The Historic Church: An Orthodox View of Christian History

Part One: The Ancient Undivided Church

1: Some Personal Reflections on the Study of Church History

History is not just the facts.

Sooner or later during every episode of the popular 1950s police drama, Dragnet, Sergeant Joe Friday stopped a witness giving a long discourse about just about everything but the crime they were investigating with the words, Just the facts, ma’am. Unfortunately, many people think that historians are academic Sergeant Fridays who are able to limit their work to a simple presentation of just the facts. This is a misconception because it is impossible for any historian to limit his or her work to just the facts. Historians are human beings who bring their personal presuppositions and prejudices with them when they approach their subject. The way they report, gather and interpret the results of their studies always reflects a personal bias. Because of the divisive and highly personal nature of the subject, the history of the Church is one of the most subjective areas studied by the historian.

A Definition of the Term the Orthodox Church

To make things clear, it is important to begin with a definition of terms. By Orthodoxy or simply Orthodox, I mean the beliefs and practices of Christianity shared by local Churches which, although self-governing, form one body through communion with each other. The Orthodox Church would include the ancient Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem as well as the modern Churches including Moscow, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia. Although each of these local national Churches govern their own internal affairs and select their leaders themselves, they all share a set of beliefs and practices that are distinct to the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople exercises a primacy of honor as first among equals. However, his authority is symbolic as he has no power to exercise jurisdiction outside of his own patriarchate. He can, however, call Pan Orthodox meetings of representatives of the federation of local Orthodox Churches to coordinate international Orthodox affairs and help resolve local disputes. Through unity of faith and communion, this federation of local Churches forms one united Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy has preserved a unique form of the Christian Faith that is neither Protestant nor Catholic, but is Christianity as practiced in the eastern section of the Christian world. Historians and others frequently modify Orthodoxy with the adjective Eastern. This is correct historically but is too limited to describe the modern Orthodox Church which is no longer geographically Eastern, but has spread throughout the world. Others refer to the Orthodox Church as Greek Orthodox or simply as the Greek Church. It is correct to describe Orthodoxy as Greek, because it grew and developed during a period of history when Greek thought and language shaped every aspect of intellectual society including the Christian religion, the New Testament, the earliest Fathers and the decisions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. However, today the vast majority of Orthodox Christians are not ethnically Greek

In America, many people consider the Orthodox Church too heavily tied to foreign ethnicism to provide a spiritual home for real Americans. Orthodoxy came to America through immigration. Greeks, Russians, Lebanese and others have used the Orthodox Church to preserve ties to an old country across the seas. In many areas, the most publicity that local parishes receive during the year is not for a strictly religious observance, but for an annual Greek, Middle-Eastern or Russian dinner or festival. This misconception has led many Americans to dismiss the Orthodox Church as a foreign sect known for its foreign folk ways and colorful and quaint forms of worship, but which is irrelevant to modern American society. Despite the popular image of Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy is no longer restricted to non Americans. The children and grand children of the original immigrants are now become as American as the descendants of English, Scottish, Irish, Italian, or German immigrants. Because Orthodox always worship in the language of the people, most older Orthodox parishes in America originally worshiped in the foreign language spoken by the people of the parish. However, over time the new generations adopted English as their primary and, in many cases, only language. As the language of the people changed, the language of worship in most Orthodox parishes has also changed. Today, many Orthodox Churches use little, if any, foreign language during their worship. Intermarriage of Orthodox Christians with persons outside of the ethnic communities, and the reception of converts from all ethnic backgrounds has intensified the Americanization of Orthodoxy. Those born outside of the Orthodox Church now make up a large percentage of the students at the seminaries as well as the already ordained clergy. Thus, today Orthodoxy has ceased to be a bastion of non-American ethnicism, but has become a spiritual home for many ordinary Americans.

Although there are Millions of Orthodox Christians, the Media and Scholarly Community Virtually Ignore the Orthodox Church.

Although millions of Orthodox Christians live in the Western Europe or the United States, the non-Orthodox world hardly notices them. All the programs and articles on Christ, the Bible or Christianity in the media around Christmas or Easter, or in relation to something like the book The Da Vinci Code, include the opinions of Protestant, Roman Catholic and secular non-believing scholars, but almost never seek the comments of the Orthodox scholars or leaders. Ironically, most television productions dealing with Christianity usually feature pictures of icons and Orthodox churches and services as a colorful background for the comments of non-Orthodox. Around Christmas 2006, Cable News Network’s Anderson Cooper hosted a widely advertised program entitled What is a Christian? 1 At the beginning of the program, the commentator stood before a pie chart illustrating the divisions of American Christians. He described the Evangelical and Mainline Protestants, the Roman Catholics and Black Churches, but never commentated on a small unidentified section of his pie chart which obviously represented Christians usually classified as others such as the Eastern Orthodox. The rest of the program consisted of several segments on what most scholars would consider fringe groups whose views are so extreme that even the most conservative Protestant would refuse to identify with them. He never mentioned Orthodox Christianity. When my wife went to the emergency room of a large hospital in Jackson, Mississippi after an automobile accident, the attendant asked for her religious preference. Although the list included most Protestant groups, there was no place for Eastern Orthodox. Instead, she was listed as Other. Public opinion poll takes routinely comment on the voting patterns of Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews, but never bother to include Orthodox Christians in their research.

Because most Western media and scholars basically ignore the Orthodox Church, almost every article or book on Church history has failed to include the Orthodox point of view. Orthodoxy has produced scholars and historians such as Frs. Alexander Schmemann, Georges Florovsky, John Meyendorff, John Behr, and Bishop Kallistos Ware. However, those outside of the Eastern Orthodox Church pay little attention to their excellent work. Yaroslav Pelikan, a widely accepted authority on the history of Christian belief became an Orthodox Christian long after the publications of his works. Most popular or scholarly studies of Christian history written or translated into English almost always reflect a Roman Catholic, Protestant or completely secular point of view.

