Читать книгу The World's Christians - Douglas Jacobsen - Страница 27

The deep roots of the Orthodox tradition extend back to the earliest Greek‐speaking Christian communities within the ancient Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was bilingual, with Greek spoken by most people in the eastern half of the empire and Latin spoken in the west. Words and languages package reality, and thereby shape the way people see the world. Greek‐speaking Christians were more prone to think philosophically and abstractly about matters of faith, while Latin‐speaking Christianity (which would eventually become the Catholic tradition) was generally more concrete and legalistic. To some degree the contours of this distinction remain in place even today.

But while the deep roots of the Orthodox tradition can be traced to the earliest years of the Christian movement in the Roman Empire, it makes little sense to speak about a distinctly Orthodox tradition during these years. The Christian movement as a whole was just getting started, and many different and sometimes contradictory impulses were being expressed. It was only after the year 325, when the first ecumenical (general or universal) council of Christian leaders was held in the city of Nicaea (in the northwest corner of modern Turkey), that the earliest framework for the Orthodox tradition began to coalesce. Three more ecumenical councils would be held before the year 500, culminating in the Council of Chalcedon (451). These four councils produced the foundational principles that form the common base for both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. The last of these councils also triggered the separation of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches.