Quiz Guide
an explanation of the Quiz answers according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church
(explanation underneath each section of answers)
for a more detailed account, choose the "Theology" tab on the navigation menu to the left
Q1: The Orthodox Church does not agree with the very common view in the Protestant world that all the churches are merely the inventions of men subsequent to Christ, more or less in their imperfections approximating only to what Christ taught about the Kingdom of God. We believe that God provided for us in establishing the Church in direct continuity with the Apostles and beyond them to Israel itself so that we might have full confidence in the guidance of our Christian lives within this Church. For reasons I won't go into here, we believe that this Church is indeed the Orthodox Church (from which Rome broke away in the second millennium; herself spawning many more schisms and heresies in the Protestant Reformation).
Q2, Q3: John 1 teaches that the "Word became flesh" (John 1:14) and that this "Word" (Logos) was and is God. Jesus is true God and true Man ... one person with two natures. No one can be "more-or-less-human" or "more-or-less-God. There can be no compromise at all in the use of either term. "Son of God" indicates a relation of the Word to the Father. It does not mean that the Word is any "less" God than the Father. Likewise the Holy Spirit is God also.
Q4: The Orthodox Church does not see Scripture in isolation from the very Church that wrote it down and authorised its definitive collection, (called the Canon). That whole process, inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, is what we call Holy Tradition. Tradition includes Scripture as its normative core but it is no way limited to that core. The Church has the mind of Christ because she is the Temple of the Living God and both the Body and Bride of Christ. Tradition, therefore, is the whole of her aposatolic life. All this is itself entirely scriptural and in full accord with the teaching of the New Testament (cf. Acts 2:42).
Q5: "3 ways" is too woolly and vague ... it could also mean that God is Father one minute, then the Son the next, then the Spirit at some other time. This is the heresy of modalism and it makes impossible the testimony of the Church that Jesus prayed to the Father (and not of course to Himself) and that the Spirit was given by the Father at Pentecost, not by Jesus. "3 divine entities" ends up as 3 gods and Christians are not tritheists! We do not try to stick together as it were 3 individuals and call them "God." The final option works for those who deny the divinity of Christ and the Spirit. Unitarianism, however, is completely incompatible with Scripture, Tradition and Christian experience. The Orthodox teaching that God is one in essence (in his essential being) but tripersonal in the communion of Perfect Love both in an "interior" and "exterior" manner is the only formulation that makes sense of the data.
Q6: The second commandment forbids the worship of idols ... that is, anything created in the place of God. When a banner is raised in church with a picture of Christ on it, does anyone seriously believe that somebody might be tempted to worship this object and the image on which it is inscribed or woven?!
However, although the use of statues in church would
not break the second commandment either, the Orthodox Church holds that
3 dimensional art can only ever be "naturalistic" even if (as is often
the case) it is idealised, abstract or sentimental. 2 dimensional art
(as in icons, banners, frescoes and reliefs) allows for a certain formal
stylisation that makes such an image a theological medium and not merely
an artefact of the personal subjectivity of the artist or any vain
attempt to copy a mundane reality. Such 2 dimensional art is
mandatory in Orthodox churches because as embodied persons we need such
means of encounter with God and his saints. Having simply
"thoughts in our heads" is not enough. Veneration (but not
worship) of such images ensures that we worship (that is love God) with
our bodies also.
Q7: Making the baptised wait until an "age of discretion" (be it
7, 11 or any other arbitrary number) makes a nonesense of the plain
meaning of baptism as belonging to the Body of Christ. If one
accepts the baptism of babies (and of courtse, the Orthodox Church most
certainly does) it is a violation of Scripture and Tradition to deny
very young baptised persons Holy Communion. To suggest that we
must be "old enough" to participate makes of God an intellectual problem
to be "understood" or a moral precept to be "accepted" rather than a
personal Reality to be encountered. Anyone can encounter God and
more especially when washed with the bath of regeneration and annointed
with the Holy Spirit. Giving Holy Communion to the very young also
makes sense in terms of child development. Would you stop feeding
your children (say) toast at breakfast because they couldn't say "why" you love them
or failed to give you an account of how bread was made?
Q8:
Acres and acres of print and a veritable
deluge of words (with much inordinate passion) has been expended in the
west over the last five centuries on this question. My approach
here is very simple. What did Jesis say? Go look it up if
you need to to. He didn't say this is a "symbol" of my Body or
this is "like" my Body or that this will give you "holy thoughts about
me." He said "This IS my Body." Can we not take him at his
word?
Q9: Again, fasting is mandatory ... not just appropriate for those
who find it useful. Christ taught his disciples to fast. He
didn't do the usual English thing nowadays of seeking not to offend by
suggesting that they might like to "consider this as helpful". In
any event, his first disciples being Jews, would have been thoroughly
familiar with the practice. So, yes, we SHOULD fast!
Q10: Christianity is a faith lived by persons, other humans, living souls transparent in holiness in all its desirable authenticity. By them we gain a measure of what it is to be a Christian and in their fellowship and by their prayers we grow in the knowledge and love of God. A church without saints is a car without an engine ... going nowhere.
