A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO
EASTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY
FOR INQUIRERS AND NEWCOMERS

© 2006 Orchid Land Publications

[20060611, updated 20060724];
may be upgraded from time to time]

  1 How one goes about finding religious truth

     Each of us has acquired or embraced, one way or another, certain assumption or premises (not true or false in and of themselves) which fence in what we can allow to be true and fence out what we cannot regard as true.  For example, is a person postulates that either (a) matter or (b) time (tradition) can, or must, play an essential rôle in a spiritual religion.  It then follows that

√  Matter (mysteries, what Western Christians call "sacraments") cannot 
    become real conveyers of Grace—neither traditional holy water and 
    Baptism nor bread and wine nor icons (including Crosses).  (Who 
    knows what the televangelists "prayer cloths" and "spring miracle water" 
   are?)   A famous compiler of Orthodox teachings in the seventh century,
   St. John of Damaskós, wrote in his Exact exposition of Orthodox belief:

 √ In a purely "spiritual" (Gnostic) religion, time can play no role in the creation 
    of the cosmos, in being saved, and in  revelation.  A temporal revelation
    including the Bible—assembled in its present Orthodox form by the authority
    of the Orthodox Church in the third quarter of the fourth century, though
    altered by Luther and others, as related below in sect. 4—and including clarif-
    fications of its meaning by Saints over time in the holy tradition.  The agree-
    ments of the Orthodox nine Œcumenical Synods are held to be revelatory.
    (Clarifications by Protestant Reformers are referred to by some Protestants as
    "our tradition.") 

As for (i) it makes a difference who can consecrate given matter to convey Grace (on which see below); and (ii) which material things can be so consecrated.  (Who knows what the televangelists "prayer cloths" and "spring miracle water" are?) 

Interestingly, Gen. 1:26 distinguishes—as the FORMS of the Greek nouns clearly show—the icon or LIKENESS of God (the dýnamis according to which humanity was created) from its ASSIMILATION to God's uncreated Energies, in short its energization by God, Whose ESSENCE (which is unknowable and imparticipable by humans), has been distinguished, from the Apostolic Age down to the present, from His uncreated ENERGIES, through which He relates to what has been created.   

     The two main divisions of Orthodox doctrine are theology and œconomy.  Theology deals with God, the all-holy Trinity; œconomy has to do with the creation and particularly human beings—revelation and salvation.

CLICK HERE FOR THE TWO DIVISIONS OF DOCTRINE IN 
EASTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY

      Finally, a problem that besets the naïve and at least one prominent Orthodox theology involves the failure to distinguish a premise (which cannot be proved wrong) from a fact (which can be proved wrong if it is wrong); put otherwise, it is a failure to distinguish a slogan or a label from a statement that has a truth value.   When to this failure are added the category failures detected in writings of the most notable (Orthodox and Western) theologians, the result is very misleading for readers not trained to detect such failings.

2 How holy Orthodoxy radically differs from Western Catholicism and Protestantism

     In Orthodoxy, certain things and even actions—like crossing oneself or prostrating before other parishioners on Forgiveness Lordsday at the beginning of the Great Fast to ask their forgiveness for any offences—can be consecrated as conveyers of Grace to those who believe in them and who are properly prepared or disposed to receive them. 

    If the rôle of matter (Mysteries) and time (e.g. in the evolution of the cosmos, of revelation [in tradition], and of Salvation) constitute the MATTER of Catholicism, Eastern and Western, it is otherwise with Prot- estants. If the FORM of Eastern Christianity (i.e. of their mental outlooks or thought worlds) is ONTIC that of Western Christians is DEONTIC (JURIDICAL/FORENSIC, i.e. will-based).

      For the Orthodox, the INCARNATION of Christ is the first Mystery that energizes others; Christ's and a worshiper's BODILY RESURRECTION are soterial (saving) Mysteries.  The uncreated Energies of God's Life are GRACE for Eastern Christians.  It is ontic.  It is very different in Western Christianity.  The Vatican Catechism tells us that Justifying Grace is neither uncreated (it is supernatural, though) nor energetic (Latin operativa).  The Protestant Reformers teach that Grace is not ontic at all:  It is GOD's benign treatment of sinners as righteous.  They do not thus become holy—i.e. saints in the Catholic sense; for every believer is equally justified, equally righteous in God's eyes.       The Orthodox divide up theology rather differently from Western Christians.  

