On Christological Ecclesiology

In the Name of "YAH", Holy, Eternal, Almighty Father God

An Apology for the Apostolic Faithfulness, Apolitical Purity and Apophatic Orthodoxy of the Church of the East Based in the Writings of the Western Fathers

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

1. The Ancient Church’s Conjoined Teachings of Christology and Ecclesiology, as Witnessed within the Writings of St. Irenaeus of Lyon and Tertullian of Carthage

“Christ could not be described as being man without flesh, nor the Son of man without any human parent; just as He is not God without the Spirit of God, nor the Son of God without having God for His father. Thus the nature of the two substances displayed Him as man and God - in one respect born, in the other unborn; in one respect fleshly, in the other spiritual; in one sense weak, in the other exceeding strong; in one sense dying, in the other living. This property of the two states - the divine and the human—is distinctly asserted with equal truth of both natures alike, with the same belief both in respect of the Spirit and of the flesh. - Tertullian, ‘Christ Truly Lived and Died in Human Flesh.’” - Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3, Ch. 5, Translated by Philip Schaff, 1881

“This, beloved, is the preaching of the truth, and this is the manner of our redemption, and this is the way of life, which the prophets proclaimed, and Christ established, and the apostles delivered, and the Church in all the world hands on to her children. This must we keep with all certainty, with a sound will and pleasing to God, with good works and right-willed disposition.” – St. Irenaeus of Lyon, “Demonstrations on the Apostolic Preaching”, edited by Armitage Robinson, D.D., MacMillan, 1920

Christological Ecclesiology –

From the beginning of the Christian faith there have been issues that have been hard questions, and these questions have divided people. The greatest of these questions was the Identity of Christ. “Who do men say that I am?” (Mark 8:27) was Jesus' classic question to his followers, and every generation of Christian has had to answer this question for themselves ever since. Christ’s identity is the foundation of everything else, because it Christ was only a man, not only could he not teach “as one having authority”, but his disciples were “of all men most miserable” because they spent their lives awaiting a miraculous resurrection that can never occur.  St. Paul wrote extensively on the heavenly reality of Christ, the glorified, reigning Son of God, who would soon return and judge the living and the dead. He was little concerned with Christ’s physical life because his spiritual reality was manifest in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the success and martyrdom of the Infant Church. Various Evangelists tackled the question differently, with St. John borrowing from Philo’s Hellenistic Jewish philosophy and referring to the preexistent Logos nature of Christ, while St. Mark introduces him in simple, human terms. Luke paints with a measured and even stroke a grand tale of Christ’s life as manifested in His Church, the idyllic community of the Book of Acts, which would be both spirit-filled and evangelistic towards the Gentiles, while maintaining a Jewish identity and strong Jerusalem base. Of all the Apostolic writers, Matthew tries the hardest to communicate the message of Christ’s identity as a fulfillment of the Jewish Law and Prophets, and he paints his Lord in the terms of a universal lawgiver, both God and man, who commanded the Church to reach into all the world, and who promised His Spirit and a quick return. 

From the earliest witness of the New Testament, Christ’s identity as both God and Man, Messiah and Logos, can be clearly seen. However, as it was in St. Paul’s day, there were many who did not receive the “Deposit of Faith”, and strove to add either a measure of pagan philosophy or the proscriptions of the Jewish Law. The first generation of bishops after the Apostles, such a St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp of Smyrna, and St. Clement of Rome had to resist fierce persecution from Jews and Romans alike, and to their long list of responsibilities, also had to protect their flocks from within from the false teachers and those who carried a different doctrine - a pagan cosmology with a thin veneer of Christian or Jewish narrative. These teachers were especially insidious because they insisted that they had access to secret knowledge, a mystery tradition, which Jesus had only handed down to one of his Apostles. Such teachers were persuasive and told imaginative stories, often with more attractive and individualistic goals, which sat well with the contemporary Greek mentality of philosopher-heroes who tried to accomplish great feats of asceticism, spirituality or prophecy. These heretical teachings also promised wealth and a certain amount of protection, since heretics were singular cultic devotees and had no qualms about dealing with the requirements of emperor worship in terms of symbolic compliance, therefore eliminating the need for spilled blood in the same way that Roman devotees to Mithra and Orphic mystery cults could avoid conflict through syncretism. We know that such teachers were many because many of the Apostolic Fathers warn against them, and as the Didache says, “try those teachers who wander from place to place, making certain that they hold the faith and doctrine of the Apostles.” The 20^th Century discoveries of the Gnostic Gospels of Nag Hammadi bring home just how clear and present the philosophical danger was for the Early Church!

It is within this setting that we find two of the earliest theological Fathers of the Church, St. Ireneaus (Died 202AD) and Tertullian (160-220AD). Both St. Irenaeus and Tertullian conceived of the Church’s existence flowing directly out of the reality of Christ’s Person, making Christ’s being and the situation surrounding Him and His Apostles directly connected to questions of both ecclesiology and Christology. (J.N.D. Kelly, “Early Christian Doctrines”, p. 36) Undoubtedly, the doctrinal basis that the Church inherited from St. Irenaeus and Tertullian’s Orthodox period of Christology informed the theoretical structure of Ecclesiology and, in turn, directly flowed into the dogmatic philosophical controversies of the 5^th century, and directly effected the fragmenting of the Apostolic Church.

Tertullian as the Witness of the Received Tradition of Christology

Tertullian was not a theoretical or innovative thinker, but a rigorist and a zealot whose major concern was the propagation of Tradition and the rebuke of the lax, the errant and the fallen brother. As such, he is careful to convey the opinions of his teachers and works hard to convey the received tradition, not a philosophical speculation that makes sense of that tradition to outsiders. As such a traditionalist, Tertullian’s witness is invaluable, because a full century before any other documentation is to appear on Christological topics, he is already insisting that Christ is fully God, fully man, in two separate and complete natures.

Tertullian is notable as the first theologian to make clear definitions of the composition of Christ’s being - “Two substances in one person” was his formula, and his explanation of the Trinity, the first to be found in the Post-Apostolic witness was similarly simple and profound - “Three persons in one substance.” (ECD, p. 151) Tertullian’s understanding of Christ’s Double Nature, His unity of Person, His function as the center and substantive being of the Church, and the outworking of this ontological reality in the Tradition of the Church, brings together a holistic expression of Christ’s Body and argues for a personal definition of “Truth” - Christ, the one from whom both the Eucharistic Communion with God flows, the Apostolic Tradition through the laying on of hands and the invocation of the Holy Spirit flows, and elevates Him as the goal and existential constant throughout Church history! His formula is still considered orthodox today - “We observe a twofold condition, not confused but conjoined, Jesus, in one Person at once God and Man.” (ECD, p. 151) This position is so close to the Antiochian Fathers and the later Chalcedonian Christological compromise that many thought his work to be a forgery during the days of the German Reformation, and Martin Luther considered his writings to be the only “real” Patristic source, with everything else (especially St. Ignatius’ letters) as a cleaver Roman forgery.  

Tertullian believed that what was taught by Christ was the self-same tradition of the Church, testified in the Gospels and worked out within the actions of the Church (ECD, p36). He calls this the “Apostolica Traditio” and, in the same vein, St. Irenaeus calls it the “Canon of Truth”. This canon is identified with both the belief learned by every catechumen as the Baptismal Creed, the “Diciplini Archani”, the sacred beliefs of the Church that taught both the mind of the Church and the Apostolic Faith, connected to the work of the Holy Spirit within the Church itself. The core of this Tradition was the Person of Christ, whose identity was vital to the whole outworking of the Church’s salvific work.

St. Irenaeus on Apostolic Succession as the Barrier to Gnostic Heresy

St. Irenaeus, roughly a contemporary of Tertullian, famously wrote letters of counsel to two popes, Victor and Callixtus[1], instructing them on matters of faith from his vast array of experience amassed at the feet of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, who had known St. John the Theologian as a child. Tertullian knew of this and used St. Irenaeus’ relationship with St. Polycarp as his “Exhibit #1” in arguments against Gnostics who claim secret authority. (Tertullian, “Against Gnostics”, Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, Ch. 8, p. 371, translated by Philip Schaff) St. Irenaeus’ position in his work “On Apostolic Teaching”, in defense of the Christian faith, closely mirror his own situation – he was an aged bishop who had been mentored as a young man by another aged bishop, with a direct and traceable lineage to the Apostles and Christ. Thus, for St. Irenaeus, the claims of the Gnostics and the Judaisers were preposterous. He was the direct heir of the Apostolic Tradition, and was within three generations of Christ’s Apostles themselves. His appeal, then, was to the authority of this relationship and the assurance that those within these circles had not only died in service of Christ, but that they had also faithfully trained those who followed them in the ways and doctrines that had come from Christ Himself. Thus, Apostolic Authority and Episcopal Blessing were one and the same, and the corner stone of the Church’s faith in Christ. In the absence of a strict canon of Scripture, these witnesses were equally authoritative and necessary. In St. Irenaeus’s most important work, “Against Heresies”, Gnostics who claimed a “secret tradition” and a different hermeneutic approach to the Old Testament were rebuked a “snakes” who both tricked men knowingly into error, and who were also deceived by their own pride into separating from God’s Church, which was the unique property of the Apostles and those who followed them. (“Against Heresies”, Book 3, Chapter 2:2-3) Because the Church had the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was present in the laying on of hands and the ordination of bishops into apostolic ministry, both the Church and its Apostles, the bishops, were kept from error and were blessed with infallibility by the promise of Christ to St. Peter and also by the promise that the “Gates of Hell will not prevail.”

