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Councils and confessions
All Orthodox creedal formulas, liturgical texts, and doctrinal statements affirm the claim that the Eastern Orthodox Church has preserved the original apostolic faith, which was also expressed in the common Christian tradition of the first centuries. The Orthodox church recognizes seven ecumenical councils—Nicaea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680–681), and Nicaea II (787)—but considers that the decrees of several other, later councils also reflect the same original faith (e.g., the councils of Constantinople that endorsed the theology of St. Gregory Palamas in the 14th century). Finally, it recognizes itself as the bearer of an uninterrupted living tradition of true Christianity that is expressed in its worship, in the lives of the saints, and in the faith of the whole people of God.
In the 17th century, as a counterpart to the various “confessions” of the Reformation, there appeared several “Orthodox confessions,” endorsed by local councils but in fact associated with individual authors (e.g., Metrophanes Critopoulos, 1625; Petro Mohyla, 1638; Dosítheos of Jerusalem, 1672). None of these confessions would be recognized today as having anything but historical importance. Orthodox theologians, rather than seeking literal conformity with any particular confession, will look for consistency with Scripture and tradition, as it has been expressed in the ancient councils, in the works of the Church Fathers (the early theological authorities of the church), and in the uninterrupted life of the liturgy. Most theologians will not shy away from new formulations if consistency and continuity of tradition are preserved.
What is particularly characteristic of this attitude toward the faith is the absence of any great concern for establishing external criteria of truth—a concern that has dominated Western Christian thought since the Middle Ages. Truth appears as a living experience accessible in the communion of the church and of which the Scriptures, the councils, and theology are the normal expressions. Even ecumenical councils, in the Orthodox perspective, must be accepted by the body of the church in order to be recognized as truly ecumenical. Ultimately, therefore, truth is viewed as its own criterion: there are signs that point to it, but none of those signs is a substitute for a free and personal experience of truth, which is made accessible in the sacramental fellowship of the church.
Because of this view of truth, the Orthodox have traditionally been reluctant to involve church authority in defining matters of faith with too much precision and detail. This reluctance is not due to relativism or indifference but rather to the belief that truth needs no definition to be the object of experience and that legitimate definition, when it occurs, should aim mainly at excluding error and not at pretending to reveal the truth itself that is believed to be ever present in the church.
God and humankind
The development of the doctrines concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation, as it took place during the first eight centuries of Christian history, was related to the concept of humankind’s participation in divine life.
The Eastern (Greek) Fathers always implied that the phrase found in the biblical story of the creation of man (Genesis 1:26), according to “the image and likeness of God,” meant that humans are not autonomous beings and that their ultimate nature is defined by their relation to God. In paradise Adam and Eve were called to participate in God’s life and to find in him the natural growth of their humanity “from glory to glory.” To be “in God” is, therefore, the natural state of humankind. This doctrine is particularly important in connection with the Fathers’ view of human freedom. For theologians such as St. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) and St. Maximus the Confessor (7th century), humans are truly free only when they are in communion with God. Otherwise they are only slaves to their body or to “the world,” over which, originally and by God’s command, he was destined to rule. Thus, the concept of sin implies separation from God and the reduction of humans to a separate and autonomous existence, in which they are deprived of both God’s natural glory and freedom.
Freedom in God, as enjoyed by Adam, implied the possibility of falling away from God. This is the unfortunate choice made by Adam and Eve, which led them to a subhuman and unnatural existence. The most unnatural aspect of this new state was death. In this perspective, “original sin” is understood not so much as a state of guilt inherited from Adam and Eve but as an unnatural condition of human life that ends in death. Mortality is what each person now inherits at birth and what leads an individual to struggle for existence, to self-affirmation at the expense of others, and ultimately to subjection to the laws of animal life. The “prince of this world” (i.e., Satan), who is also the “murderer from the beginning,” has dominion over humanity. From this vicious circle of death and sin, humans are understood to be liberated by the death and Resurrection of Jesus, which are actualized in baptism and the sacramental life in the church.
