The One True Church

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A friend and I were discussing the relative a priori equivalence of all world religions last night. How does one argue for the truth of Christ to someone who is not a Christian? Or, more accurately, to a disillusioned Christian who mistakenly believes that an intellectual tabula rasa is possible? This is quite a conundrum, but it is one I have encountered several times. This is especially true because being a philosophy major who was outside the evangelical, pietist mainstream of Asbury College meant that my circle of friends was mostly composed of disillusioned Christians.

Fr. Thomas Hopko has published a paper that will form the keynote of the upcoming Thirteenth All-American Council of the Orthodox Church in America. In it, he summarizes the Orthodox doctrine on the church, “Theologically speaking, there are not many Orthodox Churches; there is only one. An Orthodox parish is this one Church or it is not an Orthodox church at all. Each parish, therefore, must be the one and only Church of Christ.” In this, he echoes patristic teaching with roots in Ss. Ignatius and Irenaeus, which has eloquently been restated by Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) in Being as Communion.

Each parish, then, is called to enflesh, or incarnate, the Body of Christ in a specific place. The very existence of the parish is the best argument for the truth of Christ that I know. It is only in a community of believing Christians, who are learning how to personally manifest Christ to each other and to corporately manifest Christ to a bewildered world, that Christ can truly be experienced as a reality. It is only there that Christ becomes real and not an abstract possibilty.

When you break a parish down into its constituent parts, it makes no sense that the whole should manifest Christ in the flesh. Hurt, anger, misunderstandings: human weakness abounds. And yet, somehow, in our weakness the strength of Christ is revealed.

Of course, some will find this totally unconvincing—incoherent, even. But to those who have met Christ in the flesh, nothing will convince them otherwise.

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