Download Foundations: The Orthodox Church

Foundations: Understanding the Orthodox Church
STRATFOR analyst Lauren Goodrich explains the tenets that define the Eastern
Christian Orthodox Church – a faith system deeply embedded in the countries of the
former Soviet Union.
Note: The following document is a transcript of a recorded interview. It has
been formatted with subheads for the benefit of readers, but the content is
a faithful reproduction of the speaker’s diction and grammar.
The Orthodox Church is the second-largest Christian communion in the world. There are
many different versions of Orthodoxy within Christianity. The largest is the Eastern
Christian Orthodox Church. There’s many similarities, especially doctrinally, between
the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, but how each of them acts vis-a-vis the
state and the population is incredibly different.
As a faith system, you really have to trace it back just to the basic doctrines of
Orthodoxy, which came around the fourth century -- meaning the very start of the Roman
Catholic Church. These doctrines began a series of debates over how homogenous should
the Catholic Church be. Overall, the church attempted to be both Orthodox and hold to
Catholic principles -- meaning the papal primacy. But over time, the west factions of the
Church began to deviate from the ones in the east, with the Eastern churches leaning
more toward Orthodoxy and the Western more toward Catholicism.
Naturally there are gray areas, but the true identity started to really form around the
fourth century. This is when there was a series of council meetings in Constantinople
over orthodox tradition. The pope was invited, and he rejected the councils outright. This
is when the splits started to form even further.
Distinguishing the Orthodox and Catholic Faiths
There are multiple dividing issues. But two is the papal primacy and the cultural
linguistic diversification within the church and state relationship. (A RESTATE (for
grammar and emphasis) WOULD BE HELPFUL HERE)meaning you want me to come in
and redo it? Can do.
As far as papal primacy, Orthodox consider Jesus Christ to be the head of the Church, so
there’s no patriarch like the pope. Orthodox also reject the infallibility of the pope. Of
course, Orthodox respect, honor and venerate the pope – and he’s actually a part of the
Orthodox system -- but he ‘s not solely in charge.
The second difference is between the relationship of state and faith. In Orthodoxy—did
you mean to say Catholicism here?nope, it’s one and the same. The Catholic Church
unites many nations under one head, whereas orthodoxy does not, in theory, unite nations
or create a broad, culturally diverse empire. The Orthodox Church is divided into many
self-governing bodies -- each nationally and geographically distinct, but united under one
theology, which is very different from Catholicism.
This is why there are various Orthodox churches with national titles – the Bulgarian
Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox Church, Romanian Orthodox Church. This second
difference has allowed each Orthodox church to have a distinctive language, bishop,
cultural elements -- each to fit their own population. So in theory, where Catholicism
were more uniform, to unite or control all of Europe, Orthodoxy is more exclusive and
broken.
Language and Doctrine
Before Orthodoxy split off from the Catholic Church, there was a series of missionaries,
that followed the Orthodox creeds and theology and doctrines, that ended up
proselytizing across Eastern Europe. This is why Orthodoxy is so prevalent in Eastern
Europe. The reason why it became so successful was that these theologians came up with
a hybrid language, called Old Church Slavonic – which was Slavic-based, so they could
go across each Slavic region and translate the Bible and implement the Bible, but
underneath an Orthodox doctrine. This was very unlike the Catholic tradition, which they
would proselytize via Greek or Latin, which doesn’t take in the Slavic world.
So you started to have a unity within the Orthodox communities, from Belarus to
Russians to Ukrainians to Bulgarians and Serbs -- all because of this hybrid language that
was created. The Catholic Church hated this, because it doctrinally does not fall
underneath Catholicism to have the Bible translated outside of the Greek or Latin
versions.
This became one of the major components of the schisms that of course eventually led
into the larger problems between the Orthodox and the Catholics and papal primacy and
the diversification within church and state. – word choice – just verify that’s what you
meant to state here (not sure if you meant separation instead) heh, I don’t know what I
meant either… I can re-state for “and the relationship between church and state”
A Divided Geography
With the schism that happened around the 11th century, the East-West split really
happened between Rome and Constantinople, with Constantinople taking control of the
Orthodox populations in the Balkans, central Europe, eastern Europe. This has today
become the countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece,
Macedonia, etc.