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The Church Is One

A. S. Khomiakov, in Birkbeck, 1895

Chapter 11

By the will of God the Holy Church, after the falling away of many schisms, and of the Roman Patriarchate, was preserved in the Greek Eparchies and Patriarchates, and only those communities can acknowledge one another as fully Christian which preserve their unity with the Eastern Patriarchates, or enter into this unity. For there is one God, and one Church, and within her there is neither dissension nor disagreement.

And therefore the Church is called Orthodox, or Eastern, or Greco-Russian; but all these are only temporary designations. The Church ought not to be accused of pride for calling herself Orthodox, inasmuch as she also calls herself Holy. When false doctrines shall have disappeared, there will be no further need for the name Orthodox: for then there will be no erroneous Christianity. When the Church shall have extended herself, or the fulness of the nations shall have entered into her, then all local appellations will cease; for the Church is not bound up with any locality, and neither boasts herself of any particular see or territory, nor preserves the inheritance of Pagan pride: but she calls herself One Holy Catholic and Apostolic; knowing that the whole world belongs to her, and that no locality therein possesses any special significance, but only temporarily can and does serve for the glorification of the name of God, according to His unsearchable will.