As St. Irenaeus so powerfully stated in his commentary on the Apostolic Teachings, “…His forerunner was John the Baptist, who prepared and made ready the people beforehand for the reception of the Word of life; declaring that He was the Christ, on whom the Spirit of God rested, mingling with His flesh. His disciples, the witnesses of all His good deeds, and of His teachings and His sufferings and death and resurrection, and of His ascension into heaven after His bodily resurrection—these were the apostles, who after (receiving) the power of the Holy Spirit were sent forth by Him into all the world, and wrought the calling of the Gentiles…” Clearly his vision of the Gospel could not be separated from the Church, from the process of Paradosis (Παραδωσεις), receiving and teaching, insuring both right doctrine and the continuity of the community.

Many scholars point to an early Neoplatonic corruption of the Christian Hebraic understanding of Scripture as reason for disregarding the ideas of hierarchy within St. Irenaeus, seeing the onset of the Platonic “Hierarchy of Worthiness” that would develop later on. However, upon close examination of St. Irenaeus’ “On Apostolic Teaching” and “Against Heresy”, this analysis falls apart and the Gnostic elements are clearly relegated to the Platonizing writings of Alexandrian Fathers.  His ideals of “ταχις”, the apostolic nature of ecclesiastical order, are based in the nature of the Trinity - the Father drawing, the Son explaining, and the Holy Spirit working within us. (Fr. Dr. John Anthony McGuckin, “The Orthodox Church”, John Wiley & Sons, p 96) In this view, there is order, a difference of function and a process of initiation and reception, but not of power, or of a lineal descent of willful empowerment. The whole system is energized by a single ground of being, a single source of power, the Presence of the Holy Spirit. This Presence fills from all directions. The paradigm is circular, not pyramidal or immanent, and for God to be at the top of the triangle is a wrong analogy - His power is so great and manifest because He is beneath, beside and above all things, as the infinite ocean of energy that sustains all other existence.  St. Irenaeus uses St. Paul as his source, turning to a paraphrase of Colossians 3:15, "May the peace of Christ dwell in you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father." In this blessing he sees the structure of the taxis and the relationship between the Created and the Creator. Here he points out man's place within the Trinity, not as an equal, but as a state of blessedness that is indebted to Trinitarian reality. (St. Ireneaus of Lyon, “Demonstrations on the Apostolic Preaching”, Verses 31, 40-41, edited by Armitage Robinson, D.D., MacMillan, 1920)  

St. Irenaeus’ Trinitarian Ecclesiology Used Against Its Own Purpose – The Gnostic Elements of Later Developments

Unfortunately, through a long process of abstraction and Platonism using the allegorical method, a negative undercurrent can be discerned in later extrapolations of Byzantine ecclesial theory. The hierarchy gradually began to be conceived in terms of a process of sanctification, a ladder to heaven, with the 5^th Century Pseudo-Dionysian texts calling the earthly hierarchy a “hierarchy of worthiness and mediation of power” (The title of this work, “Περὶ τῆς Οὐρανίας Ἱεραρχίας”, “De Coelesti Hierarchia” in Latin, is the first time that the term “hierarchy” is actually employed in the Christian Tradition). No longer is it pictured in terms of the “deposit of faith once and for all delivered to the saints”, reflected in the ecclesial reality of the life of the redeemed people of God, or through what the Church was actually doing in its confession, worship, and partaking in the Lord’s Supper - but by a more gnostic-influenced consideration of the hierarchy of symbols attached to pastoral authority and the mysterious role that bishops played in Christ’s redemptive work through the interchangeable features of their episcopal grace, the altar, and the Eucharist offered upon the altar. With this change, liturgy was understood as a kind of spiritual panorama in aid to mystical contemplation. This has come to be called “mysteriological piety”, and the disconnect between the historical and eschatological truths of Church, and the popular perceptions of the episcopal rank and the folk practices of devotion attached to the liturgy, now defined through their relationship to the contemplations of Christian mysticism. (Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “Introduction to Liturgical Theology”, p. 128-130) This view became the justification for the idea that “attending liturgy” as a means of grace, the gradual focus on a semi-magical role of those in episcopal lineage to “dispense blessing” (which was increasingly associated with the power of the transformation of the elements in the Eucharist), and a spiritual practice of contemplation and meditation for ascension and transformation, rather than upon the traditional experience of Christianity found through “Partaking in the Communion of Christ’s Body” (both as a “ταχις” of the Holy Spirit’s presence in Christ’s Church, and also in the Communion of the Holy Table)! This changed both the focus and the participation from active to passive, from communal to individualistic, from brotherly and fatherly to princely and imperial. This transformation also effectively excommunicated all those who decided to participate in the Holy Eucharist based on their own “worthiness”, which was defined through categories of contemplation instead of through membership in the Church through baptism and repentance! (Fr. Alexander Schmemann, “Great Lent”, p. 115)

This new attitude was the victory of the perspective for the ancient mystery cults that the Early Church had fought so hard against, against “[persons and] rituals that transmits sacredness to the profane and establishes between the two the possibility of communion and communication.” (ITLT, p. 126) As Fr. Alexander Schmemann explains so powerfully, “[Christianity] professed salvation… not as the possibility of the ‘profane’ to touch the ‘sacred’, but proclaimed both as the eschatological fulfillment of the history of salvation, as the even leading man into the Aeon of the Kingdom of God. History and event, and the uniqueness of the saving fact with which the Kingdom was approaching and being revealed. These were the basic categories for Christians, and in this plan it was precisely the eschatology of the Christian cult, its foundation in the ‘event of Christ’, which drew a line between it and the mysteriological or sanctifying cults. The acceptance by the Christian consciousness of these categories of sanctification with their accompanying distinction between ‘profane’ and ‘sacred’ was therefore fundamental to the ‘mysteriological breakthrough’…” (ITLT, p. 126-127) While this shift did not change the original Apostolic inheritance of the Church, or the Gospel that it proclaimed, it did change the perception of bishops, allowing for greater corruption and un-pastoral behavior, and excluded the censorship of presbyters and local churches, leading to a loss of the leadership and effectiveness that is still felt in parish life today.

Gnostic Ecclesiology Becomes the Foundation of Papal Claims   

The later convergence of St. Irenaeus’ theory of apostolic succession with the implications of St. Ignatius of Antioch’s monarchical episcopacy, overlaid with the Matthean account of the Petrine episcopal calling and the legend of St. Peter’s martyrdom in Rome was to hijack the whole meaning of the Early Church’s “ταχις”, creating an Imperial State with claims to all the heavenly powers of the Church, to St. Peter’s “Keys to the Kingdom”. The adjustment would take a thousand years, but the ordinal traditions of the Apostolic Constitutions, and the theoretical, tripartite, hierarchical “ordo” of the Church in later mysteriological writings led to the concrete hierarchy of the Church in 4^th and 5^th century mystical writings, and this would serve to redefine many of the Church’s original understandings, which, had they been left in place, would have made monolithic claims to universal episcopacy impossible. This, combined with the mystical contemplation of the Christian Gnostics St. Clement, Origen, St. Makarius and others then led to a full-scale embrace of the Platonic process of ascension of “worthiness” that further alienates the baptized laity from “holiness” and participation in the Eucharist, and also led to the idea that the Pope was somehow connected to the Eucharist as a source of its Grace. Now the Eucharist is pictured in the Platonic work of “Henosis” and called by the pre-Christian philosophical term “Mystery”. This subtle transformation began with the mass conversions of the State Church, and quickly changed the original vision of hierarchy into something very difficult and far less covenantal and Eucharistic (literally, as in the belief that it was repentance that “made worthy” and praise and thanksgiving that made holy, rather than mystical apathia and contemplation). This is later worked into the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus and expresses the heavenly hierarchy in an ecclesial reflection of power, according to spiritual ability, “worthiness”, which brings the process full circle and elevates the priesthood from a representational function within the community to a transcendent state of blessedness that separated the ordained individual human a “vessel of grace”, rather than the community ("Kenosis" becoming a major canonical principle that completely refocuses the meaning of Law and Grace and the Early Christian understanding of the Pauline vision of the Church). It is during this time that the biblical term “Presbyter” is replaced with the pre-Christian “Priest” (although the two terms are etymologically related in English). This focuses Church law on ceremonial cleanliness and liturgical orders of form and service that had, in the explanation of St. Paul, passed away with the fulfilling of the Law by Christ and the redemption of all things unto Himself. These mysteriological ideas, combined with St. Ignatius’ insistence on Bishops acting in the role of St. Peter, along with St. Irenaeus’ insistence on the continual orthodoxy and leadership of the Roman Church, were eventually used by Clunite Frankish monks in the West to crystalize the extreme and transcendent view of Universal Papal Primacy that eventually succeeded in replacing the original apostolic system in much of the world. In the East, however, a different spirit prevailed and while St. Irenaeus’ worth was always valued, neither his works, nor any of the above-mentioned Fathers, were strictly considered infallible. The reality of the local body’s Eucharist expression, and their Apostolic continuity and succession, were too clear to ignore. Thus, while St. Irenaeus valued the bishopric of Rome as a gage for doctrinal orthodoxy, it was also apparent to the Greek and Syriac Fathers that even Rome could fall into heresy (as it did with Pope Honorius), and that it was ultimately the local body and their conformance to the universally received faith of the Apostles, that was the source of the Apostolic Authority, and not a top-down flow of Apostolic Succession.

