A Summary of the Orthodox Faith
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| Orthodox Christians believe first and foremost that the purpose of all creation is to give glory to God and to worship Him "in Spirit and in Truth" (As Jesus Christ Himself states it). The crown of God's creation is Man. He is created in God's Image, with potential to attain to God's Likeness. He alone of all creation is both physical and spiritual (with a "rational" soul), capable of offering the material creation back to God as a spiritual sacrifice of thanksgiving. The purpose and true destiny of every man and woman is union with God. Human persons are only truly themselves, and truly human, when they commune with the Living God, and share in His Life, something that begins in this life, and finds its fulfillment and perfection in the Kingdom of Heaven. At the outset, it is important to note that the word, "Orthodox" is an adjective, made up of two Greek words: Ortho, meaning right or appropriate; and "Doxa", meaning glory or worship. This adjective was used in the early Church to distinguish between those who continued in the Faith of the Apostles, and those "heterodox" who held to another doctrine or separated themselves from the Body of Believers in succession from the Apostles. Doctrine, or true knowledge of God, is directly related to, and expressed in, true worship of God. Belief is always lived out by giving glory to God, not merely in adhering to philosophical or academic concepts about God. Two early Christian sayings confirm this understand: 1) "The rule of Faith is the rule of Worship"; and 2) "The theologian is the one who prays truly, and the one who prays truly is a theologian." Perfect theology, in the Orthodox Christian understanding, is equated with experiential and personal knowledge and worship of God, and ultimately with love for God and neighbor. The perfect theologian, in the Orthodox Church, is he or she who has shed every false, dark, and sinful element from the heart, and who's spiritual eyes see God with clarity, and share in His Uncreated Energy, Light and Life. The Eastern Church has always maintained that sin is unnatural and foreign to human nature. Evil is a parasite. Sin is an act against one's own humanity. To be holy is not to be "super-natural" but "natural." The natural state of humanity is union with God. This is why Jesus Christ is said to be the only One who was perfectly Human, since He alone was without sin, and He alone lived out the perfect life of sacrificial love, obedience, and union with God the Father. The Orthodox Church believes that while the sin of Adam brought sin and corruption into the fabric of human existence and darkened man's soul, it in no way obliterated or destroyed the image of God in man. Through sin man did not become "depraved," but sin resulted in corruption and death, from which man could not save himself. Unlike in the West, the Orthodox understand original sin is primarily the darkening of the soul, not personal guilt and culpability for Adam's sin, not a stain of guilt to be washed away by baptism, nor an obliteration of man's inherent goodness, nor a sentence of death by a punishing, angry, and vengeful God who requires justice, but rather a fallen condition, a "dis-ease" to be healed and made whole. Salvation, then, is the healing of the human condition, the restoration of communion with God, not a legalistic atonement by a God who requires "satisfaction." Jesus Christ is both the perfect revelation of God to man, and the perfect reconciliation of God and man. He reveals that God is Trinity or Community; that God is Father, who by nature eternally begets His Son, and from whom proceeds His Spirit. Three Divine Persons, One Godhead. Through Jesus it is revealed that God is Love, not simply because He loves His creation, but because He is by nature community, love, a unity of Persons, sharing one Will. Orthodox Christians therefore worship God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Incarnation is at the core of Orthodox Christianity. "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth." The Only-Begotten Son and Word of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, became Man, incomprehensibly, taking on the fallen Human condition, and overcoming sin and death, by His own life and His own Death and Resurrection. As the Orthodox Easter or Paschal hymn proclaims: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down Death by death, and upon those in the tombs, bestowing life!" From eternity, He is born from God the Father, without mother, yet He is born in time from a mother, without a father. His birth from the Virgin Mary of the Holy Spirit is essential to Orthodox Christianity. The Virgin birth is necessary because it is God Himself who is the Father of Jesus. The Virgin Mary is called "Birthgiver of God" in order to protect the Divinity of Christ?to show that He is God from conception in her womb, and that He did not become God or "evolved in Divinity" some time after being born as a mere man. He is one in essence with God the Father in relation to His Divinity, and one in essence with us in regard to His Humanity. Perfect God and Perfect Man, fully God and fully Man; in His Person reconciling and reuniting God and man in a perfection which transcends (and perfects) the blessedness of Adam and Eve in Paradise. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the great Church Fathers of the fourth century said: "What is not assumed (by Christ) cannot be healed." He assumed human nature entirely in order to heal it entirely. This possible for all who are united to Him in the Church. Core Behaviors All principles of behavior in the Orthodox Church exist for one purpose: to effect the salvation and spiritual healing of the human person, and to bring him or her into unity with God through Christ. The goal therefore of Orthodox Christians is to live the spiritual life, or as St. Seraphim of Sarov (Russia, 18thc.) said: "The goal of the Christian life is to acquire the Holy Spirit of God." The spiritual life can be described as having three ascending stages as we become more and more receptive to God?s grace: 1) Purification, 2) Illumination, and 3) Deification. We are born into the spiritual life in Baptism and Chrismation, which is a personal sharing and participation in Christ's death and resurrection, and a personal "Pentecost," or reception of the Holy Spirit. Just as physical birth begins, but does not complete, the growth and development of the human person, baptism is only the beginning of the spiritual life. After baptism, the Orthodox Christian continues a life of growth and repentance, seeking to purify the heart (i.e. the spiritual center of the being) from all that is not of God and to receive Divine Grace into every crevice of the heart that may still be occupied to some degree by darkness. The passions, which originate from the impure heart, such as greed, despair, and pride, are to be struggled against and eradicated. And even natural passions, such as hunger and sexual desire, are to be purified, redirected, and transformed, used but not misused or abused. By God's grace the heart is purified with much struggle and moves toward illumination, a state of seeing all creation as it was created by God. Some have reached a state of deification/theosis, or perfect union with God, as far as can be reached in this life. A person in this spiritual state never loses his identity, personhood or personality. Deification is a union of persons, a sharing of life, but not a loss or destruction of identity. The spiritual life is usually nurtured through the following behaviors:
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