church history to the reformation ch506 ormation ef o the r ......orthodox, some fourteen million,...

Church History to the Reformation

Transcript - CH506 Church History to the Reformation © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 14 of 24CH506

The Rise of Eastern Orthodoxy

Church History to the Reformation

This is lecture fourteen—The Rise of Eastern Orthodoxy. Greetings once again in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me invite you to join me in prayer as we begin. Eternal God, we come to you once again asking for your guidance through the power of the Spirit, so that all that we think, all that is said might honor your name. For it’s in the name of Christ Jesus we pray. Amen.

Up to this point in our course, we have focused most of our attention on the Western Church, and I think it’s instructive to remember that there’s a huge part of Christendom, what’s often called Byzantine or Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which also exists and is developing in parallel fashion to much of what we have been describing. These Christians, of course, knew no Middle Ages, at least in the Western sense. They underwent no fall of their political establishment as it happened under Rome, and they, in fact, experienced no Reformation or Counter-Reformation later in their history. Consequently, it’s understandable that Orthodox Christians tend to see history in quite a different perspective, and we want to examine some of that perspective and some of that history.

This, of course, is an enormous collection of Christian churches, some fourteen separate Orthodox churches exist and some 100 million members claim to be part of that body. In America alone there are some five million Orthodox Christians and some 1500 separate parishes, to say nothing of the various schools—theological and college –level institutions, as well as monasteries which exist right here in our own country.

Most of us know very little about the Eastern Church and perhaps it’s understandable that this should be so. For centuries the Greek East and the Latin West, so called, have been growing apart, each one following its own way. And yet, in a sense, we share in common many elements of a heritage which is ours together. Indeed, much of the history of the church we’ve talked about up

Garth M. Rosell, PhD Experience: Professor of Church History

and Director Emeritus, Ockenga Institute at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary



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to this point has been shared history from Pentecost to the great ecumenical councils, much of what we talked about in the Greco-Roman Era, as well as the Middle Ages, is history that is shared on both sides of these great boundaries. In recent years this has been recognized in increasing frequency among Protestants, Catholics, certainly among many evangelicals who want to learn more about this great branch of Christendom.

A good place to begin this study for those who are interested is a relatively new volume by Anthony Ugolnik called The Illuminating Icon. This was published by Eerdmans Press in 1989 and is one of the most interesting entry points to a study of Eastern Church life for those of us who come from evangelical Christian backgrounds. We’re fortunate to have a variety of other excellent resources as well. John Meyendorff’s Byzantine Theology published by Fordham University Press in 1974 is an excellent little survey. Others of you may want to pick up the Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, University of Chicago Press, 1974 or Alexander Schmemann’s The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1963 or Harry Magoulias’ Byzantine Christianity, published by Wayne State University Press in 1982; or one of the best sources is Timothy Ware’s The Orthodox Church in the Penguin Book series, 1963. Or my good friend, Stanley Harakas has written a little book called Let Mercy Abound, 1982. These and a variety of additional source are available for us for the study of this important aspect of the church’s past and life; and I want to draw upon them and others as we take a brief look at this Eastern or Orthodox wing of the church.

Now what is meant by the Orthodox Church? Well we need to understand first of all the great divisions which have been place within the Christian church across the centuries. Three major divisions or groupings of divisions have taken place at intervals of roughly 500 years. The first of these divisions in the fifth and sixth centuries divided the main body of Christians from two interesting collections of groups. One of them the Nestorian Church of Persia and the other the Monophysite churches. There are actually five Monophysite churches—from Armenia, from Syria, this is a so-called Jacobite Church; from Egypt, the so-called Coptic Church, from Ethiopia and from India. Now we’ll come back later on in the course to talk a bit more about Indian Christianity, but there are a variety of fascinating resources available for that wing of the church, and I would encourage you, those who are interested, to find M. K. Kuriakose’s, History of Christianity in India source materials which is put out by the Christian Literature Society in



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1982. It contains a variety of interesting resource materials that relate to the growth of the church in India.

So you have in this early period, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the division of the main body of Christianity—of the Nestorian Church in Persia and the five Monophysite churches whose story will pop up periodically as we move through the history of the church.

