Origin of the Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church is the true Church founded by our Lord Jesus Christ. The Orthodox Church of today traces her history back to the New Testament Church in an unbroken continuity. The Apostles, as our Lord commanded, preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ and founded churches in the entire then-known world. Under the direction of the Apostles and their successors, whom they appointed to carry on their mission, the Orthodox Church grew and expanded. In all the cities and towns where the Apostles traveled, they appointed bishops to continue to minister to the faithful, before leaving on their missionary journeys. As the Church continued to grow, the bishops in turn appointed priests and deacons to help them with their flock.

The Orthodox Church in the First Centuries after Christ

In the early centuries of Christianity, there appeared many so-called Christian churches, which espoused heresies, i.e., false teachings, not based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and His Apostles. Thus the Christian Church had to address these heresies and to begin to systematically proclaim the true teachings of Christ. The Church did this through her Ecumenical (i.e., general) and regional councils. Just as the Apostles in the Book of Acts, Chapter 15, asked for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in addressing issues regarding the teachings of Christ, their successors, the bishops, held councils in order to proclaim the truth, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and to formulate her doctrines.

In the early centuries of the Church’s existence, while fighting to safeguard the true doctrines of Christ, the Christian Church took on the name “Orthodox.” The word Orthodox literally means “correct teaching” or “correct worship,” derived from two Greek words orthos, “correct,” and doxa, “teaching” or “worship.”

The Spread of Orthodox Christianity

The Church was persecuted since apostolic times. By the fourth century A.D., under the Emperor Constantine the Great, Christianity as a religion became tolerated and legal. By the fifth century, Orthodox Christianity was so widespread that it became the only religion recognized by the Roman government. The great centers of Orthodox Christianity were Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch. The bishops of these great cities, together with the bishop of Jerusalem, held a position of preeminence. For this reason, they were given honorary titles such as Pope and Patriarch. The bishops of other important cities were given the titles of Archbishop or Metropolitan, depending on the size of their flock or importance of their geographic or historic domain. All bishops, however, are equal, whether they preside over a small region or a great city. No bishop may interfere within the jurisdiction of another bishop.

The Great Schism: Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism

As early as the fourth century A.D., there were cultural, sociological, political and linguistic differences between the Christians of Eastern and Western Europe. The Eastern Christians spoke Greek, where the Western Christians spoke Latin. Where the Eastern Church’s administration was governed synodically, that is by a group of bishops, the Western Church’s administration was governed by a single bishop–the bishop of Rome. Eventually, a few theological differences were added to these factors that caused a tension between the Orthodox Church of the East and the West.

Unfortunately, by the eleventh century A.D. the differences became so great as to cause a separation of the Roman Church from the Holy Orthodox Church. Certain theological issues which were promulgated by the Western Church were never and are not to this very day accepted by the Eastern Church such as: the primacy or universal jurisdictional authority of the Pope of Rome and his infallibility on matters of Church doctrine, the doctrine of Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the teaching and unauthorized addition to the Creed of the filioque (“and from the Son”), and other teachings.

Continuity vs. Reformation

Especially after the schism, which took place in 1054 A.D., East and West grew apart from each other. In the tenth century, the people of Russia and Eastern Europe embraced the Orthodox Faith. But by the fifteenth century almost all Orthodox lands outside Russia fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Roman Catholic Church continued to grow and spread through its missionary efforts in North and South America. The Orthodox Church, due to its subjugation to the Moslem Turks, was unable to do this. This perhaps, from a theological standpoint, was a blessing in disguise; for the Orthodox Christians were quite adamant in retaining the faith, teachings and traditions of their ancestors who in turn had received them unchanged and in complete harmony with the faith and teachings of the Apostles of our Lord and their successors.

This was not so in the West. The Roman Catholic Church had undergone certain theological changes due to the age of Speculation & Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, which eventually led to separations within and from the Roman Catholic Church. These changes in the West gave birth in the sixteenth century to the Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans and other Protestant denominations. These “reformations” and thereby changes in Church doctrine never affected the Orthodox Church; Orthodoxy maintained its unbroken historical and theological connection to the New Testament Church.

Orthodoxy in America

By the eighteenth century, Orthodox missionaries from Russia arrived in the Western Hemisphere (what is today Alaska) and introduced Orthodoxy to North America; also, the first Greek community was founded in St. Augustine, Florida as early as 1768. By 1864, the first Greek Orthodox Church was founded in New Orleans, Louisiana. Soon after, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the liberation of the Orthodox people from the Moslem Turks and the mass immigration of Europeans to the United States, Orthodox communities sprouted all over the Western Hemisphere.

Soon, communities of Orthodox immigrants from Greece, Russia, the Middle East, etc., settled in the United States and Canada and, perhaps knowing that they were here to stay, requested the Orthodox Churches in their respective homelands to send priests and bishops in order to serve the spiritual and cultural needs of the various Orthodox people. Thus, even to this day, here in America the Orthodox Churches, though sharing the same faith and teachings, are known as the Greek, Russian, Serbian, Antiochian, etc., Orthodox Churches. The primary element that distinguishes one from another is their use of language. Since the immigration of Orthodox people has drastically declined in recent years in the United States, and due to conversions, many of them through interfaith marriages, it is expected that one day the various Orthodox jurisdictions here in America will unite and will identify themselves as the American Orthodox Church.

This article was excerpted, with some editing, from an article by Fr. Michael Varlamos entitled “What is the Orthodox Church?”