The Eastern Orthodox Tradition

Sources

Orthodox Churches in Southeastern Europe. During the nineteenth century, the once great Ottoman Empire became known as “the sick man of Europe.” By 1914 this empire had lost all of its European possessions except a small region around Constantinople (now Istanbul). Two factors contributed to the decline of these Muslim Turks: the growing strength of Russia and the intensification of nationalism among the peoples of southeastern Europe. One manifestation of this nationalism was the attempt to make the Christian Eastern Orthodox churches into national churches, independent from the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, who was under the control of the Turkish rulers. For this reason the patriarchs of Constantinople were often despised as outsiders in southeastern Europe, as were the Greek bishops and clergy that the patriarchs sent to administer the rites of the Orthodox Church. During the century before World War I, political independence movements in this region often were pre–ceded by mass movements to throw off the patriarchal yoke and to achieve ecclesiastical independence. In Greece in 1833, for instance, the national assembly, with the support of thirty Orthodox bishops, declared that the Church of Greece had no head but Christ. In subsequent years, as Greece extended its borders, the Church of Greece expanded its areas of jurisdiction, thus decreasing the territories formerly under the Ecumenical Patriarch. As it grew weaker, the Ottoman government recognized the Bulgarian Church (1870), the Serbian Church (1879), and the Church of Rumania (1885) as autocephalous (self–governing) churches. The Ecumenical Patriarch was so indignant at this severing of the body of Christ that communion between the national churches and the Ecumenical Patriarch was not fully restored until the mid twentieth century.

The Russian Orthodox Church. The history of nineteenth-century Russian Christianity is complex. As the Russian tsars flip-flopped in their attitudes toward liberalism and the West, the Russian Orthodox Church, which was closely associated with the state, also shifted in its religious and political emphases. Under Tsar Alexander I (reigned 1801–1825), the pietistic movement on the Continent and in England influenced developments within the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1813 the Russian Bible Society was formed as a sister body to the British and Foreign Bible Society. Both associations were committed to translating the Bible into vernacular languages and to distributing copies of it widely. Later in Alexander’s reign, the Jesuits were banished from the capital; the ministry of religious affairs and public education was created; and the Holy Synod was

given supervision over all forms of religion throughout the empire. However, the next tsar, the conservative Nicholas I (reigned 1825–1855), was less willing to be associated with Western ideas or institutions. Under Nicholas the work of the Russian Bible Society was suppressed, and the Russian Orthodox Church was touted as the divinely commissioned Church and the guardian of true Christianity. In the first decade of the next tsar, Alexander II (reigned 1855–1881), Russia again turned toward the West, accepting several liberal measures, including the emancipation of the serfs. At this time influential clergy lobbied the tsar to ease State control of the Church. These ecclesiastical reforms, however, were never granted. Instead, during Alexander’s last fifteen years and throughout the reign of his successor, Alexander III (reigned 1881–1894), measures were taken to isolate Russia from Western influences. Increasingly, Russia became dominated by “Slavophiles,” lovers of Holy Russia who insisted that Russian civilization was superior to Western culture. In religious matters, the Slavophiles insisted that the Russian Orthodox Church was the true Mother Church and that—just as Constantinople had earlier replaced Rome as the center of Christianity—so Moscow had now emerged as the “third Rome” and was commissioned by God to uphold Christian orthodoxy.

Russian Philosophers and Theologians. Among the great religious thinkers of nineteenth-century Russia were Alexis S. Khomiakov (1804–1860) and Vladimir S. Soloviev (1853–1900). Khomiakov, an aristocrat by birth, was a Slavophile lay theologian who argued that the Orthodox Church was the perfect synthesis of the imperfect Catholic

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and Protestant Churches. According to Khorniakov, the Roman Catholic Church had achieved unity without freedom, and Protestantism possessed freedom without unity. The Orthodox tradition alone displayed sobornost, the community of divine love that cornbines both unity and freedom. Equally influential was the deeply religious, systematic philosopher soloviev. Although a member of the Russian Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant traditions. In his younger days this Christian mystic was hopeful that, with its ability to blend Western and Eastern principles, Russia would lead humanity into an age of divine love in which nations would relace to each other on the basis of Christian rpinciples. In his later years Soloviev replaced this optimistic vision of the future with the teaching that the coming world emperor would be the Antichrist, who would rule by vanity rather than love. In thesesobering works Soloviev advanced the view that Christians should retire to the desert, achieve Church reunion, and prepare for the second coming of Christ to bring in the millennial reign of peace. These teachings influenced alater generation of Russian Christians, who were forced into exile following the triumph of the Bolsheviks in the Revolution of 1917.

Sources

Demetrious J. Constantelos, Understanding the Greek Orthodox Church (Boston: Hellenic College Press, 1990).

George Bernard Hamilton, The Religion of Russia: A Study of the Orthodox Church in Russia from the Point of View of the Church in England (London: Society of Saints Peter and Paul, 1915).

Fred Mayer, The Orthodox Church in Russia (New York: Vendome Press, 1982).