Ecclesiology
Yuri Koszarycz
Relations between Church
and the Roman State
In order to understand how Christians were brought to this
state of warfare, we have to reconstruct the main facts of the
relations between the Church and the Roman State. The Christian
Church first appeared in history as a fellowship of self-governing
communities, scattered all over the empire, and spreading even
beyond its borders. There was nothing compulsory about their
unity: it arose organically from a deep realisation, shared by
its members, that they all belonged to the same body, since they
had all been born into the same new life. But from the fourth
century, when these Christian communities received the protection
of the Emperor, their constitution underwent a radical change;
they lost their independence and became subject to the control
of the State. Formerly, if any dispute arose within the Church,
it had been settled by negotiation; but once the patronage of
the Empire was granted, the Emperors began to use their political
power to maintain unity among Christians, often inflicting severe
penalties on those they deemed to be in the wrong.
The Emperors' intentions were praiseworthy: they wished
to preserve peace and concord; but their methods were those of
the old unredeemed world, and the results were fatal. The more
they tried to suppress by force the disagreements among Christians
the more bitter the conflicts became, until at last the Church
was split up into several hostile bodies. Most of the schisms
were caused by national and temperamental divergences among members
of the Christian Church, but once the spirit of mutual charity
had been lost, differences in doctrine made their appearance,
for the divided Christian Churches fell into one-sided interpretations
of the faith.
The first split appeared in the fourth century in North
Africa, where the Roman and native Christians separated into
two competing sects (the Donatist Schism). In the fifth century
the Greeks and Copts quarrelled in Egypt, and simultaneously
a split occurred after the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) in Asia
Minor and Syria between the Greeks and Syrians (the Monophysite
Schism). Later on the Christians in Persia broke off relations
with the Byzantine Church (the Nestorian Schism). These quarrels,
disastrous as they were, did not however affect the main body
of Christians, who tenaciously clung to their unity, firmly believing
that there could be only one Church and one Empire. Meanwhile,
during the course of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries the
Catholic Church developed two distinct types of Christianity.
The first was shared by all Latin-speaking Christians, who formed
the Western Patriarchate of Rome. The second comprised the Syriac,
Armenian and Greek-speaking world, which was divided into four
Eastern Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch,
and Jerusalem.
The Byzantine and Latin traditions differed considerably,
not only in liturgical practices and customs, but also in their
outlook. The Christian East was mainly interested in doctrine;
the Latin West in morals. The East possessed a particular gift
for worship; the West for discipline and order. The East emphasised
the divergence of gifts, the West the need for uniformity and
obedience. It was not always easy for the two sides to understand
each other; they often viewed a new problem from totally different
standpoints, and sometimes these disagreements ended in an open
breach between the occupants of the two principal sees of Rome
and Constantinople. But the schisms invariably ended in a reconciliation,
for both sides acknowledged that the Church of Christ must include
both Eastern and Western Christians, and that their gifts were
complementary.
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