The second great division is usually dated at the year 1054 AD where the main body of Christians—that is, other than the Nestorians and the Monophysites—divided into two communions: the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe, primarily under the leadership of the Pope in Rome, and the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe and elsewhere under the patriarch of Constantinople. The third division, of course, which we’ll be saying later in the course, is the great Protestant Reformation period of the sixteenth century in which the Western Church and Catholicism was divided into the various Protestant bodies, as well as the on-going Roman Catholic body. So we have in church history now major groupings of Christians—Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and later we’ll find Protestants. And you have these smaller groups of Nestorians and Monophysites, each of them establishing themselves with greater or lesser strength in different regional locations, each tending to draw upon certain cultural backgrounds. The Nestorians and Monophysites drawing on a Semitic or more Oriental cultural context, the Orthodox on the Greek or Byzantine, and the Roman Catholic on the Roman or Latin.

Surrounded by Nestorians and Monophysites to the east and Roman Catholics to the west, Eastern Orthodoxy tended to spread most fully to the north to Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia. So when the Byzantine Empire began to collapse, these northern churches became increasingly important; by the fall of Constantinople to the church in 1453, the principality of Moscow was already in a position to take Byzantine’s place as protector of the great Orthodox world. Over the last 150 years, this situation has started to reverse with increased importance being given once again to the Orthodox Church in Turkey and Greece.

Geographically, then, Orthodoxy’s primary distribution is in Eastern Europe, Russia, and along the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean, though those of us in America will recognize the fact that there’s a growing presence of various Orthodox bodies here in America now as well. Orthodoxy is composed today of a series



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of self-governing, what is called Autocephalous Churches. There are, of course, the four ancient patriarchates—Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. These rank first in honor due to their historic role, and we’ve seen these places, of course, before, each one headed by a patriarch—Constantinople with about two million Orthodox Christians, Alexandria representing some 100,000, Antioch some 450,000 Orthodox Christians, and in Jerusalem some 60,000.

Now in addition to these four ancient patriarchates, there are eleven other independent or self-governing Orthodox bodies. There are the Slovic Churches, including the Russian Orthodox Church, which is an enormous church of some fifty million adherents. And then there’s the Serbian or Yugoslavian Orthodox body of some eight million and the Bulgarian body with some 6 million adherents and the Czechoslovakian Orthodox with some 350,000. This is the most recent body to become autocephalous or independent, and that happened as recently as 1951. And then, of course, the Polish Orthodox with some 350,000.

Now in addition to those Slavonic Churches, are the Greek Churches, including the Orthodox in Greece with some seven and a half million, in Cypress with some 400,000, and in Sinai with less than 100. Now in addition to that you have the Romanian Orthodox, some fourteen million, you have the Orthodox in Georgia, that section of Russian, which is not part of the Russian Orthodox Church with some one and a half million adherents. You have the Albanian Orthodox with some 200,000. The head of Russian, Romanian, Serbian, and Bulgarian churches is known as a patriarch, as is true for the four ancient patriarchy. The head of the Georgian Church is called a Catholicos-Patriarch and the head of all of the others are called archbishops or metropolitans.

Now there are several more largely self-governing, but not fully autocephalous, bodies of Orthodox. In Finland, some 66,000, in China, estimated some 20,000, in Japan some 35,000. There also ecclesiastical providence in Western Europe, North and South America, and Australia which are tied to one or other of these autocephalous churches. Finally there are three autonomous church administrations among the Russians outside of Russia. These are Russian immigrants, perhaps a million of them, who are outside of the Russian jurisdiction.

The Orthodox Church then is actually a family of self-governing churches held together not by a central organization or a



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single head with particular authority, but by the faith and the sacraments. These are called the double bounds of unity. There’s no equivalent, you see, in Orthodoxy to the Roman Catholic Pope. Of course, the patriarch of Constantinople is known as the Great Ecumenical Patriarch and is given a place of special honor, but he can’t interfere in the internal affairs of the other churches. He is more equivalent in a sense to the Archbishop of Canterbury if you think of him in the great Anglican communion.

What is the attitude of the Orthodox Church toward Rome? Well they believe that the apostolicy of Rome should be given a primacy of honor and even in some cases a right to hear appeals (remember Leo being appealed to in the period of the Council of Chalcedon), but the reject the doctrine of papal authority as set forth in the First Vatican Council of 1870. They do not see Rome as having a supremacy in authority, but merely a primacy in love, and that grows out of the special place Rome has played historically. Peter was the first among the apostles—the head of the church there. Peter and Paul, they feel, were martyred there. Rome was the early capital of the Empire. It also exhibited a kind of purity of faith in those early centuries which is greatly admired and honored, but Rome is only the first among equals. It does not hold the kind of authoritative political role that it does for the Western Roman Catholic Christians.

