What is Orthodox Christianity?

Orthodox Christianity is the life in faith of the Orthodox Church, inseparable from that concrete, historic community and encompassing its entire way of life. The Orthodox Christian faith is that faith “handed once to the saints“ (Jude 3), passed on in Holy Tradition to the apostles by Jesus Christ, and then handed down from one generation to the next, without addition or subtraction. The sole purpose of Orthodox Christianity is the salvation of every human person, uniting him to Christ in the Church, transforming him in holiness, and imparting eternal life. This is the Gospel, the good news, that Jesus is the Messiah, that he rose from the dead, and that we may be saved as a result. Orthodox Christians worship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the Holy Trinity, the one God. Following the Holy Scriptures and the Church Fathers, the Church believes that the Trinity is three divine persons (hypostases) who share one essence (ousia). It is paradoxical to believe thus, but that is how God has revealed himself. All three persons are consubstantial with each other, that is, they are of one essence (homoousios) and coeternal. There never was a time when any of the persons of the Trinity did not exist. God is beyond and before time and yet acts within time, moving and speaking within history. God is not an impersonal essence or mere “higher power,“ but rather each of the divine persons relates to mankind personally. Neither is God a simple name for three gods (i.e., polytheism), but rather the Orthodox faith is monotheist and yet Trinitarian. The God of the Orthodox Christian Church is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the I AM who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush. The source and unity of the Holy Trinity is the Father, from whom the Son is begotten and also from whom the Spirit proceeds. Thus, the Father is both the ground of unity of the Trinity and also of distinction. To try to comprehend unbegottenness (Father), begottenness (Son), or procession (Holy Spirit) leads to insanity, says the holy Gregory the Theologian, and so the Church approaches God in divine mystery, approaching God apophatically, being content to encounter God personally and yet realize the inadequacy of the human mind to comprehend him. The primary statement of what the Church believes about God is to be found in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. The second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, begotten before all ages by the Father without a mother, was begotten in time by the Virgin Mary the Theotokos without a father. He is the Logos, the Word of God, and he became flesh and dwelt among us, as says the beginning of the Gospel of John. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. This is the doctrine of the Incarnation, that God became a man. Our Lord Jesus is the Theanthropos, the God-man. He is not half God and half man, nor is he a hybrid of the two. Rather, he is fully God and fully man, perfect in his divinity and perfect in his humanity. He has two natures, joined together in the Incarnation without mixture, division, or confusion. As a result of being fully God and man, he also has two wills, one human will and one divine will to which the human one is submitted. He has two natures yet remains one person, one hypostasis. Jesus is God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. He is the I AM revealed to Moses. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is the God before the ages, come to Earth as a little child and then died on the cross as a man and rose from the dead. He and the Father are one, for he is consubstantial with the Father. During his passion and death on the cross, one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh. He is the Messiah, the Christ—the Anointed One of God, foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament. He is the Savior of the world, the Lamb of God, the Son of Man. As described in the Gospels, Jesus Christ was born of a woman, grew into a man, preached, healed, taught his disciples, died in physical reality on the cross, and then rose bodily from the dead on the third day. He then ascended into Heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father. Of all mankind, he alone is without sin. His work on Earth was for the purpose of saving mankind, for the life of the world. Everything he did was for our salvation, from relating parables and being baptized by the Forerunner to his glorious death and resurrection. Because of who he is and of what he did for us, we have the opportunity to become by grace what he is by nature. That is, we can put on the divine, becoming partakers of the divine nature.