conquered only as a despised and tolerated superstition, its ecclesiastical organization only as a convenient mechanism for governing a subject and tributary population. It is true that the Eastern Church made up in some sort for her losses by missionary conquests elsewhere. Greek Christianity became the religion of the Slavs as Latin Christianity became that of the Germans; but the Orthodox Church never conquered her conquerors, and the historian is too apt to enlarge on her past glories and forget her present strength.
Early History.—The early history of the Eastern Church is outlined in the article Church History. Here it is proposed only to give in somewhat more detail the causes of division which led (1) to the formation of the schismatic churches of the East, and (2) to the open rupture with Latin Christianity.
The great dogmatic work of the Eastern Church was the
definition of that portion of the creed of Christendom which
concerns theology proper—the doctrines of the essential
nature of the Godhead, and the doctrine of the
Godhead in relation with manhood in the incarnation,
while it fell to the Western Church to define
Controversies
and schisms.
anthropology, or the doctrine of man’s nature and needs. The
controversies which concern us are all related to the person of Christ,
the Theanthropos, for they alone are represented in the schismatic
churches of the East. These controversies will be best described
by reference to the oecumenical councils of the ancient and
undivided church.
All the churches of the East, schismatic as well as orthodox, accept unreservedly the decrees of the first two councils. The schismatic churches protest against the additions made to the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople by succeeding councils. The Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan creed declared that Christ was consubstantial (ὁμοούσιος) with the Father, and that He had become man (ἐνανθρωπήσας). Disputes arose when theologians tried to explain the latter phrase. These differences took two separate and extreme types, the one of which forcibly separated the two natures so as to deny anything like a real union, while the other insisted upon a mixture of the two, or an absorption of the human in the divine. The former was the creed of Chaldaea and the latter the creed of Egypt; Chaldaea was the home of Nestorianism, Egypt the land of Monophysitism. The Nestorians accept the decisions of the first two councils, and reject the decrees of all the rest as unwarranted alterations of the creed of Nicaea. The Monophysites accept the first three councils, but reject the decree of Chalcedon and all that come after it.
The council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), the third oecumenical, had insisted upon applying the term Theotokos to the Virgin Mary, and this was repeated in the symbol of Chalcedon, which says that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, “according to the manhood.” The same symbol also declares that Christ is “to be acknowledged in two natures . . . indivisibly and inseparably.” Hence the Nestorians, who insisted upon the duality of the natures to such a degree as to lose sight of the unity of the person, and who rejected the term Theotokos, repudiated the decrees both of Ephesus and of Chalcedon, and upon the promulgation of the decrees of Chalcedon formally separated from the church. Nestorianism had sprung from an exaggeration of the theology of the school of Antioch, and the schism weakened that patriarchate and its dependencies. It took root in Chaldaea, and became very powerful. No small part of the literature and science of the Mahommedan Arabs came from Nestorian teachers, and Nestorian Christianity spread far and wide through Asia (see Nestorius and Nestorians).
The council of Chalcedon (451), the fourth oecumenical, declared that Christ is to be acknowledged “in two natures—unconfusedly, unchangeably,” and therefore decided against the opinions of all who either believed that the divinity is the sole nature of Christ, or who, rejecting this, taught only one composite nature of Christ (one nature and one person, instead of two natures and one person). The advocates of the one nature theory were called Monophysites (q.v.), and they gave rise to numerous sects, and to at least three separate national churches—the Jacobites of Syria, the Copts of Egypt and the Abyssinian Church, which are treated under separate headings.
The decisions of Chalcedon, which were the occasion of the formation of all these sects outside, did not put an end to Christological controversy inside the Orthodox Greek Church. The most prominent question which emerged in attempting to define further the person of Christ was whether the will belonged to the nature or the person, or, as it came to be stated, whether Christ had two wills or only one. The church in the sixth oecumenical council at Constantinople (680) declared that Christ had two wills. The Monothelites (q.v.) refused to submit, and the result was the formation of another schismatic church—the Maronite Church of the Lebanon range. The Maronites, however, were reconciled to Rome in the 12th century, and are reckoned as Roman Catholics of the Oriental Rite.
Later History.—The relation of the Byzantine Church to the Roman may be described as one of growing estrangement from the 5th to the 11th century, and a series of abortive attempts at reconciliation since the latter date. The estrangement and final rupture may be traced to the increasing claims of the Roman bishops and to Western Conflict with Rome. innovations in practice and in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by an alteration of creed. In the early church three bishops stood forth prominently, principally from the political eminence of the cities in which they ruled—the bishops of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. The transfer of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople gave the bishops of Rome a possible rival in the patriarch of Constantinople, but the absence of an overawing court and of meddling statesmen did more than recoup the loss to the head of the Roman Church. The theological calmness of the West, amid the violent theological disputes which troubled the Eastern patriarchates, and the statesmanlike wisdom of Rome's greater bishops, combined to give a unique position to the pope, which councils in vain strove to shake, and which in time of difficulty the Eastern patriarchs were fain to acknowledge and make use of, however they might protest against it and the conclusions deduced from it. But this pre-eminence, or rather the Roman idea of what was involved in it, was never acknowledged in the East; to press it upon the Eastern patriarchs was to prepare the way for separation, to insist upon it in times of irritation was to cause a schism. The theological genius of the East was different from that of the West. The Eastern theology had its roots in Greek philosophy, while a great deal of Western theology was based on Roman law. The Greek fathers succeeded the Sophists, the Latin theologians succeeded the Roman advocates (Stanley's Eastern Church, ch. i.). This gave rise to misunderstandings, and at last led to two widely separate ways of regarding and defining one important doctrine—the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father or from the Father and the Son. Political jealousies and interests intensified the disputes, and at last, after many premonitory symptoms, the final break came in 1054, when Pope Leo IX. smote Michael Cerularius and the whole of the Eastern Church with an excommunication. There had been mutual excommunications before, but they had not resulted in permanent schisms. Now, however, the separation was final, and the ostensible cause of its finality was the introduction by the Latins of two words Filioque into the creed.[1] It is this addition which was and which still remains the permanent cause of separation. Ffoulkes has pointed out in his second volume (ch. 1-3) that there was a resumption of intercourse more than once between Rome and Constantinople after 1054, and that the overbearing character of the Norman crusaders, and finally the horrors of the sack of Constantinople in the fourth crusade
- ↑ After the words “and in the Holy Ghost” of the Apostles’ Creed the Constantinopolitan creed added “who proceedeth from the Father.” The Roman Church, without the sanction of an oecumenical council and without consulting the Easterns, added “and the Son.” The addition was first made at Toledo (589) in opposition to Arianism. The Easterns also resented the Roman enforcement of clerical celibacy, the limitation of the right of confirmation to the bishop and the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist.
