Subscribe to our PODCAST here.What Is The Eastern Orthodox Church?
Introduction:
This information is basically from two booklets with the above title - one written by “Rev. George Mastrantonis,” published in 1956, and the other by “Father Marc Dunaway,” published in 1995.
Discussion:
A. Various titles - The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church, the Eastern Church, or the Russian, Romanian, etc. Orthodox Church. “However, the name ‘Greek Catholic’ does not refer to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Although this Church, the so-called Uniat Church, follows the same rites and customs of its original heritage (that is, the Eastern Orthodox Church), it belongs to the Western Church.”
B. Orthodox - “orthos” (right or true) and “doxa” (opinion or glory) - means “sound in opinion or doctrine.” “The Orthodox Church bears the full meaning of the connotations of the ‘One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church’; it is all of them” (quotes from Mastrantonis, p. 9).
C. Organization:
1. Patriarch - “In the Eastern Orthodox Church the formulation of her Truths of faith and her type of government are by the people and for the people. Even its highest leader, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, is considered ‘the first among equals,’ and each Bishop as the executor and overseer for the application of the Truths and rules of the Church” (p. 14).
2. Bishop - “The office of the Bishop is restricted to unmarried Priests (chaste Priests) or widowers, an ecclesiastical custom from the 7th century up to this day” (p. 15).
3. Priest (Presbyter) - “The Presbyter is better known as Priest, because he offers the Divine Liturgy; as Pastor, because he looks after his people; and as Preacher, because he delivers the Word of God. He administers the Mysteria (i.e. the sacred ceremonies of the Church), but not that of Ordination. He administers the Chrism, (consecrated oil, fj) which is blessed and prepared only by Bishops, but is used by the Priest. Today most Eastern Orthodox priests are married” (p. 15).
4. Deacon - “The Deacon assists the Priest in offering the Liturgy; however, only a few churches have a Deacon” (p. 15).
Note: World Book says “There are also two chief minor orders - subdeacons and readers...Once ordained, priests and deacons cannot marry. Only unmarried priests can become bishops.”
D. Membership and claims: (charts from Dunaway’s booklet)
1. “It is the oldest Church in Christianity, which its biblical worship, its historic way of life, and a continuity which reaches all the way back to the early Church of the Book of Acts. In fact, Orthodox Christianity is not just a ‘branch’ of the Church, but the very trunk, the original Christian Church” (p. 6).
2. “Worldwide, there are more Orthodox Christians than there are Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Pentecostals, or any other single Protestant denomination...The primary locations of Orthodoxy in the world today are Greece, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East” (p. 5).
3. They claim that the Roman Catholic Church is an apostasy. (The first seven Ecumenical Councils were in the East; they were discussed and written in Greek.)
E. The division:
1. “The Greek Orthodox Church or, more correctly, the Orthodox Eastern Church, denies the supremacy of the Pope; holds that the Catholic Church erred in prescribing celibacy for the clergy, and teaches that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone” (The Triumph of the Church, by “Rev. John P. Markoe, S.J.,” a Roman Catholic source, p. 18
2. “In the year 1054, Cardinal Humbert, acting upon orders from Pope Leo IX, laid upon the altar of the Church of Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople, a bull of excommunication against, this time, the Eastern Church, attempting to stigmatize it as ‘the repository of all the heresies of the past’! In turn, the Patriarchs of the Eastern Church excommunicated the Western Church” (Mastrantonis, p. 33).
3. “By 451, the Bishops of Rome, Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey today), Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were called Patriarchs, of which only two remained free after the inroads of the Moslems (7th century); that of Rome in the West, and Constantinople in the East, both equal in rank and reverence. Later, the attempted abolishment of the equal status of both Seats was the main cause of the Great Separation” (ibid., p. 31).
F. Innovations by the Western Church (from Mastrantonis’ booklet):
1. Primacy - the pope claiming to be the “Vicar of Christ,” - a title “dating from the 8th century...a claim that is foreign to the ancient Church” (p. 36).
2. Infallibility - “In 1870 the Roman Catholic Church, at the Vatican Council, declared that infallibility...was attached to the definition of the Pope in matters of faith and morals, apart from the consent of the Church.”
3. The Procession of the Holy Spirit - “The insertion of the phrase filioque, meaning ‘and the son’, in the eighth article of the Nicene Creed, to read that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father but also from the Son as well, perverts the theological teaching of the Gospel and the Undivided Church (John 15,26; Acts 2,33).”
