Adventures in Rome

And the wild and wooly world of ecumenism

Over a year ago my friend Paul Gavrilyuk invited me to Rome to participate in a a conference around the 1700-year anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Paul holds the Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas. We’ve known each other since our seminary days (so, a long time!). We both went through the Graduate Program in Religious Studies at SMU, and we worked together in the Canonical Theism group Billy Abraham established while we were students that program.

Paul Gavrilyuk

It’s been a joy to watch Paul rise to prominence in his field. Today he is the Founder and President of IOTA, (the International Orthodox Theological Association). IOTA describes itself as “a community of scholars and professionals dedicated to the worldwide exchange of knowledge within the context of the Orthodox tradition.” This year’s IOTA conference in Rome was a joint meeting with Roman Catholics, with additional representation by churches of the Reformation (Anglican, Lutheran, and even a few humble Methodists). The topic was Christian unity through the Nicene Creed.

This was a new icon of the Council of Nicaea created for the conference.

The idea of going to Rome wasn’t half bad. The idea of participating in dialogue with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians around the Nicene Creed was irresistible. The centrality of the Nicene Creed has long been a passion of mine. Once I heard of the topic, I had to go. My friend and colleague Justus Hunter accompanied me on the trip. He was my guide to all things Roman Catholic in Rome and a boon companion to boot.

Rome is pretty amazing. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting the Catacomb of Priscilla. The story of Christians meeting in catacombs is just that—a story. The catacombs were located well outside of the city. They would have been dark and smelled like dead bodies. They weren’t a place where the living would spend a considerable amount of time. Nevertheless, many Christians were buried in the catacombs, and thus they provide us with some of the earliest Christian art. Below is the earliest existing image of the Virgin and Jesus. On the left is the prophet Balaam pointing to a star, a reference to Numbers 24:17.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Paul was kind enough to invite me to chair a session and deliver an “IOTA talk,” which is kind of like a TED Talk. My topic was the Nicene Creed as an instrument of unity among Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants. Because of the format, I had to memorize the talk. I realized in this process that I am not good at memorizing scripts. When the talk was over I felt as if I’d climbed Mt. Everest. So much for my acting career. Once the talk comes out, I’ll post it on this site.

It was never on my bingo card to become involved in ecumenical dialogue. My own work in recent years has focused on the particularity of my own tradition of Methodism. In other words, I’ve been focused on helping Methodists to reclaim a distinctive identity within the larger body of Christ. If we have no defining features, no particular contribution, then what reason is there for Methodist bodies to exist? We should all go be Baptists or Episcopalians or Pentecostals, traditions that do have a more distinctive character. Nevertheless, I do think Methodism, properly understood, has some important defining features. Kevin Watson and I are nearing completion of a book on this very topic.

The truth is, for most of my career ecumenism was never interesting to me. I came of age in the wake of an ecumenical movement that was largely disinterested in the particularities of different traditions. This was the ecumenism around Vatican II, the ecumenism of the World Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches. Christians could unite around social action and matters of justice, and we didn’t need to worry very much about the specificity of our beliefs. It was a way of sanding the rough edges off of all the different Christian traditions. Hence Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Barron has referred to the faith of his upbringing as “beige Catholicism.” Beige Methodism is no better.

That approach leaves me as flat as a pancake. I like rough edges, and I don’t like beige. More than that, however, without some specific unity of doctrine, our “unity” is superficial. Throughout the Old Testament, God placed moral obligations upon Israel through the law and prophets. Israel was not to live like other nations. It was a set-apart people. And yet prior to these moral imperatives was another imperative: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God: the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4). Commitment to this one God among all the other gods of the ancient Near East was Israel’s foremost obligation. The law and the prophets derived their authority from the one true God.

Likewise, Christians have moral obligations. The church is also a set-apart people. We are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession” (1 Pet 2:9). That means we don’t live like everyone else. In a fallen world, to be holy is necessary to be different. Yet the holiness of the church is derivative of her particular God. Like the early Christians, we must identify this God among a world full of gods. From early on, Christians identified God and described his saving work through rules of faith, which gave rise to the creedal tradition. Among the church’s creeds, the Nicene Creed stands preeminent.

An ecumenism that takes the Nicene Creed as central, then, has a great deal of promise. In the last few years, I’ve been invited into a few different groups for ecumenical dialogue, particularly with Roman Catholics. It has been my unexpected pleasure to participate in these conversations.

