Political Christologies: How the Ancient Church Dealt with the Problems of Human Power

Where Does the State Begin and the Church End within the Theological Inheritance of the Ancient Church?

“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

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Introduction 

Many within the Byzantine Church believe that the Church on earth has a “Single Hypostasis” consisting of the Holy Spirit mystically indwelling the baptized physical world, creating a visible Church that is just as secure in its innate, ontological reality as the glorified Church in Heaven. Because we know where this Church is, canonically, we then can rest our salvation squarely upon obeying this Church and applying ourselves to submitting to its earthly hierarchy. These Churches, connected as they are historically and financially with their local temporal polity, then command their adherents to be good citizens and to follow the directions of their secular leaders, resulting in the “Symphonia” of the Church resting completely and comfortably within the “Economia” of the State, making the effort to split the natures of Church and State nearly impossible, and creating a situation analogous to the Christological definitions of Chalcedon - “Recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one [nation] and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two, but one and the same…” (The Formula of Chalcedon, AD 451) This historically resulted in the Roman Governmental polity, wars of religion, the political usage of Christianity for national, imperial, or sectarian authority somehow being seen as “God-blessed” and “used of God,” and often made it impossible for those within their ecclesial cultures 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 role against the declarations of the Imperial State Church, and one which goes to the core of Christian identity. This inevitability leads to an apophatic theology enfleshed in state of human brokenness and ignorance, rather than in saintly glorification or theosis, and results in permanent schisms in the Body of Christ between local Orthodox Churches.

The Ancient Church understood that the government is a necessity in 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.” While much changed after the legalization of Christianity and the support of Constantine the Great, nothing essentially changed about this realization. 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 everywhere now currently find themselves. If True Christianity is "State-Sponsored Christianity," then very few of us have a hope of salvation! 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!

The Source of Division 

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 human authority must ultimately be based on Christ.

Dyophysite Political Christology

Dyophysite Christology, championed by the School of Antioch, was a political critique of the State Church by a community that believed itself beyond the governance of the secular administration, the Persian Empire, while also acknowledging the valid Apostolic existence of the Church outside of this Empire in the West and Africa - Christologically maintaining that separate origins always maintain separate identities and propensities, the famous "Qnuma" of Syriac theology, while unified in a single "Persopa" or personality. The rejection of the Council of Ephesus and the resulting ecclesial chaos also shows how this played out within the historical context: 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 the Bishops of the Church of the East maintained relationships with secular authorities in both Rome and Persia, remained uncorrupted by political authority, and never became 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 “baptize an army by marching it through a river.” These Churches maintained the integrity of the human individual as the "Image of God," relied heavily upon evangelization and reason for propagation of their message, were not (until Tamerlane and the Sack of Baghdad in 1401) associated with “peoples” or “nations,” and saw the Christian community as existing outside of political boundaries or governmental institutions.

Monophysite Political Christology

Monophysite Christology of Alexandria was a political statement of self-sufficient episcopal governance in contrast to the “worldly system” of a compromised Byzantine ecclesial 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, as many of its early Patriarchs, including St. Cyril the Great, truly were. 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 even meet with each other in council.

Chalcedonian Political Christology

Byzantine Chalcedonian Christology was a political justification of disparate natures being inseparably conjoined in hierarchical reality - Church and State joined in a single ecclesial hypostasis. While positively working to protect the Church and propagate the Holy Scriptures, this theological innovation led to the preservation of two differing origins and two functions while arguing for their indivisible unity - not just of a distinct "personality," but of essential ontological being within God’s “economy of grace,” and an eternal 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 we can see in the practice of slavery and wars of aggression, along with the persecution of heretics by the official Church through its secular military arm. This leads to the classic problems of Byzantine "Caesaropapism." It was the theological difficulties with maintaining distinct ecclesial and political natures in one national polity 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, while not compromising Himself in essence.