The general framework of this understanding of the relationship between God and humankind is clearly different from the view that became dominant in the Christian West—i.e., the view that conceived of “nature” as distinct from “grace” and that understood original sin as an inherited guilt rather than as a deprivation of freedom. In the East humans are regarded as complete when they participate in God; in the West humans are believed to be autonomous, sin is viewed as a punishable crime, and grace is understood as the granting of forgiveness. Hence, in the West the aim of the Christian is justification, but in the East it is rather communion with God and deification (theosis). In the West the church is viewed in terms of mediation (for the bestowing of grace) and authority (for guaranteeing security in doctrine); in the East the church is regarded as a communion in which God and the individual meet once again and a personal experience of divine life becomes possible.
Christ
The Eastern Orthodox Church is formally committed to the Christology (doctrine of Christ) that was defined by the councils of the first eight centuries. Together with the Latin church of the West, it rejected Arianism (a belief in the subordination of the Son to the Father) at Nicaea (325), Nestorianism (a belief that stresses the independence of the divine and human natures of Christ) at Ephesus (431), and monophysitism (a belief that Christ has only one, divine nature) at Chalcedon (451). The Eastern and Western churches still formally share the tradition of subsequent Christological developments, even though the famous formula of Chalcedon, “one person in two natures,” is given different emphases in the East and the West. The stress on Christ’s identity with the preexistent Son of God, the Logos (Word) of the Gospel According to John, characterizes Orthodox Christology. On Byzantine icons, often depicted around the face of Jesus are the Greek letters ο’ω’ν—the equivalent of the Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH, the name of God in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). Jesus is thus always seen in his divine identity. Similarly, the liturgy consistently addresses the Virgin Mary as Theotokos (the “one who gave birth to God”), and this term, formally admitted as a criterion of orthodoxy at Ephesus, is actually the only Mariological (doctrine of Mary) dogma accepted in the Orthodox church. It reflects the doctrine of Christ’s unique divine person. Mary is venerated solely because she is his mother “according to the flesh.”
This emphasis on the personal divine identity of Christ, based on the doctrine of St. Cyril of Alexandria (5th century), does not imply the denial of his humanity. The anthropology (doctrine of humankind) of the Eastern Fathers does not view the individual as an autonomous being but rather implies that communion with God makes the individual fully human. Thus, the human nature of Jesus Christ, fully assumed by the divine Word, is indeed the “new Adam” in whom the whole of humanity receives again its original glory. Christ’s humanity is fully that of every human being; it possesses all the characteristics of the human being—“each nature (of Christ) acts according to its properties,” Chalcedon proclaimed, following Pope Leo I—without separating itself from the divine Word. Thus, in death itself—for Jesus’ death was indeed a fully human death—the Son of God was the “subject” of the Passion. The theopaschite formula (“God suffered in the flesh”) became, together with the Theotokos formula, a standard of orthodoxy in the Eastern church, especially after the second Council of Constantinople (553). It implies that Christ’s humanity is indeed real not only in itself but also for God, since it brought him to death on the cross, and that the salvation and redemption of humanity can be accomplished by God alone—hence the necessity for him to condescend to death, which holds humanity captive.
This theology of redemption and salvation is best expressed in the Byzantine liturgical hymns of Holy Week and Easter: Christ is the one who “tramples down death by death,” and, on the evening of Good Friday, the hymns already exalt his victory. Salvation is conceived not in terms of satisfaction of divine justice—through paying the debt for the sin of Adam, as the medieval West understood it—but in terms of uniting the human and the divine, with the divine overcoming human mortality and weakness and, finally, exalting man to divine life.
