The following history of the Church is not intended to be a specifically dated presentation, but more of an outline of events that were taking place in the life of the Church and the interrelation of those events. We should be aware of the major milestones in the life of the Church and how they had an effect on one another and the whole life of the Church.
The Church began with the descent of the Holy Spirit on that first Pentecost in Jerusalem. The Apostles tended to the new flock in Jerusalem and slowly began to spread out their preaching and teaching about Jesus Christ. Finally, the great missions of St. Paul and the other Apostles planted the seeds of the Church in towns all around the northern part of the Mediterranean and into the capital of the empire itself. For the most part, the Eastern portion of the Empire was an Empire of small cities linked together by an excellent road and transportation system. Within a very short time, there were small Christian communities in all of the major trade centers of the Empire. Each of these communities as we know from Holy Scripture was headed by a bishop and he was assisted by priests and deacons1.
In 313 AD, an important event changed a great deal of the life course of the Early Church when St. Constantine declared the Christian faith to be tolerated, thus stopping the persecutions by the Empire itself. Some time later, Christianity became the only tolerated religion, however, even in 313, Christians had "most favored" status because the Emperor Constantine was himself a catechumen (unbaptized believer).
As the Church flourished and spread further into the outer reaches of the Empire, especially in the West, there were certain cultural changes that were affecting the society and the Church within that society. The capital of the Roman Empire had moved from Rome to Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Constantine. Rome was now a regional capital for the Western portion of the Empire. The barbarians within the society in the Western Empire were beginning to have an effect on the governmental and cultural infrastructure at first only in the most remote portions of the Western Empire. The Western Empire was not as well organized, possessing far fewer cities and trade centers nor was it as effectively linked by roads as was the eastern portion of the Empire. Rome and the area to the west and north was controlled by the regional capital at Rome, and the Church headquartered there as well. To the east of Rome were the four Patriarchates of Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria and Jerusalem, the regional Empire capitals of Antioch and Alexandria and the capital of the entire Roman Empire at Constantinople.
By the fifth century, the five ancient Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria had emerged as the centers of the new Christian Church. There was one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, governed by these five major sees or dioceses, each see being independent and equal one to another3. There was no primacy of any one see as Rome would like us to think in these later days. In the fifth and sixth centuries, there were significant changes going on in the infrastructure of the society and the government of the Western portion of the Empire as the barbarians encroached deeper into the Western Empire. The Feudal system became the dominant governmental structure at the local level replacing the civil or military rule of the Empire. The west was now a patchwork quilt of tiny feudal states, the organizations of the Roman Empire were crumbling with the further encroachment of the barbarians and the Church in the West became a monolithic structure so that it could cope with this disorganized bunch of feudal fiefdoms.
With the demise of Roman order, the educational system of the Empire also crumbled in the West and illiteracy, even among some of the clergy ran rampant in the society. This led to a sort of cultic expression in the religion and many folk theology traditions invaded Christianity in the West. The understanding of the theology of the Church became more elementary and rote. In addition there was ever increasing pressure to use Latin in the Western Church as opposed to the official language of Greek used in the Empire and the entire Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Once Rome had made a change in the language of the Church, there were now differences existing in the government, the language, the form and the society in which the Western Church operated which were significant from the Church and the Empire in the Eastern four Patriarchates, which remained unchanged.
The Dark Ages which took place in the 5-13th centuries inthe West, did not take place in the East until the 15th century with the conquest of the Moslems. The Moslems left the structure of the society intact. The Dark Ages in the East did not involve any breakdown of literacy, the society, the general structure of the government nor any linguistic change in the Eastern four Patriarchates. In short, the society, the government of the Empire, and the Church in the East remained unchanged. As a matter of fact, as increasing change in the West was noted, the eastern four Patriarchates became more set in their ways and resistant to any change.
A major force in solidifying the theology of the Church and a sort of tempering process was experienced during the entire period of the Ecumenical Councils. These councils were called to sort out conflicting teaching in the Church and through the study, discussion and agreement of all the hierarchies of the Church through the action of the Holy Spirit, the correct teaching of the Church prevailed. The work of the first and second Councils brought us the Nicean Creed - a perfect yet brief statement on the Nature of God and His relation to mankind's Salvation. The second Council was so adamant on the perfection of the Nicean Creed that the Council stated that anyone who changes the Creed in any way cuts himself off from the body of the Church. When Rome added the filioque regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit, not only from the Father but also from the Son, this addition and substantive change caused Rome to cut herself off from the body of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The Holy Church that Rome left in 1054 then took the name Orthodox to clearly denote the truth of her doctrine,versus the schismatics in Rome who were now speaking heresy in their creed. That One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that Rome cut herself away from consisted of the four ancient Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria. Those four Patriarchates have given birth to fourteen daughter (and granddaughter) Churches so that the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church today consists of 18 independent or autonomous local churches. The largest of these is the Russian Orthodox Church, with active believers numbering over 100 million and growing significantly every day, despite pressures from the state to contain that growth.
The Church today consists of the 18 local Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia, Sinai, Greece, Finland, Cyprus, Albania, Romania, Serbia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Japan, America, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The Slavic Churches sprang from the evangelistic efforts of Cyril and Methodius and later the Russian Church. The Russian Church was created when St. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, began looking for a religion to replace paganism in his principality. He looked at Islam and dismissed it as too sober and without the possibility to imbibe in spirits. St. Vladimir felt that Judaism had no hope for the future. When he looked at Christianity, the overall theology of the faith was quite acceptable to him, however, Western Christianity at Rome was a bland and legalistic expression of the Faith, while the splendor and spirituality of Eastern Christianity at Constantinople transported his emissaries "to the gates of Heaven." In 988 the instruction of the priests and bishops sent by Constantinople to Kievan Rus (the precursor to modern Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine) brought about the Baptism of the principality en mass in the nearby river.
The Russian Church spread the faith to the limit to her borders and beyond with evangelistic efforts in other Slavic countries, in Finland, Japan, Alaska and Poland. Today, the Russian Church exercises a great deal of influence in worldwide Orthodoxy and can for many reasons lay claim to the ancient title "the Third Rome."
The Orthodox Church, in clear contrast to Western Christianity, has always been a Church under persecution. The Roman Empire, the encroachment of Islam, the Communists and finally, secularism in America have each in turn tried to destroy the Faith with no success. Orthodoxy today stands firm as the living and faithful link of her Apostolic roots to the modern world. It is the understanding of the Church that Orthodoxy is the one place where someone can turn to see the Christian faith exactly as God gave it to His Church, untouched by the meddling hand of man.
Footnotes
1Constitution of the Holy Apostles, vol. VII, Book IV, Section X & XI. Grand Rapids, MI:Erdmans, p. 429.
2St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 42-44.
3T. Ware (Bishop Kalistos), (1963). The Orthodox Church, chapter 3. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, p. 35.
