On Belief in the Church and Its Essence #
New Ritualist: You keep talking about the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”—that is, the Church in which we must believe according to the Creed. But you, Old Ritualists, do not believe in this Church, even though you discuss it. The Church defined by the Creed should consist of a society of believers with a three-tiered hierarchy and seven sacraments. And you do not constitute such a Church, because you lacked a bishop for one hundred and eighty years. But we Orthodox have always constituted and continue to constitute the Church professed in the Creed, with its full composition, as we have always had bishops.
Old Ritualist: Do you believe in this Church that you claim to constitute?
New Ritualist: How could we not? In the Creed, we always read: “I believe in one God the Father, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit, in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” This is how we believe in the Church, just as we believe in God.
Old Ritualist: Is that so? You claim to constitute the Church and believe in it, even as you believe in God? Then you believe in yourselves as if you were God. What blasphemy your distorted concept and teaching about the Creedal Church leads you to! You become like idolaters, believing in a creature as though it were the Creator. Even worse—you become self-deifiers, believing in yourselves as if you were God. What could be worse or more sacrilegious than this? If it is disgraceful and sacrilegious to create an idol and believe in it as if it were God, then it is even more sacrilegious to believe this way about yourselves.
New Ritualist: But believing people are called the Church, as it says in the Catechism and in many other books; and we are obliged to believe in the Church. Therefore, we must believe in believing people.
Old Ritualist: If you reason this way, you could go even further. In Scripture, a person is called not only the Church, but even a god: “I said, Ye are gods” (Psalm 81). And, “showing mercy to His christ (anointed), to David” (Psalm 17). Following your reasoning, one could conclude that we must believe in people in place of God and Christ. This is precisely what sectarians, or “Khlysts,” do, misusing the term “God” without understanding the difference between God by nature and god by resemblance. Likewise, by misusing the term “Church,” you compel people to believe in humans as if they were God, thus promoting a form of sectarianism.
The term “Church” refers not only to the entire community of believers, but also to each member of this community, to every individual believer, and even to the building where believers gather for prayer, and to many other objects or “things,” as is also indicated in the Great Catechism (ch. 25, p. 120v). According to your logic, we should believe in every believing person and even in church buildings as if they were God, since they, too, are called “Church.”
To prevent such false interpretations and abuses, even your own metropolitan, Gregory, after listing the various meanings expressed by the word “Church,” gives this instruction:
It is very necessary to note this distinction of meanings for the word Church, because, if we do not differentiate these meanings and apply the passages of Scripture containing the word Church without proper discernment, as apostates from Orthodoxy often do, one will inevitably fall into various errors. For what is said in Scripture about the Church in one sense cannot be applied to the Church in another sense. For example, what can be said about the Church as the temple of God (the building) cannot be applied to the Church as the community of Orthodox believers. Therefore, St. Chrysostom, in his homilies on the phrase, “The queen stood,” having spoken of the Church as the community of believers, said, “Nothing is equal to the Church,” but he immediately warned his listeners not to understand his words as referring to the Church as a building, saying specifically: “Do not speak to me of walls. Walls age with time, but the Church never grows old” (The Pearl, p. 519).\footnote{Also called Margarit, a collection of homilies attributed to St. John Chrysostom.* He also said: “The Church is greatly beloved by God. Not this one enclosed by walls, but this one fortified by faith” (On Faith, p. 19v; The True Ancient and True Orthodox Church, Gregory, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Part 1, ch. 1, p. 18).
Metropolitan Gregory directed this clarification regarding the Church, of course, against the Old Ritualists, but it strikes entirely at you, the proponents of the New Ritualist Church, since you indeed mislead the simple-hearted with the term “Church,” causing them to believe in people as if they were God.
New Ritualist: But how, then, should we correctly understand belief in the Creedal Church, and how should one believe in it?
Old Ritualist: Let us read about this in the books. Here is what is written in the Great Catechism:
Question: How should we understand what we say: “I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church”? Do we believe in people, or in something else?
\ Answer: Not in people, but in their divine proclamations and dogmas, that is, we rely on the Church’s ordinances and conciliar and apostolic traditions (Catechism, ch. 4, p. 17v).
And again: “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, meaning that we trust in the teachings and dogmas of the holy apostles and the seven holy ecumenical councils, and not in people” (Great Catechism, ch. 25, p. 119).
This teaching about belief in the Church is in accordance with the teaching of Christ Himself, who began His preaching with the words: “Repent and believe the Gospel” (Mark 1:15, reading 2). By the word “Gospel,” we can understand not only the single book bearing this name but the entirety of the Christian proclamation—all the teachings and decrees of the holy apostles, holy councils, holy fathers, and teachers of the Church that are presented in accordance with the Gospel. Blessed Jerome teaches:
The entirety of many books, if they agree with each other and are written about the same subject, is commonly called by Scripture a single book, as, for example, the Gospel and the law of the Lord, perfect and converting the soul (Psalm 18:7), are spoken of in the singular, even though there are many Gospels and many commandments of the law. Likewise, the book mentioned in the speech of Isaiah refers to all divine Scripture (Isaiah 29:18). Both Ezekiel and John consume a single book (Ezekiel 3:1-3; Revelation 10:9-10), and the Savior, foretold by the voices of all the saints, said, “In the volume of the book it is written of Me” (Psalm 40:7). Corresponding to this meaning, it is commanded that there should not be many books. For whatever you might say, if it refers to Him “who was in the beginning with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1), then it is all one book, and innumerable books are called one law and one Gospel (Works of Jerome, vol. 6, Commentary on Ecclesiastes, ch. 12).
