Introduction.

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.