this faith, not a formula papering over it (see Filioque and Papal Primacy; What Divides and What Reunion Requires).

See Also

References

  • Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli (6 July 1439); Council of Trent, Session 25, Decree on Purgatory (1563). In Norman Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. London/Washington: Sheed & Ward/Georgetown University Press, 1990. (Rome’s definitions on azymes and purgatory.)
  • Benedict XII. Benedictus Deus (1336). (The beatific vision of the divine essence.)
  • Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 110. (Grace as created quality.)
  • Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. (The historical formation of the doctrine.)
  • Mark of Ephesus. Orations on Purgatorial Fire. Ed. Louis Petit, in Documents relatifs au Concile de Florence: la question du Purgatoire à Ferrare, Patrologia Orientalis 15. Paris, 1927. (The Orthodox replies at Ferrara.)
  • Gill, Joseph. The Council of Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959. (The Ferrara purgatory debate; a Catholic historian cited for the record, not the verdict.)
  • Will, Cornelius, ed. Acta et scripta. Leipzig/Marburg: Elwert, 1861; Smith, Mahlon H., III. And Taking Bread. Paris: Beauchesne, 1978; Kolbaba, Tia M. The Byzantine Lists. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. (The azyme controversy and its weighting.)
  • Runciman, Steven. The Eastern Schism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Ch. 2. (Peter III’s proportion.)
  • Tomos of the Council of Constantinople (1351), received in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy; Gregory Palamas, Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts, trans. Nicholas Gendle. New York: Paulist Press, 1983. (The dogma of the uncreated energies.)
  • Meyendorff, John. A Study of Gregory Palamas. London: Faith Press, 1964. (The hesychast councils.)
  • Russell, Norman. Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. (The Catholic critique and reassessment of Palamism.)
  • Ware, Kallistos. “God Hidden and Revealed: The Apophatic Way and the Essence-Energies Distinction.” Eastern Churches Review 7 (1975): 125–136. (The distinction stated for a Western audience.)
  • Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957. Chs. 4–5. (Uncreated grace and theosis.)
  • Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (Synthesis; the Orthodox reserve on the intermediate state.)
  • Scripture: John 15:26; 2 Peter 1:4.