Therefore, to believe in the Church means not to believe in people but to believe in the Gospel, in the commandments of God, in the divine proclamations and dogmas, in conciliar and apostolic teachings and traditions; it means to hold all the evangelical and divine commandments and church traditions and to arrange one’s life according to them, thereby entering into the most lively communion with Christ and becoming a member of His body—the Church—and a partaker of His gifts.
The commandments of God and the evangelical teaching are not something empty, abstract, or non-existent; rather, they are “spirit and life” (John 6:63, reading 24), and so powerful and strong that “heaven and earth shall pass away, but not one tittle of the law shall fail” (Luke 16:17, reading 82). And again: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away” (Mark 13:31, reading 62). These words of God and all the teachings of the Gospel, firmer than the earth and the heavens, are the Gospel’s teachings, as well as the apostolic and conciliar traditions and decrees in which we are commanded by the Creed to believe. The holy fathers and teachers of the Church often directly call these the Church. For instance, St. Maximus the Confessor says, “Christ the Lord called the right and salvific confession of faith to be the catholic Church; therefore, He called blessed the confession of Peter, who confessed well, and promised to build upon such a confession the Church of all” (Lives of the Saints, Jan. 21). St. John Chrysostom declares: “When I speak of the Church, I mean not merely a place but also a disposition; not just church walls but the Church’s laws. For the Church is not walls and a roof, but faith and life” (The Pearl, Homily 10, on the Queen, p. 519). And, “Evil shall never prevail over our pure and undefiled faith and on the true commands of Christ” (Gospel Commentary, Sunday 13, p. 244). Similarly, Nikon of the Black Mountain writes, “For the catholic churches are not walls but the right teachings and traditions of the divine rules of the holy councils and the holy apostles” (Taktikon, Homily 22).
This is the Church in which we profess to believe according to the Creed, the Church consisting of evangelical and divine commandments, apostolic and patristic dogmas, traditions, and proclamations, in which we profess to abide. From this, it is clear that those who truly believe in the Church are those who strictly and precisely hold and fulfill all evangelical and apostolic commandments and traditions and arrange their lives according to them. The Old Believer Church of Christ believes in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” meaning that it believes in the Gospel, in the divine commandments, in the dogmas and traditions of the holy apostles and holy fathers, and has always held and continues to hold them without change or compromise, striving constantly to fulfill them in all their precision, strictness, and fullness. But other heretical churches do not believe in the Church professed in the Creed, for they violate many evangelical commandments and apostolic dogmas and traditions, neither holding them nor following them. Instead, they follow their own inventions, their own destructive heresies, which they believe in as divinely revealed truths, or simply believe in themselves and in people who hold heresies.
Thus, from the presented arguments and testimonies, it is evident that the objects of faith in the Church professed in the Creed consist of the Holy Gospel, the divine commandments and dogmas, the apostolic proclamations and traditions. These, as an essential part of the Church, are often directly called the Church itself. Yet, it is known that the Church consists not only of faith but also of believers, so that faith and the faithful constitute parts of the Church. However, these parts of the Church should never be confused with each other, nor should the properties of one be attributed to the other. A person consists of both soul and body, but it would be a grave error to attribute the properties of the body to the soul, and vice versa. Likewise, concerning the Church: in it, faith is the soul, and the believers are the body. This comparison is well developed and explained by Metropolitan Macarius, who, as a theologian of your church, should hold special authority for you. In his Introduction to Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, he writes:
Faith and the Church exist inseparably. Faith, in the broadest sense, is the union between God and a rational, free creature; and the Church is the assembly of rational, free creatures united by this very bond among themselves. Therefore, particularly if we turn only to ourselves (humans), faith is the union of man with God, while the Church is the society of people who hold the same faith and are connected to each other through it. Thus:
\ (a) the same bond with God, considered in relation to individual moral beings as separate from one another, constitutes faith; but considered in relation to all of them as a connection among themselves, it forms the Church;
\ (b) the Church, or the society of moral beings holding the same faith, can be said to be the body, while the faith that binds all these beings into one whole is the soul of the Church, so that faith and the Church constitute one inseparable whole;
\ (c) faith cannot exist without the Church, because, being the property of not only one spiritual being but of all, it naturally unites them into one moral society; even more so, the Church cannot exist without faith, which it presupposes as essential to its existence (Introduction to Theology, Macarius, ch. 1, §16).
To this, it is necessary to add only that the Apostle Paul also compares the Church to the human body, saying: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12, reading 152). Among the members of the Church, bishops are undoubtedly included. But just as a person, if deprived of some bodily member, does not cease to be a person, does not die, nor lose their dignity—even sometimes boasting in their bodily wounds if received in a heroic battle for faith, king, and country—so if someone loses certain bodily members due to suffering for Christ, it is an even greater honor and glory. But if a person, with a completely whole and healthy body, has a corrupted and ruined soul, then they are not a worthy person but rather akin to irrational beasts, resembling them and deserving of complete contempt and aversion.
So it is with the Church: if it loses any of its members, for instance, a bishop, yet its soul—its faith, teachings, and patristic traditions—remains intact and unaltered, then such a Church is, without a doubt, the true Church of Christ, in which one can attain the Kingdom of Heaven and reach eternal blessedness. However, if a church retains all its members intact and seemingly healthy, but its spirit—its faith, teachings, dogmas, and traditions—is corrupted and distorted, then such a church is not the true Church of Christ but a heretical one, and within it, one cannot attain eternal blessedness.