One True Church

Truth is not subjective, it is not religious, and it is certainly not questionable within the Christian paradigm. The Orthodox Christian Church is the only true Church that operates still to this day with proper continuity to what had been laid out for us through Jesus Christ’s teachings. This truth is only discoverable to Protestants and Reformed Christians if they’re willing to set their current world view to the side for a moment. For converts into the Orthodox Faith, it becomes abundantly clear very early on how Protestant and Reformed churches continuously fall short of Christ’s teachings for us. The complete lack of continuity with early Church worship, sacramentology, theology, christology, etc… is not an issue that’s impossible to discover. With some surface level research into the early Church writings and practices you can find out very quickly how out of touch they have become. When I began my personal research into the early Church I discovered numerous amounts of problems with the current state of Christianity in America. It didn’t take long for me to find out that I was in the wrong place as a Protestant.

The first and largest problem I discovered was the complete lack of continuity with how the modern Christians believe in the Eucharist (communion). Us Orthodox refer to this as the Eucharist most commonly. What is the Eucharist? In layman’s terms, it’s the bread and wine served at service on Sunday to those who are able to partake of it. The priest takes bread, puts it in wine, and serves it off a spoon to those who come up to accept the gift. Now, that is an obviously gross understatement of what’s actually taking place, but I want to set the visual stage for readers who are not familiar with the Eucharist. Now, Protestants and Reformers (now) fall insanely short theologically and Biblically on their understanding of the Eucharist. In Evangelical churches most congregants almost never take communion. If they do, it’s a couple times a year where they take bread and grape juice and call it communion. Very, very poor Biblical interpretation. Most Protestant and Reformed churches usually fall along the same line as Evangelicals in this regard. However, there are a few outliers in extremely traditional Baptist, Anglican, and Episcopalian churches who partake more frequently. Some of them even upgrade to wine instead of the mockery that is grape juice. However, none of them truly grasp the entire proper Biblical theological basis on which the true Eucharist is established. They all believe it’s merely a “symbolic representation” of what Christ did during the last supper. This has never been the interpretation, practice, or understanding of the Church. This “symbolic” understanding was not practiced until after the Reformation which occurred inthe 1500s which is 1500 years after Christianity “began”. So for around 1500 years, the Christians never partook of the Eucharist in a purely symbolic sense. Even Luther himself, the king of the Reformation, held the Eucharist in higher regard than any Protestant church today. “The glory of our God is precisely that for our sakes he comes down to the very depths, into human flesh, into the bread, into our mouth, our heart, our bosom . . .” (This is My Body, 1527, LW, Vol. 37, 72). Luther believed in the “real presence” as the Orthodox do. However, he rejected the new (at that time) Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation. We won’t get into that now, maybe at a later date. To put it plainly, a common theme you’ll see throughout modern Protestant/Reformed theology is they all have continuously altered their faith throughout the 500 years they’ve been on their own and fall further away from the true understandings of the Church.

