Chapter I
Why the Orthodox Church?
The claim, and the case for investigating it
If a person sincerely loves Jesus Christ, trusts the Scriptures, desires to obey God, and wants to worship Him faithfully, then the question of which Church one should belong to is not a secondary question. It is not just a matter of worship style, music, preaching preference, denomination, or which congregation feels most comfortable. It is a question of history, authority, worship, sacrament, apostolic teaching, and ultimately of what Christ intended His Church to be. This question deserves to be approached with both conviction and humility. The purpose here is not to claim that every Protestant is insincere, that God is absent from Protestant churches, or that every Orthodox Christian perfectly represents the faith. God clearly works in the lives of Christians outside the Orthodox Church, and there are countless Protestants who sincerely love Christ, read Scripture, pray, serve others, and desire holiness. Nor is the argument that everything every Orthodox Christian has ever done is automatically correct. Orthodox Christians are sinners too, and Orthodox institutions have experienced human failures, political corruption, and scandals throughout history. The claim of Orthodoxy is much more specific and much more serious: the Orthodox Church believes that it is the historical Church established by Christ, preserved by the Holy Spirit through the apostles and their successors, and that within its sacramental and liturgical life the fullness of the apostolic Christian faith has been preserved.
That claim should not be accepted simply because an Orthodox Christian says it is true. It should be investigated. But before someone begins examining whether every Orthodox doctrine is correct, there is a prior question that must be answered: What exactly is the Church that Christ established, and where is it? The answer begins with Christ Himself. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus tells Peter, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Christ does not say that He will leave behind a collection of individual believers who will each determine for themselves what Christianity means. He says, “I will build my Church.” The Church is therefore not an invention of the apostles or a later institution created because Christians needed somewhere to meet. It is something Christ Himself established.
Christ also gave His apostles real authority. He told them, “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 18:18). He commanded them to go into the world, make disciples, baptize, and teach (Matthew 28:19–20). After His Resurrection, He gave them authority concerning the forgiveness and retention of sins: “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). These are not the instructions Christ gives to people who are supposed to operate as completely independent Christians. He establishes a community with leaders, authority, sacraments, teaching, and a mission. The Book of Acts demonstrates exactly what this Church looked like in practice. When a serious doctrinal controversy arose over circumcision, the apostles did not tell individual Christians to independently study Scripture and decide which interpretation they preferred. In Acts 15, the apostles and elders gathered together in Jerusalem. Peter spoke, Paul and Barnabas spoke, James gave a judgment, and the Church issued a common decision. Importantly, the council described its conclusion with the words, “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us” (Acts 15:28). This is one of the earliest examples of the Church exercising doctrinal authority under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Christianity was never presented as “Jesus plus a Bible plus my personal interpretation.” It was communal, apostolic, sacramental, and ecclesial from the beginning.
This matters because the Church was not merely an optional support system that Christ gave Christians because they might find community helpful. The Church is described in the New Testament as the Body of Christ. Paul writes that God “gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body” (Ephesians 1:22–23). He later tells Christians, “Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Corinthians 12:27). Christianity is personal, but it was never intended to be individualistic. The Christian must personally believe, personally repent, personally pray, and personally follow Christ, but he or she does so as a member of Christ’s Body. This is one of the fundamental reasons the Orthodox Church takes the Church so seriously. Christ did not simply save isolated individuals and send them into the world with a book. He gathered a people. He baptized them. He taught them. He gave them the Eucharist. He gave them shepherds. He gave them authority. He gave them the Holy Spirit. He commanded them to remain united. And He promised that the gates of Hades would not prevail against His Church.
That promise becomes especially important when considering the relationship between Scripture and the Church. Many Protestants act as though the Bible existed first and that the Church later developed around it. Historically, this is far from the truth. The Church existed before the New Testament was complete. The apostles preached before the New Testament was collected. Christians worshiped, were baptized, celebrated the Eucharist, appointed leaders, prayed, fasted, and transmitted Christian teaching before the New Testament canon was complete. The apostles, therefore, did not depend exclusively upon written documents to transmit Christianity. They taught both orally and in writing. Paul makes this explicit when he tells the Thessalonians, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). That verse is particularly significant because Paul explicitly commands Christians to preserve teachings they received “by word” as well as those received through his written epistle. If everything that was not eventually written down were irrelevant, it would be difficult to explain why Paul would command Christians to hold to teachings delivered orally.
