First Introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy

I have titled this report "First Introduction" because for a good number of people, one must be introduced to the Eastern Orthodox church many times before one can begin to have a good awareness of its ancient witness. Eastern Orthodoxy is a church denomination filled with the apostolic heritage. Everything that the apostles and their disciples taught and established for worship, doctrine, ritual, belief, Scripture, and Tradition continue to be accepted and practiced today in the Eastern Orthodox church. Just as the early Church is known for its extremely serious attitude toward worship and belief, so does Eastern Orthodoxy demand a powerful remembrance of God during church services and in daily life. This is accomplished by an emphasis on constant prayer, total attention to God during worship, pious acts, and holy rituals. It is quite similar to the Catholic church, except for certain differences in rituals and liturgical concepts, as well as a number of doctrinal disagreements. Nevertheless, there are some major similarities between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

For Protestants, which include all churches and denominations that are not Catholic or Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox worship is often associated with some of the disputed aspects of the Catholic church. However, many Protestants may be surprised to learn that Protestants and Orthodox both share some of the same theological criticisms of the Catholic church, but not all of them. Like the Catholic church, Eastern Orthodoxy believes in many elements of Christianity that Protestant churches believe in, such as the Trinity, the Virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, that God became Flesh, and other very basic tenets of the Faith. But at the same time, there are serious differences in worship and belief. Eastern Orthodox believe in more old testament Scriptures than Protestants do, as well as accepting apostolic Tradition as the only means to properly interpret Scripture, understanding the Faith more fully by the teachings and lives of the saints, communing with the Lord through the prayers of the heavenly beings, employing rituals to increase faith and spiritual experiences, utilizing icons to inspire meditative devotions, making the sign of the Cross as much as possible, partaking of the literal Body and Blood of the Lord for the Eucharist, accepting seven sacraments for the advancement of one's faith, believing that salvation is a life-long process, perceiving that faith, works, perseverence, love, and many other virtues must be combined to affect one's personal salvation, and many other things. Eastern Orthodox believe these things because the Bible, the early Christians, and all the succeeding generations of Christians have always believed these things. As the early Church taught, to believe otherwise is to alter the apostolic Faith.

Catholics may experience no or a little uneasiness when they first go to an Eastern Orthodox church, but the first time a Protestant enters an Eastern Orthodox church, he may feel very uneasy. He will be confronted with ancient customs, sights, sounds, and activities that he may not have expected. When he first enters, he may not be greeted by a member of the Church. In fact, no one may even acknowledge that he has entered the church! This is because to an Eastern Orthodox Christian, as well as to an early Christian, church is a place for prayer and total concentration on communing with the Lord. Shaking hands with a visitor and making an acquaintance with him is a distraction from what the apostles teach is most needful in worship- separating oneself from the world's amenities for union with the Lord. There is more than ample time for small talk outside church, as Eastern Orthodox see it, and in fact the vast majority of a person's time and thoughts throughout the week are spent on worldly matters anyway. 1-2 hours on Sundays devoted totally to the Lord is the bare minimum that the apostles arranged for.

After a Protestant enters an Orthodox church, he will see immediately in front of him, people lighting candles and kissing icons, which are paintings of Jesus, the saints, and of holy events. This may be the first real shock for him. Protestants have been trained to abhor any use of religious images and any connections with them, except for crosses, stained-glass windows, and a few other icon-like depictions. Watching Orthodox people kissing icons is to a Protestant no different than worshipping statues or pagan deities. But the practice of kissing icons goes back to apostolic times, in the catacombs of Rome, where the bodies of dead Christians were entombed with paintings of their faces or of events of their lives depicted on the corpses or walls near them. The first Christians would kiss these paintings and pray for them and ask them to pray for the Christians on earth. Paintings and inscriptions of these practices can still be seen on catacomb walls today. Furthermore, kissing was a normal function of everyday life, as a sign of friendship, much like shaking hands in modern times. But to an early Christian it was also a sign of union with other Christians in the Body of Christ. But most importantly, the early Christians did not believe in a division between Heaven and earth. They believed that the dead saints were still alive, as Jesus teaches in the Gospels, that God is the God of the living, not of the dead. The first Christians considered heavenly beings to be members of the same Body of Christ, that the Church consisted of living and dead Christians, not as though death was a separation, but that both the saints on earth and the saints in Heaven were not divided; they were all alive in Christ. Therefore, kissing icons was treated as a symbolic act of preserving a literal communion between Heaven and earth in the Body of Christ. It was a way to impress on the minds and souls of all true Christians that in Jesus Christ, there is no death and no separation between the saints in Heaven and Christians on earth. This is why there was never a problem with praying to the saints and asking them to pray to God for Christians on earth. Just as Christians on earth pray for each other, so was it accepted without question to ask the saints in Heaven to pray to God for the saints on earth. Indeed, since apostolic times it was never an issue to kiss icons and commune with the saints in Heaven. It only became an issue after the Muslims in the 7th century conquered major regions of Christianity. Islam abhors any use of images in worship, and because Islam demands the persecution of non-Muslims under their domination, many Christians felt pressured to compromise the Faith a little bit by rejecting the use of icons in order to appease the Muslims or because of actual belief in this new doctrine. But the apostolic practice of icons prevailed.

