Introduction to Orthodoxy (1 of 8): What is the Orthodox Church? Two Answers

so good so welcome and this is session number one session number one and eight and we will begin with a very general question what is the Orthodox Church over the eight meetings together that you and I plan to have we'll explore a number of things that Orthodox Christians do and believe a number of questions that touch on sort of really big topics who God is what is faith what is the purpose of creation why do Orthodox Christians worship God the way that they do but today we're gonna start with something that's more like an elevator speech the Orthodox Church what is it and I want to answer the question in two ways that's how the first presentation is organized you'll see this on your handout the first answer is an answer that would be given by someone who studies the Orthodox Church from the outside the studies say its history or its theology or its forms of worship so that'll be the first answer from an external point of view second answer is given is is an answer rather given by someone who is familiar with the Orthodox Church from the inside someone for whom the Orthodox story is also her story the internal point of view of someone for whom the Orthodox Church is a way of life so we'll begin with the first with the external answer the answer from someone who studies the church at a distance perhaps lovingly without a distance through reading and observation welcome and the heart of the external answer the elevator speech that might be given by an outside observer is that the orthodox church is ancient and unchanging ancient and unchanging and so what I'll do is I'll begin with the church's story with church history and this is this is a crazy ambition but we will do this in ten minutes 2,000 years of church history and 600 seconds okay and and to do this I want to focus on a single theme it's a movement really the movement first toward Christian unity but then second the movement toward division or disunity within the church and to do this I want to divide church history up into three phases there's the first 400 years which sort of represents this movement to universal unity then there is in the second phase the following 1000 years during which there's a kind of gradual drift toward disunity and then we'll end with a brief reflection over the last 500 years and sort of take a snapshot of the contemporary scene these numbers are chosen just to help us focus there's nothing hard and fast about them they just will help us tell this story in a useful way so the first 400 years the Eastern Orthodox Church reaches back and it forms an unbroken connection to the first Christian church established by the Apostles who followed Christ come on and please do and in fact mono let me get these two well so just to just to recap a little bit god bless you if you were in during Salem traffic which is always a bear this time of the year but in this in this first session we are attempting to answer a very general question what is the Orthodox Church and attempting to answer it in two ways the first is from an external point of view what is it that someone who studies the Orthodox Church from the outside considering its histories theology and its forms of worship what would be glaringly obvious to them and then second we'll consider an answer to that question about the Orthodox Church from the point of view of someone who experiences the church from the inside so we're just at the very beginning and if you take a look at your handout I'm at 1a I'm gonna do church history in 600 seconds and I got through 10 seconds when I stopped so I'm gonna take those 10 seconds matter so the Eastern Orthodox Church reaches back and the church forms an unbroken connection to the very first Christian Church established by the Apostles who followed Christ so the Apostles are those in the Bible like the brothers Peter and Andrew the brothers James and John James the brother of Christ also Matthew Thomas and so on the church is birthed in Jerusalem on Pentecost Sunday 50 days after the resurrection of Christ and the story of the first church is recorded in the New Testament book entitled the Acts of the Apostles the church in Jerusalem is a Jewish movement it's a movement one of them any one among many within Judaism the first Christians are Jews may we never forget this and Jerusalem at the time is an occupied city within the larger roman empire an empire whose common language is a creek from the beginning though Jewish the church moves outward it is a missionary church and within the first century Christianity spreads to the major urban centers in the Roman Empire so that by the end of the age of the Apostles there are four major centers of Christianity each with its own independent life and form of governance there is Jerusalem Antioch Alexandria and Rome there is as we know a whole constellation of Christian communities scattered throughout the Mediterranean and through Asia Minor but these are four major cities of the Empire and these become the first four centres of church life church history fun fact right the Apostle Peter was the leader of the church in Antioch before he was associated with the church in Rome and also for the first 300 years the church is an outlawed Church we know this changes in the fourth century from here 313 the Emperor Constantine issues the Edict of Milan which grants Imperial favor to the church the Emperor is himself baptized he embraces Christianity and so Christianity becomes the faith of the Empire Constantine also moves the capital he moves it from