The Grand Coherence, Chapter 21. Eastern Orthodoxy

This post is part of the book The Grand Coherence: A Modern Defense of Christianity. For all the links in the book, see this introductory post.

If Jesus Christ is risen, if Christianity is true, what should you do about it right now, or in, say, the next few weeks?

Among other things, go to church, of course. But which one?

Well, for my part, I am a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. 

My reasons for being Eastern Orthodox start from church governance. The Eastern Orthodox practices a form of conciliar governance that seems reasonable and is consistent with the way the early Church settled a dispute in Acts, chapter 15. 

At that time, Paul and Barnabas were making many converts among the Gentiles. The question then arose of whether these Gentile converts still needed to follow the elaborate law of Moses, including circumcision, which it seems that many Jewish Christians were probably still doing their best to obey, but which was very hard for Gentile converts, who weren't used to it and probably didn't see much value in it. Acts reports that "certain people came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the believers: 'Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.'" (Acts 15:1) Naturally, this was unsettling for Gentile converts, who had converted on the understanding that they could become Christians without living like Jews.

The dispute was settled by a church council at Jerusalem. The proceedings went as follows. First, Paul and Barnabas were sent to Jerusalem "to see the apostles and elders about this question" of whether the Jewish law was binding on Christians. So the initiative for the council came from Christians who had heard teachings that seemed wrong to them, and who were seeking reassurance and instruction.

"When they came to Jerusalem," Acts 15 continues, "they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them." As the Church tried to discern the will of God, the missionary successes and miracles of St. Paul seem to have served as important evidence that God approved of His approach to integrating Gentile converts.

"Then," continues Acts 15, "some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, 'The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the law of Moses.'" It seems surprising that there was a "party of the Pharisees" among the Christians, when the Pharisees had been such adversaries of Jesus. But it's a credit to the faith that it had converted them. And the position they take would seem to have some support from Jesus's statement that "until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished" (Matthew 5:18). So there was a real debate here, with arguments on both sides.

Continuing from Acts 15: "The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them." Peter's eloquent speech follows, appealing to his own experience in preaching to the Gentiles after a vision from God, and stresses that God "accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as He did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for He purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.'" 

There is certainly no sign here that Peter is in charge. On the contrary, the fact that after a lot of discussion he speaks up not to deliver a judgement but to engage in passionate persuasion proves he was just another discussant.

Then, after Paul and Barnabas speak, impressing the assembly by accounts of signs and wonders, James speaks up. "Brothers," he said, "listen to me. Simon [Peter] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for His name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written…" and he quotes a supporting passage from the prophet Amos, then concludes. "It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath" (Acts 15:23-21).

James' tone of calm authority, combined with the fact that his judgement ends the debate, suggests that he was presiding at the council. It ends in a compromise. Something is conceded to advocates of the law of Moses, and James cites widespread familiarity with the law of Moses in Gentile cities to justify this. Still, Peter and Paul seem to have won their essential point, for the council is authoritatively setting the precedent that the Church can override the authority of the old Law of Moses.

Next, "the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided" to send Paul and Barnabas back to Antioch with the council's decision, along with two of their own, Judas Barsabbas and Silas, "who were leaders among the believers," and who presumably have added authority since Paul and Barnabas themselves were parties to the dispute and might have been mistrusted bearing the news of a decision favorable to themselves. Crucially, they took with them a letter from the council.

The letter begins: "The apostles and elders, your brothers" (Acts 15:23). This states the source of the authority behind the letter. First, the apostles, with a natural authority from their closeness to Jesus during His ministry. But not the apostles alone, for there are also "elders." And to offset any claim to superiority that may seem implicit in the fact that they were sending a letter with instructions, they add "your brothers," putting themselves on a level with the Gentile converts while emphasizing the bonds of love between them.

