G. K. Masterson

So, the next few posts in this series are going to focus a little more on understanding the structure of the Orthodox church and its core beliefs and practices because understanding them is kind of important to understanding why Roman civilization continued and flourished up to the fifteenth century in Byzantium but floundered and collapsed in Rome and points West.

Previously, I warned the Catholics not to come at me over the fact that our two communities haven’t seen eye-to-eye on a lot of things for the better part of over 1500 years. This week, it’s the Protestants’ turn to get their feathers ruffled.

Now, I’m going to say this again: this is the Orthodox point of view. I’m not asking you to take it for your own or to even like it. I’m asking you to accept it as the Orthodox and Eastern view, a view that is very decidedly not Romanocentric. If you can do that, then we can do that “agreeing to disagree” thing. But if you think you’re going to come at me with how the Holy Spirit departed the church in the early centuries because the Pope was bad (it didn’t and the Pope wasn’t always a bad guy), how Christ “shrouded” the Real Truth until Luther/Calvin/Williams/Smith/Henry VIII/Parham/whoever your Modern Prophet Who Talks To Jesus On The Two-Way Radio is was born (go join the Gnostics and talk about how super Magickal and Spiritual you are and how you’re the Mostest Spechulist Widdle Snowflake in the Universe), or how Holy Tradition is wrong and obscures the truth of the New Testament (where in the name of God do you think the New Testament came from, you bloody-minded, squirrel-brained imbeciles?!), then I make you the same offer I made the Catholics last time:

I’ll throw the Golden Gate and the Brooklyn Bridge in free for you fine folks!

Sorry if that seems harsh but if I have to suffer through Yet Another Conspiracy Theory about how there wasn’t a “real, true church” from about 50 AD until Whenever The Great Restorer You Like Was Born AD, then I might start stabbing people with wet noodles. The true, universal and complete (that’s what “catholic” means), and Apostolic church existed in the entire Roman Empire, East and West, from 33 AD without a breach. Even the Roman Catholic Church is an off-shoot of the ancient church — just a section that went off to do its own thing due to political realities and is no longer in agreement with the Synod of the other ancient churches and the newer churches that arose from them (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Russia, Bulgaria, Armenia, Ukraine, Japan, the Orthodox Church in America, etc). Some Protestant churches are off-shoots of the Roman branch but most of them… well… no offense, but y’all are a little nuts, okay? It’s like you forgot how to read the New Testament sometimes even though you seem to worship the words in it more than the Word it speaks of.

Why is that, I wonder?

Oh yeah, because of the lack of respect for the ancient traditions we call “Holy Tradition!”

Now, before you start up with your Sola Scriptura arguments, I want you to ask yourself one very, very simple question. I want you to be honest with yourself about it, too. The question is this:

When and how was the New Testament written and compiled and how did the church continue to spread the message of salvation and teach the faith before then?

Now, I answered part of this a few entries back when I said that the books that would come to comprise the New Testament were written between about 35 AD and 95 AD. That’s the “when” part. The “how” part is “they were written with quill or pen on parchment or papyrus.” Remember, the printing press is still about 1,400 years from existing in Europe (and about 850 years from existing in China). The New Testament did not get delivered, already leather-and-cardboard bound and printed in columns with the chapters and verses numbered and words of Christ in red in modern English on Pentecost 33 AD. I mean, the Holy Spirit brings a lot of gifts, but that wasn’t one of them. 😉

Copies of the various gospels, books of instruction (like The Didache), the epistles, and other important documents had to be copied by hand and then delivered by individual human carriers (telegraph, telephone, and email being quite some time in the future). Any given church might have two, maybe three of the Gospels and a handful of some of the epistles alongside some books of local instruction, letters and writings that were not later made canon, and letters and writings that would later be held to be heretical (in error).

So then, how did the Church as a whole continue to ensure that it was teaching things correctly when the New Testament was still being gathered?

The answer is two words that some of you are gonna hate: Holy Tradition.

