Page 277 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

T H E L A S T E F F O R T T O WA R D U N I O N O F T H E C H U R C H E S
of hot water in the chalice, the epiclesis, and above all the
pope’s claim to universal authority. In every case, the Byzan-
tines found themselves compelled to respond to doctrines and
formulations that were foreign to their own tradition.
This was especially evident in the question of purgatory.
The Byzantine Church had always prayed for the departed, but
it had never developed the Latin doctrine of purgatorial ex-
piation grounded in the satisfaction of divine justice. Yet in the
final decree, Laetentur caeli, the substance of the Latin teach-
ing remained intact: souls were distinguished between the
saved, the damned, and those purified after death by expia-
tory punishments. Though the Byzantines succeeded in re-
moving explicit references to material fire and to purgatory as
a defined place, the doctrine itself remained essentially West-
ern and alien to Byzantine theology.
The same pattern marked the resolution of the filioque. In
the final formula, the Byzantines accepted the teaching that
the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son,” on the
interpretation that this meant the same as proceeding “through
the Son,” and that this procession is from one principle and
one spiration. Such wording was intended to calm Byzantine
fears of dual causality in the Trinity, yet it still required accep-
tance of a doctrine imposed from outside their theological
inheritance. Liturgical disputes, by contrast, were left unre-
solved in principle and treated as permissible differences of
custom.
Behind all these questions stood the decisive issue of papal
primacy. Though less publicly dramatic than the filioque, it
was the dominant matter of the council. Pope Eugenius IV
himself needed the council in order to strengthen his own
position against the conciliarist movement in the West, repre-
sented by the rival Council of Basel. Thus both emperor and
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