Ironically, most Protestant historians accept without question the Roman Catholic interpretation of early Church history. They fail to consider or are ignorant of the Eastern Orthodox point of view. This failure to rise above Western prejudices produces a distorted view of Church history. Many Protestants accept without question the claim that the Bishop of Rome had universal jurisdiction from the beginning of Church history. Western historians almost always fail to grasp the importance of the Eastern objections to the Western addition of the words, and the Son, filioque, to the Creed. They accept without critical examination the Western claim that the Orthodox Church broke away from Rome. Stewart C. Easton’s The Heritage of the Past, an otherwise excellent text for the first half of a basic undergraduate courses in World Civilizations, reports that the Patriarch of Constantinople deliberately provoked the schism between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.2 Scholars cannot ignore the role of Orthodoxy in Russian history, but few specialists in the field show anything other than a very shallow understanding of the Orthodox Faith. More often than not, studies of Russian history dismiss Orthodoxy as a negative influence which hindered the entrance of Russian civilization into the modern world.

With very few exceptions, reports on anything connected with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the media portray Orthodoxy as a break away from the Catholic Church. Even historians with no noticeable religious affiliation treat Orthodox Christianity as a religion for superstitious peasants who are obsessed with elaborate ceremonies and frozen in the attitudes of the past. Because most scholars and journalists in the West are almost totally ignorant of the Orthodox Church, their works are filled with distortions and incorrect statements about Orthodox belief and practice.

The Anti-Christian Bias of Some Historians since the Enlightenment

In the past, Roman Catholic or Protestant bias tainted the work of students of church history. Since the Scientific Revolution and the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment, secular ideology marked by suspicion of the supernatural dominates the work of some church historians. Because they consider the Holy Scriptures, the writings of the Holy Fathers and the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, the basis for Orthodox doctrine, the work of fallible men, they dismiss Eastern Orthodoxy as irrelevant and out of date because it refuses to conform to the modern secular society.

The eighteenth century British historian Edward Gibbon whose History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is one of the most influential historical works ever written made no effort to hide his hostility to traditional Christianity. He filled his monumental work outright hostility toward the Christian Church. Gibbons dismisses the Roman persecution of the Church as insignificant compared with the bloodshed caused by the Christian efforts to suppress heresy with such as Spanish Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church or the religious wars between Protestants and Catholics following the Reformation. He describes St. Athanasius as tainted by the contagion of fanaticism. He calls the monks, a race of filthy animals. Finally, he describes the history of the Church after the end of the persecutions as the progress of superstition.3

To be successful in the highly competitive world of modern academics, every historian must produce a new and original interpretation of whatever event, person or period they are studying. To maintain their position, they must constantly reevaluate and challenge traditional interpretations. The historian who claims to prove that the Church misjudged a person considered a heretic or that mob rule determined the decisions of one of the councils, can publish their works and make a name for themselves. The historian who claims to show that the Church misinterpreted or even falsified some aspect of the teaching of Christ or the Apostles can become famous, sell a lot of books, and obtain a good position in the academic world.

Political Correctness and Church History

More recently the forces of political correctness have overwhelmed American academic institutions. Any scholar who does not accept the claims of feminists, gays and other minorities were guilty of crimes against women, gays and just about everyone else but white upper class males risks losing their prestige as well the possibility of obtaining and keeping tenure. Of all forms of Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy is the least politically correct. Not only does it still believe in dogma in a post modern world which denies the validity of universal truths, it also ordains only men, opposes abortion and considers homosexual acts sinful. Thus, to most politically correct scholars, the Eastern Orthodox Church is a bastion of sexism, homophobia and antiquated ideas. For these reasons, one must look on many contemporary historical works with an extra dose of skepticism.

Many modern studies of early Church history show in one way or another the influence of what is popularly called the Tübingen School, founded by F. C. Bauer, a professor at the south German University of Tübingen from 1826 until 1860. Bauer and his followers view Church history as a series of disagreements between various competing groups and ideas. Since then, scholars of Tübingen, have lived and worked under the shadow of Georg Friedrich Hegel. Hegel, an early nineteenth century German philosopher, taught that conflict determines the course of history. He constructed a model history called dialectical, based on a struggle between what he called a thesis and a competing antithesis which produces a synthesis that is neither thesis nor antithesis, but something new which combines elements of both the thesis and antithesis. It is not possible to under estimate the influence of Hegel on modern intellectual development. Such differing ideologies as fascism and Marxism show his influence. Even today, the ghost of Hegel haunts the halls of most German universities. Bauer applied Hegel’s theories to the New Testament and constructed a view of Christian origins that treated a disagreement between the Apostles Peter and Paul as shaping the early Christian Faith.4 This is, of course, quite different from the Orthodox view, which portrays the two Apostles embracing in its iconography. Despite its wide acceptance, Bauer’s view of early Church history relies excessively on one incident, an argument between the Apostles recorded in only a few verses of the New Testament.5 He neglected the rest of the New Testament and failed to adequately consider the agreement between the two Apostles expressed by the Apostolic Council recorded in the fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts.

The German Heirs to Hegel emphasize Conflict in their Studies of Church History

Although F.C. Bauer concentrated on New Testament studies, Walter Bauer, another German scholar, applied the methods developed by the Tübingen School to the study of later Church history. Published in 1934, Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, challenged the traditional view of early church history.6 Bauer argued that there was no common faith among ancient Christians. Instead, Bauer and his followers believe that Christians have held such a wide variety of beliefs and practices since the very beginning that one can only speak of various forms of Christianity and not of the ancient undivided Church. According to this view, the Orthodox Faith is only the teaching of the strongest group among many equally authentic groups of ancient Christians. However, Bauer and his followers failed to consider the remarkable degree of unity in belief and practice among those Churches with Apostolic origins, such as Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome and Alexandria. Instead, they placed far too much emphasis on relatively small heretical groups on the fringes of Christianity.

