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1. Autocephaly (15th/16th centuries) The 15th century was a momentous watershed in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church: that was when the church broke with the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople (Patriarchate 2.). After the failed attempt of the metropolitan Isidore of Kiev to extend the union achieved between the Eastern and Western churches in 1439 at the Council of Ferrara-Florence to the Russian empire, the Moscow episcopal synod of 1448 voted for autocephaly and elected…

1. Introduction 1.1. General considerationsIn the early modern period, sacraments were part of the religious practice of all Christian churches, albeit with varying emphases and interpretations. Nevertheless, all believed that the celebration and administration of the sacraments, like the proclamation of the word of God, was central to the Christian church, and that sacraments, though performed by human beings, provided a place where the promise of Jesus Christ to be present with his flock was fulfi…

1. DefinitionAlthough theologians in the early church like Origen (3rd century CE) engaged  de facto in dogmatics, the term dogmatics itself (Latin  theologica dogmatica, from Greek dogmatikḗ, “teaching regarding the church’s teaching –  dógma – i.e. “theological teaching, doctrine”) did not gain currency until the theology of the 17th century. During the early Enlightenment, J.F. Buddeus was the first to offer a definition, in his encyclopedic introduction to theology (1727) [11]: the term  dogmatics denotes the portion of theology that explains and demonst…