Eastern Orthodoxy
Christianity
official name Orthodox Catholic Church
Overview
One of the three major branches of Christianity.
Its adherents live mostly in Greece, Russia, the Balkans, Ukraine,
and the Middle East, with a large following in North America and
Australia. The titular head of Eastern Orthodoxy is the ecumenical
patriarch of Constantinople (Istanbul), but its many territorial
churches (including the huge Russian Orthodox church and the Greek
Orthodox church) are governed autonomously by head bishops or
patriarchs, who must be unmarried or widowed even though lower orders of
the clergy may marry. Eastern Orthodoxy also boasts a strong monastic
tradition. The separation of the Eastern churches from the Western, or
Latin, branch began with the division of the Roman Empire into two parts
under Constantine I. A formal break was made in 1054 (see Schism of
1054). Doctrinally, Eastern Orthodoxy differs from Roman Catholicism in
that it does not accept the primacy of the pope or the clause in the
Western creed that states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the
Father (God) and the Son (Jesus). The Orthodox church accepts the
decisions of the seven ecumenical councils as well as several later
ones. It maintains that there are seven sacraments and has a worship
service that is theologically and spiritually rich. In the early 21st
century, Eastern Orthodoxy had more than 200 million adherents
worldwide.
Main
one of the three major doctrinal and jurisdictional groups of
Christianity. It is characterized by its continuity with the apostolic
church, its liturgy, and its territorial churches. Its adherents live
mainly in the Balkans, the Middle East, and former Soviet countries.
Nature and significance
Eastern Orthodoxy is the large body of Christians who follow the faith
and practices that were defined by the first seven ecumenical councils.
The word orthodox (“right believing”) has traditionally been used in the
Greek-speaking Christian world to designate communities or individuals
who preserved the true faith (as defined by those councils), as opposed
to those who were declared heretical. The official designation of the
church in Eastern Orthodox liturgical or canonical texts is “the
Orthodox Catholic Church.” Because of the historical links of Eastern
Orthodoxy with the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium (Constantinople),
however, in English usage it is referred to as the “Eastern” or “Greek
Orthodox” Church. These terms are sometimes misleading, especially when
applied to Russian or Slavic churches and to the Orthodox communities in
western Europe and America.
It should also be noted that the Eastern Orthodox Church constitutes
a separate tradition from the churches of the so-called Oriental
Orthodox Communion, now including the Armenian Apostolic Church, the
Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church, the Eritrean Tewahedo Orthodox
Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Syriac Orthodox Partriarchate of
Antioch and All the East, and the Malankara Orthodox Church of India.
From the time of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to the late 20th
century, the Oriental Orthodox churches were out of communion with the
Roman Catholic Church and later the Eastern Orthodox Church because of a
perceived difference in doctrine regarding the divine and human natures
of Jesus. This changed in the 1950s, when both churches independently
began dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox churches and resolved many of
the ancient Christological disputes.
Nature and significance » The cultural context
The Schism of 1054 between the churches of the East and the West was the
culmination of a gradual process of estrangement that began in the first
centuries of the Christian era and continued through the Middle Ages.
Linguistic and cultural differences, as well as political events,
contributed to the estrangement. From the 4th to the 11th century,
Constantinople (now Istanbul), the centre of Eastern Christianity, was
also the capital of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, while Rome,
after the barbarian invasions, fell under the influence of the Holy
Roman Empire of the West, a political rival. In the West theology
remained under the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), while
in the East doctrinal thought was shaped by the Greek Fathers.
Theological differences could have been settled if the two areas had not
simultaneously developed different concepts of church authority. The
growth of Roman primacy, based on the concept of the apostolic origin of
the church of Rome, was incompatible with the Eastern idea that the
importance of certain local churches—Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and,
later, Constantinople—could be determined only by their numerical and
political significance. For the East, the highest authority in settling
doctrinal disputes was the ecumenical council.
At the time of the Schism of 1054 between Rome and Constantinople,
the membership of the Eastern Orthodox Church was spread throughout the
Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia, with its centre in Constantinople,
which was also called “New Rome.” The vicissitudes of history have
greatly modified the internal structures of the Eastern Orthodox Church,
but even today the bulk of its members live in the same geographic
areas. Missionary expansion toward Asia and emigration toward the West,
however, have helped to maintain the importance of Orthodoxy worldwide.
Nature and significance » The norm of church organization
The Orthodox church is a fellowship of “autocephalous” churches
(canonically and administratively independent), with the ecumenical
patriarch of Constantinople holding titular or honorary primacy. The
number of autocephalous churches has varied in history. In the early
21st century there were many: the Church of Constantinople (Istanbul),
the Church of Alexandria (Africa), the Church of Antioch (with
headquarters in Damascus, Syria), and the churches of Jerusalem, Russia,
Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Albania,
Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, and America.
There are also “autonomous” churches (retaining a token canonical
dependence upon a mother see) in Crete, Finland, and Japan. The first
nine autocephalous churches are headed by “patriarchs,” the others by
archbishops or metropolitans. These titles are strictly honorary.
The order of precedence in which the autocephalous churches are
listed does not reflect their actual influence or numerical importance.
The patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, for
example, present only shadows of their past glory. Yet there remains a
consensus that Constantinople’s primacy of honour, recognized by the
ancient canons because it was the capital of the ancient empire, should
remain as a symbol and tool of church unity and cooperation. The modern
pan-Orthodox conferences were thus convoked by the ecumenical patriarch
of Constantinople. Several of the autocephalous churches are de facto
national churches, the Russian church being by far the largest. However,
it is not the criterion of nationality but rather the territorial
principle that is the norm of organization in the Orthodox church.
Since the Russian Revolution there has been much turmoil and
administrative conflict within the Orthodox church. In western Europe
and in the Americas, in particular, overlapping jurisdictions have been
set up, and political passions have led to the formation of
ecclesiastical organizations without clear canonical status. Although it
has provoked controversy, the establishment of the autocephalous
Orthodox Church in America (1970) by the patriarch of Moscow has as its
stated goal the resumption of normal territorial unity in the Western
Hemisphere.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Byzantine Christianity
about ad 1000
At the beginning of the 2nd millennium of Christian history, the church
of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire,
was at the peak of its world influence and power. Neither Rome, which
had become a provincial town and its church an instrument in the hands
of political interests, nor Europe under the Carolingian and Ottonian
dynasties could really compete with Byzantium as centres of Christian
civilization. The Byzantine emperors of the Macedonian dynasty had
extended the frontiers of the empire from Mesopotamia to Naples (in
Italy) and from the Danube River (in central Europe) to Palestine. The
church of Constantinople not only enjoyed a parallel expansion but also
extended its missionary penetration, much beyond the political frontiers
of the empire, to Russia and the Caucasus.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Byzantine Christianity
about ad 1000 » Relations between church and state
The ideology that had prevailed since Constantine (4th century) and
Justinian I (6th century)—according to which there was to be only one
universal Christian society, the oikoumenē, led jointly by the empire
and the church—was still the ideology of the Byzantine emperors. The
authority of the patriarch of Constantinople was motivated in a formal
fashion by the fact that he was the bishop of the “New Rome,” where the
emperor and the senate also resided (canon 28 of the Council of
Chalcedon, 451). He held the title of “ecumenical patriarch,” which
pointed to his political role in the empire. Technically, he occupied
the second rank—after the bishop of Rome—in a hierarchy of five major
primates, which also included the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and
Jerusalem. In practice, however, the latter three were deprived of all
authority by the Arab conquest of the Middle East in the 7th century,
and only the emerging Slavic churches attempted to challenge, at times,
the position of Constantinople as the unique centre of Eastern
Christendom.
The relations between state and church in Byzantium are often
described by the term caesaropapism, which implies that the emperor was
acting as the head of the church. The official texts, however, describe
the emperor and the patriarch as a dyarchy (government with dual
authority) and compare their functions to that of the soul and the body
in a single organism. In practice, the emperor had the upper hand over
much of church administration, though strong patriarchs could
occasionally play a decisive role in politics: Nicholas I (byname
Nicholas Mystikos; patriarch 901–907, 912–925) and Polyeuctus (patriarch
956–970) excommunicated emperors for uncanonical acts. In the area of
faith and doctrine, the emperors could never impose their will when it
contradicted the conscience of the church: this fact, shown in
particular during the struggle over iconoclasm in the 8th and 9th
centuries and during the numerous attempts at union with Rome during the
late medieval period, proves that the notion of caesaropapism is not
unreservedly applicable to Byzantium.
The Church of the Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia, built by Justinian in
the 6th century, was the centre of religious life in the Eastern
Orthodox world. It was by far the largest and most splendid religious
edifice in all of Christendom. According to The Russian Primary
Chronicle (a work of history compiled in Kiev in the 12th century), the
envoys of the Kievan prince Vladimir, who visited it in 987, reported:
“We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is
no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth.” Hagia Sophia, or the
“great church,” as it was also called, provided the pattern of the
liturgical office, which was adopted throughout the Orthodox world. This
adoption was generally spontaneous, and it was based upon the moral and
cultural prestige of the imperial capital: the Orthodox church uses the
9th-century Byzantine rite.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Byzantine Christianity
about ad 1000 » Monastic and mission movements
Both in the capital and in other centres, the monastic movement
continued to flourish as it was shaped during the early centuries of
Christianity. The Constantinopolitan monastery of Studios was a
community of more than 1,000 monks, dedicated to liturgical prayer,
obedience, and asceticism. They frequently opposed both government and
ecclesiastical officialdom, defending fundamental Christian principles
against political compromises. The Studite Rule, providing guidelines
for monastic life, was adopted by daughter monasteries, particularly the
famous Monastery of the Caves (Kiev-Pechersk Lavra) in Kievan Rus (now
in Ukraine). In 963 Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas offered his protection
to St. Athanasius the Athonite, whose laura (large monastery) is still
the centre of the monastic republic of Mount Athos (under the protection
of Greece). The writings of St. Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022),
abbot of the monastery of St. Mamas in Constantinople, are a most
remarkable example of Eastern Christian mysticism, and they exercised a
decisive influence on later developments of Orthodox spirituality.
Historically, the most significant event was the missionary expansion
of Byzantine Christianity throughout eastern Europe. In the 9th century
Bulgaria had become an Orthodox nation and under Tsar Symeon (893–927)
established its own autocephalous (administratively independent)
patriarchate in Preslav (now known as Veliki Preslav). Under Tsar Samuel
(976–1014) another autocephalous Bulgarian centre appeared in Ohrid.
Thus, a Slavic-speaking daughter church of Byzantium dominated the
Balkan Peninsula. It lost its political and ecclesiastical independence
after the conquests of the Byzantine emperor Basil II (976–1025), but
the seed of a Slavic Orthodoxy had been solidly planted. In 988 the
Kievan prince Vladimir embraced Byzantine Orthodoxy and married a sister
of Emperor Basil. After that time Russia became an ecclesiastical
province of the church of Byzantium, headed by a Greek or, less
frequently, a Russian metropolitan appointed from Constantinople. This
statute of dependence was not challenged by the Russians until 1448.
During the entire period, Russia adopted and developed the spiritual,
artistic, and social heritage of Byzantine civilization, which was
received through intermediary Bulgarian translators.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Byzantine Christianity
about ad 1000 » Relations with the West
Relations with the Latin West, meanwhile, were becoming more ambiguous.
On the one hand, the Byzantines considered the entire Western world as a
part of the Roman oikoumenē, of which the Byzantine emperor was the head
and in which the Roman bishop enjoyed honorary primacy. On the other
hand, the Frankish and German emperors in Europe were challenging this
nominal scheme, and the internal decadence of the Roman papacy was such
that the powerful patriarch of Byzantium seldom took the trouble of
entertaining any relations with it. From the time of Patriarch Photius
(patriarch 858–867, 877–886), the Byzantines had formally condemned as
heretical the Filioque clause; inserted into the Nicene Creed by
Charlemagne’s court theologians, the clause stated that the Holy Spirit
proceeded from the Father and from the Son. In 879–880 Photius and Pope
John VIII had apparently settled the matter to Photius’s satisfaction,
but in 1014 the Filioque was introduced in Rome and communion was broken
again.
The incident of 1054, wrongly considered as the date of schism (which
had actually been developing over a period of time), was in fact an
unsuccessful attempt at restoring relations, disintegrating as they were
because of political competition in Italy between the Byzantines and the
Germans and also because of disciplinary changes (enforced celibacy of
the clergy, in particular) imposed by the reform movement that had been
initiated by the monks of Cluny, France. The conciliatory efforts of
Emperor Constantine Monomachus (reigned 1042–55) were powerless to
overcome either the aggressive and uninformed attitudes of the Frankish
clergy, who were now governing the Roman church, or the intransigence of
Byzantine Patriarch Michael Cerularius (reigned 1043–58). When papal
legates came to Constantinople in 1054, they found no common language
with the patriarch. Both sides exchanged recriminations on points of
doctrine and ritual and finally hurled anathemas of excommunication at
each other, thus provoking what has been called the Schism of 1054.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Invasions from east and
west » The Crusades
After the Battle of Manzikert (1071) in eastern Asia Minor, Byzantium
lost most of Anatolia to the Turks and ceased to be a world power.
Partly solicited by the Byzantines, the Crusades proved another
disaster: they brought the establishment of Latin principalities on
former imperial territories and the replacement of Eastern bishops by a
Latin hierarchy. The culminating point was, of course, the sack of
Constantinople itself in 1204, the enthronement of a Latin emperor on
the Bosporus, and the installation of a Latin patriarch in Hagia Sophia.
Meanwhile, the Balkan countries of Bulgaria and Serbia secured national
emancipation with Western help, the Mongols sacked Kiev (1240), and
Russia became a part of the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan. The Byzantine
heritage survived this series of tragedies mainly because the Orthodox
church showed an astonishing internal strength and a remarkable
administrative flexibility.
Until the Crusades, and in spite of such incidents as the exchanges
of anathemas between Michael Cerularius and the papal legates in 1054,
Byzantine Christians did not consider the break with the West as a final
schism. The prevailing opinion was that the break of communion with the
West was due to a temporary take over of the venerable Roman see by
misinformed and uneducated German “barbarians” and that eventually the
former unity of the Christian world under the one legitimate
emperor—that of Constantinople—and the five patriarchates would be
restored. This utopian scheme came to an end when the Crusaders replaced
the Greek patriarchs of Antioch and Jerusalem with Latin prelates, after
they had captured these ancient cities (1098–99). Instead of
reestablishing Christian unity in the common struggle against Islam, the
Crusades demonstrated how far apart Latins and Greeks really were from
each other. When finally, in 1204, after a shameless sacking of the
city, the Venetian Thomas Morosini was installed as patriarch of
Constantinople and confirmed as such by Pope Innocent III, the Greeks
realized the full seriousness of papal claims over the universal church:
theological polemics and national hatreds were combined to tear the two
churches further apart.
