The Roman Empire in the apostles’ time, a close-knit political and cultural unity with many languages but with everyone knowing either Greek or Latin and all sharing the same emperor and Graeco- Roman civilization, by the late 200s AD had changed. Still ideally one, the empire had informally divided into two parts–east and west, each under its own “Caesar.” The Roman Empire instituted worship of the emperor to keep the empire united in the midst of its diverse faiths, and, since Christians refused to worship anyone other than Jesus Christ, persecuted Christians. For instance, in 257-260 AD, Roman Emperor Valerian martyred Cyprian and Sixtus II.
In 270 or 271, on a Sunday morning in an Egyptian village, a young man, Anthony, went to a church service and heard the Scripture read where Jesus said, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21). He looked for a life of not just relative poverty, but radical solitude, stepped into the desert, and started the hermit tradition in Christianity, living austerely in isolate prayer. His own village hardly missed him.
In 286 AD, the Roman Empire divided east and west, and in 301 AD, Armenia officially adopted Christianity. In 312 AD, the Donatist Division began, and in 313, the new emperor, Constantine, legalized Christianity.
In 325 AD, the First Council of Nicea met, convening 318 bishops, who opposed Arius’ teaching that Jesus was an archangel, affirmed that Jesus is fully divine, and issued the Nicene Creed, as well as eighty-five laws: Rome is the first see of Christendom, various restrictions are to be placed on Christians who denied the faith under persecution, and prayer should be offered standing. This council Orthodox theologians, ignoring the one in Jerusalem in Acts 15, consider the first of seven great ecumenical councils defining Church doctrine. Although the Nicean Council condemned Arius, it did not defeat him; three years later, Athanasius became bishop of Alexandria and kept fighting Arianism. Around 350, the Goths converted to Arian Christianity.
In the mid 300s, several founders of various monastic orders died: in 346, Pachomius, who had formed a community of monks in upper Egypt who prayed and worked together (i.e., the cenobitic or communal form), passed away; in 350, Ammon, who in Nitria and Scetis, west of the Nile, had formed a loosely knit group of small settlements or two to six monks each who looked to a common spiritual elder, or “abba,” (father) died; in 356, Antony, who had founded the Eastern monastic church by starting the original monastic life in hermit style in lower Egypt, died at the age of 106, now widely known. Meanwhile, another form of monastic life, had developed in Syria, where “stylites” chose to live on pillars. In 358, Basil the Great founded in Cappadocia the first monastery where more learned, liturgical and social monasticism prevailed.
In 380, Christianity became the sole legal religion of the Roman Empire and the next year, the Second Ecumenical Council, or First Council of Constantinople, convening 150 bishops, affirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit, thus formulating the doctrine of the Holy Trinity: one God in three persons (hypostases), Father Son and Holy Spirit, also completing the final version of the Nicene Creed. Flexing their new muscles as the only legal religion, they declared this doctrine obligatory for all Christians. They also passed seven additional laws: bishops should not interfere in matters in other diocese, and Constantinople’s bishop was second to Rome’s.
In 386, Augustine converted. In 395, Alaric the Visigoth began his military campaigns, which would overrun Rome fifteen years later. In 398, John Chrysostom became bishop of Constantinople. One year later, Orthodox Christianity lost one of its wise men, Evagrius of Pontus, who had said, among many other memorable things: the one who prays is a true theologian; “God cannot be grasped by the mind. If he could be grasped, he would not be God;” “The further a soul advances, the greater are the adversaries again which it must contend. Blessed are you if the struggle grows fierce against you at the time of prayer. Do not allow your eyes to sleep or your eyelids to slumber until the hour of your death, but labor without ceasing that you may enjoy life without end.”
During the late 300s, the center of Eastern monasticism moved from Egypt to Asia Minor, in the 400s to Palestine. There, men like Isaiah of Scetis and Sabas led the movement. In 407, Abba Moses died. He had said a monk must sit in his cell: “The cell teaches us everything,” he announced in Sayings of the Desert Fathers, a anecdotal book of unfortunately uneven quality, featuring too many stories reminiscent of guru-disciple conversations in the pagan tradition, focusing on the teacher’s wisdom rather than on God’s greatness, power, wisdom and love.
The monastic cell centered on prayer, the main social service of the Byzantine monk. Therefore, most Eastern monasteries then were in desolate, remote areas, such as St. Sabas’ in Palestine, St. Catherine’s on Mt. Sinai, the monastic republic of Mount Athos, and the towering rocks of Meteora in central Greece. Education, evangelism, and charitable work took second place to prayer. Visitors to monasteries expected to find places of prayer, people of prayer, and receive spiritual direction. Monks and nuns prayed to achieve union with the “unknowable….ever beyond” God through spiritual purification and total renunciation, stripping self of material possessions and intellectual projections–negation, apophatic knowledge. Spirituality came before Western-style knowledge. One monastery in Constantinople achieved a reputation as akoimetoi (the sleepless ones) because prayer went on 24 hours a day, with monks taking turns to recite. They experienced almost, and perhaps, charismatic enthusiasm, Pentecostal reality. The monks were called pneumato foros (Spirit-bearers), bearing witness Christ’s still-abiding presence in the Church.