      To avoid confusions caused by the conflicting senses of words in Eastern and Western Christianity, peruse this table: 

     The nuclear physicist and Anglican priest J. Polkinghorne wrote (Quarks, Chaos, & Christianity:  Questions to science and religion, 2005, p. 5):  "You can't just stare at theworld, you have to view it from a chosen point of view.  Choosing the point of view involves an act of intellectual daring in betting that things might be this way."  (For "point of view," read axiom or rather paradigm.)  The same idea has been expressed by Yann Martel (Life of Pi, Harvest Book, Haracourt, 2001, p. 231) thus:  "The world isn't just the way it is.  It is how we understand it, no? . . . You want a story . . . that will confirm what you already know."  The difference between the two columns of the preceding table is between an ontic paradigm in the East (in the left column) and a DEONTIC paradigm (in the right-hand column) in the West.  By paradigm is meant a frame of reference or thought world whose matter and form is constituted of axioms which, though being neither true nor false in themselves, fence in what one regards as true or not.  The table in sect. 2 distinguishes the ONTIC senses of terms used for discussing Christian beliefs in Eastern Christian writings from the  senses of the same terms found in Western Christian writings.   See sect 4 on Grace.
      For readers are are used to Western Christian terminology and unfamiliar with the original Greek terminology of Eastern Orthodoxy, it may help to point out that—while the axioms that constitute the MATTER of the paradigms (thought worlds, outlooks, viewpoints) of both Eastern and Western Catholi- cism are describably as mysteric or sacramental (such that created matter and time have necessary rôles in religion)—the axioms of their interpretative FORMs differ:   Eastern Orthodoxy has an energetic view of being and reality, while Vatican Christianity assumes a juridical view for historical reasons discussed HERE.  From the point of view of the Apostolic (ontic-energetic) paradigm, the worst possible scenario, the worst choice of axioms to constitute the matter and form of one's religious paradigm would be 

√ to reject the mysteric (sacramental; anti-Gnostic) axioms (approved by
   the early apologetes and bishops) in favor of spiritualistic and "wordy"
   worship

       because the Creator is called "the Word" in the West; "wordy" refers
       to the ritual essence of Worship, i.e. a rejection ceremonial "activity",
       though one speaks of a "wedding ceremonial" in which the only activity
       is giving a ring and kissing the bride

A paradigm whose "matter" is gnostic and one in which time is spiraling down toward a terrible denouement is called "Gnostic"; it was the religion of pagan Greece, though it did contain some sacraments.    Gnosticism of course rejects time (evolution) in creation, revelation (tradition), and Salvation (which is as instantaneous as conversion can be.  Note that the much-bruited word spir- itality has practically no meaning today other than a rejection of materiality; in fact, it generally refers to human behavior rather than belief.  The word is better avoided.

√ to keep the forensic (juridical) Hebrew paradigm that the Apostle Paul
   so emphatically rejected as the interpretative "form" of one's paradigm,
   say, espousing a forensic view of non-ontic "grace" and "justification." 

      3 The GODWARD side of religion:   What Worship is in the East and WHO is worshiped.  

     The East thinks of Christians as worshipers; the West calls Christians believers.  It comes near to being a distinction between what is ontic-holy and what is at least formally, something not ontic-holy but righteous is truth or, or because of divine imputation.  

     Worship is what is given to God; Salvation is what God gives to worshipers.  Worship goes "up"; instruction and other human-oriented activities go "downward."  One should not confuse worship with a service, which can be served (as we say in the East) or celebrated (as is said in the West) without worshipsay with a lecture or prayers for worshipers' or other humans' needs, . . . or even in Mysteries that bestow Grace in (as we think of it in Eastern Chritianity) or on (as the West says) worshipers.  If God the Son is a Word, as Western Christians say, then worship is to be mainly, perhaps exclusively, wordy.  If God the Son is God's Reason (John 1:1,3) and Wisdom (practical reason; I Cor. 1:24), then words are less vital to Worship than actions are.  For the Orthodox, all services center on and revolve around the Offering of Christ's Body and Blood in the divine Liturgy, served daily (except during the Great Fast) in monasteries and cathedrals—temples where a hierarch's chair or throne is located.

     Worship is given to the three Persons of the all-holy Trinity—one Essence actualized in three infinite Persons, at least by conservative Christians.  (And who is more conservative than the Orthodox—or more radically non-conservative than those who most differ from the Orthodox?)  The Trinity is central to everything Orthodox, even the prayers.  (There are three repetitions of "Holy," of Lord, have mercy," and so on to remind worshipers of the divine Threeness.)  It should be noticed that the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity rests in the Person of the Father, from Whom the Son is generated and the Holy Spirit proceeds  (not is spirated, as with the Latins) as co-equals with Himself.  Western Christians begin with the Essence (usually called "Substance") of the Trinity and treat the Persons after that.  The difference is telling.

