Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 3

The Byzantine Idea of Church and State

Alongside this natural process of co-ordination, perceptible even before Constantine’s conversion, we now observe the creation of a sort of imperial center of the Church, wholly linked in its rise and development with the changing relationship of Church and empire and with the ambiguous but fully obvious weight of imperial authority itself in Church affairs. We have seen that a kind of ecclesiastical general staff grew up around Constantine almost immediately after his conversion and strove to influence the Church through the emperor, thus counterbalancing, as it were, the previous centers of catholicity. Its members included Constantine’s old friend Osius of Cordova and the two Eusebiuses and their group. The Christian emperor inevitably created around himself a new center of attraction for the Church, but this must not be regarded — as it is by some historians — as the enslavement of the Eastern episcopate in rudiments of that “caesaropapism” with which they constantly charge the Eastern Church.

We must from the start perceive the unique profundity of the Byzantine concept of relations between Church and state, which are linked not by any concordat or juridical limitation of power, but by the truth; which is to say, by the faith of the Church, which the emperor first, and through him the empire itself, recognized as its truth, and as a truth superior to themselves. The religious attitude of the empire was not at all a matter of indifference to the Church. A heretical or apostate emperor would mean the downfall of the Christian world, a new defeat of truth by a lie, over which it had only just triumphed — a new defection of the world from Christ. We must not forget that the modern lay state, which arose out of the failure and decay of this Christian experience, was born at a time when Christianity itself had lost its universal appeal, and religion became for a long period the private affair of each individual, particularly a matter of his fate after death. But the success or failure, the errors and achievements, of Byzantium can be evaluated only if we assess the completely different experience of Christianity itself, in that period, as primarily a sense of the cosmic victory of Christ over the “Prince of this world.” In this victory the conversion of Constantine acquires a special significance, as already noted: here the state, hitherto the main instrument of diabolical malice against the Church, bowed down before Christ.
But in doing so it immediately reacquired all the positive significance that Christians, beginning with St. Paul, had never denied it. To orthodox and heretics alike, the concept of a religiously neutral state was equally alien, as was the concept of “clericalism” — the hierarchical subordination of state to Church — which arose later in the West. In the Eastern concept the Church embraced the whole world and was its inner essence, standard, and the source of gifts of the Spirit within it; but it was not the authority in worldly political matters, nor even the source of authority. The latter was granted to emperors and rulers; they should be guided by the truth of the Church, but they did not receive authority from the Church.

Only in this light can we understand why orthodox and heretics alike exercised influence over the emperor, and not merely from opportunism and ambition. Each sincerely believed in his own truth and wished to make it the norm for the Christian empire. The drama of the East lay in the fact that this vision turned out impossible to fulfill, and in actual life frequently alternated with evil. The state itself was still too set in its pagan categories, continuing to believe itself the final goal and value, and religion only its instrument. While for the state, too, the fate of the Church and its dogmatic disputes were not matters of indifference, this was for other reasons. Any division within the Church immediately reflected on the tranquility of the state.

 

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