Priest George Maximov. "A question that the Protestants never ask."
When we – Orthodox Christians – talk
about the faith with a Protestant, we can hear a variety of questions
from him. Those about icons, about the baptism of babies, about the
veneration of saints and so on. But there is one question that they will
never touch themselves. But it is this question that is the most
important, where a fundamental difference between us lies. This question
is the teaching about the Church.
What is the Church of Christ? Any
Protestant will immediately say that the denomination, to which he
currently belongs, is the Church of Christ. Then the question is: when
did your denomination appear? The range of answers will vary from the
last year to the beginning of the Reformation. Well, where had the
church of Christ been before that time?
Many Protestants look at the church
history like this: there were apostolic times, and then there was the
apostolic Church. And then, allegedly already from the II century, there
were distortions in the teachings of the Church. Many bluntly say that
the Church lost its apostolic creed because it brought all sorts of
false practices and ideas into its purity. It may even be said that "the
true Church was destroyed by paganism"[1]. So, starting from the XVI
century, from the time of the Reformation, it was them, the Protestants,
that allegedly returned the pure apostolic teaching. Well, from the XVI
century – if we talk about the "old" Protestants: Lutherans,
Calvinists. And “new” Protestants, such as the Baptists, Adventists, and
Pentecostals, for example, appeared later. Since Protestants are known
for being fond of speaking that it is them and their denomination that
faithfully follow the Bible in their faith, we will consider their views
on the Church precisely through the prism of the Holy Scripture. Let's
see if this Protestant idea about the disappeared Church is consistent
with the Bible.
And, of course, if we believe the
Protestants that the Church created by Christ had been defiled by pagan
practices, it lost the truth, and fell into fallacies, then in this case
we declare that the gates of hell prevailed against the Church. And
through this, we declare the Lord Jesus Christ to be a liar, showing
that He promised, but did not keep His promise.
There is another promise that the Lord
made. He said: Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world
(Matt. 28:20). The Lord does not only promise that the Church itself
will be stable, He promises that He Himself will be with His Church all
the days until the end of the world. Here, as we can see, it is not
mentioned that the Lord is going to make a pause from the second to the
sixteenth century. Far less, till the XIX century.
And Paul the Apostle, for his part,
writes that glory will be given to God in the church by Christ Jesus
throughout all ages, world without end (Eph. 3:21). That is, the Church
created by Christ and spread through the apostles will exist throughout
all subsequent generations and glorify God. Protestant beliefs that this
Church allegedly disappeared for one and a half thousand years,
directly contradict these biblical words.
It is also worth recalling that Christ
promised the apostles to give the Holy Spirit and said: When he, the
Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth (John 16:13),
teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you (John 14:26) We know when the Holy
Spirit came to the apostles: it was on the day of Pentecost, which is
considered the birthday of the Church. That is, the Lord gives the Holy
Spirit, and the Holy Spirit preserves the Church. He keeps her from
distortion, from deviating from the truth. Therefore, Paul the apostle
calls the church the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15).
Because the Spirit of truth guides it, and Christ Himself, who is the
Truth (John 14: 6), dwells invisibly in it. An individual or even a
group of people, of course, can fall into fallacies, and it has always
been so. The apostles also warned about this (see: 2 Pet. 2: 1; Gal. 1:
6–9). But it is impossible for the whole Church to be deluded, because
it means that it would have ceased to exist.
This raises another interesting question
to the Protestants. You say that only the Bible is holy for you and it
is based on the Bible that you came to the conclusion that since the 2nd
century, the true Church disappeared, having become infected by
paganism. But who and when approved the canon of the New Testament? Who
decided that of the many monuments of ancient Christianity, these
particular books are the Holy Scripture, the part of the Bible? Answer:
This happened in the year 364 at the Laodicean Council of that same
Church, which you consider fallen into paganism, and of which the
Orthodox Church is a historical continuation. No one can name the
earlier date of the approval of the canon of the New Testament, as we
know it now. But if the True Church no longer existed at that time, then
the Bible itself was also deprived of its authority, as the Bible was
recorded, compiled and preserved by this historical Church, from which
the Protestants later received it through the Catholics.
The mentioned Protestant ideas not only contradict the Bible, as already shown, moreover, they are not historically confirmed.