2. Contrasts between the Exegetical Schools of Faithfully Apostolic Teachers of Antioch and Edessa and the Hellenizing Gnostic Christians of Alexandria

The Typological School of Antioch

Antioch was the first center of Christian learning outside of Jerusalem, reflecting its deep connections to the Rabbinic Tradition, its continued focus on Old Testament categories, and preserved familiarity with the languages of Hebrew and Aramaic. It was one of the three theological roots of the Syriac Tradition, the others being Edessa and Adiabene. (Fr. John Meyendorf, “Imperial Unity and Christian Division”, p. 96, 99-100) The “Early School” of Antioch was established by Lucian (240-312AD) towards the end of the 3^rd century, but little is known of its teachings, which seem to be profoundly biblical and uninterested in speculation of any kind. (ECD, p75) Its methods, presumably, were the same as the “Later School”, allowing only those paradigms for interpretation that are found in Scripture itself. Only after the popularization of the Alexandrian School’s allegorical approach would Antioch rise up with its profound rebuke to those who “would see in Scripture the fancies of their own imagination”!

Diodorus (D394AD) was the founder of the “Later School”, having opposed Apollinaris with the great St. Gregory of Nazianzus. He was a presbyter who was later elevated to the bishopric in Tarsus, and who personally trained such greats as St. John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Jerusalem, St. Basil of Caesarea, and Nestorius. While his theology rejected the influence of Paul of Samosata, it did not attempt to explain a theory of immanence, or bridge the gulf between God’s transcendence and the created nature of man that the Antiochian view traditionally had preserved. The result of this oversight, only resolved later in the Church of the East by the Christological formulas of Babai the Great’s “Teshbokhta”, seemed to imply a distinction within the person of Christ that was to create great friction between the Antiochian and Alexandrian factions in the Christological debates of the Post-Nicene Church.

“One is Christ the Son of God,

Worshiped by all in two natures;

In His Godhead begotten of the Father,

Without beginning before all time;

In His humanity born of Mary,

In the fullness of time, in a body united;

Neither His Godhead is of the nature of the mother,

Nor His humanity of the nature of the Father;

The natures are preserved in their Qnumas (Outward reality of inward nature),

In one person of one Sonship.

And as the Godhead is three substances in one nature,

Likewise the Sonship of the Son is in two natures, one person.

So the Holy Church has taught.” - Teshbokhta of Mar Babai the Great

Theodore of Mopsuestia was the head of the Antiochian School as it ended in the stormy days of the “Later School”. (ECD, p75-78) While his teaching was also Nicene in form and faith, its underlying logic could not be used support the “unity of nature” within Christ that had become the teaching in Egypt. Theodore was elemental in many ways in helping to formulate the Chalcedonian position, a later compromise and synthesis between the Antiochian School and the Alexandrian School that would maintain the essential distinctions of nature within Christ, but that would insist on “hypostatic union”, a metaphysical restatement of the unified personhood of Christ that had always been held by both Antioch and Alexandria. While Theodore was never personally anathematized during his lifetime, his person and his writings were later forbidden in Eastern Orthodoxy due to political considerations during the Monophysite rebellion that ripped through the Eastern Roman Empire during the reign of Justinian, commonly known as the “Three Chapters” controversy.  Justinian and his wife, Theodora, banned Theodore in an effort to bring the Monophysite question to a close and unify Egypt and Syria once more under the Imperial banner, but they did so at the risk of compromising the original interpretation and authority of the Council of Chalcedon and making the only official understanding of its doctrines Cyrillian through promulgating the work of Leontius of Constantinople (485-543AD). This anathematization created an unresolved conflict, however, within the Orthodox Tradition, since Theodore’s liturgical and exegetical contribution to Orthodoxy is still a constant and influential force within the Church, even though it denies him the title of “Saint”!  Now, Theodore’s teachings and exegetical methods are now associated with the unquestionably great name of St. John Chrysostom, his friend and comrade, making Theodore’s presence almost completely invisible to those without an initiation into the history of the Church and its philosophy!

The Antiochian School was the definition of the ancient, conservative voice within the Church, standing in continuity with the Semitic Tradition. It employed the philosophical methods of distinction, causality, and definition from Aristotelianism to achieve the goal of maintaining proper textual authority and keeping the Christian message separate from the world of “Greek error”. As St. Ephraim the Syrian says, “Blessed are those who are not poisoned with the philosophy of the Greeks!” (St. Ephraim’s “Second Hymn of Faith”) How Antioch became distinctly Aristotelian is not known, outside of the evidence left by Diodorus in preference for this school of thought. It was probably felt that the only philosophical antidote to Plato was a familiarity with Aristotle. The fact that the Aristotelian tradition was preserved here, and later in Edessa, meant that the Mesopotamian stream of Aristotelianism would not be destroyed with the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire, and insured that the West would rediscover Aristotle in the Middle Ages through Arabic translations carried into Spain by Islamic caravans, having been preserved, translated and annotated in Babylon by the inheritors of the Antiochian School. The Antiochian School and its descendent Schools of Edessa, Seleucia-Ctesiphon and Babylon, defined differences between themselves and the pagan (later Islamic) world by dialectical redaction and statement of contrasts, holding tenaciously to the Earlier Traditions, and teaching a literal, Semitic application of the Old Testament to the New. Similar trains of thought can be observed in the formation of the Aramaic Mishna and the Babylonian Talmud, which also use Aristotelian arguments to maintain the distinctiveness of the Jewish Rabbinic Tradition in an exilic situation. It can be posited that it was only because of the stubborn, if faithful, witness of Antioch and its unwillingness to accommodate the Greek philosophical mentality of syncretism that the Greek world received the parameters for the Chalcedonian Christology that eventually triumphed within the Eastern Orthodox perspective.

The Allegorical School of Alexandria

The School of Alexandria was a much younger than that of Antioch, not having functioned as an Apostolic center of teaching, but it built on the foundation that Alexandrian Jews had left over the previous three centuries, translating the Alexandrian Jewish inheritance of the Septuagint, Philo’s Logos, and the Anagogical Method of harmonizing the Hebrew Scriptures with Greek Philosophy. Indeed, without the Septuagint, the methods of allegorizing would never taken root, since many of the textual similarities and much of the philosophical vocabulary that enabled a Greek understanding of the Old Testament were placed there by Jewish translators of earlier centuries as an apology and explanation of the Hebrew Covenant to the Greek Mind.

The converted Stoic philosopher, Pantaenus, started the school in Alexandria in 185AD independently of the Church, following the pagan pattern of schools based in the home of a philosopher. The representatives of the Alexandrian School all exceled at applying the Anagogical/Allegorical Method, pioneered by Philo, and thus were little concerned with the literal meanings or application of Scripture – they were much more interested in the hidden meanings, the connections with Pagan Philosophy, and the apologetic application of such commonalities. The School of Alexandria was highly influential in creating a fully Hellenized faith that could explain itself in the categories of the day, replying to Christianity’s most eloquent critics, such as Celsus, and creating terms and concepts that were easily understood by the Greek Mind. These developments would have major repercussions in the Christological debates that ultimately divided the Early Church, which chose to define Theological Truth and Revelation in the terms of Greek Philosophical Categories, the repercussions of which still divide the Miaphysites/Monophysites, the Church of the East, and the Eastern Orthodox-Roman Catholics today.

St. Clement of Alexandria (D215AD), a presbyter of the Church of Alexandria, was his student and main apologist for the philosophies of Pantaenus, eventually becoming the head of the school. He was the first to completely describe the Greek Philosophical connotations of Christ as the Logos, with its Stoic precedents and its Platonic connotations fully formed, taking up where Philo had left off, and producing a complete narrative of the Jewish/Stoic Logos in an Incarnate form. “Perchance, too, philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as the law of the Hebrews, to Christ.” (St. Clement’s “Stromata”, from Ayer’s translation)

Origen (182-251AD) studied under St. Clement and the founder of Neo-Platonism, Ammonius Saccas, bringing the philosophy of Christian Gnosis into full bloom, translating the entire Christian worldview into the context of the Greek Sciences. Origen was frightfully productive, gifted in languages, familiar with the Scriptures in multiple translations and versions, knowledgeable in the Jewish oral tradition, and able to explain the Christian faith within a Pagan Philosophical context. He was able to create a presentation of Christianity that allowed for the pre-existence of the soul and the possibility of reincarnation, the inspiration of Pagan Philosophers by the Holy Spirit, the deification of man in an essential reunification with God, and the restoration of all things on the Last Day – both the righteous and the damned – in the “Apocatastasis”. He also championed Christian asceticism, castrating himself as a youth (taking Christ’s words about “making themselves eunuchs” literally, and perhaps forming the motivation behind his later use of non-literal interpretation of Biblical texts), in which the human being was cleansed and transformed through contemplation of God’s being. In this process, the intellect transcends fallen matter, passion and pain, and attains enlightenment through union with God in a process that is indistinguishable from the process of Stoic Contemplation. His philosophy, while highly attractive to the Classically trained minds of the Early Church, reflected in the speculation and systemization of Augustine, the Cappadocian Fathers, and the leading monastic fathers of the 4^th and 5^th Centuries, and extremely influential upon the categories and modes of debate within the Pre-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, was ultimately heretical and detrimental to the Church. While it strove to explain the truth of Christian Revelation in a Greek world, it ultimately proved the inspiration of the pagan system within a Christian context. Based upon the faithfulness of those within Asia Minor, influenced by the Antiochian School, Bishop Methodius of Olympus, withstood Origen in his own day. (ECD, p. 182-183) Later, a local Synod of Alexandria in 399AD was to condemn his teachings, and these condemnations were to be universally recognized by the Church in the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553AD.

In the Alexandrian Allegorical Method, no thought is given to what the text meant at the time of composition, but the thought is completely centered on "what it means now", and "how the imperfect pictures are now completed in Christ." The Old Testament and the Greek Myths were all shadows of the person that was to come, but the quality of those intuitions were effected by the desire to reach higher and aspire to more pure goals... Which the carnal myths of Greece lacked, but the philosophers of the Golden Age had learned by the movement of the Spirit.