While independent then, each Orthodox church is in full agreement with the rest of the churches in all matters of doctrine and in the sacraments. There’s an enormous difference, of course, in size between various groupings of Orthodox churches. Among the independent bodies, the Russian Orthodox I mentioned had fifty million, while the Orthodox in Sinai have less than 100. Enormous varieties that you’ll find, and yet all of them tied together by what is called the faith and the sacraments.

Well, what are we to call these folk then? Well they’ve been given a variety of names—the Eastern Orthodox Church or the Orthodox Catholic Church or the Orthodox Catholic Church of the East or the Holy Orthodox Church. What I tend to like to use is the Orthodox Church, perhaps the simplest and best. Tied together then is a family of self-governing churches held together by faith and sacraments rather than by power or authority centered in one ecclesiastical figure or body.

Now the story of the Eastern Church really stems in part from Constantine, and you’ll remember our talking about the great



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Constantinian area and the revolution which took place in the 4th Century when Constantine came to power. He stands as a kind of watershed in the history of the church. With his conversion, the Age of the Martyrs came to an end and the Church of the Catacombs became the great church of the Empire. The Edict of Milan in 313 AD proclaimed official toleration for Christians and others and this was later then established as the religion of the land under Theodosius. In 324 Constantine moved his imperial capital from Rome to the old site of Byzantium on which built his new capital named after himself, Constantinople. This was to be the new Rome and that city was inaugurated in 330 AD.

In 325 remember Constantine called the first general ecumenical council of the church at Nicea. This was to establish the content of the Orthodox faith in the Empire and it was the first of the seven councils which formed the very theological foundation for the Eastern Orthodox churches. As John II, the metropolitan of Russian, put it in the eleventh century, “All profess that there are seven holy and ecumenical councils and these are the seven pillars of the faith erected as the holy mansion, the Catholic and ecumenical church.”

Now those seven councils are adopted as especially authoritative within Eastern Christianity. Only Roman Catholics accept the remaining councils up to the twenty-first which occurred in our own century. The Orthodox only accept the authority of the first seven, and you can find the full documentation of these again in The Nicene/Post Nicene Fathers volume on the ecumenical councils, which give you all of the commentary, as well as all of the original documents that are available for these seven critically important councils in the history of Eastern Christianity.

The first six councils from 325 to 681 AD indicated the basic task of clarifying and articulating the visible organization of the church and its teaching upon fundamental doctrines, particularly the Trinity, Christology, especially as it focused on the incarnation. These, of course, remain great mysteries. The councils didn’t eliminate the mystery of the faith as the Eastern churches like to teach us, but drew a fence around it to exclude false teaching and thinking, protect the faith from all outside heresy, but it was never to eliminate the mystery. It was simply to draw a fence around the mystery, the understanding of the faith which goes beyond human capabilities or mental processes.



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The practical purpose of the council in the discussions of theology which they included was the salvation of men, women, and children. The councils primarily were interested in safe-guarding the message of redemption. Heresy is dangerous precisely because it undermines redemption which can be found only in Jesus Christ. To be a Savoir, Christ must be fully God and fully man. All heresies they came to believe were aimed at undermining either one or the other of those balanced important central teachings. Arianism—Christ less than God; Monothelitism—Christ less than man, so that the first two councils established Christ as fully God in the nature of the Trinity. The next four focused on Christ as fully human. The seventh council which we will come to later on in our course was a defense of icons and the attitude of the church toward art and the use of art in the church, and we’ll see that in our next lecture.

Much of the theological work of this era, of course, was done by four of the greatest theological minds of that age—Athanasius of Alexandria, whom we referred to before, the three great Cappadocians, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa. These fourth century theologians are some of the great thinkers of that age or any, and they helped to divine the Trinity as three persons in one essence. And this was carried on then in the preaching and teaching of many others, including the man who has come to be the favorite of all Eastern Orthodox, St. John Chrysostom. John of the Golden Mouth as he is called lived from 344-407 AD. A fluent and eloquent preacher, his sermons sometimes lasted for two hours. He lived a strict and austere life, had deep compassion for the poor and the oppressed, a zeal for outreach and social justice—well worth reading and studying, and in fact six of the volumes of the Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, that marvelous set which is available in most libraries, six of those volumes are given completing to Chrysostom—volumes 9-14 in the first series, and you may want to read some of his sermons. He was considered one of the most powerful preachers of the early century.