Remember, the people who founded the early churches were the Apostles or the Equal-to-the-Apostles (like Mary Magdalene). They had been taught by Christ Himself and had witnessed His earthly ministry. They could teach from memory and, guided and guarded by the Holy Spirit, they did not change the teachings that had been given to them. They made use of writing when it could be useful. They also wrote the first ikons (to the Orthodox, ikons are not paintings, they are writings). These could be very useful in instructing and inducting new Christians since the Romans would see only “pretty artwork” but the message contained in the ikon could be understood by Christians who had not learned to read. The Apostles would lay their hands on those who were to take over the teaching and administration of a given church and would ask that the Holy Spirit guide and guard the new deacon/priest/bishop the same way He had guided and guarded the Apostles. Then the Apostles would go off to found another community.

That laying-on-of-hands is important. That’s how tonsuring and ordination is done. Every single deacon, priest, bishop, metropolitan, and patriarch of the current Orthodox Churches can trace their lineage through the direct laying-on-of-hands all the way back to Pentecost. It’s an unbroken line that, in the West, only the Pope can match. It was also one of the first sacraments. Others were baptism by full immersion in water, the Eucharist at the shared meal at the “love feasts,” the anointing with holy oil the newly consecrated and the sick, the blessing of matrimony, and the practice of confessing ones sins before God.

“But, those are all mentioned in the New Testament!”

Yes, they would be mentioned in it. Once it was written. Once it had been compiled. Once every church had a copy of it. But what about the churches in the first few centuries who had only oral teachings and a handful of notes to work off of? They were somehow able to follow the teachings without needing a copy of any of the written Gospels or the Epistles. Indeed, it would be because of the importance of Holy Tradition that the physical written texts were preserved, copied, and shared between the communities! The New Testament itself is one of the fruits, one of the products, of Holy Tradition!

Holy Tradition itself arose out of Judaism, one of the few “early” religions to place importance on written Scripture as well as oral traditions and observing annual celebrations (like the Passover). Most religions from early history did not have a strong literary component and did not require literacy to achieve rank within them. So, the emphasis on keeping records of the actual teachings in writing and preserving and copying those writings came to Christianity straight from the faith of the Jewish fathers. Remember, almost every last Apostle was Jewish. The first council in Jerusalem actually dealt with the question of “did Christians need to convert to Judaism first?”

Much of the formality of Orthodox liturgy and the Catholic mass likewise arises out of Judaism. Jewish practices at the synagogues and Temple formed the basis for how worship services were carried on in Christianity. Like the first century Jews, our worship services consist of:

1. An opening blessing
2. Prayer
3. Readings from the Law (Judaism)/Readings from the New Testament (Christianity)
4. Readings from the Prophets (Judaism)/Readings from the Gospels (Christianity)
5. Sermon
6. The Eighteen Blessings (Judaism)/The prayers to prepare for the Eucharist (Christianity)
7. The Dismissal

(Taken from The Historic Church, pages 26 – 27, by Archpriest John Morris)

The other things that make some Protestants twitch also come out of the first few centuries following Pentecost. By the time that the New Testament canon was set (sometime in the fourth and fifth centuries), the Church already had a rich support in Holy Tradition to keep it from falling into error and worse. It also had a structure that protected it from being overly influenced by the government — a structure that worked well in the East but was discarded in the West.

But we’ll get to that next time.

— G.K.

So, this is going to be one of those posts where the Catholics aren’t going to like what I have to say. Therefore, I’m going to make a deal with them: if y’all are willing to understand that this is the Orthodox point-of-view and that I’m not asking you to accept it, like it, or agree with it beyond saying “that is what the Orthodox think, we think differently,” then we can do this thing called “agreeing to disagree.” If you’re going to come at me thinking that you can ignore Acts of the Apostles (you can’t), that Rome was the only church Peter founded (it wasn’t), and that letters recognizing the bishop of Rome as first among equals because of Rome’s political importance are somehow saying that he’s Super Bishop and King of All Creation (he’s not), and that I’m going to suddenly change my mind well…

I’ll throw the Golden Gate Bridge in free.

