The Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that its existence is based upon that which was once and for all delivered to the Apostles, and that this deposit of faith is an expression of the Holy Spirit which has been passed down throughout history within the context of the life of the Church. Holy Tradition is juxtaposed and distinct from other kinds of traditions, including various cultural traditions, or the false traditions of innovation or invention that sometimes spring up. The dogma of Orthodox Tradition, or in other words, that which is considered to be absolutely true and unchangeable, not open to question, is often expressed in the Church's life in reaction to various false traditions or teachings, affirming against heterodox practices and heretical teachings that which has always been believed.
The Eastern Orthodox consider its Holy Tradition to be the continuous expression of the Spirit's guidance of the Church throughout history, the Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. In accordance with Christ's promise that the Spirit would guide his followers into all truth, the Orthodox believe that the expressions of faith which constitute its Holy Traditions are evidence of said guidance, self-consistent, verifiable from an historical base as continuous from the earliest recorded history, without contradiction or innovation. Sacred Tradition is thus considered to be the very life of the Holy Spirit as He is dynamically active in the Church, and not a static body of beliefs passed down unthinkingly or subject to change.
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The basic elements of the Spirit's active participation in the life of the Church include the Scriptures, Ecumenical counsils, hagiography, icons, patristic writings, liturgy and prayers.
*Scriptures*. There is no separation, according to the
Orthodox, between the Scriptures and its Holy Tradition; the Scriptures rather
are an aspect of the Church's Tradition by definition. The Old Testament is
passed down (or traditioned) through
*Ecumenical councils*. There are seven Ecumenical Councils, whereby the entire existing leadership of the Church gathered in order to affirm the dogma of the Church against heretical teaching. The Jerusalem council in Acts is the prototype; the seven following that always came into being as a necessary affirmation of what the Church has always believed universally, collegially and everywhere, as against certain innovative or new teachings. The first Council as Nicea, for instance, affirmed the doctrine of the Trinity and the diety of Christ, opposing the teachings of both Sabellius and Arius, who denied these things. The bishops and priests who attended the Councils do not merely vote their own opinion, but rather seek to confirm and affirm what has always been believed and passed down by the Church everywhere since the very beginning.
*Hagiography*. This aspect of Holy Tradition concerns the study of the holy, or as it is more comonly known, the lives of the saints. In the Orthodox understanding, and contrary to a popular misconception, saints are not those who have reaches a state of sinlessness nor perfection; rather, they are those who have spent a lifetime repenting from their sins. As a result, they beomce pure, vessels which are used by God, sometimes in miraculous ways, but also in a more common and humble manner. The Church recognizes such people after death, honoring them and following the examples they have set for us.
*Icons*. The use of icons in the Orthodox Church, which are
always two dimensional, has an important place. Paintings of saints remind us
that they are present with us in the
*Patristic writings*. The writings of the fathers as they elaborate on the Scriptures, teach, instruct and refute heresy, are an important aspect of the Spirit's activity in the life of the Church. The fathers are not infallible, but they do elucidate the Scriptures, and affirm along with the other aspects of sacred tradition that which was once for all delivered to the saints, and which the Church has always believed.
*Liturgy and prayers*. The common worship of the Church as it gathers to be the Church envelopes the other aspects of holy tradition. The Church gathers as a community to worship God as one body; this is the meaning of "liturgy"--a common work. In accomplishing this, the Church reads the Scriptures, honors the saints through iconography, prays and sings as one, and participates in the sacraments. The sacraments are an essential part of liturgical life, whereby the Holy Spirit makes Himself present in the lives of believers, both corporately and personally.
All the aspects of Holy Tradition, according to the Eastern Orthodox, are held in an holistic unity--none have absolute nor ultimate authority over another. Therefore, the sacramental priesthood does not have more authority than the life of a simple saint; the Scriptures interpreted privately do not have more authority than the Ecumenical councils. All is held together in unity by the Holy Spirit, with a diversity of expression without contradiction.
WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?
Christianity is the name given to that definite system of religious belief and practice which was taught by Jesus Christ in the country of Palestine, during the reign of the Roman Emperor, Tiberius, and was promulgated, after its Founder's death, for the acceptance of the whole world, by certain chosen men among His followers.
According to the accepted chronology, these began their mission on the day of Pentecost, A.D. 29, which day is regarded, accordingly, as the birthday of the Christian Church. In order the better to appreciate the meaning of this event, we must first consider the religious influences and tendencies previously at work in the minds of men, both Jews and Gentiles, which prepared the way for the spread of Christianity amongst them.
The whole history of the Jews as detailed in the Old Testament is seen, when read in the light of other events, to be a clear though gradual preparation for the preaching of Christianity. In that nation alone, the great truths of the existence and unity of God, His providential ruling of His creatures and their responsibility towards Him, were preserved unimpaired amidst general corruption. The ancient world was given to Pantheism and creature-worship; Israel only, not because of its "monotheistic instinct" (Renan), but because of the periodic interposition of God through His prophets, resisted in the main the general tendency to idolatry. Besides maintaining those pure conceptions of Deity, the prophets from time to time, and with ever increasing distinctness until we come to the direct and personal testimony of the Baptist, foreshadowed a fuller and more universal revelation — a time when, and a Man through Whom, God should bless all the nations of the earth.