The third canon of Constantinople in 381 placed Constantinople on a par with Rome as the new Rome, a place of new honor within the larger political world. And this, of course, proved to be a tension point between East and West. During the fifty years prior to the sixth ecumenical council, that is the years form about 630-680 AD, Byzantium was confronted by a sudden and alarming development. That was the rise of Islam. Within fifteen years of Mohammed’s death in 632 AD, his followers had taken Syria,



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Palestine, and Egypt. Within fifty years they were at the very gates of Constantinople, almost capturing the city, and within a 100 years they had swept across North Africa, parts of Spain, and on into Europe. The Byzantine Empire didn’t fall, of course, but lost some of its eastern possessions. The three patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem fell to Islam. It was seldom, however, free from the threat of attack on Islamic forces, only holding on with a thin thread for the next eight centuries until its final fall in 453 AD.

The Byzantine Empire is a fascinating political structure and social structure as well. Deeply permeated with religious interest and concern, its holidays were actually religious festival. Its sports events, races and the like were always started with the singing of hymns. Its trade contracts were marked with sign of a cross, and its people, whether clergy or lay, had a strong interest in theological questions. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, in the fourth century described Constantinople at the time of the second ecumenical council in 381, “The whole city is full of it, the squares, the marketplaces, the crossroads, the alley ways, men, moneychangers, food sellers, all are busy arguing. If you ask someone to give you change, he philosophizes about the begotten and the unbegotten. If you inquire about the price of a loaf of bread, you are told by way of a reply that the Father is greater than the Son or inferior. If you ask, ‘Is my bath ready?’ The attendant answers that the Son was made out of nothing.” These interesting comments indicate the kind of fascination that the people in town, lay and clergy, had.

Lay theologians by the way have always been recognized and highly revered within Eastern Orthodoxy. There’s never been the kind of sharp distinction between clergy and lay that we find so prevalent in the West, and in fact a number the great patriarchs were selected directly from the lay ranks without going through any of the other steps. “Synods and councils I salute from a distance,” wrote Gregory of Nazianzus. “For I know how troublesome they are, never again will I sit in those gatherings of cranes and geese.”

Some theologians even use questionable means to win the argument. Cyril of Alexandria in fighting Nestorius bribed the court and, in fact, set loose a private army of monks to terrorize the city of Ephesus in order to get his way. Frequent arguments, much acrimony, battles, fist fights, all of them were part of that story of the theologizing of the early church as it focused on those early ancient venerable councils. This, of course, grew out of the



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fact that these folk cared about the Christian faith. We perhaps could use a little more of that passion today. Maybe disorder is in some ways better than apathy. The councils also were filled with imperfect people like ourselves. Nonetheless, they were guided by the Holy Spirit, these weak vessels chosen by God, and they were the means that God selected to do His work, to establish His theological understanding, and to reach out in missionary activity throughout the world.

Monasticism was a central force also in the shaping of the Byzantine Empire. One of the leading figures in the Eastern Church has commented that, “The best way to penetrate Orthodox spirituality in fact is to enter it through Monasticism.” You recall that we explored this important area just before the last class. Since the tenth century the chief center of Orthodox Monasticism has been Athos. This is a rocky peninsula in Northern Greece jetting out into the Aegean and culminating at its tip in a 6000 foot peak known as the Holy Mountain. On it there are some twenty large monasteries and a number of smaller ones and a lot of hermit cells. In fact at its height, so 40,000 monks lived out there, and from that community has come some twenty-six patriarch and 144 bishops. The whole peninsula, in fact, has given up to Monastic settlement.

Now in Eastern Monasticism there are no orders as we find them in the West, such as the Carthusian or the Cistercian or so on. In the East all monks and nuns belong to one great fellowship. Individuals, of course, are attached to particular Monastic houses, but in Orthodox Monasticism, they are all drawn together around a common purpose and understanding. There are also elders within the community, older monks of special spiritual discernment and wisdom who serve as spiritual directors. We want to talk later in our course about the pastoral office and the task of spiritual direction in the church as it emerged in the Middle Ages. Sometimes these are clergy; sometimes these are lay persons. There’s no special ordination needed, but a person gained the position by a recognition in the community of their gifts in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In fact in the Eastern Church, they see St. Anthony, whom we’ve identified as the first of the great Monastics as one of these “elders.”