One unnamed Syrian monk of this time, and one who still defines Orthodox spirituality, went by the pen name, Dionysius the Areopagite. His writings suffuse with mystery–Mystical Theology addresses the God-human relationship, Celestial Heirarchy describes nine ranks of angels mediating between the divine and the earth, Ecclesiastic Hierarchy examines how church sacraments enable believers to become “deified, ” and Divine Names describes the being and attributes of God. Dionysius took mystic theology beyond all previous limits, using the apophatic (from Greek apofasis, or denial) theology–peeling away illusions, describing what God is not and hoping by this process of elimination to get to what God is, yet meanwhile realizing that, even though God has revealed Himself, man can’t really describe God. A modern example would be saying, “God is not finite, not limited in time and space.” However, the uselessness and fruitlessness and emptiness of this is easily shown and rectified by rendered similar thoughts in language both more positive and powerful: “God is almighty and our ever present help in time of trouble.”
Some people compare the apophatic process to a sculptor chipping away marble until he reaches a deeper reality in the stone. The illustration’s problem lies in that sculptors often ended with idols in their own admirably creative imagination’s likeness rather than in God’s. Gregory of Nyssa had used apophatism, but Dionysius’ writing spread it across Europe, and the anonymous writer of The Cloud of Unknowing, as well as other medieval mystics, owe him a lot.
In 410, the Visigoths sacked Rome. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Vandals, and other Germanic tribes carved up the western empire. The Byzantines in the East still considered empire universal, but the division had completed. Then the Avars and Slavs occupied the Balkan peninsula, Illyricum, and another bridge from east to west disappeared. Augustine in City of God defended Christianity from the pagan charge that Rome’s fall came because Romans had stopped worshipping the old gods. In his Confessions, he recalled conversion after hearing a child say, “Take up and read” a Bible opened at Romans 13:13. In 430, he died.
The Third Ecumenical Council, or First Ephesus Council, took place in 431, convening 200 bishops rejecting Nestorius’ teaching (that Jesus had only a divine nature), and affirmed that Jesus had two. They also declared Mary to be “Birthgiver of God,” and passed eight more laws: bishops deposed by Nestorian bishops were to be reinstated, and no one could alter the Nicene Creed. The next year, Patrick went to Ireland.
In 436, Leo I became pope. In the absence of the Roman government due to Rome having been Vandalized, met with Attila the Hun and persuaded him to bypass Rome. This diplomatic success placed Leo I at the head of Western kings
In 444, Cyril of Alexandria, who had championed monophysitism (the belief that after Incarnation, Jesus had only a divine will, but no human will), died. Seven years later, The Fourth Ecumenical Council, at Chalcedon in 451, convened 630 bishops, the largest number yet, opposed monophysite views, and affirmed that the divine and human in Jesus were united without confusion, change, division or separation. They also passed thirty more laws: clergy and monks could not join businesses or the military, women could not be ordained deaconnesses before the age of forty, priests and deacons were not to seize their bishop’s material goods when he died.
Because the council had rejected monophysitism, the churches in Egypt, Syria and Ethiopia left the universal (Catholic) church. In 483, Emperor Zeno’s work, Henotikon, tried to reconcile the monophysites, but failed. Reconciliation would never take place; the Coptics are separate today.
Isaiah of Scetis, one of the founders of monasticism in Palestine, died in 489, having established spiritual direction for his followers there. Meanwhile,Clovis, king of the Franks, got baptized around 503. Sabas, the other Palestininian monastic leader, died in 532.
By this time, however, monastic life had also started in cities. Constantinople already had by 518 some seventy communities for men alone, and monks grew increasingly influential in ecclesiastic and social life, intervening in theologic disputes, teaching liturgy and spirituality, and inspiring the laity, who tended to follow charismatic monks. Around this time (537), Emperor Justinian I completed and dedicated Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom.
Benedict wrote his monastic Rule for Western monasteries in 540. The East never had an Augustine or Benedict write strict regulations for monks. Basil of Caesarea’s Longer Rules are sermons, and his Shorter Rules are Q and A format from questions as he visited the monasteries in his diocese. This far less systematic direction resulted in no generally accepted rule. Monks simply followed the rules of specific monasteries and their traditions. The East, also, had less demand that monks and nuns live in one monastery their whole lives
In 500 AD, Gregory the Great became pope, but the really great church was still in the East, where, by 612 AD, the one church of Hagia Sophia had this ministerial staff: 80 priests, 150 deacons, 40 deaconnesses, 70 subdeacons, 160 readers, 25 cantors, and 100 doorkeepers.
During the 500s and early 600s, the monastic center shifted to a more silent, “hesychast,” type in Sinai, led by John Climacus. John said, “Let all multiplicity be absent from your prayer. A single word was enough for the publican and the prodigal son to receive God’s pardon….Do not try to find exactly the right words for your prayer: how many times does the simple and monotonous stuttering of children draw the attention of their father! Do not launch into long discourses, for if you do, your mind will be dissipated trying to find just the right words. The publican’s short sentence moved God to mercy. A single word full of faith saved the thief.”
In 553, the Fifth Ecumenical Council, or Second Constantinople Council, convened 165 bishops and tried to reconcile the monophysites. This failed. The council affirmed the teachings of previous councils, and passed no other laws.
During the 600s, Islam arose, and began to control the Mediterranean. Also during the 600s, in Spain the Church added a phrase to the Nicene Creed during their battles with Arianism. They said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son.” This new phrase spread to France, where it was called the filioque, and then to Germany.
During the early 600s, Maximus the Confessor, born in 580, held an honored role as principal secretary to Emperor Heraclius in the imperial court in Constantinople. Maximus resigned because of discomfort with the emperor’s monothelitism, which held that Jesus had only one will, the divine, rather than both a human and a divine will. Maximus joined a Palestine monastery and began writing treatises against this view, as well as guides to the mystic and monastic life. Meanwhile, John Climacus, who had started a new monastic tradition, died in 649 AD.
