On the value of husks and of settings

NOTE: I posted this on FB today, but I thought it good to put it on my blog as well, for a record and remembrance.

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 "The removal of its historical husk leads to Christianity's destruction, as in the case of Protestantism."--Florensky, "At the crossroads of science and mysticism," p. 5

A husk seems of little value. If we could produce grain without the husk, we would. The same is true of the leaves that surround the ear of corn. They exist for the sake of the fruit.

The same is true of the setting of a ring. It works best when it is unobtrusive, and simply shows off the glory of the gem it holds. Some might say that since a setting necessarily covers a part of the gem, if we are to see the gem in its full beauty we must eliminate the setting.

But the husk and leaves protect the grain and corn, and the setting both allows the jewel to be seen in its intended splendour and protects it from being lost.

At its outset, Protestantism sought to reform the Church. (Here I assume, with the Orthodox, that the Roman pontiff was the first Protestant.) The setting of conciliarity, of sobornost, was peeled away to reveal the power (not just authority) of the Roman pontiff. The "first among equals" became "the first without equal." The Filioque was its first fruit.

Almost immediately the western church fell into schism. Its Babylonian captivity in Avignon, the back-and-forth of the office among various powerful kings and families, and finally the spectrum of three popes reigning concurrently--all of these were the beginning of sorrows. Read the history. It's all there.

A council was called to settle the issue, but because the fruit of the peeling away (the Filioque) was not renounced, the mere use of a council to restore the papacy did not restore the western church. Instead, the same move was made by dissident priests and monks (e.g. Luther) and kings (e.g. Henry VIII) as had been made by the Roman pontiff himself: the One asserted itself against the Many, the intellectual asserted itself against the Tradition, the Part against the Whole.

To take but one example: Protestants rejected the already-narrowed tradition in favour of "Scripture alone." But within a single century, in the Protestant lands (Reimarus taught at Wittenberg; Semler was born in Electoral Saxony), arose the higher criticism that undercut the authority of that text. 

Protestantism is the inevitable result when a first among equals becomes a first without equals. Sobornost is but a husk. But the Church learned painfully--and may we not forget now--how important the husk is!