Seitentitel

Bismeab wewold, womenfeskidus ahadu amlak, amen!

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Taken from: http://faith.davidschneider.us/

My Journey to the

Orthodox Faith

David A. Schneider

To give a short account of why my wife and I converted to Orthodox Christianity, I had originally put up a website for family and friends who are scattered across the states. It wasn't long before I was getting lots of hits from all kinds of people surfing the web. I decided to re-write many parts of it since the audience was no longer only family and friends.

I didn't pick up a book one day and think, "hey, I'll give this Orthodox thing a try." There was a lot more to it. Sadly, there are family members I do not talk to very often but at least the internet offers a point of contact. Why go through all this trouble? I came from (and married into) a family where personal faith and church were pretty darn important…

BACKGROUND

My dad came from a Lutheran background, my mom was Baptist. Growing up, my family attended Baptist churches for the most part, then when I was in high school we started attending an Assembly of God church. These denominations are pretty typical in Southern church life (becoming more so in the North, I think). So for that time and place, we were a fairly typical American Christian family.

I attended a Bible college for one semester (Christ for the Nations, Dallas) and then lived with a missionary family in Rome, Italy for a few months. I never really wanted to work in ministry, but I mention these experiences to emphasize how much evangelical Christianity was and is a part of our lives.

Many of you know that my family moved in order to be together while Mom helped build a ministry organization with a few church friends from Virginia. I was busy attending college which kept me at a distance from the ministry.

WHAT'S GOING ON?

Something was askew in modern Christianity. I couldn’t identify the big problem- if there was one. I only knew this much:

* I wasn't satisfied at church.
* Many of my friends weren't content either.
* Christian books re-hashed the same topics but with new covers.
* It looked like preachers were competing to find something "new" and "fresh" every week.
* The most prominent feature of Christianity was preaching. Was that the essence of Christianity, 2000 years of guys talking loud?

What REALLY bothered me were those things that seemed like big problems but are accepted with little question:

1- There were the charismatic churches I had been involved in that seemed to support "personality cults". There is no system of checks and balances on personalities. Preachers and independent evangelists are validated by popular demand and not by any authority.

For example, I once saw a few minutes of a Benny Hinn evangelistic crusade on television. I believe it was located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At one point in the broadcast, he paraded a crying woman, along with her children, in front of the entire audience saying how she had just converted from Islam to Christianity. There were only two possibilities here: this woman was either an actual convert or a "plant" in the audience. If she was a genuine convert from Islam to Christianity, this evangelist had endangered her life by putting her on television and parading her in front of several thousand onlookers, many of whom were probably also Muslim. If she does not recant, her family will probably disown her, her husband will divorce her and take full custody of the children. In some countries, this woman could be killed. Did Benny Hinn's crusade have a contingency plan for protecting Muslim converts to Christianity? Did Hinn do anything to get the woman out of the country or try to make some kind of peace with her family? Although having an assistant planted in the audience is sheer deception, it would've been the more favorable scenario for that woman. Either way, this is increasingly typical of what passes for evangelism and I feel this is a liability to the Faith. If her conversion was real, why was such a popular Christian leader able to do something so irresponsible, in front of television cameras no less??? Because Benny Hinn's audience knows nothing about Islamic culture or how to communicate to Muslims. This brings up another weakness of modern Christianity: these Christian leaders don't really teach anything concrete. They preach their own invented theology for hours but don't (or can't) tell their audience anything as practical as communicating to Muslims. But its not important that we know about such things. What's important is that the Show Must Go On.

2- There were the Church Fathers- I never heard about them from the pulpit. We are conditioned to buy up thousands of copies of the latest end-times books while great works by Clement, Ignatius, Basil, and Polycarp go untouched. These men defended our Faith against dangerous heresies and the criticisms of pagan intellectuals. In fact, some of them were taught by the apostles themselves, so it seemed to me that their works should be an important part of Christianity. The things they had to say should be more important and authoritative than the kinds of personalities that usually monopolize our attention. Unfortunately, modern Christianity has little place for the Church Fathers. Why did churches go out of their way to avoid them?

I recall an incident at Christ for the Nations; in one of my classes the teacher was talking about how the scriptures have always been authoritative from the earliest times and he used a quote from an early source (I can't remember what source). A student asked about these early writers and some of the other things they taught. The teacher dismissed the Church Fathers as unimportant outside of their ability to confirm the authority of the Scriptures. I never really thought much about that until I started reading the Fathers for myself.

