Opening Address at Florence

Most holy Pope Eugene, and you most holy Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, and all the venerable bishops and priests gathered here at the Council of Florence in the year of our Lord 1439: it is given to us who are assembled in this place to address one of the most urgent questions in the life of Christendom. For nearly four centuries the Churches of East and West have been separated by a rupture that has cost both parties dearly: the West has lacked the perspective of the East, and the East has lacked the full inheritance of the West, and both have continued to speak of one Church while living as two. This Council has been convened in the hope that the separation can be healed. I say at the outset that I share this hope, and that I have come to Florence in good faith, genuinely desiring the unity of the Church. But genuine unity must be built on truth, and a union that suppresses truth to achieve agreement is not unity but the appearance of unity -- and an appearance that will collapse, as the union of Lyons collapsed, as soon as the political pressure that sustains it is removed.

We of the East come to this Council in the same spirit in which our Fathers came to the Seven Ecumenical Councils: not to capitulate to anyone's demands, not to trade theological convictions for political advantages, but to seek the truth together in the Holy Spirit. If the Latin theologians can demonstrate from the Holy Scriptures and the testimony of the holy Fathers, East and West, that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son as from a principle is an ancient and universal teaching of the Church, we will accept it with gladness and give thanks to God who has illumined us. If we can demonstrate that this teaching is an innovation departing from the common tradition, we ask that the Latin Church accept this demonstration and remove the addition from the Symbol of Faith. Let the Scriptures judge; let the holy Fathers judge; let the Seven Ecumenical Councils, in whose authority both East and West believe, judge. We are all under their authority, and it is to their witness that we appeal.

The basis of reunion must be the faith of the Seven Ecumenical Councils -- neither more nor less. The Seven Councils represent the period of the undivided Church, when East and West were one and when the decisions of general councils were received by all as binding expressions of the faith of the Apostles. Since the schism, both East and West have continued their theological development, and these developments have diverged. To demand that reunion include the acceptance of post-schism theological developments by either side is to set a standard that cannot be met without one side simply surrendering to the other -- which would not be a reunion of the Church but an absorption of one church by another. The way of genuine reunion is to return together to the common ground of the undivided Church.

I acknowledge the primacy of honor traditionally accorded to the Bishop of Rome among the five ancient patriarchates. The canons of the Ecumenical Councils confirm this primacy; the Fathers of the East have acknowledged it. In the undivided Church, Rome held the first place among equals, spoke with a voice of special authority on matters of faith, and served as a court of appeal in cases involving other sees. This primacy is real and we do not dispute it. What we dispute is the claim, developed in the West since the schism, that the primacy of honor implies a universal jurisdiction by divine right -- that the Pope holds, by institution of Christ Himself, supreme governance over all bishops and all churches of the world, and that his definitions of doctrine bind the universal Church even without the consent of a general council. This claim is not confirmed by the ancient canons; it is a post-schism development; and we cannot accept it as a condition of reunion.

Let me now turn to the central theological dispute, which is the procession of the Holy Spirit. I will state the Eastern position as clearly and precisely as I can, not to win an argument but to make the truth plain, because only when the truth is plain can genuine agreement -- as opposed to diplomatic formula -- be possible. The Eastern Church holds: the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father alone, as the eternal Source and Cause within the Trinity. The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son in the sense that the Spirit is consubstantial with the Son, is sent by the Son in time, and rests upon the Son; but the Son is not the eternal Cause of the Spirit's hypostatic existence. The Father alone is that Cause. This is the explicit teaching of the Scriptures; it is the teaching of the Greek Fathers without exception; and it is embodied in the Symbol of Faith as defined by the Ecumenical Councils, which do not contain the phrase "and from the Son."