So, as I mentioned last time, Old Rome did not much cotton to this “New Rome” being given the same prominence it had once held now that the seat of government had moved east. When Constantine argued that the bishop of Constantinople should be granted the title of “Patriarch” since he now led the church in the Imperial Capitol, well, that didn’t sit well with Rome. However, it went through because the process of allowing the expansion of the church was not subject to much centralized control (how could it be — this was way before telegraphs, the postal service, steamships, railroads, or anything resembling fast transit). It helped that the church of Constantinople had been founded by one of the Apostles (Andrew) in the first century so it wasn’t like it hadn’t been part of the ancient community.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, Constantine converted to Christianity. However, back in this era, there wasn’t any solid definition of what it was to be Christian and which teachings from which churches were authentic and correct. There was a lot of heresy and heterodoxy in this era and the Gnostic garbage is probably the most well-known of the lot.

“But what were the Gnostics? Weren’t they the ones with the Real Truth(TM)?”

Well, Timmy, do you know how there are about ten dozen different flavors of Baptist (First Baptist, Southern Baptist, Reformed Baptist, Methodist-Baptist, Primitive Baptist, Evangelical Baptist, Billy Bob’s Baptist BBQ and Casserole…) but there is at least one Baptist church that insists that only its members are doing things correctly and that only its members are going to heaven and that you had to attend it every Sunday and listen only to the sermons of its current pastor and definitely had to pay a certain amount to the church? That Baptist church would be the modern-day version of the Gnostics.

Look, if you doubt me, go read the garbage for yourself. You can find it all for free here. You’ll find that every last one of the so-called Gnostic gospels is some version of “yeah, Jesus told everyone the stuff you read in Matthew, Mark, or Luke but He totally told me the Real Magic and how to become Greater Than God and have Superpower and all you have to do is listen to the guy who says I taught him these secrets and you can be one of the Real Christians.” The handful that aren’t are just personal prophecy that didn’t have jack to do with the church or the people (yeah, a book that says that Anna had a dream that her daughter would marry a king isn’t exactly going to be as useful as the Pauline Epistles when it comes to teaching about Jesus).

I’ll be here with the whiskey and the eye bleach when you get done torturing yourselves.

Back so soon?

Well, settling the teachings of the church into those which were correct (orthodox) and those which were incorrect (heterodox) was part of why there was the First Great Ecumenical Council held in Nicaea in 325 AD. Hosius of Cordoba presided with Emperor Constantine attending just to keep things from getting out of hand (and yes, these councils could and did turn into actual, fist-to-the-face, fights at times). The main issue of contention in the First Council was to settle the issue of Arianism. Now, Arianism wasn’t some tiny disagreement over trifling details like “do we sing the processions in C major or G major?”

Arianism was a Big Deal. Arians argued that Jesus was not co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father and instead was just the highest creation. This went against what Christ Himself had said and against the teachings from the Apostles that God the Father and God the Son were one and were co-eternal and co-equal. If you argued that Jesus was just a human who God possessed, then why worship Him since Jesus wouldn’t have had much to do with the salvation of humanity? The fights over whether or not Jesus was God (He is) or was just Some Guy got pretty contentious and the First Council tried to resolve the issue (but Arianism would keep cropping up for a while — heck even today there are some Protestant denominations that hold Jesus as the First Creation). Part of this was to say that Arianism (and a lot of the Gnostic writings that supported it) was crap and to establish the Christian Creed (called the Nicaean Creed) to establish what the church actually did believe and teach.

The final list of which books were canonical was not fixed at this Council but most of the Gnostic writings were chucked out as heretical or useless.

So, what was the Nicaean Creed? Well, just about any Christian will recognize the first part of it. The original creed, as set at the First Council of Nicaea said this:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father;
Of the substance of the Father, God of God, and Light of light, very God of very God;
Begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father. By whom all things were made, both in heaven and in earth;
Who for us men, and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate, and was made man.
He suffered and the third day, He rose again and ascended into the heavens.
And He shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.
And we believe in the Holy Ghost.
And whosoever shall say that there was time when the Son of God was not, or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature or is subject to change or conversion, all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.

Other matters were settled at this council as well such as how to calculate the date for Pascha (Easter) and about how to welcome lapsed Christians back into the church and what steps of repentance they had to take. You can read more about the First Council at Wikipedia, Britannica, or by getting a copy of The Historic Church by Archpriest John Morris.

