A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

A History of Christian Doctrine
Savior through the Holy Spirit. This implies that to the
extent that Pentecostals recognize that Roman
Catholics have this common faith in and experience
of Jesus as Lord, they share a real though imperfect
koinonia with them.
In this statement and in the Vatican II documents, we
find that Roman Catholics seek institutional unity based
on a common trinitarian faith and baptism. At this point
it is not clear how far Pentecostals and other Protestants
will be willing to go to fulfill this vision of unity. That
Pentecostals have participated in sustained ecumenical
dialogue is itself quite significant, since early Pentecostals
of all kinds generally viewed the Roman Catholic Church
as an apostate church or at least a church of false doctrine
whose members needed to be saved.
Eastern Orthodoxy
The Eastern Orthodox Church officially broke from
the Roman Catholic Church in 1054. While it has a similar
theology of the sacraments, it does not recognize the
sovereignty of the pope, and it considers itself to be the
original, pure church. Culturally, theologically, and liturgically,
it has a Greek, rather than Latin, heritage. A contemporary
Greek Orthodox writer has explained the
differences as follows: 270
244
Some of the major differences between the
Orthodox and the Roman include the following: The
primacy and the infallibility of the Roman Pope; the
filioque clause [procession of Holy Spirit from both
Father and Son instead of the Father only]; the teach-