Then it says who it is to: "To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings." Some later councils had more explicit universality. It's interesting to compare this greeting to that in the synodal letter from the 4th-century Council of Nicea, which runs: "To the Church of Alexandria, by the grace of God, holy and great; and to our well-beloved brethren, the orthodox clergy and laity throughout Egypt, and Pentapolis, and Lybia, and every nation under heaven…" (my emphasis). In both cases, the council focuses on the church where the problems originated, but since the council in Acts 15 only provides a local compromise, it stops there. The Council of Nicea permanently settled a doctrinal question for the whole Church, so it adds "every nation under heaven"

The letter in Acts 15 continues: "We have heard that some went out from us without our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said." The mention of "authorization" implies that the apostles and elders assembled at Jerusalem church enjoyed some authority, as the Gentile believers must have thought in order to send Paul and Barnabas there to ask its advice in the first place. "So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul— men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." This mention of the courage for the Gospel of Paul and Barnabas bolsters the authority of the letter and the council's decision as well as Paul and Barnabas themselves. "Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of mouth what we are writing. It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell." (Acts 15:24-29)

Finally, the message is duly sent and, happily, well received by the Gentile believers: "So the men were sent off and went down to Antioch, where they gathered the church together and delivered the letter. The people read it and were glad for its encouraging message." (Acts 15:30-31)

What are some takeaways from this letter about how the Church should be governed? There is an idea of authority here, but the letter to the Gentile believers mentions no single individual in whom authority is vested. Instead, the letter comes from "the apostles and elders," clearly indicating collective leadership. Tradition holds that James presided at the council, as the text seems to suggest, but his name is not mentioned in the letter that transmits its conclusions to the Gentile believers. During the council, the matter at hand is settled not primarily by authority but by reasoning and discussion and appeals to the authority of scripture in an effort to discern the will of God. I think it's not inconsistent with the tradition of James' presidency of the council to add that James's judgment might have settled the decision of the council not because he was in charge but because he was making a concession. If James had been the most prominent voice resisting or doubting the strong advocacy of Peter and Paul, or if he enjoyed a position of particular respect and authority among the party that was advocating the Jewish law, then his judgment might have established unanimity. It does not follow from this that James could have ruled the other way and expected Peter and Paul to submit. And it's hard to imagine that they would have done so, since Peter had had a vision from God to support his position, and Paul's position on the loss of authority of the Jewish law, strongly articulated in many letters, had surely been taught to many Gentile converts, and received a kind of confirmation when Paul, teaching it, had been granted by God to work many miracles.

The outcome of the council was a compromise, and in spite of the apparently unanimous support of the council for the decision, and its inclusion in scripture, it hasn't stuck. Christians are not taught to avoid meat that has been strangled, or blood. If any Christian were to suggest that he felt forbidden to eat his steak rare because Acts 15 bade the Gentile converts to refrain from blood, other Christians would find his scruples bizarre. The compromise outcome seems a little inconsistent with the vision vouchsafed to Peter earlier, from which Peter drew the conclusion that God had made all foods clean. Paul, for his part, argues in 1 Corinthians 8 that there's nothing wrong, really, with eating food offered to idols, but nonetheless advises people to abstain from it because some think that it's wrong and it's better not to offend them or shake their faith. But while it didn't convince everyone or prove lasting, the council at Jerusalem was successful because it preserved the unity of the Church and encouraged the Gentile believers. The council restores unity without overriding anyone's reason and conscience.

The words "it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us," with which the apostles and the Jerusalem Church introduce their ruling and give it a warrant for authority, are curiously forceful and mild at the same time. Their claim to know the feelings of the Holy Spirit is strong and bold, and invests their whole reputation for spiritual insight in the decision that is being made. And yet just because one thing seems good to the Holy Spirit doesn't mean that other things might not also have seemed good. Maybe the Holy Spirit would have approved of many other compromise measures. Maybe the Holy Spirit would have approved of a more complete mitigation or abrogation of the law of Moses, and will do so later. The decision doesn't demand full intellectual agreement, but at most a kind of practical compliance. It definitely precludes and prohibits further teaching of the doctrine that comprehensive adherence to the law of Moses is necessary for Christian salvation. But it does not prohibit anyone from practicing law of Moses, themselves, or deny that there is any virtue in doing so. In general, it leaves lots of room for different attitudes and opinions and practices.

