On the Pontic Institute and the East-West Dichotomy

The Pontic Institute is a think tank whose ultimate goal is the unity of the Church, the healing of the Great Schism. It is primarily intended to be an advocacy organization. In order to promote Church unity, one must first promote mutual knowledge between the Eastern Christianity and the Western Christianity. Since Eastern Christianity is divided in many countries, with different languages and histories, one must also promote mutual knowledge between the peoples of Eastern Europe. Finally, one must promote the rediscovery of the Byzantine tradition.

The Pontic Institute is named after Ponus Euxins, Latin name for the Black Sea, itself derived from Ancient Greek Euxeinos Pontos. The basin of the Black Sea includes the basin of the Danube River, and the basin of the Don River. The Danube Basin includes most Central and Eastern Europe, from Germany all the way to Romania. The Danube is connected by a canal to the Rhine, and all major navigable rivers in Central and Eastern Europe are interconnected by canals. Likewise, the Don River is connected to the Volga, which itself is connected to many other rivers including the Moscow River and the Neva River. The City of Istambul, formerly Constantinople, lies on the shores of the Black Sea. It is the center of the former Byzantine Empire, where the Byzantine Rite formed, and is the city where the Great Schism formally took place. At the time of the Schism, there was widespread cultural and religious misunderstanding between the Latin West and the Greek East. This misunderstanding must be corrected as part of the process of healing the Schism, and the Byzantine theological and philosophical tradition must be rediscovered.

The preferred language of The Pontic Institute is English. This is because English is the language of the World today. To communicate with people from around the world, one must communicate in English. Even between the peoples of the Black Sea Basin there is no other language more widely known than English. Greek used to be the language of the World, and the New Testament was written in Greek, although most of its writers were Jewish. Educated Romans knew Greek, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius even wrote his philosophical works in Greek. The Church of Rome for the first two centuries celebrated Mass in Greek. Then Latin became the language of the Western World, while Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire until the Empire’s fall in 1453. After the end of the Renaissance, French displaced Latin as world language, but since the Second World War, English is the undisputed world language.

Once the language of small country in the South-East of the island of Great Britain, English became the world language because of many historical events, including the rise of the British Empire, the rise of the United States, and beginning of the Information Age. In this process of becoming the language of an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, the English language has become independent of the cultures where it originated and where it is spoken as a first language. The English language has become and is becoming the language of a globalized world.

The changes in world language really parallel the changes in the center of Western Culture. Greek philosophy, and with it Western Culture was born on the shores the Aegean Sea, in Ionia, in Asia Minor, in resent-day Turkey. Then Athens became the most effervescent Greek city, while Ionia was conquered by the Persian Empire. The Macedonians of Phillip of Macedon and of Alexander the Great created a huge Greek-speaking empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Empire later broke up, and was conquered by the Romans. The Romans admired Greek culture and did not try to impose their language on the Greeks. Roman culture was highly influenced, from its earliest days, by Greek culture. Rome was mainly a political center, and secondarily a cultural center. With the division of the Roman Empire, in the Western Empire, which would fall in 476 AD, and the Eastern Empire, which would last much longer, Western Culture was divided in to different areas that would have separate histories and gradually drift apart. As the Byzantine Empire fell in 1453 to the Turks, and the West rose to new prominence during and after the Renaissance, the East found itself in a Western-dominated world, whose world language was French, and now is English. In this Western-dominated world most countries of Central and Eastern Europe had to fight for national liberation from the Empires of the area, namely the Ottoman Empire, the Austrian Empire, the German Empire, and the Russian Empire. Later on, the Fall of Communism was like a second national revival in many Eastern European countries, and incorporated them more solidly in the West.

The roots of globalization and of the information age lay at the dawn of civilization itself. The invention of the wheel in the fourth millennium BC, the domestication of the horse, and the first seaworthy boats were great advances in transportation that brought people closer together, or made distances shrink. The invention of writing in the fourth millennium BC, made possible communication across time and space. These prehistoric inventions were supplemented by countless other advances such as by the invention of steamships, trains, and telegraphy. Cultural leveling has always been a result of cultural hegemony. Modern globalization is new mainly in its extent. The availability of information has also progressed, from the first information revolution, which was the origin of language, to the second which was the advent of writing, and then the third, namely the advent of the internet. The appearance of first libraries in the ancient world, and the invention of the printing press in the late Middle Ages, were major steps along the way. Indeed, humans were born through an information revolution, when with the advent of language, they became able to communicate ideas, and not just states of mind.

The are to possible definitions for the West. One refers to the developments that happened in Western Europe after the split of the Roman Empire in two. There are many such developments that took place in Western Europe, including several Medieval Renaissances, scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Catholic Counter-reformation, the Age of the Enlightenment, etc. The other definition of the West refers to the whole Christian world. In both definitions, the West was born in Ancient Greece. The Christian East was born in the Greek-speaking world, and like the West, it continues the inheritance of the ancient world, but unlike the West, it also continues the inheritance of the Byzantine Empire. In any case, the Christian East is and has been for hundreds of years greatly influenced by the West, so that this East-West division is blurring. This blurring will hopefully pave the way for the healing of the Great Schism.