by Fr. John Romanides

Our father in the faith, John Romanides (1927 – 2001), was a prominent 20th century Orthodox Christian priest, theologian, and writer. He argued for the existence of a “national, cultural and even linguistic unity between Eastern and Western Romans” that existed until the intrusion and takeover of the West Romans (the Roman Catholics) by the Franks and or Goths (German tribes). This article originally appeared in “The Orthodox Activist.”

THE FILIOQUE:

Historical Background

The Franks deliberately provoked doctrinal differences, between the East Romans, (the Orthodox) and the West Romans, (the Roman Catholics) in order to break the national and ecclesiastical unity of the original Roman nation. Because of this deliberate policy, the filioque question took on irreparable dimensions. However, the identity of the West Romans and of the East Romans as one indivisible nation, faithful to the Roman Christian faith promulgated at the Ecumenical Synods held in the Eastern part of the Empire, is completely lost to the historians of Germanic background, since the East Romans are consistently called “Greeks” and “Byzantines.”

Thus, the historical myth has been created that the West Roman Fathers of the Church, the Franks, Lombards, Burgundians, Normans, etc., are one continuous and historically unbroken “Latin” Christendom, clearly distinguished and different from a mythical “Greek” Christendom. The frame of reference accepted without reservation by Western historians for so many centuries has been “the Greek East and the Latin West.” Read more