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Denomination

Greek Orthodox Church

Also Known As Greek Orthodox · Greek Orthodoxy (English) The same designator used as an abstract noun, for the tradition rather than for the churches. · Rum Orthodox (Arabic) From Rum, the Arabic for Roman, meaning the empire governed from Constantinople. The self-designation of the Arabic-speaking congregations of the patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem.
Christianity
Origin 49 to 52 CE

Greek Orthodox Church is the English designator for the Eastern Orthodox churches whose historic language and liturgical descent are Greek and whose rite took its settled form at Constantinople. It is not a single institution and it has no governing body. It covers the ancient patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, the Church of Cyprus, the autocephalous Church of Greece, and the diaspora archdioceses that depend on Constantinople. Each of those governs itself. What they hold in common is the Byzantine Rite, the creed of 381 without the Filioque, and a primacy of honour, not of jurisdiction, accorded to the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Facts
History
Separation or Divergence
The mutual excommunications of Rome and Constantinople in 1054, hardened by the sack of Constantinople in 1204 1
Date of Separation
1833 to 1850 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) 2
Defining Doctrinal PositionSourced to the subject's own account
Rejects the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father 3
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 4
Living, and unevenly placed: an established church in Greece, a much reduced minority community in Turkey, and a voluntary body in the diaspora
Finances
Institutional Wealth or Finances
The most commonly cited estimate of the Church of Greece's centrally managed wealth is about 700 million euros, based on a 2008 Kathimerini newspaper investigation into assets directly managed by the Church's own central services; this figure excludes the separate holdings of individual dioceses, parishes and roughly 450 monasteries, and a competing estimate puts the true figure far higher (see the recorded dissent on this fact). 5
Reported via France 24's 2011 coverage of the Kathimerini investigation, filed during the Greek sovereign debt crisis when the Church's wealth became a political flashpoint.
Basis of the Wealth Figure
Journalistic or Scholarly Estimate 5
Financial Disclosure Regime
The Church of Greece publishes no consolidated public account of its own finances; the extent of its wealth is a politically sensitive, largely taboo subject in Greece, even as the Greek state continues to pay the salaries and pensions of Orthodox clergy. With 130,000 hectares, the Church is Greece's second largest landowner after the state itself. 5
Wealth Figure As Of Year
2008 5
Organisation
Governance
No central authority 1
Not one church but several self-governing ones; the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople holds a primacy of honour, not of jurisdiction
Ordination
Restricted to men 1
Ordination
Married clergy permitted 1
Its own record ties its rite to the Byzantine communion.
Relation to the State
Varies by Province 4
The Greek Orthodox Church encompasses autocephalous and autonomous churches whose relationship to the state differs sharply by country: the Church of Greece is constitutionally established as the prevailing religion, the Ecumenical Patriarchate operates in Turkey with no formal establishment, and Cyprus's Church of Cyprus holds a constitutionally recognised privileged status short of establishment.
Observance
Observance Note
Mount Athos, the autonomous monastic peninsula, lies in Greek territory but under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch rather than the Church of Greece 1
Accountability
Response Policy Adopted
Policy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, one of the diaspora archdioceses under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople: put into effect in 2000 by the Holy Eparchial Synod, revised June 2022 to a stated zero tolerance standard applying across the Archdiocese and its related entities, missions and institutions, with an independent confidential hotline added. 6
Scoped to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America specifically, one self-governing jurisdiction within the Greek Orthodox Church as this atlas defines it, the diaspora archdioceses under Constantinople. Not a policy adopted by the other patriarchates, the Church of Cyprus or the Church of Greece, each of which governs itself. The same policy is also referenced under the broader Eastern Orthodoxy entity; recorded here at the more specific jurisdiction it actually governs.
Attributions
Church Family
Eastern Orthodox 1
Eastern Orthodox, Byzantine Rite; a family of self-governing churches
Origins
Origin Period
49 to 52 CE 2
Place of Origin
The Greek-speaking sees of the eastern Roman world, with Constantinople at the centre from the fourth century 1
Founder
No single founder. Its own record states it is not a single institution and has no governing body, covering the ancient patriarchates, the Church of Cyprus, the Church of Greece and the diaspora archdioceses, each of which already carries its own founder fact where one is dateable. 2
A designator for several self-governing churches rather than one founded body; its own text states this plainly.
Origin of the Name
From Greek, the language of the eastern Roman empire and of the Byzantine liturgy, and not from the modern Greek state 1
Practice
Liturgical Language
Greek (liturgical) 1
Trajectory
Membership Over Time
A 2015 poll by the Kappa Research Firm, relayed in the U.S. State Department's 2016 religious freedom report, found 81.4 percent of Greece's population self-identified as Greek Orthodox, 2.9 percent as belonging to other religious groups, and 14.7 percent as atheist. 7
Membership Over Time
By 2022, the U.S. State Department's religious freedom report gave a wider range drawn from multiple research polls, 81 to 90 percent of the population identifying as Greek Orthodox, 4 to 15 percent as atheist and 2 percent as Muslim, a range consistent with, though less precise than, the 2015 Kappa Research figure. 8
Membership Figure As Of
2015-01-01 7
Membership Figure As Of
2022-01-01 8
Basis of the Membership Figure
Independent Survey 8
Learn More
What the Name Covers, and What It Does Not