Maximus especially dwelt on the qeosis (”theosis,” I.e. deification, or human participation in the divine life.) He taught that, since the center of earthly history is the Incarnation, by which God dwells with mankind, therefore mankind’s goal was to dwell with God, and, with God’s help, we can actually “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Redemption in Christ allows us full restoration of the image of God in the individual. Several early church fathers had said “Christ became man that man might become God,” but Max developed this concept more fully into the “glorious attainment of likeness to God, insofar as this is possible with man.”
His opposition cost him his life. From age 60 to 82, Maximus was debated, tried by tribunals, banished, recalled and dragged around the Mediterranean basin. Finally, in 662 he was brought to Constantinople on trial of opposing theologic documents supported by the emperor, punished for his spoken and written judgments by having his right hand and tongue cut off, carted to each of the city’s twelve districts and publicly whipped, then carried on a rough voyage to a Black Sea city, where he died. His wordless, suffering confession rings through Orthodox history.
The Sixth Ecumenical Council, the third one in Constantinople, convened 170 bishops, ceased trying to reconcile the monophysites and just condemned them instead, and passed no other laws.
In 692 the “Quinisext” Council convened 327 bishops, met in the emperor’s domed room of his palace in Constantinople, and passed 102 laws: obligatory clerical celibacy, Saturday fasting during Lent forbidden, and much other nonsense, but nevertheless law of the Eastern church.
Around the end of the century, Isaac the Syrian died, now famous for saying, “Speech is the organ of this present world. Silence is the mystery of the world to come.”
By the 700s, the Eastern (=Orthodox) spiritual life widely used icons. These paintings portrayed Jesus Christ, saints, saints, patriarchs and martyrs. They deliberately ignored realism to help emphasize spiritual truths–for example, eyes were made large and animated because “My eyes have seen your salvation” (Luke 2:30).
About this time, iconoclasm (the movement against icons) began within the church. A few iconoclastic bishops in Asia Minor (now Turkey) believed the Bible forbade such images (see Ex 20:4). Byzantine Emperor Leo III (reigned 717-741) in 726, convinced by this reasoning, tried first to persuade people to give up icons. When a violent underwater volcano erupted in the Aegean Sea and sent tidal waves surging on the land and a cloud of volcanic ash darkened the sky, Leo said God had warned them of divine wrath due to icons, and the emperor preached a series of sermons against icons. In 731, he ordered his soldiers to go to the Chalke palace gate and destroy the Christ icon painted over the entrance archway. After they started, some little old ladies kicked out the ladder from under the soldiers’ feet, and soon riots started, in which several women died. Leo III then persecuted people who defended icons.
In 732, the Battle of Tours stopped Muslim incursions in Europe. Seven hundred years later, under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Christians would drive the Muslims out of Europe–until the Twentieth Century.
John Mansur, a high official of the caliph’s court in Damascus, and so living in the Islamic Empire’s heart, defended the use of icons. He said the question had nothing to do with bowing and kissing, which just indicate one culture’s way of showing respect, even as Middle Eastern men kiss in greeting. The basic question, he said, was this: can we paint pictures of Jesus or other Biblical figures at all, or does the Second Commandment forbid it. Living in the middle of Islam, which absolutely interdict images, John could see this issue more clearly than most Christians of his era.
John argued that icons were venerated [proskunesis, referring to the bodily act of bowing down to an icon and kissing it–not inherently idolatrous, but a legitimate, cultural expression of respect], but not worshipped [latreia, meaning absolute worship], as Western Christians might read, cherish, honor and even kiss a favorite Bible, but not worship it. John insisted that true worship was only to God.
To support this view, John cited Basil the Great, who had written, “The honor paid to an icon is transferred to its prototype,” without indicating how this happens. In fact, this quote undercut the argument it intended to support, since it expressed the basic point of idolatry–the worshipper could express not just veneration, but also absolute worship.
John also claimed that, due to the birth of the Son of God in the flesh, the depiction of Christ in paint and wood demonstrated faith in the Incarnation. Since the unseen God became visible, painting visible representations professed faith deniable only by a heretic. He said, “In former times, God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake.”
Eventually, John of Damascus left that city for St. Saba monastery in the hills west of the Dead Sea. There his writing–both theology and hymns (he is one of Orthodoxy’s principal hymn writers) –bloomed. In Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, he said, “It is plain, then, that there is a God. But what he is in his essence and nature is absolutely unknowable….All that is comprehensible about him is his incomprehensibility”–apophatic theology again. His fellow monks thought his elegant writing went to his head, so they sent him out to sell baskets in the streets of Damascus, where once he’d held such a high post. In 749, John of Damascus, the first systematic theologian of the East, died, now honored by both East and West.
Five years later, Boniface, missionary to the Germans, was martyred. That same year (754), Emperor Leo’s son and successor, Constantine V, continued his own vigorous opposition to icons. He said that “the icon of Christ and Christ himself do not differ from each other in essence” and so the icon “is identical in essence with that which it portrays.” Since the icon obviously can’t be Christ in the flesh, it’s a false image. Besides, he said, the Eucharist is the only true image of Christ’s real presence. Iconodules argued, repeating John of Damascus, didn’t the Incarnation make a difference in the way Exodus 20:4 applied to icons? Iconoclasts declared, No. The image of God was The Word, the Son and mankind, all creations of God, but man cannot make an image of God.
