I have heard many Roman Catholics say that theirs is the "original Church" established by Jesus Christ.
They were one of the various regional churches established by the Apostles, but Rome was by no means the only one--a simple perusal of Acts, the first three chapters of Revelation and the titles of the Pauline Epistles will tell you that much. Corinth, Thessaloniki, Athens, Thyatira, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria and all the other cities named in the New Testament are or were Orthodox until this present day. A lot of the churches in Asia Minor have since either been exterminated by the Turks during the Greek and Armenian genocides, or moved elsewhere; Ephesus, for example, no longer exists because its harbor dried up, and Smyrna was a city that was hit especially hard during the genocides, with many Greeks and Armenians literally swimming for their lives to Greece. I met a friend and his family in Athens for Easter this year who are actually descended from some of those same Anatolian Greeks.
I don't know anywhere near as many people of the Eastern Orthodox faith but I can't recall ever having heard them say that.
I am vaguely aware of the reasons behind the split between these two Christian factions, but I'm wondering if Eastern Orthodox Christianity also claims that it is the "original Church" and if it sees Roman Catholicism as having broken away from them instead of the other way around.
We absolutely do see ourselves as being the authentic continuation of the New Testament Church, and we do see the Roman Catholics as having gone astray and into heresies, adding new "dogmas" which are nowhere to be found in either the New Testament or in the Fathers of the Church from St. Ignatius of Antioch in 105 AD right on down to the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787.
Our two churches split primarily over arguments about the Filioque and the growing claims of the Papacy to more and more power over the Church. The Orthodox, like the early Church of the New Testament, sees the ecumenical (or all-church) council as being the ultimate authority when matters of dogma are at stake. An ecumenical council is a representative meeting of all the clergy of the Orthodox Church--Russian, Constantinopolitan, Antiochian, Jerusalem, Serbian, etc. Compare the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, where the Apostles and the presbyters. As a side note,
presbyteros in Greek is the word meaning "priest"; in the Church of the first century, there wasn't yet a formal division between the offices of bishop and priest, which would happen once Christianity grew beyond small little clusters in individual cities. Getting back to the point, in order for an ecumenical council to be deemed as such, it must be in harmony with the Apostolic Tradition (the teachings of the Apostles as found in the New Testament, our liturgies, and the understanding of the faith passed down from generation to generation and often written down by the Fathers). They must also stand the test of time; the various ecumenical councils were always deemed to be such by later synods and councils of the Church. An ecumenical council must also be accepted by the laity. For example, the Catholic attempts to heal the schism at the Council of Florence-Ferrara in the 1400's were rejected by the Orthodox laypeople, even though the Orthodox bishops signed onto them due to both political pressures from the Byzantine Emperor so he could recruit Western powers to save Constantinople from the Ottomans, and also theological influences from Scholastic thought which had begun seeping into the ranks of Orthodox theologians.
The Catholics, however, see the ultimate authority in the Church not in ecumenical councils, but in the Pope of Rome, who is called the "Universal Bishop" (a title which Pope St. Gregory the Great in the 600's said was the forerunner to the Antichrist) and "Vicar of Christ on earth". He is above even an ecumenical council; nothing can contradict his rulings. The
Dictatus Papae read as follows:
- (1) The Roman Church was founded by God alone.
- (2) The Roman Pontiff alone can with right be called "Universal".
- (3) He alone can depose or reinstate bishops.
- (4) In council, his Legate, even if a lower grade, is above all bishops and can pass sentence of deposition against them.
- (7) For him alone is it lawful, according to the needs of the time, to make new laws, to assemble together new congregations, to make an abbey of a canonry, and, on the other hand, to divide a rich bishopric and unite the poor ones.
- (8) He alone may use the Imperial Insignia.
- (9) All princes shall kiss the feet of the Pope alone.
- (12) It may be permitted to him to depose emperors.
- (13) It may be permitted to him to transfer bishops, if need be.
- (14) He has the power to ordain the clerk of any parish he wishes.
- (18) A sentence passed by him may be retracted by no one. He alone may retract it.
- (19) He himself may be judged by no one.
- (22) The Roman Church has never erred. Nor will it err, to all eternity--Scripture being witness.
- (23) The Roman Pontiff, if he has been canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made a saint by the merits of St. Peter, St. Ennodius Bishop of Pavia bearing witness, and many holy fathers agreeing with him. As it is contained in the decrees of Pope St. Symmachus.
- (25) He may depose and reinstate bishops without assembling a Synod.
- (26) He who is not at peace with the Roman Church shall not be considered 'catholic'.
Needless to say, the Orthodox were absolutely unwilling to indulge the Pope in these tyrannical claims to power, and so we let the Roman Church schism from us. The entire ideas of Papal Infallibility and Papal Supremacy are completely antithetical to how the early Church operated, and Catholics try in vain to find examples of Papal Infallibility and Supremacy in the Fathers.
Many on both sides today see the Filioque clause as being less important and not much reason to entirely split the Church, but it does highlight differences in how we do theology, so for the sake of completeness I'll explain...
In the original text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the section on the Holy Spirit reads thus: "And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, Who has spoken by the prophets." This is how we Orthodox still say it in church. However, the Roman Catholics added in the phrase "and the Son" (Latin
Filioque) so that it reads, "And we believe in the Holy Spirit... Who proceeds from the Father
and the Son." This addition to the Creed was made by a local council in Toledo, Spain in the 600's to combat an uptick in the Arian heresy in the region, though for centuries it was vigorously opposed by the Popes; Pope St. Leo III, for example, had the Creed engraved on silver shields (without the Filioque) and hung on the doors of St. Peter's in Rome in an act of protest against this innovation of the Filioque. However, under the pressure of the Carolingian and later Holy Roman Empires, eventually the Popes capitulated and the Filioque began to be recited throughout the Roman Church. This change to the Creed, in Orthodox eyes, diminishes the role of the Holy Spirit, and also confuses the persons of the Father and the Son. The Father alone in Orthodox Trinitarian theology is seen as being the source of the Trinity and also its unity; both the Son and the Spirit derive their Personhood and their Divinity from Him. This is why we say that "the Father is the only true God", because He is the fountain of the Godhead.
On the flip side, in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Catholics claim that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father
and the Son--effectively, the Holy Spirit has the source of His being from two Persons (what is called "double spiration"). However, Catholics deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds from two sources, and says that He instead proceeds from the Father and the Son "as from one source". The Orthodox would ask, then, where the Father ends and the Son begins, as this setup effectively makes the Father and the Son the same Person, which would be a kind of Modalism. Indeed, we Orthodox see Catholic Trinitarian theology as a whole as being a departure from that of the Fathers, placing the unity of the Trinity on the Divine Essence, rather than on the Person of the Father, as the Fathers of the Church had done.
The separation was simply the first of many. This division was more a question of culture; Greek vs Roman, geography, regional hierarchial rivalry that led to the division of Rome. The theological differences were not sufficient to be the cause, Neither left the other they just went separate ways as two political cultural and regional hierarchies.
While linguistic and geographical factors did certainly come into play, these factors informed many of the theological divisions between the two churches. Cultural differences aren't reason to split the Church, otherwise one would expect Russia and Antioch to split.