I myself, for example, when I was coming
to faith, personally checked it. I read the New Testament first. After
that, I began to read other Christian documents that have survived from
the end of the 1st century. For example, the message of St. Clement of
Rome, the disciple of the apostles. Then I passed to the documents that
were written in the 2nd century. And I read them, including those
written directly by the disciples of the apostles, such as St. Polycarp
of Smyrna, St. Ignatius the God-bearer. That is, - I will emphasize -
these texts were written by those who personally knew the apostles and
accepted the Christian doctrine from them.
After that, I moved to the 3rd century
and read all the Christian texts of that time. Then I moved to the 4th
century, and so on. And I was convinced that throughout all these
centuries the Church remained the same in its teaching. The wording of
the dogma could be changed, but the dogma itself is now in the Orthodox
Church the same as it was in the times of the apostles and their
disciples. Of course, I do not ask anyone to take my word. If I chance
to talk with Protestants, I suggest them to check themselves. Take the
texts and check. Everything is in the public domain. As a rule, almost
all Protestants are very poorly versed in the history of the Church and
practically do not know it at all. What happened after the things
described in the Acts of the Apostles and before their denomination
arose is terra incognita for them. And it is a huge layer in the history
of the church, Christianity, and the mankind in general.
And if Protestants find the courage to
consider this issue without prejudice, then, of course, they will see
the truth. It is easy to see that the Church described in documents of 1
– 2 centuries, is totally different from what we now see at Protestant
meetings and what we observe while getting acquainted with modern
Protestantism in general.
That Church of the apostolic times
objectively resembles the Orthodox Church. And this is not just my
impression. I will give as an example one incident that occurred in the
1960s in the American cities of Ben Lomond and Santa Barbara. A group of
young Protestants came to the conclusion that all Protestant Churches
known to them cannot be a real Church ... And then these young people
decided to trace the history of the Church from the apostolic times to
the present day in order to find out where the Church described in the
book of Acts is now. And they took the same path that I later followed.
That is, they consistently studied all historical documents. At the same
time there were many divisions in history. And in the Ancient Church
there were various heresies that separated from Orthodoxy. And at each
such fork, these Protestants examined and compared unbiasedly: which of
these teachings — the teaching of the Orthodox Church or the teaching of
those who had separated — most closely matches the teaching that
existed before them? Who exactly kept the apostolic faith, and who
introduced the innovation?
And as a result of the research, which
was long and painstaking and in which the Orthodox side did not
participate in any way, the community became convinced that it was the
Orthodox Church that created the Bible. It was this Church who preserved
the Bible for the world. And the first steps of this church are
described in the book of the Acts. And in 1974, the entire Protestant
community — more than 2,000 people — applied to the Orthodox Church and
was accepted. There are descriptions of their way to Orthodoxy written
by them, everyone can get acquainted if he wants. For example, there is
the wonderful book by Peter Gillquist “Coming Home”. Let me quote a
passage from it:
“In our journey through history we
had carefully followed over one thousand years of unbroken continuity in
the Church. It goes without saying that we affirmed the Church as found
in the pages of the New Testament. We found that same Church in the
second and the third century, faced with bitter persecution, celebrating
her liturgy in homes, caves, and even graveyards; and guided by devoted
bishops who often finished the race as martyrs. We found her in the
fourth century, defending the faith at Nicea, and in the fifth century
at Chalcedon. We followed her through to the eighth century, studied her
Great Councils, fell in love with her stalwarts, saints, and fathers as
they preached the Gospel, warred against the heretics, and established
holy imagery in their worship of God. It amazed us how moral and
doctrinal corruption in the Church would be boldly faced, and how
potential destruction was repeatedly avoided. God was with her in the
ninth and tenth centuries …
But then came A.D. 1054, and we were
faced with a choice. A split had come. I can still somehow recall the
physical feeling that I had as I said to my cohorts, "The East is right
in resisting the papacy, and they're right in rejecting the filioque
clause." And then I drew a deep, new breath. "I guess that makes us ...
Orthodox” ”[2].
I know of other such examples, albeit
smaller in size, when people, through the study of the history of
Christianity, were convinced of the truth of Orthodoxy.
Of course, not all people are ready to
embark on such a serious historical study, not everyone has this
opportunity. But in this case, they will be satisfied with what the Lord
Jesus Christ and His apostles say about the Church in order to
understand that the true Church could not disappear. And, accordingly,
all Protestant churches, which directly hold their gap with the
preceding Christian tradition and count their history from the
foundation of their denomination by mortal people, certainly cannot be
the Church that continuously exists from the time of the Apostolic
Church and until the Second Coming of Christ.