So, what do the Orthodox believe? Well let’s take a look and compare it with the first millennium Church writings. The Orthodox Christian Church believes that “This is truly your pure body and this is truly your precious blood” (Pre-Communion Prayers). We actually believe that our Liturgical service, through the Holy Spirit, turns the Eucharist into the true body and blood of Jesus Christ. Which is completely in line with what Christ taught us in the Gospels and affirmed through Paul’s letters as well. There is no Biblical reference to taking the Eucharist lightly or symbollically. This is one aspect of the Orthodox Church I personally fell in love with because they know where to drawn the line in doctrine. We refer to our “Sacraments” as “Mysteries” or “Holy Mysteries” because unlike Catholics, we don’t believe its appropriate to over explain God and His Mysteries. That’s why we call them “Holy Mysteries”. We don’t know the literal process taking place that God is using to transform the Eucharist into Christ’s body and blood. We leave that part to God and defend it with our doctrinal teachings by using what those who came before us wrote to interpret the words of Jesus Christ and Paul when explaining the Eucharist. At no point in Church history did the Church ever believe the Eucharist to be simply symbolic in nature. This dates back to the first couple centuries AD. For example, Justin Martyr defending the Eucharist against the Roman pagans in 155 AD “so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.” Justin Martyr actually had to convince pagans that Christians weren’t cannibals essentially because of how serious they took the Eucharist. Non-Christians at the time accused us of actually eating flesh. Which we weren’t, obviously. Or Saint Ingatius of Antioch in the 1st or 2nd century “those who hold heretical opinions about the grace of Jesus Christ … refuse to acknowledge that the Eucharist is the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up” (Smyrnaeans 6.2). Or in his writings “Against Heresies” in chapter 9 where he says “Those, therefore, who speak against the gift of God (Eucharist), incur death in the midst of their disputes.” He then goes on and warns real Christians to actually avoid those who do not believe in the Eucharist. How about St. Cyril of Jerusalem in the 4th century “Therefore, do not consider them as bare bread and wine; for according to the declaration of the Master, they are Body and Blood. If even the senses suggest this to you [viz. that they are only bread and wine], let faith reassure you. Do not judge the reality by taste but, having full assurance from faith, realize that you have been judged worthy of the Body and Blood of Christ.” Saint Cyril of Jerusalem was a 4th century theologian for the Church and his writings had a profound impact on the early development of the Church. Even John Chrysostom “Let the initiated follow what I say. In order then that we may become this not by love only, but in very deed, let us be blended into that flesh. This is effected by the food which He has freely given us, desiring to show the love which He has for us…This blood causes the image of our King to be fresh within us, produces beauty unspeakable,…”. The list goes on and on quite frankly for such an astounding volume of proof for the Church’s understanding of the Eucharist that it affirms to me how disconnected the modern churches are from the early Church. Not only did the Church establish the doctrine on the Eucharist to be taken as the true body and blood of Jesus Christ, but it defended it very seriously. All it takes is a decent amount of research into the first millennium Church to find that the lack of continuity today in outside churches is astronomical in practice. You can practically choose any Saint of the Church and find they all held this same understanding. They might not all have written extensively on it, but in order to be considered a Saint within the Church, you have to follow all proper Orthodox practices appropriately. Meaning, they all not only partook of the Eucharist, but did so with the appropriate understanding as well. We won’t even get into the documentations proving how serious the Church took this Holy Mystery. When we are talking about the body and blood of Jesus Christ, how can you take it lightly as a Christian?

This is simply the tip of the iceberg floating beneath the surface that the new age churches have built their weak foundations on. This began the true conversion in my curious mind almost immediately for one simple reason. I thought in my head, “Why would Jesus lie to us when He promised to protect His Church?”. The reason I asked this question is simple. The modern Christians of today deny almost all of the essential doctrines the Orthodox Church still practices today. Therefore, these “Christians” are opposing the True Church’s practices which were guided and guarded by God, are saying that God was wrong for 1,500 years until the Reformation. They’re professing that they the way they practice now, which never existed until the last 100-200 years by the way, is the “right” way to practice Christianity. You’re telling me God allowed the Church to practice falsely for 2000 years. If you’re a Christian, you cannot believe this because you are insinuating God led us astray and betrayed His promise to us. It’s an asinine concept when you really sit down and work out what is happening to these churches in America. That lack of proper worship in modern Christianity in regard to the Eucharist is a surface level symptom of a much more serious deep-rooted cancer. I didn’t leave Reformed Christianity only due to the issues I have with their view of the Eucharist. I understood then that it doesn’t end there unfortunately.

So why are some churches so far removed from what we Orthodox have been doing for 2,000 years? I’m not sure, I’m not professional. It is Biblical that these false prophets would lead parts of the Church astray. But I would say this, from the copious amount of studying I’ve been doing it’s become apparent to me that the typical church in America has completely lost touch with the Faith. It honestly breaks my heart, and it worries me. What does that mean for their salvation? I also don’t know and will never pretend to know. Salvation is not a judgement made by mortals. However, I am worried that Christians across our country are continuously being misled by churches who completely lack the true depth that Christianity is supposed to be practiced at. Nothing about our God is simple, so practicing our worship of Him should never be simple. The metaphysical properties of the Trinity should not, and cannot, be trifled with by Christians. I am no professional, I am no priest, I am no theologian (yet), I am nothing in the grand scheme of this life. I am a sinner who loves to read about our Faith and cares deeply for the souls of everyone. I write passionately (and poorly) about these topics simply because I want to help fill the void that is ignorance in modern Christians across this country. I am not bashing anybody, I am not judging anybody, I am simply providing true information about Christianity in hopes that I can begin to peal back the veil dangling in front of the eyes of whoever is reading this. One phrase I’ll never forget my amazing spiritual father told me when I was first inquiring into the Faith was “The Orthodox Faith is the full picture of Christianity”. At first, I didn’t understand what that meant. I thought “how much else could there possibly be?”. Man oh man, was I lost. Now I understand what he meant. I hope you reading this will begin to understand what he meant too.