Visiting St. Andrew

Nicene Creed

Orthodoxy 101

The Orthodox Church is nothing but the original Church, founded by the Apostles through the authority given to them by Christ Himself, mere weeks after His death and resurrection and days after His ascension to Heaven. Through the centuries, it has held firm the same beliefs, protecting the teachings of Christ and his Apostles from the misguided teachings and speculations of those who wished to distort God's Revelation of Himself to mankind.

The Orthodox Church teaches that the faith of the Apostles is in fact the Eternal Truth, as revealed to us by God through his Son, Jesus Christ. As such, it must not be violated by alteration to suit modern ideals not founded in Church Tradition. The history of the Orthodox Church is a history of martyrdom, but persecution has only served to make the faith in the Revelation stronger, and the Church has refused to alter the teachings of the seven ecumenical councils, which established and settled all doctrinal matters in the first millennium.

Thus, the Orthodox Church remains doctrinally unaffected by second-millennium phenomena such as scholasticism (the Roman Catholic Church's attempts to rationally explain God and our relationship to Him), the Protestant Reformation, the secular humanism of the Enlightenment, etc. It retains the full teachings of the Apostles, as well as the original spirituality of Christianity. It is, simply put, the Catholic and Apostolic Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed.

On the other hand, the Church has not been afraid of accepting modernity when it was deemed not to be affecting its doctrine, however typically only after careful consideration. For example, many Orthodox churches, including our own Antiochian, uses the modern Gregorian calendar, while others, such as the Russian, still use the Julian calendar.

Still, what you'll find when visiting is a church steeped in centuries-old tradition, where the writings of men and women who lived in the 3rd and 4th centuries are just as relevant as those of the 20th century, and where the main liturgical text was written in the 4th century.

Old Testament Tradition

The direct connection from the Christian Church to the Tradition of the Old Testament is much more explicitly evident in the Orthodox Church than in any other Christian tradition, although not distinct from it: all Christians recognize Jesus as the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is read at great length in Orthodox services, although not during the Divine Liturgy itself.

Catholicism

"Catholic" means "universal:" for everybody, everywhere, in every age of time. This means that it is not just a church for those of Eastern European ethnicity; in fact, our own parish is a living testimony to this reality: the parish came into existence through the conversion of an evangelical Protestant congregation (see the article on Parish History).

Being catholic does not mean that the Orthodox Church is associated with the Roman Catholic Church, which broke off from the Eastern Church in AD 1054 for quite complicated reasons rooted in Medieval politics and deep cultural differences between easterners and westerners.

As an example, the leaders of the eastern church all spoke Greek, while the leaders of the western church used Latin, and while during the earlier part of the first millennium most powerful people knew both languages, that was no longer the case later on, as the Roman Empire had split in two independent halves. While theological reasons are often cited as the reason for the schism, most of them could have been overcome or accommodated were it not for political issues.

The Orthodox Church does not recognize the Pope of Rome as its head or as the "Vicar of Christ." Traditionally, the Bishop of Rome enjoyed a "first among equals" status, but this practice was abandoned at the time when Rome broke away from the rest of the Church having demanded supremacy instead of the traditional primacy. The one and only Head of the Church recognized by the Orthodox is Christ Himself, who does not need any individual to represent Him on Earth: that is the role of the Church.

In the Orthodox Church, final say on doctrinal matter resides not with one fallible human being, but with the entire Church, through its bishops meeting at Ecumenical Councils and the assent of the people. The last such council was held over 1200 years ago in AD 787.

Tradition

While the Church has had its fair share of problems rooted in human sinfulness, it never allowed its teachings to be corrupted in the manner that happened in the western church in the centuries before the Reformation, and thus it didn't need to be reformed and didn't suffer the tremendous loss of tradition that the western church did during that time.