While the apostles had a certain place of leadership in the early Church, no one among the apostles was particularly a natural leader. Peter tended to be the boldest and most forward, but prone to err thereby. He needed correction or confirmation by others, such as Jesus Himself during His lifetime, once very forcefully ("Get thee behind me, Satan," Jesus once told him (Matthew 16:23)), or James in the Jerusalem council, or Paul who corrects Peter when he in improper deference to the scruples of visiting Jews refuses to eat with Gentile converts while they are visiting (Galatians 2:11-21). Jesus had for the most part treated the apostles all alike, except that there were three, Peter, James, and John, whom he chose from among the rest to accompany him on a few special occasions. If Peter had been invested with monarchical authority by Jesus, as the Roman Catholic Church later began to claim, Acts 15 is where we would have seen it operating. But clearly no one at the council or in the early Church, least of all Peter, has the slightest notion of any such thing.

Both the collective approach to leadership and the bias in favor of tolerance and deference to individual opinion and conscience are reasonable. Many heads are better than one. If even God is a Trinity, why should the Church be a monarchy? Jesus chose twelve apostles and named no leader. And so for centuries the early Church made major decisions in great church councils attended by many bishops. Some bishops, to be sure, were more eminent and authoritative than others, especially the patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. There was even a hint of a slight preeminence on the part of Rome, as a sort of "first among equals," because it was both the capital of the empire and the burial place of St. Peter and St. Paul. But the idea that all the Eastern patriarchs had to submit to Rome was alien to the early Church. And so, to this day, the Eastern Orthodox churches carry on that tradition and vest the greatest doctrinal authority in councils where the Church comes together to decide pressing questions. If the Catholic Church is like the Roman Empire, with one emperor in charge, the Orthodox Church is like NATO, a league of self-governing national churches united by common principles and, hopefully, by love, which decide together. That honors the biblical model.

So where do the Roman Catholics get the idea that Jesus made St. Peter the first pope and invested all Church authority in him? They base their doctrine on the following proof text: 

“'But what about you?' he asked. 'Who do you say I am?'

"Simon Peter answered, 'You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.'

"Jesus replied, 'Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.' Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah." (Matthew 16:15-20)

Now, I can see why someone hastily reading this passage might think that the "rock" on which the church was built was St. Peter himself. But that's a very inapt description of St. Peter's place in the Church. The words "Get the behind me, Satan" (Matthew 16:23) come almost immediately after this, when Peter urged Him not to be crucified, and the three denials on the eve of the Crucifixion were still to come. Certainly, God often made good use of St. Peter's impetuous temperament, and St. Peter is much loved by Christians today, among the other saints. But the rock on which the church is built is not Peter personally, but the statement of faith that Peter had just uttered: that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. I think that's easy to see from the daily life of any pious parish. It is shared faith in Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God on which, like a rock, the love and communion and unity of any good church is built. St. Peter doesn't play that role at all. Read in the Roman Catholic way, the passage seems oddly magical and inapt, lacking the characteristic wisdom of Jesus. But rightly interpreted, it fits in, and is wise. 

As for Peter being given the power to bind and loose, we learn soon afterwards that that belongs to all the apostles, and to the Church generally. For this is what Jesus teaches about how disputes within the Church should be settled:

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

“Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:15-20)

Thus Jesus establishes a norm of collective leadership. Judgment is invested not in any individual, but in the Church generally, with an emphasis on the need for multiple witnesses, and Jesus, far from promising infallibility to a single monarch of the Church, promises to be present whenever Christians are gathered in His name. The church council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 practices the power to bind and loose that Jesus granted it, binding the believers to its compromise formula but loosing them to be Christians without mastering the Mosaic law, and binding the Pharisee believers not to blame the Gentile believers for being Christians without becoming Jews.