The Alexandrians associated new meanings with old forms, the new meaning being the person of Christ. This recognition was only made possible by a method that was not Jewish, but Greek in origin, superimposed over the Jewish text. But, rather than trying to understand the context in which the Law was given, and molding personal understanding to that situation, the Alexandrian Allegorists uses the text as a meeting place between man and the Word, the Incarnate Logos, who is the archetype from whence all forms emanate. This school was not "literalist" in any way, for as the Pseudo-Apostolic “Epistle of Barnabas” insists, the Old Testament writers did not necessarily have a conscious grasp of the meanings of what they were communicating.

The question then becomes, if Scripture was re-contextualized by Christ, and His existence was warrant enough for a completely new association of meaning, are we inconsistent when we deny this same kind of re-contextualization to Muslims and Mormons, based on their "lack of a literal prophetic record"? At what point is the New Testament subjected to allegorical interpretation? This is the question that the Gnostics asked, and the problem that Origin posed in his ornate, Christian Gnostic cosmology to the rest of the Christian world. The Old Testament shows that there was not a complete understanding of the nature of God, and a disconnect between the true meanings of God's Commands and the intent of God's plan for the salvation of the world. This invalidation of the Jewish system is evident in the writing of the Alexandrian Fathers, and is less an apologetic for the Jewish nature of the Gospel than a use of the Old Testament quotations juxtaposed with allegorical explanation to show the truly universal message of Christ, which was the same for Jew and Gentile.

For the Alexandrian School, to be a Christian has nothing to do with believing in the revelation of the Old Testament, but a belief an interaction with Christ the Logos through the Church. But, if a method of interpretation is supreme, then you must concede Gnostic supremacy, and search for ways in which interpretation of hidden meanings in the Life of Christ can be found and applied. But, if the message becomes centered on Christ, and not upon the Greek method of allegory or upon the supposed superiority of the Jewish Law, the contradiction is resolved and the allegorical method is seen as the ability of the Mind of the Word to open the words of every culture of every experience of the divine in the history of the world. It is no longer a secret meaning deciphered through a method, but a meaning that is manifest in everything by an overlay of Christ's life, confirmed by human experience. Our obedience is what accesses the meaning of Christ's reality, striving to have Christ within, and not in understanding it theoretically with our minds... And in doing so, we find meaning beyond mind in the Original Word.

This is the struggle of Greek Christian usage of the Old Testament, which must, due to its contextual and cultural break with the Jewish categories and expectations, introduce a different way of looking at the text as a valid alternative, presupposing the “equality of culture” and the preparation of the Holy Spirit in the context of pagan cultures. St. Paul said, “For we are all His offspring” (τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος εἰμέν) as he quoted the pagan poet Aratus's Phaenomena. Such incidental apologetic usage of Greek culture became the philosophical justification for how predominantly the allegorical method of interpretation was used, first by Philo of Alexandria’s desire to see Greek philosophical categories illustrated in a Jewish context (thus proving the universality of said characteristics), and secondly by St. John the Theologian and St. Paul of Tarsus’ realization that the Hebrew Covenant had become universal through Christ, and that pagan categories were prepared for Christ in the same way in which Hebrew Revelation was prepared. Christ himself said, “Search the Scriptures, for they testify of me…” (John 5:39) Thus, a shift took place as the Law was detached from the “Word” as the purpose of God’s revelation, and the Word became the Philosophical Logos (λόγος) of Heraclitas and Plato, and the “Wisdom” (חָכְמָה) of the Hebrew Sages was equated with the pre-existent Christ. By this shift in meaning the definition of “righteousness” and “justification” were no longer in conformity to the legal cultural norms of the Jewish People, nor was an outward identification with their heritage, spiritual vision, or race (through discarding circumcision and ritual separation from other nations) a definitive point of “truth”, but now depended upon a relationship with God through the Incarnate Christ. Christianity transformed the Old Testament by interpreting it outside of its own stated context, creating a new hermeneutic that separated Christianity from its historical roots in Judaism forever.  This can be clearly seen in the use λόγος σπερματικός of St. Justin Martyr, which was pictured not only, as in the Stoic sense, as the ordering principle of the universe, but the Eternal and Uncreated Word working in Nature to impart life, His Image and Likeness, in the world.    

Contrasts in the Epistemological and Hermeneutical Worlds of the Typological and Allegorical Method

The Antiochian School’s strict literal and historic understanding of the process of Revelation insures that human philosophy bends to Scripture, seeing in Scripture a real revelation of God that should inform human categories. For this purpose, they used Scripture in its direct sense, finding ‘Types” which point to Christ in a prophetic tense. The Christian use of typology begins with St. Paul’s interpretation in Romans 5:14, naming Adam as "a type (τύπος) of the one who was to come". Adam and Christ also form a typological contrast in I Corinthians 15. This use of Old Testament Scripture is found in the Old Testament itself, “Deutero-Isaiah in particular looked back to the redemption from Egypt as recapitulating, as it were, God’s original victory over chaos, and looked forward to a second Exodus from captivity in the future and a renewal of creation. The corollary of it was that typology, unlike analogy, had no temptation to undervalue, much less dispense with, the literal sense of Scripture.” (Early Christian Doctrine, J.N.D. Kelly, p. 71) The literal, contemporary sense must be kept, the meaning cannot be something brought in by the author’s inspiration, no matter how intelligent or fitting, but must already be present, and the passages cannot arbitrarily change subject or object. Therefore, one Psalm talking of David cannot arbitrarily have its true meaning as Christ in one place and be referring to David in other places. Inconsistency or contradictions are not the characteristics of truth, and interpretational methods must first of all be true before they can be of God!

The Antiochian School is therefore consistent and critical in its understanding of Scripture, looking to establish an original meaning, comparing Scripture with Scripture, and refraining from projecting outside meanings or contexts into the Text. The goal was to allow the Scripture to speak, not the interpreter. The flow of authority was mono directional, implying that the Word of God given to the Prophets and completed in Christ was conclusive, final, and formative. Authority flowed from its revelation of Christ to the Church and the Church was empowered as its agent of preservation and dissemination to the world, not as its philosophical mediator for the world. In this sense, the Antiochene mentality is truer to a critical view of history and is far less likely to collapse under modern critical/political/historical scrutiny. It was this humble opinion of people, its focus on authority coming through the text, being exegetically perceived in the text, not allowing for an eisegetical reading into the text, and the application of OT and NT paradigms of salvation that made them extremely resistant to non-metaphorical use of the theosis/henosis mechanism for salvation. It was apparent that the processes of henosis, of becoming one with the En, the demiurge of Plato’s Timeus, was through contemplation and asceticism. This was the “Way of the Sage” in the ancient Pythagorean occult, based as it was upon the mystery religions of Egypt and Babylon. The Antiochene Fathers asked the same question that critical students of history ask today - How could salvation in Christ predate Christianity and have its origins in something not revealed of God? How could salvation in Christ be henosis when it is so clearly eternal, physical resurrected life in Christ’s Kingdom? The terminology of henosis also lifted man’s opinion of himself far higher than biblically allowed, allowing a kind of pride of the group, the tradition, the culture that was consistently rebuked by the Old Testament Prophets, and which Christ and St. Paul not only warned against but actively fought! In this way, the Fathers of the Antiochene and Mesopotamian Tradition stood against Alexandrian and, to a far lesser degree, Byzantine philosophical and cultural arrogance in a truly prophetic and self-effacing role, calling the brilliant minds of the Greek and Latin Traditions back to a simple reading of Scripture, back to a simple realization that it was through a desire to become God, instead of obeying and loving God as He had commanded, that man fell! 

The Alexandrian School bends Scripture to the Platonic philosophical vision of a material world that can and does “become” a circumscription of God, a view of humanity that can be “greater than the heavens”, a transcendent view of humanity that can “Contain” God. Because this “Becoming God” view is not in the Scripture, but rather its opposite, in constant reminders that humanity is not God, Scripture must be remade through a philosophical process of re-interpretation. It was through this process, one which Philo started in Alexandria 90 years before Christ, in which the Jewish Scriptures were “explained away” to the Greek mind, that the Greek-speaking Church finally made doctrine fit into a Platonic schematic, justifying a State Church and a mysteriological, “worthiness" approach to the sacraments. In this way the Orthodox Mind became, as Fr. Georges Florovsky put so well, “Christian Hellenism”, and which today lives or dies not upon Scripture or the Apostolic Faith but upon the allegorical interpretation and contemplative practices of the Roman State Church, with its non-biblical philosophy and Greco-Roman history (G. Florovsky, “The Byzantine Fathers”, 1978, p. 9).

The Alexandrian School was inconsistent and uncritical in its understanding of Scripture, looking to establish application through implied or understood meaning, comparing Scripture with the life of Christ, and allowing for extensive and decontextualized interpretation on the part of the author. The purpose of Scripture was to allow the Spirit to speak through the Church, where the Logos was believed to dwell, not to allow the text to spiritual inform and prepare the Church to receive the Spirit. Therefore, to the Alexandrian mind, as St. Hillary said, the “the Scripture is in not in the reading, but in the understanding.” [2]

3. The Relationship Between the Differing Philosophies of Scripture and Their Opposing Visions of Salvation in Christ

The Apostolic Theories of Salvation, a Survey of 3^rd Century Soteriology Leading Up to the 5^th Century Schism

As we have seen in the above arguments, there were two different textual and cultural traditions at work, determining the attributes and nature of salvation in Christ, not only revealing basic differences in assumption, but also showing the complementarity between the views taken as a whole – an assertion of Christ’s BEING as salvific to mankind!  These theories show a great “unity in diversity”, expressing a generally held conviction that the whole life of Christ was saving, and that both the work of birth into the world, the incarnation through the Holy Virgin, the Theotokos, and the work of the cross and resurrection, were all equally necessary for mankind’s salvation. These differing views of salvation find their origin in the different traditions that made up the Christian community – with the Ransom/Propitiation/Expiation/Recapitulation theory reflecting the chosen categories of the Roman and Antiochian Tradition of the Septuagint, and the Alexandrian Christian Gnostic philosophy of Henosis/Theosis, unification with God through spiritual contemplation, championed by St. Celment and Origin’s allegorical school.