This raises an important question: What happened to everything the apostles taught that was never written down? Consider how much Jesus taught His disciples during His earthly ministry. Every conversation, explanation, sermon, clarification, instruction, and answer to every question could not possibly be recorded. John himself concludes his Gospel by saying, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books” (John 21:25). The Christian faith was therefore never based on the assumption that everything true must necessarily exist in written form. The apostles taught orally. They preached orally. They instructed churches orally. Paul himself commands Christians to preserve what they received through oral teaching. The question, then, is not whether oral teaching existed. The New Testament tells us that it did. The question is where that apostolic teaching was preserved.
The Orthodox answer is that it was preserved within the life of the Church. Holy Tradition is not simply a collection of old Orthodox customs, nor is it a second Bible that competes with Scripture. Rather, it is the continuing apostolic life of the Church: Scripture, worship, the sacraments, the teachings of the Fathers, the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils, the lives of the saints, and the faith handed down from generation to generation under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Scripture itself is at the heart of Holy Tradition because it is the written apostolic witness. The Orthodox Church, therefore, does not see Scripture and Tradition as competing authorities. Scripture is the written Word of God, while Holy Tradition is the life of the Church through which that Word has been received, preserved, proclaimed, interpreted, and lived. This is why the Orthodox Christian does not believe that accepting Holy Tradition means placing human customs above the Bible. The question is instead whether we are willing to accept the biblical reality that the apostles themselves taught both through written Scripture and through oral apostolic instruction.
This is also why separating the Bible from the Church creates a historical problem. The Bible did not arrive with a divinely inspired table of contents attached to it. Christians had to recognize which writings were apostolic and belonged within the canon. The Church did not invent Scripture or make it inspired. Rather, the Church received and recognized the apostolic writings. The New Testament emerged from within the life of the apostolic Church, not independently of it. This should produce humility in anyone who takes Scripture seriously. If we trust the ancient Church enough to receive the New Testament canon through it, it is reasonable to believe that the same Church can give us its interpretation. It would be historically strange to say, “I trust the Church enough to tell me which books are Scripture, but I have no reason to listen to the Church about how those Scriptures should be understood.”
The issue becomes even more significant when considering the Old Testament canon. The Orthodox Church receives the Old Testament according to the longer Greek Christian tradition associated with the Septuagint and receives books such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees as Scripture. Modern Protestant Bibles generally follow a shorter Old Testament canon and either place these writings in a separate Apocrypha section or omit them. It would be historically inaccurate to reduce the entire question to saying that Protestants simply “ripped books out of the Bible,” because the history of the Old Testament canon is more complicated than that. Different Jewish and Christian communities had differing relationships with particular books, and the canonical status of some writings was debated for centuries. Nevertheless, the larger point remains: the Bible did not simply fall from heaven with a universally agreed table of contents. The canon is itself a historical reality that must be understood in light of the history of Christianity. A Christian who wants to understand why his Bible contains the books it does has to engage the Church’s history, whether he realizes it or not.
This makes the idea of Scripture as the sole authority worth examining carefully. Scripture is unquestionably authoritative in Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church does not place Scripture beneath human opinion. But Scripture was never intended to function as an isolated authority detached from the Church. A Bible does not interpret itself. The moment a person reads a passage and determines its meaning, interpretation has already occurred. The question, therefore, becomes not whether Christians should interpret Scripture, but how Scripture should be interpreted and within what authority. This is precisely where the Church becomes indispensable. Paul calls the Church “the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Christ promises that the Holy Spirit will guide His disciples “into all truth” (John 16:13). Orthodoxy therefore believes that the Holy Spirit was not given merely to isolated individuals so that every Christian could become his or her own final authority. The Spirit was given to the Church.
Of course, this does not mean that every Orthodox bishop is personally incapable of error. Orthodox Christianity does not teach that every priest, bishop, or layperson is individually infallible. Christians can sin, misunderstand, become corrupt, and even fall into heresy. Church history demonstrates this clearly. The claim is that Christ’s Church as a whole will not ultimately lose the apostolic faith. That is what makes Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 so significant. If Christ established a Church and promised that the gates of Hades would not prevail against it, then Christians must have some confidence that Christ is actually capable of preserving His Church. The Orthodox Church does not understand this preservation to mean that there were never heresies, scandals, political interference, bad bishops, or periods of tremendous human failure. There were all of these things. Rather, the Church believes that despite human sin, the Holy Spirit preserved the apostolic faith. That preservation is ultimately a mystery of God’s faithfulness, much like other mysteries Christians already believe without fully comprehending them. We believe in the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and the Eucharist without claiming to understand every mechanism by which God accomplishes these things. Likewise, Orthodoxy trusts Christ’s promise that His Church will not be overcome.
