Reflections on the History of the Orthodox Church I

I spoke to my Sunday School Seniors about Church History...here are my notes

Reflections on the History of the Orthodox Church I

<> I was asked to speak to you all today about Church History. First of all, I don’t by any stretch of the mind consider myself an expert on the History of the Church. My education is in engineering and on that path I’ve read my share of books and heard my share of lectures about Church History. I’m sure that doesn’t make me an expert, but I’m confident I know enough to throw in my two cents worth of opinion every once in a while.

Secondly, I don’t think I have the time, nor you all the patience to hear a string of historical facts. In order to properly cover 2000 years of Church History, you’d probably need months if not years to just scratch the surface of what’s available. Instead, what I’m looking to offer to you high school students today is a mode of thinking in approaching Church history. I’ll present you with a few hard facts, but more importantly I’d like to elaborate to you a particular frame of mind with which to approach the history of Christianity.

I’d like to start then with an anonymous quote I’ve received a few different times forwarded to me via email. When you spend a lot of time wandering around the Orthodox blogosphere, you tend to get these random quotes. I thought this one was appropriate for today:

"The Orthodox Church is evangelical, but not Protestant. It is orthodox, but not Jewish. It is catholic, but not Roman. It isn't non-denominational - it is pre-denominational. It has believed, taught, preserved, defended and died for the Faith of the Apostles since the Day of Pentecost 2000 years ago."

We, the Orthodox Christians simply regard ourselves as “The Church.” We are not a particular denomination with a particular founder. While the Lutherans can trace themselves to Martin Luther in 1522, and Anglicans can trace themselves to Henry VIII’s secession from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534, we trace our roots back to the earliest times of the Church, which was “born” on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Disciples and sanctified the Church’s existence. If we take the word “Orthodox” in its simplest sense, we don’t mean that our Church has ever been given the name “Orthodox,” we instead intend to say that our Church is in continuity with Christianity as it was founded to be. We are “orthodox” precisely because our Church maintains that we have kept Christianity alive as it was originally intended to be.

Let me explain this further. We believe that The Church was founded at the Pentecost. Jesus Christ Himself teaches his disciples that the Holy Spirit would guide them in “all truth.” Therefore, the Church was given the entirety of truth at the Pentecost. We can not “manufacture” doctrine, because our Church’s core doctrines have been set in place by Christ. At the heart of our Church’s teaching is that God has revealed Himself to be the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that the Father has sent His Son to suffer and die, and resurrect, and in so doing redeem Humanity. Over 2000 years, the centrality of that Gospel has not changed, but has instead been re-expressed and re-contextualized according to the times and places. Orthodox Christianity, with the emphasis on the adjective “orthodox” implying proper, has never changed its teachings, but has strived to have a harmonious balance between the central truth that is preached and the restating of that truth to fit the particular situation.

In order to remain Orthodox, that is, true to the foundations of the Church as given by Christ to His Apostles, the Church’s main focus is to remain in continuity with the Church since ancient times. Nowhere else is this clearer than in our liturgical worship. I’ve been asked repeatedly where we Orthodox Christians got our Qurbana from. Well, the Church didn’t make the liturgy up out of nowhere. We inherit our Liturgy from the Temple worship in the Old Testament, which has since turned the focus from the sacrifice of the lamb on the altar to the living sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharist.

Let us examine some of the early documentation from the beginning. An early document entitled the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” dated roughly around 70AD says:

Now concerning the Eucharist, give thanks this way. First, concerning the cup:

We thank thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David Thy servant, which You madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever..

And concerning the broken bread:

We thank Thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge which You madest known to us through Jesus Thy Servant; to Thee be the glory for ever. Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let Thy Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Thy kingdom; for Thine is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ for ever..

But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord; for concerning this also the Lord has said, "Give not that which is holy to the dogs."

St. Justin Martyr writes in about 150AD:

But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized [illuminated] person, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to genoito [so be it]. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.

I could cite early references to the Eucharist exhaustively. Allow me one more for good measure:

The Blood of the Lord, indeed, is twofold. There is His corporeal blood, by which we are redeemed from corruption; and His spiritual Blood, that with which we are anointed. That is to say, to drink the Blood of Jesus is to share in His Immortality. the strength of the Word is the Spirit, just as the blood is the strength of the body. [20,1] Similarly, as wine is blended with water, so is the Spirit with man. The one, the Watered Wine, nourishes in faith while the other, the Spirit, leads us on to immortality. The union of both, however, --of the drink and of the Word,--is called Eucharist, a praiseworthy and excellent gift. Those who partake of it in faith are sanctified in body and in soul. By the will of the Father, the divine mixture, man, is mystically united to the Spirit and to the Word.- St. Clement of Alexandria (202AD)

My point here is that there is an order of Christian worship centered on the Eucharist since the very beginning. We didn’t make this up. We received the Liturgy as given to us through the generations which was adapted to the times but never changing in its central truth. Our Liturgy in use today in the Indian Orthodox Church is referred to as the Liturgy of St. James, the cousin of our Lord, which is itself an order of Eucharist used by the Church in Jerusalem since the very beginning of Christianity. We have added certain aspects, the bells, the maravasas, the keyboard in an effort to elaborate on certain mystical aspects of the Church, but the central sacrifice offered on the table is still in direct continuity to that same Eucharist celebrated by Christ as given to his Holy Apostles to do always in remembrance of Him.