The iconoclasts also insisted on no portrayals of Mary, the saints, or angels. In 754, Constantine V called the Council of Hieria, inviting 338 bishops who agreed with him. This assembly condemned the veneration of icons, saying they had no support from Origen, Eusebius, or Epiphanius of Salamis, and called itself the “Seventh Ecumenical Council.” After the council, large-scale war broke out against icons’ supporters. Monks felt persecution’s heat as Constantine V, before the end of it, had thousands exiled, tortured or martyred.
Also in 754, Pope Stephen in Rome, cut off from the East and needing help to defend his papal states from Lombard attack, asked Pepin, the Frankish ruler, to help.
In 766, Constantine V, against celibacy as much as he was against icons, paraded a group of monks holding hands with their sister nuns through the Hippodrome. Between 762 and 775, countless Christians suffered greatly, and the period was later called the “decade of blood.”
Eventually, Constantine V died and Empress Irene (reigned 780-802), a staunch supporter of icons, convened 367 bishops in 787 AD at the “real” Seventh Ecumenical Council, or Second Council of Nicea, condemned iconoclasm (echoing John of Damascus’ arguments) and affirmed that icons, although they may not be worshipped, may be honored: “we declare that one may render to icons the veneration of honor , not true worship of our faith, which is due only to the divine nature.” The council also passed twenty-two more laws: bishops, priests and deacons could not be appointed by secular authorities, women could not stay in bishop’s houses or in men’s monasteries. This has not stopped illicit affairs in the Roman Catholic, unmarried clergy.
In 794, Charlemagne, Pepin’s son and king of the Franks, welcomed the filioque and adopted it at the Council of Frankfurt. Six years later, in 800, on Christmas Day, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne immediately asked the Byzantium emperor to recognize him, but the Byzantine emperor considering himself ruler of a still-united Roman Empire and Charlemagne as an intruder, considered the papal coronation a divisive act.
The pope continued to counsel Charlemagne. For instance, Leo III wrote Charlemagne that , although he personally believed the filioque to be doctrinally sound, he considered tampering with the Creed misguided. Such misgivings had been overcome before and would be also later.
Charlemagne’s court emphasized the East-West division. They promoted learning and culture, but with strong anti-Greek prejudice in literature, theology and politics.
Theology began to diverge. The Latin approach was more practical, the Greek more speculative. Latins learned from Roman Law, while Greeks thought in terms of worship.
Under Byzantine Emperor Leo V the Armenian, the iconoclastic campaign revived in 815 and continued until 843, when Empress Theodora on the First Sunday of Lent reinstated them for good.
Other differences: regarding the crucifixion, Latins thought Jesus the victim on the cross, while Greeks considered Christ the victor over death. Latins talked more about redeeming sinners; Greeks more about deifying humanity. Latins insisted on priestly celibacy; Greeks allowed married clergy. Latins used unleavened bread in the Eucharist; Greeks used leavened. In the West, where government had broken down, the bishop of Rome, as the only church founded by an apostle, stepped into the gap, and so led all other bishops; in the East, which still had an emperor and many churches founded by apostles, the churches showed more equality. The Byzantines didn’t care if the West wanted a Roman monarchy as long as it didn’t apply to the East. Meanwhile, both churches sent out missionaries among the Slavs, and, as the two sides inched closer, by now they could less completely resolve their differences by discussion, since few in the West could read Greek, and although Byzantium still called itself the Roman Empire, Byzantines rarely spoke Latin. Photius, their greatest scholar, couldn’t read Latin.
Photius exemplifies another trend in Byzantinium: since it had accumulated great wealth and learning, many well-off educated laymen had leisure to interest themselves in theology. The lay theologian was not only accepted–Photius was a laymen before appointment to the patriarchate.
In 858, the emperor exiled Patriarch Ignatius of Constantinople, who had criticized the emperor’s private life. Ignatius resigned under pressure, and the emperor appointed Photius, now called “the most distinguished thinker, the most outstanding politician, the most skillful diplomat ever to hold office as patriarch of Constantinople.” Photius sent the customary letter to the bishop of Rome, Nicholas I, announcing his accession.
Normally the pope would recognize a new patriarch, but reports had come to Nicholas that Ignatius still had supporters who called Photius a usurper. Nicholas investigated, and in 861 sent legates to Constantinople. Photius wanted no dispute, so he deferred to the legates, even inviting them to preside at a local council to settle everything. They declared Photius was the true patriarch.
That was not what Nicholas wanted to hear. Ignatius had appealed to his authority, which Nicholas wanted to expand at Constantinople’s expense. Therefore, when the legates returned to Rome, Nicholas said they’d exceeded their powers, and he retried the case himself in Rome. This council repudiated Photius, deposed him of all priestly dignity and reinstated Ignatius as patriarch. The Byzantines ignored this Roman council and refused to answer the pope’s letters, feeling that his absolute power applied only in the West.
While the administrators wrangled over power, their missionaries met in Bulgaria. In 862, Cyril and Methodius brought the message of Jesus Christ to the Slavs. Both parties wanted to add Bulgaria to their spheres. Two years later (864), Byzantine Emperor Michael III called Latin a “barbarian” tongue since, by this time, only the relatively barbarian West spoke it. There, learning was limited to the clergy, theology was the priests’ preserve, and most of the laity were illiterate. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian khan, Boris, first asked the German, Catholic missionaries to baptize him, but when the Byzantines threatened with an invasion, he prudently changed his mind and accepted baptism in 865 from Greek clergy. In 865 also, Pope Nicholas declared that the pope had power “over all the earth, that is, over every church.” Meanwhile, Boris, wanting Bulgarian church independence, asked Constantinople to grant Bulgarian autonomy as other patriarchs enjoyed. Constantinople refused, so Boris turned to the West and gave the Latins free rein in Bulgaria. Latin missionaries responded by sharply insulting the Greeks, calling the Greeks wrong on married clergy, rules of fasting and especially the filioque.