After the capture of the Constantinople, the Orthodox patriarch John
Camaterus fled to Bulgaria and died there in 1206. A successor, Michael
Autorianus, was elected in Nicaea (1208), where he enjoyed the support
of a restored Greek empire. Although he lived in exile, Michael
Autorianus was recognized as the legitimate patriarch by the entire
Orthodox world. He continued to administer the immense Russian
metropolitanate. The Bulgarian church received from him—and not his
Latin competitor—its right for ecclesiastical independence with a
restored patriarchate in Trnovo (1235). It was also with the Byzantine
government at Nicaea that the Orthodox Serbs negotiated the
establishment of their own national church; their spiritual leader, St.
Sava, was installed as autocephalous archbishop of Serbia in 1219.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Invasions from east and
west » The Mongol invasion
The invasion of Russia by the Mongols had disastrous effects on the
future of Russian civilization, but the church survived, both as the
only unified social organization and as the main bearer of the Byzantine
heritage. The “metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia,” who was appointed
from Nicaea or from Constantinople, was a major political power,
respected by the Mongol Khans. Exempt from taxes paid by the local
princes to the Mongols and reporting only to his superior (the
ecumenical patriarch), the head of the Russian church acquired an
unprecedented moral prestige—though he had to abandon his cathedral see
of Kiev, which had been devastated by the Mongols. He retained
ecclesiastical control over immense territories from the Carpathian
Mountains to the Volga River, over the newly created episcopal see of
Sarai (near the Caspian Sea), which was the capital of the Mongols, as
well as over the Western principalities of the former Kievan empire—even
after they succeeded in winning independence (e.g., Galicia) or fell
under the political control of Lithuania and Poland.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Attempts at ecclesiastical
union and theological renaissance
In 1261 the Nicaean emperor Michael Palaeologus recaptured
Constantinople from the Latins, and an Orthodox patriarch again occupied
the see in Hagia Sophia. From 1261 to 1453 the Palaeologan dynasty
presided over an empire that was embattled from every side, torn apart
by civil wars, and gradually shrinking to the very limits of the
imperial city itself. The church, meanwhile, kept much of its former
prestige, exercising jurisdiction over a much greater territory, which
included Russia as well as the distant Caucasus, parts of the Balkans,
and the vast regions occupied by the Turks. Several patriarchs of this
late period—e.g., Arsenius Autorianus (patriarch 1255–59, 1261–65),
Athanasius I (patriarch 1289–93, 1303–10), John Calecas (patriarch
1334–47), and Philotheus Coccinus (patriarch 1353–54, 1364–76)—showed
great independence from the imperial power, though remaining faithful to
the ideal of the Byzantine oikoumenē.
Without the military backing of a strong empire, the patriarchate of
Constantinople was, of course, unable to assert its jurisdiction over
the churches of Bulgaria and Serbia, which had gained independence
during the days of the Latin occupation. In 1346 the Serbian church even
proclaimed itself a patriarchate; a short-lived protest by
Constantinople ended with recognition in 1375. In Russia, Byzantine
ecclesiastical diplomacy was involved in a violent civil strife. A
fierce competition arose between the grand princes of Moscow and
Lithuania, who both aspired to become leaders of a Russian state
liberated from the Mongol yoke. The “metropolitan of Kiev and all
Russia” was by now residing in Moscow and, as in the case of the
metropolitan Alexis (1354–78), often played a directing role in the
Muscovite government. The ecclesiastical support of Moscow by the church
was decisive in the final victory of the Muscovites and had a pronounced
impact on later Russian history. The dissatisfied western Russian
principalities (which would later constitute Ukraine) could only
obtain—with the strong support of their Polish and Lithuanian
overlords—the temporary appointment of separate metropolitans in Galicia
and Belorussia. Eventually, late in the 14th century, the metropolitan
residing in Moscow again centralized ecclesiastical power in Russia.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Attempts at
ecclesiastical union and theological renaissance » Relations with the
Western church
One of the major reasons behind this power struggle in the northern area
of the Byzantine world was the problem of relations with the Western
church. To most Byzantine churchmen, the young Muscovite principality
appeared to be a safer bulwark of Orthodoxy than the Western-oriented
princes who had submitted to Roman Catholic Poland and Lithuania. Also,
an important political party in Byzantium itself favoured union with the
West in the hope that a new Western Crusade might be made against the
menacing Turks. The problem of ecclesiastical union was in fact the most
burning issue during the entire Palaeologan period.
Emperor Michael Palaeologus (1259–82) had to face the aggressive
ambition of the Sicilian Norman king Charles of Anjou, who dreamed of
restoring the Latin empire in Constantinople. To gain the valuable
support of the papacy against Charles, Michael sent a Latin-inspired
confession of faith to Pope Gregory X, and his delegates accepted union
with Rome at the Council of Lyons (1274). This capitulation before the
West, sponsored by the emperor, won little support in the church. During
his lifetime, Michael succeeded in imposing an Eastern Catholic
patriarch, John Beccus, upon the church of Constantinople, but upon
Michael’s death an Orthodox council condemned the union (1285).
Throughout the 14th century, numerous other attempts at negotiating
union were initiated by Byzantine emperors. Formal meetings were held in
1333, 1339, 1347, and 1355. In 1369 Emperor John V Palaeologus was
personally converted to the Roman faith in Rome. All these attempts were
initiated by the government and not by the church, for an obvious
political reason—i.e., the hope for Western help against the Turks. But
the attempts brought no results either on the ecclesiastical or on the
political levels. The majority of Byzantine Orthodox churchmen were not
opposed to the idea of union but considered that it could be brought
about only through a formal ecumenical council at which East and West
would meet on equal footing, as they had done in the early centuries of
the church. The project of a council was promoted with particular
consistency by John Cantacuzenus, who, after a brief reign as emperor
(1347–54), became a monk but continued to exercise great influence on
ecclesiastical and political events. The idea of an ecumenical council
was initially rejected by the popes, but it was revived in the 15th
century with the temporary triumph of conciliarist ideas (which
advocated more power to councils and less to popes) in the West at the
councils of Constance and Basel. Challenged with the possibility that
the Greeks would unite with the conciliarists and not with Rome, Pope
Eugenius IV called an ecumenical council of union in Ferrara, which
later moved to Florence.
The Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–45) lasted for months and
allowed for long theological debates. Emperor John VIII Palaeologus,
Patriarch Joseph, and numerous bishops and theologians represented the
Eastern church. They finally accepted most Roman positions—the Filioque
clause, purgatory (an intermediate stage for the soul’s purification
between death and heaven), and the Roman primacy. Political desperation
and the fear of facing the Turks again, without Western support, was the
decisive factor that caused them to place their signatures of approval
on the Decree of Union, also known as the Union of Florence (July 6,
1439). The metropolitan of Ephesus, Mark Eugenicus, alone refused to
sign. Upon their return to Constantinople, most other delegates also
renounced their acceptance of the council and no significant change
occurred in the relations between the churches.
The official proclamation of the union in Hagia Sophia was postponed
until Dec. 12, 1452; however, on May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell to
the Ottoman Turks. Sultan Mehmed II transformed Hagia Sophia into an
mosque, and the few partisans of the union fled to Italy.
History » The church of imperial Byzantium » Attempts at
ecclesiastical union and theological renaissance » Theological and
monastic renaissance
Paradoxically, the pitiful history of Byzantium under the Palaeologan
emperors coincided with an astonishing intellectual, spiritual, and
artistic renaissance that influenced the entire Eastern Christian world.
The renaissance was not without fierce controversy and polarization. In
1337 Barlaam the Calabrian, one of the representatives of Byzantine
humanism, attacked the spiritual practices of the Hesychast (from the
Greek word hēsychia, meaning “quiet”) monks, who claimed that Christian
asceticism and spirituality could lead to the vision of the “uncreated
light” of God. Barlaam’s position was upheld by several other
theologians, including Akyndinus and Nicephorus Gregoras. After much
debate, the church gave its support to the main spokesman of the monks,
Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), who showed himself as one of the foremost
theologians of medieval Byzantium. The councils of 1341, 1347, and 1351
adopted the theology of Palamas, and after 1347 the patriarchal throne
was consistently occupied by his disciples. John VI Cantacuzenus, who,
as emperor, presided over the council of 1351, gave his full support to
the Hesychasts. His close friend, Nicholas Cabasilas, in his spiritual
writings on the divine liturgy and the sacraments, defined the universal
Christian significance of Palamite theology. The influence of the
religious zealots, who triumphed in Constantinople, outlasted the empire
itself and contributed to the perpetuation of Orthodox spirituality
under Turkish rule. It also spread to the Slavic countries, especially
Bulgaria and Russia. The monastic revival in northern Russia during the
last half of the 14th century, which was associated with the name of St.
Sergius of Radonezh, as well as the contemporaneous revival of
iconography (e.g., the work of the great painter Andrey Rublyov), would
have been unthinkable without constant contacts with Mount Athos, the
centre of Hesychasm, and with the spiritual and intellectual life of
Byzantium.
Along with the Hesychast revival, a significant “opening to the West”
was taking place among some Byzantine ecclesiastics. The brothers
Prochorus and Demetrius Cydones, under the sponsorship of Cantacuzenus,
for example, were systematically translating the works of Latin
theologians into Greek. Thus, major writings of St. Augustine, St.
Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Thomas Aquinas were made accessible to the
East for the first time. Most of the Latin-minded Greek theologians
eventually supported the union policy of the emperors, but there were
some—like Gennadios II Scholarios, the first patriarch under the Turkish
occupation—who reconciled their love for Western thought with total
faithfulness to the Orthodox church.
History » Orthodoxy under the Ottomans (1453–1821) » The Christian
ghetto
According to Muslim belief, Christians as well as Jews were “people of
the Book”—i.e., their religion was seen as not entirely false but
incomplete. Accordingly, provided that Christians submitted to the
dominion of the caliphate and the Muslim political administration and
paid appropriate taxes, they deserved consideration and freedom of
worship. Any Christian mission or proselytism among the Muslims,
however, was considered a capital crime. In fact, Christians were
formally reduced to a ghetto existence: they were the Rūm millet, or
“Roman nation” conquered by Islam but enjoying a certain internal
autonomy.
In January 1454 the sultan Mehmed II, who had conquered
Constantinople in 1453, allowed the election of a new patriarch, who was
to become millet-bachi, the head of the entire Christian millet, or in
Greek the “ethnarch,” with the right to administer, to tax, and to
exercise justice over all the Christians of the Turkish empire. Thus,
under the new system, the patriarch of Constantinople saw his formal
rights and jurisdiction extended both geographically and substantially:
on the one hand, through the privileges granted to him by the sultan, he
could practically ignore his colleagues, the other Orthodox patriarchs;
on the other hand, his power ceased to be purely canonical and spiritual
but became political as well. To the enslaved Greeks, he appeared not
only as the successor of the Byzantine patriarchs but also as the heir
of the emperors. For the Ottomans, he was the official and strictly
controlled administrator of the Rūm millet. In order to symbolize these
new powers, the patriarch adopted an external attire reminiscent of that
of the emperors: mitre in the form of a crown, long hair, eagles as
insignia of authority, and other imperial accoutrements.
The new system had many significant consequences. Most important, it
permitted the church to survive as an institution. Indeed, the prestige
of the church was actually increased because, for Christians, the church
was now the only source of education, and it alone offered possibilities
of social promotion. Moreover, through the legal restrictions placed on
mission, the new arrangement created the practical identification of
church membership with ethnic origin. And finally, since the entire
Christian millet was ruled by the patriarch of Constantinople and his
Greek staff, it guaranteed to the Phanariotes, the Greek aristocracy of
the Phanar (now called Fener, the area of Istanbul where the
patriarchate was, and still is, located), a monopoly in episcopal
elections. Thus, Greek bishops progressively came to occupy all the
hierarchical positions. The ancient patriarchates of the Middle East
were practically governed by the Phanar. The Serbian and Bulgarian
churches came to the same fate: the last remnants of their autonomy were
formally suppressed in 1766 and 1767, respectively, by the Phanariot
patriarch Samuel Hantcherli. This Greek control, exercised through the
support of the hated Turks, was resented more and more by the Balkan
Slavs and Romanians as the Turkish regime became more despotic, taxes
grew heavier, and modern nationalisms began to develop.
It is necessary, however, to credit the Phanariotes with a quite
genuine devotion to the cause of learning and education, which they
alone were able to provide inside the oppressed Christian ghetto. The
advantages they obtained from the Porte (the Turkish government) for
building schools and for developing Greek letters in the Romanian
principalities of Moldavia and Walachia that were entrusted to their
rule came to play a substantial role in the rebirth of Greece.
History » Orthodoxy under the Ottomans (1453–1821) » Relations with the
West
The Union of Florence became fully inoperative as soon as the Turks
occupied Constantinople (1453). In 1484 a council of bishops condemned
it officially. Neither the sultan nor the majority of the Orthodox
Greeks were favourable to the continuation of political ties with
Western Christendom. The Byzantine cultural revival of the Palaeologan
period was the first to experience adverse effects from the occupation.
Intellectual dialogue with the West became impossible. Through
liturgical worship and the traditional spirituality of the monasteries,
the Orthodox faith was preserved in the former Byzantine world. Some
self-educated men were able to develop the Orthodox tradition through
writings and publications, but they were isolated exceptions. Probably
the most remarkable among them was St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain,
the Hagiorite (1748–1809), who edited the famous Philocalia, an
anthology of spiritual writings, and also translated and adapted Western
spiritual writings (e.g., those of the Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius of
Loyola) into modern Greek.
The only way for Orthodox Greeks, Slavs, or Romanians to acquire an
education higher than the elementary level was to go to the West.
Several of them were able to do so, but in the process they became
detached from their own theological and spiritual tradition.
The West, in spite of much ignorance and prejudice, had a constant
interest in the Eastern church. At times there was a genuine and
respectful curiosity; in other instances, political and proselytistic
(conversion) concerns prevailed. Thus, in 1573–81 a lengthy
correspondence was initiated by Lutheran scholars from Tübingen (in
Germany). Although interesting as a historical event, this
correspondence, which includes the Answers of Patriarch Jeremias II
(patriarch 1572–95), shows how little mutual understanding was possible
at that time between the reformers and traditional Eastern Christianity.