4. Purgatory and indulgences - “Purgatory is an intermediate state where souls are made clean for paradise by expiatory suffering, according to the Roman Church” (p. 36). “According to the belief of the Orthodox Church, man after death is judged by God; that is, the chance for progress of man toward good or evil is terminated...The final judgment will not overrule or change the particular judgment of the soul right after death, although it would be the beginning of another permanent era with the resurrection of the ‘bodies’ of the dead. After death there is no chance for repentance...” (pg. 21,22).
5. The Immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary - “In 1854 a council of the Vatican pronounced the new teaching that the Virgin Mary was born without original sin, a statement not found either in the Holy Scriptures or in Sacred Tradition.”
6. Assumption of the Virgin Mary - “The assumption (bodily ascension) of the Virgin Mary was pronounced as a dogma in 1952 by the Pope of the Rome Church. This belief is not found in the Scriptures nor is it found in the Sacred Tradition.”
7. Baptism - “Baptism, which originally was an immersion of the body of the faithful in the water, was replaced during the 14th century in the Roman Church by sprinkling” (p. 37). “In Baptism all optional and original sin is cleansed...While immersing the person in the water thrice, the Priest says: ‘The servant of God is baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost...The Orthodox Church performs baptism of infants for the remission of original sin provided that one of its members will be responsible for the Christian teaching of the child. Most of the faithful of the Church are baptized when infants” (p. 24). (Note: They do not really immerse the whole body; they dip most of it, leaving the head above water.)
8. Unleavened bread - “Unleavened bread is used by the Roman Church instead of leavened bread, which was the custom of the Undivided Church.”
9. Holy Unction - “Holy Unction is offered as last rites to the sick, an innovation of the eleventh century.”
10. Instrumental music - “The Use of organs in churches is ascribed to Pope Vitalian (657-672). Constantine Coprenymos sent an organ with other presents to King Pepin of France in 767...The Greek Church disapproves the us of organs. Latin Church introduced it pretty generally, but not without protest of eminent men, so that even in the Council of Trent a motion was made, though not carried, to prohibit the organ at least in the mass”
(History of The Christian Church, Vol. 4, p. 439, by Philip Schaff).
“The Greek word psallo is applied among the Greeks of modern times exclusively to sacred music, which in the Eastern Church has never been any other than vocal, instrumental music being unknown in that Church, as it was in the primitive Church” (McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia; Vol. 8, p0. 739).
Note: Orthodox Churches in this country use organs. One “Priest” told me “It is a Western innovation,” another said “We are permitted to use them in this country.”
Conclusion:
A. Creeds were drawn up to try to settle current issues of the day. (The first seven were on the nature of Jesus.) Be careful about the creedal mind-set.
B. Orthodox Churches in many countries are political forces. The Newsweek Magazine (Aug. 26, 2002) carried a story about how the Russian Orthodox Church is trying to keep Roman Catholics out of the country. “The Catholics in this gritty industrial city, hard by the Ukraine border, have been denied the right to register as a religious group. They say it’s because local authorities, in cahoots with the Russian Orthodox Church, do not want them to reclaim their own church, a tiny 19th century chapel taken away after the Bolshevik revolution. Orthodox churchmen, who want the building for a children’s center, deny they’re playing politics or wrangling over the real estate. But (an Orthodox priest) freely admits he has a problem with Catholics. In a land where the freedom to worship has long been denied, and where people are still awakening from seven decades of spiritual slumber, he sees them as dangerous competitors for the new faithful. ‘Our Russians are being stolen,’ he insists, ‘before we have a chance to get to them.’” The article continued: “Evidence of this unholy new alliance between church and state is abundant. In May, Protestants in Omsk tried to show a film about Jesus but were stopped by local authorities, who claimed that it used hypnosis to make ‘fools’ of those who watched it. This spring, one of Russia’s four Catholic bishops was barred from re-entering the country, as have a number of priests...And so it is elsewhere in the old empire. Last week in Georgia, thugs wearing crosses of the Orthodox Church ransacked the home of a Jehovah’s Witness...As police reportedly looked on, they doused Bibles and religious pamphlets with gasoline and burned them...The Christian Full Gospel Church in Uzbekistan claims its members are being followed by the local version of the old KGB; Lutherans in Latvia complain of police harassment, and Georgian rights groups charge that hundreds of Baptists, Pentecostals and Catholics have experienced incidents of violent physical attacks and arson.”
C. When a religion becomes corrupted by becoming a political organization, it can be as powerful a persecutor as a Godless system, such as communism.