As Hegelism shaped the theories of Church historians in the past, certain trends in modern culture have had an overwhelming influence on the approach taken by contemporary scholars. Some argue that the leadership of the Church used the suppression of heresy as a means to enhance their own personal power and authority. This view has become particularly popular among some feminist theologians who teach that the Church developed its hierarchal organization and doctrinal orthodoxy to prevent women from assuming a place among the leaders of the Christian community. Reflecting their personal political views, they portray the early Church as an egalitarian society with few doctrinal requirements other than a vague belief in Jesus Christ.

The Historic Church

Although there have always been marginal groups of Christians who reject one aspect or another of the beliefs and practices of the ancient Church of the Apostles, it is also evident that there was a remarkable degree of agreement by most Christians on most aspects of the Christian religion. Despite the claims of some historians, it is possible to speak of the Historic Church which has upheld the Faith of the ancient undivided or Apostolic Church through the centuries. Amid all the differing teachings, one can identify a body of beliefs and practices that has remained continuous throughout Church history among those communities founded by the Apostles or followers of the Apostles.

Unfortunately, many Christians have for one reason or another rejected the beliefs that constitute Apostolic Christianity. Although the Roman Catholics accept the beliefs and practices of the ancient Apostolic Church, they have added additional beliefs such as the Augustinian doctrine of original sin, universal papal jurisdiction, Purgatory and Indulgences that significantly change the beliefs and practices of the ancient Church. During the Reformation, the founders of Protestantism over reacted to the Roman additions by rejecting almost fifteen centuries of Christian belief and practice. Instead of restoring ancient Apostolic Christianity by introducing reforms that eliminated the excesses and distortions found in medieval Roman Catholicism, by looking to the East which has not accepted them for guidance, they created their own new modern forms of Christianity based on their own ideas. Since there have been many Protestant leaders, the Reformation produced a host of man made religious groups which follow beliefs and practices that have only a superficial resemblance to those of the ancient Church.

The Importance of History for Christians

Christianity did not begin in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed the famous Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the Palace Church in Wittenberg, Germany. It was not perfected a few years later when John Calvin began to teach in Geneva, or during the revivals of nineteenth century America, as many Protestant Evangelical publications on the history of the Christian Church imply. The Church grew and flourished for almost fifteen hundred years before the Protestant Reformation. The Church did not sink into spiritual darkness immediately after the completion of the New Testament only to reemerge following Luther and Calvin. It is not reasonable to assume that God allowed His people to live captive to spiritual darkness from the death of the last Apostle until the Protestant Reformation fourteen centuries later. The Church was alive and well and produced great Saints and theologians for hundreds of years before Luther or the revivals of the American frontier.

Although some modern students of the history of Christianity greatly exaggerate the importance of marginal groups whose teachings were rejected by the Church, one aspect of their theory is correct. These heretical groups forced the Church to define its beliefs. The Orthodox Church has always tried to avoid defining the mysteries of God. Thus, there is no Orthodox equivalent to the official Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, the Augsburg Confession of the Lutherans, the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterians, or the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglicans. Instead, from time to time, new teachings have forced the Church to set boundaries between acceptable belief and heretical beliefs which could not be reconciled with the doctrines held by the Church since the Apostolic era. From the Greek that means to go one’s own way, heresy is the belief of a person who places their own personal opinions above the common experience of the Church. A heretic rejects all or part of the deposit of doctrine inherited from Christ and His Apostles. When the Church defined its faith in a negative way by rejecting certain ideas, the Church did not create new doctrine. Instead, the Church has always strived to remain faithful to the beliefs and practices that had been held dear by the faithful since the beginning of the Church when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles at Pentecost. For example, when Arius began to teach that the Son was created and was not truly God, the leaders of the Church studied the Holy Scriptures and the writings of theologians from the past to determine what Christians had believed since Apostolic times. Finally, they condemned the new teaching of Arius because it differed from the teachings that it inherited from the Apostles.

The Myth that Constantine forced the Church to change its teachings

One popular myth about Church history is the claim that the Church radically changed its beliefs after Constantine legalized the Church at the beginning of the fourth century. The popular press sometimes reports that the Church developed the doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicea in 325. Yet, a brief study of the writings of the major Christian theologians in the era before Constantine shows that the Church has held the same doctrine since the earliest days of its history. As time went on, new teachings that contradicted what faithful Christians already believed forced theologians and councils of the leaders of the Church to amplify and explain more precisely what the Church already believed. These theologians and councils did not create new doctrine nor did they reject what the Church has believed from the time of the Apostles. At the same time, the worship and administration of the Church evolved to meet the new requirements of larger congregations able to gather openly without fear of persecution from the authorities.

All the developments after Constantine grew from the practice of the ancient Church the same way that a tree grows from an acorn. Everything that distinguishes modern Orthodoxy existed before Constantine. The Church had a hierarchical organization, worshiped in liturgical services and considered the Sacraments as the means of salvation long before the fourth century. The Church taught the doctrines of the divinity of Christ and the Trinity long before the end of the persecutions. A study of the earliest post New Testament documents shows that the Church has held the same beliefs and practices from the very beginning of Christian history.