Greek Orthodox Church is a designator in English, not the name of an institution. Nothing answers to it as a single body, no synod governs under it, and nobody holds office in it. What it names is the family of Eastern Orthodox churches whose historic working language is Greek and whose rite, calendar and canon law took their settled form at Constantinople.

Four of them are the ancient patriarchates: Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Constantinople holds a primacy of honour among the Orthodox churches, which is the right to convene and to speak first rather than the right to govern. The bishop of Alexandria carries the title Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa. Antioch and Jerusalem hold the ancient sees of Syria and of Palestine. To those are added the Church of Cyprus, whose independence the Council of Ephesus affirmed in 431, the Church of Greece, which declared autocephaly in 1833 and was recognised in 1850, and the diaspora archdioceses that depend on Constantinople in western Europe, the Americas and Australia.

What the designator does not cover is the rest of Orthodoxy. The Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Georgian churches hold the same faith, the same councils and the same rite, and nobody calls them Greek Orthodox, because the word here records language and liturgical descent rather than communion. Reading the designator as the Church of Greece is the commonest error made with it, and it is an error of scale: the national church is one member of the family and not the family itself.

Greek by Rite, Not by Nation

The word Greek in the designator is the oldest thing about it and the most misread. Greek was the working language of the eastern half of the Roman world, the language the ecumenical councils argued in, and the language the Byzantine liturgy was composed in. It marked a civilisation long before it marked a nation, and the churches that carry it were named long before there was a Greek state to be named after.

That is why the largest congregations of two of these churches speak no Greek at all. The patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem serve mainly Arabic-speaking Christians of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, who call themselves Rum Orthodox, from Rum, the Arabic for Roman, meaning the Roman empire that was governed from Constantinople. Their liturgy is celebrated in Arabic. The Patriarchate of Alexandria serves congregations across sub-Saharan Africa and offers worship in local languages. The diaspora archdioceses of western Europe, the Americas and Australia began as immigrant churches and now hold generations who worship in English and in other languages.

Under Ottoman rule the Orthodox population of the empire was administered as a single community headed by the Patriarch of Constantinople. That fixed the association between the Greek hierarchy and Orthodox Christians of every language, and it is where the name the Arabic-speaking churches still use came from. The national autocephalies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries redrew the administrative map without touching the rite, and the designator outlasted them, because it was never an administrative term in the first place.

The Synod Votes for the New Calendar, and Parishioners Do Not Follow

In March 1924 the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece adopted the Revised Julian calendar the previous year's Constantinople congress had proposed, applying it to the fixed feasts of the church year while keeping the unrevised Julian calendar for Easter and the movable feasts that depend on it. The change was announced with little warning to ordinary parishes, and it meant that the Christmas the faithful had always kept became a date thirteen days earlier than the one their calendars had shown the year before.

Opposition arose immediately among the lower clergy and among laypeople who had not been consulted, and it did not fade. The objection was not only to the new date but to the authority behind it: critics argued that a change to the church's own calendar touched the whole Orthodox world and so could only be decided by an ecumenical council with every local church represented, not by one national synod acting alone. Congregations that refused the new calendar kept their own priests, then their own bishops, and the movement organised into what is known today as the Greek Old Calendarists, or Genuine Orthodox Christians, a body with its own hierarchy that remains outside communion with the Church of Greece a full century later.

The split is a domestic one, running inside a single national church rather than across the Greek speaking world this atlas describes elsewhere as a rite carried well beyond any one nation.