So, things would rock on for the next few centuries but Rome was getting more and more irked by the loss of their prerogatives and that did not spell peace for the Empire… but we’ll deal with that a lot over the coming posts.

— G.K.

…On Christianity and trade routes.

You didn’t actually think the answer was going to be “rock ‘n’ roll,” did you?

Yeah, no Constantinople was founded by our boy Constantine because he was paying attention to the times. That’s right, I’m talking about the actual city now that I promised I would get to last time.

Now, don’t get me wrong — Rome had been a powerhouse for a long time and definitely had a good position on the Tiber and the Mediterranean. It had been ideally situated to challenge and later beat the tar out of Carthage. It was accessible by the Greeks and the Macedonians and had the ability and the materials necessary to build some really good ships. But once Carthage had been stomped into the ground, well, there really wasn’t much in the way of trade west of Rome. Now, sure, there were silver and tin mines in Spain and tin mines up in Britannia but it was easier, in some ways, to transport those goods overland instead of on ships. Trade shifted back eastward towards Greece and Asia Minor since that is where one could find spices coming up from India and China and other points Oriental as well as stuff coming up from more-central-Africa via the Nile.

Something that Americans especially seem to have a hard time understanding is that Europe lacks any kind of river system akin to the Mississippi (where transport from a lot of different branches is feasible which is why cities like St. Louis, Vicksburg, and New Orleans were so important). The “biggest” river system is probably the Loire and that pretty much gets you across France. It doesn’t get you from France down to Rome. It doesn’t get you from Berlin to Rome. Now, rivers and coasts were vital for trade in the era before the internal combustion engine was invented. Yes, yes, Rome had good roads for people using actual horses for horsepower but that still doesn’t mean that it’s cheap or easy to travel from Rome up to Paris or over to Madrid. Europe had a lot of forests, a lot of floodplains, and a lot of mountains that made travel overland difficult and expensive.

But Asia Minor (which is where the Byzantines were) had fewer of these problems. The Silk Roads were fairly well-established with plenty of stops for food and water. Coasting along India and Arabia was easy enough. Constantinople, founded on top of Byzantium, was located on the European side of the Bosporus which is the strait linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. This put it in the best possible position to control trade between Asia and Europe. It also had the benefit of not having been a major settlement until Constantine decided to move there so it didn’t have loads of pagan temples. Constantine wanted to weaken the political power of the pagan families who still had a lot of influence in Rome and he wanted to assure that Christianity would be ascendant.

After all, he owed the Biggest C for giving him victory at Milvian Bridge.

So, based on the fact that Rome the City had been pagan far longer than it had tolerated Christians and that most of the major trade routes were in the East, Constantine decided it was time to move the capitol to his new city. It helped that there was already a good colony there with enough infrastructure and secure walls (Byzantium). Add in the fact that Constantine was the one and only Emperor now and that he was consolidating political control into his own hands and one capitol and moving from Rome made a lot of sense. It also put him much closer to three of the four ancient churches (Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch). Once the city had been consecrated on May 11, 330, it was considered the New Rome.

However, Old Rome wasn’t quite ready to give up its power and influence so easily. But we’ll deal with that next time.

— G.K.

So, when we last met, I said that we would get to our boy Constantine.

And boy howdy, we are!

First, a little bit of housekeeping. We’re dealing with an era where everyone had the same few names it seems. So, the cast of characters is this:

Flavy-Flav — Flavius Valerius Constantinus the Father of Constantine the Great
Dio — Diocletian the Douchecanoe, Emperor of Rome
Max-Man — Maximian, Dio’s junior co-Emperor
Gal — Galerius, Flavy-Flav’s co-junior Emperor
Sev — Valerius Severus, a junior Emperor once Max-Man and Flavy-Flav became Senior Emperors
Minmax — Maximinus Daza, a junior Emperor with Sev
Max-T — Maxentius, son of Max-Man, who didn’t like Sev at all
The Big C — Constantine the Great
Licey — Licinius, a co-Emperor with The Big C for a time and the guy who wrote the Edict of Milan with him