At the heart of Byzantium was the emperor. He was not simply a political figure; he was considered God’s representative on earth. He was always close to the church. Sometimes he even preached sermons or carried the censer for incense. In fact, the vestments



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which Orthodox bishops wear today are those which were worn by the emperor when he was in church. The life of Byzantium was to reflect a unified whole, a cohesive harmony. Thus there were to be no rigid lines of separation between church and state, sacred and secular, and the like. They were all part of a single organism. This was the structure that was first established under Justinian in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, perhaps the greatest of all the Byzantine emperors. The priesthood, the sacerdotium, and the imperial power or political powers, the imperium were together and cooperated together like a kind of symphony in this harmonious whole.

Now with that background, we need to move for a moment to the so-called great schism of the church often dated at 1054, and that is tied to an interesting event. A kind of tragic event in some ways that took place in Constantinople. One summer afternoon in 1054, Cardinal Humbert and two other papal legates entered the Church of the Holy Wisdom, the Sancta Sophia, in Constantinople and placed on the altar a bowl of excommunication. This incident is traditionally taken to mark the great schism between the Orthodox East and the Latin West. Actually it only symbolizes the growing estrangement which had been developing for centuries and, in fact, which was to continue to develop into the next centuries. This was caused by a whole variety of complex factors—cultural differences, theological wrangling, political problems, economic conditions, the strain of the Crusades, the fact that there was not a common language, there was not a common culture, and so on.

Two major theological quarrels highlighted the divisions, however, between the East and the West. The first of these was the authority of the pope. As we mentioned already, the Eastern Christians were willing to see the Bishop of Rome as first among equals, but they could not accept the monarchical episcopate with political supremacy. The monarchy in the West, you see, was counteracted by collegiality in the East, and you see that a bit in an interesting quote which is given by a twelfth century Orthodox writer, Nicetas, Archbishop of Nicomedia. “My dearest brother, we do not deny to the Roman Church the primacy amongst the five sister patriarchates and we recognize her right to the most honorable seat in ecumenical councils, but she has separated herself from us by her own deeds when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does not belong to her office. How shall we accept decrees from here that have been issued without consulting us and even without our knowledge? If the Roman pontiff seated at the lofty throne of his glory wishes to thunder at us and, so to speak, hurl



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his mandates at us from on high, if he wishes to judge us and even to rule us in our churches not by taking council with us, but at his own arbitrary pleasure, what kind of brotherhood or even what kind of parenthood can this be? We should be the slaves, not the sons of a such a church and the Roman See would not be the pious mother of sons, but a hard and imperious mistress of slaves.” Pretty powerful words, but they capture some of the flavor of the thinking within the Eastern Church.

Along with this debate about the pope and the bishop of Rome’s authority is the theological issue of the filioque. Now I mentioned that briefly before, but it’s a dispute which involves words about the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed. Originally the creed read, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified.” Now this original version is still maintained in the East, but the Western Church probably as a guard against the growth of Arianism added the extra phrase, “and from the Son,” the Latin filioque. Some Orthodox see this edition as simply an unauthorized accretion to the creed. Others, however, argue that it is downright heretical, and so you have this ongoing debate, which continues right down to our day, over filioque, so that these two great issues, the authority of the Bishop of Rome and the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed become points of contention which cause additional barriers and rifts between these two bodies of Christendom.

In addition to this you have what is often called a Photianism. Photios, you see, was appointed patriarch in Constantinople in 858 after his predecessor St. Ignatius had resigned under pressure from the emperor. The supporters of St. Ignatius refused to recognize Photios’ position as valid, calling him a usurper. When Pope Nicholas I received a letter from Photios indicating that he had exceeded to the crown, Nicholas decided to instigate a formal exploration and study of the matter and he sent his legates in 861 to Constantinople to do so. Photios received the legates warmly and they decided that Photios was the legitimate patriarch and they carried that message back to the pope. Nicholas, however, overturned their decision, proclaimed Ignatius to be patriarch and deposed Photios. The Byzantines, meanwhile, paid no attention to the pope’s condemnation and even sent no answer to his letters. This created, of course, an additional strain upon the relations between Rome and Constantinople.



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Nicholas, of course, felt that his power extended to the Eastern churches as well as to the Western. The Eastern churches disagreed. In 867 the emperor deposed Photios and reinstated Ignatius. The eighth Ecumenical Council held in 869 in Constantinople, the pope and as a matter of fact with only twelve bishops present, condemned and anathematized Photios. In 877 Ignatius died and Photios succeed him again increasing the tensions. Now this bouncing back and forth of authorities and regulations and appointments only illustrate for us the growing tensions on many levels between the East and the West, and these are going to break out again and again notably among the crusaders, and we’ll see those tensions further exacerbated by the Crusades.

