V. The fundamental problem from a theological point of view
The following objection is often made: it cannot be that just because of the question of church ministry priesthood, episcopate, Petrine ministry we should live in separate churches and not participate together in the Lords Table. And yet it is so! Theologians of the Orthodox Churches and of the Reformed tradition point out that on the issue of ministry a deeper difference is becoming clear. We shall progress in the ecumenical dialogue only if we succeed in defining more precisely that deeper difference, not in order to cement the diversity but to be able to overcome it in a better way.
For authoritative Orthodox theologians, especially those of the neo-Palamitic School, the basic difference involves the argument about the "Filioque", the Latin addition to the common Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of the old Church.[53] At first sight, this seems a somewhat odd thesis, although it is at least still comprehensible. Yet, in the view not only of many Orthodox theologians, but recently also of Reformatory theologians, the "Filioque" has concrete consequences for the understanding of the Church. For them, it seems to link the efficiency of the Holy Spirit fully to the person and work of Jesus Christ, leaving no room for the freedom of the Spirit, who blows where it chooses (Jn 3:8). According to that reading of the "Filioque", the Holy Spirit is so to say entirely chained up to the institutions established by Christ. For these theologians, this perceived tendency represents the roots of the Catholic submission of charisma to the institution, of individual freedom to the authority of the Church, of the prophetic to the juridical, of the mysticism to the scholasticism, of the common priesthood to the hierarchical priesthood, and finally of the episcopal collegiality to the Roman primacy.
We find similar arguments based on other premises on the Protestant side. The Reformatory Churches are no doubt in the Latin tradition and they generally keep the "Filioque"; against the rebels they affirm with energy that the Spirit is Jesus Christs Spirit and is tied to Word and Sacrament. But for them, too, it is a question of the sovereignty of Gods Word in and above the Church, and with it of the Christian human beings free will, as against a real or supposed unilateral juridical-institutional view of the Church.[54]