Rome to a new place the city he names after himself Constantinople and he establishes there a fifth major center of church life so think about this a mere 100 to 150 years after the close of the age of the Apostles the Christian Church is now organized into five Patriarchate's it's big word patriarch cute Jerusalem Antioch Alexandria Rome and new Rome or Constantinople each Church has a patriarch or first bishop who independently organizes an overseas life in his wider community and the patriarchs form a confederacy a Brotherhood of Christian communities that worked in unison but yet were each autonomous so the time between the close of the age of the Apostles and the five Patriarchate's is the same as the time between say today and the year 1900 I had relatives who remember the 1900s right in the viewer alive during the reign of Constantine you would have relatives who remembered the last of the Apostles that's how quickly this happens the next 1000 years gradual slide toward division so over the next 1000 years there is for certain further missionary work the church continues to move outward the church moves more deeply into what we would call Central and Eastern Europe there is the rise of Balkan and Slavic Christianity Kiev by the 11th century becomes the great hub of Christian culture and learning and the five sister churches those five Patriarchate's they today in time grow to include the churches of Bulgaria and Serbia and Kiev Russia but there are large scale geopolitical changes that apply new pressures on the Empire and in turn pressures on the unity of the five Patriarchate's and these changes they they break the Empire apart the Germanic tribes they invade from the north splitting the Empire into eastern and western halves Rome is increasingly isolated as a city Rome is increasingly isolated from her sister churches in the east and Rome eventually falls to the barbarians the rise of Islam puts pressure on the eastern Patriarchate's creating additional difficulties and later the Mongol horde from East Asia overtakes most of the Slavic and Balkan churches thank goodness they started the church in Moscow Moscow is a little backwater town in the northern forests that just happens it to be a place where the monks took Christianity next it's perhaps one of the few places that was not during this period under the boot of some external power but their problems inside the church as well there are internal disagreements that create disunity in the 400s there's the first major theological disagreement that leads to a break in fellowship this is the period during which what we call today the oriental Orthodox churches leave the communion and they establish their own Brotherhood these are the churches today that are present and Syria it's the Coptic Church in Egypt the Ethiopian Church the Armenian Church in the church in India there is increasingly Rome's claim to primacy Rome more and more insists on having oversight and having veto power over all churches the Roman vision is that of a hierarchy of Patriarchate's not a not a confederation of cooperating equals and the Eastern Churches were patient but only to an extent always disputing Roman aspirations to primacy and control pointing out that Roman primacy was never part of church life and I want to give you three specific dates three dates that are real sort of punches to the gut there's 1054 1054 is the so-called Great Schism the Pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople they excommunicate one another it's really a disagreement just between two people the Pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople and despite this disagreement between these two leaders the Western and Eastern Churches they continue to communicate and to cooperate but then there's 1204 the the Fourth Crusade Roman Crusaders from the West they sack Constanza No burning the city taking orders destroying its relics massacring its clergymen and replacing Greek bishops with Latin ones that are loyal to Rome this really 1204 this really is the final nail in the coffin it represents a death blow to the hopes that Rome and the churches of the East would address their differences and restore their original unity so 1054 1204 the final date is 1453 this is the fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Turks and after this point Rome and Constantinople could not communicate and cooperate even if they wanted to finally a snapshot of today the last 500 years the Eastern Orthodox communion of churches continued to expand missionary work to new lands and continued and today there are 15 members of the Eastern Orthodox communion of churches they're listed there on your on your handout I won't read them all there's 15 there's a little asterisk by a potential 16th the Church of Ukraine it's a big disagreement right now between the churches of Russia and Constantinople that's not talking about that today in addition there are six members of the Oriental Orthodox community also listed on your sheet and as an aside the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Oriental Orthodox churches are moving closer to correcting past mistakes and and reuniting it'll happen within our life within my lifetime Rome doesn't move this way into the world room of course as a missionary church but it's not in the business of establishing newer independent daughter churches the way the eastern ones did and so there is just one as we know worldwide Roman Catholic Church however the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago splits the Western Church the Roman Church and then splits