What Is the Eastern Orthodox Church? From Jerusalem to Today

Understanding Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Its Holy Land Roots

For many Western Christians, entering an Eastern Orthodox church can feel both familiar and unfamiliar at once. There is the Gospel, the Eucharist, bishops and priests, the Virgin Mary, the saints, the Cross, and prayers inherited from ancient Christianity. Yet there is also an iconostasis covered with sacred images, clouds of incense, long passages of sung prayer, unfamiliar gestures, and a theological vocabulary shaped by centuries of Greek and Eastern Christian thought.

Eastern Orthodoxy understands itself not as a later branch created by a particular reformer or historical event, but as a continuation of the apostolic Church expressed through the Scriptures, sacraments, bishops, Church Fathers, ecumenical councils, and liturgical tradition. Historically, its institutions and worship developed across many centuries, just as those of Western Christianity did. Its roots, however, reach deeply into the earliest Christian communities of the eastern Mediterranean — including Jerusalem, where Christianity itself began.

That connection makes Eastern Orthodoxy especially important for understanding the Holy Land. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem traces its origins to Jerusalem's first Christian community, while Orthodox monasteries, clergy, pilgrims, and local Arabic-speaking congregations remain part of Christian life throughout the region today.

The historical separation between Eastern and Western Christianity is explored in our guide to the Great Schism and the division between Eastern and Western Christianity. Here the focus is different: what Eastern Orthodox Christians actually believe, how their churches are organized, how they worship, and why Jerusalem and the Holy Land remain so important within Orthodox Christian life.

One Faith, Many Local Churches: What "Orthodox" and "Autocephalous" Mean

The word Orthodox comes from Greek and is commonly understood in the sense of "right belief" or "right worship." Eastern Orthodoxy is not a single centralized institution governed from one international headquarters. Instead, it is a communion of local churches sharing the same faith, sacraments, episcopal ministry, and broad liturgical tradition.

Many of these churches are autocephalous, literally "self-headed." They include ancient patriarchates such as Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, together with churches including those of Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Cyprus, and others. Each is governed according to its own canonical structure, normally through a senior bishop and a synod of bishops.

Autocephaly does not mean that each local church has its own theology. The churches understand themselves as belonging to one Orthodox Church and ordinarily share Eucharistic communion, doctrine, sacraments, and canonical tradition. At the same time, the exact number and recognition of autocephalous churches is not entirely uncontested. Disagreements over jurisdiction and the recognition of particular churches demonstrate that Orthodox governance can be complicated in practice as well as in theory.

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople occupies the traditional first place of honor among Eastern Orthodox bishops and is commonly described as primus inter pares — "first among equals." His role carries considerable historical and coordinating importance, but it is not equivalent to the universal jurisdiction claimed for the pope within Catholic ecclesiology. Other autocephalous churches are governed by their own bishops and synods rather than administratively controlled by Constantinople.

This conciliar understanding of authority is one of the most important differences between Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. Both traditions possess bishops, patriarchs, councils, apostolic succession, and sacramental structures inherited from ancient Christianity; their disagreement concerns, among other things, how primacy and universal authority should function within the Church.

To understand how Christianity reached the point at which such different structures could emerge, it helps to return to the much earlier story of how Christianity began in Jerusalem and developed into the early Church. The first Christians did not begin with a medieval system of patriarchates or national churches. Those structures developed gradually as Christianity spread across the Roman and eastern Mediterranean worlds.

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Theosis and the Mystery of God

One distinctive emphasis of Eastern Christian theology is its willingness to speak about the mystery of God through what theologians call the apophatic, or "negative," way. This does not mean that Orthodox Christians believe nothing can be known about God. Rather, it expresses the conviction that the infinite God can never be completely contained within human concepts or definitions. Christians can speak truthfully about God while still acknowledging that God's reality infinitely exceeds human language.

This approach exists alongside an equally strong conviction that human beings can genuinely encounter and participate in God's grace. In later Orthodox theology, particularly through the work of Saint Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century, this relationship was expressed through a distinction between God's unknowable essence and God's uncreated energies — God's real action and presence through which creation participates in divine life.

