HERE'S A LETTER ON THIS THEME:

The following addresses comments made by a priest of the Church who has been one of the Orthodox representatives in talks with the Latins:

     It is difficult to take issue with a widely respected and experienced priest of the holy Church. But if it can be done with respect and without offence—and without wishing to take exception to anything that is "part of an enduring relationship based on charity, mutual understanding, and spirituality"—I would nevertheless like to bring the focus back to belief. I would agree with St. Athanasios of Alexandria that everything depends on what we believe!
Nothing can be said against love, which is wonderful and to be encouraged, as also is rising above the wrongs of the past. But love cannot make true what is not true. The East-West split is much less due to surficial anathemas (which can be dated to 1054 AD or any other date) than to two things that put the Latins in a different thought world world—one lacking continuity with the Greek-language Biblical protoparadigm of Christianity:

     i. Six or seven centuries of Dark Ages, during which continuity was lost with the Greek-language thought world, with the Orthodox protoparadigm and phronema, and with a great deal else--at a time when Augustine's vastly different thought world constituted what little thought existed in the West.
    ii. The existing hiatus was made cognitively irremediable by the invention of new thought worlds derived from Cordovan (Muslim-Jewish Arab-language) studies of pre-Christian Greek scholarship when they became available in third-hand Latin translations.

     Why not admit that these discontinuities were the REAL CAUSES of the split? Why is ii so very important? The reason is that agreement over words is not agreeing on what our paradigms force agreed-on words and formulas to mean:
     Take GRACE, which all agree is an undeserved free gift. The Latins' Sanctifying Grace is a created, non-energetic habitual form of the soul; as such, it is not remotely reconcilable with uncreated divine Energy. Thomas Aquinas's conceptual-intentional Union with the (ontologically imparticipable) divine Essence is anything but an ontological Union with the uncreated Energies. (The convenantal-virtual Union of believers with Christ in the Reformation paradigm and the virtual righteousness of Protestant Justification is even more remote from us.) Orthodox ontological soteriology is anything but reconcilable with juridical satisfaction, atonement, redemption, justification, legal adoption, sanctification, etc. We don't believe that God cannot forgive without exacting a just punishment (the basis of juridical soteriology, of purgatory, etc.); we don't believe that God would wish to punish newborns for the sins of Adam that He Himself has supposedly laid on them!
     Since Western views cannot (humanly speaking) be reconciled in any honest cognitive way with what is derived from the original Eastern protoparadigm that the West for all practical purposes completely lost contact with, agreeing over a list of our differences is a loser if that is where one begins--and all interfaith efforts I have come across do begin with a list that can be added to or subtracted from without regard to whether systematic incoherences result or not. All too many projects begin with polity (ecclesiastical government)--a surficial matter that cannot reconcile irreconcilable beliefs--something that polity and all other praxis depends on. Confusing moral qualities like guilt with their supposed physical transmission ("by natural generation, as it is delicately put) is an indefensible category mistake.
     So where should one begin? One should begin at the beginning, i.e. with the thought worlds or paradigms that predetermine and filter what our thoughts and words can mean and may not mean. I don't see how either Western thought world (both of which are static and juridically oriented) can be reconciled with the energy-ontology of the Orthodox thought world. There is (I suggest) no other meaningful place to begin. We cannot study Copernicus in terms of the outlooks of Ptolemy or Newton or Einstein, nor any of them in terms of Copernicus' conceptual world--even though we are talking about the same cosmos and more or less the same heavenly constellations. But, alas, this is what interfaith discussions (at least those I am familiar with) have been doing. No other discipline would countenance that, I believe.
     Wouldn't it be better to leave off discussions of "blame" and how the Church is governed, who is valid (a dýnamis [or potential], not an enéryeia), and so on . . . and just discuss what determines WHY our interpretations of the same Bible differ so radically? In fact, the translations themselves differ radically from the Greek-language thought world. Consider how the Vulgate mistranslated LOGOS as a verbum "Word"; cf. the 27 energy words in the Epistles rendered so inadequately that Grace and works are hardly reconcilable; consider how the Assimilation (a -sis deverbative energization noun in Greek: ‘omoíosis) is undistinguishable from the resulting "likeness" (Lat. similitudo; Greek 'omoíoma) that Western Bibles speak of; etc. If we are really to concentrate on belief (since all else depends on it) and GET TO THE ROOTS OF IRRECONCILABILITY ON THAT NIVEAU, the more surficial issues would fall into place, I would wager. Till then, they just clutter up the landscape.
     It is truly something to welcome that "relations have greatly improved" (and one hopes they will continue to do so, despite Uniatism and all of that), but improvement has not led, I suggest, to a single iota (remember how St. Athanasios the Great suffered to exclude one jot [iota] from the Standard [Sýmvolon] of Belief!) of reconciling beliefs on a level that rises above agreement on words that in themselves mean irreconcilable things in different paradigms.
     We read: 

