Prodigal Brother II

Constantinople was brutally sacked and looted.

Churches—like the famous Hagia Sofia—were ransacked. Famous relics were stolen. Icons were taken or destroyed.

But this was not the Ottoman takeover of the city in the 15th century—it was the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, carried out by none other than the Western crusaders.

To understand how the West could backstab the East in such brutal fashion, we must, of course, rewind.

But not too far back.

Pope Urban II called the first crusade in 1095 to defend the East from Muslim expansionists and reclaim the Holy Land. Although only a few decades had passed since the schism, both sides were willing to momentarily discard their disagreements and unite as brothers in Christ.

Skipping to the fourth crusade, the plan was to invade Egypt before re-capturing Jerusalem. To do so, the crusaders needed the help of the Venetians, asking them to build one of their notoriously formidable fleets.

As the crusaders showed up to Venice, a problem arose: less than half of the expected crusaders showed up, so they simply didn’t have enough to pay the Venetians.

So Venice proposed an offer: if the crusaders helped sack a nearby city called Zara, their debt would be forgiven.

The crusaders were conflicted; on one hand, the solution to their problem lay right in front of them, but on the other hand, they were hesitant to sack a city under the rule of the Catholic Hungarian king.

The Pope was not so conflicted.

He immediately sent a letter to the crusaders to not sack Zara under any circumstances. Unfortunately, the letter was either not received in time or simply ignored, and the crusaders attacked the city.

The crusaders now came across a new offer: Alexios IV, son of the recently deposed emperor Isaac II, promised them naval support, troops, Eastern submission to papal authority, and enough money to cover their debts in exchange for helping his father re-take the throne from his uncle Alexios III.

It was a no-brainer.

The crusaders easily helped restore Isaac II and Alexios IV back in to power and were patiently waiting for their reward. However, two immediate problems arose: Alexios IV was having a hard time raising the capital and the Byzantine population detested Alexios IV, viewing him as a Latin puppet.

After hostility towards the crusaders, several riots, and anti-Latin massacres, a coup deposed Alexios IV, and Alexios V (not a direct descendant) took power.

The new ruler showed no sympathy towards the crusaders and established power through capitalizing on the anti-Latin sentiment growing in the empire. Therefore, it was no surprise when Alexios V refused to pay what was allegedly owed to them.

With their former ally dead and their pockets empty, they unfortunately took matters their own hands: they would take what they believed to be rightfully theirs by force. Motivated by the combination of anger, vengeance, and money, the crusaders looted the city for three straight days.

The city would never recover.

The Pope quickly condemned the attack, but by then it was too late and the damage was irreversible.

Although this attack was utterly unjustifiable, many crusaders had in mind another event often overlooked in history: the Sack of the Latins.

Just a few decades earlier in 1180s, Constantinople had a decently sized population of Westerners, with most of them being Italian merchants from Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. After gaining special trading privileges from previous emperors, they held a near monopoly on shipping and trade, which did not go over well with the local Byzantines.

Andronikos I Komnenos seized power in 1182 and presented himself as the defender of the Greek people, vowing to rid the empire of this foreign economic influence and bring power back to the people.

As a result, mob violence erupted, and Latin men, women, and children were brutally slaughtered in the streets. Several accounts describe priests murdered at the altar, Western churches desecrated, nuns violated, and homes and businesses burned to the ground.

While the precise death count is unknown, estimates suggest that thousands were killed in these attacks, and many of the survivors were sold as slaves to the Muslim Turks.

So although the attack on Constantinople was not justified given Christianity’s prohibition on revenge, it’s fair to say that the Latin massacres undeniably played a role in the decision.

Both of these tragic attacks made a potential reunification even more unlikely.

Fast forward to today and not much has changed. Despite the overwhelming proportion of agreed upon doctrines, the hostility still remains and is instead expressed through YouTube debates and Twitter exchanges.

But there is one thing that’s changing: the Orthodox Church is slowly getting some Westerners to join their church, mainly through Protestant converts.

The idea of Jason from Indiana or Brad from Florida joining the Eastern Orthodox church was likely unimaginable just a few decades ago. But thanks to the internet, it has become a growing reality—although on a small scale.

Both the Orthodox and Catholic Church have been utilizing the capabilities of social media to their advantage in the last five years or so and have been going into overdrive to compete for a growing number of Protestants that are realizing that there could be more to Christianity than the “solas.”

Although Catholics have the cultural upper hand in America given the Western ties and numbers advantage, Orthodoxy has been ramping up its online presence, spearheaded by arguably the best debater on the internet, Jay Dyer.

While the Catholic side does not boast of anyone with the debating prowess of Dyer, they have a much deeper and diverse lineup, ranging from the establishment “Catholic Inc.” voices like Trent Horn and Jimmy Akin, to the “based trads” like Tim Gordon and Taylor Marshall, to Thomists like Nicholas Cavazos and Christian B. Wagner.

In addition to these more established players, the Catholic influencer space has been adding many more small players as well, due to a compounding effect. More specifically, the cycle goes something like this: Catholic apologists explains why Protestantism is false; current Protestant spends months or even years undertaking a rigorous due diligence process; they eventually convert and have a very deep understanding of Catholicism and Church history after said diligence process, and thus can start their own YouTube channel on why they became Catholic and make the transition to being an apologist with little difficulty.

I’ve already discussed why apostolic Christianity has become more appealing to modern Christians in this brutally secular world, with arguably the most important reason being the longing for a structured institution representing the objective truth in a world that claims truth is in the eyes of the beholder. Another important reason is the realization for many Protestants that the beliefs of Christianity that was sold to them is vastly different than the ones held by the earliest Christians.