Relations with the West, especially after the 17th century, were
often vitiated in the East by the incredible corruption of the Turkish
government, which constantly fostered diplomatic intrigues. An
outstanding example of such manipulation was the kharāj, a tax required
by the Porte at each patriarchal election. Western diplomats were often
ready to provide the amount needed in order to secure the election of
candidates favourable to their causes. The French and Austrian
ambassadors, for example, supported candidates who would favour the
establishment of Roman Catholic influence in the Christian ghetto, while
the British and Dutch envoys supported patriarchs who were open to
Protestant ideas. Thus, a gifted and Western-educated patriarch, Cyril
Lucaris, was elected and deposed five times between 1620 and 1638. His
stormy reign was marked by the publication in Geneva of a Confession of
Faith (1629), which was, to the great amazement of all contemporaries,
purely Calvinistic (i.e., it contained Reformed Protestant views). The
episode ended in tragedy. Cyril was strangled by Turkish soldiers at the
instigation of the pro-French and pro-Austrian party. Six successive
Orthodox councils condemned the Confession: Constantinople, 1638; Kiev,
1640; Jassy, 1642; Constantinople, 1672; Jerusalem, 1672; and
Constantinople, 1691. In order to refute its positions, the metropolitan
of Kiev, Petro Mohyla, published his own Orthodox Confession of Faith
(1640), which was followed in 1672 by the Confession of the patriarch of
Jerusalem, Dosítheos Notaras. Both, especially Petro Mohyla, were under
strong Latin influence.
These episodes were followed in the 18th century by a strong
anti-Western reaction that was inspired in part by Roman Catholic
missionary activity and the church unions of Brest-Litovsk (1596),
Uzhhorod (1646), and Antioch (1724), formal agreements under which
several Orthodox priests agreed (under political coercion in the case of
Brest-Litovsk) to accept the authority of the pope in Rome while being
allowed to preserve liturgical and linguistic independence. In 1755 the
Synod of Constantinople decreed that all Westerners—Latin or
Protestant—had invalid sacraments and were only to be admitted into the
Orthodox Church through baptism.
History » The church of Russia (1448–1800) » The “third Rome” » Origin
of the Muscovite patriarchate
At the Council of Florence, the Greek “metropolitan of Kiev and all
Russia,” Isidore, was one of the major architects of the Union of
Florence. Having signed the decree, he returned to Moscow in 1441 as a
Roman cardinal but was rejected by both church and state, arrested, and
then allowed to escape to Lithuania. In 1448, after much hesitation, the
Russians received a new primate, Jonas, elected by their own bishops.
Their church became autocephalous, administratively independent under a
“metropolitan of all Russia,” residing in Moscow. In territories
controlled by Poland, Rome (in 1458) appointed another “metropolitan of
Kiev and all Russia.” The tendencies toward separation from Moscow that
had existed in Ukraine since the Mongol invasion and that were supported
by the kings of Poland thus received official sanction. In 1470,
however, this metropolitan broke the union with the Latins and
reentered—nominally—the jurisdiction of Constantinople, by then under
Turkish control.
After this the fate of the two churches “of all Russia” became quite
distinct. The metropolitanate of Kiev developed under the control of
Roman Catholic Poland. Hard pressed by the Polish kings, the majority of
its bishops, against the will of the majority of their flock, eventually
accepted union with Rome at Brest-Litovsk (1596). In 1620, however, an
Orthodox hierarchy was reestablished, and a Romanian nobleman, Petro
Mohyla, was elected metropolitan of Kiev (1632). He suppressed the old
school at Kiev that taught a curriculum based on Greco-Slavic letters
and literature and created the first Orthodox theological school of the
modern period, the famous Academy of Kiev. Modelled after the Latin
seminaries of Poland, with instruction given in Latin, this school
served as the theological training centre for almost the entire Russian
high clergy in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1686 Ukraine was finally
reunited with Muscovy, and the metropolitanate of Kiev was attached to
the patriarchate of Moscow, with approval given by Constantinople.
Muscovite Russia, meanwhile, had acquired the consciousness of being
the last bulwark of true Orthodoxy. In 1472 Grand Prince Ivan III
(reigned 1462–1505) married Sofia (Zoë), the niece of the last Byzantine
emperor. The Muscovite sovereign began to use more and more of the
Byzantine imperial ceremonial, and he assumed the double-headed eagle as
his state emblem. In 1510 the monk Philotheus of Pskov addressed Vasily
III as “tsar” (emperor), saying: “Two Romes have fallen, but the third
stands, and a fourth there will not be.” The meaning of the sentence was
that the first Rome was heretical, the second—Byzantium—was under
Turkish control, and the third was Moscow. Ivan IV (the Terrible) was
crowned emperor, according to the Byzantine ceremonial, by the
metropolitan of Moscow, Makary, on Jan. 16, 1547. In 1551 he solemnly
presided in Moscow over a great council of Russian bishops, the Stoglav
(“Council of 100 Chapters”), in which various issues of discipline and
liturgy were settled and numerous Russian saints were canonized. These
obvious efforts to live up to the title of the “third Rome” lacked one
final sanction: the head of the Russian church did not have the title of
“patriarch.” The “tsars” of Bulgaria and Serbia did not hesitate in the
past to bestow the title on their own primates, but the Russians wanted
an unquestionable authentication and waited for proper opportunity. It
occurred in 1589, when the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias II, was
on a fund-raising tour of Russia. He could not resist the pressure of
his hosts and established the metropolitan Job as “patriarch of Moscow
and all Russia.” Confirmed later by the other Eastern patriarchs, the
new patriarchate obtained the fifth place in the honorific order of the
Oriental sees, after the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria,
Antioch, and Jerusalem.
History » The church of Russia (1448–1800) » The “third Rome” »
Relations between patriarch and tsar
After the 16th century the Russian tsars always considered themselves as
successors of the Byzantine emperors and the political protectors and
financial supporters of Orthodoxy throughout the Balkans and the Middle
East. The patriarch of Moscow, however, never pretended to occupy
formally the first place among the patriarchs. Within the Muscovite
empire, many traditions of medieval Byzantium were faithfully kept. A
flourishing monastic movement spread the practice of Christian
asceticism in the northern forests, which were both colonized and
Christianized by the monks. St. Sergius of Radonezh (c. 1314–92) was the
spiritual father of this monastic revival. His contemporary, St. Stephen
of Perm, missionary to the Zyryan tribes, continued the tradition of
Saints Cyril and Methodius, the 9th-century “apostles to the Slavs,” in
translating Scripture and the liturgy into the vernacular. He was
followed by numerous other missionaries who promoted Orthodox
Christianity throughout Asia and even established themselves on Kodiak
Island off the coast of Alaska (1794). The development of church
architecture, iconography, and literature also added to the prestige of
the “third Rome.”
The Muscovite empire, however, was quite different from Byzantium
both in its political system and in its cultural self-understanding. The
Byzantine “symphony” (harmonious relationship) between the emperor and
the patriarch was never really applied in Russia. The secular goals of
the Muscovite state and the will of the monarch always superseded
canonical or religious considerations, which were still binding on the
medieval emperors of Byzantium. Muscovite political ideology was always
influenced more by the beginnings of western European secularism and by
Asiatic despotism than by Roman or Byzantine law. Although strong
patriarchs of Constantinople were generally able to oppose open
violations of dogma and canon law by the emperors, their Russian
successors were quite powerless; a single metropolitan of Moscow, St.
Philip (metropolitan 1566–68), who dared to condemn the excesses of Ivan
IV, was deposed and murdered.
A crisis of the “third Rome” ideology occurred in the middle of the
17th century. Nikon (reigned 1652–58), a strong patriarch, decided to
restore the power and prestige of the church by declaring that the
patriarchal office was superior to that of the tsar. He forced the tsar
Alexis Romanov to repent for the crime of his predecessor against St.
Philip and to swear obedience to the church. Simultaneously, Nikon
attempted to settle a perennial issue of Russian church life: the
problem of the liturgical books. Originally translated from the Greek,
the books suffered many corruptions through the centuries and contained
numerous mistakes. In addition, the different historical developments in
Russia and in the Middle East had led to differences between the
liturgical practices of the Russians and the Greeks. Nikon’s solution
was to order the exact compliance of all the Russian practices with the
contemporary Greek equivalents. His liturgical reform led to a major
schism in the church. The Russian masses had taken seriously the idea
that Moscow was the last refuge of Orthodoxy. They wondered why Russia
had to accept the practices of the Greeks, who had betrayed Orthodoxy in
Florence and had been justly punished by God, in their view, by becoming
captives of the infidel Turks. The reformist decrees of the patriarch
were rejected by millions of lower clergy and laity who constituted the
Raskol, or schism of the “Old Believers.” Nikon was ultimately deposed
for his opposition to the tsar, but his liturgical reforms were
confirmed by a great council of the church that met in the presence of
two Eastern patriarchs (1666–67).
History » The church of Russia (1448–1800) » The reforms of Peter the
Great (reigned 1682–1725)
The son of Tsar Alexis, Peter the Great, changed the historical fate of
Russia by radically turning away from the Byzantine heritage and
reforming the state according to the model of Protestant Europe.
Humiliated by his father’s temporary submission to Patriarch Nikon,
Peter prevented new patriarchal elections after the death of Patriarch
Adrian in 1700. After a long vacancy of the see, he abolished the
patriarchate altogether (1721) and transformed the central
administration of the church into a department of the state, which
adopted the title of “Holy Governing Synod.” An imperial high
commissioner (oberprokuror) was to be present at all meetings and act as
the administrator of church affairs. Peter also issued a lengthy
Spiritual Regulation (Dukhovny Reglament) that served as bylaws for all
religious activities in Russia. Weakened by the schism of the Old
Believers, the church found no spokesman to defend its rights and
passively accepted the reforms.
With the actions of Peter, the Russian Orthodox Church entered a new
period of its history that lasted until 1917. The immediate consequences
were not all negative. Peter’s ecclesiastical advisers were Ukrainian
prelates, graduates of the Kievan academy, who introduced in Russia a
Western system of theological education. The most famous among them was
Peter’s friend, Feofan Prokopovich, archbishop of Pskov. Throughout the
18th century the Russian church also continued missionary work in Asia
and produced several spiritual writers and saints: St. Mitrofan of
Voronezh (died 1703), St. Tikhon of Zadonsk (died 1783)—an admirer of
the German Lutheran Johann Arndt and of German Pietism—as well as other
eminent prelates and scholars such as Platon Levshin, metropolitan of
Moscow (died 1803). All attempts at challenging the power of the tsar
over the church, however, met with failure. The metropolitan of Rostov,
Arseny Matsiyevich, who opposed the secularization of church property by
the empress Catherine the Great, was deposed and died in prison (1772).
The atmosphere of secularistic officialdom that prevailed in Russia was
not favourable for a revival of monasticism, but such a revival did take
place through the efforts of a young Kievan scholar, Paissy Velichkovsky
(1722–94), who became the abbot of the monastery of Neamts in Romania.
His Slavonic edition of the Philocalia contributed to the revival of
Hesychast traditions in Russia in the 19th century.
History » Orthodox churches in the 19th century » Autocephalies in the
Balkans
The ideas of the French Revolution, the nationalistic movements, and the
ever living memory of past Christian empires led to the gradual
disintegration of Turkish domination in the Balkans. According to a
pattern existing since the late Middle Ages, the birth of national
states was followed by the establishment of independent autocephalous
Orthodox churches. Thus, the collapse of Ottoman rule was accompanied by
the rapid shrinking of the actual power exercised by the patriarch of
Constantinople. Paradoxically, the Greeks, for whom—more than anyone—the
patriarchate represented a hope for the future, were the first to
organize an independent church in their new state.
History » Orthodox churches in the 19th century » Autocephalies in
the Balkans » In Greece
In 1821 the Greek revolution against the Turks was officially proclaimed
by the metropolitan of Old Patras, Germanos. The patriarchate, being the
official Turkish-sponsored organ for the administration of the
Christians, issued statements condemning and even anathematizing the
revolutionaries. These statements, however, failed to convince anyone,
least of all the Turkish government, which on Easter Day in 1821 had the
ecumenical (Constantinopolitan) patriarch Gregory V hanged from the main
gate of the patriarchal residence as a public example. Numerous other
Greek clergy were executed in the provinces. After this tragedy the
official loyalty of the patriarchate was, of course, doubly secured.
Unable either to communicate with the patriarchate or to recognize its
excommunications, the bishops of liberated Greece gathered in Návplion
and established themselves as the synod of an autocephalous church
(1833). The ecclesiastical regime adopted in Greece was modelled after
that of Russia: a collective state body, the Holy Synod, was to govern
the church under strict government control. In 1850 the patriarchate,
forced to recognize what was by then a fait accompli, granted a charter
of autocephaly (tómos) to the new Church of Greece.
History » Orthodox churches in the 19th century » Autocephalies in
the Balkans » In Serbia
The independence of Serbia led in 1832 to the recognition of Serbian
ecclesiastical autonomy. In 1879 the Serbian church was recognized by
Constantinople as autocephalous under the primacy of the metropolitan of
Belgrade. This church, however, covered only the territory of what was
called “old Serbia.” The small state of Montenegro, always independent
from the Turks, had its own metropolitan in Cetinje. This prelate, who
was also the civil and military leader of the nation, was consecrated
either in Austria or, as in the case of the famous bishop-poet Pyotr II
Negosh, in St. Petersburg (1833).
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire two autocephalous churches, with
jurisdiction over Serbs, Romanians, and other Slavs, were in existence
during the second half of the century. These were the patriarchate of
Sremski-Karlovci (Karlowitz), established in 1848, which governed all
the Orthodox in the Kingdom of Hungary; and the metropolitanate of
Czernowitz (now Chernovtsy) in Bukovina, which after 1873 also exercised
jurisdiction over two Serbian dioceses (Zara and Kotor) in Dalmatia. The
Serbian dioceses of Bosnia and Herzegovina, acquired by Austria in 1878,
remained autonomous but were never completely independent from
Constantinople.