Some Personal Notes

On a more personal note, this work is the product of many years that I spent studying Church history. I developed an interest in the history of the Christian Church while in high school. This continued through college and graduate school. I earned a B.A. in history at Oklahoma City University and an M.A. and Ph. D. in history at Oklahoma State University with a specialization in the history of modern Germany. I also have taught history at several colleges and universities. Although I concentrated on modern German history during my graduate work, I never lost interest in the history of the Church. I found time to study the Protestant Reformation while doing research for my dissertation on nineteenth century German history as a Fulbright Scholar at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I also earned a secondary specialization on my Ph.D. in the history of Russia, which introduced me to the Orthodox Church. Eventually, my studies of Church history led me to convert to the Orthodox Church at St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church in Austin, Texas. I then studied at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology where I earned a MTS degree and became an Orthodox priest. However, I continued to teach part time at several colleges and universities near my various pastoral assignments. Like most part time-faculty, I usually taught basic survey courses in American and European history. However, I had a chance to teach Church history at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia and Malone College, in Canton, Ohio. I also taught a course on ancient Church history for the Grecho Institute of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Shreveport, Louisiana. This work, is therefore the result of years of study and reflection. I make no claims to original or profound scholarship. I certainly make no claim to be in the same league of the established Orthodox scholars who teach in our seminaries. However, I hope that I can provide an Orthodox perspective which is lacking in most works on Church history. Non-Orthodox may find my analysis biased. However, unlike most scholars, I openly admit that my personal beliefs have shaped my view of Church history. Still, I did not begin my study of Church history with preconceived ideas. Instead, I developed my ideas from the study of the history of Christianity. I am not writing for scholars, although some may find my interpretations intriguing simply because they present an Orthodox point of view that is absent from most Western studies of the history of the Christian religion. I am writing for Orthodox laity and those interested in learning an Orthodox view of the great questions of Christian history. I go into great detail on the differences between Orthodoxy and other forms of Christianity to help Orthodox Christians make some sense of the bewildering number of groups that form the modern Christian community. Member of my parish have frequently come to me with questions following religious discussions with non-Orthodox. I hope that a detailed discussion of how the various Christian groups developed, what they believe and why Orthodox do not agree with them will help Orthodox Faithful respond to the questions of non-Orthodox. I have subtitled this work, An Orthodox View of Christian History, for a very important reason. I make no claims to represent the Orthodox Church. That is why I did not use a title like The Orthodox view of Church History. I only represent myself. I have tried to be faithful to the teachings of the Orthodox Church on every issue. I apologize to my readers and my bishop if I have inadvertently misrepresented the doctrine of the Church.

Finally, underlying this work is my conclusion that despite the various different Christians groups the Historic Church which has preserved the teachings of Christ and His Apostles still exists. Otherwise, one must assume that there is really no such thing as truth and that God has allowed his people to wander about in spiritual darkness for centuries. As a man of faith, I cannot believe that God would abandon His people to such confusion. Thus, although there have always been different Christian groups, as the followers of the Tübingen School emphasize, I believe that one of these, the Orthodox Church, has remained faithful to the teachings of Christ and His Apostles.

This conclusion is partially a matter of faith. I believe that if the Gospel is true, God would not have allowed it to be forgotten or distorted by the followers of Christ. However, this is also a matter of historical judgment. As noted above, no historian is ever completely free of personal opinion or even bias. The vast majority of works dealing with the history of Christianity have a pronounced Western orientation. This work is different because it is written from an Eastern Orthodox point of view. At times, I am sure that a non Orthodox reader will consider this study biased. However, it is actually no more prejudiced than most English language studies of Christian history. Almost without exception, non-Orthodox scholars fail to consider the Eastern Orthodox point of view. Ironically, Karen Armstrong, a feminist, who describes herself as a free lance monotheist, and rejects the claim of any religion to superiority, is one of the few Western historians who seems to have some appreciation of Orthodoxy.7 Armstrong, who has emerged as one of the leading Western defenders of Islam, is one of the few non-Orthodox historians to show any understanding of the differences between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism on the wording of the Nicene Creed, the filioque controversy, and the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas.8

I became an Orthodox Christian as a result of my historical studies. Therefore, I believe that the Orthodox Church can legitimately claim to have preserved without corruption the teachings of Christ and His Apostle. I also believe that it is obvious that many of the beliefs of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are later developments that differ in important ways from those of the ancient Apostolic Church. Thus, I have chosen to focus on the divisions of Christianity as the format in which to present my conclusions on church history. In that way, I hope to show how and why I came to the conclusion that the Orthodox Church is the historic Church. I believe that Orthodoxy is the only group of Christians that can legitimately claim to be a modern continuation of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I believe that every other Christian group is the result of a split or schism led by a few mortal men and women who may have been very sincere, but who I believe also exchanged the Faith of the ancient Apostolic Church for their own opinions.

This work will consist of three distinct sections. The first will focus on the Ancient Undivided Church. It will begin with an effort to identify and explain the beliefs and practices of the Church immediately after the death of the last Apostle and will continue with a discussion of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. The next section will deal with the relations between Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Church. It will discuss the beginning and growth of the papacy and the distinct Western approach to doctrine, continue with a study of the schism and conclude with a summary on relations between Orthodox and Roman Catholicism after 1054 and the formal schism. The final section will deal with Orthodoxy and Protestantism. It will begin with an account of the beginnings and development of the Reformation, define the four classic forms of Protestantism, Lutheran, Calvinist or Reformed, Anglican and Anabaptist. The section will conclude with a study of the major groups that make up American Protestantism. Then, to put everything in perspective, the work will conclude with a discussion of the history of Orthodoxy since the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453 with a chapter on Orthodoxy in America. I have divided each chapter into very specific topics to make using this work to look up a specific topic easier.