In addition to these reasons, an interesting thought experiment reveals that it is actually logical to be Catholic or Orthodox rather than Protestant.

To understand the thought experiment, you must be familiar with the famous Pascal’s wager. The wager goes something like this: if you choose to believe in God and He exists, then you’ve won everything, but if He doesn’t exist, then you’ve lost nothing. On the flip side, if you choose not to believe in God and He does not exist, you’ve gained nothing, but if He does exist, you’ve lost everything.

To be clear, Pascal’s wager is not a proof for the existence of God or to convince people to believe in God based on a gamble but rather a representation that belief in God is undeniably rational, contrary to atheists’ belief that it’s irrational. More importantly, Pascal’s goal was to provide a gateway for unbelievers to at least be open to the rationality of belief in God.

With this in mind, the “Protestant Wager,” as it’s dubbed by Catholic apologist Brian Holdsworth, is very similar. For simplicity’s sake, the Catholic Church, and not the Orthodox Church, will be used in the example.

The Catholic Church states that the pathway to salvation is through participation in the Church, with the sacraments of baptism, the Eucharist, and reconciliation being necessities. Most Protestants, on the other hand, would likely agree that having genuine faith in Christ is satisfactory, according to sola fide.

Asking whether Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses count will likely lead many to add the qualifier of worshipping the Trinity; but for simplicity’s sake, let’s pretend like it’s simply faith in Christ.

If that’s the case, if you’re Catholic and Catholicism is true, then you’ve gained everything (if you persevere until the end). If Protestantism is true, but you’ve still put genuine faith in Christ, then you’ve also gained everything. Contrarily, if you’re Protestant and Protestantism is true, then you’ve again gained everything. But if Catholicism is true, then you’ve put your salvation in jeopardy.

Similar to Pascal’s wager, this is not intended as a proof for Catholicism being true but rather serving as a gateway for those skeptical about Catholicism to further inquire about it.

Now some Protestants may push back and assert it is not simply faith alone in Christ that saves, but rather the belief of faith alone is what grants salvation.

In other words, one needs to believe in the tenet of sola fide rather than having sola fide.

But by Protestant standards, this fails because the idea that one must believe in the tenet of sola fide to gain salvation is not found in scripture.

With that being said, as Catholicism and Orthodoxy become more popular in America, one question comes to mind: how likely is reunification between the East and West?

On one hand, reunion seems relatively plausible over the next century or even handful of decades. After all, the Eastern Catholic Churches were once Orthodox churches that submitted to papism and re-entered into communion with Rome. While maintaining many eastern customs, they affirm the universal primacy and jurisdiction of the Pope and the truth of the Filioque.

Most importantly, the overlap of beliefs is very wide: the emphasis on the role of the Church and Sacred Tradition, apostolic succession, necessity of sacraments, faith and works, veneration of saints and Mary, and more. Also, the differences in disciplines like the use of leavened and unleavened bread plus married and non-married priests are technically not a part of the deposit of faith and can be changed, so there could be room for either side to compromise there.

Even the Filioque really isn’t as controversial as Catholic and Orthodox apologists make it seem.

The Orthodox Church believes that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and through the Son, coming extremely close to the Filioque version the West proclaims. Like mentioned in Prodigal Brother I, the Filioque controversy is more about the method in which the creed was changed rather than the actual difference in creed itself.

Therefore, it mainly comes down to the authority of the papacy. The Catholic Church will not concede the infallibility of the Pope when speaking ex cathedra any time soon, so realistically it’s up to the Orthodox Church to somehow accept that they’ve been wrong about papal jurisdiction for the past 1000 years. This perfectly leads to the next difficulty in question: someone will have to admit they were wrong—and if there’s one thing we know about humans—especially men—is that one’s pride is very hard to swallow.

Another thing that needs to be said is that there seems to be more contempt from Orthodox Christians to Catholics than vice versa. Yes, I’m not exactly impartial and the selection bias of using trends noticed on the internet is not ideal, but based on observational data, it’s extremely rare for Catholics—whether that’s normal lay people, online apologists, or Church leaders and clerics—to attack for Orthodoxy the same way the “orthobros” come for Catholicism. It is relatively common to see ad hominem attacks being flung at Catholics, whereas Catholics simply have an attitude of “your theology is incorrect but you can fix it by submitting to Rome.”

It seems to be a big brother-little brother phenomenon in which after a fight occurs, the little brother is more likely to be indignant and hostile towards the older brother, while the older brother is more likely to seek peace and attempt to bring back the familial unity given the higher level of maturity.

Historically speaking, it seemed as if the little brother was going to return home on several occasions. At the Council of Lyons II (1274) and Florence (1439), the East and West did their best to reunify and came very close to doing so.

In both cases, essentially the same phenomenon occurred: although the leaders of either the Church or the empire tried to force reunification from the top-down through accepting the Filioque and papal supremacy, the masses refused to oblige. The grassroots combination of the clergy and laymen simply would not acquiesce.

Applying this to today, a similar problem stands in the way of reunification. The possibility of the Pope and the patriarch of Constantinople agreeing to put the past disagreements aside is very possible.

What is much less likely is the idea of Jay Dyer, Andrew Wilson, the rest of the American orthobros, and most importantly, the entire eastern half of Europe to accept the demands of the patriarch is very unlikely to say the least.

But what is most important is to remember that nothing is impossible for Christ.

Christ’s disciples notoriously believed that the wealthy could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven because to them, fitting a camel through the eye of a needle was impossible.

If Christ has the ability to do this, in addition to raising Himself from the dead, I’m sure He could find a way to reunite the two sides and bring the prodigal brother back home where he belongs.

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Thanks for reading and until next time.

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