Eastern churches objected to the filioque on grounds that the creeds are the property of the whole church, not to be altered at the whim of one sector, but to be changed only at an ecumenical council. Besides, the East considered the filioque theologically mistaken. In 867, with German Western missionaries using it in Bulgaria so near Constantinople, Photius, as patriarch of Constantinople, in alarm wrote to the other Eastern patriarchs, denouncing the filioque at length and charging those who use it with heresy. Then he summoned a Council at Constantinople which excommunicated Pope Nicholas, calling him “a heretic who ravages the vineyard of the Lord.”
Then, that same year, the Byzantine emperor was murdered, and the usurper deposed Photius and reinstated Ignatius. At the same time, Pope Nicholas died, and Hadrian II became pope, soon followed by John VIII. All the rules changed. A new council at Constantinople condemned Photius, reversed the decisions of 867, and placed the Bulgarian church under Constantinople. Realizing Rome would give him less independence than Byzantium, Boris accepted this decision and expelled the Western missionaries and the filioque.
The Ignatius-Photius controversy turned out well in the end. Ignatius and Photius reconciled and, when Ignatius died in 877, Photius once more succeeded him as patriarch. In 879, another council held in Constantinople anathemized the previous one and withdrew all condemnations of Photius.
In the 900s, the monastic center, in Sinai for four hundred years, shifted to Mt. Athos in Greece, where it remains today, and where all three major forms of monasticism remain.
In 987, Prince Vladimir of Kiev, searching for an appropriate faith for his people, sent emissaries to different countries to learn about their religions and worship. They traveled first to the Volga Bulgars and found these Muslims disgraceful, sorrowful and permeated in a “dreadful stench.” Among the Germans (Western Christians), they saw “no glory,” but in Constantinople, they visited Hagia Sophia, the cathedral capital. Their report: “We knew not whether we were in heaven or no earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations For we cannot forget that beauty.” Convinced, Prince Vladimir in 988 embraced Christianity, and the conversion and baptism of his subjects followed.
In 1014, at the coronation of Henry II in Rome, the priests sung the Creed including the filioque. Rome felt its strength since, due to strong popes like Gregory VII, the papacy enjoyed unparalleled power in the West. It now revived claims to universal jurisdiction, and Constantinople stopped commemorating the pope.
But times were tough in the East. One man, Simeon the New Theologian, had made things tough for everyone around him. This great but cranky mystic of Byzantium could retort that he didn’t make things easy for himself, either. First he refused the life of courtly privilege his parents had dreamed for him, dropped out of school and cut a dashing figure in Constantinople streets–”his clothing, his manner, and his bearing were so ostentatious that some people had evil suspicious about him”. But dissolution dulled and his conscience pulled, so he searched for a guide in Simeon the Studite, who lived at Studion, near Constantinople. The young Simeon flung himself into everything Simeon said–monastic life with fasting, praying, and weeping all night for his sins.
During one of these all-night prayer sessions, he experienced the vision of Divine Light, as did many other Orthodox mystics, and as do many Indian Christians, for example, today. The Light “suffused him, filled him with joy and made him lose all awareness of his surroundings.” This volatile person then returned to worldly ways for several years, stopped his revels to consult the senior Simeon, then promptly resumed his lower life. Finally, younger Simeon broke with carnality, gave God all the glory, and said, “I did not see you–indeed, how would I have been able, where would I have found the strength to lift up my eyes, covered and choked as I was by the mire–you took me by the hair and forcibly drew me out of there.” All admirable except the hair doctrine and the resulting tonsure practice, both tracable to Hinduism.
Simeon joined the Studion monastery, but soon quarreled with his leaders, who felt he obeyed the senior Simeon more than he did the abbot. The young Simeon moved to another, smaller, nearby abbot, where his real growth began.
Simeon’s writing emphasizes personal encounter with God, which he feels should characterize every Christian life. Although he lived in an age when rigidity and formalism threatened spiritual life, he called for personal commitment, yet without abandoning public liturgical life. He said concerning “the soul that is enclosed in the realm of the senses; if ever she peeps out through the window of the intellect, she is overwhelmed by the brightness, like lightning, of the pledge of the Holy Spirit that is within her. Unable to bear the splendor of unveiled light, at once she is bewildered in her intellect and she draws back entirely upon herself, taking refuge, as in a house, among sensory and human things.”
And
”…I know that I shall not die, for I am within the Life,
I have the whole of Life springing up as a fountain within me.
He is in my heart, he is in heaven:
Both there and here he shows himself to me with equal glory.”
This earnest man died in 1022.
During this same period of time, the Vikings attacked Byzantine-controlled regions in southern Italy. Venice, by now a powerful commercial city-state, increased market share in Italy and Asia Minor. By the early 1050s, the Normans forced Greeks in Byzantine Italy to follow Latin practice. Patriarch Michael Cerularius then demanded that Latin churches in Constantinople adopt Greek practices. When Latins refused, he closed their churches.