This information is basically from two booklets with the above title - one written by “Rev. George Mastrantonis,” published in 1956, and the other by “Father Marc Dunaway,” published in 1995.
Discussion:
A. Various titles - The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Catholic Church, the Eastern Church, or the Russian, Romanian, etc. Orthodox Church. “However, the name ‘Greek Catholic’ does not refer to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Although this Church, the so-called Uniat Church, follows the same rites and customs of its original heritage (that is, the Eastern Orthodox Church), it belongs to the Western Church.”
B. Orthodox - “orthos” (right or true) and “doxa” (opinion or glory) - means “sound in opinion or doctrine.” “The Orthodox Church bears the full meaning of the connotations of the ‘One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church’; it is all of them” (quotes from Mastrantonis, p. 9).
C. Organization:
1. Patriarch - “In the Eastern Orthodox Church the formulation of her Truths of faith and her type of government are by the people and for the people. Even its highest leader, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, is considered ‘the first among equals,’ and each Bishop as the executor and overseer for the application of the Truths and rules of the Church” (p. 14).
2. Bishop - “The office of the Bishop is restricted to unmarried Priests (chaste Priests) or widowers, an ecclesiastical custom from the 7th century up to this day” (p. 15).
3. Priest (Presbyter) - “The Presbyter is better known as Priest, because he offers the Divine Liturgy; as Pastor, because he looks after his people; and as Preacher, because he delivers the Word of God. He administers the Mysteria (i.e. the sacred ceremonies of the Church), but not that of Ordination. He administers the Chrism, (consecrated oil, fj) which is blessed and prepared only by Bishops, but is used by the Priest. Today most Eastern Orthodox priests are married” (p. 15).
4. Deacon - “The Deacon assists the Priest in offering the Liturgy; however, only a few churches have a Deacon” (p. 15).
Note: World Book says “There are also two chief minor orders - subdeacons and readers...Once ordained, priests and deacons cannot marry. Only unmarried priests can become bishops.”
D. Membership and claims: (charts from Dunaway’s booklet)
1. “It is the oldest Church in Christianity, which its biblical worship, its historic way of life, and a continuity which reaches all the way back to the early Church of the Book of Acts. In fact, Orthodox Christianity is not just a ‘branch’ of the Church, but the very trunk, the original Christian Church” (p. 6).
2. “Worldwide, there are more Orthodox Christians than there are Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Pentecostals, or any other single Protestant denomination...The primary locations of Orthodoxy in the world today are Greece, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East” (p. 5).
3. They claim that the Roman Catholic Church is an apostasy. (The first seven Ecumenical Councils were in the East; they were discussed and written in Greek.)
E. The division:
1. “The Greek Orthodox Church or, more correctly, the Orthodox Eastern Church, denies the supremacy of the Pope; holds that the Catholic Church erred in prescribing celibacy for the clergy, and teaches that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father alone” (The Triumph of the Church, by “Rev. John P. Markoe, S.J.,” a Roman Catholic source, p. 18
2. “In the year 1054, Cardinal Humbert, acting upon orders from Pope Leo IX, laid upon the altar of the Church of Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople, a bull of excommunication against, this time, the Eastern Church, attempting to stigmatize it as ‘the repository of all the heresies of the past’! In turn, the Patriarchs of the Eastern Church excommunicated the Western Church” (Mastrantonis, p. 33).
3. “By 451, the Bishops of Rome, Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey today), Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were called Patriarchs, of which only two remained free after the inroads of the Moslems (7th century); that of Rome in the West, and Constantinople in the East, both equal in rank and reverence. Later, the attempted abolishment of the equal status of both Seats was the main cause of the Great Separation” (ibid., p. 31).
F. Innovations by the Western Church (from Mastrantonis’ booklet):
1. Primacy - the pope claiming to be the “Vicar of Christ,” - a title “dating from the 8th century...a claim that is foreign to the ancient Church” (p. 36).
2. Infallibility - “In 1870 the Roman Catholic Church, at the Vatican Council, declared that infallibility...was attached to the definition of the Pope in matters of faith and morals, apart from the consent of the Church.”
3. The Procession of the Holy Spirit - “The insertion of the phrase filioque, meaning ‘and the son’, in the eighth article of the Nicene Creed, to read that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father but also from the Son as well, perverts the theological teaching of the Gospel and the Undivided Church (John 15,26; Acts 2,33).”