within Protestants splits occur and splits within the splits within the splits so that today the conservative estimate is that there are several hundred perhaps a few thousand independent Protestant denominations don't believe the number 33,000 it's propaganda there are 33,000 Protestant denominations but for certain a good several hundred and as we also know countless thousands of really wonderful healthy exciting churches that would consider themselves nondenominational within the Protestant tradition sort of set apart from any theological or historical tradition so here's the takeaway right the Orthodox Church the Roman Catholic Church are the two ancient expressions of Christianity both are founded by the activity of the Apostles in the first century that these two churches part ways with one another around a thousand years ago for a bundle of complicated historical and Theological reasons 10 minutes all of church history are promised so one looking at it from the outside considering its history the church's ancient and the antiquity of the church is one of the glaring features when you take a look at it from the outside by learning its history your adducts church can tell a story and got herself that forges a link between the Orthodox Church today and the First Church of the Apostles but from the outside the orthodox church not only appears to be ancient from that external point of view the church also appears to be unchanging i want to look very briefly at two ways first is the unchanging doctrine of the Orthodox Church again an outsider looking on the line that the Orthodox Church will discover that the documents are that the teachings of the church a rather limited and number this is I think a surprising discovery of many people the actual proclamations doctrinal proclamations of the Orthodox Church not very large a number the Orthodox Church holds in esteem just seven to seven major theological gavin's each is called an ecumenical council an ecumenical council ism is a gathering of all the bishops of the church and on your handout you'll see a list of the first of the seven ecumenical councils in a super super brief description of their conclusions it just really quickly 325 Council of Nicaea Jesus Christ is proclaimed as fully human and fully divine two natures 381 the first council of constantinople proclaims that the holy spirit is also divine 431 the council of ephesus Jesus Christ yes two natures as affirmed already but one person Mary is affirmed as bearing the title rather the the title Theotokos is affirmed as correct for referring to Mary as a term that means the bearer of God so it's Theotokos not just Christo tow closer bearer of Christ 451 the Council of Cal sedum Jesus Christ one person two natures these two natures exist without confusion unchangeably indivisibly and then separately it's not as if his divinity overwhelms his humanity this humanity is like a drop in the bucket abyss of his divinity no the Cal seeding confirms or affirms that those two natures exist co-equal and without divisional blurring into one another 5:53 the Second Council of Constantinople for the refinements on what comes before 681 the third council Constantinople goes on to affirm that Jesus Christ acts in the world according to two wills a divine will and a human moon he's not just someone in human form who always otherwise acts as only if God would act he had conflict within him according to his two nature's in finally 787 the Second Council of Nicaea represents the defeat of iconoclasm in a restoration of icons to churches and homes Christ is fully human not just fully divine and because of his humanity he can be depicted so I take you through that quickly for two reasons there's two important observations first there's the unrelenting focus in the seven councils on the personhood of Jesus Christ over and over it in the ARP revisiting that question who is this Jesus who saves us who is Christ what can we say what can we not say about the incarnation of the Son of God second these are seven Jesus councils they're in it that's it after 787 thousand years before the ratification of the United States Constitution the Eastern Church never again needs to add to its basic theology and neither does it subtract it in contrast just to give you something to compare that against the Roman Catholic Church goes on to add another sixteen ecumenical councils for a total of twenty-three and their tradition for the East the early church decided what needed to be decided and after that no changes there are no changes the question of who Jesus is how it is that Jesus saves us is set and that's all we need to know the seven councils summarize the ancient and unchanging faith of the Orthodox Church and to this day right to this day all 15 churches in the Eastern Orthodox Communion preach and teach the very same basic theology of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit the Eastern Churches do not differ one iota from the seven councils and so they do not differ in any way from one another the Church of Greece church of antioch pitcher to throw of Russia rather Serbia Bulgaria Constantinople Romania Albania the Orthodox Church in America worldwide and across the centuries there is no difference at all and the basic preaching and teaching of the Eastern Churches it is ancient and unchanging and finally in this first answer to the question take a look at worship from the outside we've looked at history we've considered theology think now a little bit about worship from the outside with an outsider discover about the worship of the Orthodox