Aside from our continuity of Liturgy with the early Church, the Orthodox Church claims to have a continuity of doctrine with the Church since its beginning. Many modern so-called historians and novelists have made the accusation that a hidden yet true Christianity was obscured in later times by the Church which invented its dogmas at the Council of Nicea and beyond (ie The Da Vinci Code, Christ’s Family Tomb, etc). Even a casual reading of the New Testament affirms the fact that, since the very beginning, we have always believed the Jesus Christ is God, and that God is Triune.

Allow me to run through a list of some of the historical heresies that have existed in the history of the Church.

1) Simonianism- early form of Gnosticism, Simon Magus was the First God

2) Docetism- Jesus’ body was an illusion

3) Marcionism- God of Old Testament separate from God of the New Testament

4) Montanism- Separate revelation by God, ecstatic experience of the Holy Spirit

5) Gnosticism- Exclusive hidden knowledge from God given to certain people, God (the demiurge) is merely a craftsmen who forms the material world without the higher knowledge from the actual higher spiritual beings

6) Valentinianism- subset of Gnosticism, the Demiurge was basically good

7) Adoptionism- Christ was born man but was adopted as the Son of God later

8) Patripassionism- God the Father died on the Cross

9) Monarchianism- God is a strict unity

10) Arianism- God the Son, the Logos, is not coeternal with God the Father

11) Tritheism- The Holy Trinity exists as three distinct gods

12) Apollinarianism- Jesus Christ is a human body with the mind of the Logos

13) Nestorianism- Christ’s humanity and Divinity exist as two separate natures

14) Eutychianism- Monophysitism- Christ’s humanity dissolved into His Divinity

15) And so on and so forth...

All of these heresies sprang from a misunderstanding of the central truths of the Church. Either they misunderstand that God can exist as one God in Three Divine Persons, or they misunderstand that Christ exists as both fully Divine and fully human, consubstantial with both God and humanity. Though at its core a mystery to be apprehended if not comprehended, these doctrines have been upheld from the beginning and the struggle with heresy continues unto this day.

The accusation has been made that the Council of Nicea decided upon the Divinity of Christ. However, the New Testament itself is clear about Christ. We know St. John writes in the Gospel:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

…

14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only,^[d] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Church Fathers taught categorically that Christ was both fully Divine and fully Human. For example, St. Irenaeus writes, in the 2^nd Century:

But that the apostle did not speak concerning their conjunctions, but concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he also acknowledges as the Word of God, he himself has made evident. For, summing up his statements respecting the Word previously mentioned by him, he further declares, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” But, according to their hypothesis, the Word did not become flesh at all, inasmuch as He never went outside of the Pleroma, but that Saviour [became flesh] who was formed by a special dispensation [out of all the Æons], and was of later date than the Word.

3. Learn then, ye foolish men, that Jesus who suffered for us, and who dwelt among us, is Himself the Word of God. For if any other of the Æons had become flesh for our salvation, it would have been probable that the apostle spoke of another. But if the Word of the Father who descended is the same also that ascended, He, namely, the Only-begotten Son of the only God, who, according to the good pleasure of the Father, became flesh for the sake of men, the apostle certainly does not speak regarding any other, or concerning any Ogdoad, but respecting our Lord Jesus Christ. For, according to them, the Word did not originally become flesh. For they maintain that the Saviour assumed an animal body, formed in accordance with a special dispensation by an unspeakable providence, so as to become visible and palpable. But flesh is that which was of old formed for Adam by God out of the dust, and it is this that John has declared the Word of God became.

We know our Creed, which was formed in the Three Ecumenical Councils of our Church. What is the purpose of this recitation? The purpose is not the expression of a doctrine that was new or formulated at a given time or place. Instead, the Creed is the declaration of the common Faith of the universal Church, which expresses that core Gospel of the Church as inherited in the historical tradition through those first few centuries of Christianity and beyond.

In the preceding talk I’ve brought you up to around the time of the great Church councils. I hope to expand upon the Church and Imperial Christianity in a future discussion with you all. I’ve elaborated on the idea that the Church aims to maintain the continuity of Faith between ourselves in the modern era and the Church of the Apostles. I’ve told you how continuity means we have the obligation to stay true to our heritage of Faith. I’d like to introduce another word to you all now, “organic.” Being in continuity means that we have the boundaries of doctrine and spirituality we can not cross, however, organicness or organicity, means that the Church can and does indeed change as long as those changes occur faithful to the precepts of the Church. For example, as mentioned before, the liturgical vestments and embellishments may not have been part of the earliest Eucharistic celebrations, but because the Church was free to develop faithful to its own doctrines, the Church has adopted certain key elements of liturgical music and art in order to magnify the intended experience of the Eucharist for each individual involved. Thus, the Church can grow and continuously re-contextualize itself, as it organically develops in the continuity of Faith.