What is the Greek Orthodox Church?

Yet up to the very end of the Apostle’s life, though we find all this evil fermenting, there was no OPEN division on record. We get great help as to what is to happen in the future when we study the addresses to the seven churches in Asia (Rev. 2 and 3). Looked at from the prophetic standpoint we find the stage of church history represented by Ephesus succeeded by that represented by Smyrna, and then by that represented by Pergamos, till we come to that represented by Thyatira. Of course the sad condition of Christendom in the early centuries was represented by one testimony. But there arose a conflict within the bosom of the Church. The Bishop of Constantinople sought to be the supreme head of Christendom. The bishop of Rome likewise claimed to be the supreme head, the successor of St. Peter. This resulted in the professing church at that time being divided into East and West; East bowing to the headship of the bishop of Constantinople; the West bowing to the supremacy of the pope at Rome.

The Eastern Church, finding its adherents mostly in Greece and Russia, was named the Greek Church from its geographical distribution; the Orthodox church from its vindication of dogma. The Greek church is opposed to many of the doctrine and practices of the Romish church. Both have been and are persecuting churches.

It is very clear that this cleavage points to the fulfilment of prophecy. If the testimony of Christendom were marked by only one religion, when the rising up on the one hand of the Romish Empire, and of that of Gog and Magog (Russia, etc.,) as the great northern confederacy takes place that would introduce a very difficult element in the working out of prophecy. On the other hand if Gog and Magog (Russia, etc.) were marked by the Greek religion, and the revived Roman Empire by the Roman religion, there would be no restraint imposed by religion when the political uprising of these empires takes place. It seems as if the details and practices that Roman Catholicism stands for, as foretold in Revelation 17, and which have largely passed into history, identifies the prophecy concerning Thyatira as indicating the Western church, and not the Eastern. The Eastern church thrives among the Slav nations; the Western among the Latin races.

When, at the end of the fourth century of the Christian Era, the Roman Empire (do not confound the Empire with the Church) became divided, Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Empire, acquired great prominence, and a conflict arose between its clergy and that of Rome, capital of the Western Empire, as to which of the two would dominate. The result was a break, and the Eastern Churches, generally adhering to the Bishop of Constantinople, founded together what is called the Greek Church, which differs but little in character from the Roman Catholic; for her parting from Rome was not through righteous and holy motives, as with Protestantism later on.

Before Constantine transferred the seat of empire to Byzantium and built Constantinople, Rome was the acknowledged metropolis, and her bishop the primate. But when Constantinople became the imperial city, her bishop was raised to the rank of patriarch, and soon began to lay claim to the dignity of the Roman pontiffs. This was the commencement of the Greek church as a separate communion, and of the long contest between the East and the West. There were now four patriarchs, according to the plan of the Emperor, Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria. The rank of the bishop was governed by the superiority of the city in which he presided; and as Constantinople was now the capital of the world, her bishops would yield to none in honour and magnificence. The others were jealous, Rome complained, the strife began, the breach widened; but Rome never rested until she had gained the ascendancy over her feeble and less ambitious rival.

63 The Greek Church was shorn of its glory by the inroads of the Saracens, before whom Antioch and Alexandria became extinct as to influence; and the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, in the fifteenth century, seemed to close its importance too. But such was not altogether the will of divine Providence: for (the conversion of Russia to Christianity having taken place in connection with the Grecian patriarch, in the tenth century, by the baptism, first of the grand duchess, and then of the grand duke, which was followed by that of the nation) the influence of Russia is now used in favour of the Greek Church. They were first under the patriarchate of Constantinople. In the sixteenth century the Archbishop of Moscow became first a dependent, and then an independent, patriarch; and in the reign of Peter the Great, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Czar made himself the head of the Church as in England; and the patriarch and synod became subordinate to his power. The late Russian war had for its earliest pretext the rights of Greeks or Latins to the so-called holy places in Palestine.

Brethren, the fact is, the Church of Rome is universal in none, except by the antichristian assumption by the pope of what belongs to Christ alone. A large portion of professing Christians have no communion with the Church of Rome, and have never, at any period, admitted its supremacy. Its faith is not universal; it totally differs from, and is opposed to, "the faith once delivered to the saints"; and for this we appeal to the scriptures, which they cannot deny contain that faith.

