The teachings of the
Orthodox Church are concerned primarily with the salvation of mankind through
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This salvation is expressed in the change
which occurs in the soul before and after death, and in eternal blessedness
after the Resurrection of the Dead. The means for achieving these blessings are
faith, adherence to Christ and obedience to His teachings, all of which is
facilitated by the Divine Grace of the Holy Spirit, imparted through the
Sacraments, among which the Holy Eucharist occupies the central place.
Only in the Church — the Mystical
Body of Christ — can the Holy Eucharist be celebrated, and all the other
Sacraments are grouped around it. By receiving and partaking of the Precious
Body and Blood of the Lord, the sons and daughters of the Church become communicants
of the Lord Jesus Himself, constituting His very Body, which assumes true
reality on earth in the Church of Christ (cf. Eph. 4:15-16, etc.).
Only by belonging to the Church, or,
in other words, being in communion with the very essence of Christ through the
Holy Eucharist, can one attain salvation unto eternal life. And who can be
regarded as members of the Church? The answer is quite clear: all those who
have been properly baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit, who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the true Son of God
come in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3), and who are united by the grace of the
Sacraments, in particular the Holy Eucharist administered by the Priesthood of
the Apostolic Succession.
The whole life of the Church is based on
an organic bond between the hierarchy and laity. We must recall that the
principle of an ecclesiastical hierarchy was set forth by the Lord Himself, Who
said to His disciples, I have chosen you
out of the world (John 15:19) and Who said elsewhere, He who hears you hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me, and he
who rejects Me rejects Him Who sent Me (Luke 10:16). This hierarchy
consists of a line of direct and immediate successors to the Holy Apostles
through the grace of the laying-on of hands (cf. Acts 1); these successors are
the Bishops, and through them the Priests and Deacons of the Church. The Sacraments
may be administered only by the Bishops, but in order to make them available to
a greater number, their administration is rightly entrusted to Priests (who can
be ordained only by Bishops). Following the teachings of St. Ignatius of Antioch († 107), then, where this true hierarchy
is absent, the Church of Christ is absent [To the Trallians].
St. Cyprian of
Carthage († 258) points
out the unbreakable unity between Believers and the Church: “A man cannot have
God as his Father if he does not have the Church as his Mother” [On
the Unity of the Catholic Church, 6]. This is
self-evident, since one cannot think of God and the Church as being apart from
each other. God is salvation, and God's saving power is mediated to man in His
Body, the Church.
For this reason, the Orthodox Church
regards herself as the One Holy-Catholic
and Apostolic Church, since otherwise, salvation would be possible in any
Church. Thus she says that outside the
Church there is no salvation! This is so because, as one prominent Orthodox
theologian has put it, “salvation is the Church” [G. Florovsky, Sobornost:
the Catholicity of the Church].
But, does this mean that everyone
outside of the Church is, of necessity, damned and those visibly within the
Church saved? The answer is an emphatic No!
As the Blessed Augustine noted: “How many sheep there are without, how many
wolves within” [Homilies on John, XIV,
12]. There may be members of the Church who are not visibly such, but whose membership is known to God alone. If anyone
is saved, he must, in some sense, be
a member of the Church, but in what sense, it is not always possible to say.
The Spirit of God blows where it will, and, as St. Irenaeus points out, where
the Spirit is, there is the Church!
In any case, the final judgment is
left to God. As the noted Orthodox theologian, A. Khomiakov so eloquently
asserts:
Inasmuch as
the earthly and visible Church is not the fullness and completeness of the
whole Church which the Lord has appointed to appear at the final judgment of
all creation, she acts and knows only within her own limits; and...does not
judge the rest of mankind, and only looks upon those as excluded, that is to
say, not belonging to her, who exclude themselves. The rest of mankind, whether
alien from the Church, or united to her by ties which God has not willed to
reveal to her, she leaves to the judgment of the great day [The Church is One, Part 2].
The Church, knowing that outside her
bounds there is no salvation for the outcast (with the conditions outlined
above) and that such is doomed to destruction, nonetheless cannot permit
herself to be excessively severe, closing her doors once and for all to the
sinner who could return to the fold — for to do so would be to appropriate for
herself the chastising judgment which is God's alone. The Church simply
requires that the sinner who wishes to return, truly and sincerely repent and
atone for his sins. This is because the Church sees the primary cause of
spiritual destruction for one outside the Church as the failure to partake of
Holy Communion, that is, to be in communion with the very Essence of Christ (we
speak here only of the salvation or destruction of the Christian).
Therefore, as Orthodox we say that
the Church of Christ is the community of all Believers, externally directed and
organized by the hierarchy (Bishops and ordained clergy), joined together spiritually
by the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, Who manifests His grace in the
Sacraments. And it is precisely by partaking of the Sacrament of Sacraments —
the Holy Eucharist — that one is mystically united with Christ and becomes part
of His mystical Body, the Church.
With the above in mind, a concise
exposition will be presented in the following pages concerning this Church of Christ — the
Holy Orthodox Church — and will examine her traditions, her teachings, and her
practices. Hopefully, a careful reading of the chapters which follow will
enable one to more fully appreciate These
Truths We Hold.