In the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Latin-speaking West and the Greek-speaking East grew apart. Three of the Eastern patriarchs fell under the political rule of the conquering Muslim empires, weakening them. In the West, Christianity spread north and west to the furthest ends of Europe, and all these new Christians recruited from Celts and Germans and Norsemen looked to Rome, not the distant East, for Christian leadership. The papacy's preeminence and the distance and irrelevance of Constantinople made the Church in the West seem more centralized and monarchical than the early Church or the Eastern Church. In the 8th century, someone forged the "Donation of Constantine," a document which supposedly recorded a grant of overwhelming authority by the emperor Constantine to the Roman popes, but which was exposed as a forgery in the 15th century.

But the real break came in the 11th century, when the papacy launched a kind of revolution, imposing clerical celibacy, defying emperors, launching crusades, and making very strong and ever-escalating claims about papal supremacy not only over the Church but over secular rulers. Among other things, a papal emissary excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople in 1054, and the churches have been tragically divided ever since. More divisions followed later, when papal abuses of worldly power and doctrinal authority provoked reform attempts that precipitated secession from the Roman Church, partly from an aspiration to return to the purer model of Christianity that Catholic subjects disillusioned by the spectacular corruption and violence into which the late medieval Roman Catholic Church had fallen perceived in the early Church described in Acts. Thus Protestantism was born, but it soon made mistakes and splintered. 

Nonetheless, all these churches, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic and Protestant, adhere to the Nicene Creed, and in general, their worldviews are overwhelmingly the same. I think the brevity of this chapter relative to the length of the rest of this book is roughly in proportion to the amount of doctrinal disagreement among historic Christian churches relative to the amount of agreement. They're not very different. Most differences of opinion among Christians today concern politics or secular history or cultures and customs, and in general are inessential to the faith. People don't always realize, especially if they're lukewarm Christians and not very familiar with the content of the faith to which they nominally adhere, which disagreements are doctrinal and which are inessential. But by far the most important disagreements involve the degrees and ways that Christians compromise with or make concessions to modernity, and these divisions happen much more within the historic Christian denominations than among them. This book has presented a quite "conservative" or "orthodox" Christian theology, and I believe it will find a high degree of agreement among fairly conservative (though perhaps not the most self-consciously conservative) adherents of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism alike, while provoking dissent from "liberal" or modernizing elements in all these Christian denominations. 

Denominations differ a good deal in the degree to which the hierarchy, leadership, and official statements have sacrificed the historic beliefs and practices of the faith in order to pander to a modern scientific worldview and/or liberal or progressive values. Often, the result is that the best way for members of some denominations to stay faithful to the historic beliefs and practices of those denominations, which the leadership of those churches are betraying, is to abandon modernizing and liberal denominations in favor of more conservative denominations. Many Christians seem to have done that, which is one reason why liberalizing churches regularly see steep declines in membership while more conservative denominations tend to hold steady or grow. The Eastern Orthodox Church is arguably the most conservative Christian church and, at the time of writing, seems to be one of the fastest-growing churches in the United States. 

CS Lewis, a member of the Anglican Church, was sharply critical of compromises and betrayals of core doctrines of the Christian faith by Anglican clergymen in his own day. Since then, Anglicans have become much more liberal, so that it's hard to imagine CS Lewis could conscientiously have been an Anglican today. His substantive beliefs would have made him much more at home in Eastern Orthodoxy than in modern Anglicanism.

I tend to find that, in contrast with the unacceptable compromises of liberal modernizers, the historic disagreements that explain the official divisions of Christianity among so many denominations seem, on closer examination, rather innocuous, and ought to be easy to resolve. 

