ORTHODOXY

ORTHODOXY. The Greek term “orthodoxy” means “right or correct belief or worship” (orthos, right, correct, doxa, belief/opinion, or glory; Church Slavic: pravoslavie, right glorification). This term as a collective designation for the local Eastern churches in union with Constantinople is of fairly ancient provenance, although the term “catholic” (q.v.) was also in use in the East during the first millennium. Modern use, in view of the Roman Church’s effective monopoly on “Catholic” as a qualifier, has confined itself largely to “Orthodoxy.” Thus the phrase, “the Orthodox Church,” without further qualifier commonly refers to the Greek, Slav, Romanian, etc., local churches of Eastern Europe and the Middle East (q.v.). The term also necessarily implies a distinction between this communion and the “heterodox” (lit., “of another opinion, worship”), meaning those Christian bodies not in communion with Orthodoxy. The Eastern focus on “rightness” of belief is characteristic and deeply engrained, somewhat in contradistinction to the West’s stress on unity and its horror of schism (q.v.). The Orthodox can live more happily with schisms, a virtue somewhat dictated by necessity, so long as the substance of the faith is not seen as compromised. In the West, the reverse has seemed to be in force: Heresy (q.v.) is almost tolerable so long as it does not rend the fabric of visible unity.