History » Orthodox churches in the 19th century » Autocephalies in
the Balkans » In Romania
The creation of an independent Romania—after centuries of foreign
control by Bulgarians, Turks, Greek-Phanariots, and, more recently,
Russians—led in 1865 to the self-proclamation of the Romanian church as
an autocephalous church, even against the violent protests of the
Phanar. The new Romanian church was under the strict control of a
pro-Western government. Prince Alexandru Cuza secularized the
monasteries, and Constantinople recognized the Romanian autocephaly
under the metropolitan of Bucharest (1885). The Romanians of
Transylvania, still in Austria-Hungary, remained under the autocephalous
metropolitan of Sibiu and others under the church of Czernowitz.
History » Orthodox churches in the 19th century » Autocephalies in
the Balkans » In Bulgaria
The reestablishment of the church of Bulgaria eventually was secured,
but not without tragedy and even a schism. The issue of reestablishing
the autocephalous church arose at a time when both Greek and Bulgarian
populations lived side by side in Macedonia, Thrace, and Constantinople
itself, though still within the framework of the Ottoman imperial
system. After the Turkish conquest, and especially in the 17th and 18th
centuries, the Bulgarians were governed by Greek bishops and were often
prevented from worshipping in Slavonic. This enforced policy of
Hellenization was rejected in the 19th century when Bulgarians began to
claim not only a native clergy but also equal representation on the
higher echelons of the Christian millet—i.e., the offices of the
patriarchate. These claims were met with firm resistance by the Greeks.
The alternative was a national Bulgarian church, which was created by a
sultan’s firman (decree) in 1870. The new church was to be governed by
its own Bulgarian exarch, who resided in Constantinople and governed all
the Bulgarians who recognized him. The new situation was uncanonical
because it sanctioned the existence of two separate ecclesiastical
structures on the same territory. Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimus VI
convened a synod in Constantinople, which also included the Greek
patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem (1872). The council condemned
phyletism—the national or ethnic principle in church organization—and
excommunicated the Bulgarians, who were certainly not alone guilty of
phyletism. This schism lasted until 1945, when a reconciliation took
place with full recognition of Bulgarian autocephaly within the limits
of the Bulgarian state. A Bulgarian patriarch was elected in 1961.
After their liberation from the Turkish yoke, the Balkan churches
freely developed both their national identities and their religious
life. Theological faculties, generally following German models, were
created in Athens, Belgrade (in Yugoslavia), Sofia (in Bulgaria), and
Bucharest (in Romania). The Romanian church introduced the full cycle of
the liturgical offices in vernacular Romanian. But these positive
developments were often marred by nationalistic rivalries. In condemning
phyletism, the synod of Constantinople (1872) had in fact defined a
basic problem of modern Orthodoxy.
History » Orthodox churches in the 19th century » The church in imperial
Russia
The Spiritual Regulation of Peter the Great remained in force until the
very end of the Russian Empire (1917). Many Russian churchmen
consistently complained against the submission of the church to the
state, but there was little they could do except to lay plans for future
reforms. This they did not fail to do, and in the 20th century the
necessary changes were rapidly enacted. Although Peter himself and his
first successors tended to deal personally and directly with church
affairs, the tsars of the 19th century delegated much authority to the
oberprokurors, who received a cabinet rank in the government and were
the real heads of the entire administration of the church. One of the
most debilitating aspects of the regime was the legal division of
Russian society by a rigid caste system. The clergy was one of the
castes with its own school system, and there was little possibility for
its children to choose another career.
In spite of these obvious defects, the church kept its
self-awareness, and among the episcopate such eminent figures as
Philaret of Moscow (1782–1867) promoted education, theological research,
biblical translations, and missionary work. In each of its 67 dioceses,
the Russian Orthodox Church created a seminary for the training of
priests and teachers. In addition, four theological academies, or
graduate schools, were established in major cities (Moscow, 1769; St.
Petersburg, 1809; Kiev, 1819; Kazan, 1842). They provided a generally
excellent theological training for both Russians and foreigners. The
rigid caste system and the strictly professional character of these
schools, however, were obstacles to their seriously influencing society
at large. It was, rather, through the monasteries and their spirituality
that the church began to reach the intellectual class.
More influential than the rigid discipline of the large monastic
communities, the prophetic ministry of the “elders” (startsy), who acted
as living examples of the standards of the spiritual life or as advisers
and confessors, attracted large masses of the common people and also
intellectuals. St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833), for example, lived
according to the standards of the ancient Hesychast tradition that had
been revived in the Russian forests. The startsy of Optino—Leonid
(1768–1841), Makarius (1788–1860), and Ambrose (1812–91)—were visited
not only by thousands of ordinary Christians but also by the writers
Nikolay Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The latter was
inspired by the startsy when he described in his novels monastic figures
such as Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov. From the ranks of an emerging
group of Orthodox lay intellectuals, the production of a living
theology—if less scholarly than in the academies—was taking shape. The
great influence of a lay theologian like Aleksey Khomyakov (1804–60),
who belonged to the Slavophile (pro-Slavic) circle before it acquired a
political flavour, eventually helped in the conversion to Orthodoxy of
such leading Marxists as Sergey Bulgakov (1871–1944) and Nikolay
Berdyayev (1874–1948) at the end of the century. Missionary expansion
also continued, particularly in western Asia, Japan, and Alaska.
Disproportionately larger and richer than its sister churches of the
Balkans and the Middle East, the Russian Orthodox Church included in
1914 more than 50,000 priests, 21,000 monks, and 73,000 nuns. It
supported thousands of schools and missions. It cooperated with the
Russian government in exercising great influence in Middle Eastern
affairs. Thus, with Russian help, an Arab (Meletios Doumani) rather than
a Greek was elected for the first time as patriarch of Antioch (1899).
With the successive partitions of Poland and the reunions with Russia of
Belorussian and Ukrainian territories, many Eastern Catholic descendants
of those who had joined the Roman communion in Brest-Litovsk (1596)
returned to Orthodoxy.
After 1905 Tsar Nicholas II gave his approval for the establishment
of a preconciliar commission charged with the preparation of an
all-Russian Church Council. The avowed goal of the planned assembly was
to reestablish the church’s independence, lost since Peter the Great,
and eventually to restore the patriarchate. This assembly, however, was
fated to meet only after the fall of the empire.
History » The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I
The almost complete disappearance of Christianity in Asia Minor, the
regrouping of the Orthodox churches in the Balkans, the tragedy of the
Russian Revolution (1917), and the Orthodox diaspora in the West
radically changed the entire structure of the Orthodox world. The period
from World War I to the present was marked by profound technological
changes, violent conflict on a previously unimagined scale, and economic
and cultural globalization. Yet, despite many challenges and changes,
the Eastern Orthodox Church has preserved dogmatic and theological unity
with regard to faith, tradition, worship, and ethics. This unity
continues even though Orthodox Christianity comprises diverse national
churches, each with its own jurisdiction and expression of faith.
History » The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I » The Russian
Revolution and the Soviet period
The Russian Orthodox Church was better prepared than is generally
believed to face the revolutionary turmoil. Projects of necessary reform
had been readied since 1905, and most clergy did not feel particularly
attached to the fallen regime that had deprived the church of its
freedom for several centuries. In August 1917, during the rule of the
provisional government, a council representing the entire church met in
Moscow, including 265 members of the clergy and 299 laymen. The
democratic composition and program of the council had been planned by
the church’s Pre-Conciliar Commission. This council adopted a new
constitution of the church that provided for the reestablishment of the
patriarchate, the election of bishops by the dioceses, and the
representation of laymen in all levels of church administration. It was
only in the midst of the new revolutionary turmoil, however, that
Tikhon, metropolitan of Moscow, was elected patriarch on Oct. 31 (Old
Style), six days after the revolution. The bloody events into which the
country was plunged did not allow all the reforms to be carried out, but
the people elected new bishops in several dioceses.
The Bolshevik government, because of its Marxist ideology, considered
all religion as the “opium of the people.” On Jan. 20, 1918, it
published a decree depriving the church of all legal rights, including
that of owning property. The stipulations of the decree were difficult
to enforce immediately, and the church remained a powerful social force
for several years. The patriarch replied to the decree by
excommunicating the “open or disguised enemies of Christ,” without
naming the government specifically. He also made pronouncements on
political issues that he considered of moral importance: in March 1918
he condemned the peace of Brest-Litovsk that brought an unsatisfactory
armistice between Russia and the Central Powers, and in October he
addressed an “admonition” to Vladimir I. Lenin, calling on him to
proclaim an amnesty. Tikhon was careful, however, not to appear as a
counterrevolutionary, and in September 1919 he directed the faithful to
refrain from supporting the Whites (anticommunists) and to obey those
decrees of the Soviet government that were not contrary to their
Christian conscience.
The independence of the church suffered greatly after 1922. In
February of that year the government decreed the confiscation of all
valuable objects preserved in the churches. The patriarch would have
agreed to that measure if he had had the means to check on the
government contention that all confiscated church property would be used
to help the starving population on the Volga. The government refused all
guarantees but supported a group of clergy who were ready to cooperate
with it and to overthrow the patriarch. While Tikhon was under house
arrest, this group took over his office and soon claimed the allegiance
of a sizable proportion of bishops and clergy. This became known as the
schism of the “Renovated” or “Living Church,” and it broke the church’s
internal unity and resistance. Numerous bishops and clergy who were
faithful to the patriarch were tried and executed, including the young
and progressive metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd. The Renovated Church
soon broke the universal discipline of Orthodoxy by admitting married
priests to the episcopate and by permitting widowed priests to remarry.
Upon his release, Tikhon condemned the schismatics, and many clergy
returned to his obedience. But he also published a declaration affirming
that he “was not the enemy of the Soviet government” and dropped any
opposition to the authorities. Tikhon’s attitude of conformism did not
bring immediate results. His designated successors (after he died in
1925) were all arrested. In 1927 the “substitute locum tenens” (holder
of the position) of the patriarchate, Metropolitan Sergius, pledged
loyalty to the Soviet government. Nevertheless, under the rule of Joseph
Stalin in the late 1920s and ’30s, the church suffered a bloody
persecution that claimed thousands of victims. By 1939 only three or
four Orthodox bishops and 100 churches could officially function; the
church was practically suppressed.
A spectacular reversal of Stalin’s policies occurred, however, during
World War II, when Sergius was elected patriarch in 1943 and the
Renovated schism was ended. Under Sergius’s successor, Patriarch Alexis
(1945–70), some 25,000 churches were opened and the number of priests
reached 33,000. But a new antireligious move was initiated by Prime
Minister Nikita Khrushchev in 1959–64, reducing the number of open
churches to less than 10,000. Following Alexis’s death in 1971,
Patriarch Pimen was elected amid uncertainty about the church’s future.
However, the church experienced greater religious freedom in the late
1980s, culminating with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
History » The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I » The Balkans
and eastern Europe
In bringing about the fall of the Turkish, Austrian, and Russian
empires, World War I provoked significant changes in the structures of
the Eastern Orthodox Church. On the western borders of what was then the
Soviet Union, in the newly born republics of Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania, the Orthodox minorities established themselves as
autonomous churches. The first three joined the jurisdiction of
Constantinople, and the Lithuanian diocese remained nominally under
Moscow. In Poland, which then included several million Belorussians and
Ukrainians, the ecumenical patriarch established an autocephalous church
(1924) over the protests of Patriarch Tikhon. After World War II the
Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian autonomies were again suppressed, and
in Poland the Orthodox church was first reintegrated to the jurisdiction
of Moscow and later declared autocephalous again (1948).
In the Balkans changes were even more significant. The five groups of
Serbian dioceses (Montenegro, the patriarchate of Karlovci, Dalmatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia) were united (1920–22) under one Serbian
patriarch, residing in Belgrade, the capital of the new Yugoslavia.
Similarly, the Romanian dioceses of Moldavia-Walachia, Transylvania,
Bukovina, and Bessarabia formed the new patriarchate of Romania (1925),
the largest autocephalous church in the Balkans. Finally, in 1937, after
some tension and a temporary schism, the patriarchate of Constantinople
recognized the autocephaly of the church of Albania.
After World War II communist regimes were established in the Balkan
states. There were no attempts, however, to liquidate the churches
entirely. In both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria church and state were legally
separated. In Romania, paradoxically, the Orthodox church remained
legally linked to the communist state. With its solid record of
resistance to the Germans, the Serbian church was able to preserve more
independence from the government than its sister churches of Bulgaria
and Romania. Generally speaking, however, all the Balkan churches
adopted an attitude of loyalty to the new regime, according to the
pattern given by the patriarchate of Moscow. At that price, they could
keep some theological schools, some publications, and the possibility of
worship. This was also the situation of the Orthodox minority in
Czechoslovakia, which was united and organized into an autocephalous
church by the patriarchate of Moscow in 1951. Only in Albania did a
communist government announce the total eradication of organized
religion, following its cultural revolution of 1967.
Among the national Orthodox churches, the Church of Greece is the
only one that preserved the legal status it acquired in the 19th century
as the national state church. As such, it was supported by the
successive political regimes of Greece. It could also develop an
impressive internal mission. The Brotherhood Zoe (“Life”), organized
according to the pattern of Western religious orders, was successful in
creating a large system of church schools.
The communist governments throughout eastern Europe collapsed during
the late 1980s and early 1990s, effectively dissolving state control
over churches and bringing new political and religious freedoms into the
region. In the early 1990s Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were divided
into countries that reflected older ethnic identities. In each case, one
Orthodox church continued to have jurisdiction. The Czech and Slovak
Orthodox Church has jurisdiction over the Czech Republic and Slovakia
(both of which became independent states in 1993). The Serbian Orthodox
Church has jurisdiction over the countries that once constituted
Yugoslavia: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and
Montenegro. The Albanian Orthodox Church was reconstituted in 1992 with
the appointment by the ecumenical patriarchate of a Greek primate.
History » The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I » The Eastern
Orthodox Church in the Middle East
As a result of the Greco-Turkish War, the entire Greek population of
Asia Minor was transferred to Greece in 1922. The Orthodox under the
immediate jurisdiction of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople
were thus reduced to the Greek population of Istanbul and its vicinity.
This population was reduced to a few thousand by the early 21st century.
Still recognized as holding an honorary primacy among the Orthodox
churches, the ecumenical patriarchate also exercises jurisdiction over
several dioceses of the “diaspora” and, by consent of the Greek
government, over the Greek islands. The impressive personality of
Patriarch Athenagoras I (1948–72), who was succeeded by Dimitrios,
contributed to its prestige on the pan-Orthodox and ecumenical levels.
