The Church and the Barbarians | Page 6

the
present chapter.
[Sidenote: Church and State in the East.]
But throughout the whole three centuries, from 527 to 847, the essential
character of the Church's life in the east is the same. In the East the
Church was regarded more decisively than in the West as the
complement of the State. Constantine had taught men to look for the
officials of the Church side by side with those of the civil power. At
Constantinople was the centre of an official Christianity, which
recognised the powers that be as ordained of God in a way which was
never found at Rome. At Rome the bishops came to be political leaders,
to plot against governments, to found a political power of their own. At
Constantinople the patriarchs, recognised as such by the Emperor and
Senate of the New Rome, sought not to intrude themselves into a
sphere outside their religious calling, but developed their claims, in
their own sphere, side by side with those of the State; and their example
was followed in the Churches which began to look to Constantinople
for guidance. There was a necessary consequence of this. {13}
[Sidenote: Nationalism of the Churches.] It was that when the
nationalities of the East,--in Egypt, Syria, Armenia, or even in
Mesopotamia--began to resent the rule of the Empire, and struggled to

express a patriotism of their own, they sought to express it also on the
ecclesiastical side, in revolt from the Church which ruled as a
complement to the civil power. Heresy came to be a sort of patriotism
in religion. And while there was this of evil, it was not evil that each
new barbarian nation, as it accepted the faith, sought to set up beside its
own sovereign its patriarch also. "Imperium," they said, "sine
patriarcha non staret," an adage which James I. of England inverted
when he said, "No bishop, no king." Though the Bulgarians agreed
with the Church of Constantinople in dogmas, they would not submit to
its jurisdiction. The principle of national Churches, independent of any
earthly supreme head, but united in the same faith and baptism, was
established by the history of the East. Gradually the Church of
Constantinople, by the growth of new Christian states, and by the
defections of nations that had become heretical, became practically
isolated, long before the infidels hedged in the boundaries of the
Empire and hounded the imperial power to its death. Within the
boundaries the Church continued to walk hand-in-hand with the State.
Together they acted within and without. Within, they upheld the
Orthodox Faith; without, they gave Cyprus its religious independence,
Illyricum a new ecclesiastical organisation, the Sinaitic peninsula an
autonomous hierarchy. More and more the history of these centuries
shows us the Greek Church as the Eastern Empire in its religious aspect.
And it shows that the division between East {14} and West, beginning
in politics, was bound to spread to religion. As Rome had won her
ecclesiastical primacy through her political position, so with
Constantinople; and when the politics became divergent so did the
definition of faith. Rome, as a church, clung to the obsolete claims
which the State could no longer enforce: Constantinople witnessed to
the independence which was the heritage of liberty given by the
endowment of Jesus Christ.
Such are the general lines upon which Eastern Church history proceeds.
We must now speak in more detail, though briefly, of the theological
history of the years when Justinian was emperor.
[Sidenote: Early controversy in Justinian's reign.]

Justinian was a trained theologian, but he was also a trained lawyer;
and the combination generally produces a vigorous controversialist. It
was in controversy that his reign was passed. The first controversy,
which began before he was emperor, was that, revived from the end of
the fifth century, which dealt with the question of the addition to the
Trisagion of the words, "Who was crucified for us," and involved the
assertion that One of the Trinity died upon the cross. In 519 there came
from Tomi to Constantinople monks who fancied that they could
reconcile Christendom by adding to the Creed, a delusion as futile as
that of those who think they can advance towards the same end by
subtracting from it. After a debate on the matter in Constantinople,
Justinian consulted the pope. Letters passed with no result. In 533,
when the matter was revived by the Akoimetai, Justinian published an
edict and wrote letters to pope and patriarch to bring the matter to a
final decision. "If One of the Trinity did {15} not suffer in the flesh,
neither was He born in the flesh, nor can Mary be said, verily and truly,
to be His Mother." The emperor himself was accused of heresy by the
Vigilists; and at last Pope John II. declared the phrase,