For example, Lutherans tend to make a big deal of the idea that people are saved by faith, not works. They stress this so much that one might get the impression that you can simply believe in Jesus and then do anything you want. That would be a disastrous error at the practical level, and very inconsistent with both reason and scripture. However, if you accuse a devout and articulate Lutheran of believing that you can believe in Jesus and then sin as much as you like, they'll reject it as a slanderous misrepresentation of what their church teaches, and then go on to give an explanation that seems quite consistent with sensible Christianity, but very doubtfully consistent with their insistence that believers are saved only by faith, not works. I think that for most Lutherans, never mind what Martin Luther himself might have thought, the "salvation by faith, not works" theme is a rhetorical overemphasis rather than a doctrinal error. CS Lewis was wiser when he said that asking whether we are saved by faith or works is like asking which blade in a pair of scissors does the cutting. But to emphasize salvation by faith can help to prevent people from falling into legalism and pharisaism, and inasmuch as it reminds men to try to trust God and to mistrust themselves, that's all to the good. It seems clear from history and present practice that Lutherans have never exhibited a strong tendency to treat salvation by faith as a warrant for sin. And while I haven't followed such conversations closely, I've heard rumors that Catholic and Lutheran leaders have discussed this question at a high level and no longer think there's a substantive disagreement.

As another example, my sense from having attended, back when I was a seeker, quite a few churches with some sort of descent from the Calvinist Reformation, is that the doctrine of double predestination, which I can't understand in any sense except that God arbitrarily makes some men fit for heaven while condemning others to hell, is scarcely taught or believed at all in churches with this unfortunate history. That the doctrine is abhorrent, blasphemes against the justice of God, and would make all efforts at proselytization and exhortation to good conduct pointless if it were true, seems so self-evident that I admit that I can't find the patience to look for creditable interpretations of it. But in the actual life of the churches that might be deduced from their histories to believe in it, it just seems to be absent. Perhaps clergy in historically Calvinist denominations would have ingenious ways to explain the inconsistency. Yes, God can foresee the future. And yes, He probably does have some freedom about whose lives He chooses to approve and accept in the end. Is that all they meant by it? Whatever. The way I would put it is that when you get to know Calvinist Christians, they turn out to be Christians and not Calvinists.

I guess it makes sense that Lutherans and Calvinists would converge back to orthodox Christianity, away from the errors of Calvin and perhaps Luther, since they read the Bible a lot more than they read Luther and Calvin.

As far as I can tell, the ancient dispute between the Catholics and Orthodox about the filioque, the Latin word meaning "and the Son," which Western churches gradually began inserting into the Creed starting in Spain in the 6th century, should also be somewhat easy, if not to settle exactly, then at least to neutralize as a barrier to communion. The theological issue, about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only or from both the Father and the Son, is far above my head. CS Lewis, in Mere Christianity, supplies an intuition for the filioquist position by suggesting that the spirit of God is like the spirit of a club, which arises from the fellowship of God the Father and God the Son, somewhat as the spirit of a club arises from the fellowship of its members, while yet being distinct from the characters, opinions, or taste of those members. Then he adds that while the spirit of a club is not a real person, this is one of the differences between God and men, for the spirit of the "club" of Father and Son is a real person. This is an unusually awkward argument for Lewis, and I get the sense that he's doing his duty as an expositor for popular audiences of inherited doctrines that neither he nor anyone else can fully understand. What we do know, though, is that the filioque was not present in the original versions of the Creed, so the Eastern Orthodox are clearly right to reject the way the filioque was added to the Creed in the West, if their general view of church governance is accepted. At the same time, Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to his disciples (John 14:7), so Eastern Orthodox believers who think the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone is an important theological fact should still be able to accept the filioque in this sense. Isidore of Seville, who got the filioque started when he introduced it into the creed in Spain as a rebuttal to Arianism, far from being condemned by the Orthodox as heresiarch, is venerated by them as a saint. This whole Trinitarian matter is very arcane. It tends to be singled out by the most rationalistic expositors of the faith, such as CS Lewis, as a rare example of a Christian doctrine opaque to human reason. And I can't imagine any practical relevance in the dispute.

All in all, these disagreements among Nicene Christians seem less important and difficult, and easier to resolve, than those which the council at Jerusalem in the Book of Acts had to settle. It's tempting to blame Church divisions on the pride and stubbornness of hierarchs, when key points of disagreement involve such arcana, which rank-and-file believers rarely understand and may not even be aware of. But I think the stubbornness of rank-and-file believers is at least as much to blame, for Church leaders trying to negotiate their way out of schism must always fear that reunion with other churches will cause schisms in their own, as believers who are proud of their denominational identities and have entrenched mistrust for other Christian denominations refuse to accept that the "them" has become "us."