Christianity is meant to be a perfect religion
A priori, we should expect that a religious system which was revealed and instituted, not by a prophet or even an angel, but by the personal action of God Himself, and was designed, moreover, to supplant an imperfect and provisional form of religion, would lack nothing of possible perfection in end or means. Christ's own teaching satisfied this expectation, and precludes the notion entertained by some early heretics, and still alive in the minds of men, of a fuller and more perfect revelation to come.
- First of all, He, its Founder, is God, and therefore had all the knowledge and all the power requisite to establish a perfect religion.
- Secondly, He promised His Apostles the abiding presence of the Spirit of Truth, who should teach them all truth.
- Thirdly, He promised that the body enshrining this deposit should never be vitiated by error — "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18; cf. Ephesians 5:27).
- Fourthly, the same truth is insinuated by St. Paul's words: "God, who at sundry times . . .last of all . . .hath spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews 1:1), and by the expression, the fulness of time, used in Galatians 4:4, to indicate the epoch of the Incarnation.
- Fifthly, by the character of the Christian revelation itself and the Christian ethical ideal which is the imitation of Christ, the Perfect Being. No possible development of mankind can be thought of which should not find all that it needs in Christ.
We are compelled, therefore, to believe that the Christian revelation closed with the death of the last of those originally commissioned to set it forth. We are thus brought counter to a modern view regarding revelation which has lately been condemned as heretical by Pius X (Encyclical, "Pascendi Gregis", Sept., 1907). It is to the effect that revelation is nothing external, but a clearer and closer apprehension of things Divine by the Christian consciousness, which in each particular age is the expression of the experience of the best men of that age. Consequently, revelation grows, like a material organism, by waste and renewed supply, and therefore what is truth for one age maybe quite different from what is truth for another. The error which has these developments is ultimately philosophical, being based on the false assumption that the finite mind can know only the phenomenal and can have no certainty of what is beyond experience. Were that so, any external revelation would be impossible, for its guarantees — miracle and prophecy — could not be grasped by human intelligence. These errors were long ago exposed and condemned by the Vatican Council. The most casual glance at the history of Christianity shows that there has been development of doctrine; the Creed grew only gradually; but that development is merely logical, produced by analysis of the content of the original deposit.
God intended that Christianity should be a visible organization
Christ established a Church and, in a variety of parables, sketched many of the features of its character and history, all of which point to something external and perceptible by the senses. It is the "house built upon a rock" (Matthew 7:24), showing the security and permanence of its foundation, and "the city set upon a hill" (Matthew 5:14) indicating its visibility. Its doctrine works in the three great races descended from Noe's sons like the leaven hidden in three measures of meal, silently, irresistibly (Matthew 13:33). It grows great from humble beginnings, like the mustard seed (Luke 13:19). It is a vineyard, a sheep-fold, and finally a kingdom, all of which images are unintelligible if the bond that unites Christians is merely the invisible bond of charity.
The old distinction between the body and soul of the Church is useful to prevent confusion of ideas. Christian baptism constitutes membership in the Visible Church; the state of grace, membership in the Invisible. It is obvious that one membership does not necessarily connote the other. Some of these parables apply only to the Church fully developed, and so they indicate Christ's ultimate purpose. History shows us that, in establishing Christianity as an institution, He was content that on its human side its organization should be subject to the same laws of growth and development as other human institutions. He did not give His Apostles a draft scheme of the Church's constitution beforehand, to be worked out in the course of ages, prescribing the various stages of progress, and indicating the final term. But the organization which existed in germ in the consecrated hierarchy of the apostles was left to unfold itself under the guidance of the abiding Spirit, according to the needs of time and place. The presence of the Holy Ghost and Christ's promise sufficiently guarantee that the result, however obtained, is in accordance with the original design. It may well be that the development was very largely natural, modelled, first of all, on the synagogue, and then on the existing civil government; its progress may have been hastened or retarded by the passions of individuals, but any account of it that ignores the directing finger of Providence cannot be true.
This, then, is Christianity, a supernatural religion and the only absolute one; in a sense (developed in the Epistle to the Hebrews), the oldest, for the Church is not an afterthought, but instituted by God in the fullness of time, and containing a revelation of Himself, which all to whom it has been adequately presented are bound under pain of eternal loss to accept (Mark 16:16), offering to all, who are sincere in seeking, the solution of all the world's problems; enabling human nature to rise to the sublimest heights and "to play the immortal"; full itself of mysteries and Divine paradoxes, as bringing the Infinite into contact with the finite; the one bond of civilization, the one condition of progress, the one hope of humanity. Its fortunes have been the fortunes of its Founder; "not all obey the gospel" (Romans 10:16). The Jews rejected Christ in spite of the evidence of prophecy and miracle; the world rejects the Church of Christ, the "city set upon a hill", conspicuous though she be through the notes that proclaim her Divine. What men call the failure of Christianity is no proof that it is not God's final revelation. It only makes evident how real is human liberty and how grave human responsibility. Christianity is furnished with all the necessary evidence to create conviction of its truth, given goodwill. — "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear".(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03712a.htm)