1. Incarnation – Christ Took on Humanity, Adam, Whom We All Share, thus Making God’s Life Available to Mankind. This View is Stated in St. Justin Martyr, St. Ireneaus, Tertullian, Origen, St. Athanasius, and used, in its Particular, Historical Sense, by the Antiochian Fathers. The Antiochian School Deny that Adam was a “Form”, Tracing our Derived, Ancestral Being to Adam, but Origen developed a Whole Cosmology of the Book of Genesis to Prove that Adam was the Platonic Form of Man, Using the Double Account of Creation in Genesis 1 & 2 as Justification for this Allegorical Reading. (ECD, p. 182-185)

1. Expiation – Erasing Sin through the Greater Power of the Godhead, Therefore, Christ’s Blood Wiped Out All Evil, Debt, or Lawlessness, and by Entering Into His Death through Baptism, We May Raise in the Power of the Holy Spirit

2. Recapitulation – “In Adam all Die, in Christ all are Resurrected” - Joining Life by Life through the Power of the Blood, Restoring the Repentant and Baptized Believer to the Original Condition of Adam in the Garden after the Resurrection, Based on St. Paul, Used by Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Methodius of Olympus (ECD, p. 170-174, 187)

3. Ransom – Paying a Price to Satan or Hell for Debts of Sin Owed (Always a dissatisfactory theory, but mentioned by St. Paul, thus included by the Fathers), Also Used by Origin as a Reinforcement for His Theosis Model (ECD, p. 185)

4. Propitiation – Substitution – Exchange of Life for Life for the Satiation of Wrath due to Violated Divine Law, Used by St. Augustine in His Roman Legal Model of Salvation, Hinted at by Tertullian (ECD, p. 177)

5. Tricking Hell – Death and Hell, Anthropomorphized, Thinks it is Destroying a Man, but Then is Destroyed from the Inside Out by the Power of God, Making Death into a Pathway to Christ’s Life!

6.  Christus Victor – Resurrection Breaking Death, Causing Eternal Life to Return to Adam and All His Descendants! This is a Biblical (1 Cor 15:55-56) as well as liturgical concept, seen in the ancient Egyptian wall graffiti in Luxor, dating back to the 2^nd century A.D., “Christ is Risen from the Dead, Trampling Down Death by Death, and Upon those in the Tombs Bestowing Life” and now sung as the Paschal Hymn in the Eastern Churches.

All of these views combined give us a vision of Christ’s entire Life as the origin of man’s salvation and restored relationship with God. This is why entrance into Christ’s life, into the Church itself, is expressed through the rite of baptism, through “putting on Christ”, and why the highest apex of the Christian experience before Death or Christ’s physical return is to be joined with His Body and Blood, which makes us a “part of the vine”, allowing us to “abide in Him”, fully united to His Life and Person.

The Separation of Two Visions of Salvation in Christ in the 5^th Century

In the end, there were two different visions of salvation that emerged as time went on, two opposed directions - one arguing for man’s inferiority, createdness, and the need for obedience to revelation, and the other speaking of an exalted and already realized Kingdom in which saints could gain earthly theosis through mystical contemplation, before the resurrection and Last Judgment. This Alexandrian vision held that Grace was ultimately a power (not a presence), commonly using the technical Platonic term “Ενέργεια”, and that Bishops were somehow infused with God’s Spirit as oracles, regardless of actions or evil intentions (such as St. Cyril’s obviously evil and uncanonical activities, bribing the Roman court with two tons of gold, or the Robber Council’s cruelty towards the aged patriarch of Constantinople, St. Flavian). Only a thousand years later within the Palamite defense of Hysechasm would the Presence of God be equated with the “Uncreated Energy” of God’s Being. This meant that the means faded in importance to the desired end of continued gnosis and revelation. What was forgotten is that it is only through the means, through the individuals actions, that the Holy Spirit is evidenced, that we know “whether or not it is of God” by the “Fruit of the Spirit". This later position of Christian Hellenism won in Byzantium as increased entropy and political power was manifest in the Church, for in this way the human kingdom could be infused with hermeneutical “power” by the Holy Spirit, regardless of its actions. In many ways, this was the only choice that it had. To reject a vision of an already fused-together, ascetically renewed, divinely infused, ecclesiastically mediated reality for a post-resurrection state of Communion with God in an immortal and perfected universe in a Kingdom to Come would just be bad politics. It would mean that Christians did not need the Byzantine Economy to practice their faith!  

Understanding the Social Outworking of St. Irenaeus and Tertullian's Christological Ecclesiology in the Event of a State Church

Delineating the political theme of Church and State reflected in the Christological Formulas of Apostolic Christianity after Constantine, which effects theological interpretation and historical analysis of the Christological Controversies of the 5th Century. 

“In a certain sense the General Councils as inaugurated at Nicaea may be described as ‘Imperial Councils,’ die Reichskonzile, and this was probably the first and original meaning of the term ‘Ecumenical’ as applied to the Councils. It would be out of place now to discuss at any length the vexed and controversial problem of the nature or character of that peculiar structure which was the new Christian Commonwealth, the theocratic Res Publica Christiana, in which the Church was strangely wedded with the Empire” – George Florovsky’s “Bible, Church, Tradition – An Eastern Orthodox View”, Harvard University Press, p. 95

It is the belief that the Church has a “Single Hypostasis” consisting of the Holy Spirit indwelling the World - That the Roman Governmental polity, the wars of religion, the political usage of Christianity for national, imperial, or sectarian authority have, somehow, been “used by God”, because those within the culture fail to see a difference between their national and Christian identities. They have “become one”, and thus, a paradox arises, one which pitches the Scriptural Voice against the Patristic Voice, the Church’s Prophetic Voice against the Declarations of the Imperial State Church, and one which goes to the core of Christian identity, division, and the failure of Christianity to accomplish unity based upon the acceptance of Christian mystery, and the inevitability of apophatic theology in the human state of inferiority and ignorance.

The government is the fallen world in which we live. It is NOT of God, but shows man’s destitution and separation from Truth. Christians must live in submission to it, love those who are corrupted by it, but maintain that it is NOT the Kingdom of Christ. Christ said in response to Pontius Pilate’s questioning, right before being lifted up for the salvation of the world, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” Only when this distinction is maintained does Christ’s words, the attitudes of the Early Church, and the course of contemporary Christianity (without a sponsoring state entity), become clear. With the exclusion of the Russian Church, this is the reality in which ALL CHRISTIANS now currently find themselves. If True Christianity is State-Sponsored Christianity, than very few of us have a hope of salvation (unless we all go join a Russian Orthodox fundamentalist group, like ROCOR)! The Church has a divine origin, established by Christ, and maintained by the Holy Spirit in every generation. It is distinct from this world, not belonging to it, but it belonging to Him, and will only be fully realized with the Return of Christ. This distinction leads to a proper understanding of the Church, “the called out ones”, and to the eschatological realities of our faith. It also leads to a right view of the Eucharist as the “Bread of Tomorrow”, as the seal upon a covenant that has not yet fully been fulfilled, but which is a physical presence of Christ. We do not yet inhabit the historical reality of the Eschaton, but the Eucharist looks forward to it and partakes in its coming reality, the Mystery of Emanuel, God with Us!

Why did Christology divide along cultural and political lines, if it had nothing to do with politics? Actually, it is evident that the Christological debates were also debates about ecclesiology, not just because of their historical and cultural delineations, but what they have to say about the relationship of the Created with the Uncreated. Do the two remain separate (showing a relationship of reflection and influence, ultimately leading to one “personal expression”), fuse into one to create something completely apart from both origins, or maintain duality while having only one “hypostatic reality” - the complete deification and filling of material with God in another form? To Christian philosophy, Christ IS authority, by His very being. To show the authority of the emperor, or the rejection of such authority, the functions of the State and the Church, one must logically follow a Christological formula, so that the functions follow the paradigm of the highest form of revealed truth. If Christ is authority, then all authority must be based on Christ.

Dyophysite Christology was a political critique of the State Church by a Church that believed itself beyond the governance of the secular state, while acknowledging the valid existence of the world outside of the Church - Maintaining that separate origins always maintain separate identities and propensities, while having valid correlation, unification, and resulting in a single human personality. The rejection of the Council of Ephesus and the resulting ecclesial chaos also shows how this played out within the historical context as well - the Mesopotamian Church felt under no compulsion to ratify a council as questionable or foreign to the Church’s own canonical understanding of itself, even upon the pain of a Western excommunication for the most radical and severe heresy that the West could level at the East! This approach can also be seen in the way that Nestorian Bishops maintained relationships with secular authorities in both Rome and Persia, remained uncorrupted by political authority, and were never a State Church. They were content to allow the Church to be a minority religion, to allow people to accept it or reject it based on conversations and theological debate, and never “baptized an army by making them march through a river.” These Churches maintained the integrity of the individual, relied heavily upon evangelization and reason for propagation of their message, were not (until recently) associated with “peoples” or “nations”, and saw the Christian community as existing outside of a political boundaries or governmental situation. 

Monophysite Christology was a Political Statement of Self-Sufficient Episcopal Governance in Contrast to the “Worldly System” of Byzantine Authority. This was an outright rebellion against the State and a belief that the State was not necessary for the proper governance of the Church. The Monophysite Bishops, therefore, were justified as totalitarian tyrants and as authorities apart from civil authority. This also made Monophysite Culture an unassailable bastion from the outside. The self-sufficiency of the monophysite doctrine can be seen in how it created divergent cultural enclaves without reference to one another. Armenian, Syriac Jacobite, and Coptic Churches, while all technically in communion because of the same doctrine, did not share the same practices or meet with each other in council. 

