by Trey Maxam ? October 26, 2025
Once Christianity was made legal in Rome (Edict of Milan - AD 313), the Christian Church was mostly undivided and organized itself via councils. There exist 2 groups of churches that broke off during this phase: (1) The Church of the East after the Council of Ephesus in AD 431 because of the title given to Mary and (2) The group of churches known as "Oriental Orthodox" after the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 because of the definition of Christ's natures vs his person.
The next split was the "Great Schism" in AD 1054. This is where the Catholic Church in the west became the main western expression of Christianity and the Eastern Orthodox Church in the east became the main eastern expression. The break occurred because of (1) Changes to the Nicean Creed being made by the Catholic Church and (2) arguments about how much power the Pope of Rome should have.
These factors resulted in a Eastern Orthodox church that never made the changes that the Catholic Church made - no purgatory, no transubstantiation, no indulgences, and most importantly: significantly less corruption. Basically all of the factors that caused the protestant reformation in the west never were issues in the east so the east never had a reformation.
In my view, the reformation went too far but it was obviously necessary as even the modern Catholic Church agrees with many of Luther's 95 theses. Both Protestants and Catholics shot themselves in the foot by entrenching themselves in stupid doctrines in order to counter each other - I use the cannon of the bible as my prime example but that could be an essay on its own and there are plenty others.
The bottom line is that the Eastern Orthodox Church escaped all this controversy and has been united without a pope or other supreme authority for almost 1000 years. Since they have no magisterial authority making changes in reaction to world events, their practice has remained very similar to the practice of the church prior to AD 1054. Whenever they do make changes, there is no authority to enforce them so the changes happen from a grassroots level and therefore seem to me to be more reasonable then the things I see in protestantism and catholicism. Of course it is important to remember no church is perfect!