This helps explain one of the most important words in Orthodox theology: theosis, usually translated as "deification" or "divinization." Theosis describes salvation not merely as forgiveness of sins or a change in legal status, but as the transformation of the human person through communion with God. It does not mean that human beings cease to be creatures or become God by nature. Rather, they are called by grace to participate ever more deeply in divine life.

"His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness... that through them you may become participants of the divine nature."

— 2 Peter 1:3–4

Orthodox writers often connect this teaching with the Incarnation itself. A famous patristic formulation associated with Saint Athanasius expresses the idea that the Son of God became human so that human beings might share, by grace, in divine life. Prayer, repentance, participation in the Eucharist, fasting, acts of mercy, and the whole sacramental life of the Church are therefore understood as parts of an ongoing transformation rather than isolated religious obligations.

This does not mean that Catholic or other ancient Christian traditions lack teachings about participation in divine life. Deification has deep roots in the shared theology of the early Church. What distinguishes Eastern Orthodoxy is partly the prominence that theosis has retained within its vocabulary for explaining the purpose of Christian salvation.

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Icons, the Divine Liturgy, and Sacred Time

Eastern Orthodox worship engages the senses deliberately. Churches are filled with icons. Incense rises during prayer. Candles burn before images of Christ and the saints. Scripture is chanted, hymns are sung, worshippers bow and make the sign of the Cross, and the Eucharist stands at the center of the Church's communal life.

Icons are among the most recognizable features of Orthodox Christianity, but Orthodox theology does not understand them merely as religious decoration. Their theological defense is closely connected to the Incarnation: because the Son of God truly became visible human flesh in Jesus Christ, the Church can represent Christ in sacred images. Images of Mary and the saints likewise testify to human lives transformed by God's grace.

The place of icons was fiercely contested during the Byzantine iconoclast controversies. The issue was formally addressed by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which Eastern Orthodoxy recognizes as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. The council distinguished between the veneration or honor shown to sacred images and the worship that belongs to God alone, teaching that honor directed toward an image passes to the person represented.

The central Eucharistic service is called the Divine Liturgy. The form celebrated most frequently is the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, while the Liturgy of Saint Basil is used on particular occasions and other ancient liturgical forms survive in more limited use. These liturgies carry the names of great Church Fathers, but the services as celebrated today are the products of historical development: prayers, hymns, ceremonial actions, and structures developed over centuries around an ancient Eucharistic core.

Orthodox liturgical life also gives extraordinary importance to sacred time. The year moves through cycles of fasting and feasting: Great Lent, Holy Week and Pascha, the Nativity fast, the Dormition fast, major feasts of Christ and the Theotokos, and commemorations of saints. Daily worship likewise follows recurring offices of prayer inherited from monastic and cathedral traditions.

Pascha — Easter — occupies the center of this liturgical world. The midnight Paschal service, with the proclamation of Christ's Resurrection and the movement from darkness into candlelight, is one of the defining experiences of Orthodox worship. The Christian calendar is therefore not simply a method of remembering historical events. It is a way of entering them liturgically, year after year.

One of the most recognizable gestures in Orthodox worship is the Sign of the Cross. Orthodox Christians traditionally join three fingers to represent the Holy Trinity and move from the right shoulder to the left, a practice that differs from the customary Roman Catholic direction. The gesture expresses faith in the Trinity and in Christ's Crucifixion.

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The Seven Ecumenical Councils and the Creed

Eastern Orthodoxy recognizes seven ecumenical councils as possessing foundational authority, beginning with the Council of Nicaea in 325 and ending with the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. These councils addressed some of the most consequential theological disputes in Christian history: the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, the relationship between Christ's divine and human natures, and the legitimacy of sacred icons.

An important clarification is necessary here. The first seven ecumenical councils are not uniquely Orthodox councils rejected by Catholic Christianity. The Catholic Church also recognizes these seven councils. They belong to the shared inheritance of Eastern and Western Christianity from the centuries before their eventual separation.

The creed normally recited in Orthodox worship is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed associated with the councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. Eastern Orthodox churches recite it without the later Latin addition filioque — "and the Son" — in the clause concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit.

The disagreement over the Filioque became one of the best-known theological issues separating medieval East and West, although the history was much more complicated than a single disputed word. The question also concerned ecclesiastical authority: could part of the Church alter the wording of a creed received through an ecumenical council without the agreement of the whole Church? Our article on why Eastern and Western Christianity divided follows that dispute from the early medieval period through 1054, the Fourth Crusade, and modern Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.