2: The Worship and Organization of the Apostolic Church

Fallen Branches: The True Nature of Christian Divisions

One of the most common pictures of the Christian Church is as a tree with the branches representing the different factions of the Christian religion. This is a useful picture because every Christian denomination came out of another group of believers. The members of the Church of England left the Roman Catholic Church. The Methodists and Baptists broke off from the Church of England. However, this image is also misleading, because it over simplifies the gravity of the division between various Christian groups. A more accurate diagram using a tree to designate the various branches of Christianity would have apples on one branch, pears on another, peaches on another, and so on. Each of these is a fruit, as every group of Christians professes allegiance to Christ, but each is a different fruit because each Christian organization follows beliefs and practices that are very different from those practiced by other Christians. Roman Catholics believe that to fully follow Christ one must accept the infallibility and universal jurisdiction of the Pope. Orthodox and Protestants do not. Presbyterians baptize infants, but Baptists baptize only those who have reached the age of accountability. The list of differences between the various groups of Christians is endless. Therefore just as an apple is different from a peach, a Baptist is different from an Orthodox Christian.

Since the Enlightenment swept through Europe in the eighteenth century, the divisions between followers of Christ have become even greater than before. At one time, all Christians recognized the authority of the Holy Scriptures. However, since the victory of the Cult of Reason in the West, many Christians have cast aside the authority of the sacred texts in order to build new theologies they consider more compatible with modern thought. More recently, the victory of feminism and gay liberation in fashionable circles has shattered whatever common belief still existed among those who call themselves Christians. Once all Christians, regardless of whether they were Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, considered abortion the destruction of a living human being and taught that homosexual acts were morally wrong. That is no longer the case. Since the victories of women’s liberation, several mainline Protestant groups have yielded to the so-called Pro-Choice Movement and no longer condemn abortion. Equally disturbing is the fact that some groups that call themselves Christians now ignore the clear teaching of the Holy Scriptures that homosexual acts are sinful. Today, some groups that consider themselves Christians bless same sex marriages and ordain openly practicing gay and lesbian clergy. Because of these and other differences, Christian groups are as different as apples are from pears or from peaches.

Because of these differences, a more accurate drawing of the various groups that make up the Christian world would show a forest instead of one tree. One mother tree, representing the Apostolic Church, would stand at a center of a group of trees, which represent groups that grew from branches that broke off from the Apostolic Church, and others that broke off from one of the other trees. An Orthodox version of the forest would show the modern autocephalous or independent Orthodox Churches as branches of the ancient Apostolic Church. The Orthodox illustration would show the Roman Catholic Church as a larger but also different tree that grew from a branch that broke from the Apostolic Church. Other trees near the Roman Catholic tree would represent various Protestant groups that broke from Rome or from other Protestant groups. On the ground of the forest would be dead branches that represent the heresies that flourished for a time and then died as the faithful rejected their teachings.

The Apostolic Fathers

Fortunately, it is possible to draw a very accurate picture of how the tree that symbolizes the Historic Church should look. Through historical research it is possible to discover it how it governed its affairs, what it believed and how it worshiped. Several authors from the earliest Christian period provide a great deal of information about the beliefs and practices of the Church following the death of St. John, the last Apostle, sometime toward the end of the first century. Because they wrote shortly after the death of the Apostles, historians call the first Christian theologians The Apostolic Fathers. The most important Apostolic Fathers were St. Clement and St. Ignatius of Antioch. St. Clement, the third Bishop of Rome, wrote an important letter to the Church at Corinth in about 80. St. Ignatius, the third Bishop of Antioch, wrote a series of letters to various Churches as he traveled to martyrdom in Rome in about 110.

The Apologists

Toward the middle of the second century, another group of theologians, usually called Apologists, defended the Christianity from the combined attacks of Roman officials and pagan philosophers. St. Justin the Martyr, the greatest Apologist, was born in Palestine in about 100. He studied philosophy before he became a Christian. He eventually arrived in Rome, where he founded a school of philosophy and died for the Faith in about 165. St. Justin wrote two Apologies which defended Christians against the charges that they were disloyal to the Emperor and a threat to the moral foundations of society as charged by their pagan critics. He wrote that Christians have not rejected the Greek philosophy that formed the foundation for thought in the ancient world. Instead, he argued that the same Logos, or reason who inspired Socrates and other great philosophers became man in Jesus Christ. St. Justin’s The Dialogue with Trypho is a very important early study of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. In this account of a discussion between the author and a Jew named Trypho, he shows that Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. From this, he concluded that the Church is the New Israel and Christian people the true heirs to the promises God made to Abraham and his descendants.9

Although St. Justin held no official position in the Church, other theologians of the period were leaders in the Christian community. Toward the end of the second century, St. Irenaeus, wrote Against Heresies, one of the first systematic presentations of Christian doctrine. Born in Asia Minor in the early second century, Irenaeus traveled to Gaul, what is now called France, where he became the Bishop of Lyons and died a martyr’s death around 200. St. Hippolytus was a priest in Rome. Because he considered Pope Callistus too lax, he became the bishop of a schismatic group. However, he was reconciled to the legitimate bishop of Rome before his martyrdom in 235. He was also the last significant Roman theologian to write in Greek.

The School of Alexandria

At about the same time as the death of St. Hippolytus, a very important school of theology grew up around the Catechetical School of the Church of Alexandria. Alexandria had long been the scene of great intellectual activity. It was the home of the largest library in the ancient world. Before Christ, Philo, a Jewish philosopher, used Greek philosophy to study the Holy Scriptures. He considered many of the Biblical stories allegories which illustrate a deeper truth than a literal reading of the text provides. Philo also developed the concept of the Logos or Word, who is the intermediary between God and His creation.10 Philo had great influence on early Christian thinking and may have inspired the Apostle John to use the term Word, or Logos to describe the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.