The Big C was born to a Greek Christian mother (Helena) and a Roman father who had been part of the Tetrarchy. The Tetrarchy was an attempt to make the very large, very complex, very gi-freaking-normous Empire a little less of an unwieldy kludge. And, it worked okay for a little while. Basically, there was a Senior Emperor who ruled the Eastern section of the Empire (Dio the Douchecanoe being the first) and a Junior Emperor who ruled the West (Max-Man). The Emperors appointed their own successors. Dio and Max appointed Gal and Flavy-Flav (Constantine’s dad) to Junior Emperors. When they Dio and Max retired, Gal and Flavy-Flav became Senior Emperors and appointed Sev and Minmax to be junior Emperors.

However, when Flavy-Flav died and The Big C was proclaimed to be both Senior and Junior Emperor by his dad’s army, things got dicey. It didn’t help at all that Minmax’s own son, Max-T disliked his dad’s co-Emperor Sev. When Minmax retired, he named Max-T to be junior Emperor. Sev bowed out in 307 and Max-T and The Big C were proclaimed to be Seniors by Max-Man. Meanwhile, Gal, who was just chilling out, appointed Licey to be the Senior in the West and Minmax to be Senior in the East.

Four Senior Emperors does not a stable government make. That’s way too many chiefs and not enough Indians. So, the four Emperors did what men with armies have done — they sat down and discussed their differences rationally and then came to an agreement.

Yeah. Right. No, they went to war. The Big C was fighting Max-T for control over the Western Empire while Licey chilled and ruled in the East after Minmax died. The Big C and his armies were gathering to throw down with Max-T and his armies near the Tiber at a bridge called the Milvian Bridge. It was late October. The armies were preparing for battle. The Big C has a vision from The Biggest C (Christ) that tells him if he fights under The Biggest C’s sign, he’ll win.

So The Big C does what anyone would do if The Biggest C told them that: he ordered his men to paint this on their shields and to know that the Christian God was on their side.

Guess who won the battle of Milvian Bridge? 😉

So, with Max-T out of the picture, The Big C rules the Western half of the Roman Empire exclusively, with no co-Emperor in the West, from 312 to 324. The Big C and Licey wrote the Edict of Milan in 313, which ended the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire and granted them official toleration. However, that was probably the last time the two agreed on anything. In 314, The Big C went after Licey because he thought that Licey was hiding Senecio (who wanted to overthrow the Big C). The Big C won that war and he and Licey tired very hard not to piss each other off. However, Licey had to go and appoint a co-Emperor for himself: Valerius Valens.

That did not sit well with The Big C. We’re talking it flew like a lead balloon (and not the cool one that Mythbusters made). The Big C invaded the Balkans and wiped the floor with Licey at the Battle of Cibalae. Licey fled south all the way to Adrianople and then tried to smooth things over with The Big C. However, our boy Constantine wasn’t about to surrender victory to the jaws of defeat and told Licey to get bent and marched on him, resulting in the Battle of Mardia. The Big C let anger get the better of him and this battle was kind of a stalemate. Licey and The Big C came to terms where Licey agreed that The Big C was the boss of all of Rome and of him and The Big C agreed to let Licey keep Thrace to rule. Licey also agreed to put a cap in Valens.

Things settled down for about seven years until the Sarmatians started causing problems. Licey had been dealing with them for a while but they crossed the Danube into The Big C’s turf and started wrecking stuff. Of course, our boy Constantine got ticked off and went after them. He crossed the Danube chasing them which meant that, technically, he had invaded Licey’s turf. Again.

Oh well.

The Big C followed this up with another invasion, sending the Goths into Thrace. Licey pointed out that The Big C had broken their agreement and war broke out again in 323. The Big C proceeded to roll up Licey’s forces at the Battle of Adrianople, forcing Licey to flee to Byzantium and hide behind its walls. Our boy Constantine then proceeded to beat the tar out of Licey’s fleet, which was supposed to be a really good fleet, at the Battle of the Hellespont. The final fight of this war was the Battle of Chrysopolis where Licey got his rear end handed to him. The Big C’s sister, who was married to Licey, begged her big bro to spare her husband so into exile Licey went with Constantine being the Sole Boss of All of Rome.