In 1053, Cerularius, more conciliatory, wrote Pope Leo IV, offering to settle the disputed questions. Leo sent three legates, led by Humbert, bishop of Silva Candida. However, Humbert and Cerularius both wouldn’t bend. The legates shoved an antagonistic “papal” letter, written by Humbert, at Cerularius and left without the usual greetings due an emperor. Cerularius refused to deal with them, so Humbert lost patience and wrote a papal bull of excommunication against Cerularius, saying he was no longer allowed to receive sacraments, and accusing Greeks of omitting the filioque.
One summer afternoon just before church service in the great Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), Cardinal Humbert and his company entered, placed their sealed papal bull on the altar, and strode out. As the cardinal left through the western door, he shook the dust from his feet and said, “Let God look and judge.” A deacon ran after Humbert and begged him to take back his bull. Humbert refused, and the deacon dropped it in the street. Cerularius, in turn, excommunicated Humbert and company, who went home, where all Italy treated it as a triumph.
In 1093, Anselm became bishop of Canterbury. During these years, the Byzantine emperor, Alexis, appealed to Pope Urban II to help the East. Muslims had recently conquered large areas of the Byzantine Empire, including many dearly-loved sites in the Holy Land. The West rallied to the cause, sending many crusaders. The First Crusade took place in 1095-1099, liberated both Antioch and Jerusalem, and set up Latin patriarchs in Antioch and Jerusalem alongside the Greek ones. In Jerusalem, both Latins and Greeks at first accepted the Latin patriarch as their head. In 1107, a Russian pilgrim found Greeks and Latins worshipping together in harmony in the holy places.
Bernard founded his monastery at Clairvaux in 1115.
Many people thought that West and East were just two viewpoints waiting for the right people to bring reconciliation. In 1136, Anselm of Havelberg visited Constantinople on a diplomatic mission and there publicly debated with Nicetas, the Orthodox bishop of Nicomedia. Anselm presented the West’s usual arguments–Peter founded the church at Rome, and Jesus gave the keys to Peter. Nicetus replied that the Holy Spirit did not descend only on Peter at Pentecost, but on all the apostles (and of course, on all the believers as well). He said all believers had the right to be consulted about matters of faith and practice and that Greeks didn’t mind Rome having primacy and the most honorable seat at an ecumenical council, but that “she has separated herself from us by her own deeds, when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does belong to her office….If the Roman Pontiff, seated on the lofty throne of his glory, wishes to thunder at us and, so to speak, hurl his mandates at us from on high, and if he wishes to judge us and even to rule us and our churches…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 such a church.”
Hildegard of Bingen began writing in 1141. In 1187, Saladin captured Jerusalem and the situation in the Holy Land deteriorated as the two rivals resident in Palestine now divided the Christian population between a Latin patriarch in Acre and a Greek in Jerusalem. Division had filtered down to the local church level.
In 1204, Crusaders headed for Egypt. The Venician merchants helping finance the Crusade wanted to destabilize the Byzantine Empire for their own gain, and Alexius, son of Isaac Angelus, the deposed emperor, wanted to restore himself and his father to the Byzantine throne. They persuaded the crusaders to detour. Eventually the Crusaders, disgusted with Byzantine politics, lost patience and sacked and pillaged Constantinople for three days in a display of greed and violence. Mobs of soldiers rampaged the streets, snatching everything that glittered, destroying what they could not carry–works of art from ancient Greece or Byzantine masterpieces, sparing neither monasteries or churches or libraries. Some looters, especially Venicians, taking priceless items back to Italian homes. The soldiers paused only to break open wine-sellers for refreshment, and to ravish nuns in their convents. In Hagia Sophia, the most glorious church in Christendom, drunken soldiers tore down silk hangings and pulled the great silver iconostasis (iconostasis–a screen holding sacred icons)–to pieces. They trampled on sacred books and drank merrily from altar vessels while a prostitute sat on the patriarch’s throne and sang a bawdy French song.
The sword of the Crusaders severed Christendom. Said one Orthodox witness, “Even the Saracens are merciful and kind compared with these men who bear the cross of Christ on their shoulders.” Four years later, a young man of Assisi, named Francis, renounced wealth and power for a life of poverty and peace, but Constantinople never recovered. The empire was permanently weakened.
Michael VIII reigned in Constantinople 1259-1282, recovered Constantinople from the Catholics, and sought reunion with the West, mainly because Charles of Anjou, king of Italy, threatened him, and he wanted papal protection. At the Council of Lyons in 1274, Orthodox delegates agreed to recognize papal claims and to recite the creed with the filioque. The vast majority of Orthodox clergy and laity fiercely rejected this, and the emperor’s sister said, “Better that my brother’s empire should perish than the purity of the Orthodox faith.” Grand Duke Lucas Notoras said, “I would rather see the Muslim turban in the midst of the city than the Latin miter.” Michael’s successor formally repudiated the Union of Lyon.
That same year, Thomas Aquinas, who had written so much, including his Summa Theologica, to try to unify and codify the faith, died.
1303-1378 saw the Roman popes at Avignon. During this time, Gregory Palamas’s father, on his deathbed, was tonsured a monk. After this devout man’s death, his wife and three sons all joined monastic life. The emperor wanted Gregory’s gifts in court, but Gregory declined.
In 1338, he defended Hesychasm in his Triads. Soon he was embroiled in controversy with Italian-Greek monk Barlaam. Western theologians taught that human experience with God was never direct, but always mediated through Creation or the sacraments. Eastern theologians had taught that the experience with God through prayer or sacraments was direct knowledge of divinity, and elaborated on this idea by differentiating between divine essence and divine energy.