What Christ accomplished once and for all must be appropriated freely by those who are “in Christ”; their goal is “deification,” which does not mean dehumanization but the exaltation of humans to the dignity prepared for them at creation. Such feasts as the Transfiguration or the Ascension are extremely popular in the East precisely because they celebrate humanity glorified in Christ—a glorification that anticipates the coming of the kingdom of God, when God will be “all in all.” Participation in the deified humanity of Christ is the true goal of Christian life, and it is accomplished through the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit
The gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost “called all men into unity,” according to the Byzantine liturgical hymn of the day. Into this new unity, which St. Paul called the “body of Christ,” each individual Christian enters through baptism and chrismation (the Eastern counterpart of the Western confirmation) when the priest anoints the Christian with the words “the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
This gift, however, requires a person’s free response. Orthodox saints such as St. Seraphim of Sarov (1759–1833) described the entire content of Christian life as a “collection of the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is thus conceived as the main agent of humanity’s restoration to its original natural state through Communion in Christ’s body. This role of the Holy Spirit is reflected, very richly, in a variety of liturgical and sacramental acts. Every act of worship usually starts with a prayer addressed to the Holy Spirit, and all major sacraments begin with an invocation to the Holy Spirit. The eucharistic liturgies of the East attribute the ultimate mystery of Christ’s presence to a descent of the Holy Spirit upon the worshipping congregation and upon the eucharistic bread and wine. The significance of this invocation (in Greek epiklēsis) was violently debated between Greek and Latin Christians in the Middle Ages because the Roman canon of the mass lacked any reference to the Holy Spirit and was thus considered deficient by the Orthodox Greeks.
Since the first Council of Constantinople (381), which condemned the Pneumatomachians (“fighters against the Spirit”), no one in the Orthodox East has ever denied that the Spirit is not only a “gift” but also the giver—i.e., that he is the third person of the Trinity. The Greek Fathers saw in Genesis 1:2 a reference to the Spirit’s cooperation in the divine act of creation. The Spirit was also viewed as active in the “new creation” that occurred in the womb of the Virgin Mary when she became the mother of Christ (Luke 1:35); Pentecost was understood to be an anticipation of the “last days” (Acts 2:17) when, at the end of history, a universal communion with God will be achieved. Thus, all the decisive acts of God are accomplished “by the Father in the Son, through the Holy Spirit.”
The Holy Trinity
By the 4th century a polarity had developed between Eastern and Western Christians in their respective understandings of the Trinity. In the West God was understood primarily in terms of one essence (the Trinity of persons being conceived as an irrational truth found in revelation); in the East the tri-personality of God was understood as the primary fact of Christian experience. For most of the Eastern Fathers, it was not the Trinity that needed theological proof but rather God’s essential unity. The Cappadocian Fathers (St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Basil of Caesarea) were even accused of being tri-theists because of their conception of God as one essence in three hypostases (the Greek term hypostasis was the equivalent of the Latin substantia and designated a concrete reality). For Eastern theologians, this terminology was intended to designate the concrete New Testament revelation of the Son and the Holy Spirit as distinct from the Father.
Polarization of the Eastern and Western concepts of the Trinity is at the root of the Filioque dispute. The Latin word Filioque (“and from the Son”) was added to the Nicene Creed in Spain in the 6th century. By affirming that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only “from the Father” (as the original creed proclaimed) but also “from the Son,” the Spanish councils intended to condemn Arianism, which held that the Son was a created being. Later, however, the addition became an anti-Eastern battle cry, especially after Charlemagne, the Carolingian ruler of the Franks, was crowned emperor of the Romans in 800. The addition was finally accepted in Rome under Frankish pressure. It found justification in the framework of Western conceptions of the Trinity; the Father and the Son were viewed as one God in the act of “spiration” of the Spirit.
Byzantine theologians opposed the addition, first on the ground that the Western church had no right to change the text of an ecumenical creed unilaterally and, second, because the Filioque clause implied the reduction of the divine persons to mere relations (“the Father and the Son are two in relation to each other, but one in relation to the Spirit”). For the Greeks the Father alone is the origin of both the Son and the Holy Spirit. Patriarch Photius (9th century) was the first Orthodox theologian to explicitly spell out the Greek opposition to the Filioque concept, but the debate continued throughout the Middle Ages.
