In the July 2011 edition of Christianity Today there is an interview with Bishop Kallistos Ware, formerly known as Timothy Ware, who had converted to Orthodox Christianity as a young man and who wrote a rather definitive book entitled The Orthodox Church.  Since his conversion to Orthodoxy, Ware has become a monk, took the name Kallistos, became a lecturer at Oxford University and was made Metropolitan Bishop of Diokleia for Greek Orthodoxy in Great Britain.  Ware is representative of a number of evangelicals who have converted to Orthodoxy.  Among more prominent Christians who also have converted is Franky Schaeffer, the son of Francis and Edith Schaeffer.

Because of these rather well-known conversions, I am devoting this entire edition of Issues in Perspective to an analysis of Eastern Orthodoxy and its differences with Roman Catholicism.

The Origins of Roman Catholicism. The Christian church began on Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit filled the nearly 120 believers gathered in Jerusalem.  From there it spread to Judea, Samaria and then to the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 1:8).  Organizationally, the church developed from a plurality of church leadership in the 1st century (e.g., Philippians 1:1), to a bishop having authority over several churches in the 2nd century, to a hierarchical structure into 3rd and 4th centuries.  By the 5th century, the church regarded the Bishop of Rome as the first among equals and the city of Rome as its geographical center.  Through church councils (e.g.,   Nicea [325] and Chalcedon [451] and others), the church reached agreement that the Bible taught God is Trinity, Jesus is God, His death is a substitutionary one and that He is coming again.  Protestant church historians generally maintain that institutionalized Roman Catholicism began with Gregory?s appointment as bishop of Rome in A.D. 590.  Though he refused the title pope, administratively, he organized the papal system of government that characterized the entire medieval period.  Thus, all the major bishoprics of the West looked to him for guidance and leadership.  He likewise standardized the liturgy and theology of the burgeoning Roman Church.  Doctrines like the veneration of Mary, purgatory, an early form of transubstantiation, and praying to departed saints found their infant pronouncements in his writings.  Gregory also promoted missionary activity among the Germanic tribes, who had conquered the Western Roman Empire.  Gregory laid the foundation for the great edifice known as Roman Catholicism.