Some Protestants understand this
problem. And to defend themselves, they say otherwise: yes, of course,
the Church has been in all ages. But this real Church was invisible. It
consisted of individual righteous people who could belong formally to
different Christian denominations, could be among Orthodox, Nestorians,
Monophysites, Catholics, etc., but they believed correctly (that is,
like modern Protestants), and they all formed this invisible church of
Christ. And after a certain year, it became visible via our
denomination. Many Protestants may say that the Church remains invisible
even now, and all “correct”, from the point of view of this
denomination, people from other denominations supposedly belong to it.
And it is about this invisible Church Christ said that the gates of hell
would not prevail against it and that He would be with it.
Let me suppose that the “theory of the
invisible Church” was also created in order to explain the crisis of
inconsistency of what is observed in the Protestant world with its
incessant fragmentation into new denominations, with what was described
in the book of Acts of the Apostles, where The Church appears as a
single organism, a single reality, a single structure that can afford to
hold the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem and accepts the decisions of
this Council (see: Acts 15: 6–31). In the modern Protestant world,
holding something like this for all denominations is simply unthinkable.
And the Protestants themselves admit it.
Does the concept of the “invisible
Church” agree with the Bible? Let us recall the words of the Lord Jesus
Christ, in which He indicates how to convict a person if he has sinned.
He says that you need to bring witnesses. And if he shall neglect to
hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the
church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican (Matt.
18:17). Here is the advice that the Lord gives to all Christians, to all
who want to be disciples of Him. And this advice implies that the
Church will always be detectable. The Church is not something amorphous,
speculative, indefinable, and invisible. No. It represents something
concrete, visible and clearly distinguishable from other communities.
This community has its own procedures, allowing the opportunity to ask
for help in solving baffled questions. And it has always been so in the
Church. As in ancient times, the first Apostolic Council was held, and
subsequently all controversial issues in the Church were decided by
Councils. And the ecclesiastical court also existed, it had the power of
the Church to make judgments, “to bind and loose” (see: Matt. 18:18). A
man can turn for resolution of litigation only to such a visible
Church. And how do you turn to the “invisible Church”? It is like
sending a victim of robbers to go to an “invisible court”, of which no
one knows where it is and of whom it consists.
And in other places of the Holy
Scriptures, we can see the same reality when it is said, for example,
that the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved (Acts
2:47). This is a very concrete, visible Church. People knew that if they
want to become Christians, then they must come to this community and be
baptized, they have to be with all others. And, it is described there
very well that all Christians continued stedfastly in the apostles'
doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers (Acts
2:42). And, by the way, precisely because the Apostolic Church was
visible, it could be persecuted — at that time there was a great
persecution against the church (Acts 8: 1), and Saul, who had not yet
been converted, persecuted the church of God, and wasted it (Gal 1:13).
And how can an invisible Church be persecuted?
It is worth recalling the words of
Scripture about the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ: as often
as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death
till He come (1 Cor. 11:26). That is, the Eucharist in the Church will
be celebrated from the time of the apostles and up to the Second Coming
of Christ till He come. And the breaking of the bread, as the Eucharist
is called in the Scripture, is what is performed in the visible way.
Both the cup, and the wine and the bread offered for transubstantiation,
and the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ take place in a
visible and tactile manner. All of this is just impossible in the
"invisible Church”. I should say that in the Protestant world, there is
another theory that is trying to solve the problem we are talking about.
It is namely the “theory of branches”. In contrast to the “theory of
the invisible church,” which tries to come up with some kind of mystical
unity of individuals despite the divisions between churches to which
they may belong, the “branch theory” declares the divisions and
differences between Christian denominations to be unimportant and claims
that all people who call themselves Christians – Protestants of various
interpretations, Catholics, Orthodox, and Monophysites, they all
together constitute the one Church of Christ as the branches of a single
tree.
But it is impossible to agree with this
concept either, since the Lord Himself said that He would have one fold
(John 10:16). Even with a strong desire, it is impossible to call all
the communities listed above a single fold. Because in reality - and
this is not a secret to anyone - they have no unity between themselves.
They have neither unity of faith, nor unity in sacraments, nor unity in
ecclesiastical administrative, canonical questions, nor unity in moral
views. Even among the Protestants themselves, directly opposite things
are often asserted.