There were attempts, of course, made at reconciliation in era after era, but the West and East tended to grow farther apart. Despite much in common, they felt that they must go their separate ways and that pattern has continued right down to our own time. It’s a pattern which I think needs to be reversed because areas of church life need to be in dialog with one another. And perhaps evangelical Christians can help to lead the way in opening that discussion and dialogue with brothers and sisters of the faith throughout the world.

Orthodoxy, of course, treasures tradition, what they call the faith once delivered to the saints, what Jesus imparted to His disciples. Perhaps the most distinctive characteristics of the Orthodox Church are the determinations that you find there to remain loyal to the past. By tradition, of course, they include the Bible, which is seen as having a special role in the church. These are people of the book who go again and again to the Scriptures to draw their faith. But in addition to the Scriptures you have the creeds, especially the Nicene Creed, the decrees of the seven ecumenical councils, the writing of the church fathers, the canons of the church, and the holy icons. All of these are part of that great body of tradition which is revered and treasured. They consider themselves guardians of that great inheritance which has been received from the past. They consider it important to live that out in the present and they consider it their duty to transmit it to future generations. As Georges Florovsky, “Tradition is the witness of the Spirit; the Spirit’s unceasing revelation and preaching of good tidings. To accept and understand tradition we must live within the church, we must be conscious of the grace-giving presence of the Lord in it. We must feel the breath of the Holy Spirit in it. Tradition is not only a protective, conservative principle; it is primarily the principle of growth and regeneration. Tradition is the constant



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abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words.”

Eastern Orthodox focus on the church; they’re vividly conscious of belonging to a community, but it’s a distinct understanding of the church that they are referring to. They insist, of course, on hierarchical church structure, on apostolic succession, on the episcopate, on priesthood as they understand it, upon prayers to the saints, and prayers for the departed. There’s a special relation between God and His church and they describe it in three ways: as the image of the Holy Trinity representing unity and diversity, as the body of Christ, the church as an extension of the incarnation, and as a continued Pentecost, focusing on the centrality of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. The church, therefore, is both visible and invisible. It’s both divine and human. Its orthodoxy, of course, teaches that outside the church there is no salvation, but it’s in a special sense that they teach it. No one can have God as Father who does not have the church as mother, they would say. This does not mean that all who are not visibly within orthodoxy are damned, nor does it mean that all in orthodoxy are necessarily saved. Membership, in fact, is known to God alone. They leave this in part to the area again of mystery.

The structure of the church is hierarchical with the three major offices we’ve already discovered of bishops, priests, and deacons operating. The bishops at the top—ruling, teaching, celebrating the sacraments—priests and deacons taking care of their various tasks within the life of the church, and focusing the whole of the community attention on the great sacraments of the church. The Eastern Church accepts the seven classic sacraments of Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but the two primary ones are baptism (and they practice infant baptism). In fact they confirm the child along with baptism and give communion at the time of infancy. Baptism is by three-fold immersion in water and, in fact, Orthodox insist on immersion unless it’s physically impossible to do so. Through baptism, full forgiveness of all sins, original or actual, is secured, and many Orthodox wear a small cross on a chain around their necks to remind them of that great baptismal event.

In addition to baptism, the Orthodox place great emphasis upon the Eucharist. The central expression of community worship for the Orthodox is the Eucharist. Within the context of the Eucharistic celebration, the church gathers through the activity of the Spirit to hear the Word of God with praise and to respond to it by offering the gifts of bread and wine in thanksgiving to the


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Father and in obedience to the command of the Lord.

Closely associated with the Eucharist are a number of sacraments often referred to as mysteries because they manifest the presence of God with His people. Among these are marriage, ordination, reconciliation, and the anointing of the sick, and these serve to signify either the establishment of new relationships or the healing of old relationships within the church. Although the Orthodox frequently speak of seven sacraments, there’s always been a reluctance to number them formally and thereby neglect other ecclesiastical events which they believe also have a sacramental character.

And so here in this very brief introductory form, we have some of the history and character of Eastern Orthodoxy. For many of us, of course, it’s a strange new world, but one which ought to remind us of much of that which is part of our own heritage and which, in fact, may even beckon us to learn more.

church history to the reformation ch506 ormation ef o the r ......orthodox, some fourteen million,...

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