A good series from Derek Olson

One of our up-and-coming scholars, Derek Olson, is working on a few articles for Episcopal Cafe.

Here is part of his most recent work on why the year 1054 matters to Anglicans...

As a result, the beginning of the problem in the Church began in the 2nd and 3rd centuries when the churches in Rome and north Africa began doing theology and liturgy in Latin rather than Greek. By the 4th and 5th centuries, two separate paths diverged—one in Greek, the other in Latin. Nowhere is this more evident than in the linguistic capabilities of the great Doctors of the Church in the patristic age. St Augustine himself admits his inability to converse in Greek; St Gregory the Great spent six years in Constantinople yet never learned Greek. St Leo too could neither read nor write it. While Sts Ambrose and Jerome were quite fluent in Greek, Jerome’s program of translating great Christian works from Greek into Latin further reduced the need for western clergy to learn the language—and formulations—of the eastern theologians. Photius, one of the greatest scholars of his age, knew no Latin.

Read it all here...It is a good reflection on what is currently happening in the Anglican Communion.