6.

 It is interesting to note that Russia became the Third Rome at the time Byzantium was obliterated by the Turks. Russia was cut off from close interaction with the Greeks, there was a considerable language barrier, and both nations embarked upon completely separate political and cultural destinies. These events were similar to what happened between Rome and Constantinople, yet in the case of Russia and Greece, there was no schism, no severance from the Church. Can you suggest the reason?

            Political, historical, cultural, linguistic and geographic diversity does not affect the oneness of the Apostolic Church. The Church is always one and the same, regardless of the human environment in which it is situated, be it Russia, Greece, China, Japan, or sub-Saharan Africa.

            Russia did not commit Rome's mistake of holding itself above the ancient Councils and fashioning unto itself a new theology without any reference to the Councils or Sacred Apostolic Tradition. The Russian Church was obedient to the Councils and the conscience of the Church expressed in them, and as a result, the Russian Church never cut itself off from the True Universal Church, or from Christ, its Head, as the Latin Church did. Ever since it received Christianity, the Russian nation has always been a God-bearing nation, and the faith of Christ was always preserved in it.

            With regard to Russia's being the Third Rome, the first Rome had fallen to the barbarians, and it subsequently lapsed into heresy and departed from the Apostolic Church. The Second Rome (or New Rome, or Constantinople) had fallen into heresy at the Council of Florence and had been destroyed by the Turks as punishment from God, and the greater part of the Balkans was also under the domination of the Turks. To the Russians it seemed no coincidence that at the very time the Byzantine Empire came to an end, they themselves were at last throwing off the last remaining vestiges of Tartar suzerainty. God, it seemed, was granting Russia freedom because He had chosen it to be the successor of Byzantium. Russia was thus called upon to preserve the Orthodox faith and to be its champion and protector after the other two Romes had fallen.

            As one writer goes on to expound on this matter, Moscow was indeed the Third Rome, the lawful successor of the New Rome, Constantinople. Moreover, the better Russian Tsars took this role and its attendant responsibilities very seriously. They waged successive (and usually successful) wars to liberate the Orthodox Balkans from the Turks and protect them from the Western powers; they spent large sums of money to support the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos and the Patriarchates of the Middle East; and Tsarism itself fell in a self-sacrificial war to protect Orthodox Serbia from Catholic Austria-Hungary.