25 Not only, brethren, are they opposed to the scriptures, but the articles which we renounce have been added to the creed, in express defiance of the authority of the primitive church itself. In the year 449 the third General Council, which sat at Ephesus to maintain the truth against heresies, expressly decreed that no innovation should be made on the creed then settled. In the eighth century after Christ, Pope Leo the third wrote to his Legate (who was attending assemblies of German and French bishops), in answer to an enquiry from him, stating, that no addition should be permitted to be made in the creed, which the French and German bishops were thinking of making; and he set up, out of the archives at Rome, silver tablets in St. Peter's and St. Paul's, with the creed engraved on them, as a memorial of what it was then, for the very purpose that nothing should be changed or added. This happened a thousand years ago. Now the great difference between the Greek Church (which denies the supremacy of Rome, and is separated from it) and the Roman (which calls itself catholic) is the addition which this tablet was put up to prevent, and which the Greeks have not agreed to the insertion of. And most of the great points in which we, who deny both the catholicity and the supremacy of the church of Rome, differ from you, are, twelve new points added at the time of the Reformation to the creed by Pope Pius the fourth and the Council of Trent. So that, far from their being catholic in point of faith, we are sanctioned in our separation from them, not only by the scriptures, which these new doctrines of theirs are quite contrary to, but they are, in adding them to the creed and attempting to impose them on us, expressly condemned by a General Council, which they receive and declare to be of divine authority, which sat fourteen hundred years ago. And the Greek Church, which they also condemn as schismatic is, to say the least, justified in its separation by the authority of one of their own popes who took the pains of fixing up a silver tablet to prevent that which after popes did or acquiesced in. So utterly unfounded are they in the pretensions which they set up in order to keep you in bondage.

Ephesus, the third general council, decreed that nothing should be added to the creed. The great doctrinal point on which the Greek church split from Rome was the addition of filioque, "and from the Son," made to the creed. It appears to have come from Spain; and the eminent Pope Leo, a very able man, when consulted about it from France, said the doctrine was right, but that it ought not to be added to the creed. Yet this remains one great point of difference between East and West to this day. So little is there any certainty of faith to be found in this way, so false is it, that if we have scripture we can have what was held always, everywhere, and by all, unless they departed from the faith once delivered to the saints. The rule is true, not because that universality gives authority, for the church only receives truth, but if it was always held it was held by the inspired authors at the first, who received the revelation from God, and hence, and hence only, has authority. And the simple way of knowing what they held is by seeing what they teach. Holding gives no authority; revelation does. Hence we have what is certain in scripture, and nowhere else.

130 However, what gave them the West lost them the East, and the Greek church remained independent to this day, so that a Catholic or universal church has never subsisted in unity since the ninth century.

Still the church was not one. Rome was anxious that the East should succumb to the West by subscribing to what Rome had written: this was far from what the East intended; and all that was done was to restore peace between two churches, the East and the West. The patriarch of Constantinople was head of the eastern church, and the pontiff head of the western church. It is important to notice this, because in after times � and in our own times, indeed � the church of Rome (as a mark of being the true church) claims to be the universal church. This is not true of it now, and never was true. The eastern church never acknowledged the pontiff of Rome as the head of the eastern church. As we shall see, Rome strove to claim and to enforce this; but it was always refused. John of Constantinople accepted the title of "oecumenical patriarch" � a title which shewed plainly his independence of Rome.

Neither of them were actuated by the truth of the "one body," as revealed in scripture; nor were they "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit." It was Rome striving for supremacy everywhere; and the East, without acknowledging that supremacy, desirous of peace between the two churches. As to how far either the one or the other was justified in calling itself the church of God, will appear as we proceed.