And having used the word "stubbornness," I'd better offset that right away by adding that a certain kind of holy stubbornness is often appropriate, wise, and brave. If you've found the truth, you'd better be selective in how you go along with fashionable opinion, and often you'll find yourself backed into a corner and insisting against all comers on some claim they dislike and don't understand. For the most part, I think the stubbornness that prevents Christian reunion is not the holy sort. But it's a hard question.

Nor, coming from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, can I say that Christian people ought always to follow their hierarchs. There are recognized heretics among the patriarchs of Constantinople. The true doctrines of Christianity are safeguarded in the hearts of the pious faithful, not in the Church's official hierarchy, which is all too prone to being appropriated and instrumentalized by wicked rulers. At the same time, the faithful are very prone to prejudice and provincialism. 

If anything, I think the divisions of Christianity are the fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy that "because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold" (Matthew 24:12). The blame is sometimes more on hierarchs and sometimes more on congregations, but what they are to blame for is not so much intellectual error as lack of love. I'll use an example that tells against my own church to help illustrate the point. In 1204, a crusading army from the West sacked the great Orthodox city of Constantinople, the wealthiest and most beautiful in the world, which had stood firm against Islam for centuries, while carrying the torch of a Christianized ancient civilization. How horrible! How terribly sad! And it adds extra horror that it was done by an army that had marched forth from the West in the name of God! Still, it took place more than 800 years ago. The vast majority of Western Catholics even at the time had nothing to do with it. And yet I have heard Orthodox Christians mention the 1204 sack of Constantinople as a key reason why they can't forgive or desire union with the West. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. 

We probably can't do much to resist a trend which Jesus seems to have regarded as inexorable. But let us not be among those whose love grows cold. For my part, I bear no ill will towards other Christian denominations, or I hope, by the grace of God, towards anyone whatsoever. The 11th-century schism that divided the Catholics and the Orthodox had something to do with doctrinal evolutions and something to do with church governance, but at bottom, I think it reflected indifference and resentment. The Greeks and the Latins didn't love each other much, and didn't particularly want to be in communion, so schism was precipitated easily and not much effort was made to repair it. About the Reformation, too, there was as much nationalism as theology. 

If, even today, all the churchgoing Christians on Earth prayed for reunion, and begged their leaders to labor for its establishment, and stood ready to accept changes in beloved customs for the sake of unity, and diligently studied, in a charitable spirit and with open minds, all the compromise statements produced by negotiations, and praised their leaders for progress, and lamented setbacks, and even in the absence of communion eagerly praised the Christian faithful of other denominations for whatever they did well, while stating any criticisms in the gentlest and most constructive way they could, and practiced intellectual humility, avoiding dogmatic attachments to doctrinal statements they couldn't fully understand or lacked sufficient evidence for, and engaged in heroic, self-sacrificing generosity towards Christians of other denominations at every opportunity, then it might be as easy to restore the universal communion of the Christian faithful as it was at the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. I'm not expecting that to happen. 

But I wonder if the chief purpose of all the calamities prophesied in Revelation is to throw Christians together in desperate situations so that some of them at least will forget old, petty disagreements and relearn mutual love. Maybe Christians who barely spoke to each other while they worshiped across the street for decades of Sunday mornings in prosperity will welcome one another into their homes as refugees from falling stars or plagues of locusts, and suddenly find that they are all Christians together after all, and they love each other, and delight in one another's company, and they can't help worshiping Christ together, and the long, sad divisions among Christians will melt away.

With all that said, let me come back to the question with which I begin the chapter. If you're persuaded of the need to go to church, then which one? Of course, if you're an unattached single with no ties to any church community, and if a strong Orthodox parish, full of real zeal and love and clean living, is nearby– and I have known such, thanks be to God!– then it's easy for me to give advice. Start going to services there. Meet the people. Participate. And soon you can become a catechumen, on the road to baptism.