As stated [at an official dialogue that began formally between Rome and Constantinople in 1980], "the purpose of the dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church is the re-establishment of full communion between the two Churches. This hoped-for communion, based on unity of faith according to the common experience and tradition of the early Church, will find its expression in the common celebration of the Eucharist." Many earlier efforts were marked with success.

     So the MORE BASIC QUESTION is whether intercommunion is the route to unity of belief or whether unity of belief is the precondition for intercommunion. The foregoing can perhaps be read either way. It is a question that should IMHO be settled BEFORE one presupposes or attempts to decide which side of the question is right . . . and makes use of that to derive further conclusions from it.  (For purposes of this discussion, I am staying neutral, so as not to becloud the larger issue.)  That is not the only foundational (and hence preliminary) question that should be settled BEFORE going on to derive other conclusions from it. Another is involved in what we read about the way in which former successes in "mutual understanding" (I am trying to preserve Fr. S's wording so as not to commit any distortion of his position), the lifting of anathemas, etc., have "produced many agreements of principle and practice." The onus is on principle. What I do not see, and would like to be enlightened on, is how any of this reconciles contrary beliefs (or even makes them reconcilable).  Without beginning with the conflicting paradigms, students of other disciplines would say that "mutual understandings" are misleading—agreements over words that mean contrary things in contrary paradigms. If theology is different, then one would like to hear an explanation of that difference.  If Einstein cannot be understood in Copernicus's paradigm and conversely, how can what the Latins and Orthodox say be understood without understanding their paradigms with their radically diverging axioms and presuppositions about reality, about God, about Salvation . . . the whole shebang? 
     Note that Latins' talk about their innovatory beliefs ' growing naturally out of seeds present in the unseparated Church of the first millennium STANDS OR FALLS ON THE WORTH OF THEIR PARADIGM—since everyone knows that the ideas developed from the axioms of one paradigm can in no way stand in continuity with (or be derived from) ideas in a paradigm based on contrary axiomatic presuppositions.
     What I understand in discussions about external factors like "the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union" is that they remove obstacles to getting together in the right mood for understanding. That negative is of course a procedural plus. But it is no plus for what is basic--reconciling irreconcilable beliefs on any level that rises above procedure--i.e. to what agreed-on words mean.
     If recent work has "produced many agreements of principle and practice, which prove how important we are to one another and to the Lord we serve" and if "One can find its promising and important results in a recently published book . . .," all of that is undeniably to the good. Who would question that? But what does "principle" mean—does it mean paradigm agreements on which all of the rest depends? Do "agreements in principle" show how mutually incompatible teachings about God, Grace, Salvation, and other basic doctrines—where the question is how X is compatible with a denial of X—can be gotten around with honesty preserved on either side? If that is what is shown, one would welcome hearing about it—instead of statements telling us that irreconcilables have been reconciled. (I will forego critiquing the "published book.") In brief, what is the agreed-on procession of the all-holy Spirit? What is the agreed-on Grace? What is the agreed-on Unity of Christ's members with the divine Nature? Till those matters are settled, discussing the papacy and polity are—I would like to suggest for one’s consideration—a useless waste of time, however good any of it may make us feel. If the "Mystery of the Trinity" has been agreed on, as we are told, does the Spirit proceed in the Trinitarian OUSIA (the imminent Trinity rather than the economic Trinity) from the Father alone or NOT from the Father alone? Is not the affirmation of one position inconsistent with affirming the other? Or is there in three-valued logic some position between the plus and minus poles that embraces and reconciles the "dialectic" of "creative tension" that Fr. S has mercifully spared us from reading?