3- The merchandising industry. Many times the latest "new move of God" looks suspiciously like a successful marketing campaign. If you travel to Florida to visit what is called "the Brownsville revival", you can purchase a videotape documentary, T-shirt, and mug. Another example is the popular book Prayer of Jabez, which is also accompanied by a product line of its own. Such merchandise is simply the latest in a long line of marketing campaigns that target Christians. There's nothing inherently wrong with a popular book or tape but modern Christianity has produced the expectation that such products are normative to a spiritual life. Now I'm sure lots of people benefit and find encouragement through such things, and it is not my intention to disparage something beneficial but no one can argue that what we have today isn't excessive.

4- Then there is the constant upheaval and change. Many people are restless, always searching for a new church. Churches appear, split, and disappear. I figured that since no one uses the Church Fathers as a guide to interpreting the Bible, that's why doctrinal fads are always popping up, i.e. the Toronto Blessing, Prayer of Jabez, the Brownsville revival, etc. Just a year before writing this, the Prayer of Jabez was the hottest thing. If it was so life changing, how come its already forgotten? And why is it wrong to use prayer books like the Catholics and Anglicans, but it IS okay to use the Prayer of Jabez as a guide to prayer?

5- Finally, there was the evangelical understanding of current global events. What we find offered from many pulpits, in most Christian books, and on Christian television is not led by critical, disciplined study- it is led by the desire for conspiracy and sensational events. I have known diplomats, UN workers, CFR people, I've lived overseas and I can say from first hand experience that nobody at the international level cares about taking away our guns. There will be no glorious battle between Christian patriots and the big Conspiracy.

Never have I heard a prophecy book or author make reference to "international legal norms", dollarization, or the fact that the "nation-state" is a recent idea. These three issues alone are fundamental to any discussion of international events. But TV preachers and prophecy book authors never talk about them because either 1) they don't understand these issues themselves, or 2) they do understand these issues but cannot talk about them because it wouldn't support their end-time theories.

The significance of the state of Israel plays a prominent role in modern eschatology. As such, the Palestinian question is not even addressed in modern Christianity. There has been a continuous Christian presence in Bethlehem and Nazareth since the first century. But these people- some of whom are the direct descendents of early Christians- are viewed with contempt and suspicion by modern Christianity while self proclaimed prophecy experts are given a place of authority.

These Palestinian Christians have been content to live under whatever government existed- Crusader, Ottoman, Brit, Israeli, etc. Yet, Christians are being killed. Why? Because the Israelis that Americans romanticize are humans with the capacity for wrong- doing just like anyone else. American Christians must face the fact that Israelis are doing shameful things in order to obtain Christian property. Palestinian Christians have simply received no reward for remaining peaceful. There is one thing infinitely more important than having correct politics- the welfare of the Body of Christ.

In John 13:35, Jesus says, "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." When Jesus says "one another" He is talking about all Christians. There are no exceptions. That includes the Palestinian Christians, too. American Christianity has failed miserably in this regard.

Many assume that since ancient Israel killed women and children of the foreign tribes that means modern Israel has free license to kill Palestinian women and children. This is an irresponsible and evil use of Scripture. It is also very selective because in the Old Testament God did not tell Israel to kill all non-Hebrews. We read in Ezekiel that when Israel was in exile, God outlined exactly what was to happen when they returned to the Promised Land. For those non-Hebrews who accepted the God of Israel, God said to do this:

"So shall ye divide this land unto you according to the tribes of Israel. And it shall come to pass, [that] ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel." Ezekiel 47:21, 22 (KJV) We can see from this passage that God clearly says that the descendents of the non-Israelites are to be treated as children of Israel and they are to enjoy Israel's inheritance. This is the opposite of what is taught from today's pulpits, yet it is directly out of the Bible. This is a scripture that few evangelicals dare quote because it is the opposite of the world view we are supposed to have.

If we were to apply the above passage to the modern Middle East, it could be argued that the Palestinian Muslims are "strangers that sojourn". On the other hand, the Palestinian Christians are not "strangers that sojourn" because like the modern Israelis, most Palestinian Christians are direct descendents of the tribes of Israel and are not "strangers" at all. Palestinian Christians are the physical descendents of those Jews who accepted Christ as the Messiah.