For Orthodox Christians, the councils are not merely historical conferences whose conclusions happen to remain useful. They are part of the Church's living Tradition: moments in which bishops gathered to discern and articulate the apostolic faith in response to controversy. This conciliar understanding continues to shape Orthodox ideas about authority today.

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Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox: An Important Difference

One distinction becomes especially important in the Holy Land: Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox do not mean the same thing. Their similar names can easily create confusion, particularly in Jerusalem, where churches from both families have ancient communities and rights at Christian holy places.

The Eastern Orthodox communion includes churches such as the Greek Orthodox Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, together with the Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Greek, Cypriot, and other Eastern Orthodox churches. These churches accept the seven ecumenical councils, including the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

The Oriental Orthodox communion includes the Armenian Apostolic Church, Coptic Orthodox Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. Their historical separation from the churches that accepted Chalcedon developed centuries before the medieval East-West division conventionally associated with the Great Schism.

The original dispute concerned how Christians should express the relationship of Christ's divinity and humanity after the Council of Chalcedon. Centuries of polemics often made the theological distance appear greater than modern dialogue has found it to be, and Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox theologians have identified substantial agreement in Christological faith. Nevertheless, the two families remain distinct ecclesial communions today.

This is why seeing an Armenian priest, a Coptic monk, or an Ethiopian worshipper in Jerusalem does not automatically mean one is encountering the Eastern Orthodox Church described in this article. Jerusalem preserves multiple ancient Eastern Christian traditions side by side, some separated from one another long before Rome and Constantinople experienced their own medieval rupture.

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The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem

Few places connect Eastern Orthodoxy with the beginnings of Christianity as powerfully as Jerusalem. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem traces its origins to the apostolic Christian community that emerged in the city after the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost. The Book of Acts describes Jerusalem as the first center of the Christian movement, while early Christian tradition associates James, the brother of Jesus, with leadership of the Jerusalem church.

The story of that earliest community belongs to a period long before the later categories "Eastern Orthodox" and "Roman Catholic" existed. Our guide to Christianity's beginnings in Jerusalem and the early Church follows this apostolic foundation before the development of the patriarchates and the later divisions of Christianity.

Christian tradition remembers James as the first bishop of Jerusalem, and the present Patriarchate regards the apostolic Jerusalem church as its spiritual and historical foundation. The city's Christian history was not uninterrupted in a simple institutional sense, however. Jerusalem was devastated by the Romans in AD 70, and later Christian writers reported that members of the Jerusalem church had fled to Pella before the destruction — a tradition whose precise historical details remain debated by scholars.

After the Bar Kokhba revolt, Hadrian refounded Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina in the second century. The city's Christian community changed substantially over the following generations. Jerusalem initially ranked below Caesarea ecclesiastically, but its unique importance as the city of Christ's Passion and Resurrection increasingly transformed its standing as Christian pilgrimage expanded.

The fourth and fifth centuries were decisive. Imperial patronage under Constantine transformed Jerusalem's Christian landscape, monumental churches arose at major sacred sites, and pilgrimage brought Christians from across the Mediterranean world. The Byzantine Holy Land emerged from this extraordinary period of church building, monastic expansion, pilgrimage, and liturgical development.

At the Council of Chalcedon in 451, Jerusalem received patriarchal status, establishing it among the great patriarchal sees of the Christian world. The modern Greek Orthodox Patriarchate understands itself as the continuation of this ancient Church of Jerusalem and describes the Holy City as the Mother of the Churches because of its apostolic origins.

That history remains visible at Christianity's holiest places. The Patriarchate holds major custodial rights at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, alongside the Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic communities under the complex arrangements known as the Status Quo. Other historic Christian communities also possess established rights within the church.

For a visitor, this means Orthodox Christianity in Jerusalem is not confined to a museum of Byzantine history. Bells, processions, monks, icons, incense, liturgies, feast days, and pilgrimages continue to make the Orthodox presence visible within the same sacred geography that shaped Eastern Christianity during late antiquity and the Byzantine centuries.