Q11: The Church has had bishops (overseers) from the beginning functioning as successors to the apostles. By their confession of faith, pastorate and holiness of life they have been charged with caring for the faithful and sustaining the mission of the Church. If any bishop, however, was to break rank with his brothers through heresy or a scandalous life, then ALL his clergy and people would have to desert him and seek out alternative episcopal oversight immediately. To stay with such a heretical or schismatic bishop would be to cut oneself off from the Church ... and this would be a very serious matter indeed. So, the Church is not an institution with managers holding permanent tenure. She is a living organism whose bishops help to maintain her consistency and coherence in the gospel across space and over time. A church with no bishops is as hopeless as a church with bad bishops. A bishop maybe a hopeless administrator but if he is not a man of God then his episcopacy is in vain.
Q12: Confession before a priest is vital NOT because God won't forgive us unless we are shriven (sacramentally forgiven) but because it is salutary to our souls that we have both the assurance of forgiveness AND the counsel of another who will save us from delusion and pride ... the perennial temptations of those who think that they are safe in keeping their relationship with God "private." So, for salvation's sake, confession before a priest is mandatory. The frequency of confession and the relationship to the other sacraments is another matter entirely.
Q13: God's "anger" or "wrath" is a true experience of an unrepentant person ... BUT it is how such a person encounters the divine LOVE when he or she is resistent to that (or rather Him) in word and deed. It is a bit like (by way of analogy) comparing sawing a piece of wood along the grain with sawing it against the grain. The WOOD doesn't change ... but our hands become sore if we don't "relate" to the wood in the right away. This then is God's holiness and justice: simply his Infinite Love requiring that we should relate to him without sin through forgiveness and regeneration.
Unrepentant humans populate hell which exists according to the providence of God but not his desire. God rather desires that all men should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4 - even if some are not and don't). God then never forces our hand in this matter. We CHOOSE our own course ... and we experience the consequences for that choosing ... for good or ill.
Q14, Q15: Annihilation, a disembodied existence of a reincarnation of the soul ... none of these does justice either to God's creation of life or the raising to new life of Christ with his resurrection body ... for the Risen Lord truly existed and exists and He is no ghost! And so also it is with us in the resurrection. When we die we rest in God as we await our resurrection bodies.
Q16: The Son didn't send the Spirit because Jesus promised that he
would pray that the Father would send Him, (John 14:16). So the
Orthodox Church is resolutely opposed to the idea that the Son also was
directly responsible for this sending (the late western "filioque"
clause in the Nicene Creed). To answer "God" here is to be too
woolly and unwilling to acknowledge perhaps that everything in the
Christian gospel has an explicitly Trinitarian dimension.
Q17: If there had not been a Mary ready to say yes, the Incarnation could not have happened (at least not at that time). There is no way God could have become truly human except in a freely offered womb. The veneration of the Mother of God is precisely because of this. However, we need to remember that she was totally free to obey when and only when she was "full of grace." She had both the necessity and capacity of choosing for the Incarnation to happen. Grace never overwhelms for grace is "God-Himself-Present" and God is a Lover, not a thug.
Q18: Orthodox Christianity does not START by saying that humanity is defined by any alleged consequence of the Fall. Humanity is is celebrated in the first place as created and GOOD. We are all made in the image of God and that image is never effaced no matter how heinous a person's crimes and sins might be. However, we can and do lose, more or less by degree, our LIKENESS unto God and the only thing that can restore that is repentance and faith, sacramentally ensured and provided for in the Church.
We were originally created as a "work in progress."
We are called then to develop in the goodness of God's very own
Uncreated Life and Light, not to sink back into a deadly hopelessness and despair, a self-fulfilling morbid prophecy of
human self hatred. Such guilt ridden morbidity has often been the result
(if not the intention) of extreme Augustinian traditions in the west
where God can barely look upon us save through the death of his Son.
This is a travesty of the teaching of Christ's sacrifice which was to
set us free and not to appease the wrath of a vengeful Father. God
actually loves us because we are lovable, even in our sin. He
doesn't make trash!
Q19: Forgiveness and reconciliation is an important part of the
Christian gospel but it is not salvation's FINAL goal. That final goal
is the original purpose of our creation ... that through Love and loving
we should be united to God the Source of Life. This is what the
Orthodox call theosis or deification. It is goal for our striving
in the Holy Spirit, but not fully achievable either in this life or the
next. In God and united to Him there is an infinite and glorious
ascent which makes avoiding hell and seeking heaven a useful notion but somewhat
second rate and not hitting the matter full on as it were! We love
because he first loved us; not because we want to avoid hell.
Q20: Orthodox Christianity has a unitary understanding of Truth.
That is, ANY truth if it is dependable as truth, comes from God who is
All-Truth. To think, therefore, that God can be opposed to truth
seeking "outside" of revelation is to render the creation somehow
existing independently of Him, particularly if those seeking to know
more about it and serve it (eg., scientists, poets, artists) are constrained to accept "truth" as predefined in some
arbitrary (or God forbid) absolutist manner.
If there are problems encountered (say) in relating Scripture to the modern world then the problem lies in the failure to understand the canons of interpretation of these texts, particularly as exemplified by the Fathers. Such interpretations are not defined by a shallow and fundamentalist kind of literalism .... which only subjects faith to scorn and disrepute. Truth in its infinite variety is ONE for by definition it proceeds from God who IS Truth Himself.