As the Protestant walks into the main part of an Orthodox church, he may or may not see pews. This is because for most or for all of the church service, all the people worship standing up. This is how it was practiced in the early churches in order to prevent physical comfort from being a distraction during worship. The early Christians learned from the apostles that subjecting the body to the spirit in the best way requires less comforts, eliciting greater spiritual concentration. So pews or benches were only arranged for the old, the sick, or mothers nursing children. Nowadays they are sometimes used for sitting during the sermons, or homilies. Then the Protestant will also hear one or more people singing very ancient songs, called chants. This is a tradition going back to ancient Jewish times, and even Jesus and the apostles sang chants, as it is mentioned in the gospels just after the Last Supper, in Matthew 26:30. These chants are designed to help the mind and soul focus on prayer and attention to God. Music has always been known to affect the mind and soul, and so the ancient chants of Orthodoxy often cause meditative states of mind during worship and even afterwards.

During the Orthodox church service, called the liturgy, a Protestant may see and practice many rituals, smell incense, see icons, hear chants, and even touch and eat bread after Communion (since because he is not Orthodox, he is not allowed to partake of the Eucharist). All of these activities involve the 5 senses and physical actions so as to bring each person's body, soul, and spirit into total unity for a more powerful communion with Christ. These aspects of the Liturgy were taken extremely seriously by the early Christians, and they often referred to them as Holy Spirit inspired teachings through the apostles. According to the early Christians, any church that rejected or variated these things was not accepted as being apostolic, nor were their members regarded as being in the Body of Christ. The Bible and the early Christians taught that the 5 senses, the body, the soul, and the spirit all needed to be purified by Christ and unified by Christ, so as to evoke the truest communion and worship of the Lord, as well as to advance a person's salvation. The rituals, incense, icons, chants, and other elements of the Liturgy were believed to be designed by the apostles for that purpose. This is why worship was taken so seriously and why all of these physicial realities were practiced, for it was believed that through the Holy Spirit and the heritage of these apostolic dogmas, physical realities literally united with heavenly concepts, so that Heaven and the Church were mystically one and the same. Thus, the early Christians never believed that these elements of the Liturgy were ordinary earthly customs. They treated these things as divine doctrines because they were established by the apostles themselves to be the best way to increase one's faith, purify one's total self, and worship the Lord in perfect purity and unity. This is why Orthodoxy continues to practice all of these things, for the early Christians believed that the Faith did not simply involve the Bible and a belief in Christ. The Faith has always been known to be Scripture, Tradition, constant remembrance of God, fervent struggling for perfect devotion during worship, daily practice, the eradication of sins, the acquisition of the virtues, and all the aspects of the Liturgy. The loss or alteration of just one small element of these doctrines, or even minimizing one's attitudes towards them, was to falsify or destroy something of the Gospel. Eastern Orthodoxy has inherited this ethic from apostolic times and it continues to observe it to this day.