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Monasticism in the Judean Desert: Mar Saba and Its Legacy

Eastern Orthodox spirituality cannot be understood fully without monasticism. Monks and nuns are not regarded as belonging to a different Christianity from ordinary believers; rather, the monastic vocation represents an especially concentrated life of prayer, repentance, fasting, simplicity, and contemplation. Monastic communities also played an enormous historical role in preserving theology, liturgy, manuscripts, sacred art, and pilgrimage traditions.

The Holy Land became one of the great centers of early Christian monasticism. From the fourth century onward, ascetics sought solitude in caves and valleys across the Judean Desert, while organized monasteries gradually appeared between Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Jordan Valley, and the Dead Sea.

Among the most extraordinary survivors is Mar Saba, the Great Lavra of Saint Sabbas. Founded around AD 483 by Sabbas the Sanctified, the monastery occupies a dramatic cliffside above the Kidron Valley in the Judean wilderness east of Bethlehem. Its cells, chapels, passages, and terraces seem almost to grow directly from the limestone cliffs.

Mar Saba has been inhabited nearly continuously for roughly fifteen centuries, making it one of the world's oldest surviving inhabited monasteries. Its importance extends far beyond its architecture. The monastic and liturgical traditions associated with Saint Sabbas exerted enormous influence on Byzantine and later Orthodox worship, helping shape practices that spread far beyond Palestine.

The monastery is also closely associated with Saint John of Damascus, the eighth-century theologian whose defense of sacred images became foundational during the iconoclast controversy. John argued that the Incarnation changed the Christian understanding of sacred representation: because the invisible God had truly become visible in Christ, depicting Christ in an image did not deny the faith but testified to the reality of the Incarnation. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 later defended icon veneration along related theological lines.

That connection creates one of the Holy Land's most striking contributions to worldwide Orthodox Christianity. A monastery hidden in the cliffs of the Judean Desert helped transmit patterns of prayer, hymnography, monastic discipline, and theological thought that would eventually be heard and practiced in Orthodox churches thousands of kilometers from Jerusalem.

Mar Saba therefore illustrates something larger than the survival of one ancient monastery. The Holy Land was not only the geographical setting of biblical events. During the Byzantine centuries it also became a workshop in which forms of Christian prayer and monastic life developed and then traveled outward into the wider Eastern Christian world.

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Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land Today

Eastern Orthodoxy in the Holy Land is not simply a Greek religious presence imported into an Arab region. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem serves deeply rooted local Orthodox communities across Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Jordan. Many of its lay faithful are Arabic-speaking Christians whose families have belonged to the region's Christian communities for generations.

At the same time, the Patriarchate's senior hierarchy and monastic brotherhood have historically been predominantly Greek-speaking. The relationship between the Greek hierarchy and Arab Orthodox laity has at times produced significant internal debate over representation, church property, leadership, education, and the administration of the Patriarchate. Recognizing that complexity gives a more accurate picture of Orthodox Christianity in the Holy Land than presenting it as a culturally uniform community.

Orthodox life is visible across the region: in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, in Nazareth and Galilee, in monasteries of the Judean Desert, along the Jordan River, and at sacred places associated with the life of Jesus. Orthodox pilgrims also arrive from Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Serbia, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, and communities throughout the wider world, bringing different languages into places united by shared liturgical traditions.

At many of the Holy Land's Christian pilgrimage sites, this living continuity is impossible to miss. An ancient church may contain Byzantine foundations, later medieval additions, Ottoman-period repairs, modern icons, and a liturgy being celebrated by a community that still regards the place as sacred rather than archaeological.

This is one reason the Holy Land is particularly revealing for anyone trying to understand Eastern Orthodoxy. Here, doctrine, worship, history, architecture, pilgrimage, and local Christian life overlap physically. The Church Fathers are not only names in theological books; some lived, prayed, preached, or traveled through this landscape. The Byzantine period is not merely a chapter of imperial history; its churches and monasteries helped shape practices still found in Orthodox worship. Jerusalem is not only remembered as the birthplace of Christianity; it remains an active center of Orthodox Christian life.

Eastern Orthodoxy in the Holy Land is therefore both ancient and contemporary. Its institutions have changed through centuries of Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader, Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian history. Its communities have endured political upheaval, demographic change, internal tensions, and repeated transformations of the places around them. Yet Orthodox worship continues in Jerusalem, and the relationship between the Church and the sacred geography of the Holy Land remains very much alive.

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