Beginning in 1962, the patriarchate convened pan-Orthodox conferences in
Rhodes, Belgrade, Geneva, and other cities and began preparations for a
“Great Council” of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Together with the ecumenical patriarchate, the ancient sees of
Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem are remnants of the Byzantine
imperial past, but under the present conditions they still possess many
opportunities of development: Alexandria as the centre of emerging
African communities (see below The Orthodox diaspora and missions);
Antioch as the largest Arab Christian group, with dioceses in Syria,
Lebanon, and Iraq; and Jerusalem as the main custodian of the Christian
holy places in that city.
The two ancient churches of Cyprus and Georgia, with their quite
peculiar history, continue to play important roles among the Orthodox
sister churches. Autocephalous since 431, the church of Cyprus survived
successive occupations, and often oppressions, by the Arabs, the
Crusaders, the Venetians, the Turks, and the English. Following the
pattern of all areas where Islam was predominant, the archbishop is
traditionally seen as the ethnarch of the Greek Christian Cypriots.
Archbishop Makarios also became the first president of the independent
Republic of Cyprus in 1960. The church of Georgia, isolated in the
Caucasus in a country that became part of the Russian Empire in 1801, is
the witness of one of the most ancient Christian traditions. It received
autocephaly from its mother church of Antioch as early as the 6th
century and developed a literary and artistic civilization in its own
language. Its head bears the traditional title of
“Catholicos-Patriarch.” When the Russians annexed the country in 1801,
they suppressed Georgia’s autocephaly, and the church was governed by a
Russian exarch until 1917, when the Georgians reestablished their
ecclesiastical independence. the Georgian church was fiercely persecuted
during the 1920s but survives to the present day as an autocephalous
patriarchate.
History » The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I » Orthodoxy in
the United States
The first Orthodox communities in what is today the continental United
States were established in Alaska and on the West Coast, as the extreme
end of the Russian missionary expansion through Siberia (see above The
church in imperial Russia). Russian monks settled on Kodiak Island in
1794. Among them was St. Herman (canonized 1970), an ascetic and a
defender of the indigenous people’s rights against ruthless Russian
traders. After the sale of Alaska to the United States, a separate
diocese “of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska” was created by the Holy
Synod (1870). After the transfer of the diocesan centre to San Francisco
and its renaming as the diocese “of the Aleutian Islands and North
America” (1900), the original church establishment exercised its
jurisdiction over the entire North American continent. In the 1880s it
accepted back into Orthodoxy hundreds of “Uniate” (Eastern rite)
parishes of immigrants from Galicia and Carpatho-Russia, particularly
numerous in the northern industrial states and in Canada. It also served
the needs of immigrants from Serbia, Greece, Syria, Albania, and other
countries. Some Greek and Romanian communities, however, invited priests
directly from the mother country without official contact with the
American bishop. In 1905 the American archbishop Tikhon (the future
patriarch of Moscow) presented to the Russian synod the project of an
autocephalous church of America, whose structure would reflect the
ethnic pluralism of its membership. He also foresaw the inevitable
Americanization of his flock and encouraged the translation of the
liturgy into English.
These projects, however, were hampered by the tragedies that befell
the Russian Orthodox Church following the Russian Revolution. The
administrative system of the Russian church collapsed. The non-Russian
groups of immigrants sought and obtained their affiliation with mother
churches abroad. In 1921 a “Greek Archdiocese of North and South
America” was established by the ecumenical patriarch Meletios IV
Metaxakis. Further divisions within each national group occurred
repeatedly, and several independent jurisdictions added to the
confusion.
American Orthodoxy challenged the feasibility of preserving the
ethnic identity of the national churches, which had characterized
Orthodoxy in Europe and the Middle East. A reaction against this chaotic
pluralism manifested itself in the 1950s. More cooperation between the
jurisdictions and a more systematic theological education contributed to
an increased desire for unity. A Standing Conference of Canonical
Orthodox Bishops in the Americas (SCOBA) was established in 1960 in
order to provide administrative unity amid jurisdictional confusion. In
1970 the patriarch of Moscow, reviving Tikhon’s project of 1905,
formally proclaimed its diocese in America (which had been in conflict
with Moscow since 1931 on the issue of loyalty to the Soviet Union) as
the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which had no
administrative connections abroad. However, the ecumenical patriarchate
of Constantinople protested this move, turned down a request for
autonomy presented by the Greek archdiocese (the largest single Orthodox
body in the United States), and reiterated its opposition to the use of
English in the liturgy. Meanwhile, the American archdiocese of the
Antiochian Orthodox Church was granted self-rule (though not full
autocephaly) in 2003 and later incorporated into itself the Evangelical
Orthodox Church, a group of former Evangelicals who embraced Orthodoxy.
Led by Peter Gillquist, it operates as the Antiochian Evangelical
Orthodox Mission (AEOM) and promotes the unity of Orthodox Christians in
America.
History » The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I » The Orthodox
diaspora and missions
Since World War I millions of eastern Europeans were dispersed in
various areas where Orthodox communities had never existed before. The
Russian Revolution provoked a massive political emigration,
predominantly to western Europe and particularly France. It included
eminent churchmen, theologians, and Christian intellectuals, such as
Bulgakov, Berdyayev, and V.V. Zenkovsky, who were able not only to
establish in Paris a theological school of great repute but also to
contribute significantly to the ecumenical movement. In 1922 Patriarch
Tikhon appointed Metropolitan Evlogy as head of the émigré churches,
with residence in Paris. The authority of the metropolitan was
challenged, however, by a group of bishops who had left their sees in
Russia, retreating with the White armies, and who had found refuge in
Sremski-Karlovci as guests of the Serbian church. Despite several
attempts at reconciliation, the “Synod” of Karlovci, proclaiming its
firm attachment to the principle of tsarist monarchy, refused to
recognize any measure taken by the reestablished patriarchate of Moscow.
This group transferred its headquarters to New York and became known as
the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOC). It had no
canonical relation with the official Orthodox patriarchates and churches
until May 2007. That year, following reforms within both Russia and the
Russian Orthodox Church in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, the
ROCOC signed an agreement of unity with the patriarchate of Moscow. The
“Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Exile,” by contrast, continues to be in an
irregular canonical situation. Other émigré groups found refuge under
the canonical auspices of the ecumenical patriarchate.
After World War II many Greeks emigrated to western Europe,
Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. In East Africa, without much initial
effort on their part, these Greek-speaking emigrants attracted a sizable
number of black Christians, who discovered in the Orthodox liturgy and
sacramental worship a form of Christianity more acceptable to them than
the more dogmatic institutions of Western Christianity. Also, in their
eyes, Orthodoxy had the advantage of having no connection with the
colonial regimes of the past. Orthodox communities, with an ever
increasing number of native clergy, are spreading in Uganda, Kenya, and
Tanzania. Less professionally planned than the former Russian missions
in Alaska and Japan, these young churches constitute an interesting
development in African Christianity.
History » The Eastern Orthodox Church since World War I » Ecumenical
involvement
Between the two World Wars, many Orthodox churchmen of the ecumenical
patriarchate of Constantinople, of Greece, of the Balkan churches, and
of the Russian emigration took part in the ecumenical movement. After
World War II, however, the churches of the communist-dominated countries
failed to join the newly created World Council of Churches (1948); only
Constantinople and Greece did so. The situation changed drastically in
1961, when the patriarchate of Moscow applied for membership and was
soon followed by other autocephalous churches. Before and after 1961 the
Orthodox churches repeatedly declared that their membership did not
imply any relativistic understanding of the Christian truth but
demonstrated that they were ready to discuss with all Christians the
best way of restoring the lost unity of Christendom, as well as problems
of common Christian action and witness in the modern world.
The ecumenical patriarchate, despite the hesitation of some faithful,
has devoted special attention to dialogue with the Roman Catholic
Church. In the 1960s Patriarch Athenagoras I and Pope Paul VI met in
Jerusalem, Istanbul, and Rome, symbolically lifting the anathemas
imposed in 1054 and making other gestures of rapprochement, though these
moves were sometimes mistakenly interpreted as if they were ending the
schism itself; the Orthodox view holds that full unity can be restored
only in the fullness of truth witnessed by the entire church and
sanctioned in sacramental communion. Despite stringent criticism by
conservative Orthodox Christians, Athenagoras and his successors not
only improved relations with Rome but also engaged in dialogues with
Anglicans, the Oriental Orthodox churches, and even non-Christians,
including Muslims and Jews. As ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I
(enthroned 1991) addressed concerns outside the purview of the Eastern
Orthodox Church. He endorsed Turkey’s application for membership in the
European Union and displayed such a dedication to global environmental
issues that he became known as the “green patriarch.”
Doctrine » Councils and confessions
All Orthodox credal formulas, liturgical texts, and doctrinal statements
affirm the claim that the Eastern Orthodox Church has preserved the
original apostolic faith, which was also expressed in the common
Christian tradition of the first centuries. The Orthodox church
recognizes seven ecumenical councils—Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I
(381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553),
Constantinople III (680–681), and Nicaea II (787)—but considers that the
decrees of several other later councils also reflect the same original
faith (e.g., the councils of Constantinople that endorsed the theology
of St. Gregory Palamas in the 14th century). Finally, it recognizes
itself as the bearer of an uninterrupted living tradition of true
Christianity that is expressed in its worship, in the lives of the
saints, and in the faith of the whole people of God.
In the 17th century, as a counterpart to the various “confessions” of
the Reformation, there appeared several “Orthodox confessions,” endorsed
by local councils but in fact associated with individual authors (e.g.,
Metrophanes Critopoulos, 1625; Petro Mohyla, 1638; Dosítheos of
Jerusalem, 1672). None of these confessions would be recognized today as
having anything but historical importance. Orthodox theologians, rather
than seeking literal conformity with any particular confession, will
look for consistency with Scripture and tradition, as it has been
expressed in the ancient councils, in the works of the Church Fathers
(the early theological authorities of the church), and in the
uninterrupted life of the liturgy. Most theologians will not shy away
from new formulations if consistency and continuity of tradition are
preserved.
What is particularly characteristic of this attitude toward the faith
is the absence of any great concern for establishing external criteria
of truth—a concern that has dominated Western Christian thought since
the Middle Ages. Truth appears as a living experience accessible in the
communion of the church and of which the Scriptures, the councils, and
theology are the normal expressions. Even ecumenical councils, in the
Orthodox perspective, must be accepted by the body of the church in
order to be recognized as truly ecumenical. Ultimately, therefore, truth
is viewed as its own criterion: there are signs that point to it, but
none of those signs is a substitute for a free and personal experience
of truth, which is made accessible in the sacramental fellowship of the
church.
Because of this view of truth, the Orthodox have traditionally been
reluctant to involve church authority in defining matters of faith with
too much precision and detail. This reluctance is not due to relativism
or indifference but rather to the belief that truth needs no definition
to be the object of experience and that legitimate definition, when it
occurs, should aim mainly at excluding error and not at pretending to
reveal the truth itself that is believed to be ever present in the
church.
Doctrine » God and humankind
The development of the doctrines concerning the Trinity and the
Incarnation, as it took place during the first eight centuries of
Christian history, was related to the concept of humankind’s
participation in divine life.
The Eastern (Greek) Fathers always implied that the phrase found in
the biblical story of the creation of man (Genesis 1:26), according to
“the image and likeness of God,” meant that humans are not autonomous
beings and that their ultimate nature is defined by their relation to
God. In paradise Adam and Eve were called to participate in God’s life
and to find in him the natural growth of their humanity “from glory to
glory.” To be “in God” is, therefore, the natural state of humankind.
This doctrine is particularly important in connection with the Fathers’
view of human freedom. For theologians such as Gregory of Nyssa (4th
century) and Maximus the Confessor (7th century), humans are truly free
only when they are in communion with God. Otherwise they are only slaves
to their body or to “the world,” over which, originally and by God’s
command, he was destined to rule. Thus, the concept of sin implies
separation from God and the reduction of humans to a separate and
autonomous existence, in which they are deprived of both God’s natural
glory and freedom.
Freedom in God, as enjoyed by Adam, implied the possibility of
falling away from God. This is the unfortunate choice made by Adam and
Eve, which led them to a subhuman and unnatural existence. The most
unnatural aspect of this new state was death. In this perspective,
“original sin” is understood not so much as a state of guilt inherited
from Adam and Eve but as an unnatural condition of human life that ends
in death. Mortality is what each person now inherits at birth and what
leads an individual to struggle for existence, to self-affirmation at
the expense of others, and ultimately to subjection to the laws of
animal life. The “prince of this world” (i.e., Satan), who is also the
“murderer from the beginning,” has dominion over humanity. From this
vicious circle of death and sin, humans are understood to be liberated
by the death and Resurrection of Jesus, which are actualized in baptism
and the sacramental life in the church.
The general framework of this understanding of the relationship
between God and humankind is clearly different from the view that became
dominant in the Christian West—i.e., the view that conceived of “nature”
as distinct from “grace” and that understood original sin as an
inherited guilt rather than as a deprivation of freedom. In the East
humans are regarded as complete when they participate in God; in the
West humans are believed to be autonomous, sin is viewed as a punishable
crime, and grace is understood as the granting of forgiveness. Hence, in
the West the aim of the Christian is justification, but in the East it
is rather communion with God and deification (theosis). In the West the
church is viewed in terms of mediation (for the bestowing of grace) and
authority (for guaranteeing security in doctrine); in the East the
church is regarded as a communion in which God and the individual meet
once again and a personal experience of divine life becomes possible.
Doctrine » Christ
The Eastern Orthodox Church is formally committed to the Christology
(doctrine of Christ) that was defined by the councils of the first eight
centuries. Together with the Latin church of the West, it rejected
Arianism (a belief in the subordination of the Son to the Father) at
Nicaea (325), Nestorianism (a belief that stresses the independence of
the divine and human natures of Christ) at Ephesus (431), and
monophysitism (a belief that Christ has only one, divine nature) at
Chalcedon (451). The Eastern and Western churches still formally share
the tradition of subsequent Christological developments, even though the
famous formula of Chalcedon, “one person in two natures,” is given
different emphases in the East and the West. The stress on Christ’s
identity with the preexistent Son of God, the Logos (Word) of the Gospel
According to John, characterizes Orthodox Christology. On Byzantine
icons, often depicted around the face of Jesus are the Greek letters
ο’ω’ν—the equivalent of the Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH, the name of God
in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). Jesus is thus always seen in his
divine identity. Similarly, the liturgy consistently addresses the
Virgin Mary as Theotokos (the “one who gave birth to God”), and this
term, formally admitted as a criterion of orthodoxy at Ephesus, is
actually the only Mariological (doctrine of Mary) dogma accepted in the
Orthodox church. It reflects the doctrine of Christ’s unique divine
person. Mary is venerated solely because she is his mother “according to
the flesh.”