The historical continuity of this Church becomes especially striking when looking at the Christians who lived immediately after the apostles. Christianity did not suddenly become unrecognizable hundreds of years later. We possess writings from people who lived extraordinarily close to the apostolic generation. One of the most important examples is St. Ignatius of Antioch, who was bishop of Antioch and was arrested and transported to Rome to be martyred for his faith around the beginning of the second century. He was not writing fifteen hundred years after Christ. He was writing within living memory of the apostolic age. And what does Ignatius describe? He describes a Christianity centered around bishops, presbyters, deacons, Eucharistic worship, Christian unity, and the Church. He writes, “Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop,” and he speaks of the Eucharist as the flesh of Christ. His writings present a picture of Christianity that is profoundly sacramental and episcopal. This is historically significant because if the original Christian model was supposed to consist primarily of independent congregations centered around individual Bible interpretation and preaching, one would have to explain why Christians so close to the apostles already understood Christianity so differently. Additionally, he wrote these writings en route to his own death. What does this say about the faith of early Christians? Should they be ignored?
St. Irenaeus of Lyons provides another important example. Writing in the second century against heretical movements, Irenaeus appeals to apostolic succession and the churches founded by the apostles as evidence for the authentic Christian faith. His argument is essentially that if someone wants to know what the apostles taught, they should look to the churches that received their teaching and to the succession of their bishops. The early Church’s response to heresy was therefore not simply, “Everyone independently read the Bible and decided for themselves.” The Church appealed to the apostolic faith preserved within the historic Church. This is the significance of apostolic succession. The apostles established numerous churches and lines of succession. Orthodox bishops stand within the historic succession of bishops, tracing their sacramental authority to the apostles, including Peter, Paul, Andrew, John, James, Mark, and others. Apostolic succession is therefore more than a genealogical list of names. It is the continuity of episcopal ministry, sacramental life, doctrine, worship, and communion with the apostolic Church.
This historical continuity is one of the reasons the age of Protestantism deserves to be considered seriously, although not arrogantly. The Church begins in the apostolic age. Pentecost occurs in the first century. The apostles establish churches, appoint leaders, teach the faith, baptize converts, celebrate the Eucharist, and transmit their teaching. The Protestant Reformation begins in the sixteenth century, roughly fifteen centuries after the apostolic age. Age alone does not prove truth; something is not true merely because it is old. But chronological distance matters when evaluating a theological claim. If a doctrine or form of worship substantially differs from what Christians practiced and believed for the first thousand years of Christianity, the question should not simply be, “Can I find a biblical verse that seems compatible with this?” It should also be, “Why did the Christians closest to the apostles not understand Christianity this way?” That question deserves a serious answer.
The distance between modern Christians and the apostolic age should also produce humility. The apostles walked with Jesus. The generation immediately after them knew people connected to the apostles. Ignatius lived during the generation immediately following the apostles. Polycarp was associated with the apostolic generation according to ancient Christian testimony. Irenaeus could appeal to the succession of churches and bishops connected to the apostles. These Christians were not reconstructing Christianity from archaeological fragments fifteen hundred years later. They inherited Christianity from people who had inherited it from the apostles. Therefore, when their Christianity looks substantially like what modern Orthodoxy looks like—bishops, Eucharist, sacramental worship, apostolic succession, liturgy, fasting, prayer, and a strong emphasis on preserving the apostolic faith—we should not casually dismiss them as people who simply “didn’t understand Christianity yet.” Perhaps some things developed later. That possibility should always be investigated. But the burden of proof should not automatically be placed on the ancient Christians.
The saints are especially important because they demonstrate what Christianity looks like when it is actually lived. Paul says, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). If Christians are encouraged to imitate Paul because he imitates Christ, then Christians should continue looking to people whose lives visibly reflect Christ. The saints are not competitors with Jesus. They are evidence of what the grace of Jesus can accomplish in human beings. They show that Christianity is not merely a collection of doctrines to be intellectually affirmed but a life of transformation, repentance, sacrifice, holiness, and communion with God. Some saints were bishops, some monks, some mothers, some intellectuals, some former sinners, some ordinary people, and some martyrs. What unites them is not social status but the fact that their lives bear witness to Christ.
