The Orthodox Church

by Timothy Ware

I decided to try to fill in some gaps in my chuch history and knowledge about denominations. Since Orthodoxy isn't a big player around here it wasn't anything urgent, but I really should have looked earlier. The book is from 1960, and so the description of the Iron Curtain churches is now thankfully obsolete.

I see now that Charles Williams borrowed heavily ideas from Eastern Orthodoxy.

I use the term model in the physics sense of a logical construct applied to reality. We use them to describe a system, figure out where to make measurements, and predict what the system will do.

And I think I get a little glimmer of what they mean when they say that icons are central to Orthodox faith. They are used in services, but the model of "icon" is applied to many aspect of life and faith. A physical icon is an image of Jesus or some saint, of course: not the saint himself but a window, almost an incarnation. The church is an icon of God, and completely one even if there are many instances of it. The state is an icon of the heavenly kingdom. Each gesture of the liturgy is an embodiment of some aspect of worship. God was made flesh, so the body is holy also.

And, of course, man is to be deified. That sounds blasphemous stated so baldly, but it does come out of Scripture, and is hedged about with reminders that God is utterly unique.

I knew already that the Orthodox and Catholic were quite similar: that the Orthodox were like Catholics who thought the Pope was too big for his britches. Of course over a thousand years of divergent history resulted in some additional differences, and some very bad blood because of some seriously nasty incidents (like the sack of Constantinople). I see there are a number of subtleties involved too. And I really don't understand why the filioque was supposed to be a good idea. There's a startling amount of chutzpah involved in assuming that you understand the inner workings of the Trinity well enough to go beyond the statement in Scripture.

Orthodox history is grim. The "icon model" is good for hope and working to sanctify body/mind/spirit, but it has several consequences that are less pleasant, not to say crippling:

• "The state is the icon of heaven" means that the church is a national church, and gets involved in politics. Heavily. And in very unedifying ways. And the state gets involved in the church, also in unedifying ways. This got much worse when the Turks took over and established the Patriarch of Constantinople as the offical head of all Christians in their empire, and collected heavy fees from those appointed to the office.
• National churches conflate their state's interests with divine imperatives, which makes relations between them problematic.
• The adoration of icons is very much closer to the Hindu adoration of images than is altogether comfortable, and it is inevitable that idolatry is an issue with the less well-instructed. The author does not go into this, but we've all run into it before.
• Icons are static. Orthodox missionaries were laudably determined to translate Scripture and worship into the native languages, but languages changed. The liturgy didn't always adapt. Men died rather than make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of the traditional two. The icon had become holy itself, rather than pointing to the holy.

Of course an Orthodox Christian might inquire who died and made me God that I should be judging his Church and Tradition. I call history to my side here. It is obvious that men calling themselves Christian have seriously disagreed, and anathamatized each other, and still preached the Gospel and looked after the needy. Logically somebody is at least partly wrong, and having some "apostalic chain" doesn't make you right--many of the parties could provide such. So I have no choice but to analyze to the best of my ability the evidence, the theory, and the practice.