Church what data or what facts would command the attention and once again the answer is when it comes to worship the Orthodox Church appears to be ancient and unchanging so orthodox worship has many many many many many moving parts it's beautiful and complex but to focus let's think just about Sunday morning right the Lord's Day the day that we gather to celebrate the resurrection of Christ from the dead the day that most Christians go to church so in the Orthodox Church on most Sundays of the year we follow a service order called the Divine Liturgy of st. John Chrysostom and on 10 other days we use a service called the Divine Liturgy of st. basil the great and here's the main idea Chrysostom and basil they lived in the late 300s they are the ones who organized the churches in a form that endures to this day that's one thousand and six hundred years ago just a few generations after the Apostles when you enter an orthodox church on a Sunday morning you enter a practice and tradition of praising God that is at least sixteen hundred years old it is ancient and it is unchanging go to Greece and the worship is in Greek go to Russia and the worship is in Russian and Japan as Japanese in Kenya it's in Swahili and Finland is Finnish and Antioch it is Arabic in Australia America and Great Britain it is in English but here's the main idea the language may be different but the words of worship those words are always the same no matter where you are no matter what the language or musical style of your community the Sunday morning worship service is ancient and unchanging it is how Christians Orthodox Christians have worshipped God since at least the 300s no matter where you live and no matter what language you speak so here then is one way to answer that general question what is the Orthodox Church when you look at its history at its theology and at its worship the church presents itself as ancient and unchanging but there's a second way to answer the question the second way to look at the problem and the second answer is based not on looking at the church from the outside the second answer is based on the insider's point of view on what it's like to experience Orthodox Christianity as a believer this is an answer based on an internal perspective and from the inside the earth apart Church does not feel like an institution that is an ancient and unchanging like that like a fossil frozen forever and locked away in a buried riverbed instead the Orthodox Church is experienced as a living organism a living organism that is eternal rather than ancient and that is open-ended rather than unchanging from the insider's point of view the Orthodox orthodoxy rather does not look to the past it does not look to the past it looks to the future from the outside it may strike you as ancient and unchanging from the inside you experience the church is something eternal and open-ended and in the time that remains I want to look at three connections that the church offers from the inside three connections it offers to those who embrace its fate and its worship this is to a under you know if you're following with that first the church offers a connection to Christ and this connection is not offered to a particular person who lived 2,000 years ago and our memories rather the church proclaims that the Incarnation is an ongoing and continuous reality Jesus Christ is the eternal son of God second person of the Holy Trinity and yes we believe that 2,000 years ago the Divine Son of God was born in human form this is the incarnation that's what that word means it means embodiment but the Incarnation did not end with Christ's death and resurrection and ascension we teach and preach that Christ comes to be with us and to share life with us and not just for thirty-three years not just for the sake of completing a divine to-do list Christ came to be with us eternally and in particular in the here and now and that eternity starts with his incarnation his embodiment God's divine desire to share life with us continues and he offers himself to us very directly through his church so the Orthodox Church is not a place where people gather to remember something that happened long ago as if it were an anniversary party or a birthday party we gather to remember something that began a long time ago absolutely but which continues to this day I would put it this way many many Christians are in the grip of a picture as if it can Stein would say right we speak how often do we say this we speak of heaven as up there and earth is down here the old man upstairs we will hear people say or somebody up there must really like me and God we think is in that other place while we toil away down here but this picture is false there is no place where God is not it's a biblical truth there is no place where God is not there is no two-story universe it doesn't exist there's only one story of a downstairs so to speak in Christ is with us continuing his work to offer and to share the divine life here not the very Orthodox worship offers that eternal connection to Christ we don't just remember God we don't just say nice things about God we don't just even experience God in our worship we would say that we received God the connection to crisis direct and immediate the Incarnation is not just something we believe the Incarnation is rather a way of life Christ is with us and we celebrate that continuously so first according to the insider's perspective the church offers a connection to christ second the church offers a connection to the kingdom kingdom is one of the words that we Christians like to throw