     The word orthodox can mean "right praise/worship" and "right belief."  For Eastern Christians, right worship is more distinctive, if not more defining, than right belief.  The Orthodox speak of worshipers where Western Christians speak of believers.  If the object of Worship is God, the objects of Salvation are worshipers.

    The Orthodox hold (in accordance with John 8:58 and Luke 1:43) that Jesus was the Hebrew YHWH, which pious Jews like the Theotókos in Luke 1:43, called "my Lord."  In a proleptic Incarnation, God the Son, Christ, walked  in the Garden of Eden, revealed Himself to Moses, was present in the fiery furnace (the Book of Daniel), etc. 

    Revelation is based on the Greek Bible that the Orthodox Church canonized in the third quarter of the Fourth Century, when she decided which books were to be included and which books were not to be included.

     But further revelations to various Saints and especially the Nine Ecumenical Synods of Orthodoxy have sifted out the various meanings that parts of Scripture are amenable to in favor of the right—and we hold the revealed—True Revelation.  This is called the holy tradition.

     Most Christians accept that humans are in need of being saved.  It often helps to understand a given position by contrasting it with those that are different, especially in a culture (or language) in which the position being described is a very minor position in the population.  Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity differ over (a) what we are saved from and (b) how.   

     It is accepted in the East that humanity lost the (Grace or Life of) the Assimilation to God through the sinning of the first humans, which left humanity in a state of 'amartía, the deprivation of Théosis ("Divinization"). Salvation is therefore regaining the Assimilation to God, Divinization by partaking of the uncreated Energies of the divine Nature.  For St. Peter tells us that through the divine promises 

The dýnamis ("potential") of the Icon of God in human Essence is thus energized by the Grace of the uncreated Life of God.  When members of Christ's Body sharing His Life and make use of His Grace, they

Salvation is thus coming to share the uncreated Energies of Jesus's divine Life, i.e. becoming an ontic part of His mysteric Body, and in reliance on this Grace behaving in accord with the principles He laid down in the Sermon on the Mt., etc. (see sect. 8 on Christian behavior).

      In the West, Salvation is different in some ways, not least because absence of the confusion of volitional sin ('amártēma) with ontic  'amartia.  (Note that the latter, not the former, can be inherited by the descendents of the first sinner!)  And because of the absence of the distinction between God's Essence (which is imparticipable) and His Energies in Western Christianity, one can only be united with him mentally (believers' ideas with God's ideas) or, as with Protestants, in a legal covenant.  (But law is realer than reality for the descendents of the Reformers.)   One hope and prays for Salvation from unrighteous deeds—from 'amartēmata (moral "sins").  

    In conservative Christianity, Salvation comes of being baptized (John 3:5) and from eating Christ's Body and Blood (John 6:53-54).  This is unacceptable to non-conservative Christians.  Even those claiming to accept the Bible literally reject the literal sense of these verses, among which are Christ's words, "Truly, if you all don't eat the Body of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you don't have Life in you" —where "Life" is Zōē, not víos ("being alive").  (The word for "eat" in verse 53 is ambiguous, but the verb for "eat in verse 54 is indicates literal, non-spiritual eating.)

     A (deontically) righteous person would NOT sin―that would be a contradition)― wheras an (ontically) holy person can hardly avoid sinning . . . although, if that person shares God’s uncreated Energies, His Life, Grace, there is forgiveness through offering the Creator, the holiest part of Creation, as a token of His ownership of all that is.  Unlike a focus on Worship, the focus on obedience is juridically oriented and oriented on humans rather than on God, the Giver of all Grace.   so human-oriented, it sounds like what the Apostle Paul warned against, unlike his view (quoted below) that it is the Resurrection that enables us to be righteous.  
     Paul called false worship or piety etheolthreskeis in Col. 2:23; the word refers to the self-invented, will-based, individualistic view of religion.  Eph. 1:24 does speak of the cost of redemption to his presumably Jewish readership in Ephesos, the most commercialized town in the Græco-Roman Empire.   I believe references to redemption (buying back) represent a metaphorical way of speaking about freeing satan’s slaves. In the 15 chapter of His Epistle to the Romans, he speaks of Salvation through Christ's Resrrection.  And in Rom. 4:25, he speaks of Jesus's being handed over because of our sins, our being reconciled to Christ through His dying for us, but of His being raise for our being made righteous . . . and no doubt holy too, as we read elsewhere. If we put this together with the energizations discussed in Phlp. 2:13 (see above), it is clear, one would think that the perfect sacrificial Offering on the Life-Giving Cross not only removed the obstacles to Jesus's being resurrected and also the fundamental obstacles, opening the way to our being resurrected so that the possibility of new life could be energized by Christ's Resurrection, but also made it possible for us to share the uncreated Energies of God's Life, Grace, in the synergistic manner mentioned above.  At least, this is what some have believed for almost 2000 years, though, admittedly others have taken a non-energetic, legalistic view of the whole . . . just because of terms like “new covenant” here and there. 
     In that framework, the only way to obviate the conflict of Grace and human good works is to rely on God unchanging Will.  For if there is no real differences between His changeless Essence and an energizing Nature, only predestination can solve the conflict.  The price paid for this solution is to make the human will and heart of no account in the whole matter.