Chalcedonian Christology was a Political Justification of Desperate Natures being Conjoined in Hierarchical Reality - Church and State Joined in a Single Ecclesial Hypostasis. This theological innovation led to the preservation of two origins, and two differing functions, but argued for their essential unity - not just of person, but of essential ontological being, the hypostasis. Therefore, the Empire originated as a Pagan Roman construct, but after being “taken up” by the Church, it no longer maintained its worldly associations or propensities. It was, in effect, “filled with the Church”, and as the “Church was filled with God”, it made the Roman Empire the living Icon of the future kingdom. As the Theotokos was to Western Christology, so the Roman Government was to Christian Ecclesiology - both, having “brought forth God” were put in a category that was both beyond critique, but also blameless and praiseworthy in every aspect. This association undergirded a successful and wealthy Byzantine policy, which was able to use the Roman Tradition under the auspices of the official Church, which “redeemed” its use, even when there were obvious conflicts with the original context of the Christian Gospel (the Jewish conflict with Rome, the rejection of the veneration of the emperor, etc), which can be seen in the practice of slavery and wars of aggression, along with the persecution of “heretics” by the official Church through its secular military arm. It was the theological difficulties with maintaining distinct political natures in one reality that lead to the establishment of “uncreated energy” theology, which added a new quality to the debate, insisting that God could completely fill the material world as energy and not in essence. 

As time has passed, there are obvious difficulties with all three Christological/Political constructs. The greatest difficulties have been experienced by the Nestorians, who have been destroyed by Islam and other Christians, lacking a state to protect them. The choice for this ancient form of polity has been apostasy or martyrdom, as it was for the early Church. They chose martyrdom. But this vision is the only vision that appears both sincere and practical if Christianity is to maintain the free will of all people, and respect both their choice to accept or rejection Christianity, while customizing itself to the realities of its minority status. This led to the most successful missionary movement in the history of the world, and to the acceptance of multiple cultures into one Apostolic Church, without forced conformity or political tension. This vision is also the most “realistic”, in that it preserves the observable historical reality of man’s inability to live up to even the most basic moral code. While not preaching “original sin”, much like the Byzantine tradition, the Syriac Tradition is much clearer on the sickness of sin, and upon the realities of man’s imperfection, realizing that “we hold this treasure in earthen vessels”. 

The Byzantine model, while theoretically beautiful and easy to justify in its Imperial or Roman Catholic extrapolation, has failed to live up to even its most basic promises in the absence of a Christian emperor (or a Pope with a Holy Roman Emperor). While it must justify, explain away, and hide the brutalities, inconsistencies, and difficulties of its own history in order to negotiate the tension between the Christian message and the realities of the State Church and the political necessities of survival in a fallen world, its vision of holiness became so abstracted from the realm of the everyman that all but monks effectively excommunicated themselves from the Church by abstaining from communion because of their “unworthy” status. The Saints of this system, increasingly with the rise of Hysechasm, were those who did nothing (unlike early fathers who were actively pastoral and mission-oriented), who became cultural icons of self-assured correctness in the face of a heretical Roman Church. The Roman Catholics, too, found their saints to be those who triumphed in the Pope’s authority, thus proving the validity of their system. Even as the Greek Church fell into a state of complete degradation and ignorance, it maintained it was canonically correct, even as it failed to enforce its own canons. With the passing of the mantel to Russia, Russian ecclesial function has been seen in its role as essentially tied to the State, and its self-understanding as an uncritical acceptance of the Byzantine theory of “quietude” and “inaction” as a mark of holiness.

The Monophysite model has maintained greater control, solidarity, and resilience in the face of genocide, but its model has been staunchly against a missional approach, relying on the reproduction of its members and a “holy people” status of inheritance. They will continue as their own people for as long as they can avoid Islamic genocide. Their function and polity merely reflecting on a local level what the Roman polity had accomplished in the West. 

Using St. Irenaeus’s Ecclesiology to Argue for a Church Without a Hypostasis

 “[Christ’s] forerunner was John the Baptist, who prepared and made ready the people beforehand for the reception of the Word of life; declaring that He was the Christ, on whom the Spirit of God rested, mingling with His flesh. His disciples, the witnesses of all His good deeds, and of His teachings and His sufferings and death and resurrection, and of His ascension into heaven after His bodily resurrection—these were the apostles, who after (receiving) the power of the Holy Spirit were sent forth by Him into all the world, and wrought the calling of the Gentiles, showing to mankind the way of life, to turn them from idols and fornication and covetousness, cleansing their souls and bodies by the baptism of water and of the Holy Spirit; which Holy Spirit they had received of the Lord, and they distributed and imparted It to them that believed; and thus they ordered and established the Churches. By faith and love and hope they established that which was foretold by the prophets, the calling of the Gentiles, according to the mercy of God which was extended to them; bringing it to light through the ministration of their service, and admitting them to the promise of the fathers: to wit, that to those who thus believed in and loved the Lord, and continued in holiness and righteousness and patient endurance, the God of all had promised to grant eternal life by the resurrection of the dead; through Him who died and rose again, Jesus Christ, to whom He has delivered over the kingdom of all existing things, and, the rule of quick and dead, and also the judgment. And they counseled them by the word of truth to keep their flesh undefiled unto the resurrection and their soul unstained.” (St. Irenaeus, “Demonstrations on the Apostolic Preaching”, Verse 41)

There are two ways of understanding the Church in contemporary Eastern Orthodox theology. One is the dogmatic assertion, found clearly stated by +Kallistos Ware in his book “The Orthodox Church” (p. 243), that “If we take seriously the bound between God and His Church, then we must inevitably believe that the Church is One, even as God is One: there is only one Christ, so there can only be One Body of Christ…the Church is One, in the sense that there is only a single, visible community which alone can claim to be the one true Church...schisms cannot effect [this] essential nature of the Church.” This idea rejects the fundamental idea of any invisible unity between separate local Churches, an idea so important to Origin and St. Augustine, or of historical unity as qualifying as unity within the Church, insisting instead on an “essential nature” of the Church. This way of understanding the Church has led to many problems historically, the greatest being the lack of unity experienced within the Orthodox Church as local customs become inviolable traditions that separate churches from one another in practice, language, metaphor, and heart (like the current struggle we see worldwide between the Moscow Patriarchy and the Ecumenical Patriarchy). The truth is that, if a truthful tally were made of canonical Orthodox Churches in communion with one another today, their doctrinal and liturgical disunity would be enough to force a schism on par with earlier conflicts. Thankfully, the Orthodox have learned the vanity and futility of human unity, and would never do something like this, preferring inaction and avoidance to any real theological inquisition into why this state of disunity exists in a Church ostensibly united! The recognition for wide-spread ecclesial repentance for theological Gnosticism is spreading, and the belief that philosophy and contemplation can replace the simple Gospel of the Scriptures is on the wane. Practical pastoral concerns and a vibrant, loving, Eucharistic life in Christ are the only qualities that can insure spiritual health and sustainability as Orthodoxy continues to loose its political monopoly. In this way, it is returning to reality of Christian life in the Early Church!

Metropolitan +Kallistos’ essentialist way of understanding the Church is common, and one in which the Church’s essential, hypostatic reality is found in its unity with Christ. But, there is another way of understanding the Church in which the Church has no hypostasis, but is a compound between Faith and Tradition, allowing all of us to become “essentially united with Christ in the Communion of the Holy Spirit”. This is what Fr. Alexander Schmemann argues in “Liturgy and Tradition” (p. 76), in a debate over the true “essence of the Church” and the matter of liturgical theology, he says, “The Church has no “hypostasis”, no “personality” of her own, other than the hypostasis of Christ and of those who constitute her, she has no “nature” of her own, for she is the new life of the old nature, redeemed and transfigured by Christ.”

The greatest aid to Christian unity may be the realization of two, different kinds of unity - one a personal, hypostatic, essential unity; the other a unity based on sharing, upon the communion of faith, baptism and the Holy Spirit. This second unity is that which St. Irenaeus argued was the apostolic paradigm and successfully used this as his basis for the Church’s interpretational authority, tradition, and Faith in the face of widespread Gnosticism.

This alternative way of understanding the Church is within the terms of Communion, that just as the One Bread of the Eucharist, the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is “broken yet undivided”, and so are the multiple Apostolic Churches around the world that hold to the One Faith of the Apostolic Kyrugma. Our Communion is first with Christ, and then with others in the communities that surround us, that declare the same faith and the same Apostolic witness. This is important, because it makes the historic Churches of Christian Tradition unified, even as they may differ in philosophical terms about their “Orthodoxy”, and this also defuses the arguments against Byzantine and Roman Orthodoxy that bare weight if the political situations of the day are to be brought to bare. Once the allegorical method is abandoned, the philosophy that rests upon it must be jettisoned as well, which allows for real communication and mutual appreciation once again.

This view is more ancient, and finds its support in the Apostolic writings, in early and local councils, and in the spirit of the Early Fathers themselves, and also explains why the Bible was canonized, not with later writings, canons, and councils, but as the Witness of the Apostles pertaining to Christ Himself. It was this “Regula Fide” that the Church was to protect and declare! It was the Story of Christ, and faith in Him, ordination by the laying on of hands, and baptism for regeneration by water and the Spirit that was considered the core concern of the Ancient Church. These concerns are profoundly Biblical, not philosophical! St. Cyprian, St. Jerome, and St. Iranaeus may have believed in the absence of the Holy Spirit in those who disagreed with their doctrine, but this was because their doctrine was Christological, and there can be no salvation without Christ as fully God and fully Man! The Apostles themselves, who were much greater than later saints and fathers, withstood each other, denounced each other, and even separated from one another, without confusing their misunderstandings and personal problems for the status of the Church – which is eternally secure in the Person of Jesus Christ!