The transcendence of God
An important element in the Eastern Christian understanding of God is the notion that God, in his essence, is totally transcendent and unknowable. In this understanding, God can only be designated by negative attributes: it is possible to say what God is not, but it is impossible to say what God is. A purely negative, or “apophatic” theology—the only one applicable to the essence of God in the Orthodox view—does not lead to agnosticism, however, because God reveals himself personally—as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and also in his acts, or “energies.” Thus, true knowledge of God always includes three elements: religious awe; personal encounter; and participation in energies, which God freely bestows on creation.
This conception of God is connected with the personalistic understanding of the Trinity. It also led to the official confirmation by the Orthodox church of the theology of St. Gregory Palamas, the leader of Byzantine Hesychasts (monks devoted to divine quietness through prayer), at the councils of 1341 and 1351 in Constantinople. The councils confirmed a real distinction in God, between the unknowable essence and the energies which make possible a real communion with God. The deification of man, realized in Christ once and for all, is thus accomplished by a communion of divine energy with humanity in Christ’s glorified humanity.
Modern theological developments
Until the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), Byzantium was the unquestioned intellectual centre of the Orthodox church. Far from being monolithic, Byzantine theology was often polarized by a humanistic trend, favouring the use of Greek philosophy, and the more austere and mystical theology of monastic circles. The concern for preservation of Greek culture and for the political salvation of the empire led several prominent humanists to adopt a position favourable to union with the West. The most creative theologians (e.g., St. Symeon the New Theologian, died 1033; St. Gregory Palamas, died 1359; and Nicholas Cabasilas, died c. 1390), however, were found in the monastic party that continued the tradition of patristic spirituality based upon the theology of deification.
The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were the dark age of Orthodox theology. There was no opportunity for any independent theological creativity in any of the major regions of Orthodoxy—the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia. With no access to formal theological education except in Western Roman Catholic or Protestant schools, the Orthodox tradition was preserved primarily through the liturgy, which retained its richness and often served as a substitute for formal schooling. Most doctrinal statements of this period, issued by councils or by individual theologians, were polemical documents directed against Western missionaries.
After the reforms of Peter the Great (died 1725), a theological school system was organized in Russia. Shaped originally in accordance with Western Latin models and staffed with Jesuit-trained Ukrainian personnel, this system developed in the 19th century into a fully independent and powerful tool of theological education. The Russian theological efflorescence of the 19th and 20th centuries produced many scholars, especially in historical theology—e.g., Philaret Drozdov, Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky, Vasily Vasilievich Bolotov, Evgeny Evstigneyevich Golubinsky, and Nikolay Nikanorovich Glubokovsky. Independently of the official theological schools, a number of laymen with secular training developed theological and philosophical traditions of their own and exercised a great influence on modern Orthodox theology—e.g., Alexey Stepanovich Khomyakov, Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyev, and Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyayev. Others, such as Pavel Florensky and Sergey Nikolayevich Bulgakov, became priests. A large number of the Russian theological intelligentsia—e.g., Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky—emigrated to western Europe after the Russian Revolution (1917) and played a leading role in the ecumenical movement.
With the independence of the Balkans, theological schools were also created in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Modern Greek scholars contributed to the publication of important Byzantine ecclesiastical texts and produced standard theological textbooks. The Orthodox diaspora—the emigration from eastern Europe and the Middle East—in the 20th century contributed to modern theological development through their establishment of theological centres in western Europe and America.
Orthodox theologians reacted negatively to the new dogmas proclaimed by Pope Pius IX: the Immaculate Conception of Mary (1854), which held that Mary was conceived without sin, and papal infallibility (1870), which held that, under certain conditions, the pope cannot err when teaching on matters of faith and morals. In connection with the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII (1950), which held that Mary was raised to heaven in both body and soul, the objections mainly concerned the presentation of such a tradition in the form of a dogma.
In contrast to the trend toward social concerns evident in Western Christian thought since the late 20th century, Orthodox theologians have generally emphasized that the Christian faith is primarily a direct experience of the kingdom of God, sacramentally present in the church. Without denying that Christians have a social responsibility to the world, they consider this responsibility as an outcome of the life in Christ. This traditional position accounts for the remarkable survival of the Orthodox churches under the most contradictory and unfavourable of social conditions, but to Western eyes it often appears as a form of passive fatalism.