But all this is ignored. Nowhere does the Bible say that we should send other believers to their death for Israel's political gain. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say that our loyalty to Israel supercedes our loyalty to other believers. It is wrong for Christians to formulate public policy on the basis of recent and unreliable interpretations of prophecy, particularly when those policies violate clear Biblical standards of justice.

Historic Christian teaching on the Apocalypse, the millennium, Israel, and the role of the Church in the last days, etc. is very different from what is commonly taught now in today's evangelicalism. Its almost as if Evangelical Christianity works very hard to make sure Biblical prophecies are fulfilled the way we want them to be.

We cannot force our foreign policy, much less multilateral agreements, to follow some "pattern" found in the Old Testament or in Revelations. We have a clear message from Jesus as to how we should treat people. His message did not have "caveats" or "exceptions in the case of Israel". Like many Jews of the time, Judas Iscariot's failure was that he looked for Jesus to establish a new Jewish Kingdom to kick out the foreigners. Jesus made it clear this was not His intention. His life, death, and resurrection set the standards of God's future judgment and were not a temporary fix until political Israel was reborn. God does not have a alternative plan of salvation for the state of Israel. His life, death, and resurrection fulfilled Israel. Israel does not fulfill Jesus.

As long as modern American Christianity relies on dispensationalist eschatology for guidance, it will never offer concrete political, economic, or diplomatic solutions to world problems. Christian dialogue concerning world issues must mature beyond conspiracies, sinister agendas, etc. More importantly, dispensationalist eschatology is not the message of the Bible- it is an *interpretation* of what's in the Bible. So how should one interpret the books of Daniel and Revelations? This issue raised a serious question in my mind: if I cannot trust Christianity to explain or understand with is going on in the world around us, how can I trust it to explain or understand what happened 2000 years ago? Or the Bible- written in different languages, in different cultures, and in different times?

As years went by I began to get a sense that collectively, these unrelated problems might really be related; and maybe they pointed to a larger fundamental problem in the Christian faith. Could I dare entertain the thought that Christianity itself may not be the answer? Evangelical Christianity is the most enthusiastic and culturally relevant expression of the faith- if something was wrong with it, what else is there? After all, we were the ones "getting back the basics" of New Testament Christianity.

Sure enough, the current literature was trying to pinpoint just what was happening, confirming my feelings. Books were appearing with titles like "Evangelical Is Not Enough", "The Coming Evangelical Crisis", and "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind".

So what was wrong? Heck, I didn't know. Evangelical Christianity conditions us to think our shared problems will be solved by a "new thing" from God. So what "new" movement was going to bring about needed change? That in itself was a problem, because everyone was already doing "a new thing". Some even said that God Himself was "doing a new thing". But evidently He was doing a thousand different new things at the same time and often they contradicted each other.

EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Upon marriage, we decided to attend a large, upper middle-class Baptist church. I felt it was probably closest to what I believed, yet without all the craziness we had experienced before. I became less and less interested in church. We were attending church maybe once a month. But I did become interested in writings of the early church Fathers and the Greek language of the New Testament. I wasn't trying to find any hidden or esoteric truths, I simply wanted to get a glimpse of a primitive Christianity that obviously didn't exist anymore.

While surfing the internet in 1999, I came across a text version of an ancient book called the Didache. What the heck is that (and how do you pronounce it)??? The Didache (pronounced "DID uh kay") is one of the earliest books of instruction produced by the early church. Some early Christians wanted it included in New Testament. Wait one darn minute! I had been in church my entire life and had never heard of it. If it was so important to the early Christians, why didn't anybody talk about it? Well, the Didache got my attention and I started reading anything I could get my hands on.

I read Ignatius, Clement, Barnabus, and a few others, but the two that spoke to me louder than the rest were the saints Polycarp and Justin Martyr. These guys gave me a glimpse into the early days of the faith. Polycarp is a great role model and would have been an amazing person to meet. As for Justin Martyr, I related to him more than the others because he had an academic background. He studied philosophy at college and after becoming a Christian, he defended the Faith against the criticisms of the pagans and Jews. Justin also gives us one of the earliest known descriptions of Christian worship. I learned some things about early Christianity that took me by surprise, for example:

"And this food is called among us Eukaristia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, 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, First Apology, c. 150 AD

This sounded like a modern description of Roman Catholic theology, yet here it was written around the year 150. Ignatius of Antioch, who was ordained by Saint Peter himself, said something very similar in his letter to the Smyrnaeans:

"Consider those who hold heretical opinions with regard to the grace of Jesus Christ which hath come unto us... they do not confess that the eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ."