Greek Orthodox Church
Filter Results18 entries

Baptismal life

Greek Orthodox Church

Compline

Greek Orthodox Church

Foot washing

Greek Orthodox Church

Icon Painting

Greek Orthodox Church

Intinction

Greek Orthodox Church

Liturgy of the Hours

Greek Orthodox Church

Matins

Greek Orthodox Church

None (Ninth Hour)

Greek Orthodox Church

Observing the Sabbath

Greek Orthodox Church

Pilgrimage

Greek Orthodox Church

Prayer

Greek Orthodox Church

Prime

Greek Orthodox Church

Seven Sacraments

Greek Orthodox Church

Sext

Greek Orthodox Church

Terce

Greek Orthodox Church

Veneration of icons

Greek Orthodox Church

Veneration of saints and Mary

Greek Orthodox Church

Vespers

Greek Orthodox Church
Connections

Associated With

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct Policy, Sources

This source names Greek Orthodox directly: "The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America's own national policy on the investigation and resolution of sexual misconduct complaints against clergy, put into effect by the Holy Eparchial Synod of the..."

Source Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct PolicyHoly Eparchial Synod, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
Ioannis Sakellarides and the Cherubic Hymn (Archesbookhouse and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America), Sources

This source names Greek Orthodox Church directly: "of America's National Forum of Greek Orthodox Church Musicians resource page cataloguing published Divine Liturgy settings, several credited as based on or transposed from Sakellarides's own melodic..."

Source Ioannis Sakellarides and the Cherubic Hymn (Archesbookhouse and Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America)Archesbookhouse bibliographic listing; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America church music editors
Madaba, Cities

This source names Greek Orthodox Church directly: "Madaba Map set into the floor of the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint George, the oldest surviving cartographic depiction of the Holy Land, showing Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Jordan River and dozens..."

Source The Catholic EncyclopediaCharles George Herbermann et al. (eds.)
Overview of the Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus (Kypros.org), Sources

This source names Greek Orthodox Church directly: "of Cyprus, which extended to the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus, the Muslim Vakf, and the Armenian Orthodox, Maronite and Latin-rite communities the exclusive right to regulate their own internal..."

Source Overview of the Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus (Kypros.org)Kypros.org editorial staff
The 1955 Istanbul Pogrom, Wars & Conflicts

Istanbul's Greek Orthodox community and its churches, cemeteries and clergy were the pogrom's principal target, attacked across the city over two nights.

Source The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of IstanbulSperos Vryonis Jr.
The 1964 Istanbul Greek Expulsion, Wars & Conflicts

Istanbul's Greek Orthodox community, both the Greek nationals directly expelled and the wider Turkish-citizen Rum community bound to them by family and business, absorbed the expulsion's impact.

Source The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations, 1918-1974Alexis Alexandris
Vasilopita, Sacred Foods

Saint Basil's Day and the vasilopita custom belong to the Greek Orthodox Church calendar.

Belongs To Church Family

Eastern Orthodox Churches, Groups

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions

Branch Of

Christianity, Religions
Eastern Orthodoxy, Denominations

One of the national Eastern Orthodox churches; distinct from the senior Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Rejected Here

Papal primacy and infallibility, Doctrines

Rome's honour as a see is not in question here. What is rejected is universal jurisdiction over the whole church and the personal infallibility defined in 1870. Primacy among the Orthodox churches is held to be a primacy of honour, not of power.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
The Filioque, Doctrines

The creed is recited here in its original form, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Latin addition of and the Son is rejected both as an unauthorised alteration of a conciliar text and as bad theology, and it remains the principal doctrinal difference with Rome.

Source The Nicene-Constantinopolitan CreedFirst Council of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Held Differently

Purgatory, Doctrines

This church prays for the dead and holds that the prayers help them, but it does not teach a distinct place of satisfactory punishment or the calculus of temporal penalty that the Western doctrine carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Codex Vaticanus, Textual Witnesses

The Greek-speaking churches read the Byzantine text of 1904 rather than the Alexandrian text this codex carries, so its authority for them is historical rather than liturgical.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Original sin, Doctrines

What is rejected is the Augustinian transmission of guilt, not the teaching that humanity begins damaged. This church speaks of ancestral sin: what passes from Adam is mortality and a nature inclined to sin, not personal culpability for another's act.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff
The Real Presence in the Eucharist, Doctrines

The gifts are held to be truly the body and blood of Christ. The change is confessed without committing the church to the scholastic account of substance and accident that the Latin term transubstantiation carries.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Governed By Polity

Decentralised Polity, Doctrines

Holds Element

Axion Estin, Hymns & Liturgical Texts

Named for the icon of that title on Athos, and sung in Greek after the consecration.