Gregory argued that God is absolutely unknowable and transcendent in His essence, but that He was made known in Christ Jesus. and is directly encountered through His energies (defined as the sacraments, grace, the miraculous experience of Divine Light) which are as much God as His essence, though accessible to the believer. So Gregory talked about God’s transcendence and man’s encounter with God. A church council in 1351 backed him up. He died in 1356, and nine years later, the Orthodox church canonized him as a Father.
In 1415, Jan Hus burned at the stake. The Reformation was already in motion for those who had eyes to see it.
So was the dissolution of the Eastern Empire. In 1438, Emperor John VIII (who reigned 1425-48) attended in Florence with the Constantinople patriarch and many delegates from Orthodox churches, another reunion council. The delegates knew their situation was desperate–they could defeat the Turks only with help from the West. Nearly all the Orthodox signed the Florentine Union, which sought unity of doctrine but respect for traditions peculiar to each church. Thus the Orthodox accepted the papal claims (with vague wording), the filioque (though they didn’t actually have to say it), and the new doctrine of purgatory. Greeks were allowed to use leavened bread and the Latins unleavened. All over the West, churches celebrated this agreement, but neither John VIII nor his successor, Constantine XI could enforce it, nor even dare proclaim it publicly in Constantinople until 1451. In fact, many who had signed it revoked their signatures when they got home. Only a fraction of the believers accepted the council’s decrees. Two years later, in 1453, the Turks conquered Byzantium. The city had little strength to sustain a defense, and they found themselves a minority in their own capital city.
Over the years, the Orthodox Church has experienced more persecution than any other Christian body. Soviet atheism closed 98% of the churches, as well as 1000 monasteries and sixty seminaries. Between 1917 and the beginning of WWII, 50,000 Orthodox priests died.
Today, the Orthodox church numbers about 215 million believers worldwide. Church structure has thirteen self-governing churches united in doctrine, sacraments, liturgy and church government, but each administers its own affairs, led by a patriarch, sometimes called a metropolitan. The Constantinople patriarch is specially honored as “ecumenical,” or universal, but has no power to interfere with the other twelve.
Nineteenth Century church historian Adolf von Harnack said, “The Orthodox Church is in her entire structure alien to the gospel and represents a perversion of the Christian religion, its reduction to the level of pagan antiquity.” It claims to be the one true church, and its leaders debate the spiritual destiny of Catholics and Protestants. The doctrine of justification by faith is basically absent, replaced by theosis, mentioned earlier as the gradual process of becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. They can quote Athanasius on that: “God became man so that men might become gods,” and Peter, too, in 2 Peter 1:4. They say God descended and became a man that we humans might ascend and become like Christ. Not that we lose our human nature–the Orthodox aren’t pantheists. Rather, theosis speaks of real, genuine, mystic union with God so we can move from corruption to immortality as we appropriate grace and live in spiritual vigilance. The legal framework of understanding that Christ’s perfect righteousness is credited by faith and that the Law’s penalty for sin is paid by Jesus Christ, and He takes the judgment, which Calvin and Luther called pivotal and foundational truth, is played down.
The Orthodox feel that logic and rationale don’t solve problems relating to faith in God, maybe due to their still-apophastic logic, a “breakdown of human thought before the radical transcendence of God…a prostration before the living God, radically ungraspable, unobjectifiable, and unknowable.”
Their approach leads to praise and celebration. Their theology extends from spirituality and worship. As in Vladimir’s time, aesthetics play a major role: icons and frescoes cover nearly every square inch of the walls, bells chime, candles flicker, incense fills the air. A screen covered with icons, called the iconostasis, separates the sanctuary, where the altar is, from the nave, where the congregation gathers. Over the nave, the large central dome, on it painted an austere image of the Pantocrator (Christ seated on His throne of glory) gazing down on the gathered assembly, rises. Images of Christ and of the Theokotos (Mary, “Birthgiver of God”) stand beside the iconostasis’ central doors. The large, bold, formal, unsentimental images convey this: you stand in the living God’s presence, together with the saints and the righteous of every age. Before anyone speaks, the congregation mirrors the heavenly assembly of all believers, who together sing, “Holy, holy, holy,” (Revelation 4:8).
Worship can last two hours. As the service begins, the iconostasis’ central doors open and the priest, resplendent in his vestments, intones in his sonorous voice the benediction. The deacon chants the opening litany, and the choir and people respond, Kyrie eleison (”Lord, have mercy.”) Nearly the entire service is chanted or sung. At each petition, the people together make the sign of the cross and bow, offering their prayers both mentally and physically. Whenever not kneeling or lying prostrate–whatever the liturgy dictates–they stand throughout the service, since the churches have no pews. The clergy in precision move in and out of the sanctuary. Acolytes proceed with candles. Singers juggle the many music and hymnbooks. The faithful move back and forth, placing candles on stands before icons. The hymns are sometimes chanted aloud for all to hear, others recited almost inaudibly, always elaborate, flowery, very poetic Byzantine liturgy–high achievements of Greek Christian culture, and mostly composed from Scriptures during 300 to 1000 AD. St. Basil’s Eucharist prayer, for example, contains at least 44 Biblical citations in the preface alone. These songs and prayers, even as they educated in centuries past people who could not read the doctrines, now teach believers who won’t read, since the hymns paraphrase the decrees.
The Orthodox believe that, through the Holy Spirit, Jesus descends to give us His Word and His body and blood. Meanwhile, we are transported to Him, so that every time we worship, we experience a foretaste of the kingdom.