I learned some other surprising things too:

• Preaching wasn't the center of early worship. The central act of Christian worship was the Eucharist.
• I learned that throughout Christian history, any question or dispute about what the Bible says was resolved by referring back to the Church Fathers, rather than starting a new denomination.
  
• The early church had a hierarchy with bishops, presbyters, and deacons.
• I came to believe that the writings of the early church fathers should take precedence and authority over anything by modern Christian writers.

After three years of irregular church attendance, I admitted to my wife that I didn't like going to church anymore. This was especially difficult since I knew how important it was to her. But I was being honest- I hadn't enjoyed church in almost a decade! Why? I was beginning to realize that there was a serious "generation gap" between the Faith I knew and the Faith as it was in the early centuries. I also began to realize that there was some "historical revisionism" going on within Protestantism. Just from reading the early Church Fathers, it was easy to see that some things I was taught about early Christianity weren't necessarily true.

Some evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic churches (those in which I had been involved) teach that they are a return to a lost "pure Christianity" when in fact they are something entirely new altogether. So in order to claim they have doctrinal authority , a new history or mythology must be reconstructed in their favor. It is taught from some pulpits that the "real" and "true" Christians were actually underground, spiritual "desperados", and martyrs of an intolerant apostate Church. Because of the brutal oppression by the official church, very little of this can be documented with specific names and dates… that is until the 16th and 17th centuries when the Anabaptists and Mennonites emerged. Then, the formation of the United States provided the environment in which these victimized yet "true" Christians could once again flourish.

In the same way, some Baptists have attempted from time to time to identify their denomination with groups like the Montanists, Albigensians, Waldenses, etc. arguing that they are a part of a historic body of Christians that has continued through the centuries. Many Baptists call this the "Trail of Blood" church.

But as I learned more of Christianity's history I began to ask some hard questions. If Baptists are the real first century Christians, then why do they not teach the Didache? Why do they not use the Liturgy of St. James? Or why do they not have a liturgy *older* than that of St. James?

If the Baptists descended from the Montanists, then why do they criticize the 'sign of the cross' as a Catholic invention? Tertullian, who advocated the sign of the cross in the second century was himself a Montanist. If the Baptists descended from the European Waldensians, why are there are no French or Italian songs in the Baptist hymnals? Waldensian churches spoke French or Italian up until the last century, *after* the composition of many Baptist hymns. And why have the modern Waldensians never claimed an association with the Baptists? The Waldensians congregations that still exist associate themselves (in the US) with the Methodist and Presbyterian denominations.

I discovered that the doctrinal innovations that developed in Rome were never accepted, nor are they now accepted, by the Eastern Churches. Nor did the Roman Pope ever have authority to force doctrine over the other centers of Christianity. Neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Roman Pope's authority extended beyond Europe. The rest of the world was under the authority of the Bishops of Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Moscow, and Constantinople- all equal to the Pope and all independent of Roman Catholicism. What groups did the Bishops of Antioch or Jerusalem oppress that believed the same as modern Protestants? If any such groups existed in Asia, Africa, or the Middle East, we would know about them because they would have had some verifiable contact with, or would have survived alongside the Maronites, Copts, Nestorians, etc.

I was raised and baptized as a Baptist. I value and appreciate many things about the churches I attended and I know only a minority of churches teach this, but a serious and honest look at Christian history showed me that 1) none of the schismatic groups in the first thousand years of Christianity were comparable to Baptists or any other Protestant group, and 2) many of the "Catholic" traditions that the Roman emperor Constantine supposedly invented - such as liturgical worship, the sign of the cross, bishops and priests- actually pre-dated Constantine, sometimes by a hundred years or more.

Furthermore, there was SO MUCH to early Christianity: ancient languages kept alive, church councils, writings by people who knew the Apostles, records of what happened to "the seventy" that followed Jesus, etc. But there had been little or no encouragement to learn about this stuff in church. If I wanted to learn about the most important people in early Christianity, I had to learn completely outside of church, like it was just a hobby.

All the while, my wife privately prayed that I would become interested in church again. I owe her a debt of gratitude for her patience and understanding. Little did I know that her simple, unselfish prayer would have such a huge impact on my life.

