ABSTRACT
The Orthodox Church is a complex, multi-tiered, and multi-ethnic institution that claims to represent authentic and original Christianity as it was formed in the first centuries of the Common Era. Ever since the “linguistic turn” in the philosophy of the early twentieth century, scholars of the humanities generally agree that what the people know about the world around the reader is to a large degree shaped by the language the people use to describe it. The main impact of the focus on discursivity in the study of religion mentioned earlier is the insight that the very term “religion” does not have a meaning in and of itself. The classical definition of “authority” by Max Weber is “the prospect of a specific order to be followed by certain people”. The church hierarchy constructed the faithful Christian as a distinct subject form in opposition to the bishops – lay people as opposed to monastics, married as opposed to celibate, etc.