Since they use the Julian calendar, which is two weeks behind the Gregorian, they celebrate holy days usually about two weeks after the Catholic Church does. The Orthodox Church has as much continuity and tradition to lend stability as the Catholic Church does, and both appreciate beauty, show majesty, nurture contemplation, have order and are free from fads. However, the Orthodox also deeply respect Scripture and allow more internal freedom on nonScriptural matters than do the Catholics. For instance, Catholics and Orthodox both believe Mary was assumed body and soul into Heaven at the end of her life, but the Catholics decreed belief in this as necessary for salvation, whereas the Orthodox never made it mandatory doctrine. They hold to Scripture’s primacy, more like Protestants than like Catholics. Tradition to them is handing down things entrusted to the Church, the most important of these being Scripture. Tradition is an interpretation of Scripture, not a separate source of truth. They also emphasize Jesus Christ’s incarnation and resurrection.
But the tradition still troubles, and still stifles. Russian liturgy is still sung in Old Church Slovonic, which hardly anyone speaks today. Therefore, the Church loses its youth and can’t attract new people. And the ethnic identity–Greek, Serbian, Russian–is still very strong.
The icons still irritate. Although the Church says they don’t worship icons, but only honor them, not all Orthodox believers might so limit themselves. Orthodox theology crystalizes into images rather than ideas–the icons are their theology in color. As one priest said when asked why they don’t teach more theology, “The icons teach us all we need to know.”
On the other hand, Protestants insist on the Word, and also consider the mystery of God cause for investigation, explanation and analysis. We train ourselves to find answers. Rene Descartes ground all thinking in “methodical doubt” and said to accept nothing as true unless you perceive it as clear, distinct, and certain. To the West, theology is literally a science. That’s why the sermon replaced the Catholic Eucharist in the Reformation. Calvin said, “Images cannot stand in the place of books,” and whitewashed the walls of Geneva’s Reformed churches. Puritan John Foxe said, “God conducted the Reformation not by the sword, but by printing, writing, and reading.”
Orthodoxy’s response? Alexei Khomiakov complained that Protestant scholars took the place of priests, and Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov described Protestantism as a “professorial” religion in which the central figure is the scholar-professor.
When Martin Luther burned books of Catholic canon law at the Elster Gate of Wittenburg 10 December 1520, he dramatized a now-familiar Protestant point: Scripture is unique and normative; tradition’s value, such as it is, is secondary and derivative. Protestantism insists that God speaks to the reader directly rather than only through the church. God’s Word gave birth to the Church, Calvin said, not the other way around.
Orthodoxy’s response? Theologian John Meyendorff said Christian faith and experience don’t mesh with rejection of all ecclesiastic authority except Scripture. George Florovsky calls this elevation of the Bible above the Church, leading to private interpretation, as ‘the sin of the Reformation.” They say that God’s Spirit speaks to His people through apostolic tradition, which is the Scripture and also the seven ecumenical councils, church fathers, liturgy, canon law and icons. Also, the Orthodox note that the Church existed for 300 years before the formation of the Scriptural canon, so the Church existed before the Bible did. This is as if to say that the Bible existed only when the councils said it did, which is circular reasoning. The church on its birthday at Pentecost referred repeatedly to the Scripture it had at that time–the Old Testament. It was completely foreign to the idea that all converts must “accept and understand Holy Scripture in accordance with the interpretation which was and is hel by the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church of the East, our Mother.” Paul quarreled with Jewish brothers over circumcision and Jewish dietary law, and even after a council had met him more than halfway by not requiring anything except four points, he later said that one of these was not necessary and, indeed, the church later quietly dropped it. Agreement on theology was not demanded by the brotherhood.
Conclusion? We can learn from the Orthodox church to appreciate Christian visual and oral art more, not only for aesthetic value, but for its ability to teach. We can refer more often to Scripture in our prayer and preaching. At the same time, we can keep the freedom to follow the Spirit, rather than be tied to an exact liturgy in every service. The Orthodox Church, in its rejection of papal authority, cannot easily reject our rejection of patriarchal authority.
And, of course, in order to follow the Spirit, we will have to spend much more time in prayer than most of us do now.
The future of the Orthodox Church? The present archbishop of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, says that the church has reached beyond its Greek cultural base and has members of other cultures, but that the Church’s mission is not to identify with a culture and be popular per se, but to transform culture, preach the authentic gospel and bear witness of the Resurrection. The Orthodox Church has endured long persecution. They say they now seek to rebuild religious consciousness after atheistic regimes in Eastern Europe, but to do so still speak of “cultural discontinuity,” showing a prevailing predisposition for tradition.
While they say they want to open their arms to all Christians to bring them back into 2000 years of tradition, at the same time accuse American Protestant Christians of “pilfering the house of their brethren” by evangelism in Eastern Europe. They want the Protestants to study Orthodoxy and learn about real life persecution and martyrdom.
While they say they don’t consider only themselves saved and that they know Jesus’ said the Spirit blows where He wills, they also insist that they have, by God’s grace, preserved unadulterated the gospel truth from the days of the apostles, and they still take Matthew 28:19 as their high calling.
Their contradictions are many and, while I find them less objectionable than the Catholics, I do not think they have preserved the faith unadulterated, which is their main claim and justification for their traditions. The Scripture seems to indicate a different way–from which they, the Catholics and the Protestants have all diverged to different extents–of operating a Church. All of us can stand closer identification with the apostolic Church as presented in the Bible.
was baptized somewhere along the road between Jerusalem and Gaza, not necessarily in a river. The Philippian jailer and his family (Acts 16:33) were baptized where the Paul’s and Silas’ wounds were washed, very probably not the sea, since salt water would have pained the wounds.