THE BIBLE: LANGUAGE AND ORIGINS

Things were getting interesting. Learning about the Greek sources of the New Testament exposed me to the complexities and problems faced by translators. For example, when scholars sit down to translate the Greek manuscripts into English, they have to decide which Greek sources to use because not all of them are consistent. On top of that, scholars have to use their best guess when translating some passages and words. When we read the Bible, we are placing a lot of trust in these university PhDs to accurately convey the meaning of the scriptures. Some people will say that the Holy Spirit keeps the translations accurate. But exactly which translation has the Holy Spirit "protected"? We have versions of the Bible that reflect numerous translation variations. Even the most "accurate" and modern translations are fudged just a little to make sure the text matches favorite doctrines (ex: removal of "tradition" from II Thessalonians 2:15 and 3:6) and sometimes questionable material that may not have been in the original text are kept in and not pointed out to the reader, because important doctrines have been based on those passages (example: Luther's addition of the word "sola", creating "sola fide" or "faith alone"). Theoretically, it would be possible to find a Bible that perfectly supports your doctrine, and someone who disagrees with you could in turn find a Bible that perfectly supports their doctrine. We have seen that recent translations purposefully alter the Bible so it is "politically correct" and "gender neutral". I wondered is there a modern translation that does not reflect the biases of its translators? Translating word-for-word is not enough. If the Greek were translated word-for-word, it wouldn't make any sense, you have to know the context and idioms to convey the ideas into English in a meaningful way.

What was even more discouraging to me was that even if you could find a translation that does not reflect anyone's biases, there are still ideas that can never be translated exactly or successfully from one language into another. Each language carries with it a particular mindset. You can find entire philosophies within a particular language which cannot be communicated in any other way. A good illustration of this is American Indian tribal religions. Indigenous religions cannot be learned by picking up a book in the New Age section of Barnes & Noble (despite what neo-pagans would have us believe)- authentic tribal beliefs and customs are learned in the tribal language because the ideas and concepts cannot be explained in English or any other language.

Now, where do you find someone who can understand the mindset and ideas imbedded in a language? You go to where that language is spoken. I supposed that the best place to look for a historical and reliable interpretation of ancient "Koine" Greek would be the Greek Orthodox Church. This still wasn't good enough because, like I said, there are some ideas that can never be translated exactly or successfully from one language into another. Yes, the Gospels were written down in Greek- but Jesus spoke Aramaic.

Aramaic is a cousin to Hebrew and Arabic. During Jesus' lifetime, most Semitic people of the Middle East spoke Aramaic, including the Jews. Hebrew had fallen out of common use partly because of the Jewish exile centuries before so there were very few people who could speak Hebrew in those days. Now, sometimes in the Bible, it mentions the "Hebrew language" that Jesus spoke, but the words recorded in the text are not Hebrew, they are Aramaic (like when he cried eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani in Matthew 27:46). When the authors of the Gospels wrote "Hebrew language" they were referring to the language spoken by the Hebrew people which was, at the time, Aramaic.

So there it was. I was at a dead end. If ideas can be lost when translating from Greek to English, then it's just as certain that ideas were lost when Jesus' words were translated from the original Aramaic to Greek. Aramaic was a dead language, so there isn't anyone left who can understand the mindset and ideas imbedded in that language. I was stuck with the whatever the Greek Orthodox Church had to say.

After we moved to Oklahoma City in early 2000, I picked up a book from Borders called A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels, by David Laird Dungan (1999). This book is an academic yet easy-to-read study of the age-old "Synoptic Problem", that is, how does one reconcile the different accounts of Jesus's life given by the four gospels? This debate has been around since before canon of the Bible was set. The author David Dungan provides a clear and interesting history of how the Synoptic Problem was dealt with by such scholars as Origen, Augustine, Erasmus, Spinoza, and John Locke. He also describes the political and economic agendas that influenced biblical interpretation over the centuries. Part of Dungan's purpose in writing the book is to make the public aware that the popularized "Jesus Seminar" does not represent the views of most biblical scholars and he argues that the combined historical consensus of scholars, from the ancient to the modern, is a far more reliable method to judge the historicity and reliability of the new Testament.

It was a great book, and I learned a lot about the history of the Bible. I learned that the first century church existed without New Testament books for about 30-40 years. I never thought about it before. So logically, Sola Scriptura could not have been a doctrine of the first century church. Yes, they had the Old Testament, but the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles were first an oral tradition. I was shocked to learn that even after the New Testament books were written, the Church existed for another 300 years without an agreed upon set of scriptures.