     Paul’s general outlook took Salvation to be ontic renewal in Christ, not a juridical matter of a divine Surrogates' sufficing punishment.  

     Let's connect the dots:

√ If you think that the Incarnation, like the Resurrection, is ontically soterial 
    (that is, an integral, functional part of the plan of Salvation), then the rôle of 
    Christ's Mother, the all-holy Theotókos ("God's birth-giver"), is also 
    integral to Salvation; hence, she receives honor greater than the Apostles, 
    greater than even the unembodied and normally invisible Beings of 
    Heaven—the Angels, etc.—and than other human Saints.  For the 
    Incarnation did not require the latter, and the only archangel associated 
    with it was Gabriël, whose (non-ontic) rôle was that of bringing the 
    divine message to the Theomētōr ("God's Mother").

√ If you think that the Incarnation is just a way station to being crucified, and 
    that the Resurrection merely proves Christ's divine Power over satan 
    (which the Orthodox write with a small "s"), then it follows that the Mother 
    of God was as incidental as the Incarnation to Salvation. 

We believe, as some very early writings report, that on the third day of the
Theomētōr 's death, she underwent a special resurrection and was carried off to Heaven by a convoy of Angels.       

     The Orthodox do not have a numbered list of how many Mysteries (sacraments or ordinances is a deontic framework) there are.  The Incarnation and Resurrection were the first Mysteries, the energizers of the other Mysteries, including Christian worshipers' bodily Resurrections yet to come (and of course of the already risen Theotokos).  The Protomysteries energize Baptism (and Chrismation, the repeatable part of Baptism when a lapsed Orthodox returns to the true Body of Christ); the Eucharist or Offering by Christ (in the members of His Body who share His Life; it is not a "mass," and there are no "requiems" for those reposed in Christ); Anointing (of the sick and even of the well, notably on Great Thursday evening); Ordination; Matrimony; Confession and Absolution (which can exceptionally be done by lay elders and eldresses, who normally send the penitent on to a clergyman whose prayers for the penitent's forgiveness are normative.

     The Orthodox do not have a numbered list of Mysteries.  Icons and monastic tonsure are Mysteries, as is proper fasting.  So are many kinds of bread on different festivals, even grapes, flowers, etc.  (As ashes are not applied on Ash Wednesday, a day lacking in the Orthodoxy calendar, they are not usually mentioned.)  The palms (or, where unavailable, pussywillows) on the festival of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem are Mysteries.  (The West would call such things sacramentals.)  Where some forms of Christian stick to ritual (things said) and neglect ceremonies (things done), Orthodox include both, ritual including directions on how to serve (as we say in preference to Western celebrate or perform) ceremonies.

     Note that the Great Fast would last forty-two days if it were not for the fact that Lazaros Sabbath paired with the Lordsday (Sundays are called "Resurrectiondays" in Slavic traditions) of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem are not counted as part of the Fast; the fasting customs are relaxed a bit for these two days.  There are three other major fasting seasons in Orthodoxy, plus the day before the Theophany (Jan. 6, Christ's Baptism).

     Since Christians, who constitute the Church (which in Greek is a different word from that for "temple" or churchhouse), are members of Christ, the Church is his Body, as the Apostle Paul said.  He describes her as the Bride of Christ and in moving prose, e.g. in Eph. 1:23 and in later chapters of the same Epistle.  