The Structure of Society in the Byzantine Middle Ages, Showing its "Double-Headed" Nature

The Flag of the Palaiologoi Imperial Byzantine Family, Showing the Unification of Eastern and Western Rome in One Polity. Later, After All Hope for Reunification with the West was Lost, a New Meaning was Assumed in the Byzantine Flag, which was the Unity of Church and State

The Last Coin Minted in the Name of Constantinople in Italy, Venice, AD 1480

The Flag of the German Holy Roman Empire and the Hapsburg Royal Family, Reflecting the Byzantine Ideal in the West

The Shield of the Russian Republic, Showing the Double-Headed Eagle and St. George Slaying the Dragon 

The Current Flag of Mount Athos, Center of World Orthodox Spirituality

Early Success within the Syriac Approach

As time has passed, there are obvious difficulties with all three Christological/Political constructs. The greatest difficulties was experienced by the Nestorians ("East Syriac Orthodox"), who were systematically destroyed by Islam and other Christians, lacking a state to protect them. The choice for this ancient form of polity under pressure is either apostasy or martyrdom, as it was for the Early Church. They often chose martyrdom, earning the Assyrians the title of "The Martyred Church." 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 reject Christianity, while conforming 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 East 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 great earthly weakness within the Syriac Christian approach is in its openness to persecution because it lacks of protective Christian government, leading to its near extinction under oppressive Islamic regimes over the last 1400 years. 

Continuing Byzantine Development 

The Byzantine model, while theoretically beautiful and easy to justify in its Imperial or Roman Catholic extrapolation, 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). This leads many Byzantine theologians to believe in an “8th Sacrament” in the anointing of Christian Emperors as “Defenders of the Faith.” With this approach, Eastern Orthodoxy 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. This lead directly to a bifurcated vision of holiness that often 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 Hesychasm, 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 mantle to Russia, Russian ecclesial function is 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 Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches must decouple from the State in order to overcome these negative tendencies. 

The Only English Pope of History, Pope Adrian IV, Crowning the Holy Roman Emperor, Just a Few Years After the Great Schism in AD 1054, Showing How the West Finally Concluded that All Secular Authority Originated within the Apostolic Succession of the Papacy

The Source of Coptic Strength

The Monophysite model 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 as a massive civilization.

St. Irenaeus’s Ecclesiology Shows 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)

Defining the Church's Essential Nature

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 all the earlier conflicts. Thankfully, the Orthodox have learned the vanity and futility of human intellectual unity, and would never do something like this again, preferring inaction and avoidance to any real theological inquisition into why this state of disunity exists in a Church ostensibly united! The recognition of the need for wide-spread ecclesial repentance for Orthodox theological Gnosticism is spreading, and the belief that philosophy and contemplation can replace the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ 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 lose 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. It also maintained unity between the highly differing East and West for over one thousand years!

Discerning Christ's Body

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 Kyrgma. 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 Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism that bear weight if the political situations of the day are fully considered. 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 positive perspective is more ancient, finding 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. 

A Struggle for Preeminence Among the Brethren 

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! 

The Emperor Pushing Until the Church Breaks

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 Spiritual Unity of the Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed was 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 heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of Light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man. And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried. And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; whose Kingdom shall have no end. And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. In one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen."

The Church's Hypostatic Problem

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 4th-5th 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. 

The Limits of Christian Knowledge in the Apostolic Deposit of Faith

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 later interpretations have clearer access to truth than the earlier understandings. It is easy to argue that if such were true, Orthodoxy’s current inability to form new doctrinal approaches 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 its revelation without changing its content, which is the person of God. Therefore, this gnostic epistemology is ultimately untenable, and must be replaced with an interpretational model that is based in Scripture and the authority of the Early Creeds and Councils themselves, and which defines our communion with God, not through our knowledge of God, but through our repentance and Christ’s mercy. Our communion with one another cannot be based merely upon human agreement, but within the revealed faith of the Holy Trinity and the mystery of obeying God's commandments.