Category: catechism

A good place to start is to understand ‘what Orthodox Christians do and believe’.

• Worship God, the Holy Trinity, every Sunday and throughout our daily lives? 
  Of course, . . . the world got its concept of ‘Sunday Services’ from us. 
• Bible-based? 
  Absolutely,  . . . we gave the world the Bible it uses, and it is the backbone of our 2000 year history.
• Preach Jesus Christ? 
  Like no one else, we know the Lord, God who became man, that all men may be saved. 
• Saved from what?
  Death.  We, who were created in His Image, should not know death.  He did not come to make bad men good, He came to make dead men live; to be restored to the fullness of His Glory.

Look at the following quotations of Sacred Scripture:

• “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us ….” (John 1:1&14)
• “But as many as received him, to them He gave power to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name” (John 1:12); 
• ” . . . in order that all may be one; even as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us . . . the glory that You have given Me, I have given them, so that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one. . . .”  (John 17:21-22)
• “. . . you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). 
• Christ will “transform the body of our humiliation [i.e., our fallen, animal-like body]  that it may be conformed to the body of His Glory . . . ” (Philippians 3:21)
• “We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2)
• And, in John 10:34, Jesus defends himself against a charge of blasphemy by stating: “Is it not written in your  law, ‘I said, You are gods.’ ?” It is widely believed that Jesus is referring to Psalms 82:6 in saying “Ye are gods and children of the most high.”

Saint Athanasius summed them up thus: “The Son of God became man so that we might become God” 

How then was it given to His disciples, and to us now, to live in the fulfillment of this Gospel? And what does this mean in light of St. Paul’s admonition to “continue to work out your salvation “, as well as the commission that Jesus’ teaching and Sonship be preached “even unto the ends of the earth”?

Continue reading “What is Orthodox Christianity?”