around a lot very specifically by the kingdom we mean a new creation the new heaven and a new earth which all things are organized according to God's perfect and loving will the kingdom in which evil is crumpled up and incinerated the Kingdom which is eternal and is marked by ceaseless joy an unbroken fellowship it is the very life of the Holy Trinity offered also to us but the important question about the kingdom isn't really a what question what is the kingdom the really important question is a when in question when is the kingdom and the Orthodox Church is a very particular way to answer the when question so I promised to explain fancy words so the fancy word in our theological tradition is prolapses P ro le pas is pearly her Lexus is the felt anticipation now of something that will take place at a later time / leaves this means already but not yet and of an in-between state with the Orthodox Church is it offers rather as a connection to the kingdom of heaven that is proleptic the kingdom we proclaim is already but not yet the end of time the second coming the apocalypse the eschaton whatever you want to call it this consummation of history and the establishment of a new and final creation is not something that will happen in the future the end of time has already started and it started with the Incarnation the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ it inaugurated started the kingdom and the kingdom is now moving toward a final fullness the fullness of the kingdom has not yet happened but the kingdom of heaven has now opened to us and we can experience its proleptic ly the kingdom is offered to us through the church as already here but not yet fully present so we believe within the church that any person any person at any time and in any place that person can breathe the air of the kingdom very specifically we say that the kingdom itself is experienced most directly and most fully inside the worshiping community inside the worshipping life of the Orthodox Church so on Sunday morning Christ opens the doors of the kingdom and invites us in the banquet table that he speaks of so often in the Bible that table is set and our places are ready to receive us the kingdom is a living reality eternally offered through prayer and through worship we encounter Christ yes but we always encounter Christ in his kingdom and finally there's a third connection of the church offers to the faithful alongside a connection to Christ alongside a connection to the kingdom there's also a connection to the cosmos cosmos is a Greek word it means creation that's what it means the Orthodox Church believes in the goodness matter ma tter the church rejects any form of dualism that says the spiritual is good and the material is bad that is rejected in particular all of creation all of creation was brought into existence through God's ecstatic love love that always moves outward and stands outside of itself for creative purposes over and over in the story of creation the book of Genesis God looks at what he makes and he says it is good behold it is very good in our job our job as human beings our vocation according to the early church fathers is to cooperate with God to continue is loving and creative work and to steer all of creation into communion with God we are called to discover what is good about everything in creation to honor that and to celebrate it and to receive it meaning the cosmos in the way that God designed it to be received so in the famous Bible verse that most Christians know John 3:16 right it says for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life don't skip over the beginning too quickly right we like to get to the part about salvation that comes later but but don't don't skip the intro for God so loved the world the Greek word there is cosmos that's the underlying biblical word there it means all of creation for God so loved the cosmos that He gave His only begotten Son we believe that Jesus Christ does not come to save just human beings in a way that we do not fully understand Jesus Christ is here to save all of creation to save the cosmos to save everything that there is all of creation is brought into the kingdom all of creation not just who you are but what you do where you live every rock plant animal star gravity wave subatomic particle dark matter quantum foam palm trees and beaches all that is good and all of it is fashioned by a loving God so that we might work with God to bring all of that into the kingdom when our job our vocation as human beings is to keep working to keep discovering keep thinking about how we might allow God's love to transfigure all of creation into a place where God's divine presence is revealed and experienced so there you have it this is the first presentation two ways to answer that question what is the Orthodox Church on the outside when you consider its history and theology and worship from this external point of view the Orthodox Church is ancient and but from the inside.what alongside a that i should say also from the inside when orthodoxy has lived when you accept the offer to connections to Christ and to his kingdom and to all of creation from this internal point of view the orthodox church is eternal and open-ended so let me appeal [Applause]

Channel: Saint Nicholas (Salem, MA)

Views: 2,632

Rating: 4.9578948 out of 5

Keywords: orthodoxy, orthodox, christianity, saint nicholas, st nicholas, salem ma, salem, introduction, catechumen, catechesis, introduction to orthodoxy

Id: SKhkiFQRQ7Y

Length: 36min 8sec (2168 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 13 2019