"Scripture Alone" may sound like a good concept, and it certainly helped rally the reformers around something concrete in purging some of the worst excesses of the Roman Church, but it unfortunately misses the point. It was the Church that was to succeed Christ on Earth, and it was the Church that was to carry His teaching to the corners of the world. "Scripture Alone" raises the New Testament to a level of authority that it was never intended to have. Instead of being seen as a collection of texts that was a best (never was it seen as perfect) record of God's Revelation, in the teaching of the Reformation it was allowed to replace the Church as the main legacy of Christ.

Through Tradition the Christian Faith could be made accessible to everyone, not just those who were capable of reading, Christianity was from the very beginning a faith for everyone, slave and free man alike. The Bible is a human record of the Divine Revelation, but (though inspired by Him) it is not written by God, nor is it possible to interpret it without the context that Tradition provides: the New Testament was assembled by people who assumed that a lot of things were common knowledge and didn't need further explanation or elaboration.

Spirituality

It's also the case that not everything about God's revelation can be understood rationally, by reading or hearing a text read out loud. There are things, essential things, in our relationship with God that can only be understood by personal experience of God. That's why the Orthodox Church puts such a great emphasis on spirituality, of inviting the Holy Spirit into every phase of life, into every moment of the day, into every aspect of our existence. To become holy, to become what God intended us to be in the first place, we need help from the Holy Spirit, and we need it every second of every day.

To understand Christian doctrine is important for our salvation, but its study can also become a convenient excuse for not pursuing a true relationship with God, which is each and everyone's primary task in this life. It's a little like learning the rules of the road versus driving: it is critical to understand the rules, and to remind oneself of them constantly, but it is not the same as driving, nor does the most well-studied student necessarily make the best driver. Creating an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to enter into our lives is what counts, what ultimately will allow us to be saved. A popular way of expressing this is that "Orthodoxy is not a religion, it's a way of life." In fact, it is the way.

More on spirituality.

Materialism

The great importance placed on spirituality does not mean, however, that we should reject the world as something inherently evil. To reject the world is to reject God, it is to reject His Son who came into the world as a man with a very material body, and who was resurrected from the dead with a material body.

C.S. Lewis put this well in saying "God does not hate matter – he invented it." It is, after all, not the body that is evil, it is not the body that succumbs to temptation, it is the spirit. Satan is not material, he's as spiritual as anything. What is sinful, however, is to worship the world instead of God. To place something created by God above Him is idolatry. To reject the idol itself as evil, however, is to shift the blame away from ourselves, to not accept responsibility for our sins and weaknesses.

The Divine Liturgy

In the Divine Liturgy, what some might refer to as the Orthodox Church's High Mass, all the elements of Orthodoxy come together. The Divine Liturgy is spiritual, the Divine Liturgy teaches doctrine, the Divine Liturgy embodies Tradition, the Divine Liturgy is material. While many other Christian churches have reduced services to one or maybe two senses, the Orthodox Liturgy takes full advantage of all five human senses to communicate the Mystery of God: hearing the Word of God, smelling the incense, seeing the splendid beauty of the church, touching the icons, and tasting the body and blood of Christ Himself.

The Divine Liturgy is a combination of the two forms of Old Testament worship that the original Church simply continued after being founded on Pentecost Day. To cease worshipping God the way He had been worshipped for centuries did not even occur to the Church. The exception was that all forms of sacrifice were abandoned as Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection was and remains the ultimate divine sacrifice.

Thus, the first part of the Liturgy, the synaxis, is modeled after the services in the synagogues at the time of Jesus' life. The second part, the eucharistic sacrifice, is modeled after the priestly worship in the Temple of Jerusalem. The sacrifice of Christ upon the cross is celebrated through partaking of his body and blood in Holy Communion.

Sacraments

The Orthodox Church holds on to the original Christian teaching of seven sacraments: Baptism, Chrismation (Confirmation), Holy Eucharist, Confession, Ordination, Marriage and Holy Unction. Based on the abstract and misguided principle of "Scripture Alone," the Reformation rejected all except Baptism and Holy Eucharist, and recent influences on some Protestant churches have reduced even these two to non-sacramental status.

