A History of the Orthodox Church
The Apostolic Church
Introduction |
History | Doctrine
The Church as a Eucharistic Community |
The First Persecutions and Martyrs
The Councils as the Manifestation of the Church Unity
The Apostolic Church
The history of the Christian Church begins, with the descent of the
Holy Spirit on the Apostles at Jerusalem during the feast of Pentecost,
the first Whit Sunday. On that same day through the preaching of St Peter
three thousand men and women were baptized, and the first Christian
community at Jerusalem was formed.
Before long the members of the
Jerusalem Church were scattered by the persecution which followed the
stoning of St Stephen. 'Go forth therefore,' Christ had said, 'and make
all nations My disciples' (Matthew xxviii, 19). Obedient to this command
they preached wherever they went, at first to Jews, but before long to
Gentiles also. Some stories of these Apostolic journeys are recorded by St
Luke in the book of Acts; others are preserved in the tradition of the
Church. Within an astonishingly short time small Christian communities had
sprung up in all the main centres of the Roman Empire and even in places
beyond the Roman frontiers.
The Church as a Eucharistic Community
The Empire through which these first Christian missionaries travelled
was, particularly in its eastern part, an empire of cities. This
determined the administrative structure of the primitive Church. The basic
unit was the community in each city, governed by its own bishop; to assist
the bishop there were presbyters or priests, and deacons. The surrounding
countryside depended on the Church of the city. This pattern, with the
threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, was already
established in some places by the end of the first century. We can see it
in the seven short letters which St lgnatius, the Bishop of Antioch, wrote
about the year 107 as he travelled to Rome to be martyred. Ignatius laid
emphasis upon two things in particular, the bishop and the Eucharist; he
saw the Church as both hierarchical and sacramental. 'The bishop in each
Church,' he wrote, 'presides in place of God.' 'Let no one do any of the
things which concern the Church without the bishop ... Wherever the
bishop appears, there let the people be, just as wherever Jesus Christ is,
there is the Catholic Church.' And it is the bishop's primary and
distinctive task to celebrate the Eucharist, 'the medicine of
immortality'.
People today tend to think of the Church as a
worldwide organization, in which each local body forms part of a larger
and more inclusive whole. Ignatius did not look at the Church in this way.
For him the local community is the Church. He thought of the Church as a
Eucharistic society, which only realizes its true nature when it
celebrates the Supper of the Lord, receiving His Body and Blood in the
sacrament. But the Eucharist is something that can only happen locally -
in each particular community gathered round its bishop; and at every local
celebration of the Eucharist it is the whole Christ who is present, not
just a part of Him. Therefore each local community, as it celebrates the
Eucharist Sunday by Sunday, is the Church in its fullness.
The
teaching of Ignatius has a permanent place in Orthodox tradition.
Orthodoxy still thinks of the Church as a Eucharistic society, whose
outward organization, however necessary, is secondary to its inner,
sacramental life; and Orthodoxy still emphasizes the cardinal importance
of the local community in the structure of the Church. To those who attend
an Orthodox Pontifical Liturgy,' when the bishop stands at the beginning
of the service in the middle of the church, surrounded by his flock,
Ignatius of Antioch's idea of the bishop as the centre of unity in the
local community will occur with particular vividness.
But besides the
local community there is also the wider unity of the Church. This second
aspect is developed in the writings of another martyr bishop, St Cyprian
of Carthage (died 258). Cyprian saw all bishops as sharing in the one
episcopate, yet sharing it in such a way that each possesses not a part
but the whole. 'The episcopate,' he wrote, 'is a single whole, in which
each bishop enjoys full possession. So is the Church a single whole,
though it spreads far and wide into a multitude of churches as its
fertility increases'. There are many churches but only one Church; many
episcopi but only one episcopate.
The First Persecutions and Martyrs
There were many others in the first three centuries of the Church who
like Cyprian and Ignatius ended their lives as martyrs. The persecutions,
it is true, were often local in character and usually limited in duration.
