The 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries were the dark age of Orthodox theology. There was no opportunity for any independent theological creativity in any of the major regions of Orthodoxy—the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia. With no access to formal theological education except in Western Roman Catholic or Protestant schools, the Orthodox tradition was preserved primarily through the liturgy, which retained its richness and often served as a substitute for formal schooling. Most doctrinal statements of this period, issued by councils or by individual theologians, were polemical documents directed against Western missionaries.
After the reforms of Peter the Great (died 1725), a theological school system was organized in Russia. Shaped originally in accordance with Western Latin models and staffed with Jesuit-trained Ukrainian personnel, this system developed in the 19th century into a fully independent and powerful tool of theological education. The Russian theological efflorescence of the 19th and 20th centuries produced many scholars, especially in historical theology—e.g., Philaret Drozdov, Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky, Vasily Vasilievich Bolotov, Evgeny Evstigneyevich Golubinsky, and Nikolay Nikanorovich Glubokovsky. Independently of the official theological schools, a number of laymen with secular training developed theological and philosophical traditions of their own and exercised a great influence on modern Orthodox theology—e.g., Alexey Stepanovich Khomyakov, Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyev, and Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyayev. Others, such as Pavel Florensky and Sergey Nikolayevich Bulgakov, became priests. A large number of the Russian theological intelligentsia—e.g., Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky—emigrated to western Europe after the Russian Revolution (1917) and played a leading role in the ecumenical movement.
With the independence of the Balkans, theological schools were also created in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Modern Greek scholars contributed to the publication of important Byzantine ecclesiastical texts and produced standard theological textbooks. The Orthodox diaspora—the emigration from eastern Europe and the Middle East—in the 20th century contributed to modern theological development through their establishment of theological centres in western Europe and America.
Orthodox theologians reacted negatively to the new dogmas proclaimed by Pope Pius IX: the Immaculate Conception of Mary (1854), which held that Mary was conceived without sin, and papal infallibility (1870), which held that, under certain conditions, the pope cannot err when teaching on matters of faith and morals. In connection with the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, proclaimed by Pope Pius XII (1950), which held that Mary was raised to heaven in both body and soul, the objections mainly concerned the presentation of such a tradition in the form of a dogma.
In contrast to the trend toward social concerns evident in Western Christian thought since the late 20th century, Orthodox theologians have generally emphasized that the Christian faith is primarily a direct experience of the kingdom of God, sacramentally present in the church. Without denying that Christians have a social responsibility to the world, they consider this responsibility as an outcome of the life in Christ. This traditional position accounts for the remarkable survival of the Orthodox churches under the most contradictory and unfavourable of social conditions, but to Western eyes it often appears as a form of passive fatalism. The structure of the church The canons
The basic structure for the Orthodox church is defined by the New Testament writings; the canons (regulations and decrees) of the first seven ecumenical councils; the canons of several local or provincial councils, whose authority was recognized by the whole church; the so-called Apostolic Canons (actually some regulations of the church in Syria, dating from the 4th century); and the “canons of the Fathers,” or selected extracts from prominent church leaders having canonical importance. The various canons were later compiled in the Byzantine nomocanon, attributed in its final form to the patriarch Photius (9th century). The Byzantine church, as well as the modern Orthodox church, adapted the general principles of this collection to its particular situation.
The canons themselves do not represent a system or a code. They do, however, reflect a consistent view of the church, of its mission, and of its various ministries. They also reflect an evolution of ecclesiastical structure. For the Orthodox church today, only the original self-understanding of the church has a theologically normative value. Thus, those canons that reflect the nature of the church as the body of Christ have an unchanging validity today. Other canons, if they can be recognized as conditioned by the historical situation in which they were issued, are subject to change by conciliar authority, and others have simply fallen out of practice. The use and interpretation of the canons is therefore possible only in the light of some understanding of the church’s nature. This theological dimension is the ultimate criterion through which it is possible to distinguish what is permanent in the canons from that which represents no more than a historical value. The episcopate
The Orthodox understanding of the church is based on the principle, attested to in the canons and in early Christian tradition, that each local community of Christians, gathered around its bishop and celebrating the Eucharist, is the local realization of the whole body of Christ. “Where Christ is, there is the Catholic church,” wrote St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 100 ce). Modern Orthodox theology also emphasizes that the office of bishop is the highest among the sacramental ministries and that there is therefore no divinely established authority over that of the bishop in his own community, or diocese. Neither the local churches nor the bishops, however, can or should live in isolation. The wholeness of church life, realized in each local community, is regarded as identical to that of the other local churches in the present and in the past. This identity and continuity is manifested in the act of the ordination of bishops, an act that requires the presence of several other bishops in order to constitute a conciliar act and to witness to the continuity of apostolic succession and tradition.
The bishop is primarily the guardian of the faith and, as such, the centre of the sacramental life of the community. The Orthodox church maintains the doctrine of apostolic succession—i.e., the idea that the ministry of the bishop must be in direct continuity with that of the Apostles of Jesus. Orthodox tradition—as expressed especially in its medieval opposition to the Roman papacy—distinguishes the office of “Apostle” from that of bishop, however, in that the first is viewed as a universal witness to the historical Jesus and his Resurrection while the latter is understood in terms of the pastoral and sacramental responsibility for a local community, or church. The continuity between the two is, therefore, a continuity in faith rather than in function.
No bishop can be consecrated or exercise his ministry without being in unity with his colleagues—i.e., being a member of an episcopal council, or synod. After the Council of Nicaea (325), whose canons are still effective in the Orthodox church, each province of the Roman Empire had its own synod of bishops that acted as a fully independent unit for the consecration of new bishops and also as a high ecclesiastical tribunal. In the contemporary Orthodox church these functions are fulfilled by the synod of each autocephalous church. In the early church the bishop of the provincial capital acted as chairman of the synod and was generally called metropolitan. Today this function is fulfilled by the local primate who is sometimes called patriarch (in the autocephalous churches of Constantinople [Istanbul], Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine), but he may also carry the title of archbishop (in Cyprus and Greece) or metropolitan (in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the United States). The titles of archbishop and metropolitan are also widely used as honorific distinctions.