Like the Divine Liturgy, the sacraments are both spiritual and material. In Baptism, we die and are born again as children of God, our sins having been forgiven, and it is completed through the sacrament of Chrismation. In the Eucharist, we get to experience the risen Son of God directly through the bread and wine. The Church teaches, as did Christ, that it is really, in every way, His body and blood that are offered as a sacrifice to replace all sacrifices. How this happens is not important, and the Orthodox Church does not spend a lot of time and effort trying to explain it. The Church just accepts it as something Christ taught.

The Saints

This is probably the aspects of Orthodoxy that is the most easily misunderstood by those in the Protestant churches. The respect that is paid to the Saints of the Church (we make the sign of the cross and kiss the icons) looks a whole lot like idol worship to the uninitiated. However, it only takes a few minutes of open-minded contemplation to realize that it is no more so than, for example, placing flowers on the grave of a deceased relative or to ceremoniously honor the flag. The lives of the Saints are held before us as examples of how to lead a life of holiness, as role models for us to emulate in our own lives.

We also ask the saints to pray for us, not because we can't pray directly to God, but because they may just be better at it than we are. We take the Scripture literally when it says,

The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
James 5:16

From the way they led their lives, we know that they are closer to God than most of us find ourselves in our current station in life, and that is the comfort that they provide -- we have someone helping us in our prayers. At a minimum, having someone help us pray when our worldly obligations keep us away from prayer is a good thing.

Angels

The Orthodox Church believes in angels. The Church has always held that there are beings, created by God, who are entirely spiritual, i.e. they lack physical, material bodies. While Man is decidedly of two natures, having both body and spirit, angels have no bodies, but are nevertheless individuals and distinct beings.

There is a multitude of support for this doctrine in the Bible, both OT and NT. Mary was told of her pregnancy by the Archangel Gabriel, and the shepherds outside Bethlehem were informed of the Nativity by an angel from the Lord.

It is furthermore Church doctrine that we are appointed a guardian angel at our Baptism, an angel which is a personal helper whom we can turn to prayer during times of need or distress, or for that matter whenever we need personal comfort. See Prayer to Guardian Angel.

A Way of Life

Orthodoxy is not a quick fix, it's not a part-time thing. It's both the most uncompromising and the most forgiving, it's the most demanding and the most rewarding. Orthodoxy isn't going to let you pick and choose what you wish to believe or not, it's not going to compromise its Faith, it's not going to change to be "relevant" in the modern world: the Church has never lacked confidence in its relevance. It's not going to allow itself to become an umbrella organization for a million different personalized religions or doctrinal systems. Nothing less than God's self-revelation has been handed to the Church to safeguard, and this Church takes its task very seriously.

If we give God a real chance to take over our lives, He will: that is the only path to salvation, that is The Way spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles. If we don't attempt to come to God on our terms (which, frankly, is a nonstarter), but instead let Him come to us on His terms, salvation and eternal life is ours to be had, given freely and without condition.

To allow God into our lives is entirely our own personal choice, no one else can convince us, coerce us, force us, bribe us, or otherwise compel us to accept God. The road to salvation starts with acceptance of God as our Creator, as the Origin and Destination, as Alpha and Omega. It starts with the full and unconditional acceptance that is otherwise known as Faith; It is important to realize that this full acceptance of God is not the destination that you reach after seeing all the evidence in support thereof, it is where you start.

CS Lewis once likened this to asking a building contractor to come fix your house — take care of a few leaks, maybe a crack in the foundation — and finding that he completely remodels it and turns it into a palace, and then moves in himself. That's what's going to happen to us if we give God the chance to come and fix us.

There are no middle roads, no shortcuts, no easier path: you either give up control of your life and allow God to take over or you don't. That is the fundamental choice facing every man and every woman at every point in time; unless the choice is made, no progress can be made on the path toward salvation.

Come See for Yourself!

You can read a hundred books on Orthodox doctrine and spirituality, you can study the Bible, you can read all the writings of the Church Fathers, you can browse a thousand web sites, but you cannot experience Orthodoxy until you start attending the Divine Liturgy, which is celebrated at St. Andrew every Sunday at 10:00 am.

More on what to expect when you visit.