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6
Sarah
Cowie comments further on women who were Equals-of-the-Apostles,
Fools-for-Christ's-Sake, holy eldresses, preachers, ascetics, abbesses,
anchorites, prophetesses, queens, mothers, confessors, teachers and martyrs,
noting that these saints did not find favor with God through ambition or
demanding their “rights.” Instead, they were given the gifts of the Holy Spirit
according to their humility, and because they submitted to Christ through His
Church. They were also granted unceasing noetic prayer and became
miracle-workers and healers, and after their repose, their bodies remained
incorrupt and gushed myrrh that healed the sick. So powerful an impact does the
example of their lives have that it was able to draw Sarah Cowie and many like
her out of the anarchy and hell of feminism and the New Age movement, to
Orthodox Christianity, which transforms men and women and gives them the
strength to live in the most difficult and tormenting conditions, and which
prepares them to depart with peace into the next life.
Although women have been greatly
mistreated in this sinful world, this book does not do the same through its use
of traditional language. It bears emphasizing that in no way does this work
overlook that half of the human race — women
— to whom God Himself granted a more sensitive, keen and impressionable nature,
gifted with more warmhearted tenderness than men, who are coarse by nature.
Therefore, let no women be troubled by the politically incorrect word man in the text. There is no anti
feminine bias in this wording, and most certainly there is none whatsoever in
Orthodox Christianity.
To all readers — men and women alike
— if you have studied Church history in your spiritual search but have not
looked to the East, which is the very cradle of Christianity,
your search is not complete. Commenting on the vision of Church history that
exists in the West, a convert from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodoxy
writes that:
Most Roman Catholics, when they think of the early Church, think of Rome, the popes, the
martyrs, the catacombs and the Coliseum. This view is perfectly understandable,
because for Roman Catholics and Protestants, their spiritual genesis lies in Rome — i.e., Rome was the center of
Western Christianity. The early Church, however, was overwhelmingly Eastern and
Greek. [The East] had the greatest population density and its people were
better educated and more sophisticated than their Western brethren. The East
could claim forty-four Churches of Apostolic origin, versus one for the West.
The West was not the center of Christianity but for many hundreds of years was
a missionary field and with the barbarian invasions had become a cultural
backwater. The East held for of the five Patriarchates — i.e., Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and
Jerusalem; two of these, Alexandria and Antioch, contained the first schools of biblical interpretation. The Seven
Great Ecumenical Councils were all held in the East, with an overwhelming presence
of Eastern bishops [Michael Whelton, Two
Paths... p. 49].
Many
Western Christians have become totally disillusioned as their Churches have
joined the latest whims and infatuations of the surrounding culture in an
attempt to be “relevant” and experience worldly glory. Moreover, they have come
to understand that their secularized Western Churches have succumbed to
Christ's three temptations in the desert instead of overcoming them, and that
they belong to a Church that crucifies instead of being crucified. As one
individual who became Orthodox expressed it, Western Christianity was “too outward”
for him, “not inward.” It was “too comfortable, having accommodated itself to
the world and taken its lead from the world” [Fr. Damascene Christiansen]. As
he and countless other converts to Orthodoxy have observed, the Western
Churches offer only easy, trivial and shallow solutions to the deeper questions
that confront all people on their journey through life. As a result, those
Churches can only spread disappointment and despair to all who try to find
something deeper and more essential.
Through the mercy of God, many
conservative Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians are finding their way
through the doors of the Ark of Salvation, the Orthodox Church, before God
closes its doors forever in the final times. As the Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook reports, the Orthodox Church is
the fastest growing mainline Church in North
America [1995 ed., p. 275; 1996 ed., p. 298].
Likewise, an article in the April 4, 1998 edition of the Chicago Tribune noted that “within the
last decade, Orthodox Christians in America
have begun to welcome tens of thousands of converts, especially dissatisfied
Protestant Christians.” For these people, Orthodoxy's un-worldliness, the
beauty of its services, the longevity of its Tradition, its being the original
and the one Church founded by Christ, and its holding and preserving the faith
of the Apostles as a precious jewel — all these things make Orthodoxy highly
attractive to these Western newcomers. Many of these inquirers are ministers or
better-informed laymen, and all are sincere seekers of the truth.
Readers of this book, you of
different backgrounds and concerns, you have all been disappointed by
humanistic systems and strange ideas that you have picked up along the way in
seeking something true to fill your soul. All of you have had negative
experiences and great spiritual suffering in this neo-pagan society of our
times. You look to Christianity for a knowledge of the
true God, the uncreated Consubstantial Trinity and Source of all good, so that
you can rightly believe in Him and worthily honor Him. You have had some
positive experiences in the Western Churches (for in them the Gospel is
proclaimed), yet you have also had to feel the spiritual bankruptcy that exists
in the subjective, make-it-up-as-you-go-along denominations that are forever
changing, that are constantly seeking to develop new theological ideas, new
truths, and new understandings, and
where religion is anything its adherents want it to be.
This study is for such people as
yourselves, for it offers an initial glimpse of true historical Christianity
that never changes (something you did not know exists), and it contrasts that
purest form of Christianity with the great distortions of it that have come
down in the West. “As far as the East is from the West” (Psalm 103:12), so far
is the Truth of Eastern Orthodox Christianity from the contradictory teachings
of the 23,000 Western denominations. Once you come to see what those
differences are about, you will never view things the same again.
These pages invite you to look to
the East, to Eastern Orthodoxy, for the Orthodox Church is the sole
grace-giving Church. As one writer reflects, its altar is undefiled, its
doctrine is pure, its Mysteries (Sacraments) are full of grace and holy, and
its Sacred Apostolic Tradition has been preserved. It is in this ancient
Church, that by God's grace, one's salvation from this life of perdition is
accomplished.
September 1, 2002
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