Yet although there were long periods when the Roman authorities extended
to Christianity a large measure of toleration, the threat of persecution
was always there, and Christians knew that at any time this threat could
become a reality. The idea of martyrdom had a central place in the
spiritual outlook of the early Christians. They saw their Church as
founded upon blood - not only the blood of Christ but the blood of those
'other Christs', the martyrs. In later centuries when the Church became
'established' and no longer suffered persecution, the idea of martyrdom
did not disappear, but it took other forms: the monastic life, for
example, is often regarded by Greek writers as an equivalent to martyrdom.
The same approach is found also in the west: take, for instance, a Celtic
text - an Irish homily of the seventh century - which likens the ascetic
life to the way of the martyr:
Now there are three kinds of
martyrdom which are accounted as a Cross to a man, white martyrdom, green
martyrdom, and red martyrdom. White martyrdom consists in a man's
abandoning everything he loves for God's sake ... (Green martyrdom
consists in this, that by means of fasting and labour he frees himself
from his evil desires, or suffers toil in penance and repentance. Red
martyrdom consists in the endurance of a Cross or death for Christ's
sake.'
At many periods in Orthodox history the prospect of red
martyrdom has been fairly remote, and the green and white forms prevail.
Yet there have also been times, above all in this present century, when
Orthodox and other Christians have once again been called to undergo
martyrdom of blood.
The Councils as the Manifestation of the Church Unity
It was only natural that the bishops, who, as Cyprian emphasized, share
in the one episcopate, should meet together in a council to discuss their
common problems. Orthodoxy has always attached great importance to the
place of councils in the life of the Church. It believes that the council
is the chief organ whereby God has chosen to guide His people, and it
regards the Catholic Church as essentially a conciliar Church. (Indeed, in
Russian the same adjective soborry has the double sense of 'catholic' and
'conciliar', while the corresponding noun, sobor, means both 'church' and
'council'.) In the Church there is neither dictatorship nor individualism,
but harmony and unanimity; its members remain free but not isolated, for
they are united in love, in faith, and in sacramental communion. In a
council, this idea of harmony and free unanimity can be seen worked out in
practice. In a true council no single member arbitrarily imposes his wil1
upon the rest, but each consults with the others, and in this way they all
freely achieve a 'common mind'. A council is a living embodiment of the
essential nature of the Church.
The first council in the Church's
history is described in Acts xv. Attended by the Apostles, it met at
Jerusalem to decide how far Gentile converts should be subject to the Law
of Moses. The Apostles, when they finally reached their decision, spoke in
terms which in other circumstances might appear presumptuous: 'It seemed
right to the Holy Spirit and to us ...' (Acts xv, 28 Later councils have
ventured to speak with the same confidence An isolated individual may well
hesitate to say, 'It seemed right to the Holy Spirit and to me'; but when
gathered in council, the members of the Church can together claim an
authority which individually none of them possesses.
The Council of
Jerusalem, assembling as it did the leaders of the entire Church, was an
exceptional gathering, for which there is no parallel until the Council of
Nicaea in 325. But by Cyprian's time it had already become usual to hold
local councils, attended by all the bishops in a particular civil province
of the Roman Empire. A local council of this type normally met in the
provincial capital, under the presidency of the bishop of the capital, who
was given the title Metropolitan. As the third century proceeded, councils
widened in scope and began to include bishops not from one but from
several civil provinces. These larger gatherings tended to assemble in the
chief cities of the Empire, such as Alexandria or Antioch; and so it came
about that the bishops of certain great cities began to acquire an
importance above the provincial Metropolitans. But for the time being
nothing was decided about the precise status of these great sees. Nor
during the third century itself did this continual expansion of councils
reach its logical conclusion: as yet (apart from the Apostolic Council)
there had only been local councils, of lesser or greater extent, but no
'general' council, formed of bishops from the whole Christian world, and
claiming to speak in the name of the whole Church.
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