But the Big C didn’t just chill and rest on his laurels. No, he had a city to build.

But we’ll get to that next time.

— G.K.

Okay, so, pretty much everyone knows what Rome was, that it was originally a Republic and then Caesar took control and got stabbed on March 15 and there was a war and Augustus took over and then it was an Empire. We all know that Rome dominated much of the known world at that era, having taken control of most of the Mediterranean, north Africa, the Iberian peninsula, and the Hellenic world of Greece and the Holy Lands in Asia Minor. We all know about Augustus or Tiberias doing a census, Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, Jesus being born, His growing up in Judea, His earthly ministry, and His death and resurrection followed by His ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit.

Still with me? Good.

We all pretty much know that after Pentecost, the Apostles went around evangelizing and founding churches. Peter founded the churches in Alexandria, Antioch (with Paul), and Rome. Jerusalem had a church from the beginning and it was run by James the Less. Paul went to the Gentiles and spread word of the Word around Greece founding churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, Colossae, and Hieropolis — among others. Andrew went to the Scythians, James the Greater headed out to Spain, Philip and Bartholomew hung around in Greece with Paul for the most part, Thomas went to Babylon and then on to Persia and India, Matthew headed out to Egypt and Ethiopia, Jude went to Syria and to Armenia with Matthias, and Simon the Zealot headed out towards Carthage and then up to Britain. From the mid-30s to the mid-90s of the first century, the Gospels and Epistles were written with Revelation being the last one in the 90s.

During the first century, Christianity was just assumed to be another branch of Judaism by the Romans and since the Romans had finally come to terms with the Jews following a whole lot of revolts and riots and bloodshed1, Christianity at first just kind of slid by under the Roman radar. When the Romans realized that Christians were not some subsect of Judaism, well… Bad Times Started.

So, much of the first, second, and third centuries AD saw periodic persecutions of Christians (some Emperors were more chill than others). These centuries also saw a lot of Christian writings being penned. Out of these years we get things like The Didache, Polycarp’s letters, Ignatius of Antioch’s letters, Irenaeus’s writings like Against Heresy, and Tertullian’s Apologies. However, we also get a lot of garbage out of these centuries like the Gnostic gospels (“ooh, lookit me, I have spechul, sekret knowledge and you have to do what I say before God will whisper it to you” make up the vast majority of this dreck which I had to read while working on my MA. It doesn’t even rise to the level of good fanfiction like what Milton and Dante would later write). We also get a lot of heresies out of this era like Arianism.

As Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and to parts beyond, it started to be a movement to be reckoned with. The emphasis on charity and helping the community wasn’t something found in the Roman (pagan) religion. I mean, Jupiter the Best and the Greatest at everything but keeping his libido under control didn’t exactly tell his followers “hey, build some hospitals and schools.” 😉 Even Apollo seems to have been too busy chasing random nymphs to have told his followers to build the odd doctor’s office (and he was the god of healing… among other things). But Christians built schools and taught the beginnings of literacy. They donated to help the poor. They tried to help heal the sick through prayer and through providing spaces for people to be nursed through their ailments. So, eventually Christianity caught the eye of this one guy. I mean, he wasn’t anyone super important. He was just an army dude.

His name? Constantine. Flavius Valerius Constantinus. And he was getting ready to throw down with Maxentius at a little place known as “Milvian Bridge.”

But we’ll get to him next time.

— G.K.

[1] With the Jews, the Romans finally stumbled across a people who they couldn’t subsume their gods into the Roman pantheon with the whole “oh, yeah, that god? Totally Jupiter,” shtick. So, when the Jews wouldn’t make sacrifices to Jupiter the Best and the Greatest (at everything except being faithful to his wife) for the Emperor, the Romans assumed they were rebelling and Bad Times Ensued until they and the Jews settled for sacrifices being made on behalf of the Emperor to the Jewish God (who was not Jupiter the Best and the Greatest at everything except keeping it in his pants).