Then there came a time when the Christian Church as a whole needed a well-defined, common set of scriptures to teach its faithful, for common liturgical use, and to counter the heresies that abounded. Several church-wide Councils were called to discuss this (and other important issues). So out of all the important Christian writings available at the time, which ones were inspired scripture? More importantly, who got to decide which books were Scripture?

This process was too important to be open to just anyone who called themselves a Christian. The only people trustworthy enough to define Scripture were those episkopoi (elders, overseers) who faithfully passed down the Apostle's teachings and carried the traditional interpretations of Christianity. Where did the early Church find such men? They were the ones who could trace their lineage of leadership back to the Apostles (apostolic succession). In other words, they were the episkopoi, or bishops, of the ancient Churches of Antioch, Constantinople, Rome, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Two things blew me away: 1) the Bible was a product of the Church, designed to support the already-existing Tradition, 2) the process was not open to independent churches, traveling evangelists, or just anyone who felt "called".

Another thing about the book that stood out was Dungan's description of how the Textus Receptus (the Greek text upon which the King James was based) was put together. He told how the editors were competing to publish a Greek text before the Roman Church could, thus "capturing the market". The editors had a clear economic agenda. Erasmus, the scholar hired to actually put the text together, was under great time constraints. Work began in the fall of 1515 and went to press in February of 1516. As a result, Erasmus was not able to check his work against reliable manuscripts held in other parts of Europe and was later pressured by the Roman Church to include passages that he felt didn't belong (i.e. the "Three Heavenly Witnesses" of 1 John 5:7-8, which has been found in almost every Textus Receptus edition since). The speed with which the book went through the press meant that it contained literally thousands of typographical errors. What is more, the text was hastily and badly edited from a few late manuscripts. So this was our Bible. Heck, it looked like you couldn't even trust even the Greek.

I came to the conclusion that with all this uncertainty, we NEED something independent of the Bible and outside of the individual in order to know how the Scriptures should be correctly translated for starters, and then to objectively interpret their meaning. Without such a mechanism, the ultimate interpreter is the individual. Even then, the individual is only interpreting what that particular translator has written.

So this is where I thought- Okay, if the ultimate interpreter is the individual, then no one church can claim to be more "correct" than the others. A Rastafarian's interpretation of scripture was just as valid and should be taken just as seriously as that of Wheaton Bible College, or the Roman Catholic Church. The problem is that every group claims that their particular interpretation is the correct one. So who is right? Then it occurred to me- no wonder these historical churches have tradition- THAT's the mechanism. Tradition is the context through which they interpret the Scriptures, and keep one consistent interpretation throughout the centuries. That's how Christian belief was kept before there was a defined set of Scriptures. Well, I had to take a good hard look at the evangelical groups, because most Protestant denominations have NOT kept consistent beliefs or practices even within one lifetime. For example, lots of Protestants don't like being kept out of a "closed" communion when visiting a Catholic church. They feel, as I did, that their Christianity is being judged as not good enough. But the very same denominations that now have "open" communions, also practice "closed" communion just within the last one hundred years.

ORTHODOX- ITS NOT WHAT I THOUGHT

I started to read up on the Greek Orthodox Church and discovered that it wasn't entirely Greek. It was a network or confederation of multi-ethnic churches unified by their doctrine rather than a central authority like the Roman Catholic Church. I understood the idea of liturgical languages- the church at Rome started out using Latin, so that's why they have Latin today. The churches in Greece used Koine, so that's why the Orthodox Church has preserved Koine, but it never occurred to me that this had happened in other parts of the world, too. I discovered that the early churches used whatever local languages were spoken by the people.

For example, remember in Act 8:27, when Phillip explained the Scriptures to the Ethiopian eunuch? When the eunuch returned to Ethiopia, that local church used the Amharic language, so throughout the centuries the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has maintained that language. In the same way, the early church founded by Saint Mark in Egypt used both Greek and Egyptian because both were spoken by the people (remember, Arabic arrived later when the Moslems invaded in the 600s). I was dumbfounded to learn that the Orthodox churches in Egypt not only use Greek, but they have also preserved the ancient language of the Egypt, too. This language of the pharaohs is called Coptic. Here's the icing on the cake- the churches in Syria and Asia Minor started out using Aramaic, and yes, to this day the churches in those regions still use Aramaic, that language spoken by Jesus. Syriac, or modern Aramaic, is used in churches and is still spoken as an everyday language in a few places. This was amazing to me, that a church retained such a close historical bond to early Christianity.