Alexandrian theologians emphasized the divinity of Christ. They considered deification or becoming like God through intimate communion with God through His grace the ultimate meaning of salvation.11 They followed the example of Philo by seeking the deeper meaning behind the events in the Scriptures. Thus, they treated many incidents described in the sacred texts as allegories. The allegorical method of Biblical interpretation led to the development of the typological method of Biblical interpretation. Those using typology do not deny the historical events of the Old Testament. However, they seek to look beyond the literal text find a deeper meaning fulfilled through Christ. Early Christian scholars developed the typological method from the treatment of the Old Testament in several New Testament texts. For example, Christ used the example of the serpent lifted up on Moses’ staff to illustrate how he would save humanity from sin and death by being lifted up on the cross.12 Christ also compared the three days that Jonah spent in the belly of the great fish to the three days that He would spend in the tomb.13 St. Paul called Adam a type, of Christ who is the Second Adam. St. Peter described Noah’s ark as an antitype of Baptism.14 Thus, the roots of the typological method are found in the New Testament.

Pantaenus was the first known leader of the School of Alexandria. However, Titus Flavius Clems or Clement of Alexandria was its best known early teacher. Born in about 150 of pagan parents, Clement became the head of the School of Alexandria in about 200, after the death of Pantaenus. His works show the influence of Philo, for he also used the concepts of Greek philosophy in his effort to express the Christian Gospel. Clement chiefly dealt with ethical issues. However, he also stressed the concept of the Divine Logos already found in Philo and the Gospel of St. John. Clement taught that the Logos, who created the universe, is the manifestation of God in the Old Testament which became incarnate in Christ. By assuming human nature through the Incarnation, Christ makes possible the deification of humans to become to by grace what God is by nature. This teaching is still the foundation of the Orthodox understanding of salvation which considers salvation the transformation of the believer through the grace of God and refuses to limit God’s saving acts to legalistic categories related solely to the forgiveness of sins. Clement also believed that just as there is only one true God, there is only one true Church, the Catholic Church15

Origen

Although Clement was very influential, Origenes Adamantios, or Origen, was the greatest theologian of the School of Alexandria. Indeed Origen, who died in about 254, was one of the most influential Christian scholars in the era before Constantine. He probably produced more works than any other early Christian writer. He was born in Alexandria in about 185. He was so devout that his mother hid his clothes to prevent him from joining his father who died for the Faith during the persecution of Severus in 202. Because of his great learning, he became the most influential teacher and, perhaps, leader of the famous School of Alexandria in about 202. At the same time, because the young theologian felt impelled to take the words of Christ, there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, literally, he emasculated himself.16 Because self mutilation made him ineligible for ordination, Demetrius, the Bishop of Alexandria and his ecclesiastical superior refused to ordain him. After Origen persuaded Bishop Alexander of Jerusalem to elevate him to Holy Orders, Demetrius called a council that excommunicated the wayward teacher. Origen then fled to Caesarea in Palestine where he founded his own school. He died in Tyre in 253.17

Because of his massive output, Origen was one of the most influential and controversial early Christian theologians. His Hexapla broke new ground in Biblical scholarship by attempting to identify the most correct text of the Old Testament through a comparison of six different versions of the sacred text. Origen also wrote a defense of the Christian Faith in response to Celsus, a pagan philosopher, called Contra Celsum (Against Celsus) and a study of Christian beliefs called De Principis (First Principles). Finally, the collection of his works includes sermons, and commentaries on several books of the New Testament.18

Origen’s writings show the influence of Clement and those who went before him in the School of Alexandria. Origen expanded the allegorical method of Biblical interpretation to include three levels of understanding of the sacred texts.

1. The historical or literal meaning of the text.

2. The moral meaning of the passage which show the ethical teachings behind the text.

3. The spiritual or mystical meaning of the text which tells of salvation.19

Origen was not merely an academic theologian but a mystic whose writings on union with God provide a valuable insight on early Christian spirituality. His study of prayer is one of the most important early Christian works on the subject. According to the Alexandrian theologian, the purpose of prayer is not to ask God for divine favor, but to participate in the life of God. Origen taught that frequent prayer sanctifies believers and unites them to God. Prayer also helps a Christian to avoid sin. This great theologian made a distinction between the image and the likeness of God. According to him the image is the intellect, free will and the other God like qualities that separate humans from animals. The likeness, however, is the potential to grow to union with God. Origen taught that this growth consisted of several steps or stages:

1. Self-knowledge, through which one discovers what is lacking and what is needed for spiritual growth.

2. Struggle against sin and temptation, during which the believer fights against Satan and his agents, and ascends higher and higher in the spiritual life.

3. Union with Christ, which is the last stage of the spiritual life.20

Origen’s definition of salvation as growth into union with God or deification has become standard in the Orthodox Church.

Because he relied too much on human reason, Origen developed some ideas that the Church later condemned as heretical. He so emphasized the unique oneness of God that he left little place for the equality of the Son with the Father. This laid a foundation for the development of Arianisn, a heresy that threatened the very existence of the Church during the fourth century. The great Alexandrian thinker also believed that soul existed in heaven before the creation of the body. He did not, however, as some New Agers claim, teach reincarnation. In addition, Origen taught the ultimate salvation of all including Satan and his angels, a doctrine called apokatastasis. In 553 The Second Council of Constantinople, the Fifth Ecumenical Council, condemned belief in the pre-existence souls and universal salvation as heretical.21

Because Origen’s theological speculations sometimes went too far, his teachings provoked a reaction from the second great theological school of the ancient Church, the School of Antioch. In 312, Lucian of Antioch founded a theological school to rival that of Alexandria. Lucian and his followers argued that Origen and others of the School of Alexandria placed too much emphasis on allegory. Lucian and his followers emphasized the literal and historical meaning of Biblical texts. The theologians of Antioch also emphasized the human nature of Christ.22 The rivalry between the Schools of Alexandria and Antioch laid a foundation for many of the conflicts over the relation between the human and divine nature of Christ that divided the Church during the next period of Church history.