St. Ignatius is perhaps one of the most powerful examples. He was writing letters to Christians while being transported toward his own martyrdom. He knew that he was going to die, yet his concern was not to preserve his comfort. His concern was to remain faithful to Christ and encourage Christians to remain united in the Church. He wrote about bishops, the Eucharist, unity, and faithfulness while willingly walking toward death. There is something deeply confronting about that kind of Christianity. Modern Christians can become accustomed to a version of Christianity centered around comfort. We worry about whether the worship service was enjoyable, whether the sermon was engaging and relatable, whether the music was our style, whether the pastor was charismatic, or whether the church offered the programs we wanted. None of these things are inherently evil, but the martyrs force Christians to remember that Christianity was never fundamentally about comfort. The earliest Christians understood that Christ was worth suffering for. When the Orthodox Church commemorates the martyrs, it is therefore not merely looking backward at history. It is presenting Christians with living examples of what faithfulness to Christ can cost.
The saints also matter because Christianity does not teach that death annihilates the Christian. Christ says, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). Paul speaks of departing this life and being “with Christ” as something that is “far better” (Philippians 1:23). Hebrews describes Christians approaching “the city of the living God,” the angels, and “the spirits of just men made perfect” (Hebrews 12:22–23). The Church, therefore, extends beyond the Christians currently living on earth. Death does not ultimately separate Christians from Christ, and therefore it cannot ultimately destroy the communion of those who belong to Him. The Orthodox Church understands the Church as encompassing the faithful on earth and those who are alive in Christ, awaiting the resurrection.
This understanding becomes especially visible in the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is not simply an Orthodox version of a modern church service. It is the worship of the gathered Body of Christ. Scripture is proclaimed. Psalms and hymns are sung. Prayers are offered. The Creed is confessed. The Gospel is proclaimed. The people offer themselves and their gifts. The Holy Spirit is invoked. The Eucharist is celebrated. The faithful receive Holy Communion. The saints are remembered. The Church prays as one Body. The entire service is worship. The congregation is not merely an audience listening to a speaker. The priest is not an entertainer. The sermon is not the sole purpose of gathering. The Eucharist is not an occasional addition to the service. The entire Liturgy is directed toward communion with God.
This is particularly important because the Eucharist is not treated in Orthodoxy as merely a symbolic reminder of a past event. Jesus says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood.” Paul asks, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” and “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). Paul later warns Christians against receiving the Eucharist unworthily because they are failing to discern “the Lord’s body” (1 Corinthians 11:29). The earliest Christian writings likewise demonstrate an extraordinarily strong belief in the Eucharist as truly participating in Christ. This is why the Orthodox Church considers the Eucharist central to Christian life. The Liturgy brings together Scripture, prayer, thanksgiving, sacrifice, communion, and the Church’s entire life in Christ.
This does not mean that Protestant churches are devoid of God. God can and does work through Protestant Christians. Protestants can genuinely encounter Christ, read Scripture faithfully, repent, pray, love their neighbors, and grow in holiness. The Orthodox claim is not that God refuses to act outside the canonical boundaries of the Orthodox Church. The claim is that God’s work among Protestants does not necessarily mean that Protestantism contains the fullness of the apostolic life. A person can possess something genuinely good without possessing its fullness. A Protestant may genuinely love Christ without having the fullness of sacramental life. A Protestant church may faithfully preach Scripture while lacking the historic Eucharistic and episcopal structure of the ancient Church. A Protestant Christian may possess genuine faith while never having encountered the fullness of the Church’s liturgical and sacramental life. The question, therefore, is not simply, “Is God working there?” The deeper question is, “Where has Christ preserved the fullness of the apostolic Church?”