This emphasis on the personal divine identity of Christ, based on the
doctrine of St. Cyril of Alexandria (5th century), does not imply the
denial of his humanity. The anthropology (doctrine of humankind) of the
Eastern Fathers does not view the individual as an autonomous being but
rather implies that communion with God makes the individual fully human.
Thus, the human nature of Jesus Christ, fully assumed by the divine
Word, is indeed the “new Adam” in whom the whole of humanity receives
again its original glory. Christ’s humanity is fully that of every human
being; it possesses all the characteristics of the human being—“each
nature (of Christ) acts according to its properties,” Chalcedon
proclaimed, following Pope Leo I—without separating itself from the
divine Word. Thus, in death itself—for Jesus’ death was indeed a fully
human death—the Son of God was the “subject” of the Passion. The
theopaschite formula (“God suffered in the flesh”) became, together with
the Theotokos formula, a standard of orthodoxy in the Eastern church,
especially after the second Council of Constantinople (553). It implies
that Christ’s humanity is indeed real not only in itself but also for
God, since it brought him to death on the cross, and that the salvation
and redemption of humanity can be accomplished by God alone—hence the
necessity for him to condescend to death, which holds humanity captive.
This theology of redemption and salvation is best expressed in the
Byzantine liturgical hymns of Holy Week and Easter: Christ is the one
who “tramples down death by death,” and, on the evening of Good Friday,
the hymns already exalt his victory. Salvation is conceived not in terms
of satisfaction of divine justice—through paying the debt for the sin of
Adam, as the medieval West understood it—but in terms of uniting the
human and the divine, with the divine overcoming human mortality and
weakness and, finally, exalting man to divine life.
What Christ accomplished once and for all must be appropriated freely
by those who are “in Christ”; their goal is “deification,” which does
not mean dehumanization but the exaltation of humans to the dignity
prepared for them at creation. Such feasts as the Transfiguration or the
Ascension are extremely popular in the East precisely because they
celebrate humanity glorified in Christ—a glorification that anticipates
the coming of the kingdom of God, when God will be “all in all.”
Participation in the deified humanity of Christ is the true goal of
Christian life, and it is accomplished through the Holy Spirit.
Doctrine » The Holy Spirit
The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost “called all men into unity,”
according to the Byzantine liturgical hymn of the day. Into this new
unity, which St. Paul called the “body of Christ,” each individual
Christian enters through baptism and chrismation (the Eastern
counterpart of the Western confirmation) when the priest anoints the
Christian with the words “the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
This gift, however, requires a person’s free response. Orthodox
saints such as Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833) described the entire
content of Christian life as a “collection of the Holy Spirit.” The Holy
Spirit is thus conceived as the main agent of humanity’s restoration to
its original natural state through Communion in Christ’s body. This role
of the Holy Spirit is reflected, very richly, in a variety of liturgical
and sacramental acts. Every act of worship usually starts with a prayer
addressed to the Holy Spirit, and all major sacraments begin with an
invocation to the Holy Spirit. The eucharistic liturgies of the East
attribute the ultimate mystery of Christ’s presence to a descent of the
Holy Spirit upon the worshipping congregation and upon the eucharistic
bread and wine. The significance of this invocation (in Greek epiklēsis)
was violently debated between Greek and Latin Christians in the Middle
Ages because the Roman canon of the mass lacked any reference to the
Holy Spirit and was thus considered deficient by the Orthodox Greeks.
Since the first Council of Constantinople (381), which condemned the
Pneumatomachians (“fighters against the Spirit”), no one in the Orthodox
East has ever denied that the Spirit is not only a “gift” but also the
giver—i.e., that he is the third person of the Trinity. The Greek
Fathers saw in Genesis 1:2 a reference to the Spirit’s cooperation in
the divine act of creation. The Spirit was also viewed as active in the
“new creation” that occurred in the womb of the Virgin Mary when she
became the mother of Christ (Luke 1:35); Pentecost was understood to be
an anticipation of the “last days” (Acts 2:17) when, at the end of
history, a universal communion with God will be achieved. Thus, all the
decisive acts of God are accomplished “by the Father in the Son, through
the Holy Spirit.”
Doctrine » The Holy Trinity
By the 4th century a polarity had developed between Eastern and Western
Christians in their respective understandings of the Trinity. In the
West God was understood primarily in terms of one essence (the Trinity
of persons being conceived as an irrational truth found in revelation);
in the East the tri-personality of God was understood as the primary
fact of Christian experience. For most of the Eastern Fathers, it was
not the Trinity that needed theological proof but rather God’s essential
unity. The Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus,
and Basil of Caesarea) were even accused of being tri-theists because of
their conception of God as one essence in three hypostases (the Greek
term hypostasis was the equivalent of the Latin substantia and
designated a concrete reality). For Eastern theologians, this
terminology was intended to designate the concrete New Testament
revelation of the Son and the Holy Spirit as distinct from the Father.
Polarization of the Eastern and Western concepts of the Trinity is at
the root of the Filioque dispute. The Latin word Filioque (“and from the
Son”) was added to the Nicene Creed in Spain in the 6th century. By
affirming that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only “from the Father” (as
the original creed proclaimed) but also “from the Son,” the Spanish
councils intended to condemn Arianism, which held that the Son was a
created being. Later, however, the addition became an anti-Eastern
battle cry, especially after Charlemagne, the Carolingian ruler of the
Franks, was crowned emperor of the Romans in 800. The addition was
finally accepted in Rome under Frankish pressure. It found justification
in the framework of Western conceptions of the Trinity; the Father and
the Son were viewed as one God in the act of “spiration” of the Spirit.
Byzantine theologians opposed the addition, first on the ground that
the Western church had no right to change the text of an ecumenical
creed unilaterally and, second, because the Filioque clause implied the
reduction of the divine persons to mere relations (“the Father and the
Son are two in relation to each other, but one in relation to the
Spirit”). For the Greeks the Father alone is the origin of both the Son
and the Holy Spirit. Patriarch Photius (9th century) was the first
Orthodox theologian to explicitly spell out the Greek opposition to the
Filioque concept, but the debate continued throughout the Middle Ages.
Doctrine » The transcendence of God
An important element in the Eastern Christian understanding of God is
the notion that God, in his essence, is totally transcendent and
unknowable. In this understanding, God can only be designated by
negative attributes: it is possible to say what God is not, but it is
impossible to say what God is. A purely negative, or “apophatic”
theology—the only one applicable to the essence of God in the Orthodox
view—does not lead to agnosticism, however, because God reveals himself
personally—as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and also in his acts, or
“energies.” Thus, true knowledge of God always includes three elements:
religious awe; personal encounter; and participation in energies, which
God freely bestows on creation.
This conception of God is connected with the personalistic
understanding of the Trinity. It also led to the official confirmation
by the Orthodox church of the theology of St. Gregory Palamas, the
leader of Byzantine Hesychasts (monks devoted to divine quietness
through prayer), at the councils of 1341 and 1351 in Constantinople. The
councils confirmed a real distinction in God, between the unknowable
essence and the energies which make possible a real communion with God.
The deification of man, realized in Christ once and for all, is thus
accomplished by a communion of divine energy with humanity in Christ’s
glorified humanity.
Doctrine » Modern theological developments
Until the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), Byzantium was
the unquestioned intellectual centre of the Orthodox church. Far from
being monolithic, Byzantine theology was often polarized by a humanistic
trend, favouring the use of Greek philosophy, and the more austere and
mystical theology of monastic circles. The concern for preservation of
Greek culture and for the political salvation of the empire led several
prominent humanists to adopt a position favourable to union with the
West. The most creative theologians (e.g., Symeon the New Theologian,
died 1033; Gregory Palamas, died 1359; Nicholas Cabasilas, died c.
1390), however, were found in the monastic party that continued the
tradition of patristic spirituality based upon the theology of
deification.
The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were the dark age of Orthodox
theology. There was no opportunity for any independent theological
creativity in any of the major regions of Orthodoxy—the Middle East, the
Balkans, and Russia. With no access to formal theological education
except in Western Roman Catholic or Protestant schools, the Orthodox
tradition was preserved primarily through the liturgy, which retained
its richness and often served as a substitute for formal schooling. Most
doctrinal statements of this period, issued by councils or by individual
theologians, were polemical documents directed against Western
missionaries.
After the reforms of Peter the Great (died 1725), a theological
school system was organized in Russia. Shaped originally in accordance
with Western Latin models and staffed with Jesuit-trained Ukrainian
personnel, this system developed in the 19th century into a fully
independent and powerful tool of theological education. The Russian
theological efflorescence of the 19th and 20th centuries produced many
scholars, especially in historical theology—e.g., Philaret Drozdov,
Vasily Osepovich Klyuchevsky, Vasily Vasilievich Bolotov, Evgeny
Evstigneyevich Golubinsky, and Nikolay Nikanorovich Glubokovsky.
Independently of the official theological schools, a number of laymen
with secular training developed theological and philosophical traditions
of their own and exercised a great influence on modern Orthodox
theology—e.g., Alexey Stepanovich Khomyakov, Vladimir Sergeyevich
Solovyev, and Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyayev. Others, such as Pavel
Florensky and Sergey Nikolayevich Bulgakov, became priests. A large
number of the Russian theological intelligentsia—e.g., Bulgakov and
Georges Florovsky—emigrated to western Europe after the Russian
Revolution (1917) and played a leading role in the ecumenical movement.
With the independence of the Balkans, theological schools were also
created in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Modern Greek scholars
contributed to the publication of important Byzantine ecclesiastical
texts and produced standard theological textbooks. The Orthodox
diaspora—the emigration from eastern Europe and the Middle East—in the
20th century contributed to modern theological development through their
establishment of theological centres in western Europe and America.
Orthodox theologians reacted negatively to the new dogmas proclaimed
by Pope Pius IX: the Immaculate Conception of Mary (1854), which held
that Mary was conceived without sin, and papal infallibility (1870),
which held that, under certain conditions, the pope cannot err when
teaching on matters of faith and morals. In connection with the dogma of
the Assumption of Mary, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII (1950), which held
that Mary was raised to heaven in both body and soul, the objections
mainly concerned the presentation of such a tradition in the form of a
dogma.
In contrast to the trend toward social concerns evident in Western
Christian thought since the late 20th century, Orthodox theologians have
generally emphasized that the Christian faith is primarily a direct
experience of the kingdom of God, sacramentally present in the church.
Without denying that Christians have a social responsibility to the
world, they consider this responsibility as an outcome of the life in
Christ. This traditional position accounts for the remarkable survival
of the Orthodox churches under the most contradictory and unfavourable
of social conditions, but to Western eyes it often appears as a form of
passive fatalism.
The structure of the church » The canons
The basic structure for the Orthodox church is defined by the New
Testament writings; the canons (regulations and decrees) of the first
seven ecumenical councils; the canons of several local or provincial
councils, whose authority was recognized by the whole church; the
so-called Apostolic Canons (actually some regulations of the church in
Syria, dating from the 4th century); and the “canons of the Fathers,” or
selected extracts from prominent church leaders having canonical
importance. The various canons were later compiled in the Byzantine
nomocanon, attributed in its final form to the patriarch Photius (9th
century). The Byzantine church, as well as the modern Orthodox church,
adapted the general principles of this collection to its particular
situation.
The canons themselves do not represent a system or a code. They do,
however, reflect a consistent view of the church, of its mission, and of
its various ministries. They also reflect an evolution of ecclesiastical
structure. For the Orthodox church today, only the original
self-understanding of the church has a theologically normative value.
Thus, those canons that reflect the nature of the church as the body of
Christ have an unchanging validity today. Other canons, if they can be
recognized as conditioned by the historical situation in which they were
issued, are subject to change by conciliar authority, and others have
simply fallen out of practice. The use and interpretation of the canons
is therefore possible only in the light of some understanding of the
church’s nature. This theological dimension is the ultimate criterion
through which it is possible to distinguish what is permanent in the
canons from that which represents no more than a historical value.
The structure of the church » The episcopate
The Orthodox understanding of the church is based on the principle,
attested to in the canons and in early Christian tradition, that each
local community of Christians, gathered around its bishop and
celebrating the Eucharist, is the local realization of the whole body of
Christ. “Where Christ is, there is the Catholic church,” wrote Ignatius
of Antioch (c. ad 100). Modern Orthodox theology also emphasizes that
the office of bishop is the highest among the sacramental ministries and
that there is therefore no divinely established authority over that of
the bishop in his own community, or diocese. Neither the local churches
nor the bishops, however, can or should live in isolation. The wholeness
of church life, realized in each local community, is regarded as
identical to that of the other local churches in the present and in the
past. This identity and continuity is manifested in the act of the
ordination of bishops, an act that requires the presence of several
other bishops in order to constitute a conciliar act and to witness to
the continuity of apostolic succession and tradition.
The bishop is primarily the guardian of the faith and, as such, the
centre of the sacramental life of the community. The Orthodox church
maintains the doctrine of apostolic succession—i.e., the idea that the
ministry of the bishop must be in direct continuity with that of the
Apostles of Jesus. Orthodox tradition—as expressed especially in its
medieval opposition to the Roman papacy—distinguishes the office of
“Apostle” from that of bishop, however, in that the first is viewed as a
universal witness to the historical Jesus and his Resurrection while the
latter is understood in terms of the pastoral and sacramental
responsibility for a local community, or church. The continuity between
the two is, therefore, a continuity in faith rather than in function.
No bishop can be consecrated or exercise his ministry without being
in unity with his colleagues—i.e., be a member of an episcopal council,
or synod. After the Council of Nicaea (325), whose canons are still
effective in the Orthodox church, each province of the Roman Empire had
its own synod of bishops that acted as a fully independent unit for the
consecration of new bishops and also as a high ecclesiastical tribunal.
In the contemporary Orthodox church these functions are fulfilled by the
synod of each autocephalous church. In the early church the bishop of
the provincial capital acted as chairman of the synod and was generally
called metropolitan. Today this function is fulfilled by the local
primate who is sometimes called patriarch (in the autocephalous churches
of Constantinople [Istanbul], Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia,
Georgia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria), but he may also carry the title
of archbishop (Cyprus, Greece) or metropolitan (Poland, the Czech and
Slovak republics, the United States). The titles of archbishop and
metropolitan are also widely used as honorific distinctions.