70 The progress of superstition is seen indeed in John Damascene, he refers, as we have often seen in the Fathers, to the oil of the chrism and the water in baptism, to which divine grace was added by means of the invocation of the Holy Ghost, which was, and in the Greek church is still, what consecrates the elements. These are only set apart by the words, This is my body, as a preparatory service in what is called the prothesis, and then carried in procession to be consecrated on the altar. But the language of John Damascene does shew the progress of superstition, for the strongest part of his statement is, as the editor annotator of his works, Lequien, a Roman Catholic of the order of preachers (Paris, 1712) remarks, and as is easily seen, is taken from the letter to Caesarius attributed to Chrysostom, and of that epoch, though not probably his. Now this says, "Divine grace sanctifying it [the bread] by means of the priest, it is indeed freed from the appellation of bread, but is esteemed worthy of the appellation of the Lord's body even though the nature of bread has remained in it, and it is called not two bodies, but one body of the Son," whereas in Damascene we have, "By the invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit they are supernaturally transformed (uperphos metapeiountai) into the body of Christ and the blood, and they are not two, but one and the same thing." This, "although the nature of bread remains in it" has passed away, but so had some 400 years time. A century later Paschasius Radbert first publicly introduced it in the West as we have seen. But Damascene's views were not then publicly adopted. Some six years before his death, the Council of Constantinople (754) called as general, but not received in the West, nor in the East beyond the Emperor's rule, declared the elements in the Lord's supper to be the only image of Christ. Still; though never dogmatically established, the superstitious feeling grew. I may add that in the Russian part of the Greek church, it is since Peter the Great's time in a certain sense established by law. It seems that through the efforts of Rome and the propaganda, persons from Eastern countries who had received their education there had widely propagated the views with which they had been imbued at Rome. Peter the Great brought many clergy in from the Ukraine, where Romish influence was considerable, and only then 1725) imposed on everyone consecrated bishop, an oath "that he believes and understands that the transubstantiation of the body and blood of Christ in the holy supper as taught by the Eastern and ancient Russian doctors is effected by the influence and operation of the Holy Ghost when the bishop or priest invokes God the Father in these words, 'and make this bread the precious body of Christ.'" Thus since Peter the Great's reign there has, at least by the prelates, been a positive profession of transubstantiation in Russia; but by invocation of the Holy Ghost and not as at Rome, but this is only since the beginning of the eighteenth century; that was rather late in the day. The way it came about was this: It seems Rome had been very active in seeking to win and influence the Greek church, which though itself corrupt enough, was a standing witness against her pretended catholicity, and against some of her doctrines. It had had to do with the struggles in the case of Cyril Lucaris, who had embraced evangelical doctrine and was strangled by the Porte, as was the Cyril of Berrhoea who supplanted him. By like intrigues the Ukraine or Little Russia, and the provinces at the mouth of the Danube and neighbourhood in what had once been Polish, had been very much Romanized, at the same time the clergy had at least received some education at Rome. Peter the Great, who was the ecclesiastical reformer of Russia and remodelled the whole church and monastic system, brought in thence (the Russian clergy being utterly brutish), at least educated men, and then (1725) introduced the oath as to transubstantiation. Mogilas, Metropolitan of the Ukraine, had made a catechism, confirmed in 1643 by the patriarchs, and in vogue till the Synod's Catechism by the Archbishop of Novgorod in 1766 supplanted it. I do not question that the superstition insisted on by John Damascene had borne its fruits. At the time of the Reformation, the Wurtemberg divines wrote to the patriarch Jeremias, sending the confession of Augsburg, and in his answer he quotes the words of John Damascene; he says it is the body of Christ, not a type, he calls it bread when consecrated; nor is there a hint of substance and accidents. The best account perhaps of transmutation in the Greek church will be found in Covel (p.122, C.5, Camb., 1782). But as is evidently quite modern. I thought I might notice the Greek church to complete our review.

To pursue the sad history: in the eighth century, the territory, called now the estates of the Church, or the greater part of them, was given to Rome by Charlemagne, though he reserved his imperial rights; and the pope became a temporal prince. At the same time, however, the Grecian or Eastern emperor took away southern Italy, Sicily (the kingdom of the two Sicilies), and Illyricum; depriving the see of Rome of vast estates it held in the former. Hence, of course, bitter animosity. In the ninth century the emperor, refusing to restore the estates and authority, the pope took up the cause of Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, whom the emperor had deposed, and they excommunicated each other. The emperor was murdered; and his murderer and successor recalled Ignatius. Meanwhile the pope and the patriarch contended for supremacy over the newly-converted Bulgarians, and then Rome was accused of heresy. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, was restored on Ignatius's death, the pope agreeing, if Bulgaria was subjected to him, which was agreed to and not executed. A legate was sent from Rome to Constantinople, cast into prison, and then, becoming pope, said Photius was properly judged and degraded before. In the eleventh century, Cerularius of Constantinople charged the pope with various heresies. Leo IX excommunicated all the Greek churches. The emperor, who needed his influence in Italy, sought to heal the controversy, and papal legates were sent to Constantinople; the Greeks would not submit. The legates excommunicated the patriarch and his adherents; and the patriarch excommunicated the legates and theirs. And thus the final schism of West and East took place.