Introduction to Orthodox Christianity
How we return to God
Andrew Smith
Introduction to Orthodox Christianity Discover the Church that Christ established: What we believe, and why; How we pray; How we act; How we can return to God.
Andrew Smith
COPYRIGHT First published in 2011. ISBN 978-1-4467-9142-4 Š Andrew Smith, 2011. All rights reserved All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior, written permission from the author.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Andrew Smith is an Orthodox Christian writer and speaker. Coming from a non-theistic background, he searched for God’s religion for over 18 months before finally discovered Orthodox Christianity, where he was received into the Church at 17. He studied Politics, Philosophy, Ethics, secondary Education and Applied Theology, and taught religious education in high schools for eight years. He lives in Brisbane, Australia. The author wishes to give glory to God for His love, providence, gifts and mercy. He wishes to thank his wife for her love and perspective, her editing and proofreading; his family for their love and care, unconditional on (even in spite of) thought or action; and his spiritual father, for his patience, forbearance and love, shown consistently from catechumenate through to the present. He wishes to thank all those who: believed in him; helped him; gave him counsel; opened their hearts and extended friendship to him; and, all those who count among his role models. He will never be able to show the gratitude due to them. Lastly, he wishes to thank you, the reader, for making the writing of this book worthwhile. He asks the reader to pray for him
SECTION I
A Brief History of Church
Looking back through Church history, it is a passage of God guiding His people, both back to Him and closer to Him. This process, necessarily, includes a great deal of history, but as it is written here, centres on the key theological developments in the 2000 year history of Christianity. The Christian Church can be said to have begun with Adam and Eve – the first followers of God, and the beginning of God’s plan for the perfection of humanity. As we know, this didn’t turn out perfectly, so after sending prophets and teachers, God sent His Son to earth to save us from sin and death. After His baptism, Jesus prepared Himself for His ministry with retreat, prayer and fasting, before embarking on a threeyear ministry of preaching, teaching, pastoral guidance and miracles, training his disciples to take over from Him. Near the close of His ministry on earth, Jesus Christ founded His Church1, was taken by the Judeans to the Roman governor to be crucified. The Judeans wanted Him dead because He made the claim that He is God, the Romans crucified Him because of civil unrest. Three days later, having preached the Gospel to those in the place of the dead, Sheol, He then rose from the dead and appeared to His followers, and others, several times. 1
Interestingly, in the original text, the term is ‘Ekklesia’ – those who are called – the direct translation for Church.
After His ascent into heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to His followers, and they continued His ministry on earth – preaching, teaching, guiding and, often, working miracles. The disciples went to many, many places – St Peter to Antioch and Rome, St Paul to countless places, St Andrew to Romania and other places, St Thomas to India, and others went to other places – where they evangelised and taught about the Messiah, Jesus Christ, Who was crucified and resurrected, Who had defeated the power of death, and Who invited us to join Him with God. The people who believed were baptised and became the church in that particular place. This pattern continued on despite intermittent persecutions (with martyrdom being not unknown) by the government of the day. Even from these early times, there was a church order. The apostles, being as they were Jewish, made use of their temple rituals as part of their following Christianity – believing that Christ fulfilled the Law, they would worship in the temple or synagogue on Saturdays, and then celebrate the Resurrection on Sundays. The church order included the bishop2, who would preside, assisted by the presbyters, or elders. In the beginning times of the Church, deacons were
2
The Greek word episcopos, meaning 'bishop', is common in the Bible, though different translations use other words (such as 'overseer') – although the motives for this seem questionable.
brought in to be servants3 – originally, to administer the considerable charitable works conducted by the Church, then also to assist in services. Never was this order allowed to stifle or quench the Spirit or the spirituality of Church functioning – rather, the order gave it a context in which to be recognised, accepted and appreciated. This order continued after the apostles passed on (of the original twelve apostles, Judas committed suicide, and St John reposed in exile – each of the remaining ten were slain for their faith). It was a principle in early Christianity that an evangelist would not move on until the Church in that place could survive, at which time a bishop was selected and ordained. After the apostles, it was these bishops who continued running the Church. The manner in which church-wide decisions were made can be best seen in the council held in Jerusalem. So early that it was depicted in Acts, this council was under the presidency of St James, bishop of Jerusalem and relative of Christ4, and different people (Saints Paul and Barnabas, St Peter, etc) had their say, and then the hosting bishop pronounced the consensus of the council.