For example, there are Protestants who
claim that homosexuality is a sin, but there are Protestants who say:
there is nothing like that, there is no sin here. And they even have
pastors - open homosexuals and celebrate so-called homosexual marriages.
This is just one of the examples, and there are other major
differences, including the ones of dogmatic faith nature. Where is the
unity here? But adherents of the discussed idea stubbornly say: “Yes,
all this is not essential, of course, there are differences, but are
they important? The most important thing is that we have something that
unites us. ”
But, as St. John Chrysostom said, we can
find something that unites us with any person, even an unbeliever, —
only with the devil we have nothing in common. But it does not mean that
we and any person belong to the same Church. And we’ll never come
across the idea that the differences in beliefs are not essential, as
long as people call themselves Christians, in the apostles’ doctrine.
Moreover, we find there the exactly opposite thoughts.
For example, Paul the apostle says:
After my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing
the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse
things, to draw away disciples after them (Acts 20: 28–30). Elsewhere,
the apostle says: I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause
divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned;
and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ,
but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the
hearts of the simple (Rom. 16: 17–18). And he also writes: As we said
before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you
than that ye have received, let him be accursed (Gal. 1: 9).
As we see, the doctrinal differences are
so serious that the apostle directly prescribes to anathematize such
people, to separate them from the church body. He describes that the
division itself is the result of the sin. Also, the apostle says that
heresies shall not inherit the kingdom of God (see: Gal. 5: 21–22).
Therefore, it is impossible to say that
it doesn’t matter what we believe in, and, they say, if we call
ourselves Christians, then we are all one Church. It is not true. We are
united then neither in faith, nor in moral teaching, nor in the
Eucharist. Scripture says that Christians should have one Lord, one
faith, one baptism (Eph. 4: 5). And in the existing confessions and
denominations, faith is not just one, faith is different, that is why
divisions occurred: here they teach this way, and here it is different,
and in another “church” - in some other way.
With the fact that all the so-called
“branches” do not have one faith, even the Protestants will not argue,
because it is a self-evident fact. But we need to talk more about the
unity of the Eucharist. This important point, unfortunately, is not
understood by our Protestant interlocutors at all, because they do not
believe that the rite, which they conduct, calling it the communion,
really gives them the true Body and Blood of Christ. They say these are
just symbols. And they are right that they have not the Body and Blood
of Christ, they really have bread and wine only. In this, they are
right, but they are wrong when they think that it is not possible to
unite with the true Body and Blood of Christ in communion.
Our Savior spoke of it as of not only
possible, but the necessary deed: Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of
man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh,
and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life ... [he] dwelleth in me, and I
in him (John 6: 53–54, 56). The Lord said that without the Communion of
His Body and Blood it is impossible to have eternal life in yourself,
that is, you cannot be saved. And later He showed how to fulfill these
His words. He showed it at the Last Supper, when, as the Gospel
narrates, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to
the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the
cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it;
for For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many
for the remission of sins (Matt. 26: 26–28). Christ did not say: “Take,
eat: this is the symbol of my body” and “the symbol of my blood.” He
said clearly: this is my body and this is my blood. Although the
apostles continued to see the same bread and wine, but at the same time
by the power of God they became what the Almighty Lord called them,
about whom the Scripture says: He spake, and it was done; He commanded,
and it stood fast (Ps. 33: 9). And the Lord did this miracle not only
once for the apostles. He, as we know, commanded: This do in remembrance
of Me (Lk. 22:19). And in fulfillment of these words, Christians began
to celebrate the Eucharist from the very first days of the Church. In
the same chapter, where it is described that the apostles on the day of
Pentecost began to preach, and three thousand people were converted, it
is further written that they continued stedfastly in …breaking of bread
(Acts 2:42), that is, performing the Eucharist.
The Protestants say ‘Yes and we all do
it. Of course, we break bread and drink wine, but for us it is just a
memory of Christ’s sufferings, nothing more’. But it this case, why to
bother with this ritual at all? After all, you can remember Christ
without bread and wine. Let's see if the Eucharist for the apostles
themselves was just a remembrance of Christ? Paul the apostle says: The
cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of
Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of
Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16). As we see, the apostle does not say: Is it not
the symbol of the blood of Christ? or: is it not a remembrance of
Christ? For the apostle, it is the communion of the true Body and Blood
of Christ.
And in this case, communion acquires a
special deep meaning which the apostle speaks of: For we being many are
one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread (1
Cor. 10:17). And so we, being many, are one body in Christ (Rom.12: 5).