A Protestant first watching an Orthodox service will see various rituals performed by the priest and the people. The reasons for the people practicing such rituals are for the sake of evoking prayerful states of mind and soul in order to unite with the Lord as fully as possible. These rituals and all the other aspects of the Liturgy are also meant to affect the priests, deacons, and bishops in the same spiritual way, though there is an added dimension to them. The priest was taught by the apostles and their disciples to be a symbol of Christ or the apostles on earth, depending on the sacred function he is performing at any given situation. During the Liturgy he will pray, open the main door or curtain of the altar area, and even do a procession around the church. All of these are for symbolic representations, which the apostles designed in order to impress on each Christian visual memories of the Gospel and its teachings. For instance, a Protestant visitor will immediately notice that the altar area is blocked off by a wall, or by some partition, and that only the priest, deacons, and altar boys, known as acolytes, are allowed to go in there. This is a symbol of the New Jerusalem, the Holy of the Holies, the place where Christ becomes manifested in the Church, where the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist literally become the Body and Blood of the Lord. No one is allowed to go in there, just as no one is yet capable of entering the New Jerusalem in this present age of sin, though one can see glimpes of it, much like the opening of its door at certain symbolic moments of the Liturgy, conveying certain Gospel teachings of Christ opening the door for our salvation. In addition to this, after certain holy invocations, the priest will take the Bread and Wine, go out one door, with his deacons and acolytes bearing the Cross, and walk around the Church. Everyone bows in deep reverence and makes the sign of the Cross as the Bread and Wine are carried by, which are considered to be Jesus Christ's Body and Blood. The priest then returns to the main door of the altar. This procession symbolizes Palm Sunday in the gospels, when Christ was praised with palms while he went along the road to Jerusalem, one week before His Death and Resurrection. As the priest goes back to the altar, it is a visual representation of Christ entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, which leads us to the New Jerusalem. This is one of many concepts that the early Christians inherited from the apostles, which are designed to instill a constant remembrance of Christ's work of salvation for us.

After 1-2 hours of almost non-stop standing, the visiting Protestant may feel tired. There is no peer pressure for him to remain standing or to practice any rituals. He may feel embarrassed not doing any rituals or sitting down, but if he looks around he may even see some Orthodox worshippers sitting down and not doing any rituals. This is because the strength or fervor of some people is not the same, though it is hoped that all believers may worship the Lord with all their hearts, all their minds, all their souls, and all their strength.

Some things the Protestant may notice are the same as in non-Orthodox churches. At some point in the Liturgy he will see the priest do a sermon. In early Church times this sermon was usually done at the end of Liturgy, so sometimes Orthodox priests may do the sermon at the end, though sometimes it may occur before Communion after the Gospel reading. People may sing with the chants, much like all other churches. The Trinity is often affirmed, as is Christ being the Son of God, just like in other churches. Then the Protestant may regard the Bible readings to be familiar, for during the Liturgy a reading from a new testament epistle is read and/or a passage from the prophets, and then an important reading from one of the four gospels of the new testament. He may even recognize many biblical passages chanted or acted out throughout the Liturgy. And if the Protestant visitor is observant, he may see other similarities, making his experience more familiar.

Near the end of the Liturgy, a visiting Protestant will notice that everything begins to focus on activities surrounding the Eucharist. This is because the Eucharist is the most important aspect of Christian worship, and it has been the case ever since apostolic times. But in the early churches, no unbaptized person or visitor was allowed to take Communion or to even see and hear it performed. Even Christians who were not yet baptized could not take part in this function of the Liturgy. All unbaptized Christians and visitors were literally taken out of church by the deacons with the doors closed on them. Thus, the early Christians took Communion extremely seriously, so seriously that they refused even to speak about what occurred during the Eucharist, which involves certain prayers, rituals, and then the eating of Christ's Body and Blood through the Bread and Wine. This secrecy was utilized because the apostles and their disciples did not want to give what is holy to the dogs, as they said. One reason for this was the doctrine of the Bread and Wine becoming the literal Body and Blood of Jesus. Their belief that the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist literally changed into the Body and Blood of Christ was of critical imporance and it was universally accepted by the early Christians as an apostolic fact. Regardless how a Protestant may feel about such a doctrine, the early Christian concept that heavenly realities can and do become fused with earthly realities was a basic perception in Bible times, explaining the causes of many miracles. By believing that Christ's literal Body and Blood is eaten during Communion, the early Christian became inspired with the doctrine that the Kingdom of Christ has entered his body and soul, strengthening him to fight off sin and urging him to struggle even harder to overcome temptations, so as not to minimize the power of the Eucharist within him. This was one of many reasons for keeping Communion a secret. The early Christians also kept the Eucharist so sacred and so special, that its holiness could be experienced without confusion from discussions with non-Christians who would have definitely created doubts in the minds of some Christians regarding the Body and Blood of the Lord. And the early Christians also had a powerful ethic of keeping themselves totally separated in every way from the thoughts and deeds of the pagan Roman Empire, the loose-minded Greeks, and various other unholy religions. But though the reasons for preventing non-Christians and unbaptized Christians from seeing the Eucharist no longer exist, this ethic of a sacred ritual continues to be expressed in Eastern Orthodoxy, not only by the experience of the Orthodox taking Communion, but also by withholding the Orthodox Eucharist from non-Orthodox people, even for Protestant Christians who are convinced of their faith in Christ. The first Christians did not even allow beginning Christians to take Communion if they were not yet baptized, and this apostolic teaching is still a major doctrine in Eastern Orthodoxy. Each person, if he wants to take part in the Orthodox Eucharist, just like all the early Christians, must go through a time of spiritual preparation and learning, as well as an apostolic baptism through an apostolic succession of priests before he can experience the Body and Blood of Christ.