But some unattached singles may live a hundred miles from the nearest Orthodox parish. And the nearest parish may conduct its services almost entirely in a foreign language. And it may be short on zeal, lax in its practices, ineffectual or indifferent in urging its members to avoid fashionable sins of fornication or avarice, and festering with nationalist resentments and conspiracy theories. And there may be a thriving Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic church next door, with a wise and a loving priest or pastor, and a congregation singing hymns of joy and bearing one another's burdens and reading the scriptures and having conversations so edifying that any eavesdropper will have food for joyful thoughts for days afterwards. Even in such a case, if you believe that bread and wine are by a sacred mystery transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and that the power to provide this sacrament has been transmitted from ordination to ordination, since the time of the early Church, and all the way back to the apostles, then there is a case for putting up with the hundred-mile drive, and the bitter, nationalistic fellow parishioners, and the foreign language services, in order to partake of the true Body and Blood. Still, I'm not sure I can bring myself to urge Western seekers to pay any price in order to prefer a bad Orthodox parish over a good Western congregation.

A different sort of difficulty arises if a mature, well-established Christian tightly integrated into a Western Christian community becomes convinced of the superior canonical and/or doctrinal claims of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Should you leave behind family and friends and go, alone, to a strange church where no one knows you? Maybe. But what would happen to those you leave behind? Some may have depended on your example and counsel to guide them. For some, your absence may jeopardize their very Christian faith. For others, you influenced their Christian faith and practice in a wholesome direction. If you stayed in your Western community, you might even have had a chance, at some point, to bring about the incorporation of the whole community into the Eastern Orthodox Church as a body. Such things have happened. On the other hand, can you stay in a Western congregation, believing in Eastern Orthodox ecclesiology, without lying? And if you convert, you may bring others with you into the Eastern Orthodox Church who would never have come. Those you could have brought into Eastern Orthodoxy with you might otherwise, if you don't, even leave Christianity altogether because of the same doubts of their Western denomination which are leading you towards Eastern Orthodoxy. There's no end of the complications here.

I'll hazard three pieces of advice concerning the choice of a church. 

First, if you find a genuine community of Christians, stick to it. I don't mean people who label themselves Christian, of course. I mean people for whom their discipleship of Christ is the most important thing in their lives, and who strive to follow his teachings in everything they do. Remember what Christ promised: "For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them" (Matthew 18:20). Christ will be invisibly present wherever two or three Christians come together to follow and worship Him. So don't be a church shopper. In the best Christian communities, there are all sorts of petty frictions. That's nothing compared to the value of the presence of Christ.

But second, be truthful, and don't let peer pressure from a Christian community make you assert something that you cannot really believe. For me, it was papal infallibility in the case of the Catholics, and a conviction that personal salvation is a once-and-for-all event that happens during this life, in the case of the most devout Evangelical communities that I met. I don't think intellectual honesty requires that you thoroughly vet every doctrine that was ever ratified by the official hierarchy of a church that you attend. I think some doctrines atrophy and become irrelevant without being formally repudiated. But a church is naturally a community of agreement, as I explained in chapter 4, and if you cannot accept doctrines that are central to the religious life of your fellow believers, you will become uncomfortable and feel like an outsider. Don't tell lies to escape that feeling. Let God send you a new church instead.

And third, remember that Christ told us to eat His Body and to drink His Blood, so look for that holy food. Here history seems relevant, for the sacramental gift ought to be passed down as a gift and not claimed by someone merely on their own authority. But I think the witness of the feelings of the heart, and of the Holy Spirit and response to Christian prayer, are as important. However you discern, remember that Jesus said: "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you" (John 6:53). Find that precious food and drink.

Those three principles were enough to lead be into Eastern Orthodoxy.

Good luck on your journey! Keep praying, and by the grace of God, one thing will lead to another, and soon you'll be doing some good, and beginning a life story that's fit to be written in the Book of Life, and carried into eternity.