13.

 Write out the quotation from St. Cyprian of Carthage which the textbook uses to demonstrate the principle that there is salvation only within the Church.

            St. Cyprian instructed: “A man cannot have God as his Father if he does not have the Church as his mother.” In his book The Non-Orthodox: the Orthodox Teaching on Christians Outside the Church, Patrick Barnes, a convert to Orthodoxy, comments that this statement is one of the “hard sayings” (Jn 6:60) for people offended by any ecclesiological exclusivity. Mr. Barnes, whose own search for the truth took him through various non-denominational Protestant Churches while at the United States Naval Academy, then to the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church, and finally to Orthodox Christianity, understands from experience that this idea runs contrary to everything Protestants have been taught about the nature of the Church. Protestants, he states, wrestle with the issue of Orthodoxy's claim to be the one true Ark of Salvation (1 Peter 3:20 ff.) established by Christ and preserving unadulterated the very criterion of Christianity. However, the former Protestant goes on to point out, Christ was “exclusive” when He said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man cometh unto the Father except by Me” (Jn 14:6). Mr. Barnes notes that since the Church is Christ's Body (Eph 1:22-23), then no one can come to the Father except through Christ's Church. Scripture clearly teaches that Christ, as encountered through His Holy Church, is the only door to the narrow way which leads to life (Mt 7:13-14, Jn 10:7). Mr. Barnes also notes that Orthodoxy does not hold its exclusive claims out of arrogance, but out of love for its traditions. Orthodoxy has maintained the integrity of faith, this convert discovered, and with open arms it offers that faith to outsiders (as he once was) in the pure form as it was handed down from Christ and the Apostles.