Alexander Schmemann

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

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 19

Justinian and the Church.

One cannot understand Justinian’s significance in history, especially in the history of the Church, without understanding that he was also the first ideologist of the Christian empire, who brought the union of Constantine to its logical conclusion. In his reign occurred the first synthesis of Christian Byzantinism, and this in turn was to define the whole future course of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Justinian never distinguished Roman state tradition from Christianity. He considered himself to be completely and fully the Roman emperor and just as organically a Christian emperor. Here lay the source of his whole theory, in the unity of the empire and the Christian religion, which to him was self-evident and completely indivisible. But here, too, may be found the ambiguity and, one must frankly admit, the inner fallacy of his theory. On the one hand it demonstrated that the mind of the empire had undoubtedly changed under the influence of Christianity; Justinian always felt himself to be the servant of God and the executor of His will, and the empire to be the instrument of God’s plan in the world. The empire had placed itself irrevocably under the symbol of the Cross, and its purpose was to guard and spread Christianity among men. Justinian’s interest in missionary work, his contributions to Church charity, and his generous material support of the Church must never be forgotten or minimized, nor can his sincere faith and genuine interest in theology (which was not merely political) be denied. His Code deliberately opens with a confession of the “Catholic faith” in Christ and the Holy Trinity, and on the precious throne of St. Sophia, the symbol, heart, and protection of the empire, are engraved the words: “Thine own of Thine own are offered Thee by Justinian and Theodora.” In a certain sense they actually express the mind and inspiration of the emperor. The empire now belonged wholly to the Christian God.

Most Orthodox historians, however, do not perceive the tragic flaw in Justinian’s theory. Some of them — those who are hostile to Byzantium on the whole — consider him a theoretician of caesaropapism, the subordination of the Church to the state, and regard this as the source of all evils in the history of the Orthodox East. Others, on the contrary, see him as the creator of a “symphony,” a truly Orthodox theory of relations between Church and state, and interpret the errors and violence of his reign as inevitable earthly shortcomings. But the fatal element of Justinian’s theory lies in the fact that there is simply no place for the Church in it. By planting Christianity sincerely and deeply at the heart of all his official acts, the great emperor actually managed not to see the Church, and therefore based his whole concept of the Christian world on false presuppositions.

One must hasten to admit that the word “Church” is encountered innumerable times in his writings, and that he defined the mission of the pious emperor to be “the maintenance of the Christian faith in its purity and the protection of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church from any disturbance.” But what was the real situation behind these words?

 

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