     Since we have seen Orthodox delegates so often out-maneuvered by Papal delegates as to regard that as normal, it is well to concede that "There is really an abiding basic distrust of the Vatican's motives and methods among many Orthodox still." But that can, with goodwill, be risen above; it is not our problem. Though a sinner, my present problem is not about loving the otherdox or distrust of them but about those beliefs that love cannot reconcile. Let's not pull the wool over our own eyes. When St. Athanasios struggled to maintain true doctrine against all of the subtleties of his opponents, was he without love for those in error? Ah my Savior, how I wish we could get around talk about "the historical responsibility of western Christians for the divisions between Christians" and just talk about reconciling irreconcilable beliefs. The rest is just background noise or (more charitably) background music that cannot make the untrue true. It may soothe our passions but it in doing so it diverts us from getting down to the nitty-gritty—viz. how to reconcile the irreconcilable on the level that matters most for all other considerations except perhaps love--viz. belief. For if beliefs are not clear, all of the rest--prejudice and love, government and anarchy, and you name it--logically have no status worth discussing. True and necessary as those considerations are for getting together, they fail to grapple with the essence of the matter. When will we go beyond preliminaries and methodologies and eliminating mistrust and get to the medulla medullae, as our Latin friends would put it?
     When I read that "many Orthodox are still unbending in their resistance and refuse to enter into dialogue, " I think it would be better to qualify "dialogue" and say "dialgoue from which there is excluded the Biblical and Orthodox energy view of reality so unknown to Western theologians (and also to their Bible-translators) or any dialogue on a playing field where the Orthodox goal is uphill and the Western goal is downhill." If that kind of dialogue were avoided and talks took place on a level playing field with our protoparadigm standing in first place, it would then be true that many "Orthodox people welcome positive ecumenical relations and dialogue." Even so, good relations cannot make the false true (and I am circumspectly NOT saying that what is being quoted here entails that error, though it does throw dust in the eyes of those looking at the core impasse). But I do ask Orthodox delegates to Orthodox-Papal discussions whether our paradigm has its rightful place clearly acknowledged.
     It is far from my desire to mock anyone's sincerity of commitment. In my opinion, nothing could be more true than the editorial's antepenult sentence: "There is a widespread feeling that the ‘old way’ of resistance and of opposition cannot lead to the universalism of Christianity." Ameen. Dwelling on the Crusades won't get us anywhere. But the addition of the penult words:

Thus, only a dialogue of love and truth will overcome our present impasse and lead to the final goal of full communion.

simply puts sugary icing on the impasse over belief with (excuse the mixed metaphor) soothing background music concerning procedural matters that do not advance a resolution of the main impasse one iota, so far as I can see. Indeed, they obscure the basic issue that has to be resolved before other issues can be resolved in a consistent manner.

     I would be the last to say that the all-holy Spirit cannot find a way out. But if methods and goodwill push teachings that are genuinely irreconcilable over to the margins, what would He have to reconcile? Some say, let’s begin with things easy to agree on and thus pave the way to good vibrations. That mistake leads to false anticipations about the hard issues . . . and that leads to a lessening of goodwill. Some day, perhaps, the background music can be pushed to the margins; some day, reconciling the irreconcilables will be what we are bidden to focus on. I don’t think St. Athanasios resisted the Arians and others out of ill-will. I think he did what he did because he saw what not resisting error would lead to. He understood the nitty-gritty while, I am sure, loving those in error as much as any of us today will ever be able to do.
     But I am fallible and could well be wrong.  Indeed, I would welcome being shown how--but without the distracting background music.

                                                                        In Christ our true God,