The jurisdiction of each autocephalous synod generally coincides with
national borders—the exceptions are numerous in the Middle East (e.g.,
jurisdiction of Constantinople over the Greek islands, jurisdiction of
Antioch over several Arab states, etc.)—and also concerns the national
dioceses of the Orthodox diaspora (e.g., western Europe, Australia, the
United States), which frequently remain under the authority of their
mother churches. The latter situation led to an uncanonical overlapping
of Orthodox jurisdictions, all based on ethnic origins. Several factors,
originating in the Middle Ages, have contributed to modern
ecclesiastical nationalism in the Orthodox church. These factors include
the use of the vernacular in the liturgy and the subsequent
identification of religion with national culture.
The structure of the church » Clergy and laity
The emphasis on communion and fellowship as the basic principle of
church life inhibited the development of clericalism, the tradition of
enhancing the power of the church hierarchy. The early Christian
practice of lay participation in episcopal elections never disappeared
completely in the East. In modern times it has been restored in several
churches, including those in the United States. Besides being admitted,
at least in some areas, to participation in episcopal elections,
Orthodox laymen often occupy positions in church administration and in
theological education. In Greece almost all professional theologians are
laymen. Laymen also frequently serve as preachers.
The lower orders of the clergy— priests and deacons—are generally
married men. The present canonical legislation allows the ordination of
married men to the diaconate and the priesthood, provided that they were
married only once and that their wives are neither widows nor divorcees.
These stipulations reflect the general principle of absolute monogamy,
which the Eastern church considered as a Christian norm to which
candidates for the priesthood are to comply strictly. Deacons and
priests cannot marry after their ordination. Bishops are selected from
among the unmarried clergy or widowed priests. The rule defining the
requirement for an unmarried episcopate was issued at a time (6th
century) when monks represented the elite of the clergy. The
contemporary decrease in the number of monks in the Orthodox church has
created a serious problem in some territorial churches, as new
candidates for the episcopacy are difficult to find.
The structure of the church » Monasticism
Eastern Christian monasticism began in the 3rd and 4th centuries of the
Christian era. From its beginning it was essentially a contemplative
movement seeking the experience of God in a life of permanent prayer.
Concern for prayer, as the central and principal function of
monasticism, does not mean that the Eastern Christian monastic movement
was of a single uniform character. Eremitic (solitary) monasticism,
favouring the personal and individual practice of prayer and asceticism,
often competed with cenobitic (communal) monastic life, in which prayer
was mainly liturgical and corporate. The two forms of monasticism
originated in Egypt and coexisted in Byzantium, as well as throughout
eastern Europe.
In Byzantium the great monastery of Studion became the model of
numerous cenobitic communities. It is in the framework of the eremitic,
or Hesychast, tradition, however, that the most noted Byzantine mystical
theologians, such as Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas,
received their training. One of the major characteristics of the
Hesychast tradition is the practice of the Jesus prayer, or constant
invocation of the name of Jesus, sometimes in connection with breathing.
This practice won wide acceptance in medieval and modern Russia.
Cenobitic traditions of Byzantium also were important in Slavic lands.
The colonization of the Russian north was largely accomplished by monks
who acted as pioneers of civilization and as missionaries.
In Byzantium as well as in other areas of the Orthodox world, the
monks were often the only upholders of the moral and spiritual integrity
of Christianity, and thus they gained the respect of the masses as well
as that of the intellectuals. The famous Russian startsy (“elders”) of
the 19th century became the spiritual leaders of the great Russian
writers Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolay Gogol, and Leo Tolstoy and inspired
many philosophers in their quest for religious experience.
Since the 1970s, when a resurgence in the admission of new monks
began, the most famous centre of Orthodox monasticism has been Mount
Athos in Greece. In this remote location more than 1,000 monks of
different national backgrounds are grouped into a monastic republic—a
federation of 20 self-governing monasteries and smaller monastic
communities whose governor is appointed by the Greek minister of foreign
affairs and whose spiritual head is the ecumenical patriarch.
Worship and sacraments » The role of the liturgy
By its theological richness, spiritual significance, and variety, the
worship of the Orthodox church represents one of the most significant
factors in the church’s continuity and identity. It helps to account for
the survival of Christianity during the many centuries of Muslim rule in
the Middle East and the Balkans, when the liturgy was the only source of
religious knowledge or experience. Since liturgical practice was
practically the only religious expression legally authorized in the
Soviet Union, the continuous existence of Orthodox communities in the
region was also centred almost exclusively around the liturgy.
The concept that the church is most authentically itself when the
congregation of the faithful is gathered together in worship is a basic
expression of Eastern Christian experience. Without that concept it is
impossible to understand the fundamentals of church structure in
Orthodoxy, with the bishop functioning in his essential roles as teacher
and high priest in the liturgy. Similarly, the personal experience of
participation in divine life is understood in the framework of the
continuous liturgical action of the community.
According to many authorities, one of the reasons why the Eastern
liturgy has made a stronger impact on the Christian church than has its
Western counterpart is that it has always been viewed as a total
experience, appealing simultaneously to the emotional, intellectual, and
aesthetic faculties of humans. The liturgy includes a variety of models,
or symbols, using formal theological statements as well as bodily
perceptions and gestures (e.g., music, incense, prostrations) and the
visual arts. All are meant to convey the content of the Christian faith
to the educated and the noneducated alike. Participation in the liturgy
implies familiarity with its models, and many of them are conditioned by
the historical and cultural past of the church. Thus, the use of such an
elaborate and ancient liturgy presupposes catechetical preparation. It
may require an updating of the liturgical forms themselves. The Orthodox
church recognizes that liturgical forms are changeable and that, because
the early church admitted a variety of liturgical traditions, such a
variety is also possible today. Thus, Orthodox communities with Western
rites now exist in western Europe and in the Americas.
The Orthodox church, however, has always been conservative in
liturgical matters. This conservatism is in particular due to the
absence of a central ecclesiastical authority that could enforce reforms
and to the firm conviction of the church membership as a whole that the
liturgy is the main vehicle and experience of true Christian beliefs.
Consequently, reform of the liturgy is often considered as equivalent to
a reform of the faith itself. However inconvenient this conservatism may
be, the Orthodox liturgy has preserved many essential Christian values
transmitted directly from the experience of the early church.
Throughout the centuries the Orthodox liturgy has been richly
embellished with cycles of hymns from a wide variety of sources.
Byzantium (where the present Orthodox liturgical rite took shape), while
keeping many biblical and early Christian elements, used the lavish
resources of patristic theology and Greek poetry, as well as some
gestures of imperial court ceremonial, in order to convey the realities
of God’s kingdom.
Normally, the content of the liturgy is directly accessible to the
faithful, because the Byzantine tradition is committed to the use of any
vernacular language in the liturgy. Translation of both Scriptures and
liturgy into various languages was undertaken by the medieval
Byzantines, as well as by modern Russian missionaries. Liturgical
conservatism, however, leads de facto to the preservation of antiquated
languages. The Byzantine Greek used in church services by the modern
Greeks and the Old Church Slavonic still preserved by all the Slavs are
at least as distant from the spoken languages as is the language of the
King James Version of the Bible—used in many Protestant churches—from
modern English.
Worship and sacraments » The eucharistic liturgies
The liturgies attributed to St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great
are the eucharistic liturgies most generally used in Orthodox worship.
Both acquired their present shape by the 9th century, but it is
generally recognized that the wording of the eucharistic “canon” of the
liturgy of St. Basil goes back to the 4th century and may be the work of
St. Basil himself. The liturgy of St. James—composed about the 4th
century and largely similar to that of St. Basil—is used occasionally,
especially in Jerusalem. During the period of Lent a service of
Communion, with elements (bread and wine) reserved from those
consecrated on the previous Sunday, is celebrated in connection with the
evening service of vespers; it is called the “liturgy of the
presanctified” and is attributed to St. Gregory the Great.
The liturgies of St. John Chrysostom and of St. Basil differ only in
the text of the eucharistic canon: their overall structures, established
in the High Middle Ages, are identical and begin with an elaborate rite
of preparation (proskomidē). A priest on a separate “table of oblation”
disposes on a paten (plate) the particles of bread that will symbolize
the assembly of the saints, both living and dead, around Christ, the
“Lamb of God.” Then follows the liturgy of the catechumens, which begins
with a processional entrance of the priest into the sanctuary with the
Gospel (“little entrance”) and which includes the traditional Christian
“liturgy of the word,” the reading from the New Testament letters and
the Gospels as well as a sermon. This part of the liturgy ends with the
expulsion of the catechumens, who, until they are baptized, are not
admitted to the sacramental part of the service. (If no catechumens are
present, the expulsion is symbolic.) The Liturgy of the Faithful
includes another ceremonial procession of the priest into the sanctuary.
He carries the bread and wine from the table of oblations to the altar
(“great entrance”). This is followed here—as in the West—with the
recitation of the Nicene Creed, the eucharistic canon, and the Lord’s
Prayer and Communion prayer. The bread used for the Eucharist is
ordinary leavened bread; both elements (bread and wine) are distributed
with a special spoon (labis).
Worship and sacraments » The liturgical cycles
One of the major characteristics of the Byzantine liturgical tradition
is the wealth and variety of hymnodical texts marking the various cycles
of the liturgical year. A special liturgical book contains the hymns for
each of the main cycles. The daily cycle includes the offices of
Hesperinos (vespers), Apodeipnon (Compline), the midnight prayer,
Orthros (matins), and the four canonical “hours”—offices to be said at
the “first” (6:00 am), “third” (9:00 am), “sixth” (12:00 noon), and
“ninth” (3:00 pm) hours. The liturgical book covering the daily cycle is
called the Hōrologion (“The Book of Hours”). The Paschal (Easter) cycle
is centred on the Feast of Feasts—i.e., the feast of Christ’s
Resurrection. It includes the period of Great Fast (Lent), preceded by
three Sundays of preparation and the period of 50 days following Easter.
The hymns of the Lenten period are found in the Triōdion (“Three Odes”)
and those of the Easter season in the Pentēkostarion (called the
“Flowery Triodion”). The weekly cycle is the continuation of the
Resurrection cycle found in the Triōdion and the Pentēkostarion; each
week following the Sunday after Pentecost (50 days after Easter)
possesses its own musical tone, or mode, in accordance with which all
the hymns of the week are sung. As described in the Octoechos (“The Book
of Eight Tones”), there are eight tones whose composition is
traditionally attributed to St. John of Damascus (8th century). Each
week is centred around Sunday, the day of Christ’s Resurrection.
The Easter and weekly cycles clearly dominate all offices of the
entire year and illustrate the absolute centrality of the Resurrection
in the Eastern understanding of the Christian message. The date of
Easter, set at the Council of Nicaea (325), is the first Sunday after
the full moon following the spring equinox. Differences between the East
and the West in computing the date exist because the Orthodox church
uses the Julian calendar for establishing the date of the equinox (hence
a delay of 13 days) and also because of the tradition that Easter must
necessarily follow the Jewish Passover and must never precede it or
coincide with it.
The yearly cycle includes the hymns for each of the 366 days of the
calendar year, with its feasts and daily commemoration of saints. They
are found in the 12 volumes of the Menaion (“Book of Months”). From the
6th to the 9th century the Byzantine church experienced its golden age
of creativity in the writing of hymns by outstanding poets such as John
of Damascus. In more recent times hymn writing has generally followed
the accepted patterns set by those authors but rarely has it reached the
quality of its models. Since the Eastern Orthodox tradition bans
instrumental music, or accompaniment, the singing is always a cappella,
with only a few exceptions admitted by some parishes in the United
States.
Worship and sacraments » The sacraments
Contemporary Orthodox catechisms and textbooks all affirm that the
church recognizes seven mystēria (“sacraments”): baptism, chrismation,
Communion, holy orders, penance, anointing of the sick, and marriage.
Neither the liturgical book called Euchologion (“Prayer Book”), which
contains the texts of the sacraments, nor the patristic tradition,
however, formally limits the number of sacraments. They do not
distinguish clearly between the “sacraments” and such acts as the
blessing of water on Epiphany Day or the burial service or the service
for the tonsuring of a monk that in the West are called sacramentalia.
In fact, no council recognized by the Orthodox church ever defined the
number of sacraments. It is only through the “Orthodox confessions” of
the 17th century, which was directed against the Protestant Reformation
(which recognized only two, baptism and Communion), that the number
seven has been generally accepted.
The underlying sacramental theology of the Orthodox church is based,
however, on the notion that the ecclesiastical community is the unique
mystērion, of which the various sacraments are the normal expressions.
The church interprets each sacramental act as a prayer of the entire
ecclesiastical community, led by the bishop or his representative, and
as God’s response, based upon Christ’s promise to send the Holy Spirit
upon the church. These two aspects of the sacrament exclude both magic
and legalism: they imply that the Holy Spirit is given to free people
and call for their responses. In the mystērion of the church the
participation of humans in God is effected through their “cooperation”
or “synergy”; to make this participation possible once more is the goal
of the Incarnation.
Worship and sacraments » The sacraments » Baptism and chrismation
Baptism is normally performed by triple immersion as a sign of the death
and Resurrection of Christ; thus, the rite appears essentially as a gift
of new life. It is immediately followed by chrismation, performed by the
priest who anoints the newly baptized Christian with “Holy Chrism” (oil)
blessed by the bishop. Baptized and chrismed children are admitted to
Holy Communion. By admitting children immediately after their baptism to
both chrismation and Communion, the Eastern Christian tradition
maintains the meaning of baptism as the beginning of a new life
nourished by the Eucharist.
Worship and sacraments » The sacraments » The Eucharist
There never has been, in the East, much speculation about the nature of
the eucharistic mystery. Both canons presently in use (that of St. Basil
and that of St. John Chrysostom) include the “words of institution”
(“This is my Body” and “This is my Blood”), which are traditionally
considered in the West as the formula necessary for the validity of the
sacrament. In the East, however, the culminating point of the prayer is
not in the remembrance of Christ’s act but in the invocation of the Holy
Spirit, which immediately follows:
Send down Thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon the Gifts here spread
forth, and make this bread to be the precious Body of Thy Christ.
Thus, the central mystery of Christianity is seen as being performed
by the prayer of the church and through an invocation of the Spirit. The
nature of the mystery that occurs in the bread and wine is signified by
the term metabolē (“sacramental change”). The Western term
transubstantiation occurs only in some confessions of faith after the
17th century.
Worship and sacraments » The sacraments » Orders
The Orthodox church recognizes three major orders—the diaconate, the
priesthood, and the episcopate. It also recognizes two minor orders—the
lectorate and the subdiaconate. All ordinations are performed by a
bishop normally during the eucharistic liturgy. The consecration of a
bishop requires the participation of at least two or three bishops, as
well as an election by a canonical synod.