3
Deacon, literally, translates as ‘servant’. The original word used in New Testament Greek, ‘adelfos’, is used for ‘brother’, ‘cousin’ or ‘uncle’ in different parts of the Old and New Testament. It is the Orthodox tradition that the various ‘adelfos’ of Jesus were children of St Joseph’s from a previous marriage; that is, they were step-brothers of Jesus. 4
There are many significant people through Church history. St Ignatius of Antioch wrote about bishops and how integral they were (and are) to the Church. St Justin Martyr, in the second century, wrote explanations of Christianity to the Roman Emperor, including the first recorded description of how Christian worship was done. The first battles with heresy5 were had with Gnosticism, which began to be a problem at the end of the first century, causing St John the Apostle to write against them in his epistles6. Gnosticism believed that the way to heaven was through knowledge, whereas Christianity held that Christ, and love, brought us to God. This particular battle continued for some time, but was resolved in the second century. Docetism was the next predominant heresy, which believed that Jesus only appeared to be human, but was not actually human. However, Christianity holds that Christ was absolutely human. This, too, was resolved in the third century.7 The fourth century brought some major events that would change the way that the Church was governed. In 311, Constantine – who was fighting to claim the western side of 5
Heresy is a word applied to a belief that implies picking-and-choosing what a person will believe, rather than accepting the entirety of Christian truth. 6 Epistles are letters; in this case, St John wrote the letters to the entire Church. To contrast with the other type of books in the New Testament, Gospels are written accounts of the Good News (i.e. of the life of Christ). 7 The reader should note that heresies can stay current for some time, and have plagued the Church since the beginning. However, the Church has always been able to survive them.
the Roman Empire – saw a vision of a cross, with the words ‘in this sign, conquer’. In response, he told his soldiers to put crosses on all their shields before battle, a battle that they subsequently won. Constantine took this as a sign, and became a Christian. He issued the Edict of Milan, which made Christianity legal across the empire8. Considering that the Church was just recovering from the persecutions of Domitian – the greatest persecutions up until that time, even surpassing Nero – this must have been very welcome to the Church at that time. Around the same time, however, a priest named Arius had began to spread a heresy, called Arianism, that would effectively divide the Church (for a time). Having dealt with Docetism and its belief that Christ was only God, the Church now had to contend with Arius teaching that Christ was only human and was less than God9. The emperor, in response, called a council which is now called the First Ecumenical Council10. There were 318 bishops from all the churches of Christianity, and it was held in the year 325. At this council, Arius’ doctrines were 8
This Edict only made Christianity legal, and held only the same civil benefits that holding the same religion as any person of power would give. Greater civic emphasis on Christianity, and the Roman Empire as being a Christian empire, would only come around the time of Justinian. 9 This is a position held by Jehovah’s Witnesses today. 10 An ‘Ecumenical Council’ involved calling all the bishops of the entire known world together to resolve an issue.
rejected with an overwhelming consensus of over 300 bishops, who stated that Jesus was ‘of one essence’ with the Father11. This was also the council that gave us much of the Nicene Creed. Eventually, this particular heresy left the life of the Church. The Second Ecumenical Council, held in 381, both maintained the teachings of the First Ecumenical Council and also completed what we know today as the Nicene Creed, principally adding the portion about the Holy Spirit (in response to the heresy of the time). The contents of this creed are the subject of the next section of this book, ‘What We Believe, and Why’. During the fourth century, some Christians felt that it was difficult to live a whole-hearted Christian life while surrounded by the world and all its temporal delights. These Christians would move to the desert, where they would struggle, alone, against their own passions and sins and pray for the world. This was the beginning of monasticism, a movement which would ignite many in their faith and would give many spiritual texts to Christianity. In addition, this was around the time when a cluster of brilliant theologians and bishops were active. Theologians and Church historians alike speak of names such as St 11
In Greek, ‘homoousios’.