Tertullian and the Beginning of Western Theology

Although all of the early Christian theologians, including Ireneaeus of Lyons, wrote in Greek, a very important school of theology written in Latin grew up at the middle of the second century. Minucius Felix’s defense of the Christian Faith in about 185 is the first known Christian theological work written in Latin.23 Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullians, or Tertullian, was the first great Latin theologian. Tertullian was born in Carthage in about 155, the son of a Roman centurion. He studied law and became a successful attorney. In about 195, he began to write on theological subjects. According to St. Jerome, he was a priest, although he makes no reference to ordination in his own writings. Toward the end of his life, this great theologian left the Church and joined the Montanists, an heretical movement which among other things taught a very rigid morality.24 St. Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage in the middle of the third century was also an influential early Latin Father of the Church.

The Importance of the Fathers

These early Christian authors are important because they provide an authoritative view of the life and teachings of the Church in the period immediately following the death of the Apostles. St. Ignatius was the third bishop of the Church of Antioch, the Church where Christians were first called Christians.25 He learned the Christian Faith from the Apostle John.26 His flock had learned the Faith from the Apostles of Sts. Peter and Paul. St. Clement was the third bishop of Rome where Sts. Peter and Paul also lived and taught. St. Justin the Martyr taught in the imperial city. Thus, those who heard them and read their writings learned the Faith from two leading Apostles, or from the students of the Apostles. St. Irenaeus was not self-appointed, like the leaders of the heresies he opposed. He was the leader of a very important local Church in Gaul. He was also a student of St. Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, a pupil of the Apostle John.27 Clement of Alexandria and Origen were highly respected teachers and scholars in one of the most important centers of intellectual activity of the ancient world. St. Hippolytus was an influential theologian and important witness to the worship of the ancient Church. Thus, from them it is possible to determine how the Apostles organized the Church, how they worshiped and what the doctrines they taught. It is reasonable to assume that if any of these early theologians had departed from the practice of the Apostles, the community of believers would not have accepted their authority or treasured and preserved their works through the centuries. The writings of the Fathers also show that the beliefs and practices of the Church in the era after the Apostles was remarkably uniform throughout the known world.

Because of their role in the formation of Christian theology, early Christian writers are called the Fathers of the Church. The Orthodox Church does not consider any Father infallible. Some of them, Origen, for example, combined great insights with ideas that would later evolve into heresies. Some were men of great intellect who made major contributions to the understanding of the Gospel, but who could be very un Christian when involved in controversy with those whose ideas they considered a threat to the integrity of the doctrine of the Church. When studying the Fathers, Orthodox Christians look for the consensus of the Fathers to discern the mind of the Church. In Orthodox thought no individual Father or theologian has special authority over the other Fathers. Instead, the works of the Fathers taken together are important because they illustrate the mind of the Church. Orthodox theologians also consider the historical context of the Fathers, and how their work has been interpreted by the Church through the centuries.

None of the Fathers tried to be an original thinker. They based their work on the Holy Scriptures and the theologians who came before them. No true Christian theological work is an original creation. To be authentically Christian, every discussion of doctrine must faithfully adhere to the Bible and the deposit of faith and worship inherited from the Apostles and preserved through the centuries. Because, their works have withstood the test of time and have inspired generation after generation of Christians, the Fathers are the most authoritative Bible commentators of all. They were much closer in time and thought to the authors of the sacred texts than any modern scholar could ever hope to be. They understood the nuances of the Greek language far more accurately than a modern scholar because it was their language, not a foreign language that they learned in a classroom.

The Fathers expressed the insights of the Scriptures in the language of Greek philosophy, because that was the language of all intelligent discourse at that time. However, they did not Hellenize the Gospel. Instead, they Christianized Hellenism. Significantly, every time that some thinker compromised the Gospel by surrendering to Hellenistic philosophy, the Church rejected their ideas. There were major differences between Christian thought and Hellenistic philosophy. Hellenism believed in the eternity of matter and rejected the idea of a Creator God, one of the central teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Greek philosophers did not believe that history was moving toward a climax. However, Christians taught that history is moving toward the second coming of Christ and the end of the world. Finally, the ancient Greeks considered the body inferior and were horrified at the Christian belief in the sanctification of matter and the resurrection of the body.28

The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament

When the first Christians consulted the Holy Scriptures, they studied the Old Testament of the Jews. Since Greek was the language of the ancient Church, it was only natural that the first Christians used the standard Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. According to legend, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled Egypt between 285-246 B.C., assembled a team of seventy-two Hebrew scholars to translate the Jewish scriptures into Greek for his great library in Alexandria. They produced a text called the Septuagint, from the Greek word for seventy, or simply LXX from the Roman numeral for seventy. Most quotations from the Old Testament in the Gospels and other books of the New Testament come directly from the Septuagint. Although the story of the seventy-two scholars in Alexandria may be a legend, the LXX is much older than the standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Masoretic text, traditionally attributed to the Synod of Jamnia. This council of Jewish leaders, which established the authoritative Hebrew text of the Scriptures, met sometime between 90 and 100 A.D.29

Eventually, the Church added the New Testament to the Old Testament to produce the Christian Bible. The list of officially recognized books in the Bible is called the canon from the Greek word for standard. The ancient Church simply adopted the canon as found in the LXX, which contains forty-nine books. At the Reformation, the Protestants rejected the LXX in favor of the Masoretic text, which contains only thirty-nine books. Most English Bibles that include the books found in the LXX but not in the Masoretic text label them as Apocrypha from the Greek word for hidden. Although the Orthodox Church continues to consider the LXX its official version of the Old Testament, some modern Orthodox consider the extra books Readable or Deutero-Canonical Books, because they are not of the same level of authority as the books found in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament.30