Even before Communion, the visiting Protestant may feel tired of seeing people making the sign of the Cross on their bodies so many times. But making the sign of the Cross was a practice which the early Christians believed was completely necessary and totally apostolic. Some early Christians report that Christians made the sign of the Cross every single day for almost every single thing they did or thought! This is because the Cross of Jesus and its application in our lives was of vital necessity. The Cross of Jesus wipes out sins and it protects us from Satan and more sins. Since the early Christians also learned from the apostles that the relations between body and soul, earth and Heaven were fused into a single reality, the making of the sign of the Cross was more than an imaginary superstition or a useless custom. It was a heavenly reality impressing itself on a physical body and mind. Miracles were more common in ancient times because of this life-long perception. Hence, in addition to being an apostolic doctrine from the Holy Spirit, as it was believed, making the sign of the Cross has always had relevance, no matter how meaningless it may appear to be today.

When Communion is over and after the sermon, if it occurs at the end, a Protestant will see everyone line up for more bread. He may seem confused by this because he may sense that it's time to leave and it appears as though he must follow the crowd. That is exactly what he can do, if he likes. The bread that is handed out at the end of the service is blessed bread, but not the sacred bread of the Eucharist. Everyone is allowed to take from this bread, and it is handed out for those who did not spiritually and physically prepare themselves for taking Communion or for non-Orthodox visitors. This is a time when all the people prepare to leave, though not before one last pious act of kissing icons and making the sign of the Cross while leaving the church. Then outside the church is the place where people talk and visit. In many cases, food and drinks are served in an adjacent building or somewhere nearby. This is a reflection of the early Christian agape meal, where the Christians gathered either for Communion or for a holy meal after Liturgy. At this point, the Protestant may do as he likes, either visit outside church or go in for refreshments or to discuss religion or to make small talk.

After the Protestant finally leaves an Orthodox church for the first time, he may feel a little theologically bothered or somewhat enlightened or even as though he is in a meditative mood. Whatever the case, the typical Protestant needs to study and experience Orthodoxy on many occasions before he can understand it and make proper conclusions or criticisms. Most Protestants do not understand the reasons and sources behind the beliefs and practices of Orthodoxy, and so they usually judge it based on what others have told them, though these other sources commonly have had little or no experience with comprehending the heritage of Eastern Orthodoxy. The average Protestant only has about 500 years of Christian experience applied to his awareness of the Bible and Tradition, with a somewhat limited connection to the apostles. But Eastern Orthodoxy has 2000 years of ancient apostolic experience with a vast amount of Scriptural experience and experiences of the saints. The Eastern Orthodox church has accrued so much wisdom over the centuries, that the average Protestant has a lot of catching up to do. But every bishop and priest has been trained according to the apostolic succession, to understand all there is to know about Orthodoxy. They are good sources for learning this ancient wisdom, though a monk or a nun is even better. This is how the Faith has always been observed, taught, and defended, through the apostolic succession of bishops, priests, and monastics. The average Christian was never regarded as an authority on Scripture and the Church, unless he conformed to the apostolic traditions. This is how the early Church thought and this is how the Eastern Orthodox church thinks. They are one and the same, and they always have been. As Jesus said, the gates of Hades will never prevail against His Church, the Church of the apostles. And though Protestants have been taught that Satan has prevailed against the early Church, sacred history reveals that this has never occurred. Eastern Orthodoxy has never changed the early Church, it has never broken away from any church, and it has never gone through a reformation. Jesus promised this protection and it will always be fulfilled.