So after all, there IS a place one can go to understand the mindset and ideas that were a part of Jesus' language and culture! Since the original languages have been preserved and are still used, then it should be possible to find a reliable translation of the Bible true to the original meanings and ideas. Did the Orthodox Church have such translation?

Even if they did, how could I be sure that the interpretations of these Orthodox churches were reliable and not altered to fit their pet doctrines? Easy. Compare them with the writings of the Church Fathers. Were they similar? No, they were the same. Biblical interpretation in the Orthodox Faith WAS and IS the Church Fathers. The Fathers were not only revered as authoritative, but they were from- and clergy members in- these churches now called Orthodox.

WHAT ABOUT LITURGICAL WORSHIP?

A common assumption is that New Testament worship was spontaneous. However, the early disciples did not create new worship practices. They all prayed as Jews and worshipped as Jews, and their worship was liturgical because Jewish worship itself was liturgical. With a brand new understanding of the centrality of Christ’s victory over death, the Apostles combined their Jewish synagogue liturgy with another element of Jewish temple practice- the Eucharistic or Communion service. This living continuity of worship from Temple to Synagogue and into the early Christian Church is why there is a highly developed Christian liturgical order in use by the end of the first century, within sixty years of Christ's resurrection.

All of Christian worship was liturgical from the beginning. It continued in this way for 1500 years until the Protestant reformation restructed its faith to reflect the political aspirations of the European Enlightenment. In its disdain for anything Roman Catholic, Protestantism modernized, trivialized, or discarded completely its first century liturgical and Patristic roots. The Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church can be traced back to the first century form of worship used in Jerusalem prior to the Apostles' mission to the Gentiles.

There is no misty past for the Orthodox. There is no hazy gap between them and the early Church. The Orthodox timeline doesn't begin with Emperor Constantine or an Ecumenical Council. These churches have an unbroken lineage of bishops that goes back to the time of the Apostles. Here are some examples of the historical continuity of the Orthodox Church:

• Fasting is still done as it was taught in the Didache.
• Saints Basil and Ignatius were early leaders within the Syrian Church.
• The Syriac Orthodox "Liturgy of Saint James" is traced to the early church in Jerusalem.
• Some of these Church Fathers actually decided which books were to be included in the New Testament.
• They have been singing "O Gladsome Light" every Saturday for at least 1700 years.

The Orthodox Church didn't study history and then try to re-construct early Christianity based on their best guess. The church in Jerusalem that we read about in Acts still exists. It is known today as the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem. The NT churches of Thessolonika, Athens, and Corinth are still around today, they are known as the Greek Orthodox Church. The church of Antioch continues today after 2000 years- its called the Orthodox Church of Antioch.

I learned that the Orthodox have a thing called Holy Tradition. THAT was the mechanism used to keep a consistent Biblical interpretation throughout the centuries. The Fathers are part of this Tradition. The ancient liturgical worship, the lives of the saints and martyrs, the Church Fathers, the Bible itself; these are all parts of the living Tradition of the Church. Maintaining the original languages (along with their mindsets and imbedded ideas) is yet another aspect of Orthodox Tradition.

Doesn't the Bible say tradition is bad? I wasn't going to make a quick judgment based on my "knee-jerk" reaction because, as I said, if the ultimate interpreter is the individual, no one church can claim to be more "correct" than the others. I had to admit, my denominations had their own man-made traditions, too, such as altar calls, preaching- centered services, and Sunday School. Plus, the Orthodox Church was serious about the Church Fathers, so I was going to give it a chance.

Remember how the early church existed without New Testament books for about 30-40 years and how the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles were first an oral tradition? How did they keep this oral tradition. How did they "practice" an oral tradition? The teachings of Jesus and the Apostles were repeated through the liturgical worship. So just to maintain an oral history, there had to be a tradition of some kind. The center of liturgical worship is the partaking of the bread and the wine, the Eucharist, a tradition begun by Jesus Himself when He told the disciples to do this "in remembrance of me". We see in II Thessalonians 2:15 that Paul says, "stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or by our epistle." The Greek word for tradition is paradosis, which means to pass on or transmit, in much the same way a runner passes the baton in a relay race. This is the Orthodox understanding of Holy Tradition- faithfully passing the baton of the Gospel to the next generation.