This distinction also matters when considering modern Christianity’s individualism. One of the subtle dangers of contemporary Christianity is the idea that the Christian life can become essentially “Jesus, my Bible, and me.” A Christian may sincerely love Christ, read Scripture every day, pray, listen to sermons, and desire holiness. All of those things are good. But Christianity becomes distorted when the individual Christian becomes the final authority over the meaning of Christianity. The Christian begins deciding, “This doctrine is biblical. That doctrine is not biblical. This tradition is acceptable. That tradition is man-made. This church is right. That church is wrong.” Eventually, even unintentionally, the individual becomes the final interpreter of Christianity. The Orthodox Church challenges that model because Christ did not call Christians to become their own popes. He called them into His Body. He gave them apostles, shepherds, sacraments, the Holy Spirit, Scripture, Tradition, and one another. He gave them a Church in which they could be formed rather than requiring every Christian to reconstruct Christianity independently.
None of this requires pretending that the Orthodox Church is made up of perfect people. It is not. The apostles themselves had disagreements. Peter denied Christ. Thomas doubted. Paul and Barnabas disputed. Judas betrayed Jesus. The existence of sinful Christians, therefore, does not disprove the Church. The question is whether Christ preserves His Church despite the sins of its members. That is precisely what Orthodoxy believes. The Orthodox Church is therefore not asking Christians to choose between Christ and His Church. It is asking Christians to encounter Christ within the Church that belongs to Him.
The Bible is not diminished by Tradition. It is understood within the apostolic Tradition that preserved it. The saints do not diminish Christ. They demonstrate what Christ accomplishes in those who surrender themselves to Him. The Eucharist does not compete with the Cross. It proclaims and makes present to the faithful the saving mystery of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice. The priest does not replace Christ. He serves Christ. The bishop does not replace the apostles. He stands within their apostolic succession. The Liturgy does not replace the Gospel. It proclaims, embodies, and worships according to the Gospel. The Church does not compete with the Holy Spirit. The Church is precisely the community into which Christ poured out the Holy Spirit and through which that apostolic life has been preserved.
For that reason, the Orthodox invitation is not simply, “Believe Orthodoxy because Orthodoxy says it is true.” A sincere seeker should investigate. Read the New Testament. Read the Christians who lived immediately afterward. Read Ignatius. Read Irenaeus. Read Justin Martyr. Read Athanasius. Read the Ecumenical Councils. Examine what the early Christians believed about the Eucharist, baptism, bishops, worship, the saints, and the Church. Then attend an Orthodox Divine Liturgy and listen carefully to what is actually being prayed and proclaimed. Do not merely ask whether the Liturgy feels foreign. Ask what it is saying. Listen to how frequently Scripture is woven into the worship. Listen to the Creed. Listen to the prayers. Listen to the Eucharistic prayers. Notice that the saints are remembered. Notice that the living and departed are prayed for, and why. Notice that the Eucharist stands at the center. Notice that the worship is not built around the preacher’s personality. Then ask the historical question: Does this look like a religion invented centuries after Christ, or the continuation of something profoundly ancient?
And then comes the harder question: If this really is the Church Christ established, what would prevent me from entering it? That is ultimately the question worth wrestling with. The Christian was never meant to walk this road alone. Christ did not leave His people with a book and their own private judgment. He gave them His Church. He gave them apostles. He gave them the Holy Spirit. He gave them the sacraments. He gave them the Eucharist. He gave them to one another. And because He conquered death, He gave them the saints who have gone before them. The Church is therefore not merely a building Christians enter on Sunday. It is the Body into which they are baptized, the household in which they are formed, the community in which Scripture is proclaimed, the place where the Eucharistic life of Christ is received, and the communion that stretches from the apostles to the present and from earth to heaven.
If Christ truly meant what He said—that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”—then perhaps the most important question a Christian can ask is not, “Which church agrees most closely with what I currently believe?” Perhaps the better question is, “Where is the Church that Christ promised He would preserve?” That question deserves more than a quick answer. It deserves history, Scripture, prayer, humility, and investigation. And that is precisely why a Christian who loves Christ and His Word should, at the very least, seriously inquire into the Orthodox Church. The question is not whether Orthodoxy is simply another denomination among thousands. The question is whether it is what it claims to be: the continuation of the Church Christ established, the Church that received the apostles’ teaching, preserved the Scriptures, confessed the faith of the Ecumenical Councils, worshiped Christ sacramentally, and has continued to proclaim the same Gospel for nearly two thousand years. If there is even a possibility that this claim is true, it is too important to dismiss without investigation.
If this is your question, start here: Finding the Church That Jesus BuiltBible study · Four parts · Church, canon, and apostolic tradition