The Church had been understood in terms of faith, and the faith was incarnate in repentance, baptism, confession, communion, and Life in Christ – Most of all, in the invocation of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of Christ that happens personally and corporately as a result. It was only upon the teaching authority of this unified, amorphic and undefined Communion that Orthodoxy can truly lay claim to the Truth, and which, as a whole, provides the evidence for the catholicity and apostolic nature of the original Church. This was the “essential” nature of the Church. 

The first five hundred years were full of cultural, linguistic and philosophical fault-lines that, once crossed, divided churches that had been in communion with one another - who had once shared in the One Bread of Christ’s Body in their different places, customs, and cultures. These fault-lines were easily spotted, and each schism was the result of people in a cohesive language and culture group reacting to totalitarian claims made by a governmentally backed religious organization, rather than upon the simple baptismal creeds which were the canons of faith, the “Canon of Truth”. The Chalcedonians had the tables turned on them several times, and each time, they chose to reject the imperial authority that they had themselves so effectively wielded upon the Miaphysites. The Early Church had no such imperial or philosophical definitions of Orthodoxy, no set and unchangeable terminology for theological terms drawn from the Greek Tradition. 

The idea that the Councils did nothing but preserve that which was already established and agreed upon is inaccurate, not only evidenced by the irregularities of the Councils themselves, but also as evidenced by the rejection of new terms (“Homousious” for one, and “Theotokos” as most indicative) based on appeals to tradition and Apostolic teaching. Those who stood with the older and more authoritative tradition often stood against these exercises in imperial authority and human economy. The true authority of a council is in its reception, not in its proclamation!

It was only when the episcopal system of the imperial patriarchy collided with the ancient concept of local, bishop-based communion - when the Patriarchal system overtook the local bishop in authority, based on the will of the Roman Emperor, and started to enforce terms and teaching across natural language and cultural barriers, and the bishop's own “authority” for dispensing the Eucharist dependent upon his submission to this centralized imperial control - was the problem of absolute teaching authority and the dogmatic definition of terms, along with the cross-cultural implications of translation, acculturation, and reception brought to the fore. Before, variations of teaching and conceptualization were tolerated and clearly evident in the records of the Early Church Fathers and of various local synods, based on a functional, localized, and extremely indigenized concept of authority that was referential to history, to the Apostolic Gospel, and not to temporal authority. As long as the episcopal structure and mutual accountability between bishops were maintained, the living relationships that were both the basis for the Councils and also the dynamic that the Councils tried to make concrete, were deemed to be members of the True Church. When the imperial model of management was forced onto the “village function” of the Church, the Church splintered into all of its linguistic and cultural segments.

The Nicene Creed had been universally accepted. This faith was espoused by all the separated Churches - from Persia and India, through Ethiopia and Nubia, and from the Andalusian Plains all the way to the Carthaginian trade routes, all the bishops of truly Apostolic Churches accepted this statement of faith as true to their own experience with the Gospel. All the national Churches enshrined it as their central teaching - Georgia, Armenia, Syria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Rome, Byzantium, Jerusalem, Antioch, Babylon. It was the product of this Council that became the authoritative foundation on which all other councils claimed their authority. This was the Council that was truly received and was truly universal!

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible: And (we believe) in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only Begotten, the First Born of all created, begotten of His Father before all worlds and not made, very God of very God, of one essence with His Father, by whose hands the worlds were was established and everything was created: Who for us men and for our salvation came down form heaven, and was incarnated by the Holy Spirit, and became man and was conceived and born of Virgin Mary: He suffered and was crucified in the days of Pontius Pilate, He was buried and He rose again on the third day: As it is written and ascended into Heaven and sat on the right hand of His Father: And He shall come again to judge the dead and the living: And (we believe) in one Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth: Who proceeds from the Father, the life-giving Spirit: And (we believe) in one Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church: And we confess one Baptism for the remission of sins: And the resurrection of our bodies and life forever and ever: Amen” (The Nicene Creed According to the Tradition of the Church of the East, translated by the Archdiocese of Australia and New Zealand)

The real essence of unity became a hypostatic problem - who, in what person, does the authority of the Church sit? The truly Catholic have always had the right answers - Christ! But, who, then, on earth, is to be charged with the management of that authority. Very quickly we see the different local variations to answer that question. The Byzantine’s called their emperor the “Vicar of Christ”, not long afterwards, the popes took up this title as well, to disastrous consequences!

In the early stages, we see the Local Church Body, consisting of Bishop, Presbyters, Deacons, and Faithful - that in this stable order of locally known and knowing communion, we have an icon of eternal truth, a reflection of the Trinity, and an effective, family-oriented management system. All members shared in a common priesthood of the believer, imparted at baptism. This system, regardless in what separate Church in which it now resides, is still the best, most stable, and truthfully fruitful structure within the historical church, resting firmly upon ancient church tradition and biblical mandate. This is the “organic” situation of the church, that, regardless of being lost to the literary imagination of later centuries, never ceased to function. This expression of Christ’s work and the manifestation of His Body, is, by very nature, Eucharistic! When this was the definition of the Church, without overly speculative boundaries forced upon her Biblical narrative, it cultivated an age of intellectual giants in the Church, as lawyers and orators established “Master-Disciple” patterns throughout monastic communities and schools in Alexandria, Antioch, Byzantium, and Rome, and brought forward all the untested questions of philosophy and speculation that divided the Apostolic Church. It was the Emperor’s desire to force consensus and use the Church as a mechanism towards political unity that actually caused the problem.

The clear flexibility of the 4^th-5^th century theological thinking is evident within the cosmological syncretism and philosophical speculation of the day. Origen, the greatest example of the spirit of that age, was probably one of the most influential Christian philosophers of all time – and yet, even with his continued influence, is considered a heretic! The Pseudo-Dionysius is another of the better-known influences of this age; a forgery and clearly a neo-platonic philosophical treatment of Christian subjects, written to justify Monophysite philosophy, and yet it still has not been fully questioned by Churches of the Apostolic Tradition, just because so much of the rationale behind the imperial centralization and secular control of the Church that changed the Church is found between its covers. To reject Dionysius’ philosophical understanding would be to question the scholastic paradigms of both the East and the West, and reject the “Hierarchy of Worthiness” that has been imagined to dispense God’s Grace over the last 1500 years. It was within this flux of unbridled philosophical creativity that the Church found the inspiration and ability to change the stable, sustainable, and organic forms of Early Christianity into a new, Imperial, and Greek Philosophical synthesis that was able to encompass the entirety of the contemporary thought world, but also loose its flexibility, unity, and ability to translate itself into other cultures, such as India and China! While these forms were still based in the authority of the Imperial Family, still based upon the existence of family reality, these forms were also sustainable. Only with the collapse of Byzantium and then of the Tzarist Russia, did the sustainability and rationale of the system exhaust itself. Now, Orthodoxy is searching for a new paradigm, one that may already be present within the Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Traditions.

A relationship with Christ or Apostolic succession does not create higher forms of knowledge, and Councils only function as mechanisms for receiving the Gospel into a given context. This being the case, doctrine and communion must be based upon what has been received as revelation, rather than what is agreed upon through philosophy. When the Allegorical Method prevails, it creates a hermeneutical grid that is dependent upon outside agreement. This outside opinion is formed by a culture completely detached from the Scriptures themselves, thus reading into the text what the culture predicates. This is the case of Christian Hellenism, in which the outside cultural categories of Platonic thought were forced upon an unrelated system. When such a process occurs, the interpretational authority no longer rests in the meaning of the text, but is found within what others agree and believe it to be. This creates a form of knowledge higher than the text, and as Origen admitted, not accessible through the text of original context itself, having to wait for subsequent inspiration of later generations to unlock the “true meaning” hidden in the otherwise clear text. When higher knowledge is established through this process, the interpretational authority is no longer the received tradition, which has been embraced as the foundation of authority and the parameter of a traditions revelation, but within the contextual opinions of ensuing generations. This places the developed, derived, dependent tradition ABOVE the texts, above that which has been received, and the gnosis of this culture becomes the defining category of revelation (how revelation is understood = revelation), which both distorts and misplaces the context, and also hardens and calcifies their meanings - so that there is only one possible “Orthodox” opinion on any given subject, which is clearly not the case of the Fathers themselves. This gnostic attitude not only contradicts the history of the Church, and the attitude of the Early Fathers regarding the unity of the Church and the cohesion of its teachings, even in the midst of their individual contradictions, but it also argues for an epistemology in which the later has clearer access to truth than the former. It is easy to argue that if such were true, Orthodoxy’s current inability to form new doctrines or contextually address the problems of the contemporary world clearly disqualifies it from truth, and that by such a continuous definition of truth, Roman Catholicism is the only option for continuous revelation. However, this position creates basic problems for the Gospel, which is essentially a deposit of “unchanging” truth, about a single individual, Jesus Christ, and as such, cannot afford to change it revelation without changing its content, which is the person of God. Therefore, this gnostic epistemology is ultimately unsustainable, and must be replaced with an interpretational model that is based in Scripture itself, and which defines our communion with God, not through our knowledge of God, but through our repentance and Christ’s mercy. Thus, our communion with one another cannot be based on human agreement, but within the revealed faith of the Holy Trinity. 

