Overview of Orthodoxy

Founded by the Apostles

The Orthodox Church is the very community that has been founded by Christ and the Apostles. We are the actual community from Jerusalem (often referred to as our mother church) where Christ ministered and where St James the Apostle held the first Church council that we see in the Book of Acts.

The Church as ‘The Pillar of Truth’

From Jerusalem we grew into real life communities, expanding throughout the globe as Christ commanded us to “baptize all nations”. We formulated the very Bible itself in one of our Church councils, but not until the Fifth Century! This is astounding to many because it is assumed that the New Testament was perhaps always there, from the beginning, but it was certainly not. There were dozens, and perhaps, even hundreds of letters from apostles and their successors that were doctrinally sound, but the Church only chose a small amount of those letters, not because of some scientific litmus test of authorship, etc. (we don’t even have scientific evidence of any biblical letters because they were destroyed in the early centuries), but based on the fact that they were well known and well published, and would help unify the Church. The secular emperor at the time, Constantine, who later converted to the faith, requested that the Church unify though a type of continuity of manuscripts. The Church did not grant his request, but prayerfully took their time with it, and later, well after Constantine reposed, formulated the Canon (Bible). It is important to note that the Church is not founded on documentation, but rather spiritual and physical community itself. This is not to say that the words of Christ and the apostles are not important. They are, indeed! But it is the Church community that is the “pillar of truth”, as St Paul the Apostle himself states. It is the Church that gives us the spiritual direction to understand and unpack the Scriptures.

We are ‘The Early Church’

The Orthodox Church is the continuing community of what many refer to as the “early Church”. We grew! We didn’t dissolve and lose the Church into some sort of dark age (granted, the west did begin falling away, eventually creating their own false, and yes, barbaric empire in the 800s, known as “The Holy Roman Empire”).

Orthodoxy grew from the communal enclaves described in the Book of Acts into entire Orthodox nations such as Greece, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. Prior to the World Wars (essentially persecution of Orthodoxy and other religious communities) these and other countries were baptized Orthodox countries. The murder stats from the wars are outrageous in these Orthodox countries, much higher than that of the Holocaust. These are the times we live in, and we do indeed believe that we are living in “the last days”, but how many years or even centuries these strange times will go on, we do not know.

Creation and not Just Doctrine

The Orthodox Church has archeological evidence of our early communities in the Holy Lands and the rest of the world where both Old Testament and New Testament saints ministered. The lands became holy because through God’s grace the Church practiced holiness. This holiness permeates creation because this is actually where it all starts. Christ’s incarnation changed entire creation. St Paul the Apostle speaks to this in his letter to the Romans by stating that nature itself is so blessed that it will be used as a means of judgment in the end. 

Creation/nature is self evident and miraculous, and renewed through Christ’s incarnation. It draws us to Christ and His Church. In Orthodoxy, matter matters. God came to dwell on earth not to wash it away. He came to restore it along with our very bodies at what he calls the “First Resurrection.” At the end, when Christ returns as He states He will, all creation will be fully restored. There will be a “new heaven and earth” as He states in the Scripture. Christ and the Apostles say throughout the Scriptures that we are to take on this new nature of Christ. It is not a psychological thing that is only in your head. It is a spiritual reality that affects our entire being. This does not mean that we immediately aquire heavenly bodies, but we are headed toward them and participating in this same miraculous spiritual movement that gives us heavenly bodies (and earth) when Christ fully consummates all things

Sacraments and not Just Doctrine

Orthodoxy is “sacramental” in this way of creation. Our sacraments are a part of matter that are in a sense doorways to Christ’s restoring nature. These sacraments of Holy Communion, baptism, etc, are what we refer to as “Holy Mysteries”. They are the mystical reality of how nature intersects with the spiritual world, the world that is everlasting and more real than the passing world.

Orthodoxy has been given the the Holy Mysteries as a type of guaranty for eternal life. They are a part of this “new creation” that Christ gave us. He assigned the Church to guard and nurture these gifts so that many would leave enough of the sinful world in order to become a part of this heavenly world. This is salvation. We are being illumined and sanctified for the “New Jerusalem,” the “City to Come” as St Paul the Apostle states in his letter to the Hebrews.

Spiritual Energies of Faith In Christ

All of these things, our physical/historical communities, the apostolic succession of our bishops, the writings and the works of our saints – which has in part maintained all these things – is legal evidence enough for all to convert. But we know that conversion requires faith. This faith gives us the spiritual energy to “put it all together”, so to speak. It’s a lot to convert based on research and study alone. People do it, but it is exhausting and many times these people have a hard time getting out of the “study” mode as they enter the Church. The Church is a spiritual community. This is important to understand because we have warded off many heretical movements over the centuries that were academic in nature, with their wrangling of words, etc.

Christ’s Body

Orthodoxy is Christ’s living body, as He states in the Scriptures. We are not just a preaching or prayer service. We are a community, and we are a community that is “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses”, as St Paul says in Hebrews. Our community extends from heaven to earth, as Christ’s Lord’s Prayer states. The two are connected, both heaven and earth, but through the sacramental aspect of Christ’s community. Our prayer services are the windows and doors to heaven, and we do not shut these doors and windows when we are not in our churches. We do all we can to keep these avenues of grace open as we live our lives.

There is no other faith that even comes close to Orthodoxy. This might sound pompous to some, but this is the honest truth. People are converting from various western forms of Christianity at an alarming rate not because it is a new way, but because it is the old and original way. It is what many people have been searching for all their lives. Glory to Jesus Christ!