Every serious theological engagement between the Orthodox and

Catholic

parties to the modern (and perhaps quite hopeless) oecumenical movement

reveals

depth upon depth of substantial agreement, and yet always fades upon the midnight

knell,

as

each

side ruefully acknowledges the perplexing

refractoriness

and stubborn persistence

of

differences that lie (apparently)

deeper

still

posed to papacy,

sobornost

as

opposed

to

monarchia),

even "ontological" (to cite the somewhat hermetic language of the Oecumenical Patriarch's recent address at Georgetown University). And because these various characterizations have been only rarely proposed in a spirit o f critic al detach ment

—

indeed have most typically appeared in contexts of the most squalid kind of recrimination — it has usually proved difficult to distinguish the real differences between the chur- ches from the simply perceived, to separate the genuinely important fr om the merely accidental, or ef fic ie ntl y to dismiss distin ctions made for purposes purely polemical or ultimately frivolous. Every serious theological engagement between the Orthodox and Catholic parties to the modern (and perhaps quite hopeless) oecumenical movement reveals depth upon depth of substantial agreement, and yet always fades upon the midnigh t knell, as each side rue fully acknowle dges th e perplexing refractoriness and stubborn persistence of differences that

lie

(apparent ly) d eeper still. As i f the ta sk o f dialog ue were not rend ered difficult enough by the sheer intractability of the concrete details of doctrine and practice that divide the churches, an abiding sense of some ever more determinative (and yet ever more indeterminate),

essential

difference almost always overshadows every conversation (however charitable) that attempts to span the divide. Simply said, a profou nd sense that our gramm ars are fundamentally diffe rent (which, to a large extent, they of course are) serves constantly to temper our elation over what meager accords we strike, to imbue our continued division with an almost mystical aura of inevitability, and to resign us fatalistically to our failures and to the failure of our love. No regio n o f dogmat ics seems to o ff er bet ter proof o f this differen ce in grammar and sensibility, of course, than the question of atonement; it

is,

at least, most certainly the case that many Orthodox theologians have long be lieve d (no t entir ely without warrant) that Western narra- tives of salvation have all too often reduced the atonement worked by Christ to the sta tus of

a

simple transaction, enacted more or less e ntirely on the cross, and intended solely as an appeasement of the Father's wrath against

sin.

F or many in the Eastern Church , it is simply a given that Western soteriology exhibits no very profoun d sense o f the sal vif ic significance of the resurrection, or of the ontological dimension of salvation opened up in the incarnation, or of the superabundance of God's mercy (which requires no tribute of blood to evoke

it).

Christ is, after all, the conqueror of death and the devil, who joins us — in the Spirit — to the new creation he has established in himself in order to divinize us ; and it is this, so the story goes, that has been lost to view along the Western

via

crucis,

with its unrelenting concentration on the langu age of penal suffer ing and remission fr om deb t. And no figure in the Western tradition provides a more compelling illustration of this

334

D.