The formation of the canon of the New Testament did not conclude until the latter part of the fourth century. Various groups that challenged the teachings of the Church produced a large number of works claiming Apostolic authorship such as the Gospel of St. Thomas or the recently discovered Gospel of Judas. When Marcion, a self-proclaimed prophet not recognized by the Church, rejected all Gospels, except for the Gospel of St. Luke, the Church had to decide which books it considered authentically divinely inspired and worthy of reading during its worship. This process created the canon of the New Testament. This began with the recognition by the Church of the authority of the Gospels Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Writing in about 180, Theophilus, the sixth Bishop of Antioch, was the first known Christian writer to consider the Gospels divinely inspired and equal to the books of the Old Testament. He also called St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and his First Epistle to Timothy the divine word.31 Meanwhile, St. Irenaeus of Lyon successfully argued that there are only four true Gospels, Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, not many as recognized by various groups outside of the Church.32 In 1740, L. A. Muratori discovered a list of works read during worship services probably written in Rome between 155 and 200 that included most of the books in the modern the New Testament.33

St. Athanasius of Alexandria completed the formation of the canon of the New Testament. In 325 the Council of Nicea instructed the Bishop of Alexandria to send an annual Festal Letter to the other bishops informing them of the date of Pascha, the annual celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. In 379, St. Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria included a list of the books which he considered worthy of inclusion in the New Testament in his Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter.34. His prestige was so great that the rest of the Church adopted his list of canonical books at the Council of Carthage in 419. In 692, the Council in Trullo, the continuation of the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, ratified the decisions of the Council of Carthage, making St. Athanasius’ list of canonical books the official New Testament of the Christian Church.35

The canon, from the Greek word for rule, of the New Testament came from the worship of the Church. In evaluating all the books that claimed apostolic authorship, the leaders of the Church compared their contents with the teachings inherited from the Apostles, or Holy Tradition, and rejected those books which contained ideas incompatible with the teachings of the Apostles. For example, Serapion, Bishop of Antioch at the end of the second century, told the Church of Rhossus not to use a text called the Gospel of St. Peter, because, despite its claim to Apostolic authorship, it could not be authentic because its ideas are contrary to the teachings which the Church received from the Apostles.36 Thus, the Church did not take its beliefs from the Bible. Instead, the Church only chose those books which contained doctrine that conformed to the teachings that the Church had inherited from the Apostles. Because, the Bible is a written expression of the Holy Tradition of the Church, the Orthodox Church has always looked to the rest of Holy Tradition as a guide for the proper understanding of the Bible. The effort to understand the Holy Scriptures apart from the other expressions of Holy Tradition only lead to chaos and divisions among Christians as each individual or group imposed their personal interpretation on the sacred text.

The Role of the Synagogue in the Development of Christian Worship: The Liturgy of the Word

It is only natural that the need to establish an authoritative list of texts to be read in worship led to the formation of the canon of the New Testament. At that time, the only exposure that most Christians had to the Holy Scriptures was during the public readings during worship. Because they had to be copied by hand, books were very rare and expensive, far beyond the capacity of the average Christian to afford. As it does today, the life of the early Church centered on worship. Writing in the middle of the second century, St. Justin Martyr gives one of the first descriptions of Christian worship. Significantly, the beginning of the service described in his works bears striking resemblance to the synagogue service of the Jews. This is not an accident since the early Christians worshiped in the synagogue. The Gospel of St. Matthew reports that it was the custom of Christ to worship in the synagogue.37 Sts. Peter and John participated in the services at the Temple.38 St. Paul and the other Apostles worshiped in the synagogue during their missionary travels.39

During their exile in Babylon in about 575 BC, the Jews were unable to worship in the Temple. Instead, they gathered for a service of prayers, chants and readings. This led to the development of the synagogue. By the time of Christ, synagogue worship evolved into a uniform order of service which consisted of:

1. An opening blessing.

2. Prayer.

3. Readings from the Law.

4. Readings from the Prophets.

5. Psalms.

6. The Sermon or Midrash, explaining the scriptures.

7. The Eighteen blessings, a series of short prayers.

8. The final blessing.40

It was only natural that after the Jews cast them out, that the early Christians continued to worship in the familiar ways of the synagogue. Thus, the synagogue service became the Synaxis, or Liturgy of the Word, the first part of early Christian worship. It is also called the Liturgy of the Catechumens, because those studying in preparation for Baptism, called Catechumens, were allowed to attend. Today, the Orthodox Church and all other groups of Christians following traditional forms of worship celebrate the Liturgy of the Word, using the same basic order established by the Jewish synagogue.41 From the very beginning, Christian worship followed a definite and traditional liturgical format, as indicated by the comment in Acts that following Pentecost, the Apostolic Church gathered, not just for prayer, but for the prayers.42

The Eucharist in the Apostolic Church

The Liturgy of the Word was only one part of early Christian worship. The Apostolic Church also gathered for the Eucharist, or service of Holy Communion. The term Eucharist comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. Like the Liturgy of the Word, the Liturgy of the Eucharist evolved from Jewish practice. It is also called the Liturgy of the Faithful, because in ancient times only those who could receive Holy Communion, that is the Faithful, were allowed to attend. In addition to the yearly Passover meal, the ancient Jews gathered with their family and friends on the weekly Sabbath for a ritual meal, the Chaburah or Meal of Fellowship. During the Chaburah, the father of the family led the company in a traditional prayer, the Berakoth and distributed pieces of blessed bread. At the conclusion of the meal, the father took a cup of wine, held it up, blessed it and passed it around. Very early, perhaps in Biblical times, the Church dropped the common meal during the service. The prayer of blessing, the Berakoth, evolved into the prayer of consecration called the Anaphora by the Orthodox Church and the Canon of the Mass by the Roman Catholic Church. The prayer of consecration or Anaphora in The Didache, an early guide for the instruction of converts to the Church, shows definite Jewish influence:43

By the end of the fourth century, the Church began to celebrate the two services of the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist together, thereby creating the classical form