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A Thousand Years of Caesaropapism or the Triumph of the Christian Faith?
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13745 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1988 |
7,960 Words |
| Author
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Ernest Gordon
Ernest Gordon has been president of CREED (Christian Rescue
Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents) since its inception
in 1981. He was dean of the chapel of Princeton University
from 1955-1981, when he retired. |
There is some confusion in people's minds about the millennium of Christianity soon to be celebrated in the Soviet Union. Most people think of Russia as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; but in the USSR there are fifteen such republics with at least eighteen well-defined ethnic groups or nationalities. Armenians, for example, can trace their Christian tradition back to the beginning of the fourth century A.D.
Nevertheless, the year 988, according to tradition, marks the arrival of Christianity in Russia. That was when the Kievan Prince Vladimir was baptized, and his subjects along with him. With this event the ruler selected the religion of the people and the form of religious worship was distinctly Byzantine. Although the Great Schism of 1054 had not yet taken place, there existed in fact a Western and an Eastern branch of the church. The centers of these branches were located in the twin seats of the Roman Empire, namely Rome and Constantinople.
From the time of the Emperor Constantine, and particularly after the Fall of Rome in 410, church-state relations changed the form and polity of primitive Christianity. What is now known as the Orthodox Church expanded from the church of the East Roman Empire. Its theological position derived from a strenuous and lively conflict of wills and intellects. The Monophysite and Nestorian conflicts of the fifth and sixth centuries may have purged the church of heresies, but they also weakened it in terms of numbers and power.
The schism of 1054 greatly reinforced the particular characteristics of the Eastern and Western branches of the church. The chief doctrine contributing to the
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