      The Church has cantors or readers, who may be of either sex, and may receive a kind of ordination.  (Protocantors have a higher ranking than other cantors, often [less felicitously] called lectors.)  Priests are first ordained as hypodeacons and deacons.  This has got to be done before marriage for parish clergy, though a married person whose wife has died or consented to become a nun, can receive these ordinations as well as that of a hierarch—a bishop.  The terms hierarch and bishop include archbishops and metropolitan archbishops; the latter are higher than archbishops in some jurisdictions but lower in the Greek and Arabic archdioceses.  The chief archbishop of a province is called a Primate.  The highest hierarchs are Patriarchs, of which the Patriarch of Constantinople is highest in honor.  Each order has its particular forms of formal and informal address; we kiss a hierarch's hand.  There are protopriests, protodeacons, archimandrites (monastic protopriests), as well as abbots and abbesses.  Monasticism is not divided up into orders like the Latin Franciscans, Benedictines, Augustinians, etc.  The most notable ancient monasteries are those of St. Aikaterínē on Mt. Sinai and the "nation" of monks on Mt. Athos, not to speak of the Holy Táphos (Sepulchre) in Jerusalem.  

     8 The life in Christ
     
     Morality has been differently envision in traditional (Catholic) Christianity and in the more revolutionary Protestantism.  The Latin words for the two outlooks were jussum quia justum ("commanded because right," i.e. in accord with human nature in the Likeness of God) vs. justum quia jussum   ("right because commanded," i.e. by someone with the authority to rule).  Readers should not confuse natural (what accords with a thing's nature) with normal, a statistic.  (Since the Fall what prevails statistically in human behavior may well be unnatural.)  This is not the place to deal with morality in detail, though it may be said that fasting and other ascetic practices are probably greater among the Orthodox laity than in the larger branches of Western Christianity. 

     Monastics, monks and nuns, lead stricter lives than others.  Hierarchs (clergy of episcopal rank) have to be monks.  There are basically three kinds of monasticism—hermits and monks and nuns who live in lavras (large monasteries) and sketes.    Lavras are large monasteries; sketes are smaller . . . originally a number of huts containing a few monks and an elder grouped around a central temple, where all (including hermits in the neighborhood) assembled for the divine Liturgy (the eucharistic Sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood, communicated to Orthodox worshipers).  Other services as well as meals were served in the separate huts (or alone in the case of hermits).

√ Matthew 28:19, where we are admonished to "go, teaching the nations 
    [i.e. unbelievers] all [of the Gospel], baptizing them in the name of the 
    Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and instructing them to hold to all [of] 
    whatever I have enjoined on you all."

√ I Peter 13:15, where readers are admonished to be "ever ready for a 
    rational defence to everyone inquiring of you a REASON for [or the 
    reasonability of] the hope in you."

10 The Afterlife

      The truest form of the Afterlife begins with bodily Resurrection.   This was the hope that formed the theme of the New Testament.  While the purest form of energy is LIGHT—which explains the halos of the Saints—another form of light is FIRE the main form in which energy is perceived by the condemned in the afterlife.   The Apostles were baptized with tongues of fire at the first Christian Pentecost (also called Trinity Lords-day); it is the fiftieth day of Pascha). 

     We pray for those fallen asleep (reposed) in Christ and we pray to (communicate with) reposed Saints.  We hold memorial services with the Mystery of boiled Wheat for our reposed relatives and friends.  Christ liberated the holy Hebrews during his short stay in Hades before he rose again.  As for the details of existence in Heaven, there is little that is exact; the Apocalypse (the last book of the New Testament) gives us an idea of what Heaven is like.  Except for the trumpet, the picture squares with what archeologists accept concerning the ancient temple:  The bishop in the apse surrounded by presvyters (i. e. priests), an Angel serving as deacon censes the Altar in the center, etc.  We can be certain that worship is the occupation of reposed worshipers; as for the others, there is usually not more than speculation—though little of it like Dante's Inferno.  But see Jesus' words in Luke 16:22-26, where Grace is igneous.

 11 Summary
    
     A person can be initially attracted to Orthodoxy by its beauty and mystericism (respect for the role of body and time in religion) . . . but the only praiseworthy reason for becoming Orthodox worshipers rather than a believer or adherent of some other form of Christianity (or some other religion) is to compare it—as it really is, not the way it is mis-portrayed in English by non-native-speakers of our language . . .  or by those misquided individualis who portray Orthodoxy as Vatican Lite.  The writer of this account has done the homework of this comparison and is convinced that Orthodoxy avoids the problematic things (inherited guilt and much else, not least the post-Apostolic paradigms) that appertain to Western Christian thinking.  See also HERE.