The IOTA conference was fascinating. It was interesting to listen into conversations among Christians of other traditions as they wrestled with questions of Christian unity. One sticking point for Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians is the addition of filioque (“and the Son”) to the Latin version of the Nicene Creed in the Western Churches. In the Eastern Churches, the creed affirms that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. In the Western Churches, we confess that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Latin: filioque). The term filioque is not original to the creed but represents a doctrinal development in the Western tradition. The legitimacy of that development is contested.

Another matter of disagreement is the date of the celebration of Easter. Western and Eastern Christians celebrate Easter at different times.

Both of these matters, while significant, might be surmountable. Another issue, however, seems more difficult to overcome: the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. The Roman Catholics aren’t going to give this up. Eastern Orthodox Churches are not going to recognize it. While there can be important strides toward greater unity between Eastern and Western Christians, there are limits on what we might realistically expect.

Still another complicating factor is that Eastern Orthodoxy is a diverse set of churches, generally specific to national and ethnic communities. For example, there are Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, and Coptic Orthodox Christians. They are in some ways connected to one another, but in other ways they are independent. Exactly how these churches relate to one another is complicated. They are autocephalous, meaning “self-governing,” though they relate to one another through the Ecumenical Patriarch. He is considered “first among equals,” though the power of governance remains within the different churches. I won’t attempt to explain more about this because I don’t understand it well enough to do so.

These churches, moreover, are not going to come under the authority of a single bishop or governing body. While many Americans are resistant to the idea of Christian nationalism, in Orthodoxy faith and nation/ethnicity are often closely connected. As an example, consider the religious aspects of the Russia/Ukraine conflict. The Russian Patriarch Kirill has provided a theological rationale for and ecclesiastical endorsement of the war. Even in the United States, if you go to, say, a Greek Orthodox church, most of the people there will be Greek. This is simply a characteristic of many Orthodox churches. I don’t write any of this as a critique of Orthodoxy, just a set of observations. (It isn’t my normal practice to criticize traditions other than my own.)

I was also interested to learn about the Oriental Orthodox traditions, which include the Ethiopian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, and Syrian Orthodox Churches, among others. The Oriental Orthodox represent a very ancient Christian tradition. [Warning: the rest of this paragraph is extremely nerdy. Proceed at your own risk.] Like the other participants at the conference, they affirm the Nicene Creed. The Definition of Chalcedon is another matter. They never assented to the decisions of Chalcedon, and they developed their own tradition alongside it. It’s not so much that they reject Chalcedon, but that Chalcedon is a non-factor. They are not anti-Chalcedonian, but a-Chalcedonian. Those churches that assented to the Chalcedonian Definition have often labeled those who do not monophysites, in distinction from dyophysities. A monophysite holds that Christ has only one nature. A dyophysite affirms the two distinct but inseparable natures of Christ (divine and human). Oriental Orthodox Christians, however, do not accept the label of monophysite. Rather, they describe themselves as miaphysites. The distinctions between monophysites and miaphysites get pretty technical, but they are important. Basically, monophysites could hold that Christ has one nature, which is a kind of divine/human hybrid. Miaphysites hold that Christ has one nature that is simultaneously both divine and human. They trace this teaching back to Cyril of Alexandria. I can’t say that I have a very firm grasp on miaphysite Christology, so I’m going to stop writing about it now. (If anyone reading this is an expert on miaphysite Christology, please correct me where I’ve gone wrong.)

Adding to the list of things I never thought I would do, our group was granted a private audience with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. He came across as a very humble and kind man. Even though we Protestants do not regard him in the same way Roman Catholics do, we can pray for him to lead with faithfulness, wisdom, and integrity. After all, he is the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Christians. That’s no small responsibility.

After the conference, I joined IOTA as an affiliate member. Even though I’m not a member of an Orthodox church, I’m nevertheless interested in what’s happening in these traditions and want to stay involved in the conversations to the extent that is appropriate. If you have any interest in joining, you can do so here.

I’ll conclude with a few hot takes:

• Don’t believe the people who tell you the pizza in Rome isn’t good. It’s amazing.

• The Orthodox have really cool vestments.

• Italian Roman Catholics know how to hold a reception.

• The pope’s demeanor made an impression on me. Christian leadership should be humble leadership. If the leader of over 1 billion Christians can walk with such humility, perhaps the rest of us can, too.

• Rome is hot in the summer.

• I think God is guiding me to participate more fully in ecumenical conversations. If that’s the case, let’s go.

• I respect and honor both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, but neither is my tradition. I’m a Methodist. This is where God has placed me. It’s my ecclesiastical family. Does it give me headaches sometimes? You bet it does. As I said, it’s family.