ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH (frequently spoken of as "the Greek Church," and described officially as "The Holy Orthodox Catholic Apostolic Eastern Church"), the historical rep resentative of the churches of the ancient East. It consists of (a) those churches which accepted all the decrees of the first seven general councils, and have remained in full communion with one another, (b) such churches as derived their origin from these by missionary activity, or by abscission without loss of communion.
Origins of the Greek or Eastern Church.—Christianity arose in the East, and Greek was the language of the Scriptures and early services of the church, but when Latin Christianity es tablished itself in Europe and Africa, and when the old Roman empire fell in two, and the eastern half became separate in gov ernment, interests and ideas from the western, the term Greek or Eastern Church acquired gradually a fixed meaning. It denoted the church which included the patriarchates of Antioch, Alex andria, Jerusalem and Constantinople, and their dependencies. The ecclesiastical division of the early church, at least within the empire, was based upon the civil. Constantine introduced a new partition of the empire into dioceses, and the church adopted a similar division. The bishop of the chief city in each diocese naturally rose to a pre-eminence, and was commonly called exarch —a title borrowed from the civil jurisdiction. In process of time the common title patriarch was restricted to the most eminent of these exarchs, and councils decided who were worthy of the dig nity. The council of Nicaea recognized three patriarchs—the bishops of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. To these were after wards added the bishops of Constantinople and Jerusalem.
When the empire was divided, there was one patriarch in the West, the bishop of Rome, while in the East there were at first two, then four and latterly five. This geographical fact has had a great deal to do in determining the character of the Eastern Church. It is not a despotic monarchy governed from one centre and by a monarch in whom plenitude of power resides. It is an oligarchy of patriarchs. It is based, of course, on the great body of bishops; but episcopal rule, through the various grades of metropolitan, primate, exarch, attains to sovereignty only in the five patriarchal thrones. Each patriarch is within his diocese, what the Gallican theory makes the pope in the universal church. He is supreme, and not amenable to any of his brother patriarchs, but is within the jurisdiction of an oecumenical synod. The schis matic churches of the East have always reproduced the ecclesiasti cal polity of the church from which they seceded.
The Greek Church, like the Roman, soon spread far beyond the imperial dioceses which at first fixed its boundaries, but it was far less successful than the Roman in preserving its conquests for Christianity. This was due in the main to the differing quality of the forces by which the area covered by the two churches was respectively invaded. Greek Christianity became the religion of the Slays as Latin Christianity became that of the Germans; but the Orthodox Church never conquered her conquerors.
The great dogmatic work of the Eastern Church was the definition of that portion of the creed of Christendom which con cerns theology proper—the doctrines of the essential nature of the Godhead, and the doctrine of the Godhead in relation with man hood in the incarnation, while it fell to the Western Church to de fine anthropology, or the doctrine of man's nature and needs.
All the churches of the East, schismatic as well as orthodox, accept unreservedly the decrees of the first two councils. The schismatic churches protest against the additions made to the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople by succeeding councils. The Niceao-Constantinopolitan creed declared that Christ was consub stantial with the Father, and that He had become man Disputes arose when theologians tried to explain the latter phrase. These differences took two separate and extreme types, the one of which forcibly separated the two natures so as to deny anything like a real union, while the other insisted upon a mixture of the two, or an absorption of the human in the divine. The former was the creed of Chaldaea and the latter the creed of Egypt ; Chaldaea was the home of Nestorianism, Egypt the land of Monophysitism. The Nestorians accept the decisions of the first two councils, and reject the decrees of all the rest as unwarranted alterations of the creed of Nicaea. The Monophysites accept the first three councils, but reject the decree of Chalcedon and all that come after it. They gave rise to numerous sects and to at least three separate national churches,—the Jacobites of Syria, the Copts of Egypt, and the Abyssinian church, which are treated under separate headings. (See also NICAEA, COUNCIL OF ; CHAL CEDON, COUNCIL OF ; NESTORIUS ; NESTORIANS MON'OPHYSITES.) The relation of the Byzantine Church to the Roman may be described as one of growing estrangement from the 5th to the nth century, and a series of abortive attempts at reconciliation since the latter date. The estrangement and final rupture may be traced to the increasing claims of the Roman bishops and to Western innovations in practice and in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by an alteration of creed. In the early church three bishops stood forth prominently, principally from the political eminence of the cities in which they ruled —the bishops of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. The transfer of the seat of empire from Rome to Constantinople gave the bishops of Rome a possible rival in the patriarch of Constanti nople, but the absence of an overawing court and of meddling statesmen did more than recoup the loss to the head of the Roman Church. The theological calmness of the West, amid the violent theological disputes which troubled the Eastern patri archates, and the statesmanlike wisdom of Rome's greater bishops, combined to give a unique position to the pope, which councils in vain strove to shake, and which in time of difficulty the Eastern patriarchs were fain to acknowledge and make use of, however they might protest against it and the conclusions deduced from it.