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Orthodox Christianity, Vol I, Ch 1: Early Christianity
Metr. Hilarion has three major sections of this volume that provide guidance into discovering the continuity between the early and the contemporary Church. In the first millennium, Roman civilization and the widespread Greco-Roman culture in the Mediterranean world forms a foundation for understanding Church history. In the second millennium, Russia’s church history is covered with the introduction of Byzantine missionaries to the Slavs in the 9th and 10th c in Kiev, and then the development of the Moscow Patriarchate. Finally, the third millennium is covered and the canonical structure of “world Orthodoxy” as it is known today. The editor of these volumes purposely kept these Russian chapters for English speaking audiences with the intent that it would serve as case studies for our generation of Orthodox Christians in a different culture.
God is the “creator of the ages.” Like the holy scriptures, the history of the Church comes in ages. There is the age of Christ when He founded the Church before His Ascension. There is the following apostolic age after the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles in fire at Pentecost, which “caught the whole world with a net.” There is the age of the beginning of the great martyrs during the Roman Empire after the apostles departed. They deserve their own age partly because they took the known world away from Roman and other forms of paganism. They performed an unprecedented feat without using violence or coercion. They were inspired by the Holy Spirit to act and speak. The apostolic community and martyrs were defined by their love, which took on many different forms and uniformly a resolute and controlled attitude against coercion, manipulation, insults, and temptations to change their mind and behave contrary to Christ. Then, ascetical and Christian literature blossomed in all parts of the Christian and the Roman world, which has continued to this day. The age of the ecumenical councils was a period when Christians questioned heresies. Dogmas were defended either indirectly by hymnography of liturgical worship. The technical terms of the Greek language, which was the common language of the world at the time of Christ, should be appreciated for its ability to clearly teach the right faith then and now.
In imperial Rome the Greek language became the elite language of exchange between the educated, nobles, and government officials. It became a marker of culture and status. The earliest liturgies in Rome were conducted in Greek as well as many Popes being of Greek descent. The transition from a primarily Latin speaking to a Greek speaking empire located in Asia Minor, what would become Constantinople, wasn’t a stretch administratively or culturally for the Romans. The so-called “Byzantines,” who considered themselves Romans, always considered Rome in the western half as part of the empire. They did all that they could to keep it integrated despite the barbarian invasions from the north and east, and rival claimants from primarily the Franks to the world empire called the ecumene or the inhabited part of the earth. The word Hellene or Greek meant that one was a pagan and non-Christian. It is used in St. John Chrysostom’s homilies to indicate the same meaning. So, to be Roman was to be civilized, following an order and ruler ordained by God, and practicing Orthodoxy. For this reason, Charlemagne and the Franks called the Romans or “Byzantines” Greeks to demean and remove a Roman continuity and identity in Constantinople, and to undermine its connection to Rome in Italy, and to insinuate that its religion isn’t the “right glory.” The caesars and imperial rulers had considered themselves the descendants of the Trojans in Asia Minor – Aeneas being the legendary progenitor of Rome itself according to political propaganda and Latin literature. Roman citizenship and rule once covered many lands before they were nations such as parts of modern Britain, Switzerland, Gaul, Spain and Portugal, Italy, Greece, Pannonia and Romania, the Balkans, North Africa, Egypt, and Asia Minor – largely a Mediterranean territory and its periphery. After the 4th c., being Roman meant you were a citizen of the empire with legal rights, you dipped bread in olive oil, reclined, kissed icons, and worshipped according to the Byzantine styled Orthodox faith. The difficulty for Christians today in modern democratic republics and nations is to understand that monarchies tend to be by design more conservative, traditional, and the people are less inclined to view themselves as identical to the state or secular government. While Protestants have mostly developed a negative interpretation of Roman civilization as the corruption of Christianity and Roman Catholicism have taken the name by self-identification, the Orthodox Christians of the East have largely kept that same idea of “Roman” identity from ancient times up to the 20th c. even though they may speak Greek or Syrian. Greeks in the 20th c. and maybe even some Russians would identify as “Romaioi” because of how they defined themselves according to culture, ethos, and religious practice, not necessarily in strict categories of language or geography as do modern nation states in Europe. After the Renaissance, being Roman meant something else to many western Europeans as they redefined it. It meant accepting “progress,” republican values, “tension” between man and nature, and an individual spirit of government, enterprise, and one’s freedom of choice. This difference of how we relate to Roman civilization has left some residue of influence into our modern times between Western Christianity and the Orthodox world. After Constantine accepted Christianity into the Roman empire, to be Roman began to mean that someone was a part of the empire, a civilized person, and someone who practiced the Orthodox faith. No one would deny that some emperors were bad and heretical. But overall this transformation of the empire was largely a good outcome starting with Constantine. To be Roman meant to be under the rule of one empire in the world and one Christian faith, which they called ecumenical because it represented all peoples regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, and political party. It was an unprecedented event in the history of the world, and it deserves our close attention as we discuss the history and the canonical structure of the Orthodox Church. But Metr. Hilarion reminds in the first chapter that “Christ is the Founder of the Church.” That is the starting point of our history, our perfection, and our salvation. So, the focus of the first millennium in the following chapters focuses on the New Testament, early Christian literature, and the holy fathers of the Church who participated and formed our practices, traditions and councils.