The Eastern Churches

Question 1

Justinian the Great

Answer 1

• 6th-century Byzantine Emperor
• With his general Belisarius, he was able to retake much of the territory of the old Roman empire
• effectively re-founds the Roman empire as a Christian society, with Constantinople as its centre
• carried out a massive building program, especially churches and monasteries
• revised Roman law “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”

Question 2

Hagia Sophia

Answer 2

• The Church of Holy Wisdom
• rebuilt by Justinian I in the 6th century in Constantinople
• regarded as one of the wonders of Christendom
• with its massive dome, it was the largest cathedral in Christendom for over a thousand years
• the most important church and centre for Byzantine culture and ceremony

Question 3

John Climacus

Answer 3

• 6th-7th-century monk and ascetic writer
• Mount Sinai
• “John of the Ladder”
• Wrote Ladder of Divine Ascent
• One of most widely read books in Byzantine Christianity
• Describes ascent to God by stages in terms of Jacob’s ladder
• ascetical emphasis

Question 4

Simeon the New Theologian

Answer 4

• 10th-11th-century Byzantine monk, mystic, and spiritual writer
• Constantinople
• influential mystical writer
• emphasized the vision of divine light
• sums up Byzantine spiritual teaching
• in turn influences later Hesychasm (inner mystical prayer associated with Mt. Athos)

Question 5

Mount Athos

Answer 5

• ‘The Holy Mountain’
• peninsula in Macedonia, north eastern Greece
• Since 9th-10th centuries, a major site for Byzantine monasticism
• Associated with the Jesus Prayer and hesychasm, a practice of inner mystical prayer
• “descending with the mind into the heart”

Question 6

Cyril and Methodius

Answer 6

• “The Apostles to the Slavs”
• 9th century
• Two brothers sent out from Constantinople as missionaries
• translated the Bible and service books into Slavonic
• mission took root in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia
• sets the stage for the later shift of Orthodoxy toward Kiev (988) and Moscow

Question 7

John of Damascus

Answer 7

• Orthodox theologian: defender of icons; early defender of Christianity against Islam
• 7th-8th centuries
• Associated with the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem
• wrote Fount of Knowledge
• “We do not change the everlasting boundaries which our fathers have sent, but we keep the traditions just as we have received them.”

Question 8

Patriarch Timothy of Baghdad

Answer 8

• Patriarch of the Church of the East (Nestorian)
• 8th-9th centuries
• centred in Baghdad in Muslim era
• engaged in theological dialogue with the Muslim caliph al-Mahdī
• superintended missionary expansion into central and south Asia, and China

Question 9

Oriental Orthodoxy

Answer 9

• A modern term for a group of non-Chalcedonian churches in the East
• Includes Coptic, Armenian, Syrian, and Ethiopian Churches
• rejected the “two natures” language of Chalcedon and described as monophysite or miaphysite
• distinguished from the (non-Chalcedonian) Nestorian Church of the East who stressed the “two natures” more strongly than Chalcedon

Question 10

Second Council of Nicea

Answer 10

• the seventh and last ecumenical council, in the year 787
• in response to the iconoclastic controversy
• reaffirmed the devotional use of icons and their orthodoxy
• the “veneration” of the image was for the sake of the “true adoration” of the prototype, that is, the divine nature
• defenders of icons (“iconodules”) grounded their defence in the two natures of Christ and the hallowing of matter in the incarnation