4. Purgatory and indulgences - “Purgatory is an intermediate state where souls are made clean for paradise by expiatory suffering, according to the Roman Church” (p. 36). “According to the belief of the Orthodox Church, man after death is judged by God; that is, the chance for progress of man toward good or evil is terminated...The final judgment will not overrule or change the particular judgment of the soul right after death, although it would be the beginning of another permanent era with the resurrection of the ‘bodies’ of the dead. After death there is no chance for repentance...” (pg. 21,22).
5. The Immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary - “In 1854 a council of the Vatican pronounced the new teaching that the Virgin Mary was born without original sin, a statement not found either in the Holy Scriptures or in Sacred Tradition.”
6. Assumption of the Virgin Mary - “The assumption (bodily ascension) of the Virgin Mary was pronounced as a dogma in 1952 by the Pope of the Rome Church. This belief is not found in the Scriptures nor is it found in the Sacred Tradition.”
7. Baptism - “Baptism, which originally was an immersion of the body of the faithful in the water, was replaced during the 14th century in the Roman Church by sprinkling” (p. 37). “In Baptism all optional and original sin is cleansed...While immersing the person in the water thrice, the Priest says: ‘The servant of God is baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost...The Orthodox Church performs baptism of infants for the remission of original sin provided that one of its members will be responsible for the Christian teaching of the child. Most of the faithful of the Church are baptized when infants” (p. 24). (Note: They do not really immerse the whole body; they dip most of it, leaving the head above water.)
8. Unleavened bread - “Unleavened bread is used by the Roman Church instead of leavened bread, which was the custom of the Undivided Church.”
9. Holy Unction - “Holy Unction is offered as last rites to the sick, an innovation of the eleventh century.”
10. Instrumental music - “The Use of organs in churches is ascribed to Pope Vitalian (657-672). Constantine Coprenymos sent an organ with other presents to King Pepin of France in 767...The Greek Church disapproves the us of organs. Latin Church introduced it pretty generally, but not without protest of eminent men, so that even in the Council of Trent a motion was made, though not carried, to prohibit the organ at least in the mass”
(History of The Christian Church, Vol. 4, p. 439, by Philip Schaff).
“The Greek word psallo is applied among the Greeks of modern times exclusively to sacred music, which in the Eastern Church has never been any other than vocal, instrumental music being unknown in that Church, as it was in the primitive Church” (McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopedia; Vol. 8, p0. 739).
Note: Orthodox Churches in this country use organs. One “Priest” told me “It is a Western innovation,” another said “We are permitted to use them in this country.”
Conclusion:
A. Creeds were drawn up to try to settle current issues of the day. (The first seven were on the nature of Jesus.) Be careful about the creedal mind-set.
B. Orthodox Churches in many countries are political forces. The Newsweek Magazine (Aug. 26, 2002) carried a story about how the Russian Orthodox Church is trying to keep Roman Catholics out of the country. “The Catholics in this gritty industrial city, hard by the Ukraine border, have been denied the right to register as a religious group. They say it’s because local authorities, in cahoots with the Russian Orthodox Church, do not want them to reclaim their own church, a tiny 19th century chapel taken away after the Bolshevik revolution. Orthodox churchmen, who want the building for a children’s center, deny they’re playing politics or wrangling over the real estate. But (an Orthodox priest) freely admits he has a problem with Catholics. In a land where the freedom to worship has long been denied, and where people are still awakening from seven decades of spiritual slumber, he sees them as dangerous competitors for the new faithful. ‘Our Russians are being stolen,’ he insists, ‘before we have a chance to get to them.’” The article continued: “Evidence of this unholy new alliance between church and state is abundant. In May, Protestants in Omsk tried to show a film about Jesus but were stopped by local authorities, who claimed that it used hypnosis to make ‘fools’ of those who watched it. This spring, one of Russia’s four Catholic bishops was barred from re-entering the country, as have a number of priests...And so it is elsewhere in the old empire. Last week in Georgia, thugs wearing crosses of the Orthodox Church ransacked the home of a Jehovah’s Witness...As police reportedly looked on, they doused Bibles and religious pamphlets with gasoline and burned them...The Christian Full Gospel Church in Uzbekistan claims its members are being followed by the local version of the old KGB; Lutherans in Latvia complain of police harassment, and Georgian rights groups charge that hundreds of Baptists, Pentecostals and Catholics have experienced incidents of violent physical attacks and arson.”
C. When a religion becomes corrupted by becoming a political organization, it can be as powerful a persecutor as a Godless system, such as communism.