Byzantine Chant, Sacred Sound

Sung in Greek, which is the language the notation and the modal theory were built for.

Source A History of Byzantine Music and HymnographyEgon Wellesz
Hermeneia of Dionysius of Fourna, Other Writings

The painter's manual compiled on Athos in the eighteenth century is the Greek handbook of iconographic composition, prescribing what each scene must contain and how it is to be laid out.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Mar Saba, Sacred Sites

The monastery in the Kidron valley belongs to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and has been inhabited without interruption since the fifth century.

Patmos, Sacred Sites

The monastery of Saint John on the island is a dependency of the ecumenical patriarchate and stands over the cave in which the Revelation is traditionally placed.

Philokalia, Other Writings

The Greek church produced the collection on Athos and printed it at Venice in 1782, and it remains a standard of its spiritual teaching.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sacred Sites

The monastery at the foot of the mountain is an autonomous Orthodox church under its own archbishop, and it holds a charter of protection attributed to the Prophet and a mosque within its walls.

Tama, Sacred Objects & Ritual Items

The stamped metal plaque of the thing prayed for is pinned beside an icon in fulfilment of a vow, and the walls beside a working icon carry hundreds of them.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Sacred Sites

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem holds the largest share under the Status Quo, including the main body of the church and its own chapel within the shrine over the tomb.

The Church of the Nativity, Sacred Sites

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate holds the basilica and the greater part of the grotto beneath it under the same Status Quo that governs the Holy Sepulchre.

The Council of Chalcedon, Councils and Synods

The Greek church receives Chalcedon as the fourth of the seven councils.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
The Quinisext Council, Councils and Synods

The Trullan canons are part of the received canonical inheritance of the Greek church.

Source The Council in Trullo RevisitedGeorge Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (eds.)
The Second Council of Nicaea, Councils and Synods

Received as the seventh council.

Source Decrees of the Second Council of NicaeaSecond Council of Nicaeathe holders' own account

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Great Lent, Holidays & Festivals
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct Policy, Abuse Inquiries and Response Policies
Hesychasm (the Jesus Prayer), Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The Jesus Prayer belongs to Orthodoxy, defended by Gregory Palamas against the charge that its practitioners claimed to see God's essence; monks and increasingly laypeople repeat it alone on a knotted woollen cord, and teachers warn against the breathing technique without direction.

Hieromonk, Religious Offices
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Holy Orders, Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. A married man may be ordained deacon or presbyter, though not bishop, and a man may not marry after ordination. This is the settled difference from Latin practice.

Holy Week, Holidays & Festivals
Hypostatic union, Doctrines

Received in the Chalcedonian form: one person known in two natures, without confusion, change, division or separation. Receiving Chalcedon is what places this church in the Eastern Orthodox communion rather than the Oriental Orthodox one.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account
Icon Painting, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Incarnation, Doctrines

Held in the terms the Council of Chalcedon set in 451, which this church receives as the fourth of the ecumenical councils.

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account
Infant baptism (paedobaptism), Beliefs & Restrictions
Infant Baptism and Christening, Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Infants are baptised, chrismated and communicated in one rite, so initiation is complete before the child can speak.

Intinction, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Communion is given in both kinds together, the consecrated bread having been placed in the chalice and administered to each communicant from a spoon. The result is the same as intinction and the manner is not, and the practice here is ancient rather than adopted for convenience.

Jesus Prayer, Prayers

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Lazarus Saturday, Holidays & Festivals
Letter of Jeremiah, Scriptures & Texts
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Liturgy of the Hours, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Marriage Ceremony, Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The marriage service is the Crowning, and the priest is the minister of the sacrament rather than a witness to a contract the couple make, which is the opposite of the Roman analysis.

Matins, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Metropolitan, Religious Offices
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Monastic Tonsure, Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Tonsure is the rite of monastic profession itself, performed in degrees, and is not a preliminary to it.

Monastic Vows, Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Monastic profession is made in degrees, the rassophore, the stavrophore and the great schema, rather than as a single set of three vows.

Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Holidays & Festivals
New Testament, Scriptures & Texts
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
None (Ninth Hour), Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The Ninth Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion and precedes Vespers, so that the liturgical day turns on it.

Nunc Dimittis, Prayers

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Observing the Sabbath, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Sunday is kept as the day of the Resurrection and the day of the Divine Liturgy, and Saturday retains a liturgical character of its own that the West largely lost.