And the Church itself is also the body of Christ (see: Eph. 1: 22–23).
For the apostle, all this was reality — both the fact that the Church is
the body of Christ, and that communion is the Body of Christ. And we
become a part of this body through communion, through the Eucharist. So
we become part of one Church of Christ. And in Orthodoxy for two
thousand years, this uninterrupted connection through the Eucharist is
preserved. For example, when I was at celebrations in Hong Kong one and a
half year ago, during a divine service, I took communion from the same
cup with Father Michael Lee. He is a Chinese Orthodox priest who is now
90 years old. Father Michael himself, in the days of his youth, took
communion from the same cup with St. John of Shanghai. And St. John of
Shanghai, in turn, in his childhood, received communion from one cup
with St. John of Kronstadt. And so from generation to generation, back
into the centuries, this living connection comes to the time of the
apostles, who received communion from the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself. Through the Eucharist, the Church is a single divine-human
organism that has lived without interruption for two thousand years,
starting from the very apostolic times.
Therefore, it is not surprising that our
saints say: The borders of the Church are the borders of the Eucharist.
Whoever does not take communion in the Orthodox Church, who does not
communicate with the Orthodox Church and does not partake in it, is
outside the Church of Christ [3]. And, returning to the “theory of
branches”, we see its inconsistency from this side as well - since there
can be no completely separate communities, calling themselves churches,
all equally having the true communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.
As the apostle writes: Is Christ divided? (1 Cor. 1:13). Christ is one
and His Body is one. Therefore, the Eucharist is one, having been
performed continuously for two thousand years in the only authentic
Church of Christ. Our task is to find this Church, which was founded by
the Lord Jesus Christ, and which from the apostolic time, has
continuously kept both the apostolic faith and the sacraments, including
the Eucharist. This church is true. The rest of the communities that
call themselves churches, if they are separated from it, are not true.
We cannot say that all churches were created by Christ, because the Lord
said: I will build My Church (Matt. 16:18), and not: “I will build My
churches.” And the apostle wrote: The Church is the pillar of truth (1
Tim. 3:15), and not: "The churches are the pillars of truth." The Church
is one, preserving its unity over the centuries in fulfillment of the
words of the Savior: they all may be one (John 17:21), and there shall
be one fold, and one shepherd (John 10:16).
The uniqueness, unity and
indestructibility of the true Church of Christ are often spoken of by
Holy Scripture and, of course, by Sacred Tradition. And it is not
something that we simply declare. It is a historical fact. Any
Protestant can refer to the testimony of history to see where the truth
is.
And it is precisely this feeling of the
Church that our Protestant interlocutors unfortunately lack. They do not
understand the reality of the Church, what it is all about. They
present it as simply a human meeting: “I came to a certain city, found
several like-minded people, we began to get together, read the Bible,
pray - this is the church too.” But this is not the Church, but a hobby
club that you yourself created. Where is the church created by Christ?
Come and see that this is the Church that is now known as the Orthodox,
that is, the one that truly glorifies God.
August 4, 2014.
[1] Баптисты, их задачи и цели
(Baptists, their tasks and goals). Rostov-on-Don, 1909. p. 8. The same
ideas are expressed by modern Protestant authors.
[2] http://waytohome.narod.ru/texts/witness/tohome/.
[3] I will quote two statements. The
Monk Justin (Popovich) writes about this like “all the truth”: “The Holy
Eucharist is the fullness of the Church; it is the living, all-perfect
God-Man, the Lord Christ, who in His God-human fullness wholly dwells in
the Church in all ages ... He is always the Same as He is in the holy
Eucharist; always the Same for each participant and in each participant
... And through all this, He is our sanctification, our transfiguration,
our salvation ... and all this is found in the Divine-human body of the
Church through the communion of the holy Eucharistic Body and Blood of
the Savior. As the Body of Christ - the Eucharist is the Church, so the
Church is the Eucharist, for by it and in it we are in the catholic
unity with all the saints "(Justin (Popovich), Rev. Assembly of Works.
T. 3. M., 2006. S. 519). Saint Hilarion (Troitskiy) says the same thing:
“The meaning of the sacrament of communion is in his churchliness.
There is no communion outside the unity of the church. It is essential
that in patristic writings, church unity is inseparably linked to the
sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ ”(Hilarion (Troitskiy),
martyr. There is no Christianity without the Church).
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