Athanasios of Alexandria, St John Chrysostom, St Basil the Great and St Gregory of Nazianzus with some degree of awe – these were all around at the same time. In the case of Sts John Chrysostom and Basil the Great, both of these penned Divine Liturgies that have been passed down to us, and these are still used in the Orthodox Church today – the former being the standard Liturgy, and is explained further in the second section of ‘How We Pray’. The Third Ecumenical Council was convened in Ephesus in 433, where the heresy of Nestorianism was being actively taught. This was the heresy, taught by Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople, that held that there was a human Jesus and a divine Jesus – a state that can be best described as similar to having a split personality. Hence, according to Nestorians, one couldn’t say that God the Son suffered on the cross, rather, only that the human-Jesus suffered; nor could one say that Mary was the Mother of God, because she was only the Mother of Christ. This heresy was also defeated by the Church, which upheld the teaching that, while Christ was both human and divine, He was also a single person. Hence, we can say that God suffered for us, and that the one who gave birth to Him was the mother of God (or, in the terms of the time, Theotokos). The Fourth Ecumenical Council, held in Chalcedon in 451, had to deal with the opposite heresy, that of Monophysitism. This heresy was that Christ’s two natures, human and divine,
became fused as one single nature which Christ took on. The Church rejected this teaching, as the two natures of Christ are absolutely essential in the work of salvation – unless Jesus was truly God, He could not save; and unless Jesus was truly human, He could not save us. However, this council could not prevent the Church from a major division, or ‘schism’, which took place. While the Church was no stranger to division – that is, people deciding to leave the Church – the aftermath of Chalcedon would cause a division in two of the five major churches: Alexandria, in north Africa; and Antioch, in Arabia. This marked the beginning of what is known today as the Oriental Orthodox Church. The Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils were largely held in order to reconcile with the Oriental Orthodox: the Fifth primarily condemned various teachings of an early teacher by the name of Origen (which included various beliefs derived from Plato’s ideas, such as the belief that everyone, including the devil, would be saved), and the Sixth was held to discuss, and condemn, a compromise theology called monothelitism (that Christ had one will). The Seventh Ecumenical Council, Nicaea in 787, seems to have been about a completely different issue: that of iconography. But, this was about a bigger issue: that of the Incarnation. As part of accepting that Christ, the Son of
God, truly became human, it is necessary to accept that He is able to be depicted in pictures – just like we use cameras today. For this reason, the council accepted that icons of Christ can be respected, and that while icons can have respect and veneration shown to them – just like one would respect a photograph of someone that they loved – only God could be worshipped. In the ninth century, there was a great rupture in the Church. Various problems occurred at the same time, causing an actual schism, or break in communion12, between the Church of Rome and the four other ancient patriarchates13 (that is, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem). While there were a number of issues – minor, political and otherwise – involved in this, the principle reason for this schism came down to what we today would term the Papacy14. Coming from the word for ‘father’, the Pope of Rome at the time claimed that he had the authority to settle disputes in other local churches – in this case, Constantinople. This was rejected by the other four churches, who held to the belief that each bishop was equal 12
A break in communion meant that each did not consider that the other was united with God – it was very serious. 13 ‘Patriarchates’ were the first bishop of a particular region. In current Orthodox practice, nations often have their own Church, which may be a patriarchate (if ancient) or may have another title. 14 Interestingly enough, the Patriarch of Alexandria is also referred to as ‘Pope’ without any desire for authority – obviously, the dispute isn’t with the title, but the belief that one bishop is superior to others.
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Introduction to Orthodox Christianity
How we return to God
Andrew Smith
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