Orthodox Christian Fasting, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Orthodox Christian Funeral, Rituals

Kept in the Greek tradition, where the service is the exodios akolouthia.

Source Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic ChurchIsabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator)
Orthodox Crowning (Stefana), Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Palm Sunday, Holidays & Festivals
Panikhida, Rituals

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Kept across the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Pascha, Holidays & Festivals
Patriarch, Religious Offices
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Pentecost, Holidays & Festivals
Pilgrimage, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Pilgrimage to Mount Athos, to Jerusalem and to the shrines of local saints is a settled devotion of this church.

Prayer, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Prayer here is weighted toward the fixed cycle of the services and toward the short repeated prayer of the heart rather than toward extempore petition.

Prayer of Manasseh, Scriptures & Texts

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Prayer of the Tax Collector, Prayers

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches.

Priest (Presbyter), Religious Offices
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Primacy of Honor Among Orthodox Churches, Doctrines

This church is autocephalous and governs itself. It accords the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople a primacy of honour as first among equals, which is not a jurisdiction over it.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)
Prime, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The First Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion, appended to Matins, and was never suppressed here as Prime was in the Roman rite.

Protodeacon, Religious Offices
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Psalm 151, Scriptures & Texts

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Reader, Religious Offices
Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Rejection of the filioque, Beliefs & Restrictions
Septuagint, Scriptures & Texts
Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account
Seven Sacraments, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The Orthodox perform the same rites but have never treated seven as a fixed count, calling them mysteries; chrismation follows infant baptism at once and communion is given to infants from then on, where the West defers both.

Sext, Practices

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. The Sixth Hour is prayed daily from the Horologion and is joined to the Third in ordinary parish use.

Sin as Illness in Orthodox Theology, Doctrines

Sin is described in medical rather than forensic terms: Christ the physician, the church a hospital, the passions the disease, and confession a treatment rather than a sentence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff

Showing 51 to 100 of 128 in Objects and Practices of This Tradition, page 2 of 3.

Originates in Language

Byzantine Greek, Languages

The Byzantine rite is celebrated in Greek here, in the received liturgical form of the language rather than in the modern spoken one.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Related To

Church of Greece, Denominations

The Greek Orthodox Church entry covers the tradition; this one is the autocephalous church of the Greek state specifically.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Uses Liturgical Language

Byzantine Greek, Languages
Sources
1. The Orthodox Church
Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware), Penguin Books, 1993View the Source
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
3. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed
First Council of Constantinople, 381The Nicene Creed text
Quote, The Nicene Creed text
We believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
the holders' own accountView the Source
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
5. Debt Crisis Puts Pressure on Wealthy Orthodox Church (France 24, 2011)
France 24, 2011View the Source
6. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Sexual Misconduct Policy
Holy Eparchial Synod, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 2022View the Source
7. 2016 Report on International Religious Freedom: Greece
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2017View the Source
8. 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: Greece
U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2023View the Source
Decrees of the Second Council of Nicaea
Second Council of Nicaea, 787the holders' own accountView the Source
The Council in Trullo Revisited
George Nedungatt and Michael Featherstone (eds.), Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1995
A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography
Egon Wellesz, Clarendon Press, 1961View the Source
The Definition of Faith of the Council of Chalcedon
Council of Chalcedon, 451Session IV, Definition of Faith
Quote, Session IV, Definition of Faith
Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son of God and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same Person, that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man.
the holders' own accountView the Source
Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
John Meyendorff, Fordham University Press, 1979On ancestral sin, deification and the apophatic methodView the Source
Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church
Isabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator), Houghton Mifflin, 1906The litanies, which name the Theotokos ever-virginView the Source
Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, Crete 2016
Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, 2016News Bulletin Number 1
Quote, News Bulletin Number 1
The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church commenced on the Sunday of Pentecost, 19 June 2016, with the Pan-Orthodox concelebration of all the Primates of the participating Orthodox Churches.
View the Source
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Institutional Wealth or Finances

Manos has publicly estimated the Church of Greece's wealth at over one billion euros, well above the widely cited 700 million euro Kathimerini figure this fact records; the Church itself, through Archbishop Hieronymus, has separately dismissed claims of major Church wealth as 'a myth.' The boundaries between different categories of Church assets are not transparently disclosed, so the true figure remains disputed.

A dissenting reading, from Stefanos Manos, former Greek Minister of EconomyDebt Crisis Puts Pressure on Wealthy Orthodox Church (France 24, 2011), France 24, 2011

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