Eastern Orthodoxy arose after the 11th-century "Great Schism" between Eastern and Western Christendom. The separation was not sudden. For centuries there had been significant religious, cultural, and political differences between the Eastern and Western churches. Religiously, they had different views on topics such as the use of images (icons), the nature of the Holy Spirit, and the date on which Easter should be celebrated. Culturally, the Greek East has always tended to be more philosophical, abstract and mystical in its thinking, whereas the Latin West tends toward a more pragmatic and legal-minded approach. (According to an old saying, "the Greeks built metaphysical systems; the Romans built roads.". The political aspects of the split date back to the Emperor Constantine, who moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople. Upon his death, the empire was divided between his two sons, one of whom ruled the western half of the empire from Rome while the other ruled the eastern region from Constantinople.
The Orthodox Church is organized into several regional, autocephalous (governed by their own head bishops) churches. The Patriarch of Constantinople has the honor of primacy, but does not carry the same authority as the Pope does in Catholicism. Major Orthodox churches include the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Church of Alexandria, the Church of Jerusalem, and the Orthodox Church in America. The religious authority for Orthodox Christianity is not the Pope as in Catholicism, nor the individual Christian with his Bible as in Protestantism, but the scriptures as interpreted by the seven ecumenical councils of the church.
Orthodoxy also relies heavily on the writings of early Greek fathers
such as Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great.
Although some Orthodox confessions of faith were produced in the 17th
century as counterparts to those of the Reformation, these are regarded
as having only historical significance.
Orthodox Beliefs
Orthodox Christians attach great importance to the Bible, the
conclusions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, and right orthodox
belief. However, the Eastern Churches approach religious truth
differently than the Western Churches. For Orthodox Christians, truth
must be experienced personally. There is less focus on the exact
definition of religious truth and more on the practical and personal experience of truth
in the life of the individual and the church. Precise theological
definition, when it occurs, is for the purpose of excluding error.
This emphasis on personal experience of truth flows into Orthodox
theology, which has a rich heritage. Especially in the first millennium
of Christian history, the Eastern Church produced significant
theological and philosophical thought.
For Orthodox theologians, humans were created in the image of God and made to participate fully in the divine life. The full communion with God that Adam and Eve enjoyed meant complete freedom and true humanity, for humans are most human when they are completely united with God.
The result of sin, then, was a blurring of the image of God and a
barrier between God and man. The situation in which mankind has been
ever since is an unnatural, less human state, which ends in the most
unnatural aspect: death.
Salvation, then, is a process not of justification or legal pardon, but of reestablishing man's communion with God. This process of repairing the unity of human and divine is sometimes called "deification." This term does not mean that humans become, gods but that humans join fully with God's divine life.
East Orthodoxy tends to emphasize the divine, pre-existent nature of Christ,
whereas the West focuses more on his human nature. However, both East
and West affirm Christ's full humanity and full divinity as defined by
the ecumenical councils.
Christ's humanity is also central to
the Orthodox faith, in the doctrine that the divine became human so
that humanity might be raised up to the divine life.
The process of being reunited to God, made possible by Christ, is accomplished by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit plays a central role in Orthodox worship: the liturgy usually begins with a prayer to the Spirit and invocations made prior to sacraments are addressed to the Spirit.
It is in the view of the Holy Spirit that Orthodox theology differs from Western theology, and although the difference might now seem rather technical and abstract, it was a major contributor to the parting of East from West in the 11th century. This dispute is known as the Filioque Controversy, as it centers on the Latin word filioque, and from the Son, which was added to the Nicene Creed in Spain in the 6th century. The original creed proclaimed only that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. The purpose of the addition was to reaffirm the divinity of the Son, but Eastern theologians objected both to the unilateral editing of a creed produced by an ecumenical council and to the edit itself. For Eastern Christians, both the Spirit and the Son have their origin in the Father.