There was a point in my mind where the scales tipped far enough in favor of the Orthodox Church that I was willing to visit one. Hey, at the beginning I was just interested in what Justin Martyr had to say and I ended up taking this wild ride through church history.

In February of 2001, we felt like it was time to seek a new church home. We dreaded it. Here we go again. How many churches are we going to have to visit before we find one we like? One Saturday we opened the Yellow Pages and right then and there made a life changing decision- we were going to look up an "Orthodox" church and nothing else.

I had never been to an Orthodox church before, so I had NO idea what to expect. I figured I better call ahead and ask. I called the Greek Orthodox church- no answer. I called the Russian Orthodox Church- no answer. I called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church- no answer. The last one was an "Antiochian" Orthodox Church. I called the number and talked to a "subdeacon". It was like he was reading my mind, he answered questions before I could ask them. Come to find out, he was a former Baptist minister and knew exactly all the issues I was dealing with.

The next day as we walked toward the door of the church, I said to my wife "this will be the closest thing to early Christian worship we've ever seen." I had grown up in a tradition where worship was a combination of frontier revivalism and Reformation expository preaching, so needless to say, I knew this was going to be very different from anything I had experienced before.

There I was, a Baptist/charismatic, in an Orthodox Liturgy. And I was blown away as the Orthodox priests raised their hands in worship while they prayed over the bread and wine. Was it dead? Were the people there just to be seen? No. There was something big happening and I was desperately trying to wrap my mind around it.

In the Summer of 2001 we began taking the inquirer's classes and all the issues and questions that had been on my mind were addressed one by one- Mary, liturgical worship, the Saints, icons, etc. I learned more about the history of Christianity and about how the Bible was put together than I had ever learned in my life. They talked about the Church Fathers a lot- Ignatius, Basil, Justin Martyr.

That was the beginning of our catechumenate (learner's period). What a weird thing to do. After we decided to take the leap we learned about all the others that had taken the same step including Jaroslav Pelikan, the world's foremost Lutheran scholar; and Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer. There were even families in the local parish with evangelical backgrounds. Most interesting were those entire congregations coming into the Church at once from such backgrounds as Charismatic, Episcopal, and Evangelical. Examples include Vinyard Christian Fellowship in California and the former leaders of Campus Crusade for Christ whose entire network of churches was accepted into the Orthodox church in 1987.

Evidently, our decision to become Orthodox wasn't so weird after all. We were part of a much larger phenomenon and didn't even know it. It is comforting to know that others made the same journey we did and for the same reasons. But let me tell you, the loneliness and frustration throughout this process was very real and deeply felt.

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I am no longer a Protestant. On the basis of Holy Scripture and the continuous two thousand years of Christian history, I believe the Orthodox Church represents the fullest and most authentic expression of the original, historic Faith taught by our Lord Jesus Christ and passed on by the Apostles.

I accept the declaration of Faith as it is expressed in the Nicene Creed. I accept the Ecumenical Councils. I accept and understand Holy Scripture in accordance with the interpretation which was and is held by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Orthodox Church of the East. My wife and I are Orthodox; we inherit the powerful legacy of the Church Fathers. I am thankful God allowed my wife and I to make this journey together.

I never would have found the ancient Church had it not been for the foundation laid by my Evangelical heritage. It should be emphasized that most of the Christian elders throughout my lifetime did there very best and any lack that I felt was not their fault. They had imparted to me a great zeal and love for God. There were larger issues they simply did not have the tools to address. Are all my questions answered? No, I still have questions, and there are things I still wonder about. But I understand enough to know that Orthodox doctrine is safe. I understand enough to know that it is trustworthy.

A quote by Clark Carlton, "Whatever is true, whatever is good, whatever is beautiful in evangelical Protestantism has its source in the historic Orthodox Faith. One thousand years before the birth of Martin Luther; fourteen hundred years before the creation of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Fathers of the Orthodox Church had already wrestled with and decided the most important doctrinal issues facing the Christian Faith. Whenever an evangelical Protestant professes faith in the Trinity and in the Divine Manhood of Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God, he is unknowingly confessing the Orthodox Faith! This is an invitation for evangelical Protestants to return to their historic roots."

In March of 2002, by God's grace, my wife and I were Chrismated and received into the Orthodox Church. God's work of salvation in our lives has only just begun. It is my hope and prayer that together, My wife and I will deepen our experience of the mystery of Christ's teachings. I am learning to "seek ye first the Kingdom of God". text below generated by server.