4. The Ancient Faith Preserved by the Holy Spirit within the Apostolic, Catholic and Orthodox Church of the East as a Testimony to the Other Apostolic Churches

By the definitions provided above, the Church of the East is an Apostolic, Catholic, and fully Orthodox Church. They are Apostolic, founded by Apostles Peter, Thomas, Thaddeus, and Mari, with an unbroken apostolic lineage of bishops until the present day. They are "Catholic", with a complete episcopal, local, and representative form of Church governance. They are Nicene, accepting the Creed of Nicaea as our statement of faith, and declared by the 318 Holy Fathers who affirmed and sealed the Apostolic Gospel that had been taught to them. They accept a Chalcedonian understanding of Christ as fully God and fully man in two natures and affirm the "Tome of Leo", the ancient definition of universally affirmed orthodox Christology.  They are "Orthodox", in that they preserved the teachings of Christ and His Gospel, faithfully, from the beginning in a holy mission of transmission of Christ's Saving Grace and Authority in His Body, the Church. They are Trinitarian, believing in the Father as Origin of the Godhead, Christ the Eternally Born Son, and the Spirit-Ever-Emanating from the Father. They are Antiochene, literalist, Semitic, and focused on the work of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, who was Fully God and Fully Man, and who contained the fullness of both natures, without mixing or confusion. Christ is God, of one nature with the Father, and man, of one nature with his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. He did not derive His Divinity from His Mother, and therefore they call his all-honored, loved, and cherished Mother the "Mshiha Yalada", "the Mother of the Messiah, Our God," not the "Mother of God" which would be to infer the Father and the Spirit, who are all God, were also born of the Virgin (Syriac only having the biblical term for God, "Alaha" or "Elohim", which means "God the Father," and, therefore unable to say that a generic "divinity" like the Greek "Theos" was born of her blessedness). They are liturgical in worship, biblical in language, Eucharistic in understanding of Church experience, and restorative in vision (not “Ecumenical” in the modern sense, but desiring a restoration of communion between sister churches that hold the truth of the Nicene Creed and a right belief in the double nature of Christ). 

The Seal of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, Showing the Tigris and Euphrates and the "House Between the Rivers", Beth Nahrain (ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ) the Home of the Assyrian People

The Church of the East holds a place of honor amongst the ancient Churches as the greatest missionary Church in history. While they stress correct doctrine and fidelity to Christ, they believe that doctrinal knowledge is not what saves man, since these are mysteries that can only be approached from afar with human terminology, but humility and submission to the "Faith Once and For All Delivered to His Saints" but be followed for the sanctification and salvation of souls! They therefore do not deny the Holy Spirit to those who disagree with us over definitions or cultural conceptions, but they humbly insist that the Church of the East has been faithful to the Apostles and Early Christian teachings that were delivered to it by God and preserved within the Aramaic language and culture.  

While they never anathemized Nestorius, who was unfortunately belligerent and shockingly forceful in his debates with the Western Church, The Church of the East is not “Nestorian”, nor have they ever espoused the doctrines that the West associated with him (with supposed duality of persons within Christ), they prefer the biblical language to describe the theological mystery of Christ, not the doubtful language of Stoics, Gnostics, and Greek Philosophers. While Greece has contributed much to the world, they cannot assume that its place of honor and use to be higher than the Holy Scriptures, inspired by God, infallible, and preserved for His Church in the Ancient Tongues of the Hebrews and Chaldeans by the Prophets of Old, and the Aramaic Language which proceeds from these, which was the original language of Christ and His Disciples. 

Where their Tradition began to diverge from the Western Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches is rooted in one term, “Ecumene”, which, to the Romans was the “Totality of Civilization United Under Roman Rule.” This political concept, when confused with the “Completeness of the Local Church" and the “Universality of Christ's Saving Gospel" (Two definitions that are hotly debated by the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox), and in so doing exaggerated the place of the emperor (and later the pope) to a central and irreducible capacity within the process of Christianity’s definition of doctrine and secular enforcement of right practice. This term, when confused, makes true, cross-cultural communication unnecessary, and made the councils of the Roman Church far less than "ecumenical". 

The Church of the East has never been a State Religion, and is therefore free of the tendency to use Christianity as a mechanism for economic and social negotiation between classes and cultures. They hold our "Catholic" status to be the same as the ancient Church, which was the "complete" order of the local lay faithful, deacons, presbyters, and bishops, who are all equal and able to hold one another accountable as pastors and shepherds of the Church. Now, with the passing of the Roman Empire, the tendency is to reduce the importance of secular rulers in the Church (like the Greek Orthodox), recreate a Church-State economy (like the Russian Church is attempting to do), or underplay the whole issue and argue for liberalization and rapid evolution of Church doctrine (like the Roman Catholic Church is currently doing) has become a new mode of operation - forgetting that Western Church doctrine is the result of political power struggles, more than any other factor in her history. All of these approaches to the State are untrue to the experience of the Early Church, and are untrue to the experience of the Apostolic Christian Community outside of Roman Hegemony. The Church of the East testifies that the State was never necessary for the preservation and propagation of the Gospel and Church, and that God has chosen His Church to shine in the persecution and difficulties of this world, and to be glorified with Him in the next! While all may rejoice in the conversion of emperors and princes, their concerns can never be confused with the Kingdom to Come, and never should these worldly rulers have charge over doctrine or the headship of the Church. 

For the Early Church in Edessa, Nisibis, Seleucia-Ctesiphon and the Persian Empire, Rome’s political claims to universality were not only untenable, but impossible to recognize. Rome was NOT universal. More than half of the world's population lived in China, India, and Persia during the time of Early Christianity. Therefore, as Theodosius I through Justinian I increasingly saw their role in the world as the “Protector of Faith” and the “Bishop of Bishops”, their brothers in the East, who agreed with them in Nicaea I and Constantinople I on the definition of the faith (which was the faith of the WHOLE Church, and was preserved by all in the face of persecution and chaos in both the Roman and Persian Empires), and continued to assent to most of the beliefs of the Orthodox world through Chalcedon and Nicaea II (with the rejection of Ephesus I and II absolutely necessary due to uncanonical status and the dismissal of the entire Eastern Church from Roman Communion, and the cessation of invitation of the Persian Christians to council after the disintegration of Imperial Orthodoxy into the warring factions of Monophysite and Chalcedonian Orthodox), but eventually grew apart and lost connection as the Roman Government and the Sassanian and Caliphate Governments continued to fight each other throughout history. They could not, as members of the Persian Empire, be subject or loyal to the Roman Empire! 

Due to the reality of the Persian Church’s inability to submit to the Church as an earthly political organization, the Church of the East proclaimed itself independent in 410AD, while trying to maintain cordial and respectful relations with the Roman Imperial Church, and this independent reality has continued until today. She did so, not as a schism, but as a recognition of the reality. Christ's Church may be broken along cultural lines, and confined to specific locations and nations, but it is never divided. Brokenness is of our sinful, human condition, and not our participation in the Heavenly and Transcendent Mystery of Christ's Body - which is fully realized in Heaven, and is fully present in every local body that has been faithful to apostolic teaching, baptism, chrism, the laying on of hands, and the Lord's Supper. 

For the Persian Church, the questions of Constantinianism and the ensuing tendency to sacradotalize and elevate human rulers was always concerning. This continuing trend can be seen throughout the course of the Roman Church, ending in a collapse of categories and the State sponsorship, use, and ultimate coercion of the faithful. Emperors normally led doctrinal changes, called councils, enforced councils, and did all of this for the political and social unity and stability of the Roman Empire. While this is understandable, the Eusebian tendencies of the Roman Church to confuse Christ’s Kingdom to come with the earthly kingdom of Rome cannot be condoned.  The Church of the East can provide a healthy and doctrinally sound alternative for this compromise, and a way that the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church may continue to understand its role and presence within a postmodern, post-Christian world. Christians everywhere are headed into a reality that has only been understood and faithfully navigated previously through 1500 years of persecution and oppression by the Church of Martyrs, the Church of the East! 

5. Lessons for the Anglo-Orthodox Movement from the East Syriac Tradition
This hidden and often overlooked ecclesial history of the East Syriac Church shows a "Third Way" in theological studies of ecclesiology, which directly undermines Roman Catholic claims to Papal Infallibility and ecclesial centrality, and also rejects the exclusive claims of Eastern Orthodox fundamentalism. It shows that the qualities of catholicity are primarily discerned through biblical categories and practical continuity, and not dependent upon later political developments, the centralization of episcopal power in patriarchates and papal states, and is not, ultimately, even tied to later (non-ecumenically accepted) doctrinal clarifications (such as occurred in both Rome and Constantinople after they fell into schism). The power of the Ecumenical Council is in its reception, not in its declaration, and that reception is dependent upon each, local, Catholic Church, headed by a bishop who is co-equal to all other bishops. The Scriptures, Apostolic Succession, the Historic Episcopate, the Tripartite Office of Bishop, Priest and Deacon, the reception of the Nicene Creed and of the Ecumenical Councils, and the maintenance of the Sacramental Life of the Church. These are the primary qualities of catholicity that mark the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of our Sacraments and the validity of ecclesial orders. It is by these standards, and the historic witness of the Syriac Tradition, that we can confidently disagree with Roman and Byzantine scholasticism and fundamentalism, and insist that we are, indeed, rightful members of the Universal Church and One in the Body of Christ without depending on artificial canonical categories to maintain such a claim!

[1] This Bishop of Rome who would so deeply irritate Tertullian for his lax and liberal rulings on adultery and apostasy that he would reject the “Catholic” position and insist on the Charismatic revelation through the prophecy of the “Paraclete”, Montanus, if only for the sake of maintaining good discipline and traditional modesty in the Church!

[2] “Scriptura est non in legendo, sed in intelligendo”, quoted in Fr. George Florovsky’s “Bible, Church, Tradition – An Eastern Orthodox View”, Harvard University Press, p. 75