“There is no denying the fact that we moderns do not
like being told that [any] one Church is the true Church. It offends our
democratic sensibilities.”[1]
The
quote above gets to the heart of the divisiveness Christians have had over the
past Millennium. Is there a One Church of Christ? If so, where is it and who is
a part of it? These are the questions that have formed the external picture of
the Church since the Great Schism in the middle of the 11th century,
essentially splitting the Church in two. I believe that this is a good starting
point in our discussion of who the Orthodox Church is; in order to understand
her doctrine and practices we must look to history. We must understand why
after nearly 1,000 years of Christian unity the Body of Christ seemed to be
split in two; and why nearly 500 hundred years after that, the Body of Christ
seemed to split again – this time into multiple fragments. The story of the
Orthodox Identity begins with an understanding of these divisions among
Christians and where it is the Orthodox fit into the picture.
Of
course, when asking a Roman Catholic who the first century Church was, they
would answer, “the Catholic Church of course!” And an Orthodox would state that
it was indeed the Orthodox. The question then becomes who left who. In the wake
of the events of the NT, the Church spread throughout the known world; first to
Antioch where we were first called Christians (and Peter’s first Episcopal
See), to Alexandria by the hand of the Apostle Mark, to Greece & modern day
Turkey by the hand of the Apostle Paul, and to Rome by those Christians who
witnessed the Great Wind at Pentecost – and continued later by Peter and Paul.
By the End of the first century, Christians were found from one end of the
Roman Empire to the other – even as far east as India. Bishops (or Episkopos in
the NT) became the leaders of the local Christian community charged with
passing on what was taught to them by the Apostles. Among these Bishops in the
region was a Bishop whose jurisdiction fell over major cities of the Empire
which held large populations of Christians. These Bishops became known as
Patriarchs (in later times the Patriarch may be the Bishop of a particular
nation’s capitol, ie. Moscow, Rome, Constantinople). These Patriarchs held the
same authority as any Bishop; however; being the Bishop of an important city
which usually held significance for both Empire and Christian, meant they were
given an honorary leadership role among the bishops of the area – the First
among equals. It can not be stressed enough that this was only honorary, and
that all Bishops within the Church hold the same authority. By the time of the
First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea there were 5 majorly recognized
Patriarchates: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome; the
Church in all being blessed with hundreds of local Bishops. It is also
important to note that the Apostles of Christ were in fact the very first
Bishops (Mark in Alexandria, Peter first in Antioch and then in Rome, James the
Brother of Jesus in Jerusalem). Those whom they taught then taking their place
– but more on that in later blogs.
The
Great and Holy Ecumenical councils of the Church (7 as counted by the East)
included all Bishops of the Church, east and west. This is where the Church was
able to come together and make sure the whole Church was on the same page. The
last of these councils took place in the year 787. There were many factors that
lead to the duel excommunications in 1054 between the Bishop of Rome (the Pope)
and the Bishops of the East. This was not a sudden split, but rather a gradual
building up of tensions over many centuries – many of which was the fault of
neither side. Rome would say that the church of the first centuries was
inherently Catholic. The East would say the opposite. Who is right? How did
they drift apart? What made them stay in communion for so long before
splitting? In Part II we will look at how East and West drifted apart, and who
left the true body of Christ and why.
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