Worship and sacraments » The sacraments » Penance
The sacrament of penance in the early church was a solemn and public act
of reconciliation, through which an excommunicated sinner was readmitted
into church membership. It has evolved, however, into a private act of
confession through which every Christian’s membership in the church is
periodically renewed. The practice and the rite of penance vary in the
Orthodox church today. In the churches of the Balkans and the Middle
East, it fell into disuse during the four centuries of Turkish
occupation but was gradually restored in the 20th century. In
Greek-speaking churches only certain priests, especially appointed by
the bishop, have the right to hear confessions. In Russia, on the
contrary, confessions remained a standard practice that was generally
required before communion. General or group confession, introduced by
John of Kronshtadt, a Russian spiritual leader of the early 20th
century, is also occasionally practiced.
The rite of confession in the Euchologion retains the form of a
prayer, or invocation, said by the priest for the remission of the
penitent’s sins. In the Slavic ritual a Latin-inspired and juridical
form of personal absolution was introduced in the 17th century by Petro
Mohyla, metropolitan of Kiev. In general Orthodox practice, however,
confession is generally viewed as a form of spiritual healing rather
than as a tribunal. The relative lack of legalism reflects the Eastern
patristic understanding of sin as an internal passion and as an
enslavement. The external sinful acts—which alone can be legally
tried—are only manifestations of humanity’s internal disease.
Worship and sacraments » The sacraments » Anointing of the sick
Anointing of the sick is a form of healing by prayer. In the Greek
church it is performed annually for the benefit of the entire
congregation on the evening of Holy Wednesday in church.
Worship and sacraments » The sacraments » Marriage
Marriage is celebrated through a rite of crowning, performed with great
solemnity and signifying an eternal union, sacramentally “projected”
into the kingdom of God. Orthodox theology of marriage insists on its
sacramental eternity rather than its legal indissolubility. Thus, second
marriages, in cases of either widowhood or divorce, are celebrated
through a subdued penitential rite, and men who have been married more
than once are not admitted to the priesthood. Remarriage after divorce
is tolerated on the basis of the possibility that the sacrament of
marriage was not originally received with the consciousness and
responsibility that would have made it fully effective; according to
this view, remarriage can be a second chance.
Worship and sacraments » Architecture and iconography
Since the time of the Roman emperor Constantine I, Eastern Christianity
has developed a variety of patterns in church architecture. The chief
model was created when Emperor Justinian I completed the “great church”
of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in the 6th century. The architectural
conception of that church consisted of erecting a huge round dome on top
of the classical early Christian basilica. The dome was meant to
symbolize the descent of heaven upon earth—i.e., the ultimate meaning of
the eucharistic celebration.
The long Iconoclastic Controversy (725–843), during which the
Orthodox theology of icons was fully developed, concerned itself
primarily with the problem of the Incarnation; it was the direct
continuation of the Christological debates of the 5th, 6th, and 7th
centuries. The image of Christ, the incarnated God, became for the
Eastern Christian a pictorial confession of faith: God was truly visible
in the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, and the saints—whose images
surround that of Christ—are witnesses of the fact that the transfigured,
“deified” humanity is accessible to those who believe in Christ.
Departing from tridimensional images or statues, that were reminiscent
of pagan idolatry, the Christian East developed a rich tradition of
iconography. Portable icons—often painted on wood but also using mosaics
with enamel techniques—are always kept in houses or public places. Among
the icon painters, who never signed their work, there appeared several
artists of genius. Most of them are unknown, but tradition and written
documents have revealed the names of some, such as the famous
14th–15th-century Russian painter St. Andrey Rublyov.
The screen, or iconostasis, which separates the sanctuary from the
nave in contemporary Orthodox churches is a rather late development.
After the triumph of orthodoxy over iconoclasm (destruction of images)
in 843, a new emphasis was placed upon the permanent revelatory role of
images. The Incarnation implied that God had become man—i.e., fully
visible and, thus, describable in his human nature. The images of Christ
and the saints, who had manifested in their lives the new humanity
transfigured by the grace of God, were placed everywhere in full
evidence before the congregation. A contrast was thus suggested between
the visible manifestation of God through the pictorial representation of
Christ as man and his more perfect but mysterious and invisible presence
in the Eucharist. The iconostasis, together with those parts of the
liturgy that involve the closing and opening of the curtain before the
altar, emphasizes the mysterious and “eschatological” (consummation of
history) character of the eucharistic service. They suggest, however,
that this mystery is not a secret and that the Christian is being
introduced through the eucharistic liturgy into the very reality of
divine life and of the kingdom to come, which was revealed when God
became man.
The church and the world
The schism between the Greek and Latin churches coincided
chronologically with a surge of Christian missionary activity in
northern and eastern Europe. Both sides contributed to the resultant
expansion of Christianity but used different methods. The West imposed a
Latin liturgy on the new converts and thus made Latin the only vehicle
of Christian civilization and a major instrument of ecclesiastical
unity. The East, meanwhile, as noted above, accepted from the start the
principle of translating both the Scriptures and the liturgy into the
spoken tongues of the converted nations. Christianity thus became
integrated into the indigenous cultures of the Slavic nations, and the
universal Orthodox church evolved as a fellowship of national churches
rather than as a centralized body.
The church and the world » Missions: ancient and modern
The Christian East, in spite of the integrating forces of Christian
Hellenism, was always culturally pluralistic: since the first centuries
of Christianity, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Copts, Ethiopians, and
other ethnic groups used their own languages in worship and developed
their own liturgical traditions. Even though, by the time of the Greek
missions to the Slavs, the Byzantine church was almost monolithically
Greek, the idea of a liturgy in the vernacular was still quite alive, as
is demonstrated by the use of the Slavic language by the missionaries
led by Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century.
The Turkish conquest of the Middle East and of the Balkans (15th
century) interrupted the missionary expansion of the Orthodox church.
The expansion of Islam into formerly Christian territories in the Middle
Ages meant that the Christians could survive only in enclaves and were
legally excluded from proselytizing among Muslims.
The Russian church alone was able to continue the tradition of Cyril
and Methodius, and it did so almost without interruption until the
modern period. In the 14th century St. Stephen of Perm translated the
Scriptures and the liturgy into the language of a Finnish tribe of the
Russian north and became the first bishop of the Zyrians. The expansion
of the Russian Empire in Asia was accompanied by efforts of
evangelization that—sometimes in opposition to the avowed policy of
Russianization practiced by the government of St. Petersburg—followed
the Cyrillo-Methodian pattern of translation. This method was utilized
among the Tatars of the Volga in the 16th century and among the various
peoples of Siberia throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1714 a
mission was established in China. In 1794 monks of the Valamo Abbey
reached Alaska; their spiritual leader, the monk Herman, was canonized
by the Orthodox church in 1970. Missions in the Islamic sphere resumed
to the extent that by the year 1903 the liturgy was celebrated in more
than 20 languages in the region of Kazan.
The Alaskan mission was under the direction of a modest priest sent
to America from eastern Siberia, Ivan Veniaminov. During his long stay
in America, first as a priest, then as a bishop (1824–68), he engaged in
the work of translating the Gospels and the liturgy into the languages
of the Aleuts, the Tlingit Indians, and the Eskimos of Alaska.
In Japan an Orthodox church was established by St. Nikolay Kasatkin.
The distinctively Japanese character of this church enabled it to
survive the political trials of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), the
Russian Revolution, and World War II. The church of Japan received full
autonomy from the Russian church in 1970.
The missionary tradition has also been revived in Greece. Various
Greek associations are dedicated to the pursuit of missionary work in
Africa, where sizable indigenous groups have recently joined the
Orthodox church.
The church and the world » Orthodoxy and other Christians
Since the failure of the unionist Council of Florence (1439), there have
been no official attempts to restore unity between the Eastern Orthodoxy
and Roman Catholicism. In 1484 an Orthodox council declared that Roman
Catholics desiring to join the Orthodox church were to be received
through chrismation (or confirmation). In the 18th century, however, the
relations deteriorated to the point that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of
Constantinople decreed that all Roman Catholic and Protestant
sacraments, including baptism, were totally unauthentic. A parallel
attitude prevailed in Russia until the 17th century, when large numbers
of Eastern Rite Roman Catholics (“Uniates”) were received back into
Orthodoxy by a simple confession of faith, and this practice was adopted
in the acceptance of individual Roman Catholics as well.
In the 16th century, during the Reformation, a lengthy correspondence
took place between a group of reformers headed by Philipp Melanchthon
and the ecumenical patriarch Jeremias II. It led to no concrete results,
for the East generally considered the Protestants as only a branch of
deviation of the altogether erroneous Roman church.
Various attempts at rapprochement with the Anglican Communion,
especially since the 19th century, were generally more fruitful. Several
private associations of ecclesiastics and theologians promoted
understanding between Eastern Orthodoxy and the “Anglo-Catholic” branch
of Anglicanism. The Orthodox, however, were reticent in taking any
formal step toward reunion before a satisfactory statement on the
content of Anglican faith, taken as a whole, could be obtained.
The contemporary ecumenical movement has from its inception involved
the Orthodox church. Eastern Orthodox representatives took part in the
various Life and Work (practical) and Faith and Order (theological)
conferences from the very beginning of the 20th century. One by one the
various independent Orthodox churches joined the World Council of
Churches, created in 1948. Often, and especially at the beginning of
their participation, Orthodox delegates had recourse to separate
statements, which made clear to the Protestant majorities that, in the
Orthodox view, Christian unity was attainable only in the full unity of
the primitive apostolic faith from which the Orthodox church had never
departed. This attitude of the Orthodox could be understood only if it
made sufficiently clear that the truth—which historic Eastern Orthodoxy
claims to preserve—is maintained by the Holy Spirit in the church as a
whole and not by any individual or any group of individuals on their own
right and also that the unity of Christians—which is the goal of the
ecumenical movement—does not imply cultural, intellectual, or ritual
uniformity but rather a mystical fellowship in the fullness of truth as
expressed in eucharistic communion.
The ecumenical movement, especially since the Second Vatican Council
(1962–65), is today much wider than the formal membership of the World
Council of Churches. The principle of conciliarism and the readiness of
the popes to appear publicly as equals of Eastern patriarchs—as in the
meetings between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I in the
1960s—represent significant moves in the direction of a better
understanding between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Pope John Paul II
sought to improve relations with various Orthodox churches, and his
successor, Benedict XVI, met with Patriarch Bartholomew I in Istanbul in
2006.
The church and the world » Church, state, and society
In the West after the fall of the Roman Empire, church assumed the
unifying social function that no other individual or institution was
able to fulfill. Eventually the popes assumed civil authority in
Christendom (according to the false Donation of Constantine, the first
Christian emperor actually bestowed authority over the Western Empire to
the pope). In the East the empire persisted until 1453 and in Russia
until 1917. Thus, the church had to fulfill its social functions in the
political framework of the Christian empire.
This historical contrast coincides with a theological polarization:
the Eastern Fathers conceived the God-man relationship in terms of
personal experience and communion culminating in deification. Western
theology, meanwhile, understood man as autonomous in the secular sphere,
although controlled by the authority of the church, which was conceived
as vicariously representing God.
The Byzantine and Eastern form of church-state relations has often
been labelled as caesaropapism, and the hierarchy of the church was,
most of the time, deprived of the legal possibility of opposing imperial
power. But this label is inaccurate in two respects: first, it
presupposes that the emperor possessed a recognizable power to define
the content of the faith, comparable to that of the papacy; and, second,
it underestimates the power of the church (as a corporate,
transfiguring, and deifying power) that is effective without legal
guarantees or statutes. The Byzantine ideal of church-state relations
was a “symphony” between the civil and the ecclesiastical functions of
Christian society. The abuses of imperial power were frequent, but
innumerable examples of popular resistance to those imperial decrees
that were considered as detrimental to the faith can be cited. Neither
the strong emperors of the 7th century, trying to impose monophysitism,
nor the weakened Palaeologans (13th–15th century), attempting reunion
with Rome, were able to overcome the corporate opposition of Orthodox
clergy and laity.
The Byzantine conception of church-state relations was not, however,
without major weaknesses. It often led to the identification of the
interests of the church with those of the empire. Conceived when both
the church and the empire were supranational and, in principle,
universal, it gradually evolved into a system that gave a sacred
sanction to national states. Modern ecclesiastical nationalism, which
inhibits relations between Orthodox churches, is the outcome of the
medieval alliance between the empire and the church.
Only after the Turkish occupation of the Balkans was civil authority
directly assumed by the Orthodox church hierarchy in the Middle East. It
was granted to it by the new Muslim overlords, who chose to administer
their Christian subjects as a separate community, or millet, ruled by
its own religious leaders. The patriarch of Constantinople was thus
appointed by the sultan as head (millet-bachi) of the entire Christian
population of the Ottoman Empire. Understood by some, especially the
Greeks, as the heir of Byzantine emperors and by others, especially the
Balkan Slavs and Romanians, as an agent of the hated Turks, the
patriarch exercised these powers until the secularization of the Turkish
republic by Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the
republic, in 1921. By that time, however, the patriarch had lost most of
his jurisdictional powers because of the establishment of autocephalous
churches in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. The millet system,
however, survived in other areas of the Middle East. In Cyprus, for
example, the church assumed a leading role in national liberation, and
its prestige encouraged the election of Archbishop Makarios III as the
first president of the young republic.
The millet system and the active political responsibilities that it
implied for the church, it should be noted, originated in the Ottoman
period only and is not in the spiritual tradition of the Christian East
as such. The Russian church is the most recent example of religious
survival without practical social or political involvement.
The Orthodox attitude toward social responsibility in the world
constitutes a distinct contribution to the contemporary ecumenical
movement. But it will be meaningful only if it is understood in its
proper framework—i.e., as an understanding of the Christian faith as a
personal spiritual experience of God, which is self-sufficient knowledge
of God and which, as such, can lead to an authentically Christian
witness in the secularized world. The form of that witness has varied
greatly in history, and Orthodox tradition has placed among the church’s
saints both hermits and politicians, Hesychast monks as well as
emperors. According to the modern Orthodox theologian Sergey
Nikolayevich Bulgakov, the Orthodox church accepts “a relativism of
means and methods,” provided there remains “an absolute and unique
goal,” which is the kingdom of God still to come but also already
present in the mystery of the church.
The Rev. John Meyendorff
